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).

Yes

Didn't read all that I'm afraid. As long as I don't have to get naked next to somebody with a cock it's all good.

Well the power of prescience. Im sure this bullshit has cost many of you more than me but I’m getting more than fed up. It’s a bit of a high price, I’ve lost someone quite special. Quite, quite fed up.

anyway. I chose this username because I was trying to be a one-subject username. Nothing more. I understand how a guy pretending or not revealing he was male may be an issue for some women on some subjects. I don’t think I’ve ever got involved in any conversations here I should not have done. I’d be mortified to make anyone feel uncomfortable by being a guy. I’ve never pretended. I hope no one has felt lied to.

I'm constantly aware this is a primarily though not exclusively female space. Given everything I should probably step back more, can be tricky. That sense of right and wrong or justice is pretty core, sure it it with most people. Genuinely very sorry if Ive truly upset anyone.

You're doing great work and I for one appreciate it. It has clearly taken a massive toll, and don't think it's not appreciated by so many of us.

You begin by admitting that your theory requires no evidence. That is convenient, but it also means it proves nothing. An evidence-free theory that diagnoses women with class envy, sexual hang-ups and internalised misogyny is not serious analysis. It is fan fiction about the motives of women who disagree with you.

I never suggested my opinion proved anything. It's simply an everyday theory not a scientific one that I supported with cultural mores particularly exclusive to Britain & an irrational rejection of science pertaining to sex. And don't look now, but suggesting I only did so because some women disagreed with me is also an unproven 'every day theory' except the difference being you failed to provide any supporting argument.

You continue to confuse enjoying femininity with being female. Gender-critical feminism does not tell women to reject dresses or make-up, or men to reject femininity. It says those things do not determine sex. A feminine man remains a man; a masculine woman remains a woman. People should be free to express themselves without having their clothes turned into a diagnostic test for an inner sex.

I have already covered the hypocrisy in this assertion so I won't repeat myself as its my MO not respond to commenters who repeat comments already addressed upthread to save boring everyone to death.

Your position is the stereotypical one. If feminine presentation helps make somebody a woman, then “woman” has once again been reduced to clothes, make-up, mannerisms and preferences. That is old-fashioned sexism wearing progressive branding.

My position is one of respecting an individual's right to their own beliefs including interpretations of their identity just as I do for all subjective issues such as GC's who take the bio realist view despite my disagreeing with it. Just because I personally believe the bio realist view isn't in keeping & harmful to the feminist premise of self determination & not reducing women to their reproductive body parts doesn't delegitimise their right to their own beliefs. Same with religion. However I might rationally disagree I don't get to delegitimise, dehumanise & demonise others for their beliefs.

Rude remarks by particular people would be rude; they would not demonstrate that recognising sex is hatred of femininity.

Um, if you are using feminine expressions/presentations as a tool demean it kinda points to a hostility towards that expression. The saying 'you fight like a girl' is hateful for a reason.

Why use 'men in dresses' & 'cross dressers' & 'woman face' to mock & degrade trans women If feminine expression is perfectly acceptable in males? Why accuse females of being socially constructed patriarchal 'stereotypes' for feminine presentation?

Nor do possible biological influences on average behaviour turn those averages into sex categories. There is enormous individual overlap. A preference for lipstick is not a reproductive class.

The point you are missing that was being made with this out of context assertion is gendered behaviours aren't necessarily only social constructed. This comment wasn't related whether behaviour should or shouldn't be considered as a sex category but rather about how GC's view how gender comes into being.

“Bio-realist supremacy” is another impressive-sounding phrase doing the work an argument should be doing. Recognising the female sex does not claim women are superior. It says women are equal human beings with material interests and boundaries.

Bio realists believe their sex entitles them to rights over others regardless of proportionality & that is garden variety supremacy.

Why, in your formulation, is a male person’s identity treated as authoritative while a woman’s refusal is treated as pathology? Why is his self-conception worthy of automatic respect while her privacy, dignity and “no” are negotiable?

As I have said repeatedly depends on the proportionality/rights balancing in the individual circumstances.

That is the misogynistic hierarchy here. You still have not answered why a male person’s self-description should override female rights.

Are you seriously suggesting the proportionality test in law is misogynistic? Do you even know what you are saying?

