These stories too important not to be free, but if a subsciption you take, blessed will you be! Monday 11th July - Uncivil Servants THE TELEGRAPH: Civil service officials tried to derail Kemi Badenoch’s plans for single-sex toilets in public buildings.
"If the anti-trans agenda has SO much money and SO much support and is SO right, why haven’t they set up their own services? Way more simple than targeting inclusive services and organisations. Unless of course, your goal is not protecting women, but eradicating trans people."
First of all, and just as a general point, having "SO much money" and "SO much support" does not automatically connect with being "SO right" or indeed being right at all. Indeed, this has to be emphasised since it is clear that the Trans lobby have no shortage of money and support.
Second, this is not an "anti-trans" agenda but a service that is supposed to protect vulnerable women who have suffered male violence. Message to those waving the self-identified "trans" banner: Not everything is about you! And this certainly isn't!
Thirdly, this service to protect women should not have to "set up their own services". THEY ALREADY HAD THEIR OWN SERVICES WHICH HAVE BEEN UNDERMINED AND DESTROYED.
Fourthly, the objection to an alleged targeting of "inclusive services and organisations" and a concern with "not protecting women, but eradicating trans people" takes us away from that clearly defined category WOMEN and back to this vague vaporous TRANS.
Where is all this damn money? All the feminists and feminist allies supporting actual women and not men in womanface want to know, Fern, where is all the money?
"... high profile professional women who appear to have not one ounce of compassion or empathy for a woman who’s suffered the trauma of male violence ..." I would point out that one does not gain a high profile, at least in general, by demonstrating any compassion or empathy for anyone, just kissing the right ass which Fern is doing to the point that she is glued to someone's butt.
"It is not a feminist act to target a rape crisis centre for being trans inclusive. It is not a feminist act to sue a rape crisis centre for being trans inclusive. It is not a feminist act, IT IS NOT ABOUT PROTECTING WOMEN."
You don't have to go to 4 points. We only need point 3. Women only spaces and services exist. Trans people should be setting up their own spaces and services if they need them as "anti-trans" spaces are single sex spaces!!!
"Why haven't they [feminists] set up their own services?"
These WERE our own services - which we struggled for generations to set up, with very little money and very little support, only to have them stolen from us like this!
How many more generations will it take to get them back?
Too right except for the last line ... we will get em back within **this** generation. Keep faith in facts!!! EDIT - facts and commitment to actively resisting this harmful imposed undemocratic twaddle on basis compassion and reality.
As you so clearly state, women did this on their own and without government funding. I think women -- younger women with more energy than us old ones -- just have to get to work again and I never heard that it took generations once women decided shelters and rape crisis services were necessities. Much of what I am familiar with took place in a very short time in urban centers at least.
The more I read these horror stories, the more I notice the same word popping up over and over again - inclusion. I am actually becoming adverse to it now. For me it now means the opposite of what it used to mean. It stands for the exclusion of biological women. It's the word that is holding the civil service and so many other institutions, businesses and bodies to ransom too. Diversity and inclusion - all the stale, pale and male senior bosses are falling over themselves to tick that diversity and inclusion box and they either don't know or don't care who they are throwing under the bus to get their big fat D&I tick in the box. HR departments are completley complicit putting in place policies that favour anyone that ups their D&I points without thought to real sustainable change that includes everyone. It's why we have a womens network that has been renamed the women's inclusion network, because now anyone can join.
Exactly! I have come to abhor "inclusion" and "diversity." As you say, they mean the opposite of what they used to mean, and as soon as I hear the words on television or radio I know I'm going to be exposed to a stinking pile of crap.
It's like listening to a mantra most of the time. What is more I find the measures laughable - representation? Seriously? So they wheel out one of each (colour, gender, etc.) and then tick the D&I box and pat each other on the back for a job well done when all they have done is tick a box. That is not real sustainable change. That is, for example, giving someone a part in a film because of their D&I attributes and not because of their talent, which is what should matter regardless of their D&I attributes. All it does is pee people off and the people getting the part never know if it because they are good or becuase they were used to tick a box. I've been there. I have worked in male dominated places most of my life and was always accused of being the "token" woman despite the fact I was better than most of my colleagues adn what is more I had to work twice as hard to be seen as half as good. The system uses people and no-one wins. Least of all the people it is meant to protect, and in the case of services and spaces for women, women are the losers.
