I'm confused what gender critical people want. Could someone clarify?

[Christinapple]

They want any LGBT person or supporter who makes a threat of violence arrested? Correct? For an example there was Sarah Jane Barker who made a "if you see a TERF, punch 'em in the face!" comment. There was a Glasgow protest where someone held up a cardboard sign with a guillotine crudely drawn with a crayon and "decapacitate TERFs" or something scrawled. These happened years ago and to this day the GC community still talk about and refer to them and say they should have been arrested/charged/convicted.

For another example a trans person a while back jokingly posted something like "let's give KJK a NZ welcome" on twitter which then led to a lot of angry GC people from here making police reports and brigading them (someone posted a link on here and lots went over to be abusive directly to her).

And then Graham Linehan threatens to/incites others to punch trans people in their genitalia (not his first time btw, he has a long track record of threatening and inciting abuse and violence towards LGBT people and their supporters), and yet these same GC people flock to twitter to say that it's "free speech" and "people shouldn't be arrested for online communications".

So what is it to be? If you want LGBT people arrested and charged for threats then GL would need charged too.

If you want GL to have a "legal pass" to make threats then that means it should be the same for all including LGBT people and allies.

Whatever the law is it needs to apply to everyone equally. You can't have one rule for GCs and another rule for LGBT people and allies.

I believe that women's spaces should be protected and I have grave concerns about the effect the trans lobby is having in strengthening harmful gender stereotyping. But I think the OP has a point. There are so many sensible, measured, admirable people who could be figureheads for the rights of women, but for some reason, Graham Linehan and KJK are given lots of attention and air time. Both are very problematic in lots of ways, and do active harm to the movement of people who are concerned about what's happening to women's rights.

People talk about the silent majority. There are reasons about that silence, and it's not all about getting cancelled. Lots of us would not want to stand with KJK and GL.

Read this OP. ⬆️

If after reading it, you still don’t understand, then that’s because you don’t want to understand and we can’t help with that.

The officers being armed or not isn’t the big fail here (although why couldn’t they have detained him quietly, at passport control, if they really needed to?), it’s the selective use of the laws they arrested him under.

I’m surprised that a supervising officer didn’t engage their brain at any point in this process and say “hold on a sec… WHY are we actually preparing to do this?” There’s only so far that “I was only following orders” will get you.

The Met are now facing the criticism that they absolutely deserve, and the irony is that the TWAW-thinking buffoon who thought this would be a jolly jape has probably done his ‘side’ a massive disservice.

It’s focused attention on the issues at play and will (likely) end up with there being less / looser regulation of t’internet and far fewer opportunities for TRAs to engage in Lawfare.

TBH, apart from the effect on poor old Glinner’s BP, this will end up as a win for sanity and reality.

Where has @Christinapple said they're a man? Have I missed something? Or is this that "you're a man" thing again if it's a poster you don't agree with?

We need something like a woman holding a Tunnocks teacake in a raised hand, with the caption "Sex Matters! Get over it men!" or similar? 😁

I cant speak for anyone else but what I want is single sex services and for people to stop pretending humans can change their biological sex.

I am gc but I am in the minority in that I cant stand GL. I find his motivations questionable.

I think that anyone making threats or suggesting people assault others should be dealt with according to the law on such behaviours.

I'm very concerned about where the QIA+ have gone. We're back to just LGBT.

#sadtimes

To go into a little more detail (though it really does feel so obvious to me):

TRAs

"if you see a TERF, punch 'em in the face!"
"decapitate TERFs"
"let's give KJK a NZ welcome"

LINEHAN

"if a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

"If you see" etc. emphasises that any, incidental encounter is a justification for violence, while "decapitate TERFs" is a comprehensive attack on a group based on their views. This is very different indeed to a specific response by an individual in a situation in which they feel unsafe.

Next, note the context to the Lineham tweet - a list of alternative actions preceding the reference to violence, culminating in the emphatic "if all else fails". Very different indeed to the immediate embrace of violence in your list.

Lastly, this context creates a very different tone indeed. There's a practicality to Lineham's bland imperatives that's reminiscent of the self-defence advice we're given. Again, a male may not recognise this, having been fortunate enough not to have heard these very words while growing up from teachers, self-defence instructors and parents. Compare Lineham's structured list of "Try action 1, Try action 2, then 'if all else fails' to try action 3... with the glee implicit in the following":

1. "in the face" ("face" is a vicarious, intimate and unnecessary detail that stands in stark contrast to the practical advice given to vulnerable females to "hit him where it hurts")

2. "decapitate" (bizarrely, indulgently excessive and gruesome, again, standing in stark contrast to practical self-defence)

3. "Let's give" (an exhortation, with associated connotations of large-scale action and enthusiasm, very different to "make", "call", "if... then")

All this feels so obvious to many women that I think your post may be rather misjudged - for me, it only served to highlight how very clear the difference actually is.

