Here’s a tweet by Jonathan Powles, Vice-Principal and PVC Learning, Teaching and Students at@UniWestScotland (He/him) that provides horrifying insight into the casually reckless attitude of trans rights proponents.
Is there anything more terrifying for a woman than to be sexually violated by a man impersonating as a woman? It’s the stuff of nightmares. And yet society is letting this happen to children. Children! All in the name of, hmmm, how does Jonathan Powles (he of the he/him pronoun brigade) put it? Oh yeah — why obsess over an “implausible” “possibility” to the “exclusion” of “compassionate” and “inclusive” LGBT "gender rights”. Whatever the hell those are. These are all his own publicly proclaimed blah blah blah words, may he choke on them. Soon, please. And all those well-platformed and complicit big names, who continue to socially uphold and approve this inhumane insanity? They need to be held accountable. Soon, please.
I do wonder how many men just don't realise (lots certainly don't care) how much male sexual micro-aggression forms the background girls' and women's lives. Starting at around the age of 12
the daily grind of cat calls, casual sexual comments, comments from passing strangers about our bodies, never mind being groped and outright assaulted. These are not things that happen once in a lifetime to one percent women. No, they are the backdrop to the lives of nearly all women.
So please tell me Mr He/Him, why it's 'implausible' that these same men would never dream of invading women's spaces to further assault and terrify us?
I hate to say it, for me it was about 8 or 9 and it's not micro-aggressions or from boys my own age. I knew what 'kerb crawling' was at that age as I walked home from school alone. That's older and adult men leering and catcalling and groping if they get near enough a girl in school uniform. That's somehow fair game. This is the reality for many and generation after generation and most of us know it. It still seems to come as a shock to many men, and then only when they become fathers.
Yes I know it is often much younger than 12, but I read somewhere that is the typical age for this shit to start. And it is indeed from adult men, sometimes the fathers of friends. I think I meant micro-aggressions in terms of it being judged against the whole panoply of horrendous behaviour towards women: I'd just returned home from a vigil for a murdered pregnant woman. No, when you're 12 and some man has made sexual comments to you, comments which you scarcely understand, then wishing to stay at home under the bedclothes & never venture outside again is devastating.
I agree Anne, I wasn't trying to be deliberately oppositional or correct you. Apologies if I came across as such. When things are part of the woodwork and accepted norms it's hard to start to say how the hell was it ever acceptable, at what ages, who decided and why are we still putting up with it. It was reading what you wrote that made me think. That flash of fear to protect younger relatives meshing with my own experiences and wishing someone had stopped it happening to me at those ages. I once walked behind our ten year old girl and then watched the men walking past checking her out one summer. Lovely lithe legs and little girl shorts, yet I saw their eyes slide to check her out. Give the smiles and the no, after you street flirting. She laughed and smiled completely unaware and thinking those men were friendly and nice. I wanted to scream 'she's TEN! STOP IT! STOP UNDRESSING HER WITH YOUR EYES! STOP FLIRTING! STOP SEXUALISING HER!'. Then it was whether and how I warned her to sit in a different way in case someone looked up her skirt or saw her behaviours as sexualised. My heart sank that I was working out at what age I should start (was it too late, am I culpable for that etc). That grooming gangs still operate despite decades of faux outrage and lessons must be learntism shows we have to keep looking at the whys. She should be able to sit freely and confidently - it's not up to us to change our behaviour it's up to the boundary breakers to stop their spectrum of abuse.
I am realising more and more that this whole area is under reported, researched or linked together and that's again part of it all. What we don't 'officially' 'know' or 'see' is there we can't hope to address. That it's not or wasn't seen as a serious priority reflects the lack of belief or desire to address and stop it.
I didn't think you were being oppositional at all! Please don't think that, no apology needed. It's a minefield and we all have our different experiences although there is so much commonality. I know what you mean about watching men checking out very young girls. Years ago, when I was in my mid thirties, I was with a group of people, mainly men, and I was aware that one of them had a look on his face that I recognised but it confused me for a few seconds. It was a look I was used to seeing on men's faces when they interacted with me (not always, of course, but often enough). Then I saw this look and the flirty behaviour was being directed to my then 12 year old daughter. What to do? Nothing had actually happened. If we talk to our daughters they might think they've done something wrong. Are we on a losing fight with this?
Oh they realised soon enough and it's funny what a look to warn off can do. Or me speeding up to stand close to her. It's weird being a secret security detail but no one was getting near her while I had breath in my body :-)
Yes I know it is often much younger than 12, but I read somewhere that is the typical age for this shit to start. And it is indeed from adult men, sometimes the fathers of friends. I think I meant micro-aggressions in terms of it being judged against the whole panoply of horrendous behaviour towards women: I'd just returned home from a vigil for a murdered pregnant woman. No, when you're 12 and some man has made sexual comments to you, comments which you scarcely understand, then wishing to stay at home under the bedclothes & never venture outside again is devastating.
'Fathers of friends' got me thinking. We need to have these conversations.
There was a little girl at a wedding making goo goo eyes at my (new) partner. He was joking along, teasing her back and making others feel a little uncomfortable. He'd done this 'friendly flirting banter' to a few women at the wedding - our age and in our 30s. But this? I was aghast at her full on flirting (she actually stood in front of me, nudged me out of the way and ignored me completely) and his what appeared flirting back and forth and quite so openly in front of me. He professed innocence but went red. But didn't stop himself. He then went on and on about her. He went on about 'how she'd ahem er grown, hasn't she grown'. I asked if he meant her budding breasts and how she kept standing inappropriately very close and flicking her hair and almost wiggling, holding eye contact with him, touching his arm, commenting on his muscles (!) telling him how gorgeous and tall he was and that he smelled so manly (!?). It was a sight to see but it made me deeply uncomfortable and he was eventually getting evils from most of us (men and women). He was literally preening. I tried to talk to him on the way home, as he apparently had 'no idea' what was happening and what it looked like. It was almost as if in the two summers since he'd last seen her she'd gone from girl to woman (at 12) and boy was she practising her flirting skills on him. It was classic. I was dumbfounded at how like putty in her hands he was. Later found out they were struggling with her overly sexualised behaviours and it was a very difficult series of conversations. He didn't see the harm in it.