Ideas crossing borders are not imperial conquest. If they were, every international feminist campaign, LGBT campaign and human-rights organisation would need its own colonial office. Not to mention no one would ever take inspiration or ideas from other countries, you are coming across as stiflingly surface in your understanding of words.

To establish cultural imperialism, you would need evidence of coercive power displacing a local culture. The fact that foreign newspapers report an argument you dislike does not establish that women were hypnotised by Rupert Murdoch into noticing biological sex.

Apples & Oranges AKA false equivalence. The difference being broad grass roots movements v top down propaganda fear mongering media campaigns that manufacture consent.

"Cultural imperialism and the manufacturing of consent explain how powerful corporate and Western media systems spread dominant political and consumer values to shape public opinion globally without using direct force. [1]

Manufacturing Consent
Introduced by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent, this theory argues that corporate media act as a propaganda system. They guide public thinking through five key filters: [1, 2, ]

• Ownership: Large media conglomerates prioritize profit over critical or independent journalism.
• Advertising: Media companies sell audiences to advertisers, tying content to commercial interests.
• Sourcing: News relies heavily on statements from governments, corporations, and approved "experts".
• Flak: A system of negative feedback disciplines the media and discredits opposing views.
• Common Enemy: Creating a shared threat (like communism or terrorism) rallies public support behind elite agendas. [1, ]

Cultural Imperialism Rooted in the work of scholars like Herbert Schiller, Media imperialism describes how dominant nations—primarily the United States and Western powers—impose their cultural norms, economic models, and values onto other countries. [1, 2]

• Consumerism: Global media export an American "way of life" that promotes buying goods over collective social action.
• Individualism: Media narratives shift focus toward personal consumption and Western standards of success, making local populations easier targets for transnational corporate exploitation. [1, 2]

How They Connect Cultural imperialism provides the global content (consumer values and Western supremacy), while the propaganda model explains the structural filters that keep that content aligned with ruling economic and political interests. Together, they show how global media secure voluntary public compliance for capitalist and geopolitical goals. [1, 2, 3, 4]"

The existence of trans-identifying people across different cultures does not prove that identity changes sex or creates an entitlement to opposite-sex provision. Respectful treatment and participation in public life do not require women to surrender female categories.

Strawman. No one is saying trans people change reproductive sex categories. The evidence is kinda in the name trans gender not trans sexual. Its a sociological category not a biological one.

Nor is female-only provision inherently patriarchal. Excluding women from political power is not equivalent to women organising together, recovering from male violence or seeking privacy while undressing. Pretending these are identical because both involve boundaries erases purpose and power. It also makes you look easily confused, Patriarchy does not apply, it's just single sex groups organising something.

Its patriarchal in the sense of returning women to a time when they were defined by their reproductive parts ….& treated accordingly. Making the claim that male violence justifies segregation is a door way to a very slippery slope of segregation….hence the far right cheering on this convenient caper.

While I don't agree I can certainly understand why some commenters here are averse to males on this platform given their propensity for ignorance & spreading misinformation on feminist matters. You seem to be completely clueless to the fact of women's struggle to be taken as cognitive equals with men that regressing to being defined by their bodies doesn't help. There's an interchangeability there that's been the main barrier to overcome that isn't helped by bio realist's demands for segregation & saftyism.

Calling gender-critical feminism a “one trick pony” is an unsupported generalisation. A movement may concentrate on one neglected issue while its participants also campaign on rape, domestic abuse, employment and reproductive rights. Even if somebody worked on only one cause, that would not make the cause false.

False. The media domination & saturation of GC talking points proves otherwise.
There is simply no other room for anything else & their thought leaders are exclusively GC focused.

Your “segregate everywhere or nowhere” demand is an all-or-nothing fallacy. Context is precisely what proportionality is supposed to consider. Men and women sharing streets, offices and classrooms does not ordinarily entail undressing, sleeping, receiving intimate care or being confined together.

Male teachers and carers occupy regulated professional roles, with recruitment checks, supervision, safeguarding duties and codes of conduct. That does not give them unrestricted access to female changing rooms as users or the right to provide intimate care over a woman’s objection. Employment and membership of a female-only user group are plainly different. Pretending otherwise is comparing apples with changing rooms.

Nevertheless substantially more sexual violence still occurs in schools & the workplace than public toilets so by GC logic segregation is required but no? Why?