I love your image of wheeling out one of each; I can totally picture it!
I took worked in a trade which was male-dominated in NYC and loved it. I got paid decently and though the unions had fallen by the wayside -- mostly due to unions trying to hold onto a diminishing technology and not working at unionizing new workers -- we still followed union rules, such as being able to read the newspaper when there was no work. I learned so much about how to manage a work situation -- like you never ask for a raise, you tell the bosses they're going to give you a raise -- which I had wish I had known when I was younger.
I tend to get wary and bored when I hear those words, even when they clearly refer to other groups of people. I am and always will be a strong voice for combatting discrimination - inclusion and diversity have often come to mean abolishing all safeguards against discrimination and reducing the very people they are supposed to empower to the color of their skin, their sexuality or whatever else is fashionable to include. What you end up with is a few token members of whatever group out there on display as examples how diverse and inclusive a company is, and the rest is thrown under the bus - including other members of their group.
There is zero statistical evidence that "inclusivity" increases the job chances of ethnic or religious minorities - or others, for that matter - , or that it leads to higher average income for members of these groups. It leads to higher turnovers for the companies that have inclusivity programs - and that's for a reason. Because now all of a sudden their employees do not only sell their own labor. Now they sell their entire personalities, in the form of marketing tools for the company. And of course, they have to do so for free. Now, you are not an employee for just 40 hours a week, you are your company's property 24/7. All for the same price. That is total exploitation of the work force - cheered on by people who consider themselves "left" and "antifascist". Traitors to their class is what I call them. Renegades. Pure and simple.
And if we look at the antidiscrimination side of things: Now it's OK to ask people in job interviews whether they are gay, whether they want to have kids, what religion they have, what languages they speak at home, heck, some companies may even ask you about mental illnesses - don't we want to "include" "neurodiverse" people as well -, or what you like wearing at home. Throw in political opinion as well, while we're at it. It should be obvious to everyone that this will not help reduce discrimination. It just helps it get more intricate and even more profitable for businesses.
Likewise Chris. I couldn't agree more. All virtue signalling and box ticking and no real sustainable change. As you say, this is even more insidious as it's all smoke and mirrors and claims to be doing what it is not.
Oprah Winfrey is a perfect example of "See! you can succeed! Here's a black woman who's a billionaire!" I would add, from appealing to her core audience, white liberal women while she hung with the most vicious white Republicans. Janice Peck wrote a superb book about her, an icon for the neoliberal age.
I can't click on like, but I like this a lot. One reason I was never interested in a middle-class job is because I recognized decades ago that your labor is not enough, they want ALL of you. At the end of the workday I wanted to go home and leave work behind, and one can do that when one is skilled at a trade.
It horrifies me that job interviewers can ask those questions! No wonder we have a workforce that is increasingly incompetent. Some California university did a study years ago trying to figure out what percentage of workers were actually competent -- across industry and corporate lines -- and the end result was 10 percent.
Well, who's to stay she doesn't identify as neurodiverse and has some Celtic ancestors, which must surely classify her as a representative of oppressed ethnic minorities? Also, some relatively recent ancestor will have been a peasant or some such thing, so there we go: She is the perfect embodiment of all the victims of oppression in this world, and all working class people, especially women and members of minorities, be damned.
EDI now stands for Exclusion, Dicks and Inequality. You may not wish to hear 'Ms Sharon Le Grand' and his views on 'inclusivity'. This is how the Daily Mail put it:
"He was performing to a crowd at the free River Stage festival in South London when she started speaking about inclusivity.
The drag queen told the audience: ‘We need to teach our children to open their hearts, teach our children to open their minds... and to teach our children to open their legs.’"
I'm not sure how much more obvious this can be, or how many more bookings can be made with everyone involved doing their shocked faces. Parents who take their children to see these acts then act surprised leaves me really scratching my head.