At another wedding as we were all sat around a fire in the wee small hours he kept asking another of his friend's daughters if she really was 'only' 16, oh you look much much older etc, and if she had a boyfriend 'yet'. What type she 'goes for'. Urgh. Same old same old. She was young, sweet and incredibly pretty. He couldn't see what a sad pervy old man he was. And how offensive that was to me and her. He didn't see any harm in this type of 'showing interest', but the other dads didn't act like this. I tried to steer the conversation away and I pointed out (after, so as not to make her uncomfortable) he wasn't 16 himself any longer and it was just creepy inappropriate behaviour. She was backing away, trying to deflect and change subject and the dynamic was awful. (We're no longer together).
Glad to hear you're no longer together. And any girl who is engaging in this behavior has either been sexualized in her home or taught that the behavior is okay.
Trouble is the mobile phones and laptops are in their bedroom and school bags and it's in all our homes and blasted out everywhere. Even if you can keep it mostly out of your own home you need to have the conversations. Their friends will talk about it at school. There are 'queer allies clubs'. When there are people online grooming and teachers wanting to teach 'what your sexual preference' is with five year olds or those wanting a bus pass we've gone collectively nuts. That's not safeguarding it's grooming. Looking at you Jonathan Powles.
My daughter was subjected to sex based violence at her school aged 6 including a minor sexual assault. She was attacked by a pack of boys in her class and the year above and endured being punched, kicked, dragged off playground equipment, her head was smashed on the ground leaving her concussed, her glasses were smashed and her clothing ripped. 3 to 4 times a week for 3 months. She was called a bitch and had her bottom grabbed repeatedly by one of them. I attended 20 safeguarding meetings at her school where the headmaster was so rude to me I had to call our penultimate meeting to a halt as he was play banging his head on the desk and sat with his back to me whilst I was explaining that my daughter had been attacked again. I had to ask a client of mine, the financial director of Dulux to come to our next meeting to ensure the head acted in a civil manner to me. Our doctor wrote to the school twice as my child had started bedwetting, stopped eating and was having stress induced stomach cramps so bad the hospital consultant checked her appendix. Trans ideology is gender based violence rapped up in tinsel. Jonathan Piles (sic) is stating that women's lives are expendable to male lies. Sounds like every other domestic abuser I have ever known.
That was gut-wrenching to read but thank you. My sister moved their family out of one area (out of the country) which I thought was a little drastic. Her reasoning? Partly after a series of pupil on pupil rapes and sexual assaults at the lower school they were supposed to send my niece to. Then the other school in the catchment. This really is too real and is happening too much (at all). Hope you and your daughter are recovering and living your lives to the full.
I'll remember your tinsel phrase - brilliantly put.
No, her dad is a domestic abuser who I left when she was 3 to make sure she grew up free from domestic abuse. He stopped all contact between me and her 2.7 years ago, aided by a family court judge who refused all facts on his history of domestic abuse. She now says that me reporting his violence was child abuse ... the denial of truth is what is so striking between domestic abuse and trans ideology. I have complained to every ombudsman and the Mayor's office on policing is reviewing my case but it has been a harrowing experience. There are so many parallels between lying about biological sex and sex based violence and how many men support these abuses and so few men like Graham and Seb Potter that will actually break rank. They are gems amongst swine.
Bullies and predators always recognize the vulnerable. Your daughter's and your suffering from her father explains why she was picked out for this extreme level of violence. I too had a very violent home when I was a kid and of course, I was the one the bullies preyed upon. So I can very much relate to that and hope your daughter gets over it as she gets older. You are totally right, trans ideology very much is the same thing. Those who push it for their own ends prey on the vulnerable. Be it that they ensnare kids and teenagers, be it that they do everything to normalize the crossing of personal boundaries up to sexual assault with their emotional blackmail.
They went after her because she stood up to them. They were trying to segregate the play equipment on sex based exclusion, saying boys are better than girls and girls cant go on the climbing frame etc and she told them they couldn't do that. They then came after her as a group. The teachers covered for them so they got worse and worse. At one point I was going in almost every day, complaining to governors, filing official complaints, reporting to police, NSPCC, council, children's services - none of them would go anywhere near acknowledging sex based bullying. They even put her in a special needs class. Luckily we were offered a new place at another school. Her dad was complicit too. Now he's isolated her completely.
I am so sorry your daughter endured this. I was bullied at school and it was tolerated by the teachers there so I know the harm it does. I am also sorry you were treated with such little regard and respect by that head. They should lose their job. That was shocking and childish behaviour on his part and he has no business being in charge of children.
Im sorry for your experience too. The headmaster was supported by my ex who is a domestic abuser so it was a toxic situation. He has now witheld contact between me and my daughter for 2.7 years for reporting his domestic abuse. I'm not sure how she's doing as she doesn't reply to my texts/letters/gifts but I think that is through fear of him and the fact that every agency is supporting him. She is also confused as to what material reality is due to the whole gender id bullshit and thinks that there are multiple versions of reality. Gender id is really screwing with young people's mental health by confusing perspective with material fact.
That's just awful Vicki. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine who had an abusive ex. Whe she left him he theatened to take her kids and he did - by turning them against her and making out to them that she abused him. I am so sorry about your daughter. Genderwoo really is screwing with kids minds and the adults that are complicit should be thoroughly ashamed.
Yes, this is happening all the time in family court. When this becomes public, its going to make Jimmy Saville look like a saint. Multiple judges awarding custody to child sex abusers, rapists, batterers.
