I have to say I’ve been enjoying Sturgeon’s car-crash interviews - LBC and Channel 4, the Scottish media are too feart of her! She digs a deeper hole every time she opens her lipless mouth. Thankfully the GRR bill will now be toast forever as, amazingly, not all ‘trans women’ are women (who knew?!) and they must be housed in men’s facilities. Now for toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, refuges and sports.
Don't think its a blanket ban yet. She was forced to intervene due to public outcry but if the pressure wasn't on she would not have a thing just carried on with the lie.
This battle is not over. Not with her gov or with westminster as men are STILL in female estate there too.
Can you imagine the courage of the Suffragettes? Risking arrest, imprisonment, force feeding, and God knows what else. And now we have educated, pathologically kind handmaidens, handing over their very existential definition, and along with that -- ALL of women's historically achieved rights to this Men's "Rights" ideology. It does beggar belief. What happened to deaden the spirit of this new generation of women? What finally defeated them? Could internet pornography have anything to do with it? Could it possibly be that many young women's only sense of available "power" is through their unconscious pathetic agreement with their dominators?
I think there’s more than that going on - just watched snippet of Jeremy Vine where his co presenter a middle class younger woman was being snide and haughty to a working class women who rang in to criticise Starmer. Labour is no longer there for working class people, seems captured by snobby privileged people with zero self awareness. Hope they look back and feel a sense of shame
I agree— there are most likely more reasons — like every bloody trusted institution spouting “trans” speak — but the degradation by pornography is ubiquitous and soul- destroying.
Yes. Erasure of boundaries and beliefs. The porn soaked everything we've been marinating in for decades. We all have indirectly even if not directly or the polite at the edges admissions. The ubiquity of that has seeped in so it's generally accepted as an unpleasant part of life that we must somehow accept or that it's just a bit of fun. How younger people see those as the standards and can't even see the standard as they knew nothing of how it was like before and are in it. Casting about wanting to feel part of something, so being led to this nicey, nicey quasi-rights movement which is many wolves in one poor sheep's tatty clothes. Looking again at what is allowed on Reddit forums is still stomach-churningly hard to see. Those men are out with those disturbing views and in our real lives.
Non of them can think - it is like they’ve parked their brains and they reply with platitudes and ideology learnt by rote, then they show demonstrable pride in themselves. Can’t quite put into words
This is certainly not a popular opinion, or even a previously voiced opinion, but I have always blamed Madonna. She was one of the first women to push the idea that the reclamation of female sexuality was empowering. Sure it is, but not the way she did it -- same old, same old. And people fell for it. Look at her now. What you see is what she was all along. Not a beacon for sexual empowerment. At all. Desperate for attention -- absolutely not a liberator of women -- the opposite in fact. Decades later, she's still trapped in the pursuit of being perceived as a sexually enticing woman. She's showing her true self to the world now with her surgeries and fillers and fishnets-- and taking it on tour -- if her arthritis will let her!
She was on my list!! But then I edited it down and took her off it because I thought it would provoke a distracting row! I absolutely agree - that's everything I was getting at.
Yup. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The amount of men and women I knew who saw women in our friendship groups going through these iterations and were in turns uncomfortable, but then were shouted at that it was up to women to get their norks out, sleep with as many men as they liked. Then with a lecture on how empowering it was to play with that in an newly anti-heteronormative take on postmodern blah blah rights. I seem to remember other men and women advising them to keep quiet, nod along, then they got to get girls flashing their bits and being 'empowered' and demanding to do this. That they could use them.
I worked in a nightclub for a short time. One night in the early 00s there was what appeared to be a live sex show on one of the stages. I wouldn't wear the required uniform and only wore trousers after many incidents in clubs. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Young women competing with each other to practically and then actually have sex on stage, having paid to gain entry, paid to get so drunk to get the courage up to 'empower' themselves. For a tee shirt. How easily they sold that to a baying crowd of drunk men.
This is spot on. God I remember moving to London in the 90s and the ladette culture was in full swing. I remember thinking I'd stepped back in time. I grew up with 'Free to be you and me'
The equal rights movement of the 1970s impressed upon women that the way to power and success was to act like men, one key feature being throwing other women under the bus. This is what happens when a movement does not ground itself in serious analysis but just wants its "oppressed" group to behave like the oppressors.
Did you read my descriptor? Equal rights feminism did not center women, it centered women's right to dominate and exploit just like men. Radical feminism -- and there were probably gradations in between -- did not believe that women would be free from oppression by behaving like men, rejected domination and exploitation of anyone, and truly envisaged a different sort of world.
And what do we see as the result of the former idea? Just look around!
And if I need to detail it, I'm a 1960s and 1970s RADICAL feminist.
Sorry Susan if I misunderstood you. I sort of grew up a feminist without considering there were different ways to approach it. I still get a bit confused on the labels and what they actually mean! I think I'm a Radical feminist by your definition. I never really considered the other sort actually were feminists whatever they claimed.
Exactly this: 'What happened to deaden the spirit of this new generation of women? ' I look around at work and it's the 20 and 30 something women that are the handmaidens. What happened to them?
Everything you and WomanOnTheEdge say is spot on. Young women have never even heard of radical feminism -- Robert Jensen introduced the idea to young women in his journalism classes and it was completely foreign -- and they have bought into the neoliberal mantra: You are on your own, you have nothing in common with others, it's up to you to climb the ladder of [no]success doing whatever's necessary, including throwing other women under the bus and repeating nonsensical mantras.
