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).

Intel Lady on X has done her own version of what EW said and it's pretty good.

https://x.com/intel_lady/status/1971310795335340484

There's a petition to be signed:

https://x.com/StigOfTheDamp/status/1972022602698052080?

(Link to tweet because I believe there's a problem with linking directly to petitions. But if you prefer an alternative route, go to the government petitions site and search for 'Inquiry into sexual violence in NHS hospitals'.)

Thanks, NoBinturongsHereMate, I've signed it and can see the numbers going up.

JKR responds directly to Emma Watson....

x.com/jk_rowling/status/1972600904185483427

On point, as always.

That's an excellent response. I wonder if Emma Watson will read it.

I caught this penis article in the Telegraph

https://archive.ph/NARCg

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/29/i-read-my-therapists-notes-and-she-needed-help/

Worked at the Tavistock! I have no idea if it's relevant to how things developed there but 😳

That therapist sounds nuts.

I agree wholeheartedly with this:

...some experts are fearful that our creeping therapeutic culture – that labels everyday stresses and strains as mental health issues – could be doing more harm than good, particularly when it comes to children.

Prof Dr Sami Timimi, a consultant psychiatrist, psychotherapist and author, says: “We have created a whole panic around the concept of mental health.”
He points out that problem behaviour or feelings are “not like cancer, where early intervention will make a huge difference”.

“You are more likely to create a long-term problem [with early intervention] than head it off at the pass... Once you start looking at things through a certain lens, you become convinced that there is something problematic going on; it is very hard to get out of that mindset.”

That is just... mindblowing!

I don’t think it reflects the way therapy happens nowadays though. My DD is a psychotherapist in the Gestalt tradition and I had therapy in that mode too, and it was nothing like that either theoretically or experientialy.

British Judo has revised its policy for women's competitions. Previously they allowed in men who'd had puberty blocked; now the women's catagory is for natal women only.

Oh look! It was absolutely FINE when it was just girls restricting their food and liquid intake to avoid using the school toilets, but now that it's trans children, the UN must get involved.

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1nvkfda/teachers_say_trans_pupils_limiting_food_and_drink/?chainedPosts=t3_1in69dv

The Greens are at it again. Green Women's Declaration banned from conference at the last minute: https://x.com/GWDeclaration/status/1973448790280643003?

It's the law!

When will they understand this?

There are loads of 'men trying period pain simulator' videos out there, but I thought this one more interesting than most.

Rather than just 'turn it on and watch men cry', they have a man and a woman both actually trying to do something while wearing it. Both try the same tasks at the same levels (roughly equivalent to normal background, normal active cramp, and endometriosis) and talk a little about about how they experience it and how it affects sport training.

I'm not sure whether this FB link will work, but it points to some interesting research at Cornell about just how early male and female embryonic development diverges - long before any visible differences emerge.

www.facebook.com/share/p/17PYJf8F3B/

Here's the text, for those who can't open the link.

Hashem Al-Ghiali

Male and female embryos take different paths just 7 days after fertilization.

One focuses on growth, the other on immunity, and it reshapes health and growth for a lifetime.

Sex-based differences in biology begin far earlier than once thought—just seven days after fertilization, according to new research from Cornell University. In a study of cow embryos, which closely mirror human development, scientists found that male and female embryos activate entirely different sets of genes almost immediately. Males prioritize rapid cell division and energy production, while females begin investing in immune system and reproductive gene pathways.

These distinctions arise long before the presence of hormones or organs, hinting at deeply rooted genetic blueprints that steer development from the very start.

These early divergences may have profound implications for health and medicine. Since many diseases affect men and women differently—from cardiovascular issues to neurological disorders—understanding sex-specific development could reshape how treatments are designed and tested. Historically, medical studies have relied on male models, potentially overlooking critical factors that influence drug response in women. The findings also open new possibilities for improving IVF outcomes and optimizing livestock breeding. More broadly, this research suggests our biological sex is not just a feature that emerges during puberty—it’s a fundamental part of who we are from our very first week of life.

source
"Sex-biased transcriptome in in vitro produced bovine early embryos." Cell & Bioscience, 27 August 2025.

Randomly came across this

The struggle to protect children from conspiracy theorist parents - BBC News https://share.google/czJnCW4JiZ45iff0W

Vaccine deniers for the most part. Unsurprisingly, to me, there's one major omission. Although a good chunk of the grate great and good would think I was the conspiracy theorist for not believing humans can change sex and for thinking it's wrong for kids to have their normal puberty blocked, to be hurried down the road to wrong sex hormones, risky surgeries, anorgasmia, sterility and a lifetime spent as a patient.

Things I did not know: Kellie-Jay Keen has a theology degree!

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.

My ex once observed that men who imitate women (I think we used to call them 'transvestites') usually put on exaggerated "female" gestures and speech mannerisms that actual women don't do. I've seen it from time to time, such as the man, dressed in feminine style, doing a strutty model walk along the pavement while the actual women just walked with normal gait.

I’m in Barcelona at the moment and went down the street and spotted a lot of the baby pink/baby blue trans flags along with some pride flags ahead. It turned out to be some sort of LGBTQ+ Market.

I had to go past it and it was quite interesting (quite a variety of fetish gear), but slightly ahead of me was a group of four nuns who seemed to be interacting with the stallholders quite well.
They were deep in conversation with a very tall man who says he’s a woman who has a business giving lessons in walking to other men who say they’re women. I wonder what they were talking about.

Are you sure they were nuns? Maybe they were men dressed in nun clothing.

I faintly remember reading articles about girls avoiding unisex and trans inclusive toilets at school and some of them getting UTIs, but Google is of no help and suggests this only affects poor poor trans identified boys. Could you or anyone else please link one?

¡Heh! They were definitely women. They had that keen look about them that made me think they would probably “be kind”. On reflection, it was almost undoubtedly a specific trip to show how embracing of diversity they were.

Squid - I can definitely remember people posting on Mumsnet about their daughters not wanting to use the toilets, but thinking about it, I don’t remember seeing any articles about it. Why would I: they are only girls in the eyes of journalists and therefore difficulties in their live are not important. See also boys playing in their sports teams. The only time young women are treated as important is when they are the soon-to-be-victim of a murder on TV shows.

I didn’t watch it all because it’s quite long but it was interesting. I had PCOS, undiagnosed as a teen…I don’t think the cramps induced by the TENS machine made either of them throw up.

It is of course quite funny that the pain is being induced by the device used for pain relief in labour. That’s all I ended up using, DH kept helpfully turning it up but at some point it became merely irritating.
Afterwards before he returned it to Boots, he was curious as to its effect and tried it… yelled and fell down. Ok so that’s a ‘turn it on and watch men cry’ anecdote but he was pretty awestruck!