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?

They don't actually SAY very much at all in case they lose their jobs, get arrested for "hate crimes" and/or threatened by TRAs who, mysteriously, never get charged for hate crimes,
Some of them do take the matter to court though which does tend to show you how they FEEL.

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

Bingo. I entirely agree.

The research provided can give us some idea.

The research provided gives some answers to the questions I asked. Thanks though.

You are right OP, it's definitely class related. Professional women are much more likely to be on board with TWAW. They are subscribers to the big bag of woke, of which TWAW is a part.

Working class people have a much better bullsht detector because they're more used to being sht on from a great height and the environment they live in is harsher.

This article from 2018 talks about the Deptford Project being infiltrated by socially privileged, middle class students leading to the exclusion of the working class women that the project was designed to help -

https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/

In particular, the last paragraph -

'Mcdonagh says:

“I want to tell those people who have gentrified our whole existence that our safe spaces are not for sale. That our experience is not for them to redefine. I want to let those people know that they are complicit in the victimization of already victimized people. Mostly, I want to start a conversation about social privilege and how the trans political and social movement is driven through [academia] and is suppressing the rights of working class women.”

(Sorry about the amount of edits! It's been a tough week)

True. “Be kind” is aimed firmly at women & girls. If you reject comments about your body, a males ironic comments about sex then you’re not kind, therefore of no use to The Patriarchy. Girls and women should be taught to BE ANGRY not fecking kind unless the situation merits kindness. Was it kind of the female inmates to allow the Transwoman to rape them in Scottish prisons?

And bizarrely, James Morton is a trans-identifying female. Who chose to throw other women under the bus.

Thank you for sharing that.

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1850946306413633689?s=20

I haven't read the full thread, OP, but your thread caught my eye as I read an interesting take on this subject yesterday on one of my facebook feeds.

... "My copy of "Sovereignty" the brilliant biography of John Mappin arrived today, every paragraph is spot on, for example "betrayal dressed as compassion is harder to oppose than open cruelty. Cruelty reveals itself and can be fought. Betrayal wears the language of virtue".

I don't know if this helps at all .

Imo "be kind" always seems to be at the expense of women and girls in particular i,e. so called trans rights is, in reality, men's rights overpowering women's rights. The current "refugees are welcome here" counter demonstrations against local people objecting to undocumented foreign illegal males dumped in their towns, yet again is at the expense of girls and women's safety in their own community. In my town this week there have been a further three incidents against local females, from the males housed in our local hotel . My question is, how many assaults is enough? Council doesn't care, unions are on the side of the males, too. We are just told to "be kind" . Rant over.

I think my anecdotal experience links it very strongly to university education, which is related to class but not quite the same.

For example, I know quite a lot of people in what might have been considered "working class" jobs, but they are well off. They tend not to take the "be kind" view, or if they do, it is mild and reflects that they haven't thought about it a lot. If you have a conversation about it - which notably is possible - they very quickly are appalled to find out that women's prisons or sports have men in them, for example.

Those who I know who have been to university otoh, nine times out of ten seem like cult members, including those who come from working class or even very vulnerable/underclass situations.

I think this analysis breaks down somewhat in the 18 to 25 age range who seem to have suffered massive indoctrination. They either are believers, or use non-belief as a kind of rebellion if that is the kind of kid they are and usually they are adopting all kinds of anti-woke stuff.

This is what I mean. Most of the people I personally know who are very vocal about trans related issues and rights are white, from poorer backgrounds, under about 30 and uni educated (or about to be). The people I know who don't fit that box but are vocal about it are all disabled. But honestly I mostly know poor people anyway.

Even though what you say is true, University effectively changes a person’s class to my mind. It generally endows education, more power, and more choice in life. So income and original background are not necessarily so relevant any more.

I don't think it does. Say there is a man in a bedsit with a history of mental illness +/- dependency issues. He is solely reliant on benefits. I dont think you could describe him as middle classed because he has a degree. He could be from a middle classed background but I still wouldn't see him as currently part of the middle classes

I’m a middle class professional. I don’t know anyone of my peers who has been the victim of DV or who is afraid of men for any other reason. None of them have been to prison. Would be very easy for these women to say be kind, with no understanding of what it feels like to be afraid of men,

Ah see I work with lots of women in a role where they disclose DV. Where I trained for this role was in an area with much affluence and also deprivation. DV or more like DA was something that was pretty stable across the classes. It was a real shock for me because I didnt think "posh" men beat their wives.

I disagree. If your formative years have been around working class poverty, going to university doesn't undo any of that. Even more so if you are commuting to university from home. If anything, it compounds your difference.

A lot of these working class students simply can't take advantage of a lot of opportunities that a degree may offer. They often have to work more then they attend uni and do can't take part in the extra-curriculars or they are living at home and so have to be mindful of the train/bus times. They can't afford internships and don't have the family connections that can often facilitate those types of opportunities. They may not be able to afford to move cities to take up a graduate scheme job. Their university choice will be limited to begin with because they may only be able to attend a local one. The list goes on.

Let’s not forget the odious “Stephen” Whittle, ex-president of WPATH, shadowy figure behind the decision to allow (insist on, really) self-id in all NHS trusts and for this to be hidden in their “same-sex” accommodation policies, and owner of the most ridiculous moustache.

I feel like these two are both cases of needing to throw other women under the bus in order to prove that they’re not actually women. Hyper-performative manning. Like Whittle saying things like “oh I don’t do any of that parenting nonsense, I leave that to my wife.”

I agree that younger people on the whole tend to be more TWAW, but as a teacher I'd say that even amongst teenagers, there's a noticeable difference in opinion on gender politics (and indeed politics in general) between students of different socio-economic backgrounds. Not universally, obviously, but significantly.

But it's not in any way a movement peddling regressive gender stereotypes amirite??

To the latter question? 100% yes.

Agree about the hyper performative manning. A woman's take on the 'typical' behaviour of men which must come across as utterly bizarre to actual men.

'Owner of the most ridiculous mustache' made me laugh

As an aside, You've made me think of an interview where a transwoman talked about how his life was simply wonderful after transitioning and roller bladed off merrily with the children, leaving his wife to scurry behind, carrying the coats and other miscellaneous items. Somehow it's always the women (unless they've decided to ape men and push the work onto their same sex partner to show how 'manly' they are and above such details) who are left with the grunt work.

I just watched a facebook reel taken on an American student campus. It went something like:

Interviewer: Why do you think people from third-world countries should be allowed to come here?
Student (with green hair): That's offensive, please call them developing countries.
(long argument about terminology)

Interviewer: So what is a woman?
Student: A woman is anyone who thinks they're a woman.
Interviewer: Why do you say that?
Student: It's what the dictionary says.
Interviewer: No it isn't.

(and back to immigrants)
Interviewer: They have different laws and customs in their home countries, then they come here and attack people.
Student: Their laws aren't worse, just different.
Interviewer: So what laws do they have that are different? In Afghanistan, for instance?
Student: I don't know.
Interviewer: Then what about Somalia?
(student tells interviewer to harass someone else and walks off)

God help us for the future if these are the brightest and best. The interviewer may or may not be right in all her points, but the student is hung up on terminology and being kind, obviously knows very little about what she is talking about, and fails to debate any of the important points.

I have no doubt of some the difficulties you are describing ( though some universities offer extra help) but nevertheless, by and large, going to university provides social mobility for those from poorer backgrounds according to the Sutton Trust:
Higher education is a key driver of social mobility in this country. Young people from less well-off backgrounds who attend university are more likely to become socially mobile into higher income brackets, and income gaps are lower between graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers compared to non-graduates.