UK radical feminists; what to do?

[RealRoseCritic]

So there was a question earlier today in one of my groups about TERFs in the UK, why are they so strong there, etc. Let me elaborate on something.

There is something special in mainstream British feminism that is quite different from European feminism(s), but since the English speaking internet concerns mostly the Anglosphere and not Europe, due to us having separate, isolated debates in each country/language, you won't likely ever hear how the UK is substantially different.
It is important to understand the logic of British feminism. Unlike European feminism, which is mostly inclusive and focused on stuff like equal pay, care, safe design of public space and general equity, in the UK it was always about "separate but equal".

British centres of power were always men-only, and many British feminists didn't react the way European women did (aka pushed their way into male spaces, so that these became co-ed spaces), but created their own, separate spaces, which they then aggressively policed the same way British men did with theirs. Add some Victorian prudishness and bioessentialism, that was abandoned in Europe after WWII for obvious reasons, but not in the UK, and voilà, here come British second-wave radfems and the TERFs.

I am from the Czech Republic where I currently live; I lived in Norway, Poland and the Netherlands, I speak fluently multiple European languages and understand few others; I don't say that to brag, but to show my ability to do the comparative analysis, since I study the topic closely.

Out of EU member states, only in Bulgaria and Hungary are trans rights worse than in the UK at the moment, with Hungary being expected to get substantially better soon, and in neither of those two countries are trans people, and especially trans women, as demonised as in the UK.

In all EU member states transphobia comes exclusively from far right places; it is unheard of that liberals or anyone non-far right would say what is absolutely the mainstream in the UK, including Hungary and Bulgaria.
If you are saying the stuff JKR is saying, you are 100 % aligned with far right politics.

We had an attempt by a group of our far right senators to enact a bill proposal similar to what is in the UK, but the proposal was killed within a week before it could have been even voted upon in the Chamber of Deputies. Just for instance.
Scandinavian feminism is focused mostly on fair share of care and chores, German feminism focuses mostly on equal pay, Kita for everyone and the like, Polish feminism is mostly about access to abortion, Czech feminism is mostly about equal pay and safety from domestic violence - I could go on, but all in all, men are welcome to participate and the goal is to create equity for everyone, regardless of their gender. Together.
We don't get British obsession with separate spaces for women, women here are absolutely fine with the way things are, mostly because cultures in the Continent are far less prudish and overall we treat men and women as one people rather than different species.

Moreover, because of civil law rather than common law, we have different approach to legal texts and their interpretations; this makes it different too.
Not just regarding trans rights, but also regarding women's rights, I am often amazed by how much backward the UK is in so many ways compared to the EU (again, including places like Hungary, this needs to be stressed). I often see women in English-speaking debates saying things like "ugh, men" on things that actually concern problems that are specifically British and that stem mostly from both societies' tendency to separate already boys from girls, treating them differently and sexualising women in contexts we don't really see as sexual at all.

We can't really get this across the Channel, because we just don't have the power to do so. For instance Czech debate on feminism is quite isolated; it's interesting, but no more than 15 million people would ever be able to participate in it (CZ/SK) due to the language barrier, the same goes for Scandinavia (17 million), Benelux (28 million), Poland (38 million), or even DACH (95 million). It is nothing compared to half a billion people of the US, UK, CA, AU, NZ and IE that are giving tone to the worldwide debate in English.

So, if you are a British trans woman, you would do yourself a great favour if you moved to mainland Europe. You will be welcomed and cherished (for the most part).

No. Feminism is the movement for the rights and liberation of female people. Women organising around sex-based inequality have not “appropriated” feminism; sex is why feminism exists.

“Transphobe” is doing all the work here. Saying that males are not women and should not automatically enter female sports, prisons, refuges, hospital wards, changing rooms or toilets is not hatred. It is a boundary grounded in material sex and women’s privacy, dignity and safety.

Nor does support from some people on the political right make a belief right-wing or Christian. Gender-critical women include atheists, lesbians, socialists, Labour voters, trade unionists and radical feminists. Argue with what they say, not the presumed company they keep.

If this movement is supposedly “funded by the far right”, name the funders, recipients and evidence. Vague guilt by association is not a fact.

Women do not stop being feminists because they say no to males. Women’s rights are human rights; trans women are male, and no male identity overrides female boundaries.

<Stands to applaud @SingleSexSpacesInSchools>

That is inaccurate.

Funding legal costs is not “buying” a court case. Courts hear both sides and judges decide the law. For Women Scotland won unanimously because the Supreme Court held that “sex”, “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act mean biological sex—not because J.K. Rowling helped fund the case.