This can kind of help one understand Germaine Greer's issue with the women of Me too. What is more important? Your career or having some ethics and a sense of responsibility toward other women?
A lot of what is seen as 'feminism' currently strikes me as disempowering women, infantilising them and diminishing them. I didn't like what MeToo turned into, just another victim fest which I felt robbed women of agency and responsibility. The current focus is menopause as disability which (despite bad personal experience) I think is actually a great way of undermining older women and their voices in the workplace and society
The last thing you want when battling a hot flush halfway through a work meeting is some condescending d.head asking if you'd like to take a break to get some fresh air!
There is currently a rather insidious movement in the UK about women which keeps putting its head above the parapet and which I don't like the flavour of. Instances of it include Scotland appointing a period tsar (a man obviously! and later dropped as reported on this Substack).
We've just had an attempt to introduce Menopause as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act defeated but it was noticed and the HSBC banking giant has introduced new 'menopause friendly' uniforms. There's lots of talk about menopause in the workplace policies.
I distrust all of this. To my mind there's a distinct whiff of implying that women are fragile, flawed, prisoner to their body processes (CF origins of 'hysteria' - those pesky wandering wombs!). It's not a huge leap of logic to get to the point where someone can say that 'transwomen' are the superior sort of woman as they aren't prey to the adverse affects of all these things - no fear of overemotional, irrational actual women with brain fog messing up the workplace!
And of course it devalues the wisdom of older women, we've already been through challenging women with inconvenient opinions with "are you premenstrual or something?", now we can shut down women over 40 with "are you suffering from brain fog?".
Inevitably it's divisive as well, lots of men moaning about 'feminists wanting special treatment' and 'you want equality but you're not up to the job'.
I totally get what you are saying! On the one hand, men can change their sex [not!], but women are stuck in their troublesome bodies. Which wouldn't be so troublesome if we had decent health care!
Yay,. Finally. This is what Canadians woke up to today -- wee bit of proper media coverage. We are SO captured it's refreshing to see glimmers of public acknowledgement of THE IDEOLOGY. Naturally -- it's in a right wing paper. But still.
"Transgender women inmates were also identified as being disproportionately likely (as compared to the general prison population) of being incarcerated because of sexual violence they had committed while living as their biological sex."
It's so good to read that key and alarming realisation about a fact being written about. So male sex offenders and men who abuse retain their sex-offending patterns, no matter how they identify. That blows the 'not all men' tripe out of the water. And that these types of men are disproportionately likely to, so why are so many other of their male colleagues in maleness defending them! Who knew! Oh, that would be us, we all know this, all those shouted down as bigoted.
It's not good when we can only defend or call out those who share a limited list of the same protected characteristics as us and it's been very reassuring to see the two men, Clive and Dennis on the Queen's Speech podcast being so upset and indignantly fed up and angry with their fellow men and telling them, come on guys, stop this and stop treating women like this.
I think there's a great deal of ignorance among the general public about the trans community: about the assorted forces driving transactivism, and about the range of people involved -- from "transing away the gay", to 40% being autistic, plus a contingent of autogynephiles, paedophiles and other fetishists.
Most people don't even know that 99% of sex offenders are male, and 88% of victims are female. Nor that male pattern sex offending does not change with transition: and that there are (not surprisingly) a higher proportion of sex offenders among trans-identified males than in the male population generally.
However criminologists find it hard to pin down the numbers -- exacerbated by UK police now recording crimes only by "gender identity", not by sex. But the mere fact that this results in nearly 50% of trans-identified male prisoners (in England & Wales) being convicted sex offenders -- far higher than the proportion of sex offenders among male prisoners generally -- is agreed to reflect the fact that male sex offenders faced with a prison sentence have extra reasons for transitioning. Eg to be put in women's prisons to have an easier time, and/or to gain continued access to female victims.
It's a pity that news reporting about trans-identified male sex offenders never states these revealing statistics.
Well said. I get bamboozled by shrieked but but but genociding you want to erase us stats, then try to take a breath, realise this is exactly what they want and get this straight in my head. To imagine what some of the Profs for the public understanding of X or Y might say. We need a Prof for the public understanding of bunkum trans stats and the type Nancy Kelley uses to deliberately obscure and skew. Oh and lying by omission. She has a habit of doing the first part 'such a small population', 'tiny numbers of marginalised' then never gets to the '...who commit a disproportionately high number of sex offences compared to the wider male prison population'.
You can see I struggle to use words here! I'd like some infographics :-)
I got the stats from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) with figures for sex offending taken from the Crime Survey of England & Wales (CSEW).
A conversation about these stats with a gender-critical criminologist on Twitter elicited his judgement on the 50% figure of sex offenders among trans-identified male prisoners as "bad stats" for any inference that this represented the level of sex offending among TiMs generally, given the extra incentives for male sex offenders to transition as prisoners: with safety from other males being only one. And he said that in any case there were much better sources for the level of sex offending among TiMs being higher than among males generally: but unfortunately these are in research papers and journals of criminology I don't have access to.
Yes, infographics would be a good idea. Transactivists hide behind a lot of lies and false stats on this issue.
