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).

I wonder if because they're special, they're allowed that? My friend wasn't allowed to take her cyst home despite it having had a name for several months before they got round to removing it. She was most peeved as she fancied Cyril (name changed to protect the innocent) in a jar on her mantelpiece.

That’s nice dear. Run along now.

The one thing you can't reasonably call MumsNet posters is prudish. I'll take old myself (alas!) and even ugly when I'm in a temper but we're mostly mothers and we've all been down in the trenches with shit, blood, piss, sperm and most other bodily products. We discuss them in language that's often explicit and the humour can be, well, Rabelaisian. Who doesn't have affectionate memories of the penis beaker thread, the long-running sweary threads, and the (wholly undeserved) reputation of CentreParcs?

And yet there are some plain factual words that describe gender reassignment processes that we are forbidden to use on MumsNet because a few people decided trans people would find them too offensive. We are not the prudes on this topic.

Well obviously we are the Feminist Identified Transphobes. FITS. 😂

Or are very proud to retain.

Well, I was having a late lunch break. <sigh> don't think I want the rest of it now...

Sorry Bridget!

She gave it a male name as it was being offensive to her ovaries. Dp also wasn't allowed his appendix to take home. As a teenager just coming round from anesthetic, apparently he was quite rude about this. His parents had to apologise. A lot.

Just.... ewwww! 😬

Fit but we know it

Like @FlirtsWithRhinos I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff is now automated. Either that or some people have a great deal of deal of time on their hands. Especially when the TRA introduces the issue and presents their position as ever so reasonable, even handed and compassionate. Later on, the more incoherent and hardline stuff suggests the presence of a flesh and blood human being, because AI software generally has better spelling and grammar these days. So I suspect a hybrid model. Some of it's automated, but the posters occasionally write something of their own and in their intemperate haste don't run it through the AI enhanced grammar checker. This would explain the rather primary school-ish didactic, condescending tone, when we're told for the umpteenth time that (of course) scientists agree that sex is a spectrum, is complicated and is too difficult for us to understand.

This will not get through customs. Just saying. Unless they wrap it in kitchen roll and hide it in a trug under some cleaning products and mops.

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).

Good luck with the Visa application to all who wish to apply.

😂

Perfect!

Just to say that reading every one of @SingleSexSpacesInSchools superbly-argued responses to Gretel's posts today has been both an education and a deep pleasure.

Naughty!!........😂

Totally agree @NotAtMyAge

And no matter what they manage to retain their male superiority ego along with their domineering and aggressive sense of entitlement. As far removed from real women they will always be.

100%

Phallo phobic. Fucksake.

That is a rapey as fuck term and I wish I hadn't heard it. Any man who uses a word like that about women is a boundary pushing, solid gold creep.

Still, I suppose its further useful evidence. For anyone who hadn't grasped the issues yet.

Greer's 'female eunuch', which had very little to do with actual squishy, bleeding, human women.

Well, Australia will be waking up in a couple of hours, so no doubt we can expect more bilge incoming soon.

There really are some nasty things in the water that you don't want to meet, lol.

Drums fingers

Phallo phobic. Fucksake.

Quite 🤮

Hi Howse,

So same shit, different username.

Do we get a motte and bailey as a bonus?

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.

I don't have to offer evidence because I'm positing a theory not a fact. But what is a fact is Gender critical feminism is primarily a British movement whose salience is particular to Britain AND whose premise is gender being a social construct imposed upon women by the patriarchy….& we will get to the internalised misogyny from here:

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.

Bollocks. If any of that was remotely true gender critical feminists wouldn't feel the need to routinely mercilessly viscously mock trans women as 'men in dresses' 'cross dressers' 'woman face' 'parodies of women' & 'mentally ill predators' for doing so. If they genuinely believed that men should embrace femininity as men why the need to demean trans women when they do? Because they used the 'wrong speech' to describe themselves? I don't think so. The reason is squarely an issue with femininity full stop because they don't limit their irrational disdain for feminine expression only to males but also to females as hapless victims of patriarchal demands. They are all reduced to robotic stereotypes of what men want rather than having any autonomy of their natural disposition towards feminine expression. There's nothing more insulting & patriarchal in nature than asserting women's don't know their own minds, needs & desires. They are simply at the mercy of cultural whims? Do you hear yourselves & who you sound like?

This movement has a raging internalised hatred/phobia of feminine expression that they make very clear by stigmatising feminine presentation much more harshly than a masculine one. They will try to excuse this away as an 'aversion to stereotypes' but this dogged reductive categorisation of self evident evolutionary influences is simply a red flag of denial of what cannot be tolerated.

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.

The unscientific dogma is a denial of evolutionary (genetic & hormonal) influences to gendered expression. And irrationally denying science particularly one regarding sexual expression points to 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.

Not so fast with bait & switch. Retreating to 'we just want safe spaces' to avoid the bio realist supremacy charge as who does & doesn't qualify as a woman is an oldie but a goody. In other words you don't get to delegitimise trans people as an identity just because competing rights exist. And if you think that isn't a class inspired move, I have news.

And you can save the dignity & fairness shameless hypocrisy for someone who has been living under a rock & as such is not privy to the disgusting uncivilised smears against trans people that are anything but dignified. Is it really any wonder that the gender critical movement is designated by many as a hate group when their demands are framed in dehumanising & demonising rhetoric not unlike white nationalists who require their legitimate concerns regarding unsustainable & disorderly immigration to be wrapped up in a pretty bow & served to the public under the guise of muslims as terrorists, rapists & pedophiles?

And don't gimme that shameless lie that 'its not hate to say sex is real' because that is NOT the only thing being said here & you know this.