Women's rights are under threat says the Guardian. The big gender elephant is in the room.

[Lovelyview]

The Guardian thinks that women's rights are under threat - but no mention of women's spaces in the UK. Anyone with the arguments at their fingertips want to write a letter to the editor? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/29/the-guardian-view-on-global-womens-rights-saudi-arabia-isnt-the-only-problem

fuck me, is it April Fools day already?

I think my essay needs padding out a bit;

Dear The Grauniad
How do you live with the cognitive dissonance?

Thank you, that was satisfying!

Who'd have thought that the 21st century would be so dangerous for adult human females?

Cognitive dissonance? You know they publish conflicting points of view on a whole range of topics.

It's an editorial - so the Guardian's opinion - not a columnist. Subtle but important difference. Plus I've yet to see any Guardian columnist raising the alarm about gender affirmative care, self ID and male access to female spaces (prisons, rape crisis centres, communal changing rooms)

I came here expecting to see the usual reply of "that's the Observer, actually" but having read it, yep that's typical Graun.

Women and men around the world continue to battle for the girls and women of today and the future, often at personal risk.

Yes, and you can read all about them on this board, Ms Viner!

1.How can you identify what women's rights are if you cannot specify what a woman is? Is there even such a thing as a woman? What does it mean to be a woman, as opposed to a man?

2.Is 'a woman' just a state of mind' that anyone can identify into - if so, can anyone be a woman with the right mental attitude - or stop being a woman if they don't have the right mental attitude?

3.Are there any specific rghts or protections that women should have, which are in addition to basic human rights, if so, what are they, and why should women have them?

If we cannot distinguish or differentiate between one type of thing and another how can we understand precisely what we are talking about, make meaningful law, or organise our society in an intentional and functional way?

Kath Viner doesn't write the leaders. They have a team of leader writers, including Susanna Rustin, who's a gender-critical feminist, so it might well have been written by her.

Oh come off it. This is an article about leaders/politicians.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has just announced that it will resume publicly stoning women to death. It had already restricted the access of women and girls to education, employment and public spaces. Politicians in the Gambia are seeking to overturn a ban on female genital mutilation. South Korea’s “anti-feminist” president has pledged to abolish its gender equality ministry after winning a 2022 election fuelled by a backlash to the #MeToo movement.

What line are you wanting them to put in there? "In the UK males can use ladies toilets"?

If they were going to put anything, I'd prefer "In the UK, rape is effectively decriminalised by the chronic underfunding from the government". But really that article illustrates why we are extremely lucky to live in the UK

You know full well that it's about more than toilets, Adam.

In Afghanistan women were not allowed to have a name or give it out to even their doctors or have it on their grave stones. They were not allowed an identity.

Women in Europe and the US are also no longer allowed to have an identity as the words to describe us are taken from us (woman, mother).

We might not be stoned to death, yet, but enough of us have faced arrests and threats of convictions that it is more than worrisome.

If you think women aren't in danger in the UK because of incompetent and misogynist politicians you are severely mistaken.

More like "In the UK women had to campaign to get convicted rapists out of women's prisons - and the Labour Party want to let them back in."

[Taliban] had already restricted the access of women and girls to education, employment and public spaces.

Thank goodness we don't have the seeds of that here. Just rape of children in schools, coercive control of women in the workplace (see ONS) and police ignoring those who object to women's right to assemble (LWS, FiLiA, when Helen & Maya went to Manchester etc.).

RebelliousCow has listed the important issue of definitions.

Guardian article and several recurring themes on this forum made me think about this. MN FWR is one of the relatively few platforms where it's possible to discuss women's rights. (Who knows after April 1 tho'.)

I sometimes wonder if one of the best ways to make a forum unusable would be to have a community disruptor bot that consistently manages to generate engagement.

I still have a fondness for the Fermat manoeuvre although I don't know if it would need an update in the face of bot technology?

In the absence of a block/hide poster button, I suggest the following strategy (given that you're talking to the lurkers).

Do not name check the sealion. Instead, respond to a depersonalised paraphrase:

"It is sometimes erroneously suggested that blah. Blah is wrong for the following reasons (short and pithy). If you need more information re. debunking blah, here's a link."

Then (this next step is important to combat derailment) go back up thread to the last useful contribution to the discussion, make sure you do name check that contributor, and pick up the discussion from that point.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3438714-Bunbury-s-Public-Service-Announcement-2?reply=82973323

In the US, anti abortionists discuss the death penalty for women who seek an abortion - including for underage girls.

This is the house that man built, and it the same model the world over regardless of creed or culture.

https://twitter.com/MrsAMartini/status/1773160427981070620

Yes I do. But it really is extremely privileged to take that article and complain that it does not mention UK "womens spaces". We are so lucky.

Actually lots of those examples are a case study of what governments "that know what a woman is" choose to do with that knowledge.

I'm just irritated really that people can't see past gender politics to the serious harm being done to women globally.

Women in Europe and the US are also no longer allowed to have an identity as the words to describe us are taken from us (woman, mother).

Quite some hyperbole. It's not like they are banned words. Our prime minister is clear that women don't have penises and "a man is a man and a woman is a woman".

We aren't being stoned to death, prevented from being in public without a male chaperone, banished to freeze in a hut when we are on our period, locked up in prison "for our own safety" if we are a victim of domestic violence etc etc.

I think that article is saying something important and homing in on "well it doesn't mention womens spaces in the UK" is missing the point.

In Somalia, the government is discussing proposals that would undermine the efforts to eliminate child marriage. In Scotland, the government refuses to comply with the UN resolution to eliminate child marriage, and so won't raise the minimum age to 18. And in UK schools, teenage girls have been forced to undress in front of male peers.

It's not missing the point. Just because you don't think women's sex based rights are important enough you feel able to dismiss it. I don't. I see the Guardian as misogynistic and this article as gaslighting. Yes, worse things happen to other women abroad, but they are also sex based too.

As pp said, it's the elephant in the room.

Yes I do. But it really is extremely privileged to take that article and complain that it does not mention UK "womens spaces". We are so lucky.

It's all part of the whole.

This is the house that man built, and it the same model the world over regardless of creed or culture.

Exactly.

Im not really sure what happened to you, Adam. You used to be a good poster before you namechanged, you engaged in good faith and were thoughtful.

What we are dealing with is the erasure of women as a human category with its own integrity and requirments for dignity.

Relieving themselves and 'going to the toilet' for women in many cultures is fraught with risk and potential for violence as well as for shame, certainly where there are no facilities provided.

In the West we have accorded women some basic protections which respect the conditions of their sex. This is fundamental women's rights stuff - not a frilly addition.

The irony of the Guardian publishing that piece, while failing to mention its own contribution to undermining the rights of women in the UK.

Quite.