And the comparison is between public toilets & employment/schools not spaces where exemptions in Australia already exist. Your bad faith conflation isn't doing your credibility as a honest interlocutor much good.

And yes context matters in terms of proportionality that's why its hospitals refuges, sports & prisons who receive exemptions in Australia. Public toilets aren't because its not considered on the same level that requires an exemption.

And in case you need it spelled out for you the reason why exemptions don't exist for male teachers or work colleagues despite the exponential increase risk of harm is precisely because harms work both ways & as such rights must be balanced which is a concept you seem to be struggling with.

Why does your balancing exercise always begin with the male person’s desire for access and end with women being told to accommodate it? Why must women choose between total separation from men and having no meaningful boundaries at all?

It doesn't actually. See Sports, Hospitals, Refuges, Prisons exemptions IN AUSTRALIA

Is it because you're a dude?

What? Can't you tell? I thought you people could always tell?

I must say have enjoyed the delicious irony of GC commenters breathlessly falling all over themselves to identify other commenters sex via their 'gendered' responses. Gender critical feminists never met a stereotype they didn't love.

There is a glaring contradiction here. You accuse women of “deciding for others” while repeatedly declaring that Australian women do not care, based largely on the absence of a campaign sufficiently visible to you.
Apparently silence becomes reliable evidence of consent whenever it supports your conclusion. It is not. You cannot speak for every Australian woman any more than I can.

Apparently silence becomes reliable evidence of consent whenever it supports your conclusion. It is not. You cannot speak for every Australian woman any more than I can.

So lemme get this straight. You can't identify a problem but you are going to make it one because YOU think it is one. Well, change laws with no evidence & worry about the legal & social fall out later is certainly one way to do politics but not a very wise one. Democracy usually works best with broad consultation but hey maybe that's just us crazy Aussies.

You would think with poor old Sal & Rupe working over time on the blower that us poor hapless loo oppressed Aussies might have gotten the hint. But alas no according to Sal. There's not a day that goes by that she doesn't loudly lament our disinterest. You would think she would be smart enough to realise she's telling on the movement's impotence & keep a lid on it but no….the attention seems overrule the cause on that one. Nice to know she's still keeps 'form' tho.

Your excursion through Sal Grover’s biography is an exceptionally long scenic route around the argument. Her former ambitions, the age at which she began campaigning, your opinion of her business and her use of crowdfunding do not determine whether sex is real or whether women may associate as females.
People frequently become campaigners when a law first affects them. That is not evidence of dishonesty. Even if every allegation you made about one campaigner’s motives were true, it would remain irrelevant: an imperfect advocate can make a correct argument, and an admirable advocate can make a false one.
Why should female rights depend on whether you approve of one woman’s CV? Why are allegations about her motives supposed to answer whether women may exclude males from a female association?

Strawman. I never said her grifting invalidated the GC cause. I simply called her a grifter….& backed it up.

Within that statutory context, the majority treated post-surgery Tickle as a woman/female. That was an interpretation of legislation and Australian usage. It was not a scientific discovery that reproductive sex had changed. Courts determine what statutes mean; they do not rearrange human reproductive biology.
Just legal paper, not reality.

Strawman. I never argued anything about that.

Repeating “proportionality” does not demonstrate that you understand it. Proportionality requires a genuine assessment of the objective, competing rights, necessity, available alternatives and overall balance. It does not mean “the male person gets access unless women can prove an assault is imminent”.

OMG I have literally been making this argument all along but it's good to know you finally got there. Maybe all that repeating the same question at the end of every comment (that had already been answered) of yours finally triggered a light bulb? WELL DONE!!!

You have ignored nearly every female interest raised: privacy, dignity, safety, trauma, fairness and freedom of association. You have ignored private and unisex alternatives. You have ignored the difference between working alongside men and undressing, sleeping or receiving intimate care in their presence.
That is not balancing competing rights. It is removing the female side from the scales and still calling the result “proportionate”.

Um I specifically agreed with all Australian exemptions in terms of proportionality so I have no idea what you are babbling on about here.

British institutions, businesses, politicians etc were sold the gender ID myth, largely by Stonewall, who helped persuade them that trans rights extended far beyond what was legal in this country.

