Gender Discussion #76

[IcanSpellBéchamel]

I have recently asked several drag fans to explain to me the difference between blackface (obviously bad) and womanface (apparently stunning and brave), and nobody has yet given me a coherent or convincing argument. Maybe @PeteM will do one of his drive-by seagull posts to explain to us silly laydees what distinguishes the former from the latter.

Before around the last three months or so I didn't have the courage to speak up in real life to express my GC terfy views with anyone except MrSpellyB (who is French so has a different cultural background). But now, I have stopped giving a shit if I get called transphobic or whatever. It's a meaningless epithet.

I feel there has been the beginning of a societal shift, away from the TRA nonsense dominating the narrative. But I think there is a long way to go, particularly as the BBC remains so captured.

 

[petitspois]

I find it amazing that with male violence, society's default is to parrot 'not all men' and the same with this grooming scandal - it is overwhelmingly men of Pakistani upbringing and, if you see something going on around you, you are more likely to take part.

I saw a documentary by Trevor Phillips (who I'm actually no fan of tbh) where he said the reluctance to talk about facts about race actually harms everyone. For example, alcohol-fuelled violence is largely perpetrated by white men and it's not racist to say that, that's what the statistics show.

 

[Funny_bunny]

Sandie Peggie, the nurse who is suing her NHS Trust and a trans woman doctor for harassment after being suspended for objecting to sharing a changing room with said trans doctor is asking the tribunal hearing her case not to refer to the doctor using she/her pronouns. Her excellent argument is that if the tribunal refers to the doctor using she/her pronouns 'as a courtesy', this leads to the presumption that Sandie Peggie is being discourteous by not using those pronouns. And more importantly, the essence of her case is that the doctor is not a she/her but is in fact a man. Specifically she says that:

“It is impossible to put that case clearly and forcefully while referring to the man in question as ‘she’ and paying lip-service to the fiction that he is a kind of woman. The whole point is that he is a man.”

I actually want to stand up and applaud this woman. I used to use preferred pronouns on this thread when I first started posting here, but I realised that you then find yourself saying nonsensical things like, as a made-up example:

'Lia Thomas should not be competing with biological women because she has an unfair advantage as she has gone through male puberty. And she shouldn't use the female changing rooms because she......' etc.

It's the same effect as using female pronouns in court for male rapists, which leads to the abomination of 'her penis' and the like.

Sandie Peggie has asked that the tribunal refer to the doctor without using pronouns. I expect she will lose that battle because the judge has already referred to the non-binding Equal Treatment Bench's guidance which says that LBGT should be addressed how they wish to be addressed. Nonetheless, I'm glad that she's raised the point.

This is the thing that gets me. Calling TIM “she” and “her” is lying. Using pronouns of choice reinforces the lie. No one can change sex, why do we have to lie and pretend the impossible has happened, and why do someone’s delusions become more important than biological facts?
If someone feels they are born in the wrong body, the problem is in their mind. Why has society got to go along with this, and in fact give them praise for being “stunning and brave”, push them as being more important than real women and make not upsetting them priority over everyone else (ie real women). Referring to “her penis” is frankly ridiculous and anyone who genuinely thinks this is acceptable needs to take a long hard think. Courts should go back to dealing with truth and reality rather than tip toeing around feelings of dangerous, violent and depraved men. Why are the perpetrators treated with very misguided consideration and compassion over the victim, who is forced to lie? Once again, it’s misogyny that men always have to be put first.

 

[Vanelope]

They call it gender fluid, I call it ‘sometimes I wear trousers and sometimes a dress’ - sometimes I take the bins out and sometimes I make a cake. It’s bollocks and as Germaine said in that clip, all made up and cultural.

 

[moldwarp]

Baroness Jay is in the news calling for the government to implement the recommendations of her inquiry.
I’m getting so fucking angry with the way women are treated. I had a dream I’d set up a vigilante group last night. Then I woke up and had a cup of tea.

I think it should be a statutory public inquiry, that way witnesses are compelled to appear. Televise their testimony, get it all out in the open.

There's a real blocker to it being discussed, when Suella Braverman set up a Grooming Gangs Taskforce in 2023, she was accused in the Guardian of inciting racial hatred. No, it's not about that - it's about institutional misogyny and classism. Bringing it back to race/ethnicity just makes it all about the perpetrators - the MEN - not the victims - they are not even allowed a voice in their own story, that's how heavy the misogyny weights on the issue.

It's also about life and death, we know at least 3 girls murdered by the gangs: Charlene Downs, Laura Wilson and Lucy Lowe, all aged 16 - 17 at the time. I think if the UK media can downplay the longstanding instituionalised sexual torture of children (because it was torture, some were raped so badly they needed surgery) then we're pretty fucked as a nation, in regards to how we treat women and girls.

Goddess Bless Julie Bindel who was writing about this since 2017 but otherwise....crickets from the Pick Me feminists like Caitlin Moran, Jess Philips, Victoria Coren all them.

Anyway I'm gonna leave the subject now cos strictly speaking it's off topic but it does enrage me that female children can be treated like this in a so called developed country.

