Very mvoing tweet about how women have been colonised by men

[PoetryEmotion]

I came across this tweet by Diana Alastair today, and thought it was worth posting. It's absolutely heartbreaking, and anger-making:

OK, trans community – it’s truth time. One of the biggest differences between the way women are treated and the way that y’all are treated is that y’all are allowed to have safe spaces. You’re allowed to have subreddits that are trans-only, places and events that are just for you. We’re not.

When I tried to start a subreddit for female humans, for example (including the ones who identify as men) so that we had a place to talk about female things, it lasted less than a week, and the admins performed a delicate little dance before banning us for “hate.” They temp-banned me and all my mods, then banned the whole community because we weren’t able to take down the anti-trans posts that were clearly against our rules - and that didn’t appear until after we were tempbanned. Hmm.

Women get nothing: not subreddits, not dating apps, not even an app for women in general. No bathrooms, no changing rooms, no sports of our own; hell, we can’t even get away from y’all in prison! Any female-only event y’all get to hearing about is targeted by protesters, often violent ones, invariably carrying signs threatening harm or encouraging suicide — lovely behavior from people who constantly quote trans suicide statistics as if it’s the biggest crisis on the planet, btw.

Any women’s shelter or rape crisis center that is female-only is also targeted: the sole remaining women’s rape crisis center in all of Canada has been repeatedly vandalized with threatening graffiti, and even had a dead rat nailed to its door. This, in a city with 6 other rape counseling centers available, all of them trans-friendly. It’s not about being denied access to services — it’s sick, twisted, furious hatred at even the idea of women having anything of our own.

You have taken it all: our spaces, our sports, and our safety. You’ve taken our privacy, our dignity, our right to single-sex incarceration, and our right to single-sex intimate care. You’ve taken our identities, and the words we use to name ourselves.

You want us to agree that being female means nothing, is nothing, deserves nothing - no recognition, no separate existence — not even a name. We are “uterus-havers,” “menstruators,” “bleeders,” and “people with cervixes.” “Women” belongs to you now, and you’re even coming for “female.”

You’re taking everything we are, piece by piece — and what do we get in return, for the theft of the names you took from us? “Cis” — a prefix that sidelines us in our own demographic, and which privately, the trans community uses as a slur. What good little colonizers you’ve turned out to be.

https://x.com/sappholives83/status/1983648197403721787

Are you kidding?

Any man walking into a women's single sex space (which are in the main where women are in a state of undress) is straightforwardly taking away her dignity and privacy as described in law as the reason for providing single sex provision. I'd also argue that as he is there specifically to use the experience of her physical presence and body, he's removed her dignity in other ways too, not least that he's demoted her to a prop he feels entitled to use. Human dignity being a thing.

I'm glad you're happy about your dignity personally in changing with men, the gender neutral spaces will give you lots of extra space to enjoy. But the women who cannot share mixed sex spaces need single sexed provision.

It takes more than that to take away my dignity!

Dont get me wrong… I think the entire trans nonsense is just that..,, awful nonsense and I’d like the government to say “fuck that, you’re a man, the day you don’t have a penis is the day you can do xyz”

my point is…. This? Doesn’t reduce my dignity or diminish me in any shape or form.

If you were sent to prison and forced to share showers or a cell with a male rapist do you think that would be enough to take away your dignity?

13 years ago ish [time really does fly] one of my male colleagues, in his 50s at the time, turned up at work to meet with me, on his day off.

We worked at a place that had an education dept which had children mainly primary visiting - usually 2-3 coach loads almost every day. As he walked towards me, dressed as little bo peep, with his hair in ribbons, white ankle socks on and frilly knickers that were more than visible under his pink checked frilly skirt, my dignity was through the floor. I do not and did not consent to cosplay his fetish and neither did any other staff or volunteers in that day.

Luckily, I could see the coach parking area as he walked in my direction, and none were in that day. I breathed a sigh of relief. And luckily he wasn't really interested in the meeting, spoke briefly to me and went into the building. I made my excuses that I would do the work from home that day and drove home.

Until you experience the absolute in your face brazen fucking cheek of these guys, who you know will face zero consequences for their behaviour, you have no idea what it will do to your dignity.

I am still, 13 ish years later, within seconds of bursting into tears at the frustration of it all, and I'm a 58 year old who has taken early retirement because I couldn't cope with the fucking nonsense any more.

No

it would concern me, it would anger me, I would feel very anxious

but no. It would not take away my dignity

This would have been mortifying! I would have felt embarrassed and distanced myself!

but no… it would not have taken away my dignity

Did you have no idea about your colleague??!

That’s probably because you are better than everyone else

Oh don’t be silly and childish

Did you not say, “What the fuck do you think you look like, Colin?”

I don’t think I would have been able to stop myself.

Exactly

and surely the poster knew this about her colleague? I wouldn’t be meeting up with him in any circumstances!

r. I do not and did not consent to cosplay his fetish and neither did any other staff or volunteers in that day.

but you did consent to meet him. Knowing he was trans.

and you did consent to meet him at your workplace knowing this

I consented to have a meeting with a colleague. Not be a party to his cos play fetish. In work hours. In a professional setting.

If you don't see the difference maybe you had no dignity to start with?