Yeah, it does seem that's what EDI stands for. Where I work they have tellingly dropped the "E". Pride month really left me feeling amazed that some people still only see the "Love is love" banners and rhetoric and not the "kill terfs", "I punch terfs" or children should be taught to open their legs. The Pride scene has been infiltated and taken over by misogynists, AGP men and paedos. I have no idea how people can be shocked when they are literally parading this openly through the streets other than the ideology is being pedalled everwhere and the uninformed believe the hype over them being "the most marginalised people in the world" and think they're all like that funny Ru Paul on the TV. Humans usually don't wake up and bolt the stable door until after the horse has bolted. So far, women being raped in prisons and hospitals isn't enough to shake people awake and they do not seem to be joining the dots between the astronomical rise in teenaged girls become trans (and detransitioning), castration cults and all the other awful stuff becomeing normalised with queer and gender ideology. The media is completely cuplable - it is not their job to choose what they report and spin it., it is their job to report the facts but sadly they long ago forgot this (being owned by completely amoral people).
I know the feeling. I inwardly recoil when I see the updated Pride flag or the trans flag. When I see someone's pronouns proudly displayed I know to proceed with caution as they have been ideologically captured - either they are weak and going along with it (watch your step here), or they are a true believer (run!). I'm like you. I have been what is now termed "an ally" all my life. I still am to the LGB community. I still am to any transexuals with genuine dysphoria, but not to the cult members. I've always voted on issues and never been affiliate to a left or right side in politics, the issues are dictating how I vote now more than ever.
Yes anyone who uses 'left' to signal virtue tees me off - or use 'right' to vilify. We humans need to acknowledge our own tribalism before we accuse or assume 'the other side' of evil intentions without looking at the facts. Seen 'respected radfems' do this too. Why?
Fern Riddell forgets that FtM trans people are welcome in women's spaces because they are women and always will be no matter what hormones or surgery they get. So they can hardly be "eradicating trans people". As always, it seems that the only trans people worth talking about are males.
In one sense, it is exactly what I want to see, as painful as it is for the female that wasn't nominated.
Much like how 'Lia' came out-of the blocks too fast initially, it's rightly been highly visible.
Normally we see males so old and past-it, yet suddenly competitive when competing against females. Now even the wilfully blind cannot rationalise the advantages of male athletes.
What is it with services that don't apply the Equality Act 2010 or the Human Rights Act 1998 and think they should apply something written by Stonewall on the back of a cigarette packet? Then there are the women who sook up to the trans lobby. I so hope that they never find themselves having to seek out rape suppoemrt services and speak about their trauma with a self ided man in the room. If they do, it's too late to whinge!!
But it also feels like it's being ramped up. We were warned that things would get worse before they get better and this certainly seems to be. The Conservative Party Leadership Election has brought Self-ID into sharp focus in UK mainstream media and more and more people are seeing the reality of this evil ideology. I hope that the Tories face down this issue, ignoring the flounces of the fetishists and misogynists and that England finally becomes a guiding light of common sense.
I wouldn't count on it, there's a lot of pressure on the U.K. from external sources. A commenter on this blog could not seem to see any connection between men's sexual pecadilloes (transgenderism) and men's sexual pecadilloes (raping underage girls under the auspices of Jeffrey Epstein). I see these activities as closely connected and indicative of the world we live in and the world we will be living in, in which social norms of behavior will increasingly be labelled as outdated prudery.
While, it may be added, we also have new prudery showing up elsewhere. It is very contradictory, but ultimately it boils down to who has the better lobby. Surprise, surprise, most of the time it's men.
I am speaking about the West, actually. Queerfeminism in particularly has a tendency to be both prudish while also celebrating festishes. Which is very contradictory, but so is queerfeminism in general. There is that push for banning men from barring their chests in public spaces that allow sunbathing because women get stared at - or so they claim - when they go topless. (Of course they prefer not to say women but "people read as female".) Another thing is the easily raised accusation of sexual harassment in these circles - and here I really mean just these circles and these circles alone. Essentially, when a guy asks a woman out on a coffee (!) it must (!) be considered sexual harassment when she says so. We are not talking about a guy trying this for the umpteenth time, no, it's also the first time he does so, it need not be in a sleazy way, and even when it is just about not wanting to spend his coffee break alone or whatever. There need not be any difference in hierarchy, no professional dependency, in short: Context does not matter.