Yes, and why statisticians keep warning about how they are messing about with them (very good to see the stern letters). I became very interested in public understanding, awareness and acceptability of risk. This directly ties to what the Scottish government has been doing - and hoping to further confuse the public who they clearly expect and want to be, then treat as, stupid. So many at evidence sessions come across as sneery and superior. Yet can't explain, then lie and obfuscate. Giving false reassurances and then covering up evidence. Then expecting and requiring trust in them.
I do have caution when looking at all this. We have tried to pin down particular death and injury statistics in order to inform public policy and still find it hard to get. Then near-misses (trying to find the almost reportable). It's linking together reports, sources, through the process, until the post-impact, event or injury where that occurs and who is picking that up, like in insurance data. When there is a regulatory imperative, and/or a police and criminal justice process you can get more and different layers of information. Then the prevention of future deaths reports or inquiries that we seem to be relying on as a back stop.
I recently did a refresh as I was looking at the rollout of basic English and maths skills with the national literacy and numeracy campaigns. We could feed back on how easy to use the resources were as they built them. I was deemed in the top % so felt a little better about attempting to understand what we're facing here and how new methods are used. As I've used them for my job I was worried and I still feel bamboozled, often by people poorly explaining what they don't know how to explain with remarkable confidence. Then I get an old childhood maths anxiety. Then I ask for confidence levels and get a blank look.
At Uni we were asked to go and look up funding in our home wards and post codes. I think in some hope to engage us in the stats and census data we were working with (and they hoped some of us might be producing in the future). I wanted to ensure I got my head around the data collection and what inferences we drew, and with what reliability and validity, as this was individual people's local council funding settlements and the very real impact on our lives. People I knew and like me, people not like me and who I'd never meet or hadn't been born yet. I've used ONS, CSEW and other resources since. Then we've analysed if they are fit for purpose and showing us what we need to see - and where the gaps are. And I've seen the rejigging and massaging of other collection so it's harder to compare and spot patterns or change and over time.
There have been many ongoing admissions that the cost-benefit analyses that underpin government investments are 'under review' as they are often skewed and unreflective. More than ten years on, we're still consulting. The stats they use and screw up with 'trans' seem pin the tail on the donkey levels of quality assured!
As many of you know, back in 2015 the British Library, working closely with partners at Jisc’s Journal Archives platform and with copyright holders, digitised and made freely available the entire run of Spare Rib magazines. We are delighted that this resource, documenting a vibrant and important period of women’s activism in the UK, has been so well used by researchers and those interested in the Women’s Liberation Movement.
It is therefore with considerable regret that we are confirming that the resource, as a result of the UK leaving the European Union, will no longer be available following the end of the transition period. The decision to close down the Spare Rib resource once the UK leaves the EU was made on the basis of the copyright status of the digitised magazine, which relies heavily on the EU orphan works directive. For a more detailed account of the reasons behind the suspension please see the British Library’s blog from February 2019."
Oh my god. But it will be hosted somewhere? I bet this wasn't being thought of when Jacob R-M decided we shouldn't have all those pesky EU laws. Is it 4,000 now at risk? They've all been licking their lead painted toys.
I'm trying to find the blog you mentioned from Feb 2019 - they have a few.
Yes sorry -- I changed my mind & deleted it! But well done in finding that the British Library has digitised all the issues of Spare Rib. In 2012 they contacted me (and everyone who'd ever worked on SR), asking for copyright permission. But sadly this doesn't seem to have been enough to survive Brexit and the UK government's mad intention to ditch 4,200 pieces of EU-derived legislation by the end of 2023, as a futile assertion of "sovereignty" -- and another sidelining of Parliament in giving Ministers the sole say in what gets kept or adapted, or ditched, and why. It's also a nightmare for civil servants who haven't a hope in hell even of finding out what's covered by the "sunsetting" date.
It was anyway very frustrating that to actually view any issues of SR on BL's website, you have to be a BL member or live in London. And I didn't qualify to be a member -- you need to be a researcher or involved in education -- and live in Brighton.
I hope you could put it up again somehow. Re viewing. That was partly why they were on my naughty step - they put off many potential 'readers' by making the application process and ways in so difficult. I had access through an Institution. When I enquired a few times I had to give evidence and multiple things with my address on. Very similar with Oxbridge colleges - we're often able to gain access rights as a local resident (town or gown).
Wonder how a certain actor is going to interpret this one as literal violence, like ribbons tied to a fence = noose somehow. I fully expect him to, I'm looking forward to the specific mental gymnastics.
We can save him and his fevered imagination the bother again and wasting police and court time, oh and the time of those he targets. These are clearly missiles and nasty projectiles, with nuclear material attached, and I bet there are razor blades hidden underneath and they will be potentially not likely in any way possible be being projected towards him in an attempt to genocide him. They will probably be spat at him, so that's biological warfare too. Save him! Save him!
Ha ha :-). How did I not realise the supertastic element to this, sorry ribbon man, they are likely made of kryptonite too. Very likely, and will be projected from spidey strings at him. And probably by people from another time zone and era too. Space and time must terrify him.
There's a aging AGP transvestite who works for the civil service near me For twenty years he has been rocking up to his job in goth girl fetish gear, I imagine largely unchallenged by his supervisorS. Outfits so OTT that a supervisor would be having a word about dress code he were actually female.
Today he was stood in the picket line in suffragette colours.
