VAWG - how does the cognitive dissonance not smack them in the face?

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/29/men-killing-women-girls-deaths

I thought this was an excellent piece - full of cold controlled fury about the dreadful and ongoing VAWG

“Male violence – whether domestic abuse, a stranger attack, or terrorism – is not a case of a few bad apples or a rare lone event. It is systemic, a result of a thousand moments, big and small, that teach men to hate and women to be afraid.
The reason that the spate of killings this summer has resonated with many of us is that it feels at once shocking and deeply familiar. Women can join the dots between the day-to-day indignities and stresses we face – the wolf whistles, the park flashers, the public transport gropes – and the stuff of nightmares. This is not hysterical or an overreaction. Evidence shows that men who commit murder, including as an act of terrorism, often have a history of “lesser” offences, such as stalking or domestic abuse”

Yes yes to all of the above and yet FR is a committed TWAW how does she not see? Every piece of safeguarding removed to appease men’s insistence that they are in fact women is giving any and all men access to the few safe spaces women have

How does she not understand this?

It's because they don't really care about women. They're lying.

It all makes sense then

Given the offences are sub judice, I'm curious as to her confidence in linking the listed cases with wolf whistling. We don't know what the motivations were. All the cases could be quite different.

She probably doesn't connect the two things. After all, none of the recent murders were committed by transwomen, nor did they happen in women's spaces, and they'd have happened regardless of the way our society regards transwomen. Just good old fashioned VAWG, and it was ever thus.

Because it’s not real transwomen who commit violence against women and girls, it’s men who pretend to be women who do the bad stuff. Real transwomen ‘just want to pee.’
Not sure how they get round the fact that you can’t tell which is which until a woman or girl is hurt but they’re just collateral damage when ‘being kind’ is the most important thing.

It’s about TW being men and men being the perpetrators of everything she talks about. Women trying to keep men (however they present) out of women’s spaces are doing it to protect our safety (as well as privacy & dignity & the right to have our own fucking spaces!). There is zero evidence that TW stop displaying the same traits as other men that’s why women need single sex spaces

how does she not see that?

The answer is a concept called 'ketman'.

'The subjects produced by totalitarianism were not mindless drones, but skillful dissemblers, as capable of self-justification and moral hair-splitting as the best-trained Jesuit. The name Miłosz gave to this new talent was ‘Ketman’.'

https://aeon.co/ideas/ketman-and-doublethink-what-it-costs-to-comply-with-tyranny

If you don't think too hard about it you can hold in your head the two ideas that male violence is a problem but that when a man identifies as a woman that means they are taking on women's oppression so are equally oppressed (if not more so because of nasty women not accepting them) It's a really odd mental state to be in but as others have said, humans are very good at explaining away anything that doesn't fit our current world view.

I suspect she genuinely thinks that transwomen are women and that includes taking on the behavioural aspects of women, i.e. that we commit less violent crime than men.

So she thinks transwomen aren't a danger to women. Or rather, they pose the same threat to women as "other" women do, rather than posing the same threat to women as men do.

The Ketman point is a good one. I think the thought process goes like this ...

1.Men do terrible things to women.

2.But men who identify as trans aren't actually men so don't count (despite all evidence to the contrary). Also they are 'mostest oppressed' compared to women, therefore are top trumps. Incidents where TIM hurt women are really rare and should therefore be ignored and not talked about.

3.The fact that self id allows ALL men into women's spaces is mostly glossed over as something that wouldn't happen, despite point 1 above. When the evidence is in their face, then they justify putting in women in danger because it wouldn't be fair to TIM, and as they are the most oppressed, they take priority.

The conclusion here is that these people don't care about women nearly as much as they care about presenting the 'right' opinions to their peers.

But I agree, the cognitive dissonance must be tough to deal with. Which is why increasingly they just want to silence/suppress the bits of the conversation that show their hypocrisy for what it is.

I'd add to point 2. that tw who hurt women aren't really trans, they're 'at it'.

Manipulation of language is very important to maintaining this double think. I try to call out that 'transwomen are men' every single time it comes up. It's much harder to gloss over the danger they pose when we unambiguously say who they are.

Yes, not 'tru trans'.

But whenever we ask how we're supposed to tell the difference ... crickets.

Trans identifying men have to be the victims. Even when they manifestly aren't. Their position totally depends on this.

I found it was possible to hold those two ideas in my head until I started to think about how to make them work in practice. There wasn't a way to make them both work.