 

[Metropolis]

Spoke to my son earlier who’s at uni doing politics. This semester, he has to do a compulsory module on Critical Race Theory. I pointed out it would be good to hear different points of view and he said, “no mum, the way they’re teaching it is that you can’t disagree or challenge it. The essay titles are written as if it’s an accepted fact so nothing is open to interpretation.” I can’t see how that works as it’s a theory or an ideology just like Marxism and of course you should be free to critique it, but apparently not.

In today’s lecture the students were told that feminism is a failed concept because it was ‘invented by white women’. No debate. Of course, feminism fails if it is not inclusive of women from all backgrounds and the reasons why non-white women feel excluded should absolutely be examined and the issues thrashed out. But just to make a statement as this lecturer did that ‘feminism can’t succeed’ is ridiculous. My son also said that the students had to vote anonymously as to whether they agreed with the concept of identity politics and only a third voted that they didn’t agree .

 

[Metropolis]

Courts should go back to dealing with truth and reality rather than tip toeing around feelings of dangerous, violent and depraved men.

And how the fuck have we actually arrived at a position where we are waiting months for the Supreme Court to rule on how women are defined in law? Go back twenty, or even ten, years and no one would have entertained this even being up for consideration. It’s highly, highly insulting to women.

 

[Mugglewump]

Merry Christmas fellow Terfs.
I'm alone this year, because my friend who usually invites me no longer will because I'm a TERF, she's known for years, but suddenly her adult daughter has an issue.
Anyway, I've had a nice chilled out day, and I'm wearing this in defiance, Christmas present to myself.
I still won't wheesht.

 

[Mismatched Pegs]

I especially love the self-righteous "stop embarrassing yourself". Um, ok person who thinks women can have penises

 

[Mismatched Pegs]

Does anybody know when the march for Afghan women is? Oh, there isn't one? What a surprise. But what about our trans sisters over there being unable to leave the house or sing or read? White feminism indeed.
To paraphrase The Usual Suspects: the greatest trick the patriarchy ever played was to convince women that some men are more vulnerable than they are.
Yes I've woken up angry. I'm a middle aged woman, I'm fucking entitled to.

 

[Ceelea]

What?!

How the hell was he acquitted?

Re violent trans offenders, there's a scene in Family Guy where a bartender informs a dude in a dress watching porn on his phone that it's not allowed and the guy replies, " I'm trans. "

The bartender then immediately reacts with, " Oh, Oh... I had no idea... Do what you want all the time. "

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

I think if people don't come into contact with it, they don't realise how prevalent/dangerous it is. My family just think I'm a nutter going over the top and avoid any mention of anything trans related in front of me, or anything Caster Semenya/Imane Khelif related in case I go off on one. My late 20s daughter watches Drag Race etc and thinks it's harmless.

Same here - and I admit I used to think Drag Race was harmless, too, until I saw it becoming more and more misogynistic and nasty, and it was as thought he scales suddenly fell from my eyes.

It's the lack of open aggression towards women that makes this so dangerous. Starts off with "We just want to pee" and ends up with women being raped by their cellmates in prison, or used for wank-fodder in rape crisis centres, and innocent newborns being forced to suckle on male chests - and not even getting any viable nutrition from it, poor little things.

Talk about a Trojan Horse - it happens before our very eyes and many of us can't see it.

 

[Mismatched Pegs]

Every quiz show seems to have a trans contestant at the moment.

Was catching up on Christmas University Challenge yesterday and there was a TW on.
There was a particular round where he knew the answers and didn't really bother conferring with the team (kind of barked the answer at them and then answered with a curt yes-that's-it nod if the head) The behaviour was so male coded and not in any way how a female contestant would actually behave. It's funny, doesn't matter how much surgery they have, their mannerisms and socialisation gives them away.

 

[moldwarp]

This is a perfect example of the cultural mindset and it leaves me cold. It's just wrong.

Re your first paragraph, yeah, a schoolfriend of mine was Muslim, obviously this is going back many years now. She was super clever and actually won a place at Oxford to study English, she was literally like the big local celebrity for this (literally - people would point her out in the street and congratulate her), our school didn't send kids to Oxbridge or Russell Group, she had really, really achieved this off her own back and it was like a once in a lifetime opportunity for her to move up several rungs of the social ladder and create an amazing life for herself.

Come time to go to Uni....her dad decided he wouldn't let her go because he didn't feel it was right or appropriate for an unmarried girl to live on her own potentially among boys. I still think of her sometimes. What a waste.

I do think though that the mindset you describe is the mindset that exists in the majority of the world. Women and girls are not seen on the same level as boys and men. Look at female infanticide in India and rural China for example.

Western and Northern Europe are very much the outliers for women. That's why I feel very blessed everyday to be living here, but also that's why it really winds me up when I see privileged feminists like Emma Watson and Sandi Toksvig ready to sacrifice our rights so easily at the altar of trans. They are so privileged that they literally do not understand what they are giving up.

