Women's rights general conversations - Thread 10

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 9.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

Saw a transwoman in Tesco today. I kept bumping into them as we were taking a similar route around the store.

He was over 6ft tall and heavy built and I'd guess around late 50s in age. He had long hair tied in school girl bunches and was wearing a spaghetti strap sundress and strappy sandals. He had a male face with stubble, a flat chest with chest hair coming out of the top of the dress and hairy male feet.

What I noticed though was his behaviour in the shop. Most people just wander around with their trolley and maybe ask the odd question to staff when they need help finding something.

He was going around staring at customers and deliberately trying to make eye contact in an intimidating way so he could start up a conversation. He spoke to every staff member he saw. Every time I overheard him, he was telling people he was a woman and he loved sundresses.

He just came over as creepy and weird. Ordinary biological women don't behave like that. They just go in and do their shopping without any fuss. It's like he was demanding attention from people in the shop to validate his perception that he is a woman.

This brought back memories of earlier discussions where people said that sport would be the thing that blew the lid off this nonsense in the eyes of the general public, because everyone - including men - could see what a pisstake it would be to allow males to infiltrate women’s sports. Anyway, a good read….

archive.ph/2025.08.24-103303/www.telegraph.co.uk/sailing/2025/08/24/tracy-edwards-trans-activists-fights-back/

That was a good read. Thank you.

I didn't know the US has National Women's Hall of Fame...or it did until 2024 when they induced a bloke. Apparently he's essential for understanding womanhood. Bloke doing peak mansplaining. Currently living in a throuple.

They can never cope with the idea that being sex-realist or gender critical means believing that gender-based characteristics are a bunch of stereotypes that some people like to buy into that do not change anyone's sex or give them a right to access any single-sex spaces or activities.

And that the rest of us should not be obliged to subsidise.

This.

The most perfect summary of the women’s rights movement.

I made a meme.

The green C on the second line is making me twitch.

AI does that. It will take ages to fix, if it’s even possible.

I love Jill Bearup. She suffered her 2 minutes of tra hate a few years ago iirc. Anyway I thought this was interesting but wasn't sure if it warranted its own thread

Victoria Smith kicking arse as always.

https://thecritic.co.uk/why-malcolm-gladwells-trans-retraction-wont-ever-be-enough/

Sorry to read that about Malcolm Gladwell.

Has anyone listened to yesterday's Front Row with Maxine Peake on Mary Whitehouse and (Briefly) JKR. And Lucy Hunter Blackburn on the WWWW and library controversy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002j5r9

Older TRAs always bang on about this man as if he’s the second coming.

I met Maxine Peake a few years ago, in the beer queue at Castleford Tigers! We had a long chat, she was such a sweetheart.

I empathise with her, and she (along with all the other, mainly women, who stuck their necks out early and were immediately set on) have every right to be angry. I do think this article is slightly missing the point about Gladwell’s very late admission, though.

Already the mob pile-on has started on him. Character assassination (very JKR - he’s never been a good person, he has supported wrong think in the past, his books are all shit, he is pro-genocide/actually racist, etc), he shouldn’t be listened to, everything he says is wrong, there’s no reason for him to be afraid so he’s really just transphobic, and so on and on and on.

They are demonstrating exactly what kept him silent for so long, but they’re too high on their own supply to recognise it. The fact he’s broken cover is genuinely a useful sign of which way the wind is blowing though, even if he’s far from a leader (!) on the path back to reality.

Agreed x 2 rayon.

Related to Gladwell's cowardly pious fraud, here's another prominent Canadian academic who is a weaselly chicken-shit (and apparently "didn't read" the statement he signed):

https://unherd.com/2025/09/the-taming-of-a-gender-researcher/

There was an astonishing interview of Gordon Guyatt by Mia Hughes and Stella O'Malley on X yesterday. https://x.com/_CryMiaRiver/status/1965155081038561553

They asked him why he'd signed a statement saying that 'gender affirming care is necessary' and he furiously denied it. Mia Hughes then gets out the statement to show that he did indeed sign it and he starts complaining that he didn't write that part and anyway it's only a few words, so it doesn't matter. The difference between him, red faced and blustering, and the calm, polite women is something to see.

I just read this in a Sex Matters update:

Also in The Times, Sanchez Manning reported that two-thirds of women believe that being female is an important part of their identity according to the British Social Attitudes Survey, with 52% of men saying the same. Fiona McAnena said that women are more aware of the significance of sex because our biology shapes the experience of our daily lives in a way that is profoundly different from men.

It was like this presented as a relatively good thing. IIJM, but I thought, only two-thirds? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

I think it depends exactly how the question is worded, and how people interpreted 'being female' and 'identity'.

Being female certainly shapes aspects of my existence, but I'm not especially feminine and put no particular stock in that. So i might have answered either way depending on exactly what they asked.

I hope 52% of men weren't saying 'being female' was an important part of their identity. Perhaps the men meant they believed 'being female' was an important part of a woman's identity? 🤔

Sorry, just visiting from Pedant's Corner.😊

I read that as 52% of men believe that being female is an important part of their identity.

😂

I'm assuming everyone's seen Emma Watson's modest mea culpa and JKR's oblique response? Just in case, enjoy below.

https://x.com/nypost/status/1971285234529292761

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1971191971709587676

Wow - that's painfully slow.

If you really believe something do you need to weigh each and every word so carefully, or is it only when you're battling cognitive dissonance with one hand while frantically calculating career effects with the other?