What is it with the civil service? And the line for women between sex-kitten who must be gagging for it and needs to be disciplined for being unprofessional, or an uptight frigid frump they wouldn't 'do' is a few mm of a skirt suit, collar or neckline height, heel height or length our hair is cut. Or how we laugh or smile. There must be a select area of Psychiatry devoted to how some people (let's say men) are able to have these delusions (let's say they identify as women and we term that AGP) then their particular sub-fetish or paraphilia is that they are women's rights activists as the full bloom and apogee of their florid fantasies. Who wear those suffragette colours. They appropriate everything, and every aspect of our lives as a costume, from used sanitary pads they fish out of bathroom bins, to womanface at work. The Colin one (who calls himself yeah yeah all his legal documents say Katy) also insists he's a feminist, not just female. They get the kudos wearing the cloak of fighting a genuine historical oppression which confuses others around them. I wonder what Az Hakeem would say?
We know they take the ideal version they want to be - the baby in a nappy, the sweet little girl, the coming of age pubertal girl, the porn star, the gagging for it, the vocal strong women's rights advocate who says no, the advocate against male violence against women and girls. Then they pick and choose how they role play that and further than those with that actual lived experience ever could.
I once represented the government at an event not so long ago where young women in tiny gold hot pants were striding around in between the mainly men in suits. So those were my options, serious woman who kept being approached for my technical knowledge to do trade deals, or floozy to attract men to another stall for who knows what. Some men confused the two.
IIRC civil servants were always encouraged to be open about their fetishes and any assorted hangups so that they couldn't be blackmailed by foreign powers. Basically so that if the Soviets threatened to expose them for being crossdressers, they could say "go ahead, everyone already knows". Not sure if that's still the case. I don't think it was ever encouraged for them to do it in the office though, that's new.
Yes, I believe this is still the case. I knew a few who discounted it then were pleasantly suprised how welcoming they were. When going through layers of onboarding or vetting you are encouraged to be honest and open which seems like a good thing to have with any employer. They are supposedly better at having people with protected characteristics to fully represent the people they serve and have changed the requirements about elements of your nationality so they aren't so restrictive about who thinks they can apply.
He may be good at his particular role but it's the complete hypocrisy that gets to me - like the 'Pippa' Bunce bloke in banking who wears stockings and what he clearly thinks is low cut rubber or PVC wimminy sexywear when he wins his awards for being the best part-time woman. There are so many of these men, loudly announced as brave rights activists, right at the heart of government, all departments and bodies like the CPS. All those cases about women in banking or services having to wear make up or heels and they swoop in and claim all those rights as 'women'.
All these civil service alphabet groups that wield power yet or because they pay lip service to equality and promote misogynist and homophobic attitudes.
yes, T fo trans uppance - the ideology that is, not the poor victims of it - Suffragette Penny, the maker, came up with the name TervanTuppence - perfect!
Please sign and share the UKGov petition - ‘Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” is biological sex’. Google ‘petition 623243’ to find it or look on the Sex Matters website.
I'm after advice - do awards/posts created specially to encourage women into fields they are underrepresented in have to be open to 'anyone who identifies as a woman' now? I have queried one such and been told by the organisation that this was the law under the equality act of 2010, due to gender reassignment being a protected characteristic...
I have to say I’ve been enjoying Sturgeon’s car-crash interviews - LBC and Channel 4, the Scottish media are too feart of her! She digs a deeper hole every time she opens her lipless mouth. Thankfully the GRR bill will now be toast forever as, amazingly, not all ‘trans women’ are women (who knew?!) and they must be housed in men’s facilities. Now for toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, refuges and sports.
And schools
Absolutely. They need to be front and centre and the brainwashing needs to stop.
Don't think its a blanket ban yet. She was forced to intervene due to public outcry but if the pressure wasn't on she would not have a thing just carried on with the lie.
This battle is not over. Not with her gov or with westminster as men are STILL in female estate there too.
Absolutely. The GRA and Equallty Act both need to be updated to ensure sex is biological sex.
Can you imagine the courage of the Suffragettes? Risking arrest, imprisonment, force feeding, and God knows what else. And now we have educated, pathologically kind handmaidens, handing over their very existential definition, and along with that -- ALL of women's historically achieved rights to this Men's "Rights" ideology. It does beggar belief. What happened to deaden the spirit of this new generation of women? What finally defeated them? Could internet pornography have anything to do with it? Could it possibly be that many young women's only sense of available "power" is through their unconscious pathetic agreement with their dominators?
I think there’s more than that going on - just watched snippet of Jeremy Vine where his co presenter a middle class younger woman was being snide and haughty to a working class women who rang in to criticise Starmer. Labour is no longer there for working class people, seems captured by snobby privileged people with zero self awareness. Hope they look back and feel a sense of shame
I agree— there are most likely more reasons — like every bloody trusted institution spouting “trans” speak — but the degradation by pornography is ubiquitous and soul- destroying.
Yes. Erasure of boundaries and beliefs. The porn soaked everything we've been marinating in for decades. We all have indirectly even if not directly or the polite at the edges admissions. The ubiquity of that has seeped in so it's generally accepted as an unpleasant part of life that we must somehow accept or that it's just a bit of fun. How younger people see those as the standards and can't even see the standard as they knew nothing of how it was like before and are in it. Casting about wanting to feel part of something, so being led to this nicey, nicey quasi-rights movement which is many wolves in one poor sheep's tatty clothes. Looking again at what is allowed on Reddit forums is still stomach-churningly hard to see. Those men are out with those disturbing views and in our real lives.