No, she told me straight off. The teachers, deputy and headmaster covered for the boys, as did her dad. I did multiple safeguarding meetings and then realised that none of the staff were taking the violence seriously. It then took me a while to get Lambeth Council to get her another school.
Where I live we supposedly have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying at school. However. After watching caseworkers who were obviously scared of violent parents whose children were at risk, I began to think that school staff are also scared of the bullies and their families, explaining why they often do so little to protect children who are being bullied. I worked with a woman who lived in a small town in Maine who slept with a gun under her pillow because there was a whole family of bullies there whom the police would do nothing about. I think this is what we get with masculinist culture, a lot of cowardice and a tolerance for bullying.
Jonathan Powles appears to be a very stupid man, making pronouncements about an issue he knows nothing about. But I am finding this more and more true of academics: My nephew, a professor of chemical engineering, constantly pooh-poohs things I tell him I heard (and then a day or two later, what I told him is a major story in the New York Times). I watched a program about sinkholes and the climatologist said when she first heard of a huge sinkhole in Siberia, she assumed it was a made-up story. Why would anyone assume this when they haven't been to Siberia to see the sinkhole? My brother-in-law was a nuclear physicist and when my mother asked him about black holes he told her it was nonsense.
These people keep their brains in boxes and the boxes don't allow in information they are not comfortable with. Rather than remaining open to new info, putting it in their memory file for later reference, they just immediately dismiss other people's experiences, concerns, and thoughts. And this is what makes people STUPID.
I've been thinking this over and realized that academics have rare contact with anyone other than their fellow academics and all-too-frequently brain-dead youngsters. This leads them to believe they know everything and are superior to us regular mortals. I've always been aware of the concept of the ivory tower, but it appears to have intensified in recent decades.
Women's rights are compassionate and inclusive of L rights. Let men fight for compassionate G rights. B and T rights are included in the rights of the sex they belong to. Not the sex they are comfortable saying they belong to.
Although I'm not even sure that most Ts are very comfortable saying they belong to the other sex. It takes them considerable effort to make themselves believe it, and this is why they are so aggressive.
Just one thing: When I think L rights are in danger, I'll fight for them just the same as I'll do for G rights. That should be a matter of common sense. But naturally, women's rights organisations will support L rights more, as they are just a part of the whole thing and you can't fight all fights all the time.
"Although it's implausible." Why is it that gender identity campaigners (of either sex, frankly) find it so easy to identify WITH female-identifying males, and, yet, are so disinterested in identifying WITH vulnerable girls and women whose formerly sex-segregated spaces, services, and arenas of accomplishment are so under threat from these same males.
Because they are borderline sociopaths with little empathy for anyone except themselves -- and we don't want to think about what they get up to -- and men such as Powles do not believe women are fully human and deserving of safety and security.
Don't rock the boat appears very deeply engrained. If you find yourself thrown overboard not rocking the boat is hardly a concern any longer. But being crowed over and told not to rock the boat from those still sat snugly inside and looking the other way is head wrecking. Then your main concern is trying to get to another boat as quickly as you can, conserving your energy and ideally finding dry land.
It’s one thing to know about many of these cases, and another to see them collected like this. Truly horrifying. Utterly sickening that so many have washed their hands of defending the right of women and children to safety because to do so would be “transphobic”.
Completely agree, and I'm getting so fed up of the term "transphobic" being banded about. On twitter when people are challenged about it, noone can even say what anyone has said that IS transphobic. Deafening silence. It seems that disagreeing on anything is transphobic.
And tbh I'm starting to think even being a woman is seen as transphobic. Sounds mad but I can't think how else to put it.
It's exactly that and not mad at all. Being one and saying anything at all to do with women, women's lives, stats about women, the lot, it's all so offensively 'transphobic'. And nine times out of ten it's men being so offended and therefore to 'stand up for their rights' they need to scream that we don't believe they exist and we are hateful bigots and transphobes.
I totally agree. I have read that childbirth is transphobic and that vagina is a transphobic word ,so yeah being born female is the worst crime you can commit ,because it hurts the feelings of " trans" people and makes them feel " unsafe " !!
It’s the women turning their backs on women, that is the worst, but then I’m a Terf, a transphobe and a bigot, and what ever other names they want to throw my way. I’m also a realist, and that will never change.
Of course, this is great and important work. It's just if all those "trans allies" weren't so blissfully and willfully ignorant and undereducated, it wouldn't take this list. Sexual predators have disguised themselves as women to gain access to victims - or to confuse them - for ever since there have been records about sexual violence. So, OK, technically one might say that they don't pose as transwomen but as actual women, but to everybody a sexual predator and a "trans women" just look the same, i.e. as a man dressing as a woman.
"What is a woman?" Has been a vital question in defending women's rights. I think "what is safeguarding?" is equally important in challenging those standing for "men's rights" because many completely fail to grasp that men who aren't a threat support safeguarding. Men who oppose it will always be suspect.
Thanks for pointing that out: should be obvious but sadly it's not. Worth saying at every opportunity, to emphasise that stating women will always be at risk from SOME men doesn't mean they are at risk from ALL men: an important distinction to make, given men's tendency to close ranks and defend other men whatever they are accused of. And men who pose a threat do not go around wearing badges to announce it. The offending behaviour even of a minority of men is what creates the need for protection for women from all men, however inconvenient it might be for non-offenders: and decent men recognise and accept this.
It's so dismissive, isn't it? Males attack females and we are socialised in a way to protect ourselves. Whenever something happens, it's always more advice to females about how to look after ourselves better.
The sports issue has gone on and on about MtF still having the strength and advantages of male puberty, if they even transition at all.
The prison issue has highlighted that the rate of offending is still the same.
The AGP issue has highlighted some serious reasons not to let MtF people in female places.
Put that all together and think why are you advocating for this? It's just the same as letting any other males in. It seriously is!
