Victoria McCloud Telegraph Article

[Nomnomnew]

Name changed for this. I have just seen a post on LinkedIn from Victoria McCloud referring to an interview in the telegraph. I can’t believe this claim/ quote from the former judge:

‘Speaking to The Telegraph after her Financial interview, she said: “As an anatomical, endocrinological and legal woman whose birth registration is female, I am as at risk of rape and assault as any woman and efforts to place me in isolation in hospital or force me to use male spaces are no more than blind prejudice.”’

I find it exceptionally offensive that a trans woman would claim such a thing - as if rapists are checking birth certificates/ GRCs! The mind boggles that anyone would think this is an appropriate thing to say/ claim.

The full article is here, though paywalled.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/03/first-transgender-judge-hits-out-trans-hostile-conspiracy/

The biggest prejudice that women face in the workplace is due to employers considering their likelihood of pregnancy.

McCloud doesn't have a fucking clue.

Ofcourseshecan · Today 09:11

an anatomical, endocrinological and legal woman

The first two, whilst demonstrably false, could be construed as ignorance and misunderstanding, which are not good qualities for judge to display.

The third is a dishonesty, too; them may be "legally" a woman, but it's a legal fiction, not a material fact. Them has also claimed that they's birth registration is female, which is demonstrably untrue. Them was registered correctly at birth as male and subsequently had it altered to show they as female.

Again, this shoddy line of so-called reasoning is highly undesirable in any member of the legal profession and most especially in a judge.

I 100% accept that a man who has replaced his penis with a surgically created neo genital orifice is more at risk than other men from certain men in certain situations. I'll even allow this gives him something in common with women.

Is there actually any evidence that heterosexual men who call themselves women are more at risk of rape than any other heterosexual man?

I can imagine that homosexual transexuals are more at risk (same as other gay men) but I doubt that's got anything to do with having a surgically constructed mangina and everything to do with the fact that they date and have relationships with men.

I wish that these surgeons would be very clear that implanting a body part as an extreme body modification does not make you the thing you are trying to resemble.

It does not make you a snake if you split your tongue.
It does not make you a devil if you implant something under your skin to look like little 'horns'.
It does not make you a cat if you have plastic 'whiskers' threaded into your cheeks.
It does not make you a woman to have a false cavity implanted into your body and you, the patient, wants to call it a vagina.

Extreme body modifications are just that. Extreme body modifications. Any doctor saying anything differently has been negligent to that patient.

I question this too signal.

I couldn't work out why a male with a body modification would be more at risk than any other male person? Because male people rape male people as well as female people. What would happen if a rapist found a penis instead of an implanted vagina? And how would they know that the male person claiming to be a woman has a penis or a surgically implanted cavity?

It think that people such as McCloud are trying to use some weak logic. That they think male people will perceive them as female and therefore those male people presenting as female then take on the risk factor that female people have of being raped. But this is fully reliant on that rapist not perceiving those male people to be male people.

This person is using these articles to show off their power.

They have been influential in driving through policy changes that allow them to make these ludicrous statements.

They know who they are, they want to be seen and treated as something else and they will make us do it.

The subtext is "just try and stop me".

It absolutely is.

And it really reads like some previous male posters on this board. I think one of them even said 'try and stop me' didn't they? After we broke through the 'womanly stereotyped' behaviour that one was if I remember correctly.

I just can't get over the idea that a male with a hole is a woman.

The male gaze fixates on the surface sex characteristics as signifiers, and sometimes mistake the attraction for function. So it reducees the female body to how attractive it is to males. It's an outrageously sexist viewpoint.

We grow breasts not because 'titty skittles' attract the male gaze, but because we are mammals. Female since conception, in every cell, forever, our bodies evolved around our reproductive function.

The idea that a constructed cavity is in any way comparable to the amazing organ that is a vagina is so male-centric, it's laughable. The vagina is not just a 'hole' for sex and it's so regressively backwards to suggest it is. Similarly to suggest that a silicon tit is the same as a woman's breast, with the intricate and amazing physiology that means we can produce colostrum and milk.

As if chopping bits off a body or popping some pills could change sex! The ridiculousness of it!

I know this isn't news, it's just hit me how horribly offensive, diminishing, and absurd it is to say that 'man with hole' is a woman. A two-dimensional, facile cartoon of what 'woman' is, compared to the actual 'lived experience' of a female body.

Do women's feelings matter?

I don't know, but I was working from the perspective that some men use rape as a punishment/dominance display, and the type of man who uses the sex act to punish and dominate other men is also the type of man likely to consider a man who has (in a patriarchal mindset) deliberately sissified himself is a man deserving exactly that punishment.

I'm not sure heterosexual and homosexual even have much meaning in the context of rape as a weapon. I certainly don't think a man's "day to day" sexuality is 100% the sex he will always have.

I quoted that paragraph on one of the other threads this week because I was 🤯 that it wasn't challenged or questioned by the journalist. It enrages me that these males - who now have an F on their legal documents - state unashamedly that this now means that they actually ARE female. And I have contempt for the politicians and establishment that have allowed this to happen.