As in so many logical contradictions that look consistent on the surface, it is the misuse or loss of quantifiers (all, some, sometimes, always, may, does) and comparators (equally, similarly, the same) that does it. All you have to do is leave a few of these words out or smear them together.

when a man identifies as a woman that means they are taking on women's oppression so are equally oppressed

When "a man identifies as a woman" that may mean he is sometimes "taking on women's oppression". But not all of it, and not all the time. If he is oppressed himself he's not "equally oppressed" because he is also still capable of continuing to oppress women through the masculine qualities (such as physical size and strength and psychological habits and tendencies) that he retains.

(if not more so because of nasty women not accepting them)

He may also be oppressed in ways that women aren't due his to being gender non-conforming.Much of that oppression will come from men, and it's mostly not the same oppression that women get. That doesn't mean he is being more oppressed than women. Just differently.

Sorry, that was @Lovelyview - I failed to quote.

There was a good example on here a few months ago. A poster was at a party and a trans identifying man said some extremely inappropriate (referencing his genitalia) to her young daughter.

The poster was horrified, didn't know how to deal with it, but did admit that her reaction would have been quite different if it had been a regular man not wearing a dress.

She was appalled at the TIM, but somehow didn't see it as the same as a non trans man doing the same thing. She was self aware enough to work that out.

Of course, the usual suspects were lining up to say that this man had every right to talk about his genitals to little girls as he got so much grief in his life. 🙄

FR iirc has a disability. I wonder if she'd be okay if her health authority dispatched some random bloke nurse to provide intimate care? Hopefully she'll never be in that position. I hope she has the cushion of enough wealth so that she can insulate herself from those types of indignity.

Yeah, echoing some other points: they think transwomen really are "psychologically women" and are no more likely to engage in these kinds of male-type behaviour than any other women. Probably any transwomen they know personally are not obviously violent or oppressive (but most men aren't anyway!).

(I personally have never encountered any transwoman who didn't behave in a very male-type way. But none of them gave off particular abuser vibes either. But can you detect these things, in someone you don't know very well?)

They also massively downplay the idea that some man might pretend to be a woman just to be abusive. This often seems in part to hinge on the not quite explicitly stated idea that being a woman is such a shameful and inferior thing to be that no true man (one of the rightful masters of the universe) could ever stoop to even present himself as one.

She acknowledges in that quote that women learn to fear men.
This does not exclude men who mentally identify as not men. Sigh.

The constant, and it seems unevidenced, insistence about the high level of trans suicide rates may be part of this. It sets up the idea of vulnerability and exposure to harm for trans people, to offset and balance the vulnerability and exposure to harm for women. It’s both sides are in the same boat – only we’re really not.

But whenever we ask how we're supposed to tell the difference ... crickets.

I think we're meant to silently accept that some women will just have to be collateral damage. In fact, I remember one well-known tw saying as much.

The reason that the spate of killings this summer has resonated with many of us is that it feels at once shocking and deeply familiar. Women can join the dots between the day-to-day indignities and stresses we face – the wolf whistles, the park flashers, the public transport gropes – and the stuff of nightmares. This is not hysterical or an overreaction.

As a side point, I think this is complete bollocks. If police are failing to protect women in domestic abuse situations then that is completely unrelated to wolf whistles etc. It’s like taking down all the traffic lights and then writing an article blaming increasing car accidents on an inexplicable rise in road rage. I wonder how long it will be til we have a functioning news media again.

Yes. The most depressing thing is, as you say, we're supposed to not draw attention to it. The notion of caring for women's safety is entirely a facade.

Just taking the article as it is, it is very strong and it's good to see it in the Guardian. There is a force and clarity about MVAWG in this article that is welcome. I think her point about the continuum between everyday misogyny and violence is a valid and well-established one.

I know nothing about the writer, and would disagree vehemently with her if, as you say, she is TWAW; I also agree about the cognitive dissonance between being TWAW, and this article.

But this article is clear and strong and angry and it's in the Guardian. It's a pity that such a forceful article is being seen only as evidence of the writer's cognitive dissonance rather than being welcomed as a powerful article about MVAWG.

I'm not disagreeing at all with other posters, I just think that whoever she is and whatever else she believes - and maybe she has expressed awful opinions elsewhere that I know nothing about - the writer has done a good job here in this specific article, and fair play to her for that.

I think that’s my frustration @MarieDeGournay it is a really really good article. One of the best I’ve read clarifying and summarising the issue

which is why I’m baffled that she doesn’t join the dots

Yes, all of that is true. I guess I just find it quite depressing that her conviction here is so utterly undermined by her position on 'TW'. It makes this piece less authentic for me.