Non of them can think - it is like they’ve parked their brains and they reply with platitudes and ideology learnt by rote, then they show demonstrable pride in themselves. Can’t quite put into words
but you just did -- and very well!
Gee, sounds a whole lot like many men to me.
Exactly. Porn is grooming the kids.
I think it's mainly down to the ubiquitous and well funded reach of the sex industries, starting in the 1980s.
Threatened by the feminism of the 1970s, they devised strategies to undermine it from within and bring women back to their 'proper' place and status.
1980s Girls just wanna have fun. The start of the movements to destigmatise sex work.
1990s Ladette culture
2000s Spearmint Rhino etc - 'not just for men'. Pole dancing at the WI.Burlesque is 'art'.
2010s Sex work is work. Women can enjoy porn too. Friends with benefits. Only fans.
The important thing to note about all of these is that at every stage girls have been told this is EMPOWERING THEM and their female sex.
They don't know what feminism is any more.
This is certainly not a popular opinion, or even a previously voiced opinion, but I have always blamed Madonna. She was one of the first women to push the idea that the reclamation of female sexuality was empowering. Sure it is, but not the way she did it -- same old, same old. And people fell for it. Look at her now. What you see is what she was all along. Not a beacon for sexual empowerment. At all. Desperate for attention -- absolutely not a liberator of women -- the opposite in fact. Decades later, she's still trapped in the pursuit of being perceived as a sexually enticing woman. She's showing her true self to the world now with her surgeries and fillers and fishnets-- and taking it on tour -- if her arthritis will let her!
The misuse of her charisma and potential and talent was like a knife in the heart of second wave feminism.
I felt exactly that at the time - I couldn't understand why other people couldn't see it.
You're absolutely right. Back in the 80s and 90s I thought her songs and videos were really regressive. I was in the minority.
She was on my list!! But then I edited it down and took her off it because I thought it would provoke a distracting row! I absolutely agree - that's everything I was getting at.
Yup. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The amount of men and women I knew who saw women in our friendship groups going through these iterations and were in turns uncomfortable, but then were shouted at that it was up to women to get their norks out, sleep with as many men as they liked. Then with a lecture on how empowering it was to play with that in an newly anti-heteronormative take on postmodern blah blah rights. I seem to remember other men and women advising them to keep quiet, nod along, then they got to get girls flashing their bits and being 'empowered' and demanding to do this. That they could use them.
I worked in a nightclub for a short time. One night in the early 00s there was what appeared to be a live sex show on one of the stages. I wouldn't wear the required uniform and only wore trousers after many incidents in clubs. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Young women competing with each other to practically and then actually have sex on stage, having paid to gain entry, paid to get so drunk to get the courage up to 'empower' themselves. For a tee shirt. How easily they sold that to a baying crowd of drunk men.
This is spot on. God I remember moving to London in the 90s and the ladette culture was in full swing. I remember thinking I'd stepped back in time. I grew up with 'Free to be you and me'
The equal rights movement of the 1970s impressed upon women that the way to power and success was to act like men, one key feature being throwing other women under the bus. This is what happens when a movement does not ground itself in serious analysis but just wants its "oppressed" group to behave like the oppressors.
I'm a 1970s feminist and that doesn't describe my feminism at all.
Did you read my descriptor? Equal rights feminism did not center women, it centered women's right to dominate and exploit just like men. Radical feminism -- and there were probably gradations in between -- did not believe that women would be free from oppression by behaving like men, rejected domination and exploitation of anyone, and truly envisaged a different sort of world.
And what do we see as the result of the former idea? Just look around!
And if I need to detail it, I'm a 1960s and 1970s RADICAL feminist.
Sorry Susan if I misunderstood you. I sort of grew up a feminist without considering there were different ways to approach it. I still get a bit confused on the labels and what they actually mean! I think I'm a Radical feminist by your definition. I never really considered the other sort actually were feminists whatever they claimed.
I remember that. The workplace was designed by men for men so women had to “join in” or leave. “Working like a woman” meant you stayed at the bottom
Exactly this: 'What happened to deaden the spirit of this new generation of women? ' I look around at work and it's the 20 and 30 something women that are the handmaidens. What happened to them?
I don’t know but it is all helping rid the workplace of much needed over 50s who can’t be doing with this nonsense - Sunak won’t get them back!
Brainwashed and manipulated. They actually believe they are being 'progressive' and 'having it all'.
yes and are the first to repeat the trans rights mantra but look blankly if I refer to sex-based rights. so odd.
It's tragic really.
Everything you and WomanOnTheEdge say is spot on. Young women have never even heard of radical feminism -- Robert Jensen introduced the idea to young women in his journalism classes and it was completely foreign -- and they have bought into the neoliberal mantra: You are on your own, you have nothing in common with others, it's up to you to climb the ladder of [no]success doing whatever's necessary, including throwing other women under the bus and repeating nonsensical mantras.
This can kind of help one understand Germaine Greer's issue with the women of Me too. What is more important? Your career or having some ethics and a sense of responsibility toward other women?