Hmmm. A number of us on Spinster don't particularly like being faced with half-dressed men; I guess we're prudes! Where I live one really doesn't want to see the men who think they look fine with no shirt on. I have no problem with bare chests at the beach, but really, in the grocery store? I do see you mention sunbathing so that is at the beach and not at the grocery store!
I've never heard of a woman claiming sexual harassment when a man asks her out politely. I worked in a male-dominated industry and had no problem handling men who suggested a little hanky-panky, but my intimidation factor was pretty high and that helped. You don't work in NYC and be tops at your job if you're a wimp.
Yes, it will end and all the damage that has been caused can start being assessed, but I think it's going to take a long time to fully comprehend the extent of the harm, and how people can best be helped. I also think the tide is noticeably turning, it's clear that nothing is going to be enough for the instigators and promotors of this inconsistent, abusive ideology. Once the fear is lost it's not going to come back, and no amount of grotesquely misogynistic gender identity ideologising, manipulation and threat will make it come back. They're aware of that, hence their desperation.
Oh, history also shows that fanatical religious ideologies may take a long time to collapse and can do a lot of damage doing so. Quite a bit more than transideology does, whose dangers I do not mean to downplay by that. And what it sometimes boils down to is fighting fire with fire, which just makes it all the worse.
"The woman suing claims this is about “women’s rights”. Women’s rights includes trans women’s rights."
because...
"Trans women are women."
Then why aren't they just called "women"?
"Trans men are men."
Then why aren't they just called "men"?
"Trans men" and "Trans women" are clearly NOT men and women!
"Non-binary people are people."
Indubitably. But what kind of "people"? People without gender? People without sex? Are such people possible?
"If she really cares this much about women’s rights she wouldn’t be suing a rape crisis centre."
"Women's rights" are not synonymous with a specific rape crisis centre.
But I don't think our Lauren is that bright really. "What doesn't kill you makes you weird at parties" says the photo at the head of her Twitter page. Gosh - how wacky in a self-congratulatingly "erudite" way! She/sheshe/shalala "has never worked for fox news" Ooh a proudly self-advertising "progressive"! (And I'm sure Fox News must be devastated!)
Well, I never worked for Fox News and never would, and I think my progressive and left credentials are strong enough so I don't have to advertise this to the world and that I feel no need to define myself by that fact. For the same reason I wouldn't hire the likes of Lauren Ingram. I think journalism is too serious and responsible a business to be left to religious right wing fanatics - a term that describes both Fox News and our beloved undereducated Lauren on an analytical level. Wokies and Fox News are just different shades of reactionary, and both perilously close to historical Fascism, each in their own way.
"Diversity Equity and Inclusion" ,have now become synonymous ,in my mind, with "Erasure of Women" ! Totally hate that term now and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary (that's piling up daily) ,the tras still double down on the "trans people are the most marginalised and vulnerable in society " bunkum. The opposite is true of course , they're running the world ,while women are being attacked in every conceivable way.😭🤮🤬.Never known such open misogyny in my whole life. They must've been hiding it well. As for the women who support them ,words fail me !! Thanks ,JL ,for the post ,depressing as it is.👍♥️🙏
These photos of middle-aged men grinning in their uniforms next to their teen-aged team-mates. How many of these do you have to see before you can accept that the emperor has no clothes?
"Dr" Fern Riddell:
"If the anti-trans agenda has SO much money and SO much support and is SO right, why haven’t they set up their own services? Way more simple than targeting inclusive services and organisations. Unless of course, your goal is not protecting women, but eradicating trans people."
First of all, and just as a general point, having "SO much money" and "SO much support" does not automatically connect with being "SO right" or indeed being right at all. Indeed, this has to be emphasised since it is clear that the Trans lobby have no shortage of money and support.
Second, this is not an "anti-trans" agenda but a service that is supposed to protect vulnerable women who have suffered male violence. Message to those waving the self-identified "trans" banner: Not everything is about you! And this certainly isn't!