There is nothing implausible about a male sexual predator assuming a trans identity in order to gain access to female spaces. There is nothing remotely implausible or unusual about men like this making exceptional efforts to get close to the objects of their desire. Claiming to be trans is a comparatively simple strategy, it doesn't involve training in order to enter a specific profession, for example. Powles clearly has no understanding of this kind of behaviour or how strongly motivated sexual predators are.
He can't even consider let alone accept women's legitimate concerns, not only are they not legitimate, they are obsessive and discriminatory. Preventing women from creating and protecting their own spaces and boundaries means we have been forced into hypervigilence regarding who enters them. This is a situation that absolutely should not exist.
Marie Le Conte has aptly described herself as a vulgarian and with that attitude, it fits. It must feel great to throw women and children under the bus to further one's own cause. I would like to reply to Powles and Le Conte's callous and thoughtless remarks:
Women do not obsess about tran people per se, they are extremely worried that their very safety and that of their children is being given away to anyone who claims that they are a woman to gain access to those spaces for whatever means and that includes sexual predation. It is a known fact that men (not all) can be a threat to women and children but we cannot know which ones by just looking at them - this article has but a smaple of those that are out there. The boundaries cannot be blurred to allow some men in as it lets all men in. Those that are not sexual predators and value the safety of women will always stay out of womens spaces, but there are so many that will use it as an opportunity to fulfill their own fetish or to prey on women and children. It removes the right of women to challenge men in their spaces, it removes the right of women to dignity and safety and to belittle such legimate concerns as an "obsession" is beneath contempt.
Mr Powles can't imagine how women feel because he is not a woman. He has never walked home in the dark and been worried about someone walking behind them. He has never been on a tube and had a man rub his crotch against him. He has never had his body remarked on casually by other men as if you are not there. He has never had his arse, breasts or crotch grabbed by a stranger in a pub. He has never been sexually violated by someone he trusted. He should keep his mouth shut until he can show a little compassion for women and Marie Le Conte should know better.
The issue of men abusing self ID to gain access to women's spaces for nefarious purposes is utterly beside the point. The point is that you can't have women's spaces if any man, 'trans' or 'cis', can gain access without question just by saying they're a women.
I haven't seen all of the comments by Powles, as he had me blocked from very early on in his rampage against women's, safety, so I'm relying on screenshot. However, it seems that he is either too unobservant to be in the position he is, or too callous. This oddly romanticised version of men that says some will go to any lengths to get access to girls and women just doesn't hold up. Even without going to a list of the worst cases, he must have known the teenage boys in his classes that would climb ladders, drill holes in shower-room walls, set cameras in changing rooms, to see girls in a state of undress. He must have known the undergraduates that would not take "No" for an answer, get doubles instead of singles at the bar, let their hands "wander" at concerts to get what they thought the "deserved" from young women. He must know the post-graduate teaching assistants who use tutorials to identify young women, often away from home for the first time, who will appreciate some "extra tutoring". He must know the established lecturers and professors that take impressionable new PhD students "under their wing". He has, whether he acknowledges it or not, known men who gave done, and are still doing, this. Some males will do absolutely anything to get to the objects of their sexual desires. They'll spend years becoming priests, counsellors, social workers, doctors and nurses - or university lecturers.
The University of the West of Scotland urgently needs to investigate Powles' for his comments, because he is bringing the organisation into disrepute.
There are crimes, from the smallest infringements, like non payment of a fine, to 1st degree murder. Barring actual rape, by law in the UK, a penis is involved, and every abomination in between, are all committed by women.
Fact.
I know we are capable of committing the most appalling crimes, to other women, men, children and animals. I acknowledge this, everyone acknowledges this, but, being a TRA or a trans woman, or a trans man, reality just evaporates. They seem incapable of considering that rape and assaults ever, or rarely occur, and if, it might happen, it’s rare. Proof is ignored, excuses are made, and denial that the ‘most vulnerable’ among us, would ever do such a terrible thing.
This blinkered and naive attitude, is not only dangerous for women and girls, but eventually, dangerous for those perpetrators, regardless of their identity. The more people become aware, that selfID is being used, I fear any tolerance may soon disappear very quickly.
Stats are useful here: like (in the UK) 99% of sex offenders are male, 90% of victims are female. And nearly 50% of trans-identified male prisoners are convicted sex offenders.
That compares with 3.3% of female prisoners who are convicted sex offenders: of the tiny number of all female prisoners compared with a massive number of men.
So an opinion on "plausibility", based on ignorance and lack of concern, is an acceptable substitute for disagreeable facts?
It sounds very much like the fantasy world of benign high society transsexuals with gender reassignment surgery, who have lived as women for 30 or 40 years, that motivated so many men in the House of Lords to vote down an amendment to the Police, Crime etc Bill for excluding men -- as trans-identified males -- from single-sex women's prisons.
Ignorance rules. And closing ranks to protect and privilege men seen as potential "victims" of other violent men trumps women's rights to protection as actual victims of domestic violence by men.
The thing is he was admitted to one shelter where he sexually assaulted a resident and rather than calling the police the shelter transferred him to another shelter where he immediately sexually assaulted another resident.
Seems to me the shelter cared more about trans people than their victims.
I’m sorry to bring the subject down to base level, but one reason I don’t hear much about is the hygiene aspect. Male bodies pee differently to us ( no shit) which is why urinals were invented, they do it standing up.
Now, I’m fully aware women can trash a loo well and good by the end of a heavy night’s partying ( why is there always 1 person who stuffs 5 rolls of tissue down the bog?) but men’s loos are even worse, and personally, I don’t want to have to sit or stand in someone’s piss cos they can’t aim it in the bowl straight or know how to put the seat down when they’ve finished. Loos are separated by sex for a reason.