It was Beira’s Place, a women-only sexual-violence service, whose lawyers challenged Amnesty’s description of it as “anti-rights”. Amnesty then removed the list, expressed regret that it had bypassed its internal review process and self-reported to the charity regulator. That does not prove every threatened claim would succeed, but it makes your “anything they don’t like” account plainly misleading.

And “Germany follows science” is just a slogan. Policy can change legal documents and social treatment; it cannot change reproductive sex. Trans women are male. Protecting them from discrimination is compatible with protecting female privacy, dignity and safety.

Hope this helps.

We’ve got a Labour government right now in the UK. Perhaps you should read before spouting nonsense.

I'd personally hand it over to you right now.

Alas the rules state you must apply in triplicate, wait 6 months, then apply again in triplicate as it's become apparent the first application "got lost". You must then wait 12 months for your application to be processed. At this point you will be asked to fill in a 643 page supplemental application document. You will have 32 minutes from arrival of the email containing the document to fill it in, in triplicate using a purple pen only. Failure to send the completed in triplicate document within the 32 minute time frame will result in your application being denied. You will be allowed to apply again only when 67 months since your denial date has passed. If you do successfully complete the supplemental document within the required timeframe your application will be placed in a queue. At this point don't call me I'll call you.

I'm assuming that Gretel and Rose are the same person, ie some spotty 20-year old bloke typing away in his mum's back bedroom in Wolverhampton.

This is armchair psychoanalysis, not an argument. You offer no evidence that British women defend sex-based rights because of class envy, sexual hang-ups or “internalised misogyny”. Diagnosing women en masse because they disagree with you is itself strikingly misogynistic.

Gender-critical feminism is not an aversion to femininity or masculinity. It says the opposite: clothes, mannerisms, interests and sexual presentation do not determine sex. A feminine man remains a man; a masculine woman remains a woman. That frees people from stereotypes instead of turning stereotypes into identities.

Calling biological sex “rigid unscientific dogma” reverses reality. Sex is the reproductive distinction between male and female; gender roles and expectations are cultural. Medical transition can alter appearance, hormones and some anatomy, but it cannot move somebody from one reproductive sex to the other. Trans women are male; saying so is not a sexual hang-up.

Women seeking female-only sport, prisons, refuges, hospital wards and intimate spaces are not “staking class territory”. They are defending privacy, dignity, safety and fairness. Replacing their stated reasons with an invented Victorian sexual complex is not feminist analysis. It is a refusal to listen to women.

Calling women in different countries who independently recognise biological sex “colonialism” is an extraordinary category error. Ideas crossing borders are not imperial conquest; by that logic every international feminist, LGBT or human-rights campaign would be colonialism.

Gender-critical feminism is not a British export imposed by a state or empire. Women in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, North America and elsewhere have reached the same conclusion because the material conflict is the same: males do not become female, and female people need sex-based rights and boundaries.

There is some irony in accusing women of imperialism while insisting that a contested theory of gender identity must override local law, ordinary language and women’s own boundaries everywhere.

Women discussing and organising for privacy, dignity, safety and fairness are not colonising anybody. They are exercising the same political freedom you are using here. Disagree with the argument if you can, but “colonialism” is simply an attempt to make female dissent morally unspeakable.

These men’s rights activists always seem to break out into odd formatting too. If it’s not random block capitals it’ll be italics or something. I wonder why, it just looks silly.

That is a false either/or, and “infinitesimal” is an assertion for which you provide no evidence. Feminists campaign against rape, domestic abuse, workplace harassment, child sexual abuse and coercive control. Defending single-sex spaces is one part of that work, not a substitute for it.

Safeguarding is not reserved for whichever setting produces the largest statistic. We use employment law at work, safeguarding rules in schools, criminal law against assault, and sex-based boundaries where people undress, sleep, are imprisoned, receive intimate care or escape male violence.

Female-only provision does not assume every male will offend. It recognises that sex matters to privacy, dignity, risk and trauma, and that nobody can identify a dangerous man by looking at him. A male person’s gender identity does not remove those considerations.

Women should not have to wait for an assault before their boundaries count. Prevention is the point of safeguarding.

The consistent position is simple: challenge male violence wherever it occurs and retain female boundaries where sex matters.

Either their device is imploding or they're trying to do everything one-handed.

