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

Here's an example of women in a UK public organisation paid for by the tax payer being threatened with disciplinary action for exercising their legal right to have their privacy and dignity considered and respected in the workplace.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/5039445-disciplinary-action-for-ons-female-employees-if-they-object-to-trans-colleagues-using-their-lavatories

I actually think 'progressives' more and more are giving less and less of a shit about women, and about what happens to women, if those women 'belong' to a supposed oppressor category. Hence the way that the atrocities committed against Israeli women and girls were minimised because apparently 'Hamas' could "only take so much without snapping". Hamas were seen as the real victims - even as they paraded the bodies of naked, dead women around to be spat on.

'Karens' are fair game too; as is JK Rowling, and so on.

Why on earth are you talking about Hamas? There are plenty of threads on the ME board to discuss that on. BTW, making the Gaza war about "progressives" is really distasteful, as well as being off topic.

All around the world, governments are,rowing back on women's rights. The UN have made Saudi Arabia the chair of women's rights, which is laughable. That is worth discussing, rather than political point scoring and purity spiralling about "progressives"/the left.

Maaate.

If it’s hate to even state the definition of woman then how can women have rights? You can’t defend what you can’t define.

Yes all around the world governments are rowing back on women's rights. Including in the UK. We should discuss that.

I couldn't watch all that. Frightening stuff.

Thats tomorrow.

Joy.

Guardian publishes article about women's rights globally.

Women on a British site reflect on the article with reference to perceived omissions that may contribute to the bigger picture (women's spaces in the western world). Other posters tell them this isn't relevant, &, indeed, morally dubious.

Women on a British site reflect on the article with reference to global political trends that may contribute to the bigger picture (reductive hierarchies of oppression). Other posters tell them this isn't relevant, &, in fact, downright inappropriate.

Hm.

That overall trend of women's voices, concerns & needs being dismissed & minimised certainly does seem quite relevant over here after all...

It is not " off topic" - it's bang "on topic". I'm giving examples of where those who purport to be all for women's rights and against 'violence against women' but aren't quite so feminist when it comes to women in groups they don't approve of, who they consider less worthy - and how the violence these women suffer is somehow made light of, or excused, or even denied.

I also gave examples earlier on of the women who have been subject to random street attacks in New York who have been encouraged maybe not to report to the police because of the imagined 'vulnerablity' and victim status of their attacker.....

The UN have done this because they don't think women are important. It's not a bug, it's a feature of the misogyny in society. The same misogyny which coddles men wailing that they are women because they like wearing their wife's tights, while calling rape survivors bigots for saying they don't want those same men in their female only spaces.

The point being , that whilst you are focused on poor oppressed women in global 'patriarchies' women's rights are being eroded here too. Though because of your/our relative privilege and your obvious feelings of security - you don't consider that women here are still in need of protections. I don't think we should ever take for granted that the integrity of women and girls will always be respected, in law, and in social custom.

Once the boundary has been crossed and you permit some men to be included as women - no matter how limited the initial context or scenario is - it is inevitable that the boundaries and the line will be further pushed.

What we need is clarity around women's sex based rights and protections not a muddying of the waters. That is why knowing what a woman is is fundamental to women's rights.

In a slight tangent, I would like to know how to help the poor women of Afghanistan. Is it donating to charities? Letter writing to politicians? How do women here help women abroad?

Hi @adamryan op here. I have become incredibly alarmed at the assault on women's rights that has been happening in the UK. My main concerns are:

1. the pushing of the idea that you can be born in the wrong body on teenagers, mainly girls, who have autism, have suffered sexual abuse, or are mentally ill. In fact gender dysphoria is a mental illness. There is a growing realisation (Cass report) that this should be treated with counselling rather than irreversible drugs and surgery but there are still private GPS prescribing puberty blockers to teenagers.
2. The move towards self id and the belief that once a male identifies as a woman they should be allowed into female spaces. This is absolutely an open door for people with penises to walk into women's spaces with no grounds for being challenged - indeed in the case of prisons and rape crisis centres they have been supported. It is open to abuse in so many ways. I am deeply concerned that the next labour government/coalition will nod through self id without much thought of the consequences
3. The classification of men as women and vice versa for research purposes. This is giving us skewed data in areas such as murder rates of women and men, rape statistics, employment statistics.
4. Male access to women's sports - not just at elite level but in schools and universities where trans girls who have been through male puberty are taking girls and women's opportunities despite the obvious unfairness.

The reason I posted the article is because the Guardian has never covered any of the viewpoints. They have never asked what is going on. Women's rights in the UK are hugely under threat and the Guardian never mentions it. I think that is utterly shocking.

A British newspaper talking about global women's rights without even mentioning the UK, is quite indicative of their misogynistic attitudes towards women. But to read further back that we should be lucky that we live in the UK, I find ignorant and dismissive of the everyday lives of women in the UK today. I don't wish to go into too much detail, but I have been left in a position where I am frightened of the dark, of travelling on quiet trains, where I find it difficult to share a space with an unfamiliar man and where I have to take my husband with me to some appointments. We may not face being stoned to death but violence/abuse against girls and women is still happening in the UK today leading to death or long-term impacts. And against that context, of course we will want to discuss the issue of males entering our spaces not just with regard to our own safety but that of future generations. The Guard not recognising British women being part of a global discussion on women's rights feels chillingly oppressive.

I don't agree that the Guardian is gaslighting us by referring only to the worst treatment of women globally. It feels that way, because we know about their other views, but this particular article could equally well have been published in a more gender-critical outlet, without remark.

I think that it would have been hard to include the UK, or trans issues, in the article, not because the problems are trivial, but because they are of a different type, arising as they do at a point when women have already achieved notional equality, but it is being subtly undermined by resentful males.

Hard, but not impossible? I drafted a letter which I can't send, because there would be repercussions in my own life. Any of you who wants to use it in any way is welcome to.

In your article, you fail to mention the situation in the UK. After more than a hundred years of progress, that progress has stalled. Women have legal equality, but real life inequality, and violence against women is still rife. Worst of all, the protections that women need because of their physical vulnerability and child-bearing potential are being systematically removed, because of a naive belief that biological sex is irrelevant to outcomes for women as a political class.