 

[Dinate]

Now this is an interesting case: a nurse, Sandie Peggie, who was suspended for objecting to sharing a changing room with a trans woman doctor. is suing her NHS Trust and the trans doctor for harassment and she's won the right to have the hearing held in the open. The hospital had argued that the case should be held in private with the names of both the nurse and the doctor and the hospital where they worked to be kept secret to protect the doctor from having his trans status publicly disclosed.

Nurse beats attempt to gag tribunal reporting amid trans row

archived 7 Jan 2025 21:30:28 UTC

archive.ph

The judge agreed that the public interest in the case and the rights of the press and campaigning groups overrode the privacy concerns of the doctor. Amongst other things, Sandie Peggie argued that it was obvious that the doctor is a man from his appearance. The judge disagreed....WIthout even having seen said doctor, I'd wager that the judge was being generous in his assessment, or perhaps wasn't wearing his glasses. I find it highly unlikely that, to quote the judge,'The tribunal does not find that looking at Dr Upton it is obvious that Dr Upton is a man'. Erm, should have gone to specsavers perhaps, your honour.

On a serious note, this employment tribunal is being held next month. i'm sure the Darlington nurses will be watching with interest.

 

[moldwarp]

Oh I'm not saying that she doesn't have a point about some things but that doesn't make her somebody I'm ever going to look up to as a whole. I've never understood only wanting things for yourself, I've been treated like shite in the past and I don't want to be the person that does it to other people so I've always tried to base any decisions on the impact on others, it matters and I don't see how people can look at themselves in the mirror if they don't. Personally I don't want to see self centered people and the world would be a much better place if more people looked around more often and didn't just blinding follow anybody to hell because they liked something they said.

I've always tried to base any decisions on the impact on others,

Noooo Sister you have to stop doing this! Andrea Dworkin has written very well on women's tendency to privilege the needs of others (usually men) over their own needs when making decisions, and the devastating cumulative impact this has over time on women's health, wealth, safety and well-being.

Sure this whole set of threads is about the trans madness which could not have gotten this far had it not been for women who, whether through fear or a misplaced sense of altruism, stepped aside and essentially gave up vital spots in elite sports, college sports scholarships, refuges, awards, bursaries etc etc because they didn't want to say no to selfish and perverted men in dresses.

As I see it, TRAs are essentially relying on the socialised selflessness that you just described, and that many women have, to get what they want. They rely on the fact that we've been socialised to put men's needs before our own.

Don't fall for it! it's a trap. Put yourself first. The men in your life certainly are. So why shouldn't you?

 

[PryingPenny]

I worked in one of the areas affected by the grooming gangs and the men involved knew the limits of the law and exploited every loophole. Young people who were in residential units would be picked up by cars or taxis and the staff couldn't do anything except take note of the registration numbers. If you had your own kid in the house you'd have bolted the door and met these predators with a baseball bat but young people were allowed to have mobile phones which led to more exploitation. The love bombing would start and then they would be swept into the awful abuse. Secure residential units can be up to a quarter of a million a year so it was incredibly hard to be able to move young people away. Young men were brought in almost as bait for the girls, given drink and drugs and told to invite their female friends in. For young people who have already been through so much it's sickening that they were chosen by these abusers because adults were powerless to help. It needed much quicker change at a political level, I don't think the residential unit workers were able to do enough without overstepping. We were told to consider looked after young people as our own but they can't receive either appropriate affection or protection so they seek the first elsewhere. I once bought a 15 year old some off the shelf cough medicine as he had a horrendous cough, it went to the unit for him to be given, I received a formal disciplinary and was told I should only have got him water. The system is fucked, having a mobile phone isn't a human right, children should be protected and kept away from those who want to hurt them.

*I didn't work in social services, but did work with some of the young people in a related role

 

[Mismatched Pegs]

Once again, if you think that transwomen are women why are you singling them out, surely they're already included, what with being women and all. I definitely don't think they think transwomen are women. Transphobic bigots.

 

[Funny_bunny]

The 'Womens March' on Saturday ...


View attachment 3369485

Just saw this - SJB is a transwoman who served 25 years of a life sentence for attempted murder and - allegedly - castrated himself in prison


View attachment 3369499This

“This decision was not made lightly.” They really seem upset that they can’t have a violent MAN at a women’s march, so desperate are they to have TIM included. A women’s march should only be for women. “Any allies of women welcome to join in”. OK? So in fact, it’s not a women’s march at all then if anyone can join in.
Women really can’t have anything just for us any more.

 

[Funny_bunny]

Slightly confused- aren’t trans women men? Do they mean there’s not many cases of p-cancer in WOMEN? As there’s plenty in men

Ridiculous to be so obtuse about something so important

I really wish that the term “assigned male at birth” would stop being used. It’s a lie. No one is assigned anything at birth, It’s observed and you’re either male or female. Being non binary, whatever that actually is, surgery, hormones, clothes, whatever cannot change it.
In the context of healthcare it’s particularly dangerous as the terminology quickly gets confusing. It’s come to a ridiculous state of affairs when reality has to give way to not hurting feelings of deluded people.