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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 15:42

Kelly Jones has a trans child

Ah, that old cobblers.

Mermoose · 21/04/2025 15:44

Has Neil Gaiman not signed yet?

Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 15:46

I'd guess he's preoccupied with other stuff.

IstayhomeonFridaynight · 21/04/2025 15:48

Some really depressing names there. I know they're virtues signaling and in the media/lovvie bubble, but do they really think that Isla Bryson should be in a female prison?

I suspect most would say that they don't mean people like him, only real transwomen, but any man, at any stage, can say he's a transwoman, so no one gets to police entry to the trans club.

The lack of real debate about trans issues leads to very simplistic resposes like this. Debate hasn't been possible as it's shut diwn by trans activists - they at least realise that letting light on the issue is not in their interest.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 21/04/2025 15:52

ArabellaScott · 21/04/2025 12:19

' The signatories of this letter attest to the fact that writers with a bioessentialist view of womanhood and a binary view of sex and gender are in the minority.'

That's some assertion.

  1. Do they really think that their self-selecting sample of under 1400 people represents every writer on Earth?
  2. Do they think that their opinions, based on no scientific training, hold any weight?
selffellatingouroborosofhate · 21/04/2025 15:57

EmpressoftheMundane · 21/04/2025 12:21

I think they do understand biological fact very well. They just want it to be irrelevant. For some privileged people maybe it can be. But in many crucial situations, it cannot be escaped.

Edited

For some privileged people maybe it can be.

Queens have died in childbirth and been raped by their subjects. No woman is immune to sexual violence, nor is she immune to the complications of her reproductive biology.

Molto · 21/04/2025 16:00

I think it's a combination of career-protection as I said earlier, and also a deep simplification of complex thinking. If everyone around you is shouting 'TERFs are evil! They are committing violence against trans people and want them dead! Even asking to "debate" trans rights means you're coming from an anti-trans stance!" (as someone said in the linked Times article) then I think it's really tricky to let other voices in.

I know I bought into it all in the early days, wanting to be OTRSOH and hearing the echoes of early Stonewall battles, watching the far-right and populism grow across the western world - this seemed a clear and easy way to back vulnerable people and battle against fascist forces that only cared about white, straight men.

It was a drip-drip of articles, podcasts, and of course MN threads that slowly woke me up to the practical realities of all of these "new truths", and they only crept into my life because I'd pulled back from my arts career. When these people are in the absolute thick of it, surrounded by voices getting huge (but still niche) public acclaim for sharing misinformation because it fits with a great narrative of vulnerability and heroism, it would be almost impossible for them to say (like most people on MN do), 'Trans people deserve safety and security and currently have huge protections under the law to ensure these, so can we talk about what women and girls might lose in terms of their own safety and security when TWAW?'

I can't imagine any of those people having the guts to do that in a million years. I am also 99% sure that at least a handful of names who I know quite vaguely on that list are highly, highly GC.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 21/04/2025 16:02

MarieDeGournay · 21/04/2025 11:58

yes I was also thinking - with a few exceptions - who?

Sadly I DO recognise this name:
Nicola Coughlan raises over €130,000 for trans charity after UK ruling on gender
Nicola Coughlan raises over €130,000 for trans charity after UK ruling on gender

I can just see Sister Michael's [the character, not the actor playing her] epic eyeroll...

Nicola Coughlan is Irish, I have no idea why she thinks this is any of her business.

I'm sure that if British celebrities started objecting to the decisions of Irish courts on matters of Irish law, Irish people would tell them where to bloody well stick it.

godmum56 · 21/04/2025 16:04

why would I care what UK writers think?

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 21/04/2025 16:12

Forgettingblue · 21/04/2025 13:14

I love that bloke holding the ' Feminism is the refusal to define a woman' placard.

Imagine that boldly proclaiming, ' I'm a bit thick, me.'

Feminism isn't the refusal to define women. It's the insistence that women are people.

PriOn1 · 21/04/2025 16:14

Erin Hunter is on there! Erin Hunter doesn’t actually exist…🤔

Gillian Philip, one of the former Erin Hunters would undoubtedly not agree!

Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 16:18

I am also 99% sure that at least a handful of names who I know quite vaguely on that list are highly, highly GC.

