Why British Feminists are Based

[HerGorgeousMajestyArabellaScott]

https://fairerdisputations.org/british-feminists/

Susannah Rustin, with some interesting insights into the history and evolution of Terf Island.

Mumsnet gets a nod.

But other countries captured by GI also have socialized health services? Where it actually seems to a locus of control rather than a protection.

What's the relation of the Elizabeth Fry society in the UK now to GI? In Canada they are totally captured, (as are most Quakers, sadly.)

Spot on InvisibleBuffy

Yes, interesting point.

Also, we're relatively small. Women like KJK, for instance, can get round the whole country in a short space of time.

Plus, the actual sheer number of people affected, like parents, start to make a real impact relative to the population as a whole.

Also, we're relatively small. Women like KJK, for instance, can get round the whole country in a short space of time.

Is this a physics question relating to height and velocity?

Kelly, what time is it?

Shit! Now I don't know where I am!

duc748 · Today 12:38

That's a very good piece. Get it in the Guardian, Susannah!

Very droll - have you considered a career in stand up?

It's centralization more than a socialized system per se I suspect. Because of it, the UK has long been a front-runner in the development of evidence-based medicine. In contrast, a lot of continental countries have decentralized, self-administered systems that have also made it much harder to campaign against various forms of quackery such as homeopathic medicine. Germany's just been developing new guidelines for youth gender treatment and it's been a total shitshow - critics throwing in the towel halfway, evidence standard of the guidelines getting downgraded in the process so it's not really worth squat anymore, but public reaction has been close to zero.

More generally, love the article! A few points of agreement and disagreement, again from a German vantage point.

• Agree with Rustin on the importance of the feminist tradition (ours is weaker, so less mobilisational capacity) and the fact that abortion is more or less settled (similar here.)

• Also agree on the crucial importance of the sex-gender distinction in law and would add, also in language itself. Having only one term to encompass both has proved an enormous handicap.

• That said, what Rustin doesn't address at all is the impact of administrative culture and informal Self-ID which led to things spiraling out of control in the UK much earlier than elsewhere and thus made the need for action much more obvious much earlier. I think pretty much all continental countries require full government gender recognition according to whichever statutory standard in order to be issued new documents - in Germany that's even needed for just a change of first name. Without that, all you were able to get was a piece of cardboard from a trans charity titled "supplemental ID." Similarly, other bureaucracies have been much more hesitant to give way to de facto Self-ID, whether in prisons or hospitals. The flip side of this is there's a potential for things to get ugly rather quickly after the passage of Self-ID, even if legislators insist the new law is restricted to "only" a change of civil status and that the governance of single sex spaces will remain entirely separate. I doubt anti-discrimination lawyers will be in agreement..

Thing is, Australia is all those things, and more.

And yet they do not (universally) share our sceptism.

Fair enough.

I feel a name change coming on. Turns out you can’t change names mid thread. So no homage in this thread, sadly.

I always think of Phoebe changing her name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock when I hear that argument

I suspect part of the issue is the fight is still in people’s minds on having to pressure the government about same sex marriage. Many people have not understood the ramifications of gender identity legislation and what these identities mean. When I talk to my family and friends there, Australian’s do understand they tend to be supportive of women and children’s needs.

I feel Australia is a few years behind and has its own significant legal challenges ahead with working out what impacts Gillard’s 2013 anti-discrimination act has.

There is no way the British public would just accept at face value something as ridiculous as a burly fellow claiming he is actually now a woman called Suzie. Its just too silly.

And yet as a public, it has. 20 years since the GRA, so many institutions making services unisex in practice, parroting TWAW. There's been pushback; that doesn't mean it hasn't been largely 'accepted' as a situation.

Homophobia in the UK comes in a specific local flavour. Class sometimes overrides homophobia in the UK in the same way it occasionally overrides racism and misogyny. To be fair we're not the only country where that's the case but it is perhaps more open here. It's never straightforward but it meant that public reaction to upper class gay culture and also cross dressing was not always the kind of public disgrace that the law seemed to imply. I don't want to overstate that - look what happened to Oscar Wilde. But there were definitely some spaces for gay life that were more tolerant (and in this case I am definitely including men dressing and presenting as women and women presenting as men in gay culture - homophobia tends of course to force them together). I don't think the UK ever in the modern era had actual laws that made wearing the clothes of the opposite sex a crime, which certainly existed until quite far on in the 20th century in the US. That's something that I don't see emphasised in this debate. Maybe I'm wrong though? Dies anyone know of UK laws like that?

I really don't know, but Google only shows screeds of trans propaganda and rights for trans people. I'm sure I used to read the odd story in the papers about a transvestite being arrested, but that may have been related to cottaging. I think they used to be taken for a mental assessment.

Ah! According to this, the UK never put the anti-cross dressing verses in Deuteronomy into law.

They would have had to repeal them during WW2, as women were critical for the war effort.
www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-workers-that-kept-britain-going-during-the-second-world-war

I think there's another aspect of UK culture thats overlooked; when we see that something needs doing, we get on and do it instead of waiting for an authority to come along and do it for us.

I've not read the full article as yet, the title seems hopeful. I think British people are not as obsessed with celebrity culture and jumping on bandwagons as in the US which probably helps matters. A good dose of cynicism, stoicism and sarcasm helps too.

One thing it's missing (unless I missed it) was the Lords. I think they've been important in resisting the worst excesses eg the MOMA and attempts to erase "mother", as well as the conversion therapy debate which was (largely!) so well informed.

And they are uniquely placed as they don't need to worry about reelection or being popular. The quality of debate in the Lords has been miles and miles ahead of the Commons, which - apart from a very small number of MPs - has not been good at all.

Elizabeth Fry said that women should be housed in a separate prison estate for their safety. She also said they should be looked after by female warders. This was enacted in 1823. But we now seem to have male warders in the female estate (and female ones in the male estate). Surely this is a possible cause of harm to incarcerated women - and also female prison officers?

If something is 'based' it means attached to reality. So the title means ' British feminist are attached to reality' - at least some are, there are also handmaidens who should remember the point made by Fry and her supporters: women campaigners have a duty to help women.

Corporate Britain has jumped on the new bandwagon - that doesn't mean the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus agrees with it.

They may not agree with it, but I think the majority of men, and a lot of women, don't see it as that important.

How about SEx Based Rights Activist - SEBRA