This happened at the same time that gender studies ideas were informing students, who took these new ideas into the workplace. Meanwhile EDI took off in businesses across country.

This is all Top Down. There is very little demand for it from the population at large. This is partly why there is such push back. People did not ask their politicians and institutions to replace sex with gender ID. There was no debate.

No one did any sort of risk analysis. No one was consulted.
It was all imposed from above. Too right we have looked at it and said no.

There was very little demand for homosexuality to become mainstream from the population at large when gays started demanding their rights too. But they got there in the end with awareness campaigns/protests and Stonewall & Universities certainly had a lot to do with that.

My point is the key difference between GC ideology & trans rights is trans people like gays have always existed so by virtue of their class existing & by extension requiring rights its a grass roots campaign that has grown in visibility via social acceptance. Gender ideology while having a fringe starting point required a mass scare propaganda campaigns to attain relevancy including conflating the right to beliefs with the consequences of competing rights.

Hello. We’ve been expecting you.

There was very little demand for homosexuality to become mainstream from the population at large when gays started demanding their rights too.

I don't think you're correct there. There was quite a lot of desire from the public to stop putting men in prison for consensual acts in private.

The persecution and suicide of Alan Turing, a war hero, was a turning point in that.

Gender ideology while having a fringe starting point required a mass scare propaganda

There you go again writing about women as not being able to make their own minds up about sharing facilities and sports with male bodied people.

And I think you are wrong. What really started this off for a lot of us was seeing men on medal podiums and the increasing demands of men to be in women's sport. It was the ramping up of demands that triggered the response.

I didn't give a damn about men in women's (my) changing rooms until I realised that it was part and parcel of Lia Thomas and Caster Semenya stealing medals from women. That was when I got involved with the subject and now I also understand why male bodies are not appropriate in female spaces.

Women are not so weak witted that we need a male press to tell us how to think on this.

What 'peaked' me was girl guides trying with one hand to say they were girl only whilst simultaneously accepting boys (aka transgirls) and having policies that these tween/teen boys could share tents and washing facilities at camp without informed consent of the actual girls or their parents - breaks safeguarding 101.

Boys and girls are in separate accommodation on school trips and (previously) things like activity camps for safety privacy and dignity which are primarily sex based issues not nebulous 'gender' ones.

The organisation of women in the UK has been bottom up against such travesties brought on by organisations with leaders with vested interests and 'Stonewall law'. In the UK it is not funded by 'far right' or 'Christian' anything but by grassroots women. Just look at the go fund me for legal action, hundreds of women giving £20 here and there. (But yes with some bigger funders sometimes like JKR who is also not 'far right'!)

If only the 'left' had done their job and defended the rights of women in the first place ....

Women are not so weak witted that we need a male press to tell us how to think on this.

When I first became aware of this over a decade ago, the women on here were absolutely desperate for the press to become aware of it. It kicked off here, as far as I remember, with the IOC threads, and several 'I am Spartacus threads'.

Women, including me, felt it was an act of independent bravery to agree that men were not women on an anonymous website largely populated BY women, ffs.

Very many women thought that as soon as the press got hold of it, it would be came over! Women were badgered for their contacts in the media to try and push a story, any story, to make other people aware.

It just didn't happen. MSM were too shit scared.

It is independent women, and women alone, who are responsible for Terf Island.

Transactivists themselves even didn't realise what was happening on Mumsnet. In their sexist fashion, they thought it was all about prams and nappies. That the women here couldn't be politically aware. Many a thread on here wondering why they were going off alarming on Twitter and Reddit, but absolutely leaving Mumsnet alone. Ignored us in fact

An Australian Johnny Come Lately like Gretel being clueless about the grassroots and powerful movement in this country really isn't a surprise.

We even got their way before J. K. Rowling!

Propaganda my arse.

Gender ideology while having a fringe starting point required a mass scare propaganda

I'm a biologist, the very first time someone told me that sex was a spectrum and that humans can change sex, I went "Nah, don't be daft, that's complete and utter bollocks". I've been anti-GI and pro-science since long before the MSM (and even JKR) noticed the issue.

I was anti men in women's loos before I realised it was anything to do with transgenderism. I just remember thinking fuck no, no piss on my seat thank you.

These man don't realise that it's actually nothing to do with identifying as trans, and everything to do with being male.

