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).

ps. Directive has come down: long posts that have been quoted will be truncated with "show more/show less." Long posts will not.

All Hail MNHQ. Etc. Etc.

As you were...

And yet, very weirdly, they like to insult women they don't approve by saying they look like transwomen.
Sophie Cunningham being the latest one I have seen.

Rupert Murdoch, for instance.

If the general public in Australia were polled as to whether sex is more significant than gender stereotypes, I'm quite sure the results would mirror those in the UK where the vast majority think that way. Your quasi-academic jargon would be laughed out of court by the man and woman in the street.

Thank you - I had to google that: "Left-Wing, Anarchist, and Single-Issue Terrorism"

I'm reminded of an article in the Times where the author demands investigation of the extreme transactivist group Bash Back and their terrorist behaviour. This was a powerful reminder of what women are all too aware of - that the male led campaigns against women upholding women's rights and the need to safeguard children have faced increasing threats of violence from unhinged transactivists:

"political violence does not begin with an assault but with the creation of an atmosphere in which intimidation is normalised, opponents are dehumanised and supporters are encouraged to believe that extreme measures are justified”.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/proscribe-militant-trans-group-bash-back-ex-political-violence-tsar-l9t757tjn

https://archive.ph/hEN36

Accusing women of "Phallophobia" seems very close the mindset that used to call women "frigid" for not entertaining the advances of men they weren't interested in, doesn't it?

Um, I was born here & had no choice in the matter just like the prisoner population that Britain forcibly dumped here & enslavened.

Are you going to blame colonialism for Australians overwhelmingly rejecting a plan in 2023 to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum?

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).

What part won’t be welcomed and cherished?

I’m convinced it’s the same poster across multiple threads using different names. Most likely a young male that identifies as female. It’s the same sarcastic, mocking and attention seeking tone in responses that side step any substantive issues and def never to the challenging questions.

Edited to add: men really hate being told no and handmaidens really hate having their subservience pointed out to them.

Are you ok? You seem very invested in hatred for women.

Nonsense. Woman is the word in the English language for an adult member of the female reproductive sex class. Always has been and always will be. I find it extraordinary that you prioritise the restrictive and damaging stereotypes of behaviour and presentation known as gender. How regressive. 🙄 We are sexed bodies. Everything else is personality.

I did see recently a 'goths against cancel culture' or something similar facebook group that was incredibly TERFy. Well done to them I say.

But then again I am high on iced coffee and a walnut and coffee cake sugar high right now so maybe I dreamt it.

The misogyny from these men fairly drips off the bloody page, doesn't it.

I'm very grateful to, and impressed by, all the women (and men), refuting the points one by one.

The mansplaining is so fucking tedious, all power to you guys who address it.

It's a frankly bizarre scenario where they want to be us, but can't, so hate us.

An exercise in futility really.

Of course it is.

It's possible it's one or a group of the scrapy tech-ish boys looking to do one or more of: getting us to say enough to train an LLM to find a killer argument that undermines GC feminism once and for all (not gonna happen, because female people do, annoyingly, continue to exist and that cannot be handwaved away); get us to say enough to identify us IRL (could happen, I have my strategy ready - so much so that a part of me thinks Bring It On); or categorise what we say on a made-up scale of hateyness so he can go to some sort of quango and "prove" MN is a hotbed of hate because I hAvE nUmBeRs!!! (pretty sure that is already happening, but again as soon as anyone looks at the Scale Of Objective Hateyness and finds it basically boils down to "those witches said female people matter as well!" the whole thing becomes a farce, looking at you Amnesty)

Still, every time we go round the groundhog day loop again, it is an opportunity to expose the lack of coherent thought behind the demands and the total failure to recognise or respect that female people are more than just background scenery, so he's really doing us a favour.

