Stephen Fry - What a repulsive, condescending misogynistic turd

[Absentmindedsmile]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14820209/Harry-Potter-narrator-Stephen-Fry-turns-JK-Rowling-TERFs.html

Yuk.

Thank you. I'm glad someone is addressing it.

Crikey, what bar is that?

<grabs bag and keys>

Cheers. That's clear. I get what you are saying

“I think you have made my point entirely. Your refusal to even acknowledge the obvious and public racism at work in the identification and vilification of Ms Semenya is what makes many minorities feel excluded from white feminism.”

Looking back on this thread, I wonder if this is partly where it has gone the way it has.

It really is a dishonest position being used here as an accusation.

If this paragraph referred to black female athletes being wrongly identified as male athletes, I suspect that most posters would have agreed.

But when a poster uses an example of a male athlete as an example of vilification of female athletes and as a point of comparison of falsely identifying a female athlete as being male, it is a position that is not only flawed and using falsehood as support. And it then creates a situation where some people will respond to the falsehood and confusion is one of the outcomes.

I'm really struggling to wrap my head around a poster using the example of a black man to make a point about racism against black women.

Why would anyone take this position?

It seems ridiculously racist in itself, no?

It just makes no sense to me. And it screams of whitesplaining - somehow you can see the black plight better than I can. Somehow you are a saviour for black women

Jesus H., I despair.
I haven’t seen anyone thinking they are saviours of any kind, nor that white people understand black plight, ffs.

What we keep saying, and you aren’t hearing because apparently we aren’t using the special Acceptable Words, is that Semenya is a man who competes in women’s sport, denying actual women their places, sponsorships and medals. The women he is disadvantaging are mostly black, but this is a discussion about sex, not race, and no one who is white knows what it is to be black
(I could draw the obvious comparison…)

As GC women and feminists, we support women, not men who want to take our stuff. Women. Black women, white women, straight bi or lesbian, with or without disabilities, young and old, those we agree with and those who want us to shut up and Play Nice. Semenya doesn’t qualify.

And, as Hellabore’s excellent links to scientific studies demonstrate, people can and do perceive sexual dimorphism and correctly identify who is male.

With our aforementioned eyesight.

I don't get why anyone particularly liked him. He's always been utterly insufferable and pious. I've always hated QI with a passion for being utterly pompous.

I am really hoping he gets murdered on Celebrity Traitors first.

To my knowledge, J. K. Rowling has never published the threats she's received.

I wonder if now is the time.

It would be a way of demonstrating to Fry exactly who it is who has been radicalised.

Plus, in his own words, it would be effective.

And right, of course.

All of the above. Trans identifying men commit sexual crimes at a higher rate than men in general, so they may be smaller in number, but are more likely to be predatory. They are already asking women to accept something that we know isn’t true, so are well used to crossing boundaries.

Also, why is it so unreasonable of women to just want spaces without men in them? I’m happily married to a man, I have two amazing sons, and two wonderful brothers, but I sometimes want to be in an all female environment. Men don’t have the right to have access to women 24 hours a day.

I'm sure I read the other day that he says he doesn't speak at home like he does in public.

So it's a persona designed to make people he doesn't know think he is clever.

Unfortunately it's the persona of a misogynistic asshat.

She doesnt need to. Plenty of them have been made in plain sight.

Dear God.

That's horrendous.

Yeah. It really is. I'm surprised it hasn't gained more traction tbh.

There’s a difference between having a full debate on these forums and JKR using her huge platform to tweet like that without context, and to target individuals. Even if the intended impact isn’t to make white women and men eyeball minority women every time they use a women’s facility, or make comments about the masculinity of a black women’s body, that is the impact of the narrative.

It makes you wonder whether they'll be a bunch of stories about him in years to come and we get to go 'well actually if you'd have been paying attention it's it's not even remotely surprised'. Followed by comments from broadcasters about lessons learned.

As I say I have never particularly liked him. He gives me that off vibe. I like Blackadder but him no. I guess my ickdar was spot on then unfortunately.

No one is 'assigned' a sex at birth. HE was raised as a son. Multiple sources confirm this. So you are factually incorrect.

You are either male or female. There is no 'grey area'. And please keep your racist opinions out of this.

Calling a male with a micropenis, prostate and testicles 'she' doesn't help anyone and makes you look disingenuous. He, is a HE.

i hope it posts, i kept getting an error message.

(1) Malcolm Clark on X: "1./ 🧵Stephen Fry and Britain's Failure to Take Child Abuse Seriously. Our headlines are dominated by the scandal of institutions that refused to protect girls for fear of seeming "racist". My latest article suggests Stephen Fry's knighthood is from the same copybook. 1/of 21 https://t.co/8OQxOYbRF4" / X

Because black women experience misogyny in a different way to white women and that experience has the same root as Semenya’s experience of racism.

It isn't racism that results in semanya being called a man . It's the fact he's a man. He can't experience misogyny because he's a man.

The only racism in this, is yours.

Wait, now we're talking about Semenya's experience of racism? Not the fact that he is a man?

Well, no.

Even if it were true, the argument would still have to be "I have a ladybrain and that makes my male body actually the same as your female one in a deeper than physical sex way", and that is still a big (I would say indefendable) claim.

The reason we have female only supports is because people with female bodies were marginalised or at risk. Having some sort of ladybrain structure in a male body doesn't put one into the catgeory of people with female bodies.

Saying a "womanlike" brain structure if found in a male mind means that man is actually a physical female is like saying if a cyclist drives a car then the car is actually a bike and it's fine to use it in cycle lanes, race in cycle races and so on 😂 The issue is not the the cyclist isn't a cyclist, it's that the car is not a bike.

So end of the day, even if it were true, it still wouldn't justify what trans women want from women.

It's just another manipulation, an attempt to imply that if you don't accept TW as women you are somehow base, unable to perceive beyond a simplistic physical object to a deeper realm of mind. Emperors new clothes. Confusing mud being thrown around to justify a demand that if was made in simple language - "I am a man but I feel like I think women must feel so I want you to pretend I am one just like you" no one would consider reasonable for a hot second.

At best it might mean a little more sympathy to why the demands get made (although as I said on another post, the "womanhood" expressed by some trans women is very hard to reconcile with my experience of being female and sometimes downright offensive, so the idea that it's stemming from some sort of genuine mental commonality with female people is - unconvincing).

What it might do if actually real is bring about a more subtle understanding of personality. Maybe we'd start to see BrainFeel as something meaningful and maybe have services/supports tailored to that. But that would be something aside from sex, not a replacement for sex or a reason that physical sex, that has been a significant factor in how we humans treat each other and see ourselves, is suddenly magically not going to be noticed.

Again, this is an example of your hateful racism. Semenya never experienced racism at all. The fact you think he did, shows you think he did because you think he looks male.

He would have had medical exams. And if he has a micropenis, like those with 5ARD do, and testes, he would have ejaculated during puberty.

He would have known.

I’m saying that the targeting of her, the way her case was handled was hugely innapropriate and racist, yes. Even if the outcome was ultimately correct. This is something that needs to be addressed as black female athletes and other minorities are ultimately the ones that suffer from normalising that treatment and judgment of our bodies on eyesight first.

That’s why I’ve said repeatedly on this thread that I welcome standardised sex testing but until then the GC approach required greater awareness of racial sensitives and bias, and harm caused to black women as a result of the current approach to target individual DSD athletes.