A lot of what is seen as 'feminism' currently strikes me as disempowering women, infantilising them and diminishing them. I didn't like what MeToo turned into, just another victim fest which I felt robbed women of agency and responsibility. The current focus is menopause as disability which (despite bad personal experience) I think is actually a great way of undermining older women and their voices in the workplace and society
Yes and hearing men come on yammer and telling us they understand menopause makes my skin crawl . It’s really undermining
Agreed!
The last thing you want when battling a hot flush halfway through a work meeting is some condescending d.head asking if you'd like to take a break to get some fresh air!
Menopause as disability?!? Hadn't heard that one yet! Older women are the great untapped harbingers of wisdom!
Exactly - I'm celebrating my Crone status!
There is currently a rather insidious movement in the UK about women which keeps putting its head above the parapet and which I don't like the flavour of. Instances of it include Scotland appointing a period tsar (a man obviously! and later dropped as reported on this Substack).
We've just had an attempt to introduce Menopause as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act defeated but it was noticed and the HSBC banking giant has introduced new 'menopause friendly' uniforms. There's lots of talk about menopause in the workplace policies.
I distrust all of this. To my mind there's a distinct whiff of implying that women are fragile, flawed, prisoner to their body processes (CF origins of 'hysteria' - those pesky wandering wombs!). It's not a huge leap of logic to get to the point where someone can say that 'transwomen' are the superior sort of woman as they aren't prey to the adverse affects of all these things - no fear of overemotional, irrational actual women with brain fog messing up the workplace!
And of course it devalues the wisdom of older women, we've already been through challenging women with inconvenient opinions with "are you premenstrual or something?", now we can shut down women over 40 with "are you suffering from brain fog?".
Inevitably it's divisive as well, lots of men moaning about 'feminists wanting special treatment' and 'you want equality but you're not up to the job'.
It just doesn't feel positive to me.
I think you’re right to be suspicious. I’m also uneasy.
I’m glad to hear from others who are not drinking the kool-aid
I totally get what you are saying! On the one hand, men can change their sex [not!], but women are stuck in their troublesome bodies. Which wouldn't be so troublesome if we had decent health care!
Bet the stamping is a bit more fun though. Cathartic.
Hammer trumps Sharpie 💪😂
Finesse - it's a woman thing!
Yay,. Finally. This is what Canadians woke up to today -- wee bit of proper media coverage. We are SO captured it's refreshing to see glimmers of public acknowledgement of THE IDEOLOGY. Naturally -- it's in a right wing paper. But still.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/first-reading-scotland-scandalized-by-trans-sex-offenders-in-women-s-prisons-as-canada-ignores-it/ar-AA16Zreh?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=59d066f2146e4d8cbbc17c83a206a398
I do love this sentence:
"Transgender women inmates were also identified as being disproportionately likely (as compared to the general prison population) of being incarcerated because of sexual violence they had committed while living as their biological sex."
It's so good to read that key and alarming realisation about a fact being written about. So male sex offenders and men who abuse retain their sex-offending patterns, no matter how they identify. That blows the 'not all men' tripe out of the water. And that these types of men are disproportionately likely to, so why are so many other of their male colleagues in maleness defending them! Who knew! Oh, that would be us, we all know this, all those shouted down as bigoted.
It's not good when we can only defend or call out those who share a limited list of the same protected characteristics as us and it's been very reassuring to see the two men, Clive and Dennis on the Queen's Speech podcast being so upset and indignantly fed up and angry with their fellow men and telling them, come on guys, stop this and stop treating women like this.
I LOVE those guys! And yes it’s so satisfying to see the truth actually being written about in a national Canadian newspaper.
I think there's a great deal of ignorance among the general public about the trans community: about the assorted forces driving transactivism, and about the range of people involved -- from "transing away the gay", to 40% being autistic, plus a contingent of autogynephiles, paedophiles and other fetishists.
Most people don't even know that 99% of sex offenders are male, and 88% of victims are female. Nor that male pattern sex offending does not change with transition: and that there are (not surprisingly) a higher proportion of sex offenders among trans-identified males than in the male population generally.
However criminologists find it hard to pin down the numbers -- exacerbated by UK police now recording crimes only by "gender identity", not by sex. But the mere fact that this results in nearly 50% of trans-identified male prisoners (in England & Wales) being convicted sex offenders -- far higher than the proportion of sex offenders among male prisoners generally -- is agreed to reflect the fact that male sex offenders faced with a prison sentence have extra reasons for transitioning. Eg to be put in women's prisons to have an easier time, and/or to gain continued access to female victims.
It's a pity that news reporting about trans-identified male sex offenders never states these revealing statistics.
Well said. I get bamboozled by shrieked but but but genociding you want to erase us stats, then try to take a breath, realise this is exactly what they want and get this straight in my head. To imagine what some of the Profs for the public understanding of X or Y might say. We need a Prof for the public understanding of bunkum trans stats and the type Nancy Kelley uses to deliberately obscure and skew. Oh and lying by omission. She has a habit of doing the first part 'such a small population', 'tiny numbers of marginalised' then never gets to the '...who commit a disproportionately high number of sex offences compared to the wider male prison population'.
You can see I struggle to use words here! I'd like some infographics :-)
I got the stats from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) with figures for sex offending taken from the Crime Survey of England & Wales (CSEW).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/sexualoffencesinenglandandwalesoverview/march2020
(This overview references the datasets)
A conversation about these stats with a gender-critical criminologist on Twitter elicited his judgement on the 50% figure of sex offenders among trans-identified male prisoners as "bad stats" for any inference that this represented the level of sex offending among TiMs generally, given the extra incentives for male sex offenders to transition as prisoners: with safety from other males being only one. And he said that in any case there were much better sources for the level of sex offending among TiMs being higher than among males generally: but unfortunately these are in research papers and journals of criminology I don't have access to.