To he honest I didnt know what to say. Its the flight fight freeze fawn response and I froze. And got the fuck out of there.

You cant refuse to meet up with colleagues just in case one turns up dressed is his fetish gear!

I don't like the tone of the tweet. It's too pleading. All this "y'all are taking our things, please let us have our things back". Who does she think she'll get through to? Men who invade aren't going to stop doing so from pleading

Huh?

he had the day off and was meeting the poster socially

I would have frozen too. While I would prefer to come up with a rational response, such as “What on earth so you think you look like?” or something even pithier, experience tells me that my mind shies away from almost any kind of unreasonable challenge/perceived conflict when I’m not expecting it.

I wonder what he was thinking. Presumably he enjoyed shocking you. Men like him make my flesh crawl and I am so sick of society, governments and the police putting them first over women every single time.

It doesn't read at all like AI to me. It's her own style of writing (I've followed her for a long time).

This was a close friend and colleague

I’m baffled that the poster seems to have been so surprised by the turn of events

I think we've run into a difference of opinion about what we mean by 'dignity'.
I take it as meaning a sense of self-worth and self-respect, and I agree that nobody can take that away from me.

But people can behave towards me in a way that does not recognise my dignity.
A man walking in to a women-only space where I was in a vulnerable state, by reason of being partially undressed, etc. and hanging around and watching instead of saying 'Oh I'm very sorry!' and backing out rapidly, is an affront to my dignity.

It doesn't take my dignity away, but it disrespects it and that's what makes it unacceptable.

In my view, that is disrespectful

nothing to do with taking away my dignity ( self worth etc)

No, he arranged a busines meeting without telling me it was his day off and turned up dressed as Little Bo Peep.

Who said he was a 'close friend'?

Do male colleagues in their 50s turn up to work meetings dressed in their fetish gear regularly at your workplace?

First result on search:

Human dignity can be violated in multiple ways. The main categories of violations are:

Humiliation

Violations of human dignity in terms of humiliation refer to acts that humiliate or diminish the self-worth of a person or a group. Acts of humiliation are context dependent but we normally have an intuitive understanding where such a violation occurs. This approach is common in judicial decisions where judges refer to violations of human dignity as injuries to people's self-worth or their self-esteem.

For example Sandie Peggie and the Darlington nurses being expected to stand beside a man and assume a state of undress that they would never be expected to alongside men without trans identities because it would be humiliating. And the loss of self worth comes when a woman has to take her clothes off with that man (remember Sandie covered in blood from her period?) or a woman has to submit to a strip search from a man who has been excepted from the usual restrictions for a man, because her body and his access, his power to be there and do what men normally can't, gives him a lovely experience. Is that great for a woman's sense of equality and self worth? Or is she being reminded that the man has the power, and however she feels does not matter, her body is his in this context. Unless, like the Darlington Nurses and SP she has the guts and the money to fight through court and then have her period discussed in the national press.

Instrumentalization or objectification:
This aspect refers to treating a person as an instrument or as means to achieve some other goal. This approach builds on Immanuel Kantz's moral imperative stipulating that we should treat people as ends or goals in themselves, namely as having ultimate moral worth which should not be instrumentalized.

Oh yes. Like not wanting to strip search them or change beside them because they're just a vehicle to ride your gender identity around on. And dress up as. It's ridiculous to deny that for a large group of such men this is also a basically sexual and fetish experience using that woman as a prop. She isn't a person in this. Look at the imbalance right now in perception and treatment of the hospital team towards the Darlington nurses (you're uncomfortable, shut up and get over it and take your clothes off/lie naked on a table and let him see you unconscious) and their treatment of the man involved. Who might be upset.

Degradation
Violations of human dignity as degradation refer to acts that degrade the value of human beings. These are acts that, even if done by consent, convey a message that diminishes the importance or value of all human beings. They consist of practices and acts that modern society generally considers unacceptable for human beings, regardless of whether subjective humiliation is involved, such as selling oneself to slavery, when a state authority deliberately puts prisoners in inhuman living conditions.

Deliberately putting women in the position of having to undress for some men for those men's desires, regardless of how the woman feels or what she believes yes, would be pretty degrading. I'd argue that the women who tell us they love taking their clothes off with unknown men and every woman should embrace that freedom and higher plane is not telling us what she thinks she is about herself or her view of women as equal or valuable

Dehumanisation

These are acts that strip a person or a group of their human characteristics. It may involve describing or treating them as animals or as a lower type of human beings.

Like telling lesbian women to 'learn to cope' with straight sex as men want it from them as part of their gender expression. Not a person, not a relationship partner, but a kind of free sex worker with a duty. Expecting distressed women to take their clothes off or lose access to the space and resource as a punishment. Men with trans identities must be treated with 'respect', it's a daily message - the respect normally means that they should have access to undressed women - have you ever seen a line in a newspaper article talking about the equal need to respect the women in the situation? Is there even a mention of the above issues for women in the many articles describing how sad it is for poor men not allowed to invade women's privacy and ignore their consent and how difficult it is for poor businesses to permit women to escape this?

Men with trans identities will tell you it dehumanises them to permit a women's single sex resource exist alongside their own provision. Is that more dehumanising than women not being permitted a resource at all if they cannot or will not submit to placing his interests above their own and providing themselves as his prop?