..... (so I've been told ...)

ps ed sp

Interestingly I think sometimes people (in general, not specific to this poster or anyone else) do that type of thing to distract people from their other posts in an online community. Name changing is freely available and accepted on MN but sometimes posters don’t want to be recognised from one thread to another. It’s a thing.

Yes, I'm of the mind that all the "Australians" at the moment are the same person, but who knows. There are lots of "Australians."

Rights do not become real only when they dominate an election. Most safeguarding and equality questions never decide a general election because voters choose between parties on many issues at once.

Nor does limited electoral salience prove that “nobody cares”. It proves only that the issue has not displaced the economy, housing, health, immigration and every other national concern at the ballot box. Calling women “grifters” is not evidence about either their motives or public opinion; it is simply an insult used instead of answering them.

More importantly, female rights are not a popularity contest. A woman’s right to privacy, dignity, safety and fair treatment does not disappear because a poll or party manifesto gives it little attention.

Trans women are male. Whether that fact matters in a particular setting should be decided by the purpose of the service and the rights of the women affected—not by how many votes a politician thinks the issue will win.

Gender ideology is just one big "believe me because I say so". Which explains the increasingly desperate attempts to smear and denigrate anyone who dares to call it out.

It's not gender critical women who have been sacking and fining people who disagree with them, it's genderists. No debate is their slogan, not ours.

You said up thread that "my way or the highway" is a fascist attitude. Transactivism has taken exactly that approach.

As a general point about online extremist behaviour, it's always interesting to see that pathway driven by extreme misogyny and grievance based beliefs, ending up as a full on incel.

Women do need to take seriously that when we see spitting, seething contempt and fury aimed groups of women, it's worth considering how far along the path to being incels some people might be?

There's growing evidence about this being a significant problem for society with certain groups of men.

https://safeguarding.network/content/responding-to-the-incel-ideology

You are right about one narrow point: in May 2026 the Full Federal Court upheld that excluding Tickle from Giggle was unlawful gender-identity discrimination, and Giggle’s special-measure argument failed. That tells us how the Australian Sex Discrimination Act currently applies to that service. It does not tell us that Tickle changed sex, or that the law is beyond criticism.

The race analogy is false. Race has no bearing on bodily privacy, reproductive needs, physical performance or the trauma of female victims of male violence. Sex sometimes does—which is exactly why Australian law retains sex-specific exceptions and exemptions.

Nor does maintaining sex-based toilets require routine inspection of women’s bodies. Rules are routinely enforced when relevant facts become known; imperfect or selective enforcement does not abolish the underlying category.

The real issue is whether gender-identity protections should override women’s freedom to associate as females. The court answered the statutory question under current Australian law. Women remain entitled to argue that the law has struck the balance wrongly. Trans women are male; legislation can regulate treatment, but it cannot alter that fact.

You know what I miss?

Goths.

People could dress up; be miserable, oppressed, and misunderstood; and write long screens of self absorbed nonsense (in the form of poetry that never saw the light of day) - all without causing any bother to others beyond the odd cloud of hairspray.

I say bring back goths. Or emos. Much more fun than this nonsense.

Goths are probably transphobic by now. Shame.

Calling women “phallophobic” because they recognise sex is not an argument; it is a sexualised insult used to dismiss female boundaries.

Safeguarding does consider potential harm, but risk is not assessed by pretending sex is irrelevant. Sex is one of the most basic population-level risk factors for sexual and violent offending. Rules for intimate spaces cannot depend on officials somehow identifying in advance which individual male will offend, because nobody can reliably do that.

Female-only provision is not merely about visible anatomy or a belief that every male is dangerous. It protects privacy, dignity and trauma-informed boundaries, and it gives women a clear rule that does not require them to negotiate each male person’s claimed identity or predicted intentions.

A trans woman is male. Medical treatment or presentation may alter appearance, but it does not move someone into the female sex or erase the male risk category.

Potential harm therefore supports sex-based boundaries; it does not make sex disappear. Women are entitled to say no without being diagnosed with a “phobia”.

Incel falls under the LASIT type of extremism.

If we’re not allowed a laugh emoji perhaps MN could consider letting us have a boak one.

I thought there was one, but can't find it now.

There's a poster on another thread at the moment whose style I’m finding very difficult to reconcile with their previous posts. Vastly different in tone and content.

@RealRoseCritic Faika El-Nagashi an Austrian politician (ex Green Party) has a substack and podcast collating stories of silenced gender critical voices across Europe. Your analysis is lacking half the evidence.

open.substack.com/pub/faikaelnagashi/p/on-the-record-the-stories-europe?r=27xtyb&utm_medium=ios