Yes, infographics would be a good idea. Transactivists hide behind a lot of lies and false stats on this issue.
Yes, and why statisticians keep warning about how they are messing about with them (very good to see the stern letters). I became very interested in public understanding, awareness and acceptability of risk. This directly ties to what the Scottish government has been doing - and hoping to further confuse the public who they clearly expect and want to be, then treat as, stupid. So many at evidence sessions come across as sneery and superior. Yet can't explain, then lie and obfuscate. Giving false reassurances and then covering up evidence. Then expecting and requiring trust in them.
I do have caution when looking at all this. We have tried to pin down particular death and injury statistics in order to inform public policy and still find it hard to get. Then near-misses (trying to find the almost reportable). It's linking together reports, sources, through the process, until the post-impact, event or injury where that occurs and who is picking that up, like in insurance data. When there is a regulatory imperative, and/or a police and criminal justice process you can get more and different layers of information. Then the prevention of future deaths reports or inquiries that we seem to be relying on as a back stop.
I recently did a refresh as I was looking at the rollout of basic English and maths skills with the national literacy and numeracy campaigns. We could feed back on how easy to use the resources were as they built them. I was deemed in the top % so felt a little better about attempting to understand what we're facing here and how new methods are used. As I've used them for my job I was worried and I still feel bamboozled, often by people poorly explaining what they don't know how to explain with remarkable confidence. Then I get an old childhood maths anxiety. Then I ask for confidence levels and get a blank look.
At Uni we were asked to go and look up funding in our home wards and post codes. I think in some hope to engage us in the stats and census data we were working with (and they hoped some of us might be producing in the future). I wanted to ensure I got my head around the data collection and what inferences we drew, and with what reliability and validity, as this was individual people's local council funding settlements and the very real impact on our lives. People I knew and like me, people not like me and who I'd never meet or hadn't been born yet. I've used ONS, CSEW and other resources since. Then we've analysed if they are fit for purpose and showing us what we need to see - and where the gaps are. And I've seen the rejigging and massaging of other collection so it's harder to compare and spot patterns or change and over time.
There have been many ongoing admissions that the cost-benefit analyses that underpin government investments are 'under review' as they are often skewed and unreflective. More than ten years on, we're still consulting. The stats they use and screw up with 'trans' seem pin the tail on the donkey levels of quality assured!
Your reply about working at Spare Rib has disappeared but it did lead me to discover that the British Library has digitised every edition!
They've even created a dedicated Spare Rib site https://www.bl.uk/spare-rib
Oh dear - another Brexit benefit!
"Digitised Spare Rib resource
As many of you know, back in 2015 the British Library, working closely with partners at Jisc’s Journal Archives platform and with copyright holders, digitised and made freely available the entire run of Spare Rib magazines. We are delighted that this resource, documenting a vibrant and important period of women’s activism in the UK, has been so well used by researchers and those interested in the Women’s Liberation Movement.
It is therefore with considerable regret that we are confirming that the resource, as a result of the UK leaving the European Union, will no longer be available following the end of the transition period. The decision to close down the Spare Rib resource once the UK leaves the EU was made on the basis of the copyright status of the digitised magazine, which relies heavily on the EU orphan works directive. For a more detailed account of the reasons behind the suspension please see the British Library’s blog from February 2019."
Oh my god. But it will be hosted somewhere? I bet this wasn't being thought of when Jacob R-M decided we shouldn't have all those pesky EU laws. Is it 4,000 now at risk? They've all been licking their lead painted toys.
I'm trying to find the blog you mentioned from Feb 2019 - they have a few.
Yes sorry -- I changed my mind & deleted it! But well done in finding that the British Library has digitised all the issues of Spare Rib. In 2012 they contacted me (and everyone who'd ever worked on SR), asking for copyright permission. But sadly this doesn't seem to have been enough to survive Brexit and the UK government's mad intention to ditch 4,200 pieces of EU-derived legislation by the end of 2023, as a futile assertion of "sovereignty" -- and another sidelining of Parliament in giving Ministers the sole say in what gets kept or adapted, or ditched, and why. It's also a nightmare for civil servants who haven't a hope in hell even of finding out what's covered by the "sunsetting" date.
It was anyway very frustrating that to actually view any issues of SR on BL's website, you have to be a BL member or live in London. And I didn't qualify to be a member -- you need to be a researcher or involved in education -- and live in Brighton.
I hope you could put it up again somehow. Re viewing. That was partly why they were on my naughty step - they put off many potential 'readers' by making the application process and ways in so difficult. I had access through an Institution. When I enquired a few times I had to give evidence and multiple things with my address on. Very similar with Oxbridge colleges - we're often able to gain access rights as a local resident (town or gown).
I never know if I’m left or right , I do however know if I’m right or just plain mental ( sometimes !😂)
I honestly don’t know I agree with bits of both , not cocks in frocks obviously but politics confuses the nut out of me
They’re all corrupt , it just depends on the degree we accept
Enjoy Sturgeon falling flat on her arse but the silence from the Scottish Greens is deafening .
