Rebecca Don Kennedy of the Equality Network interviewed

[ArabellaScott]

https://archive.ph/yw2s0

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25413097.equality-chief-i-not-fight-trans-rights-hurt-women/

'Kennedy sees the battle over trans rights as an “imported culture war”, which came along with “a rise in right-wing rhetoric, the rise of fascist tendencies, and a return to patriarchy. It manufactured fear and anxiety and made marginalised people scapegoats for the ills of the world”.
What’s happened in Britain and America isn’t happening in Europe, Kennedy says. “They’re looking at us in horror. The things that are going on around trans people’s human rights is unfathomable. We’re referred to as ‘Terf Island’ for a good reason.” Terf means “trans exclusionary radical feminist”.'

“It’s awful for LGBTI people, and specifically trans people, and more specifically trans women, right now. It’s terrifying. They’re demonised by the press, by their politicians, demonised on <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/yw2s0/www.heraldscotland.com/topics/television/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TV, questioned within institutions and their workplace, and they’re maybe not even able to use the toilet when they go outside.
“All the while this is happening, other people who are hateful are lauded and lifted up as heroes – and worse than that, painted as heroes for feminism. It’s just abhorrent.
“To be a trans women right now is so hard. Their strength is unparalleled. I cannot imagine being able to just hold my head high and live my life regardless of how – and I’m going to swear now – f***g awful it is. The admiration I have for trans women is huge. I couldn’t do it.”

“It’s dangerous for any woman who falls outside the supposed standard of what women should look like. I cannot believe that we’re returning to a world where if you don’t look like a feminine woman then you’re looked at with suspicion. I’ve heard more about cis women being pulled up and questioned in toilets – often cis lesbian women v than I have about trans women. I mean, what are we doing? We’ve gone so down the rabbit hole that people are being encouraged to take pictures of women in bathrooms. It’s not just trans women who bear the brunt of that, it’s all women who don’t conform to whatever it is we’re meant to conform to.”
She described the proposed system around bathrooms as “a mess with no clarity. It’s unreal. Trans men are to use women’s toilets, and trans women are to use men’s toilets. But anybody that’s non-binary, or looks ‘too transitioned’, is to use gender-neutral toilets, if there are any”.
“What that likely meant in practice was that, for example, bearded masculine trans men would be told they should use women’s toilets – unless that caused upset or fear – then they didn’t have a toilet to use at all, unless there was a gender-neutral one. It’s utterly ludicrous, appalling actually.”
Kennedy believes that women opposing trans rights are damaging feminism. “I’d give them grace and say they don’t realise how these things entwine. Partly this might be because before 2018 they weren’t involved in the equalities movement, or human rights or the feminist movement. So they don’t see there’s an intertwining of shared struggles.
“We all have human rights. If some of us don’t have them, then none of us do. As soon as you start that divisive pulling apart you weaken the armour and the tools that we have for moving forward. I believe in intersectional feminism where everyone who’s marginalised needs to work together. If we don’t work together, we won’t achieve anything.
“Many women [opposed to trans rights] are in quite privileged positions and have – or believe they have – what they need. Some people believe everything is fine because they’re fine, and they don’t look any deeper.”

Those are such completely excellent questions Flirts, and ones I would love Rebecca to answer. She never ever will though. If by some chance you were able to put them to her she would find a way to divert from them, by feigning disgust at your prejudice and denial of trans people’s existence or similar

If the thing we have in common isn't our bodies but yet there is still a thing we have in common, what is it?

and how do we analyse why any particular group is marginalised without that infornation?

how do you stop them being marginalised if you don’t understand this?

https://www.equality-network.org/about/complaints-policy/

How to.make a complaint, for anyone who has the faintest hope that Scottish quangos like the EN aren't the.most wilfully pointless waste of money since Betamax box sets and that there may be any glimmer of hope that our civil society is worth anything at all. Rather than just needing to be wound up and started over.

FGS what an utter numpty she is.

Also, as a Brit who lives in France, I have not ever once heard anyone talking about the UK's approach to trans issues. These conversations will only be happening in the European branches of the same privileged echo chamber that people like Rebecca live in.

Personally I'm proud to be from a country which recognises that women both (a) exist, and (b) have sex based rights including the right to an abortion.

I've asked this question many times and lots of people have answered that there is nothing all women have in common.

To which my response is, "So what is the point of this category?"

She, and others are playing a dangerous game with LGB rights - I keep hearing about the threats to LGBT marriage - but, as far as I know, none have been made?!

