Women’s Hour - Transwoman Talking About Misogyny WTAF?

[DrBlackbird]

I’ve just clocked this as R4 on in the background but Nuala (of course) talking to a transwoman about misogyny?! I mean just what… Nuala asked about his experience of misogyny after transitioning. Apparently, nothing, not even misogyny, is allowed to be centred on women.

Coming from a sort of heady mixture of desire for strong emotions, a need to control and dominate, combined with the pleasure of self righteousness. This could apply to many of the Green Party proposals. But for many men, we add an innate hatred of being told no (esp by women) and the added thrill of imposing a sexual fetish on others.

A very potent force.

How very well you have put that.

In a book I heard about on the radio, “ My Year as a Man” she said men thought she was a gay man.

( She was not a trans man. She just decided to carry out an experiment really.)

I don't know why any women listen to Women's hour any more, or even bother with the BBC,the most biased misogynist organisation on the planet, behaves worse than the mafia, threatening jail to anyone who doesn't want to pay the protection money they demand. R I P the Beeb

@nauticant reference’s to the relentless demand coming from extreme activism made me think about other examples beyond trans activism and the similarities of the people involved.

Like the older woman from Cambridge who spent time in jail because she was one of the JSO M25 protesters stopping traffic despite her family begging her to stop before that happened. And others such as those in XR blocking the London Underground. There are many examples.

All relentless in pursuit of their objectives.

On the one hand, admirable in pursuing socially desirable outcomes. Who doesn’t want ecological progress, or animals to be treated humanely, or whales not to be hunted to extinction, or peace in the Middle East.

But for many protesters it seems so personal. As if driven by a need to feel a burning righteous anger as well as desiring power over others. It’s been said of TRAs that it’s the new religion, but of course that particular righteous anger is directed towards women. Who should know their place and don’t. Medieval.

But for many protesters it seems so personal. As if driven by a need to feel a burning righteous anger as well as desiring power over others.

A tipping point is when the views being pushed become incorporated into someone's identity. At that point, any resistance against those views is perceived as a harmful attack against someone's person. Which they can then respond to with a more forceful attack, or even violence. For trans activisim, the incorporation into one's identity is intrinsic from the get go.

Political views being intrinsic to someone's identity means there's no natural restraint to the level of extremism this can lead to.

Some excellent points being made on here so I thought I'd contribute by saying that Ray has very poor taste in hats.

I think you’re right @nauticant and the combination of personal and political identity would explain the intensity spiralling around the Middle East conflict and the increasing attacks on synagogues and Jews here in the UK.

But I also can’t help but feel that for many men who identify as women, that identity incorporates a deep psychological need to dominate women. To the point of wanting to bodily absorb the idea of a female persona. Like the Borg.

It can’t all be sexual, so I’m just not sure how that impulse emerges.

I have little doubt that there's a cohort that find trans activism so attractive because of the opportunities it provided to control others, and particularly to control women.

Can there be anything more intoxicating to a misogynist than being giving licence to abuse women and then be applauded for it?

Many years ago I read a discussion about how trans isn't one thing. Having that in mind is essential when thinking about these issues.

There are a lot of threads, not least that a group that tends to be rather unkindly described as beta males, who have had the experience of girls easily rejecting them, have a means in this to become VIPs nurtured by girls and women - although you then get the articles, of which there are several well known ones, explaining the baffled anger that these women will sit with you all night attentively supporting and agreeing how attractive and other qualities you are, but then not get their pants off and get into bed. It's described by men who have written about it as akin to cock teasing, its the source of a lot of anger against women. You then get lines like 'they resist the penis!' about .... lesbian women. There's no ability to recognise that the empathy and kindness didn't equal sexual attraction or submission. Lots of crossover with incellism.

It's also interesting to read women detransitioners' articles where they often describe a common experience of becoming focused on coercive control, and the world becoming about who they had full control over (language, perception, all focused on supporting the chosen identity) and who was not controlled and therefore was abandoned. Some very articulate articles out there.

Medieval is also probably very accurate. The chaos years of Henry VIIIth reign, when he was going through Queens slightly faster than he was trousers, had political and cultural similarities with this. Two strongly opposing views, one highly political, the other focused on reality, but the passionate righteousness and the enjoyment of it being vicious and involving the destruction of neighbours who could be caught even for their eyes having moved to the wrong place at the wrong second, is uncomfortably familiar when you read about it. Thank goodness making women die in a fire is now a violent male fantasy only.

Emma Barnett was no friend to gender-questioning women when she was at Women’s Hour, and oversaw the fawning over trans-identifying men just as much as the Nuala does currently.

To clarify, I never saw Emma Barnett as a GC crusader, she was certainly no Jenni Murray (RIP). I did hear her push back a few times, in particular when she interviewed the transwoman Steph Richards - presumably as EB suffers from endometriosis it was a bridge too far to have it mansplained by a cos-playing dude. I meant that she was probably thrilled to get away from the nonsense, while the current lot seem very happy to constantly fawn. I’ve completely given up listening now.

She did indeed get angry with the Steph chap, but as you say, probably because she was personally affected. Not sure it led her to reconsider the whole issue and women’s hour’s previous ways of addressing it.

As you obviously know, Women’s Hour’s preferred approach on any gender-related issue is to have a trans-identifying man on to explain. They have platformed trans-identifying men an astonishing number of times. And the current lead on women’s hour has been remarkably rude and confrontational with anyone not espousing genderism, while lionising the trans chaps.

And as you also know, the BBC more widely seems to feel compelled to platform a trans chap whatever the story, leading to the trope among gender-questioning women on any subject (oil crisis, harsh weather, shoplifting) ‘but how does it affect trans!?’.