McCloud is just another example of a delusional, entitled male exercising power...but there are far too many of them. We need to repeal the GRA and stop this 'legal fiction' being permitted.

I've always assumed that the "we're in so much danger of attack" thing is both manipulative & part of the "fantasy"🤢

Of course it is! They all say it, word for word.

It's out of the $€¥* playbook.

*Is that acronym still verboten?

Nah bruv. 🤨

We're like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons to that crowd.

Exactly. It sickens me.

I can see your point.

However, this would also likely apply to gay men or any male who that type of male person wanted to punish. If they are using rape as a punishment are they going to rape any male whether or not that male person has an implanted cavity?

I think that if they said, we are as vulnerable to rape as any other male person of a particular group, then yes. That would be accurate.

Leveraging female people's rape in the way that they are is an act of misogyny in my opinion.

However, I also understand the manipulation behind it is that if they used the more accurate comparator of vulnerable male people, it highlights that they are still male people. The language is so very very important to them to hide that obvious point. So, they leverage female people's trauma instead. Whatever tool works for them, as we have seen, and this shows how little they actually respect any other group.

The reality is that even in the horrific event that they are raped, female people are not a resource that they can tap to protect them. Female people and their needs are not there to be utilised as a shield for vulnerable men.

I agree. And I agree with the many excellent posts from previous posters. The ‘playing woman’ thing that seems to appeal to lots of trans people (I’m not saying that’s all there is to being trans, but it certainly seems to be the motivator for a section of people who say they are trans) is infuriating normally, but to stray into claiming the same vulnerabilities as women when those vulnerabilities are associated with their sex has made me just furious. Part of women’s risk is that generally, men are physically larger and stronger, and as we see on many of the sports related issues, trans women who have been through male puberty tend to hold on to those physical differences.

I am glad to be able to discuss it with you wise ladies here - I first saw it on LinkedIn and obviously, that being a professional (apparently!) network, I didn’t think it wise to jump in and challenge there but my god it made me furious to read on there.

And yes. Sickening though it is, how many of them have written about their 'rape' fantasies? How many of them have published things like that Long Chu quote about vacant eyes and waiting mouths or whatever. Or Paris Lees declaring how empowering it was to be sexually harassed. And on and on and on. And those are not even the rape fantasies.

@Helleofabore

However, this would also likely apply to gay men or any male who that type of male person wanted to punish. If they are using rape as a punishment are they going to rape any male whether or not that male person has an implanted cavity?

Yes. My point isn't that their surgery makes their patriarchal punishment more likely to be rape than other patriarchally punished men, it's that it makes them more likely to be patriarchally punished men.

I think part of the problem is that it is impossible for most men (perhaps all) to comprehend what it is like to be the more vulnerable sex. I only realised how big the gulf is relatively recently, when watching something with my very kind, sensitive and good DH. There was a sequence with a woman walking home alone at night, frightened about being followed/ passing men, holding her keys in her hand etc. He said to me ‘have you ever felt like that?’.

I was so surprised, I said ‘ever? I regularly feel like that!’ He was so surprised too! It didn’t occur to me that he would be unaware of how regular a thing that is for women. But I suppose it’s not a thing for men much of the time, so why would they know?

Perhaps that’s ultimately why claiming to be ‘as vulnerable’ as women is so offensive. Not just because it’s probably untrue, but also because it’s an issue that is omnipresent for women. It affects things women do day to day, where and how they walk or run, whether they go out at night, how late they stay at a bar etc. Obviously those issues are wider societal issues and nothing to do with trans women, but it feels particularly offensive for men to turn something which is such a female issue into something they are trying to appropriate.

‘Walk like you have three men walking behind you.’
A famous quote by Oscar De La Renta.

Another powerful man who didn’t get it.

it feels particularly offensive for men to turn something which is such a female issue into something they are trying to appropriate.

Yep. You cannot know what it is like to be in the half of the population that is smaller and weaker and vulnerable to pregnancy when you are part of the other half that is larger, stronger, and commits 99% of all sexual assaults. Not a clue. Not a little inkling.

Yes. My point isn't that their surgery makes their patriarchal punishment more likely to be rape than other patriarchally punished men, it's that it makes them more likely to be patriarchally punished men.

I don't agree that the majority of these men are victims of the patriarchy.
If anything they are the epitome of the patriarchy.

As men they have the weight of patriachy endorsing their view of reality over that of actual women, in this case their view that they are "women" or at least should be allowed to live "women's lives". To that degree yes, they are the epitome of patriachy, forcing women to support men's needs to the degree of even overwriting our own understanding of ourselves with his.

They are also going to be seen by many men within patriachy as lesser because they are adopting "femininity" over masculinity.

I'm not trying to plead a case for them or suggesting the two cancel each other out, just recognsing that a man can be an awful human being to women and still suffer at the hands of men.

"Being equally at risk of rape" (as how this judge is framing his womanhood) is not why women need same sex spaces in the first place anyway.