Thirdly, this service to protect women should not have to "set up their own services". THEY ALREADY HAD THEIR OWN SERVICES WHICH HAVE BEEN UNDERMINED AND DESTROYED.
Fourthly, the objection to an alleged targeting of "inclusive services and organisations" and a concern with "not protecting women, but eradicating trans people" takes us away from that clearly defined category WOMEN and back to this vague vaporous TRANS.
Let trans have their own exclusive services. Stop wasting money on ideological cr*p.
"The only reason that person (man) would be in there was because they (he) had been raped"?!
WTF?
Gay men and boys are far more likely to be raped than straight men are, but you don't get them in women's rape crisis centres.
Does she know *nothing* about autogynephilia?! This example screams it!
I'm not a doctor, but I know what a pervert is! (apols to K-J Keen).
Where is all this damn money? All the feminists and feminist allies supporting actual women and not men in womanface want to know, Fern, where is all the money?
"... high profile professional women who appear to have not one ounce of compassion or empathy for a woman who’s suffered the trauma of male violence ..." I would point out that one does not gain a high profile, at least in general, by demonstrating any compassion or empathy for anyone, just kissing the right ass which Fern is doing to the point that she is glued to someone's butt.
A fascinating further tweet from our estimable "doctor":
https://twitter.com/FernRiddell/status/1541707420585857024
(emphasis added)
"It is not a feminist act to target a rape crisis centre for being trans inclusive. It is not a feminist act to sue a rape crisis centre for being trans inclusive. It is not a feminist act, IT IS NOT ABOUT PROTECTING WOMEN."
Indeed it is not. Indeed it is the reverse.
You don't have to go to 4 points. We only need point 3. Women only spaces and services exist. Trans people should be setting up their own spaces and services if they need them as "anti-trans" spaces are single sex spaces!!!
"Why haven't they [feminists] set up their own services?"
These WERE our own services - which we struggled for generations to set up, with very little money and very little support, only to have them stolen from us like this!
How many more generations will it take to get them back?
Too right except for the last line ... we will get em back within **this** generation. Keep faith in facts!!! EDIT - facts and commitment to actively resisting this harmful imposed undemocratic twaddle on basis compassion and reality.
As you so clearly state, women did this on their own and without government funding. I think women -- younger women with more energy than us old ones -- just have to get to work again and I never heard that it took generations once women decided shelters and rape crisis services were necessities. Much of what I am familiar with took place in a very short time in urban centers at least.
The more I read these horror stories, the more I notice the same word popping up over and over again - inclusion. I am actually becoming adverse to it now. For me it now means the opposite of what it used to mean. It stands for the exclusion of biological women. It's the word that is holding the civil service and so many other institutions, businesses and bodies to ransom too. Diversity and inclusion - all the stale, pale and male senior bosses are falling over themselves to tick that diversity and inclusion box and they either don't know or don't care who they are throwing under the bus to get their big fat D&I tick in the box. HR departments are completley complicit putting in place policies that favour anyone that ups their D&I points without thought to real sustainable change that includes everyone. It's why we have a womens network that has been renamed the women's inclusion network, because now anyone can join.
Exactly! I have come to abhor "inclusion" and "diversity." As you say, they mean the opposite of what they used to mean, and as soon as I hear the words on television or radio I know I'm going to be exposed to a stinking pile of crap.
It's like listening to a mantra most of the time. What is more I find the measures laughable - representation? Seriously? So they wheel out one of each (colour, gender, etc.) and then tick the D&I box and pat each other on the back for a job well done when all they have done is tick a box. That is not real sustainable change. That is, for example, giving someone a part in a film because of their D&I attributes and not because of their talent, which is what should matter regardless of their D&I attributes. All it does is pee people off and the people getting the part never know if it because they are good or becuase they were used to tick a box. I've been there. I have worked in male dominated places most of my life and was always accused of being the "token" woman despite the fact I was better than most of my colleagues adn what is more I had to work twice as hard to be seen as half as good. The system uses people and no-one wins. Least of all the people it is meant to protect, and in the case of services and spaces for women, women are the losers.