So why on earth have they signed it?

godmum56 · 21/04/2025 16:19

Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 16:18

I am also 99% sure that at least a handful of names who I know quite vaguely on that list are highly, highly GC.

So why on earth have they signed it?

book sales perchance?

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 21/04/2025 16:20

ArabellaScott · 21/04/2025 15:18

2020 had the open letter in support of JK Rowling.

I can't recall how many original signatories there were, but it ended up as a letter with over 30k signing it.

www.ipetitions.com/petition/in-solidarity-with-jk-rowling

People are still signing it.

SoloSofa24 · 21/04/2025 16:21

NotEvenTheRainHasSuchSmallHands · 21/04/2025 13:40

I know several of the signers well and I'm incredibly disappointed. These are smart, highly educated, critically thinking women. I can only imagine that they haven't done much research into the issues and are #beingkind, but that's disappointing, too.

Everyone involved will likely be a professional writer of some description, by the way. There are a great many jobbing writers out there who you've never heard of.

They are definitely not all 'professional writers' - one name I recognised is a friend of one of my DC, and is still an undergraduate student who has co-written one small poetry pamphlet, as far as I am aware. I am sure there are plenty more of them along those lines.

IrritatedEarthling · 21/04/2025 16:23

I'm a huge reader and I think I recognise two names.

🤷‍♀️

Mistyglade · 21/04/2025 16:28

These trans activists are starting to give me a real guttural sense of fear, does anyone else feel genuinely scared of them? I’ve never felt frightened of anything before but this is all so unhinged I’m worried what they might try.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 21/04/2025 16:28

I'm disappointed to see Nikesh Shukla on that list. I have a copy of The Good Immigrant.

Surely, he can understand that a woman can no more identify out of sex-based oppression than someone visibly brown can identify out of racial oppression? And a man trying to pretend that he's a woman is as offensive to women as blackface is to Black people?

RoyalCorgi · 21/04/2025 16:31

Some of those names are ones already recognised as being full-on TRA - I've already been through the disappointment once (Russell T Davies, James Acaster, Josie Long etc.) Plus a whole bunch of names I don't recognise. But I AM disappointed in Mark Haddon, who I thought was one of the good guys. A BIT disappointed in Patrick Gale, who I previously liked, though I'm not quite as surprised as I was at Haddon.

And you know, the letter is just shit. Full of crap like "this Supreme Court hearing took place on shaky legal ground". Well, no, it didn't. That's just idiotic. How many of them have actually read the judgement?

There's more than 1,300 of them. How could so many supposedly clever people be so stupid? The one consolation is we have the receipts.

ArabellaScott · 21/04/2025 16:31

Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 16:18

I am also 99% sure that at least a handful of names who I know quite vaguely on that list are highly, highly GC.

So why on earth have they signed it?

Have the names been verified as being added by their actual owners?

ArabellaScott · 21/04/2025 16:32

PriOn1 · 21/04/2025 16:14

Erin Hunter is on there! Erin Hunter doesn’t actually exist…🤔

Gillian Philip, one of the former Erin Hunters would undoubtedly not agree!

How odd.

Pudmyboy · 21/04/2025 16:35

A very long list but I recognise just a handful, eg sara pascoe and robin Ince. All the rest: no idea! Are they all fantasy authors?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 21/04/2025 16:36

Ohyoudodoyou · 21/04/2025 13:48

I think this one is a great writer 😉
Jesuis O. Mofobique

I don't think all the names are being vetted. Say this one out loud.

Sweetpeasaremadeforbees · 21/04/2025 16:40

book sales perchance?

But it makes them look a bit thick (especially getting the date wrong), why would you want to read a book they've written?

Pudmyboy · 21/04/2025 16:40

Screamingabdabz · 21/04/2025 12:22

The younger generation have not earned enough stripes to have a fully rounded opinion on this imo. Wait until ‘Melissa’ has a baby, and her daughter has to use toilets or be examined medically, or gets fitted for her first bra. Or maybe she has problems with labour or childbirth…And wait until Melissa experiences gynaecological or hormonal issues that only females experience or she herself experiences a lifetime of male entitlement and arrogance and dismissal. God forbid she ever experiences first hand male violence… I wonder if she’ll be so idealistic about it all then?

Or her daughter loses a place in a sport she loves to a boy, and loses college funding as a consequence