Is there anything more terrifying for a woman than to be sexually violated by a man impersonating as a woman? It’s the stuff of nightmares. And yet society is letting this happen to children. Children! All in the name of, hmmm, how does Jonathan Powles (he of the he/him pronoun brigade) put it? Oh yeah — why obsess over an “implausible” “possibility” to the “exclusion” of “compassionate” and “inclusive” LGBT "gender rights”. Whatever the hell those are. These are all his own publicly proclaimed blah blah blah words, may he choke on them. Soon, please. And all those well-platformed and complicit big names, who continue to socially uphold and approve this inhumane insanity? They need to be held accountable. Soon, please.
I do wonder how many men just don't realise (lots certainly don't care) how much male sexual micro-aggression forms the background girls' and women's lives. Starting at around the age of 12
the daily grind of cat calls, casual sexual comments, comments from passing strangers about our bodies, never mind being groped and outright assaulted. These are not things that happen once in a lifetime to one percent women. No, they are the backdrop to the lives of nearly all women.
So please tell me Mr He/Him, why it's 'implausible' that these same men would never dream of invading women's spaces to further assault and terrify us?
I hate to say it, for me it was about 8 or 9 and it's not micro-aggressions or from boys my own age. I knew what 'kerb crawling' was at that age as I walked home from school alone. That's older and adult men leering and catcalling and groping if they get near enough a girl in school uniform. That's somehow fair game. This is the reality for many and generation after generation and most of us know it. It still seems to come as a shock to many men, and then only when they become fathers.
Yes I know it is often much younger than 12, but I read somewhere that is the typical age for this shit to start. And it is indeed from adult men, sometimes the fathers of friends. I think I meant micro-aggressions in terms of it being judged against the whole panoply of horrendous behaviour towards women: I'd just returned home from a vigil for a murdered pregnant woman. No, when you're 12 and some man has made sexual comments to you, comments which you scarcely understand, then wishing to stay at home under the bedclothes & never venture outside again is devastating.
I agree Anne, I wasn't trying to be deliberately oppositional or correct you. Apologies if I came across as such. When things are part of the woodwork and accepted norms it's hard to start to say how the hell was it ever acceptable, at what ages, who decided and why are we still putting up with it. It was reading what you wrote that made me think. That flash of fear to protect younger relatives meshing with my own experiences and wishing someone had stopped it happening to me at those ages. I once walked behind our ten year old girl and then watched the men walking past checking her out one summer. Lovely lithe legs and little girl shorts, yet I saw their eyes slide to check her out. Give the smiles and the no, after you street flirting. She laughed and smiled completely unaware and thinking those men were friendly and nice. I wanted to scream 'she's TEN! STOP IT! STOP UNDRESSING HER WITH YOUR EYES! STOP FLIRTING! STOP SEXUALISING HER!'. Then it was whether and how I warned her to sit in a different way in case someone looked up her skirt or saw her behaviours as sexualised. My heart sank that I was working out at what age I should start (was it too late, am I culpable for that etc). That grooming gangs still operate despite decades of faux outrage and lessons must be learntism shows we have to keep looking at the whys. She should be able to sit freely and confidently - it's not up to us to change our behaviour it's up to the boundary breakers to stop their spectrum of abuse.
I am realising more and more that this whole area is under reported, researched or linked together and that's again part of it all. What we don't 'officially' 'know' or 'see' is there we can't hope to address. That it's not or wasn't seen as a serious priority reflects the lack of belief or desire to address and stop it.
I didn't think you were being oppositional at all! Please don't think that, no apology needed. It's a minefield and we all have our different experiences although there is so much commonality. I know what you mean about watching men checking out very young girls. Years ago, when I was in my mid thirties, I was with a group of people, mainly men, and I was aware that one of them had a look on his face that I recognised but it confused me for a few seconds. It was a look I was used to seeing on men's faces when they interacted with me (not always, of course, but often enough). Then I saw this look and the flirty behaviour was being directed to my then 12 year old daughter. What to do? Nothing had actually happened. If we talk to our daughters they might think they've done something wrong. Are we on a losing fight with this?
If this had happened to me when I was a child, I hate to think what my fierce, protective mother would have done.
Oh they realised soon enough and it's funny what a look to warn off can do. Or me speeding up to stand close to her. It's weird being a secret security detail but no one was getting near her while I had breath in my body :-)
Yes I know it is often much younger than 12, but I read somewhere that is the typical age for this shit to start. And it is indeed from adult men, sometimes the fathers of friends. I think I meant micro-aggressions in terms of it being judged against the whole panoply of horrendous behaviour towards women: I'd just returned home from a vigil for a murdered pregnant woman. No, when you're 12 and some man has made sexual comments to you, comments which you scarcely understand, then wishing to stay at home under the bedclothes & never venture outside again is devastating.
'Fathers of friends' got me thinking. We need to have these conversations.
There was a little girl at a wedding making goo goo eyes at my (new) partner. He was joking along, teasing her back and making others feel a little uncomfortable. He'd done this 'friendly flirting banter' to a few women at the wedding - our age and in our 30s. But this? I was aghast at her full on flirting (she actually stood in front of me, nudged me out of the way and ignored me completely) and his what appeared flirting back and forth and quite so openly in front of me. He professed innocence but went red. But didn't stop himself. He then went on and on about her. He went on about 'how she'd ahem er grown, hasn't she grown'. I asked if he meant her budding breasts and how she kept standing inappropriately very close and flicking her hair and almost wiggling, holding eye contact with him, touching his arm, commenting on his muscles (!) telling him how gorgeous and tall he was and that he smelled so manly (!?). It was a sight to see but it made me deeply uncomfortable and he was eventually getting evils from most of us (men and women). He was literally preening. I tried to talk to him on the way home, as he apparently had 'no idea' what was happening and what it looked like. It was almost as if in the two summers since he'd last seen her she'd gone from girl to woman (at 12) and boy was she practising her flirting skills on him. It was classic. I was dumbfounded at how like putty in her hands he was. Later found out they were struggling with her overly sexualised behaviours and it was a very difficult series of conversations. He didn't see the harm in it.