So sex differentiation is at once so "nebulous" that it can't be defined and shouldn't be considered significant - and so all-consumingly important that it has to be pursued by means of drastic and unpleasant medical procedures. Women have nothing in common to unite them in solidarity - but you're being erased and destroyed if you're not allowed to be one of the girls.
Yeah, right. Makes perfect sense.

I think TRSOH want to use "woman" as a catch-all term for anyone who does not fit a macho male stereotype, and "Feminism" as an all purpose "fighting for all marginalised people"

It's so regressive. They believe they are challenging Patriachy but they are still thinking about people along the male/female scale Patriachy laid out. The whole concept of "gender as a spectrum" ultimately comes from the Patriachal idea that some men are less manly than other men. They are challenging nothing.

And it's so simplistic, so black and white. As if only stereotypically macho men hurt, abuse, talk over and exclude women. As if people who are marginalised and abused never also marginalise and abuse others.

But I'm not against society having a catch-all term for all the people who for a range of reasons don't have the cultural privilege of the, for want of a better phrase, "pale, male and stale". I just don't think it's rasonable for that word to be "women", because female people exist and we have experiences and challenges that are specific to us and not just those of a wider group of the marginalised.

Women are the only marginalised group who aren't allowed to have their own equality movement which focuses on their rights rather than everybody's rights.

"I believe in intersectional feminism where everyone who’s marginalised needs to work together."

So she doesn't actually know what "intersectional feminism" means.

"At first, Kennedy wondered: “Where was it coming from? Down south? America?”
She adds: “I think now we know that it’s coming from concerted MAGA rhetoric.”"

She also doesn't think women are capable of thinking for ourselves. I don't need anyone else to tell me that including men in the class of "women" is detrimental to women. I can figure that out for myself; it's not rocket science.

Have just seen someone comment that no other than Mridul Wadhwa was on the board of the Equality Network and received their Outstanding Campaigner award in 2015. Yes, that Mridul Wadhwa who presided over Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre which, according to an independent review, failed rape survivors because of their institutional adherence to gender ideology.

EN really is women hating to it's core.

I honestly think the only answer can be: for the feelz

She also doesn't think women are capable of thinking for ourselves.

Could that be because she isn't? She's obviously copied this verbatim from some American TRA site because she hasn't got a clue. Because she knows nothing, and she's a woman, she's assumed that other women are as clueless as she is.

So the point of the category "women" is to make trans identifying men feel good?

Hard pass.

ATTENTION PLEASE AMERICAN STYLE LIBFEMS.

British women are capable of coming to the conclusion that we deserve to exist in law and have some sex based rights all by themselves, without needing to be brainwashed by - checks notes - "MAGA"/the American far right.

If you think we are even spending that much time thinking about Trump and his cronies beyond a general observation that America is fucked, much less that we copied our feminism from him (LOL!) then you really are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, to put it politely. Not everything revolves around America and American politics.

And yes, I realise you don't think we are feminists. It's OK. We don't think you are feminists either.

The comments are almost universally scathing and negative.

I've heard this a lot recently, that it's a manufactured / imported culture war. What might be the best way to debunk this when arguing it with someone?

Last time I had this discussion I tried explaining that feminists have been pushing back against this for years, decades even, before conservatives took an interest, and even pointed out that in the UK it was a Tory government who tried to introduce gender self-id laws, but none of that changed their view.

It also makes some women feel.good to give away the rights of other women they judge as less enlightened than themselves. Warm fuzzies. So good. Much virtue.

One could point to Germaine Greer, who was absolutely crystal clear on this fifty years ago.

Or talk about how the women in the UK who fought self.ID were from across the political.spectrum - every major political.party in the UK has a 'gc' organisation.

But tbh I'm a.bit past trying to point out the utter bollocks spoken on the subject. I guess maybe more effective to ask them for what they are basing this mad conspiracy theory on.

I'd also say that, though I regret I couldn't ask a question other than "what the actual fuck are you talking about you silly silly person"

“What’s alarmingly clear now is that they came as part of a package and part of a movement that’s a US import that’s anti-progress, anti-rights and anti-women’s rights.”

Ahh, 'anti-progress' is inherently bad, progress inherently good - as in 'the lemmings progressed en masse over the precipitous cliff'

Oddly enough, since the whole more-victimised-than-thou schtick seems to be an American import, she may be on the nail there. Just not the way she meant.

Oh Dear God! Pray tell; where exactly is the intersection between women and trans identifying men? Fucked if I can see it. It is the absolute antithesis of intersectionality.

Women and trans identifying men are two parallel lines.