"Information cannot argue with a closed mind." A quote from an inimitable sketch by the wonderful Nichols and May, which seems totally appropriate here. s

In the UK The Times employs a number of excellent columnists who cover the whole contested issue around sex and gender. Just because it is a Murdoch owned paper does not mean what those columnists say can be brushed aside as you try to do. No single point on the left-right political spectrum has all the truth on any issue. Only the terminally closedminded could think that.

A pity it's a fail for you on that.

I don't think they do want to be us.

They want to be an imaginary woman that lives in their heads that actually has very little to with the reality of being female other than tits, but with a whole extra load of being pretty and taken care of and fussed over and desired and perhaps degraded sexually.

So they hate us because we represent the ugly parts of womanhood that spoil their fantasy, and they hate us because we say no to them and make them explain what they mean when they claim to be women.

What a woman is is not “in the eye of the beholder”. A woman is an adult human female. That is a material sex class, not a personality type, an outfit or a status bestowed by an observer.

Individuality does not require everyone else to pretend categories have no boundaries. A male person is free to dress, live and identify as they wish; that does not make him female or entitle him to female-only provision.

Calling an objective definition “fascist” reverses reality. It is authoritarian to demand that women abandon ordinary language and sex-based boundaries, then smear them for refusing. Female people need a stable word for themselves because their rights, risks and reproductive lives are sex-based.

Nobody is denying individuality. We are denying that one person’s self-description rewrites everybody else’s rights.

Agree, they don’t want to be actual women, they see us as entirely inferior beings.

Well true, I guess, they want to be a new better type of women, as in that old article.

Good luck with that, chaps.

Gretel, I have read the rest of your posts - I should have just one bundled up response - The remaining posts still do not supply the missing principle; they repeat the same diversions in different forms.

An absence of a referendum or a large, visible campaign is not evidence of consent. Women may disagree quietly, especially where disagreement is branded hateful, fascist or harassment. Rights to privacy, dignity and safety do not depend on winning a popularity contest. Nor must women choose between addressing domestic violence and retaining single-sex provision; feminism can do both.

Dismissing evidence because it appears in a Murdoch-owned outlet is a genetic fallacy. Challenge the data, question or methodology, not merely the proprietor. Evidence from reports, research and individual cases does not become false because you dislike one publisher.

Single-sex rules are not “body policing”. They classify by sex, not by femininity, appearance or conformity to stereotypes. No intimate inspection is required. In fact, self-identification creates more appearance-based uncertainty, whereas a sex-based rule treats masculine women as women and feminine men as men.

“Harm dictates access” also concedes the principle you keep denying: sometimes male people should be excluded from female provision. You already acknowledge female-only provision in prisons, refuges, sport and hospitals. Trans women are male, and self-identification does not remove sex as a relevant group-level safeguarding criterion. Risk management never requires every member of a higher-risk class to be dangerous before a boundary is legitimate. Privacy and dignity matter too; a cubicle door does not turn the surrounding communal facility into a sexless space.

Harassment concerns conduct, not the accurate recognition of sex. Saying that a male person is male does not dictate his personality or prevent him living freely. Demanding that women redefine themselves, deny material reality and surrender female boundaries to validate a male person’s identity is the imposition here.

Finally, “right wing”, “fascist”, “elitist”, laughter, attacks on campaigners and criticism of one witness are not answers, they in fact clearly show you up for having no ideas or counter arguments at all. You might as well say "But you all smell".

The central question remains untouched: why should a male person’s self-description override female people’s sex-based rights? Nothing in your remaining posts answers it.

Exactly. Paris Lees famously wanted to be treated like a piece of meat. Quite happy to say it out loud, as if it's completely normal for a 'woman' to want that.

The women they want to be is an entire constructed, pornified fantasy in their own heads.

And yes, actual women are just a bloody inconvenience getting in the way of being treated like that fantasy.

That's why they get annoyed. Not because they want to be us, but because we're preventing them from being a sexualised parody of us.

'...Everything else is personality...'

or, lack of...

😂 the parts they now carry in a jar.