At another wedding as we were all sat around a fire in the wee small hours he kept asking another of his friend's daughters if she really was 'only' 16, oh you look much much older etc, and if she had a boyfriend 'yet'. What type she 'goes for'. Urgh. Same old same old. She was young, sweet and incredibly pretty. He couldn't see what a sad pervy old man he was. And how offensive that was to me and her. He didn't see any harm in this type of 'showing interest', but the other dads didn't act like this. I tried to steer the conversation away and I pointed out (after, so as not to make her uncomfortable) he wasn't 16 himself any longer and it was just creepy inappropriate behaviour. She was backing away, trying to deflect and change subject and the dynamic was awful. (We're no longer together).
Glad to hear you're no longer together. And any girl who is engaging in this behavior has either been sexualized in her home or taught that the behavior is okay.
Trouble is the mobile phones and laptops are in their bedroom and school bags and it's in all our homes and blasted out everywhere. Even if you can keep it mostly out of your own home you need to have the conversations. Their friends will talk about it at school. There are 'queer allies clubs'. When there are people online grooming and teachers wanting to teach 'what your sexual preference' is with five year olds or those wanting a bus pass we've gone collectively nuts. That's not safeguarding it's grooming. Looking at you Jonathan Powles.
My daughter was subjected to sex based violence at her school aged 6 including a minor sexual assault. She was attacked by a pack of boys in her class and the year above and endured being punched, kicked, dragged off playground equipment, her head was smashed on the ground leaving her concussed, her glasses were smashed and her clothing ripped. 3 to 4 times a week for 3 months. She was called a bitch and had her bottom grabbed repeatedly by one of them. I attended 20 safeguarding meetings at her school where the headmaster was so rude to me I had to call our penultimate meeting to a halt as he was play banging his head on the desk and sat with his back to me whilst I was explaining that my daughter had been attacked again. I had to ask a client of mine, the financial director of Dulux to come to our next meeting to ensure the head acted in a civil manner to me. Our doctor wrote to the school twice as my child had started bedwetting, stopped eating and was having stress induced stomach cramps so bad the hospital consultant checked her appendix. Trans ideology is gender based violence rapped up in tinsel. Jonathan Piles (sic) is stating that women's lives are expendable to male lies. Sounds like every other domestic abuser I have ever known.
all love to your dear daughter!
Thank you Nancy xx
That was gut-wrenching to read but thank you. My sister moved their family out of one area (out of the country) which I thought was a little drastic. Her reasoning? Partly after a series of pupil on pupil rapes and sexual assaults at the lower school they were supposed to send my niece to. Then the other school in the catchment. This really is too real and is happening too much (at all). Hope you and your daughter are recovering and living your lives to the full.
I'll remember your tinsel phrase - brilliantly put.
That is just dreadful. So shocking. I do hope your daughter is OK. What is it with men like that headteacher? He should be removed from his post.
No, her dad is a domestic abuser who I left when she was 3 to make sure she grew up free from domestic abuse. He stopped all contact between me and her 2.7 years ago, aided by a family court judge who refused all facts on his history of domestic abuse. She now says that me reporting his violence was child abuse ... the denial of truth is what is so striking between domestic abuse and trans ideology. I have complained to every ombudsman and the Mayor's office on policing is reviewing my case but it has been a harrowing experience. There are so many parallels between lying about biological sex and sex based violence and how many men support these abuses and so few men like Graham and Seb Potter that will actually break rank. They are gems amongst swine.
Bullies and predators always recognize the vulnerable. Your daughter's and your suffering from her father explains why she was picked out for this extreme level of violence. I too had a very violent home when I was a kid and of course, I was the one the bullies preyed upon. So I can very much relate to that and hope your daughter gets over it as she gets older. You are totally right, trans ideology very much is the same thing. Those who push it for their own ends prey on the vulnerable. Be it that they ensnare kids and teenagers, be it that they do everything to normalize the crossing of personal boundaries up to sexual assault with their emotional blackmail.
They went after her because she stood up to them. They were trying to segregate the play equipment on sex based exclusion, saying boys are better than girls and girls cant go on the climbing frame etc and she told them they couldn't do that. They then came after her as a group. The teachers covered for them so they got worse and worse. At one point I was going in almost every day, complaining to governors, filing official complaints, reporting to police, NSPCC, council, children's services - none of them would go anywhere near acknowledging sex based bullying. They even put her in a special needs class. Luckily we were offered a new place at another school. Her dad was complicit too. Now he's isolated her completely.
I am so sorry your daughter endured this. I was bullied at school and it was tolerated by the teachers there so I know the harm it does. I am also sorry you were treated with such little regard and respect by that head. They should lose their job. That was shocking and childish behaviour on his part and he has no business being in charge of children.
Im sorry for your experience too. The headmaster was supported by my ex who is a domestic abuser so it was a toxic situation. He has now witheld contact between me and my daughter for 2.7 years for reporting his domestic abuse. I'm not sure how she's doing as she doesn't reply to my texts/letters/gifts but I think that is through fear of him and the fact that every agency is supporting him. She is also confused as to what material reality is due to the whole gender id bullshit and thinks that there are multiple versions of reality. Gender id is really screwing with young people's mental health by confusing perspective with material fact.
Sending you my warmest wishes, courage and hope Vicki x
That's just awful Vicki. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine who had an abusive ex. Whe she left him he theatened to take her kids and he did - by turning them against her and making out to them that she abused him. I am so sorry about your daughter. Genderwoo really is screwing with kids minds and the adults that are complicit should be thoroughly ashamed.
Yes, this is happening all the time in family court. When this becomes public, its going to make Jimmy Saville look like a saint. Multiple judges awarding custody to child sex abusers, rapists, batterers.
How did this go on for three months? Was your daughter scared to tell you?
No, she told me straight off. The teachers, deputy and headmaster covered for the boys, as did her dad. I did multiple safeguarding meetings and then realised that none of the staff were taking the violence seriously. It then took me a while to get Lambeth Council to get her another school.