I love your image of wheeling out one of each; I can totally picture it!
I took worked in a trade which was male-dominated in NYC and loved it. I got paid decently and though the unions had fallen by the wayside -- mostly due to unions trying to hold onto a diminishing technology and not working at unionizing new workers -- we still followed union rules, such as being able to read the newspaper when there was no work. I learned so much about how to manage a work situation -- like you never ask for a raise, you tell the bosses they're going to give you a raise -- which I had wish I had known when I was younger.
Yeah, I wish I'd have known what I do now in my twenties!
I tend to get wary and bored when I hear those words, even when they clearly refer to other groups of people. I am and always will be a strong voice for combatting discrimination - inclusion and diversity have often come to mean abolishing all safeguards against discrimination and reducing the very people they are supposed to empower to the color of their skin, their sexuality or whatever else is fashionable to include. What you end up with is a few token members of whatever group out there on display as examples how diverse and inclusive a company is, and the rest is thrown under the bus - including other members of their group.
There is zero statistical evidence that "inclusivity" increases the job chances of ethnic or religious minorities - or others, for that matter - , or that it leads to higher average income for members of these groups. It leads to higher turnovers for the companies that have inclusivity programs - and that's for a reason. Because now all of a sudden their employees do not only sell their own labor. Now they sell their entire personalities, in the form of marketing tools for the company. And of course, they have to do so for free. Now, you are not an employee for just 40 hours a week, you are your company's property 24/7. All for the same price. That is total exploitation of the work force - cheered on by people who consider themselves "left" and "antifascist". Traitors to their class is what I call them. Renegades. Pure and simple.
And if we look at the antidiscrimination side of things: Now it's OK to ask people in job interviews whether they are gay, whether they want to have kids, what religion they have, what languages they speak at home, heck, some companies may even ask you about mental illnesses - don't we want to "include" "neurodiverse" people as well -, or what you like wearing at home. Throw in political opinion as well, while we're at it. It should be obvious to everyone that this will not help reduce discrimination. It just helps it get more intricate and even more profitable for businesses.
Likewise Chris. I couldn't agree more. All virtue signalling and box ticking and no real sustainable change. As you say, this is even more insidious as it's all smoke and mirrors and claims to be doing what it is not.
Oprah Winfrey is a perfect example of "See! you can succeed! Here's a black woman who's a billionaire!" I would add, from appealing to her core audience, white liberal women while she hung with the most vicious white Republicans. Janice Peck wrote a superb book about her, an icon for the neoliberal age.
I can't click on like, but I like this a lot. One reason I was never interested in a middle-class job is because I recognized decades ago that your labor is not enough, they want ALL of you. At the end of the workday I wanted to go home and leave work behind, and one can do that when one is skilled at a trade.
It horrifies me that job interviewers can ask those questions! No wonder we have a workforce that is increasingly incompetent. Some California university did a study years ago trying to figure out what percentage of workers were actually competent -- across industry and corporate lines -- and the end result was 10 percent.
Well, who's to stay she doesn't identify as neurodiverse and has some Celtic ancestors, which must surely classify her as a representative of oppressed ethnic minorities? Also, some relatively recent ancestor will have been a peasant or some such thing, so there we go: She is the perfect embodiment of all the victims of oppression in this world, and all working class people, especially women and members of minorities, be damned.
That sounds oh so familiar.
EDI now stands for Exclusion, Dicks and Inequality. You may not wish to hear 'Ms Sharon Le Grand' and his views on 'inclusivity'. This is how the Daily Mail put it:
"He was performing to a crowd at the free River Stage festival in South London when she started speaking about inclusivity.
The drag queen told the audience: ‘We need to teach our children to open their hearts, teach our children to open their minds... and to teach our children to open their legs.’"
I'm not sure how much more obvious this can be, or how many more bookings can be made with everyone involved doing their shocked faces. Parents who take their children to see these acts then act surprised leaves me really scratching my head.
