Please help be articulate my thoughts, ‘be kind’ is heavily linked to privilege/class

[Temporaryusernamefortoday]

I will start off by prefacing this post with the fact that my title is badly written but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.

This though process was sparked by seeing a post mourning the ‘exclusion’ of trans girls from Girlguiding and seeing a good friend respond with the ‘crying’ emoji.

I can’t help feeling that the invasion of female only spaces, in a way that most likely to pose a threat to mental or physical wellbeing disproportionately effects the most vulnerable women in society and those of ‘lower socio/economic status’.

In my mind the potential for greatest harm is in:

• Prisons
• Rape crisis
• Refuges
• Police custody/searching
• Intimate care spaces ie hospitals/carehomes
• public toilets.

The greatest service users of these spaces are not the ones shouting at everyone to ‘be kind’. They are those who are most vulnerable in society, those who often have fewwer options or a poorer start in life and are therefore more likely to end up as victims of DV, SA, in the prison system, in hospital etc.

I genuinely think that most of the Be Kind brigade view the issue through their own lenses of

• being willing to occasionally be mildly uncomfortable in a public toilet to signal their ‘credentials’
• the TiM

I think they find it easier to empathise with a male of a potentially similar ‘class’ than a woman who is unlike them.

If be intrigued to hear if others think there is an un acknowledged class element to this or if I am barking up the wrong tree/oversimplified this?

I don't think these things are related. For example, are poorer, more vulnerable, women, more likely to be against sharing single sexed services and facilities with transwomen?

Are transwomen more likely to be men from the middle and upper classes?

I think there’s some truth to this. In my experience you are more likely to have a job where you need to change in front of others if you’re in a lower paid job i.e health care assistant versus corporate office.

If you are in a more expensive restaurant you’re more likely to have a toilet with doors floor to ceiling rather than a flimsy cubicle which doesn’t shut properly etc.

Yes but that only matters in regards to the OP if the HCA is more likely to be against transwomen in female spaces than someone in a corporate role. I don't know the answer to that. Are there stats that break down how women feel about this issue by demographic?

I think they probably are (though I can’t be certain as I am very fortunate to be in a comfortably middle class, mostly none people facing role).

I also think such concerns are more likely to be brushed off as a result of them being ‘uneducated’. In the same way that voting leave in relation to Brexit was quite often presented as ‘uneducated’ (I voted remain and would again but do feel that some of the vitriol against leave voters was class motivated).

Furthermore if you asked many of the ‘BeKind’ brigade to describe a TiM I think they would be much more likely to describe an individual like them than Ryan Haley/Natalie Wolf

I didn’t make my point clearly, I was trying to say the removal of single sex spaces will have a greater impact women in lower socioeconomic situations. Of course you can be kind if it doesn’t directly impact you. You aren’t giving anything up.

Personally, I've found that younger people are more likely to share this view rather than it being about wealth or class. I'd bet than any research goes along those lines.

Generally speaking, I'd say the less wealthy a person is, the more likely they are to say "live and let live", or, as you say, "be kind". So my hypothesis would be the opposite to yours.

@Temporaryusernamefortoday have you read any Victoria Smith? She is very good on this sort of thing, and has a whole book on the expectation that it is always women who should “bekind” called “Unkind.”

Whilst there are certain aspects of life where that applies, such as how high your garden fence is or if you are doing building work on a Sunday morning, I don't think the same holds true for wider issues. When you look at, for example, issues of migrant hotels, it tends to be the lower social classes who are shouting the loudest. Of course there are deeper issues going on there that aren't easily analogous to trans issues.

Like with a lot of issues, I think it's easy to be principled when it doesn't directly affect you. When push comes to shove, women in uncertain or risky financial situations will be more likely to put up and shut up simply because they have no other viable option. That doesn't make them BeKind, but they have to think of what the consequences of what speaking up may be.

I haven’t but I will, thank you.

Also, wrt prisons, I hope someone with receipts will come along and help me out here, but I believe that the TRAs specifically targeted women’s prisons (ie, to house trans-identifying men) early on in their campaigns because they saw it as the thin end of the wedge. Here were women who the general population didn’t care about (or just didn’t think about) and who could not protest - they were seen as an ideal first skittle to knock down.

Here you go: by Róisín Michaux
https://4w.pub/you-meet-more-perverts-when-poor/

Purely anecdotally, almost all of my older millennial, middle class and tertiary educated social circle are of the “Be Kind” school of thought, with an annoying penchant for virtue signalling and assuming because you’re left wing and of a similar background, you think the same way. Although there is a range of incomes, I think I can see the common factors as being similar upbringing, age and level of education, and the fact that when I was growing up it was deeply uncool to be a feminist, so no one had a great deal of awareness of feminist theory, let alone the different schools of thought. Make of that what you will!

‘if these women get perved on, well they can just get in their cars and drive to a different, better place. They can sell their homes and go live somewhere not filled with desperate men and vigilante justice. They can go to the more expensive swimming pool, the one with the doors that lock. The one frequented by men with too much to lose.’