Where I live we supposedly have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying at school. However. After watching caseworkers who were obviously scared of violent parents whose children were at risk, I began to think that school staff are also scared of the bullies and their families, explaining why they often do so little to protect children who are being bullied. I worked with a woman who lived in a small town in Maine who slept with a gun under her pillow because there was a whole family of bullies there whom the police would do nothing about. I think this is what we get with masculinist culture, a lot of cowardice and a tolerance for bullying.
Jonathan Powles appears to be a very stupid man, making pronouncements about an issue he knows nothing about. But I am finding this more and more true of academics: My nephew, a professor of chemical engineering, constantly pooh-poohs things I tell him I heard (and then a day or two later, what I told him is a major story in the New York Times). I watched a program about sinkholes and the climatologist said when she first heard of a huge sinkhole in Siberia, she assumed it was a made-up story. Why would anyone assume this when they haven't been to Siberia to see the sinkhole? My brother-in-law was a nuclear physicist and when my mother asked him about black holes he told her it was nonsense.
These people keep their brains in boxes and the boxes don't allow in information they are not comfortable with. Rather than remaining open to new info, putting it in their memory file for later reference, they just immediately dismiss other people's experiences, concerns, and thoughts. And this is what makes people STUPID.
I've been thinking this over and realized that academics have rare contact with anyone other than their fellow academics and all-too-frequently brain-dead youngsters. This leads them to believe they know everything and are superior to us regular mortals. I've always been aware of the concept of the ivory tower, but it appears to have intensified in recent decades.
Women's rights are compassionate and inclusive of L rights. Let men fight for compassionate G rights. B and T rights are included in the rights of the sex they belong to. Not the sex they are comfortable saying they belong to.
Although I'm not even sure that most Ts are very comfortable saying they belong to the other sex. It takes them considerable effort to make themselves believe it, and this is why they are so aggressive.
Just one thing: When I think L rights are in danger, I'll fight for them just the same as I'll do for G rights. That should be a matter of common sense. But naturally, women's rights organisations will support L rights more, as they are just a part of the whole thing and you can't fight all fights all the time.
"Although it's implausible." Why is it that gender identity campaigners (of either sex, frankly) find it so easy to identify WITH female-identifying males, and, yet, are so disinterested in identifying WITH vulnerable girls and women whose formerly sex-segregated spaces, services, and arenas of accomplishment are so under threat from these same males.
Because they are borderline sociopaths with little empathy for anyone except themselves -- and we don't want to think about what they get up to -- and men such as Powles do not believe women are fully human and deserving of safety and security.
For the men it's straight-up misogyny and for the women it's social conditioning to put male interests ahead of their own.
Don't rock the boat appears very deeply engrained. If you find yourself thrown overboard not rocking the boat is hardly a concern any longer. But being crowed over and told not to rock the boat from those still sat snugly inside and looking the other way is head wrecking. Then your main concern is trying to get to another boat as quickly as you can, conserving your energy and ideally finding dry land.
Very good point !
Because they know they are men.
It’s one thing to know about many of these cases, and another to see them collected like this. Truly horrifying. Utterly sickening that so many have washed their hands of defending the right of women and children to safety because to do so would be “transphobic”.
Completely agree, and I'm getting so fed up of the term "transphobic" being banded about. On twitter when people are challenged about it, noone can even say what anyone has said that IS transphobic. Deafening silence. It seems that disagreeing on anything is transphobic.
And tbh I'm starting to think even being a woman is seen as transphobic. Sounds mad but I can't think how else to put it.
It's exactly that and not mad at all. Being one and saying anything at all to do with women, women's lives, stats about women, the lot, it's all so offensively 'transphobic'. And nine times out of ten it's men being so offended and therefore to 'stand up for their rights' they need to scream that we don't believe they exist and we are hateful bigots and transphobes.
I totally agree. I have read that childbirth is transphobic and that vagina is a transphobic word ,so yeah being born female is the worst crime you can commit ,because it hurts the feelings of " trans" people and makes them feel " unsafe " !!
It’s the women turning their backs on women, that is the worst, but then I’m a Terf, a transphobe and a bigot, and what ever other names they want to throw my way. I’m also a realist, and that will never change.
Me too. A proud TERF👍
👍
Of course, this is great and important work. It's just if all those "trans allies" weren't so blissfully and willfully ignorant and undereducated, it wouldn't take this list. Sexual predators have disguised themselves as women to gain access to victims - or to confuse them - for ever since there have been records about sexual violence. So, OK, technically one might say that they don't pose as transwomen but as actual women, but to everybody a sexual predator and a "trans women" just look the same, i.e. as a man dressing as a woman.
"What is a woman?" Has been a vital question in defending women's rights. I think "what is safeguarding?" is equally important in challenging those standing for "men's rights" because many completely fail to grasp that men who aren't a threat support safeguarding. Men who oppose it will always be suspect.
Thanks for pointing that out: should be obvious but sadly it's not. Worth saying at every opportunity, to emphasise that stating women will always be at risk from SOME men doesn't mean they are at risk from ALL men: an important distinction to make, given men's tendency to close ranks and defend other men whatever they are accused of. And men who pose a threat do not go around wearing badges to announce it. The offending behaviour even of a minority of men is what creates the need for protection for women from all men, however inconvenient it might be for non-offenders: and decent men recognise and accept this.
It's so dismissive, isn't it? Males attack females and we are socialised in a way to protect ourselves. Whenever something happens, it's always more advice to females about how to look after ourselves better.
The sports issue has gone on and on about MtF still having the strength and advantages of male puberty, if they even transition at all.
The prison issue has highlighted that the rate of offending is still the same.
The AGP issue has highlighted some serious reasons not to let MtF people in female places.
Put that all together and think why are you advocating for this? It's just the same as letting any other males in. It seriously is!
So annoyed!
