Superb article from Victoria Smith in The Critic

[NotAtMyAge]

Our terfy middle-aged lawyer daughter has just sent me this by the wonderful author of Hags.

https://thecritic.co.uk/gender-critical-women-do-not-lack-empathy/

Great! Loved this
The trouble with trans ideology is that an absence of empathy for female people is so deeply ingrained — so essential to the maintenance of the passive femininity myth — that any assertion of female needs, desires and boundaries is instantly translated into an attack on trans women. It is as though female humans, those eternal looking-glasses, only operate on two emotional settings: the desire to serve males by saying “yes”, or to hurt them by saying “no”.This is why every time women have suggested that we are a class of humans in our own right, we’ve been accused of wilfully denying trans women’s “right to exist”. It’s why the supreme court ruling has been swiftly reinterpreted, not as something about and for women, but as cruelly targeting males, just for the sheer hell of it.

She is just the most pithy writer:

Like many feminists, while I find the concept of gender identity fundamentally sexist, rooted in regressive and often pornified stereotypes, I have never had any particular desire to tell men who believe themselves to be women that in actual fact, they are not. It’s not just that this would be needlessly hurtful; it’s also that their beliefs aren’t remotely interesting. Scratch the surface and it’s bog-standard fantasising about how women lack complex emotional lives, or enjoy being hurt, or really get off on getting dressed up. It’s not some great challenge to “the gender binary”; it’s conservative and it’s boring.

That’s bloody good. One of the best analyses of the trans backlash to the Supreme Court judgement that I have read.

There is a word for people who find a female “no” intolerable, and it is not “marginalised” or “victimised”. I find it grotesque that there is a call to shower even more pity and attention on people who hold such deeply entitled, misogynistic views that the prospect of having a noun — just one noun! — that remains exclusive to female humans is enough to prompt a week-long tantrum.

Amazing. I wish a training module could be written based on this content and made mandatory for every public sector worker.

Wow that’s so good!

I am afraid the trans backlash means we must continue to fight. Governments, businesses, etc are so captured that we may have to defend the SC's ruling against demands for Parliament to overturn it - which, of course, they can do.

Fantastic article.

Brilliant article and spot on with her analysis..

Thanks for that. Superb writing.

Great article.

The link to the evidence of TRAs threats is chilling.

What a great article. I wish I had the guts to share it on my social media

In a piece for the Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff worries that “some gender-critical feminists who have endured years of death threats, ostracisation and attempts to get them fired […] are clearly in no mood to be magnanimous”, whereas “for trans people and those who love them, this is a frightening and uncertain time”. It’s an interesting play-off. Gender-critical feminists might have experienced years of the worst, most terrifying abuse but the main issue isn’t their lasting trauma. It’s that it might have made them less “magnanimous” towards those who perpetrated it, who are too busy being “frightened” by women having basic rights to give a second thought to how the women they harmed might be coping.

Too bloody right.

Cracking article, thank you for sharing it.

There's another one in The Critic on the harms of gender identity ideology in children's libraries.
thecritic.co.uk/queering-the-kids-section/

She is really good. I always love her articles

Oh that’s so good!

Excellent. Thank you for posting.

Excellent article.

I see Jo Grady from UCU has waded in, and little OJ has popped up again.

Agree re the chilling TERF threats.

A question: are the Supreme Court judges, the UK government, and everyone who thinks the judgement is broadly sensible, all classed as TERFs now?

Wow, absolutely brilliant article!! Thanks for sharing. I hope JK shares it on X so it get's the number of readers it deserves.

I very much hope TRAs do go around accusing everyone and everything of being evil TERFs who want all trans people dead. The sooner politicians and organisations realise that there is nothing they could do or say to placate the TRAs, the sooner they'll be ready to stand up to bullies.

Yes, like Hillary Cass is.

Yes Gaby’s article was so… vanilla in its mild recognition that there might be something to be gained from a biological understanding of sex. But I suspect she will still be declared a beyond the pale transphobe because of it anyway, be frozen out of the morning tea room at the Guardian and finally come to realise that even showing a hint of understanding or empathy for women gets you kicked out of the ‘club’. She has tried to placate the extremists for so long now though that even if she went full terf because Owen, Arwa and Zoe won’t share cookies with her anymore, she has lost all credibility as someone who truly understands and cares about feminism and women’s rights.

Excellent article! Thanks for posting it.

You could just weep reading that. It really encapsulates who genuinely are the hated, silenced, marginalised and whose lives and mental health are really at risk. A brilliant piece of writing. Thank you for sharing.

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