That hit quite hard. Thank you

A lot of people would say I’m “privileged”. I am 110% GC and believe in only two sexes. Male and female. You can physically be a man and dress up as a woman (and vice versa) but that doesn’t make you a transwoman or a woman. It’s just make you a man dressing up as a woman. I think that this nonsense shouldn’t be taught at schools and I think it is a mental health issue and surgery/hormone blockers should be banned.

so I’m not sure I buy into this “be kind” is a privilege/class thing (my whole family feel the same). But maybe I am the exception to the rule, as there were a few at my work trying to get the email signatures changed to include pronouns.

However, I actually think it is virtue signalling from people with too much time on their hands, doing too much navel gazing, watch too much social media and can’t think for themselves. And that isn’t defined by class.

I think that to understand the pressure placed on women to 'be kind', you have to be the one who is expected to 'be kind' at personal costs.

Its easy to imagine that we'd be just as happy to 'be kind' in all situations when we havent experienced the reality directly and are never likely to either.

Also, the women more likely to suffer are rarely listened to or cannot speak out - the elderly women needing personal care for example, or the person who would risk losing their job if they spoke out.

Also, men know which women are more likely to be believed, listened and able to speak up. They dont target them so much.

“Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?”

I think you have a point, and like pp I find that I, a relatively privileged, mc, educated woman, working in a sector that can’t stop blathering on about inclusivity, am expected to hold these kinds of views. It’s taken for granted. When I stick my neck out even slightly I can tell it makes people reconsider their view of me, and I suspect I’m considered to be right wing.

I feel that the pronoun bekindness is presented as somehow aspirational in the sector, as though you’ve joined a stratum of society in which your ‘identity’ is important and meaningful, whereas it might not have been in your background.

I definitely see it used as a way of ‘othering’ people and having a reason not to take them seriously or engage with them.

i think it's also a mental safety/denial thing. #BeKind and give away women's rights because we don't need them now, right? Because everyone knows now that women are equal to men, don't they? Because yes feminism was important in olden times or in other countries, but our men aren't like that any more, are they? OK there's still far more women sex workers and women are brtualised in porn but they choose to do it, right? And ok some women are assaulted by men, but women can be violent or sexually agressive as well you know? So our sex is not a vulnerability in this society any more, so I'm safe now. Aren't I?

Act like the danger isn't real and maybe it isn't. Mentally paint trans women as being far more in danger than cis women and subconsciously you can feel powerful, the one with the power to protect, someone who can give away your protections because you don't need them.

I agree with you OP, and i think you've articulated it very clearly. Good example of this is the Sandie Peggie case - working class nurse vs privileged doctor. He was propped up and encouraged by women with a similar background to him, and, importantly, women who would not have to use the changing room, either because they are doing desk based DEI jobs, or because they are more senior and have their own office to change in. Luxury beliefs sums it up.

What class is the Guardian readership? That will be the same class as the majority of ‘be-kinds’ and academic queer theorists and tras.

Most red belt voters, if they had had an explantation first as to what transwomen are, would say no way.

On the other hand, there must be working class transwomen who got cornered by homophobia in their own communities, for whom their trans identity was an escape. There was one such detransitioner in the NE seeking NHS redress for not allowing enough counselling before irreversible operations.

Re The OP:
I do think poor women are more likely to be affected. There was a very good article about this a few years ago which unfortunately I can’t remember well enough to link but it might have been in something like 4Women if anyone here can remember it.

If you don't think these things are related then you haven't been paying attention. OP is quite right. Poorer and working classwomen are disproportionately suffering from trans ideology in exactly the ways she cited. Middle class and above just don't face these issues in the same way (as a general rule). It's a privileged POV much like the attitude towards immigration. It doesn't affect them to "be kind".

See the Sandy Peggie trial for a strong example of this class discrimination in action.

James Morton Scottish transgender alliance

"We strategised that by working intensively with the Scottish Prison Service to support them to include trans women as women on a self-identification basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure that all other public services should be able to do likewise".

Knew there would be someone with the details - thank you!

If you have to be kind, you can't discuss any scenarios where harms are being done, because that's 'unkind'.

Those harms still have occured, but you just can't talk about them.

Who benefits from this dynamic most?

It's those who are, by definition, least exposed to risks and best able to protect themselves by other means.

A vulnerable person will often have no choices for whatever reason - they can remove themselves from a situation, they don't have the funds to improve their circumstances, they don't have the ability to speak for themselves and crucially be listened to. They have invisibility in society.

There are not really any MPs with twitter handles promoting their commitment to abused ethnic minority women in prison now are there? There are however plenty who have she/her or he/him together with their little flag.

When you look at this you look for the silences as well as those gobbing off loudest.

Fundamentally though the thing with 'be kind' is that if you acknowledge a harm, you have to do something to address that otherwise you are unkind. It's simply easier to just do not and pretend you don't see a problem because it means you can stay safe in your life bubble and do nothing.

Being inclusive is actually listening to ALL voices, not just the voices you like and approve of.

Is it kind to allow everyone to maintain a lie which ultimately can't avoid?