There is nothing implausible about a male sexual predator assuming a trans identity in order to gain access to female spaces. There is nothing remotely implausible or unusual about men like this making exceptional efforts to get close to the objects of their desire. Claiming to be trans is a comparatively simple strategy, it doesn't involve training in order to enter a specific profession, for example. Powles clearly has no understanding of this kind of behaviour or how strongly motivated sexual predators are.
He can't even consider let alone accept women's legitimate concerns, not only are they not legitimate, they are obsessive and discriminatory. Preventing women from creating and protecting their own spaces and boundaries means we have been forced into hypervigilence regarding who enters them. This is a situation that absolutely should not exist.
It's a horrifying list
If it was a list of priests the Boston Globe would dedicate a team to exposing it.
Marie Le Conte has aptly described herself as a vulgarian and with that attitude, it fits. It must feel great to throw women and children under the bus to further one's own cause. I would like to reply to Powles and Le Conte's callous and thoughtless remarks:
Women do not obsess about tran people per se, they are extremely worried that their very safety and that of their children is being given away to anyone who claims that they are a woman to gain access to those spaces for whatever means and that includes sexual predation. It is a known fact that men (not all) can be a threat to women and children but we cannot know which ones by just looking at them - this article has but a smaple of those that are out there. The boundaries cannot be blurred to allow some men in as it lets all men in. Those that are not sexual predators and value the safety of women will always stay out of womens spaces, but there are so many that will use it as an opportunity to fulfill their own fetish or to prey on women and children. It removes the right of women to challenge men in their spaces, it removes the right of women to dignity and safety and to belittle such legimate concerns as an "obsession" is beneath contempt.
Mr Powles can't imagine how women feel because he is not a woman. He has never walked home in the dark and been worried about someone walking behind them. He has never been on a tube and had a man rub his crotch against him. He has never had his body remarked on casually by other men as if you are not there. He has never had his arse, breasts or crotch grabbed by a stranger in a pub. He has never been sexually violated by someone he trusted. He should keep his mouth shut until he can show a little compassion for women and Marie Le Conte should know better.
The issue of men abusing self ID to gain access to women's spaces for nefarious purposes is utterly beside the point. The point is that you can't have women's spaces if any man, 'trans' or 'cis', can gain access without question just by saying they're a women.
I haven't seen all of the comments by Powles, as he had me blocked from very early on in his rampage against women's, safety, so I'm relying on screenshot. However, it seems that he is either too unobservant to be in the position he is, or too callous. This oddly romanticised version of men that says some will go to any lengths to get access to girls and women just doesn't hold up. Even without going to a list of the worst cases, he must have known the teenage boys in his classes that would climb ladders, drill holes in shower-room walls, set cameras in changing rooms, to see girls in a state of undress. He must have known the undergraduates that would not take "No" for an answer, get doubles instead of singles at the bar, let their hands "wander" at concerts to get what they thought the "deserved" from young women. He must know the post-graduate teaching assistants who use tutorials to identify young women, often away from home for the first time, who will appreciate some "extra tutoring". He must know the established lecturers and professors that take impressionable new PhD students "under their wing". He has, whether he acknowledges it or not, known men who gave done, and are still doing, this. Some males will do absolutely anything to get to the objects of their sexual desires. They'll spend years becoming priests, counsellors, social workers, doctors and nurses - or university lecturers.
The University of the West of Scotland urgently needs to investigate Powles' for his comments, because he is bringing the organisation into disrepute.
How dare he.
There are crimes, from the smallest infringements, like non payment of a fine, to 1st degree murder. Barring actual rape, by law in the UK, a penis is involved, and every abomination in between, are all committed by women.
Fact.
I know we are capable of committing the most appalling crimes, to other women, men, children and animals. I acknowledge this, everyone acknowledges this, but, being a TRA or a trans woman, or a trans man, reality just evaporates. They seem incapable of considering that rape and assaults ever, or rarely occur, and if, it might happen, it’s rare. Proof is ignored, excuses are made, and denial that the ‘most vulnerable’ among us, would ever do such a terrible thing.
This blinkered and naive attitude, is not only dangerous for women and girls, but eventually, dangerous for those perpetrators, regardless of their identity. The more people become aware, that selfID is being used, I fear any tolerance may soon disappear very quickly.
Stats are useful here: like (in the UK) 99% of sex offenders are male, 90% of victims are female. And nearly 50% of trans-identified male prisoners are convicted sex offenders.
That compares with 3.3% of female prisoners who are convicted sex offenders: of the tiny number of all female prisoners compared with a massive number of men.
So an opinion on "plausibility", based on ignorance and lack of concern, is an acceptable substitute for disagreeable facts?
It sounds very much like the fantasy world of benign high society transsexuals with gender reassignment surgery, who have lived as women for 30 or 40 years, that motivated so many men in the House of Lords to vote down an amendment to the Police, Crime etc Bill for excluding men -- as trans-identified males -- from single-sex women's prisons.
Ignorance rules. And closing ranks to protect and privilege men seen as potential "victims" of other violent men trumps women's rights to protection as actual victims of domestic violence by men.
Patriarchy rules.
photo wall of depravity, sickness, and violence against women and girls.
Re: Hambrook.
The thing is he was admitted to one shelter where he sexually assaulted a resident and rather than calling the police the shelter transferred him to another shelter where he immediately sexually assaulted another resident.
Seems to me the shelter cared more about trans people than their victims.
I’m sorry to bring the subject down to base level, but one reason I don’t hear much about is the hygiene aspect. Male bodies pee differently to us ( no shit) which is why urinals were invented, they do it standing up.
Now, I’m fully aware women can trash a loo well and good by the end of a heavy night’s partying ( why is there always 1 person who stuffs 5 rolls of tissue down the bog?) but men’s loos are even worse, and personally, I don’t want to have to sit or stand in someone’s piss cos they can’t aim it in the bowl straight or know how to put the seat down when they’ve finished. Loos are separated by sex for a reason.