Yeah, it does seem that's what EDI stands for. Where I work they have tellingly dropped the "E". Pride month really left me feeling amazed that some people still only see the "Love is love" banners and rhetoric and not the "kill terfs", "I punch terfs" or children should be taught to open their legs. The Pride scene has been infiltated and taken over by misogynists, AGP men and paedos. I have no idea how people can be shocked when they are literally parading this openly through the streets other than the ideology is being pedalled everwhere and the uninformed believe the hype over them being "the most marginalised people in the world" and think they're all like that funny Ru Paul on the TV. Humans usually don't wake up and bolt the stable door until after the horse has bolted. So far, women being raped in prisons and hospitals isn't enough to shake people awake and they do not seem to be joining the dots between the astronomical rise in teenaged girls become trans (and detransitioning), castration cults and all the other awful stuff becomeing normalised with queer and gender ideology. The media is completely cuplable - it is not their job to choose what they report and spin it., it is their job to report the facts but sadly they long ago forgot this (being owned by completely amoral people).
I know the feeling. I inwardly recoil when I see the updated Pride flag or the trans flag. When I see someone's pronouns proudly displayed I know to proceed with caution as they have been ideologically captured - either they are weak and going along with it (watch your step here), or they are a true believer (run!). I'm like you. I have been what is now termed "an ally" all my life. I still am to the LGB community. I still am to any transexuals with genuine dysphoria, but not to the cult members. I've always voted on issues and never been affiliate to a left or right side in politics, the issues are dictating how I vote now more than ever.
Yes anyone who uses 'left' to signal virtue tees me off - or use 'right' to vilify. We humans need to acknowledge our own tribalism before we accuse or assume 'the other side' of evil intentions without looking at the facts. Seen 'respected radfems' do this too. Why?
Fern Riddell forgets that FtM trans people are welcome in women's spaces because they are women and always will be no matter what hormones or surgery they get. So they can hardly be "eradicating trans people". As always, it seems that the only trans people worth talking about are males.
NCAA making a male their Woman of the year is a special kinda stupid.
In one sense, it is exactly what I want to see, as painful as it is for the female that wasn't nominated.
Much like how 'Lia' came out-of the blocks too fast initially, it's rightly been highly visible.
Normally we see males so old and past-it, yet suddenly competitive when competing against females. Now even the wilfully blind cannot rationalise the advantages of male athletes.
No, it's not stupid. It is intentional. It is malice through cowardice.
What is it with services that don't apply the Equality Act 2010 or the Human Rights Act 1998 and think they should apply something written by Stonewall on the back of a cigarette packet? Then there are the women who sook up to the trans lobby. I so hope that they never find themselves having to seek out rape suppoemrt services and speak about their trauma with a self ided man in the room. If they do, it's too late to whinge!!
Gawd. Make it stop.
Feels like it's never going to end
I know, VN. But it will. The pendulum is swinging back. Keep the faith!
But it also feels like it's being ramped up. We were warned that things would get worse before they get better and this certainly seems to be. The Conservative Party Leadership Election has brought Self-ID into sharp focus in UK mainstream media and more and more people are seeing the reality of this evil ideology. I hope that the Tories face down this issue, ignoring the flounces of the fetishists and misogynists and that England finally becomes a guiding light of common sense.
I wouldn't count on it, there's a lot of pressure on the U.K. from external sources. A commenter on this blog could not seem to see any connection between men's sexual pecadilloes (transgenderism) and men's sexual pecadilloes (raping underage girls under the auspices of Jeffrey Epstein). I see these activities as closely connected and indicative of the world we live in and the world we will be living in, in which social norms of behavior will increasingly be labelled as outdated prudery.
While, it may be added, we also have new prudery showing up elsewhere. It is very contradictory, but ultimately it boils down to who has the better lobby. Surprise, surprise, most of the time it's men.
Do you think some of that prudery is due to the West's poor example of so-called "liberation"? or are you speaking about the West?