Patrick , Lorna and Mad Maggie - where are you ?
Maggie's off somewhere trying to find some chromosomes.
Graham, you can't wipe my letters off though 😂
Sharpie doesn't stick to metal very well.
Wonder how a certain actor is going to interpret this one as literal violence, like ribbons tied to a fence = noose somehow. I fully expect him to, I'm looking forward to the specific mental gymnastics.
We can save him and his fevered imagination the bother again and wasting police and court time, oh and the time of those he targets. These are clearly missiles and nasty projectiles, with nuclear material attached, and I bet there are razor blades hidden underneath and they will be potentially not likely in any way possible be being projected towards him in an attempt to genocide him. They will probably be spat at him, so that's biological warfare too. Save him! Save him!
Now I’m imagining wolverine ( not a bad thing 😂)
Ha ha :-). How did I not realise the supertastic element to this, sorry ribbon man, they are likely made of kryptonite too. Very likely, and will be projected from spidey strings at him. And probably by people from another time zone and era too. Space and time must terrify him.
He’s been awffy quiet lately ……
Never good imagining what he's up to. I suspect his 'campaigning' and 'raising awareness' and yet more attempts at court cases to silence others.
There's a aging AGP transvestite who works for the civil service near me For twenty years he has been rocking up to his job in goth girl fetish gear, I imagine largely unchallenged by his supervisorS. Outfits so OTT that a supervisor would be having a word about dress code he were actually female.
Today he was stood in the picket line in suffragette colours.
What is it with the civil service? And the line for women between sex-kitten who must be gagging for it and needs to be disciplined for being unprofessional, or an uptight frigid frump they wouldn't 'do' is a few mm of a skirt suit, collar or neckline height, heel height or length our hair is cut. Or how we laugh or smile. There must be a select area of Psychiatry devoted to how some people (let's say men) are able to have these delusions (let's say they identify as women and we term that AGP) then their particular sub-fetish or paraphilia is that they are women's rights activists as the full bloom and apogee of their florid fantasies. Who wear those suffragette colours. They appropriate everything, and every aspect of our lives as a costume, from used sanitary pads they fish out of bathroom bins, to womanface at work. The Colin one (who calls himself yeah yeah all his legal documents say Katy) also insists he's a feminist, not just female. They get the kudos wearing the cloak of fighting a genuine historical oppression which confuses others around them. I wonder what Az Hakeem would say?
We know they take the ideal version they want to be - the baby in a nappy, the sweet little girl, the coming of age pubertal girl, the porn star, the gagging for it, the vocal strong women's rights advocate who says no, the advocate against male violence against women and girls. Then they pick and choose how they role play that and further than those with that actual lived experience ever could.
I once represented the government at an event not so long ago where young women in tiny gold hot pants were striding around in between the mainly men in suits. So those were my options, serious woman who kept being approached for my technical knowledge to do trade deals, or floozy to attract men to another stall for who knows what. Some men confused the two.
IIRC civil servants were always encouraged to be open about their fetishes and any assorted hangups so that they couldn't be blackmailed by foreign powers. Basically so that if the Soviets threatened to expose them for being crossdressers, they could say "go ahead, everyone already knows". Not sure if that's still the case. I don't think it was ever encouraged for them to do it in the office though, that's new.
Yes, I believe this is still the case. I knew a few who discounted it then were pleasantly suprised how welcoming they were. When going through layers of onboarding or vetting you are encouraged to be honest and open which seems like a good thing to have with any employer. They are supposedly better at having people with protected characteristics to fully represent the people they serve and have changed the requirements about elements of your nationality so they aren't so restrictive about who thinks they can apply.
He may be good at his particular role but it's the complete hypocrisy that gets to me - like the 'Pippa' Bunce bloke in banking who wears stockings and what he clearly thinks is low cut rubber or PVC wimminy sexywear when he wins his awards for being the best part-time woman. There are so many of these men, loudly announced as brave rights activists, right at the heart of government, all departments and bodies like the CPS. All those cases about women in banking or services having to wear make up or heels and they swoop in and claim all those rights as 'women'.
All these civil service alphabet groups that wield power yet or because they pay lip service to equality and promote misogynist and homophobic attitudes.
LOVE THIS
#TervanTuppence
Perfect :D Especially given the slang meaning of tuppence...
With a dash of comeuppance in there too for handmaidens and the turn away hands-in-ears-and-over-eyes be nice brigade.
omg, i missed the double meaning. Tervan Queen's English!
yes, T fo trans uppance - the ideology that is, not the poor victims of it - Suffragette Penny, the maker, came up with the name TervanTuppence - perfect!
My mum's a coin collector. Lots of people are wanting to make their own now. 🔥
If I had a hammer! An iconic artifact and iconic image for the movement - bloody well done! And now this - perfect timing ! https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-gender-reform-activists-urged-29108416
I got told later about that. It's so funny. 😂💜
Thanks 💜
We demand change!
Please sign and share the UKGov petition - ‘Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” is biological sex’. Google ‘petition 623243’ to find it or look on the Sex Matters website.
Love this idea!
I'm after advice - do awards/posts created specially to encourage women into fields they are underrepresented in have to be open to 'anyone who identifies as a woman' now? I have queried one such and been told by the organisation that this was the law under the equality act of 2010, due to gender reassignment being a protected characteristic...