Anyone work for one of the big 4 consultancies who celebrated international women's day with a man taking about coming out as transgender?

[realdays]

I generally don't care to get that stressed about the transgender issue BUT this flabbergasted me. I actually found myself saying to the screen out load 'oh you have to be kidding!'

On what planet is that right!!! Can't say a word at work as it is very US centric and obviously they think that's fine.

It can't hold. It isn't going to be possible to force this charade on women forever. Many women experience it as wholly disrespectful.

It has always been the case that as soon as the truth is allowed to be spoken, the TRA position looks ridiculous and even nasty.

When the typical argument for men on the podium is merely a shaming "how does it even affect you" and women can answer in many and varied ways how it does indeed affect us...well the game is up.

The trouble was that the voices being heard were mostly people troll hunting and indulging in personal attacks. If you choose to break MN rules and get zapped, that's not them silencing you, that's you asking for it.

Ah ok. I apologise for misinterpreting your post.

Mostly? I don't think that's accurate at all.

@Zyq couldn't they just have deleted those posters and left the main thread?

Funny how the phrase 'you were asking for it' trips off the tongue, isn't it?

Yes we do.

My usual Cassandra self grumbles.

Note the power disparity. How many women were in any position to halt the proceedings and say, "This is IWD. What message do you think you're sending?"

What would have happened if any of them did? The OP of this thread is a director and couldn't.

I didn't attend any but was aware of them happening around me and how they were promoted and staged.

This is a triumphalist statement of power. All HR, employment and civil policies are stacked up on one side. We've (expensively) seen what happens to women who raise even basic questions in the workplace.

I've just done a "turning + tide" search for FWR S&G since 2018. Bear in mind, all the deleted threads that have discussed this and the multiple splitting of the subforums etc. and there are still >2500 (duplications, granted). I'm incandescently angry about what is happening to women's rights. Without policies and without any mechanism to rewrite them, we're just shifting the position of the oppressors' boots/kitten heels on our necks.
https://www.mumsnet.com/search/advanced?allTopics=false&from=2018-01-01&query=turning+%2B+tide&to=2024-03-09&topics[0]=Feminism%3A+Sex+%26+gender+discussions

What about starting a thread where people can link to IWD posts that centre biological women. It could be a great way of promoting them.

You're right, they're not. But that's not what was happening on that thread.

You must've been reading a different thread from me then as all I could see was the majority of posters try to make sense of the 2/3 posters spouting the 'you are all transphobes' nonsense with examples, situations where women can be put in vulnerable situations having a man present, stating biological reality etc etc.

The personal attacks came from the TWAW brigade. I was called a dinosaur at one point for pointing out that gender isn't assigned by a doctor at birth, which one poster was struggling with. (I'm 42 sniff sniff).

Actually I'd like to hear this constantly in the media, publicised and discussed.

Because...I hear it daily from male friends and family, each of them insisting that they can only connect emotionally with women because other men don't feel the way though do.

There could be great sociopolitical change if men would speak out about this more, rather than confide in women/use women for emotional support.

I'm intrigued by the reaction at the OPs consultancy firm. Did anyone complain? Did the webinar audience drop significantly when this person was speaking?

If it isn't challenged then the same thing will happen again.

Funny how the phrase 'you were asking for it' trips off the tongue, isn't it?

Isn't it just.

Mostly? I don't think that's accurate at all.

It's not accurate. The main deleted posts were genderists until MNHQ said they were taking the thread down "for the night".

Sorry meant to quote @ditalini

So much this. There is such power in realising that you are not alone and this is what these feeble men are afraid of.

It's part of the power of the delete button - once the thread's gone it can be whatever you say it was, just those nasty women asking for it.

But anyway, someone will likely be reporting away trying to get this deleted as thread-about-a-thread, so probably should stop mentioning it unfortunately.

YY @ditalini

How can women ever stand up against this ridiculous situation when even talking about it is banned?
We are living under a dictatorship of a small minority and their misguided and misinformed supporters.

Yeuch. Listen to yourself FFS.

I think the way the discussions tend to turn to women's fear of there being predatory, violent males among transwomen is in fact counterproductive.

Although the fears aren't ungrounded, not only do the discussions often descend into transphobic suggestions about transwomen in general, but it can also distract from the more insidious, far-reaching implications for women of an ideology claiming gender distinctions and stereotypes must be proclaimed biology and law.

Most people still believe that males and females have innately, biologically distinctive characters, abilities,brains, essences, souls and traits. The idea of questioning this is so alien to them, that they assume gender critical women (despite the clue being in the name!) are either scared of transwomen or hate them. That's why they think we're the regressive ones.

Actually most trans people I've known are more of the view that gender is a social construct and have given up in despair of changing society's sexism, so have wanted to change sex and gender to conform to feel they fit into society better in alignment with their own characters.

That's dancing around the fact that they are male. That's the sole objection to them being in women's spaces.

I never said it did.

But if numerous posts on a thread are clearly breaking MNs guidelines then it's not surprising that the whole thread gets pulled to avoid the swiss cheese effect.

I'm not suggesting we ignore that fact, but just that the core issue is that by pretending gender stereotypes or accepting in law the reactionary and regressive claim that gender constructs are innate, essential and immutable we are smashing to pieces not only scientific fact as a basis of law, but the entire premise that women's rights and equalities have been founded upon. Thereby opening the floodgates for a return to terrifying subjugation of women and girls (and little hope of progress to liberate women from oppressive regimes in other countries).