I am speaking about the West, actually. Queerfeminism in particularly has a tendency to be both prudish while also celebrating festishes. Which is very contradictory, but so is queerfeminism in general. There is that push for banning men from barring their chests in public spaces that allow sunbathing because women get stared at - or so they claim - when they go topless. (Of course they prefer not to say women but "people read as female".) Another thing is the easily raised accusation of sexual harassment in these circles - and here I really mean just these circles and these circles alone. Essentially, when a guy asks a woman out on a coffee (!) it must (!) be considered sexual harassment when she says so. We are not talking about a guy trying this for the umpteenth time, no, it's also the first time he does so, it need not be in a sleazy way, and even when it is just about not wanting to spend his coffee break alone or whatever. There need not be any difference in hierarchy, no professional dependency, in short: Context does not matter.
Hmmm. A number of us on Spinster don't particularly like being faced with half-dressed men; I guess we're prudes! Where I live one really doesn't want to see the men who think they look fine with no shirt on. I have no problem with bare chests at the beach, but really, in the grocery store? I do see you mention sunbathing so that is at the beach and not at the grocery store!
I've never heard of a woman claiming sexual harassment when a man asks her out politely. I worked in a male-dominated industry and had no problem handling men who suggested a little hanky-panky, but my intimidation factor was pretty high and that helped. You don't work in NYC and be tops at your job if you're a wimp.
'Prudery' is a whole long topic in itself ..... !
It will end. History shows how these ideologies eventually implode in on themselves. There will be a massive backlash - I feel the tide turning
Yes, it will end and all the damage that has been caused can start being assessed, but I think it's going to take a long time to fully comprehend the extent of the harm, and how people can best be helped. I also think the tide is noticeably turning, it's clear that nothing is going to be enough for the instigators and promotors of this inconsistent, abusive ideology. Once the fear is lost it's not going to come back, and no amount of grotesquely misogynistic gender identity ideologising, manipulation and threat will make it come back. They're aware of that, hence their desperation.
Oh, history also shows that fanatical religious ideologies may take a long time to collapse and can do a lot of damage doing so. Quite a bit more than transideology does, whose dangers I do not mean to downplay by that. And what it sometimes boils down to is fighting fire with fire, which just makes it all the worse.
I hope we can avoid that this time.
Truly "the forever of the dentist's chair" (as a poem that I wrote back in my 20s put it).
Lauren Ingram:
"The woman suing claims this is about “women’s rights”. Women’s rights includes trans women’s rights."
because...
"Trans women are women."
Then why aren't they just called "women"?
"Trans men are men."
Then why aren't they just called "men"?
"Trans men" and "Trans women" are clearly NOT men and women!
"Non-binary people are people."
Indubitably. But what kind of "people"? People without gender? People without sex? Are such people possible?
"If she really cares this much about women’s rights she wouldn’t be suing a rape crisis centre."
"Women's rights" are not synonymous with a specific rape crisis centre.
But I don't think our Lauren is that bright really. "What doesn't kill you makes you weird at parties" says the photo at the head of her Twitter page. Gosh - how wacky in a self-congratulatingly "erudite" way! She/sheshe/shalala "has never worked for fox news" Ooh a proudly self-advertising "progressive"! (And I'm sure Fox News must be devastated!)
Well, I never worked for Fox News and never would, and I think my progressive and left credentials are strong enough so I don't have to advertise this to the world and that I feel no need to define myself by that fact. For the same reason I wouldn't hire the likes of Lauren Ingram. I think journalism is too serious and responsible a business to be left to religious right wing fanatics - a term that describes both Fox News and our beloved undereducated Lauren on an analytical level. Wokies and Fox News are just different shades of reactionary, and both perilously close to historical Fascism, each in their own way.
"Diversity Equity and Inclusion" ,have now become synonymous ,in my mind, with "Erasure of Women" ! Totally hate that term now and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary (that's piling up daily) ,the tras still double down on the "trans people are the most marginalised and vulnerable in society " bunkum. The opposite is true of course , they're running the world ,while women are being attacked in every conceivable way.😭🤮🤬.Never known such open misogyny in my whole life. They must've been hiding it well. As for the women who support them ,words fail me !! Thanks ,JL ,for the post ,depressing as it is.👍♥️🙏
These photos of middle-aged men grinning in their uniforms next to their teen-aged team-mates. How many of these do you have to see before you can accept that the emperor has no clothes?