Laura Bates “Girl up”: what a fucking disappointment

[yoursweetpotatoesarebland]

Am currently at the Hay festival and saw Laura Bates talking about her latest YA novel which seemed great.

Bought her book “Girl Up”as dd (who is currently trans identifying) said she would be interested in reading it. When I got home I opened it and the first page says how the book will not tolerate gender stereotypes, so far so good. The second page goes on to say that “bodies with vaginas” and people who “live as women” are oh so important terms and to be acknowledged.

I feel so sad - I thought LB and this book could be such an asset to girls in owning that their sex is not linked to any public perception which is mostly rooted in misogyny. How can she on the one hand claim to reject stereotypes and give speeches on Ai sex robots and on the other walk vulnerable girls into thinking this is nothing to do with their sexed reality, as if sex robots have nothing to do with the female body.

I know, I know. I probably should have known and this is just another woman to
fall prey to this pervasive ideology, but she seemed smart and a good role model and for some reason I feel SO disappointed today.

She doesn't understand it?

Hmmm... Even The Guardian doesn't seem to like it, despite "approving" of Laura Bates.
So I wonder what market she was going for!

Laura Bates has always been an idiot, her Guardian column years ago full of statistical fallacies and illogical, unevidenced, claims.

I agree, I can’t take her seriously when she talks about “the manosphere” without mentioning the massive fucking elephant tap dancing in the corner. I find her a bit ridiculous.

Pretty sure the Hay Festival would not platform a feminist writer with sensible views on sex and gender. Same goes for all the other literary festivals. Dire state of affairs, but gives you a heads up on what to expect.

What kind of fallacies? About sexual harassment or similar?

Rookie error. The mainstream feminist writers who get new books published and promoted are rarely the ones with one contentious views, like sex being rather important when it comes to sexism.

Get your DD offline and protect her from whatever has influenced her towards the genderwoo.

I loved Laura Bates everyday sexism website. It was eye opening for me and honestly did change my life. I'm surprised she doesn't see the problems inherent in gender identity rather than sex being the basis of segregating facilities/services.

Yes, I've stopped going. I used to love it but their line ups have been poor the last few years. It's a real shame. There have been so many amazing feminist books recently and brilliant writers, but somehow they never appear.

You see this with a lot of any sort of writers/campaigners who become establishment figures (such as being platformed by The Gauardian, BBC etc).

To maintain their careers they have to parrot the establishment position, and then it shows their moral integrity over what is important, theirs morals or their careers.

Yes… it was less noticeable a few years ago when it was almost impossible to actually get a GC book published. Now there’s a few out there, I have found it quite striking that there’s no discussion of the gender issue and no platforming of sex realists at all. Jameela Jamil is here tho….

No, mainly about statistical things, or unwarranted generalisations.

She would get a lot of her ideas from the things written on her everyday sexism twitter or blog or whatever, and then would conclude certain things were on the rise used against women. The fact that a place people were deliberately writing in to for incidents like that wouldn't be a good indicator of what was or was not happening in the general public seemed to go over her head.

Or she would assume some behaviour was particularly against women when in fact it was pretty widely experienced.

Oh this is disappointing.