Simon Jenkins - reliably wrong

[rebax]

A piece in the Guardian today:
The few trans people I have encountered are discreet. They avoid controversial situations and do not march for “trans rights”. They understand that they are exceptional and that it will take time for many others to accept them for who they are.
Rights are always sensitive, but there should be few cases that require litigation.

Oh that’s ok then. The few men I know are lovely, therefore we can chuck safeguarding out the window altogether.

I know, it's remarkable.

And all predicated on the male perspective - to ME they're lovely, to ME they're women, according to THEM they need access, in THEIR minds they're women - with nary a thought or acknowledgement of women having a perspective on this themselves.

Which, given the article was spurred by the Peggie case, is something of a glaring omission! (An omission I suspect would be seen as shameful were it another protected characteristic, eg. race, disability etc., that were being disregarded).

Let him sob. He doesn't appear to understand that women do not want any men in their single-sex spaces.

I think it's a completely different frame of reference.

Basically, dividing the world into men and non-men.

I think they saw him as exactly what he was - a man - and prioritised him accordingly.

It's not about seeing men who pretend to be women as women. It's about how they see women - which is as background noise.

https://x.com/treesey/status/1999603905332723871/photo/1

Jill Tweedie writing about 'Conundrum' in the Guardian in 1974

An old fashioned kind of feminist who believed sexist stereotypes were bad.

Wow! So good, and so fully relevant still to today's situation. I find myself wanting to quote so many bits of it, as they are incredibly insightful indeed.

I know! I just think what went wrong?

In 1974 things generally looked like they were going in the right direction. Unlike now. What Jill Tweedie would make of the world now, God knows.

I don't see the Grauniad running that one, even thought without doubt the Black and White Minstrels were not meaning any harm (just wanting employment) and most of them (as far as actors go) were probably nice people.

He was an AGP. Once he died some less than laudatory tales came out. I remember him appearing on TV and being describes as the 70s equivalent of 'stunning and brave'. I seem to remember him reading a story...long time ago.

Seriously? That's so wrong headed it's actually hilarious. And I say that as a woman who's pretty shit at maths.

Fabulous article. I particularly liked the expression 'a convert to womanhood'. I think I'll magpie that, should the situation arise.

My 1973 self (aged 20) would have written these off as dreadful old frumps, whether female or pretending to be female. And I’d have been right.

Hinge and Bracket! 😁

Simon being so keen to keep women’s rights private and out of the law are reminiscent of how reluctant society was to bring rape within marriage and domestic violence into the public sphere. It seems it is of great interest to these men to stop women from airing the dirty laundry of TRA in the public forum of our courts. His declarations that laws and court cases which seek to confirm women’s rights to gather and deal with personal hygiene away from men are necessarily ‘bad’ laws, and that these issues are best dealt with by individual women pleading for respite (and only in extraordinary circumstances) echo those of his counterparts in the 70s and 80s who were always very keen to keep the state out of ‘family matters’. When social morality breaks down, as it often did when a man was beyond legal reproach in his treatment of women and children so long as he had put a ring on it, then legal recourse is the next necessary step. Unfortunately, women find ourselves in this position with TRA, as we did with male treatment of women and children in marriage, and in so many other aspects life. We actually have far more appealing things to do Simon. But we are fighting for our dignity, our safety and our privacy as women. We are fighting to exist as women in public. Men may prefer us to fight these battles quietly and behind closed doors and by pleading for special consideration and individual favours such as a private hospital room, or male free dorm room, or broom cupboard in which to change our scrubs. But it just won’t do.

As so many women have said ‘we want our things back’. Not just on a case by case basis. When your house gets burgled you’re not expected to justify why you would like each individual item back. We want it all back. For all of us.