It's risible and completely illogical, to imagine that women need to be told not to want men in their spaces 😄. Patriarchy on steroids

It is independent women, and women alone, who are responsible for Terf Island.

And that has been the strength of it.

Women as individuals from every part of the political landscape, left, centrist, right. Of every age, of every race, of every class.

We all share womanhood and we all have experienced life as women, and that includes experiencing the behaviour of men.

Very brave women have protested despite personal risks to safety, career, social standing, and family.

From the tiniest gestures, like refusing to comply in a thousand small ways, stickering, tying ribbons, creating our own secret networks, to the big bold gestures like billboards, legal cases headlines.

Women powered.

The timeline is so important on this.

We were talking about this years before JKR was ever involved.

I am convinced that she walked amongst us (and maybe still does) for some time before she said a word publicly. I don't think I will shift my opinion on this given all the things said over the years.

The comments that she radicalised so many women are just funny to me as a result. JKR was almost a latecomer (but thank god she did). There were threads for years talking about how various famous people had almost publicly peaked and speculating about whether they would. Then she did.

MN didn't radicalise women. Women simply shared their lives experiences here and found out that they were far from unique and there were clearly patterns, there is almost a TRA script which looks like a learned that's it's almost Bingo. And the back stories are so similar. Unlike the women here who have a huge range of life experience and backgrounds.

My current favourites are the ploppers that go "well if you knew any transpeople you wouldn't say that" so stuck in this mentality that we couldn't possibly have a broad enough life experience to come across someone trans in real life.

What's striking about the women here when they talk about the subject is the breathe of knowledge and how there's focus on completely different concerns and issues. And it's the sheer depth in knowledge. This is all interconnected with other areas of professional knowledge too.

Comments here are not made up nonsense. They are which is grounded in wider world issues which trans activism lacks and suffers from badly. Trans activism relies on exceptionalism and why they don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does in terms of safeguarding and that's it's biggest problem. And as such it can never get away from the question of whether it's by ignorance and stupidity or by design.

This dynamic of failed protocol and procedures due to exceptionalism is the very thing that leads women here by multiple different routes - professional and private.

I just assumed it was the ‘female name / food ‘ code that he uses.

But sometimes when my phone screen was dim and I struggled to read, it did come across as ‘Christ in an apple’ . I also wonder if he has a thing for round shaped food.

It is a very inconvenient fact that it is so grass roots for many people who wish to continue to use the ‘far right’ falsity.

MN didn't radicalise women.

It did teach me some phenomenally mindblowing things.

Like: feminism is for women, by women.

It was researching what my school should do with a boy who was claiming he was a girl that introduced me to the Mermaids toxic "guidance" for schools saying that he must be given access to female toilets and changing rooms. Oh and it suggested primary children thinking the same should have an assembly and a cake to "celebrate" their sex change.

You don't need to be a psychologist to see how that's grooming and gaslighting children. The assembly would ensure that a young child would never be able to walk back from that announcement.

The start of the erosion of safeguarding children by the trans lobby that continues to this day. And we still have to challenge it.

Well, maybe - imagine what would happen if they realised that so many 'gc' women are the complete opposite of the caricatures. We might be in real trouble.

I guess that's why they use the attacks they do. They think that leftwing, gender nonconforming, etc women will be incensed to be called all the things they call us. I suppose some of the attempts at personal insult just come straight out of the basement stock of women-hating incels.

By now, it doesn't really bother anyone because it's such obvious bollocks.

I'm not going to lie, I've never once said a man is a woman or called one 'she'. Not in real life and not on the internet.

I had the unfortunate experience of men who thought they were women from the very early 90s onwards. Both in real life and in work.

I'd say that the only place the propaganda came from was from the pro-'men who say they are women' side. As far as I know, there has never been TV series or films starring TERFy women and when there is, one day, I'm betting the starring roles will all go to men. There have been oodles of 'trans child' TV series though, weirdly. There has been massive attempts to make it all seem normal to sterilise and mutilate your child and to accept the pink and blue into your life.

This 'mass scare propaganda' I suppose is the likes of Isla Bryson and Barbie Kardashian showing the world what this insanity looks like. And yet they still cannot roll it back in these large publicly funded organisations. The girl who got into a woman's car and was held captive by the man pretending to be a woman at the same time Scotland was trying to get legislation through didn't help.