Indeed. And I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Glinner criticise the LGB. Just the actions of some of the T.

What do I want?

Male people above the age of 8 years old to stay out of female single sex spaces, no male people at all in any other single sex provision.

Consistency would be nice.

You may remember that the police only arrested the torturer and attempted murderer for telling people to punch women in the fucking face because they were shamed in to it by the public. They weren't going to bother, and initially told complainants it was his free speech.

As far as I'm aware, the police didn't put in much effort with your other MRA examples either.

Yes, the law does need to apply equally. The police turning up in numbers as soon as a MRA makes a report, whilst telling women who make reports to just not look on social media if they don't like threats isn't very equal, is it Chris?

this 👍

I don’t think anyone should be arrested for a tweet on either side of the argument.

I do think people who attend events with aggressive placards threatening death and shouting abuse/being intimidating/throwing things at people/spitting (see trans activists for all this btw) should be.

I’m yet to see any gender critical people shouting abuse, throwing things and spitting at trans people in the street.

Btw, I'm another who finds some of Linehan's posts distasteful and sometimes downright unpleasant. I love his comedy, sympathise with him as an individual. He's done a huge amount to highlight our cause, and I respect his devotion to women's rights. I find him both amazing and problematic! Sometimes, I feel he's bang on in both what he says and how he say it. But equally often, I don't like or condone his approach.

Still, though, there's a difference here.

And it's really stark.

No-one just 'happens' to be arrested, airside, at a big international airport.

Glinner was returning to the UK voluntarily to appear in magistrates court. It's not like he's a flight risk or the met wouldn't know where to find him. There was no justification for arresting him in that manner, it was a blatant abuse of power.

I want the law applied a) fairly and b) evenly. The law should also be proportionate so there is also an aspect that the current hate speech laws potentially need revisiting.

Either way, if it's not OK for Graham Linehan to tweet "A man who goes into a woman's changing room illegally should be punched in the balls" then it's not OK for Sarah Jane Baker (someone who has form for violence AND was on licence at the time) to shout in central London "If you see a TERF punch them in the fucking face".

Why are they treated differently?

A threat of violence is a threat of violence. We've all seen posters and placards at 'trans rights' rallies where there are threats of violence either to gender critical women in general ("Decapitate TERFs") or specifically, usually JK Rowling.

Why is nothing done about those?

I've run the gauntlet of protesters screaming obscenities, calling for death to women like me and holding pictures of guns.

The police stood by. Why is that?

I dunno in this case. I think Chris raises a question others will be asking, and while many of us have a sufficiently strong enough sense of the difference between the two sets of posts given that the difference feels painfully self-evident, it can be quite useful to put into words why this is.

I found it helpful to kind of deconstruct - it really affirmed my instinctive reaction on this. Other posters have made the same and similar points.

It could be useful for fence-sitters and both-siders to have it laid out like this.

Off topic sorry but,

if tans women really are women they would understand how women feel, understand why we want single sex spaces and most of all no woman would threaten another woman with rape.

I find him both amazing and problematic!

And that's part of the issue from the TRA side, they simply cannot understand that someone can do good things and still be flawed, and we don't cast them out into the wilderness for it. I don't agree with everything anyone says, doesn't mean a) I don't respect their right to have a different opinion or b) I feel the need to 'cancel' them to prove my own purity.

Interesting you say that. I nearly said similar in my post. Defo thought it as I was typing.

Have not RTFT. We want the TRAs to be quiet and get on with their lives without being all over everything all the time.

And we want them to stop using the wrong single sex spaces (to be clear: transwomen are men and should use the men's, transmen are women and should use the women's)

I want them to campaign for 3rd spaces where possible and for them to use them.

I want them to Let Women Speak without disrupting every time

I just want them to do what they say they want to do and get on, very very very quietly, with their lives.

I agree, Catiette. This is an important point that the OP is missing - Linehan suggested, probably not entirely seriously, direct action against a man who was in a single sex space, who had been challenged about it and asked to leave, and who had refused to do so.

This means the man hasn't accidentally wandered in to the wrong toilet, he isn't there 'just to pee', he is in the women's toilet for some nefarious reason of his own, and his continued unwanted presence is causing a disturbance and a perceived threat to the comfort and safety of the women using the women's toilet.

At women's self-defence classes we are taught that the most effective way of defending ourselves against a threatening man is to target the most vulnerable area of his body. Linehan was probably referring to that advice.

He was not advocating randomly approaching any trans identifying man and punching him in the balls, unlike SJB who advocated approaching any GC woman and punching her in the face.

In short, the OP is not comparing like with like.