The 'your problem is with predatory men and NOT trans women!' and other mic-drops which leave us TERFs feeling silly

*For evidence challenging this narrative, please see The Rich Fantasy Self ID Endangers Women & How Can We Teach Our Children To Defend Themselves?

Somewhere, online, a conversation has begun over self id, gender neutral toilets or changing rooms or trans women in women's prisons and refuges. Have a look, you will find one happening now, which sounds almost exactly like this;

🙎‍♀️A woman, probably - 'I'm not against anyone living how they want to; I don't want to add to any oppression trans people face. I just don't think it's ok to open the doors to women's spaces, on the self identification of males. Because it is males who endanger us all'

🏳️‍🌈Gender ideologue - 'So, you think trans women are men? Do you have any idea how bigoted and out of date that is?'

🙎‍♀️Woman - 'No, no! I don't call transwomen men, I just...'

🏳️‍🌈Gen Id - 'Have a primary kid's understanding of biology*? Don't know that brain scans of trans and cis women's match*? Don't understand that gender isnt the sa...'

🙎‍♀️Woman, a little more tense - 'No, don't misrepresent me, please. This is a complex subject'

🏳️‍🌈Gen Id - 'Not really. Trans women are women'

(Let's pause here, for a moment. Go have a look at some online interactions. Check the level of hostility. Look at who is strawmanning who. Observe who seems to have room for doubt, and who has all the answers in snappy slogans - which even if they can't explain themselves, they're sure to have an article which can, and a study from somewhere they claim to have read and understood)

(*The brain scan and biology nonsense will have to wait for another day)

🙎‍♀️Woman - 'What I'm saying is, how do we know? How can I tell who is potentially a danger?'

🏳️‍🌈Gen Id - 'Do you think that signs on doors stop rapists? Maybe every door should say 'please don't rape', and no one would be we'd live in a safe society!'

🙎‍♀️Woman - 'No but there's are reasons we have different toilets, and safety is one, isn't it?'

🏳️‍🌈Gen Id - 'Do you have a man's toilet and a woman's toilet at home, or is it used by everyone?'

🙎‍♀️Woman (increasingly irritated) - 'I know who is in my house, I control who comes in and just one person a time uses it. I feel like allowing anyone to walk in is dangerous, and these things have happened to people before..' 

🏳️‍🌈GI - 'No! They haven't! What HAS happened is trans women getting beaten up and raped in men's toilets. But thats ok with you?'

🙎‍♀️W - 'Of course it's not, I just feel like it makes women's spaces meaningless if anyone who feels like it can walk in, whichever sex. I feel like men will abuse it and ...'

🏳️‍🌈Gen Id - 'Your problem is with predatory men, NOT TRANS WOMEN!'

BOOM. At this stage you'll probably find a deluge of love and care reacts have landed on Gen Id's comment. A meme, maybe about TERFs, has appeared. Likely the conversation has stopped. That may be because progress looks unlikely, which is true.

And yet, Charlie, men have given up their whole lives to become priests, teachers, scout leaders, coaches, to access victims. And having an accounting / business / finance degree is no testament to good intention, not to mention you definitely don't need to put in four years to self identify. Men lie about their identity to trick people ALL THE TIME. Ted Bundy used to have his arm in a sling and manipulate women with a story he was too incapacitated to load groceries into the back of his truck. Good god, listen to yourselves

It's genuinely difficult to stand up against this barrage of pre-scripted replies and a person who finds a way of glossing over or avoiding every point. Who has had ample experience of picking through your words to select anything that could be misconstrued, to derail you. 

This is a 'debate' that is dress rehearsed hundreds of times a day, and those who have seen a few might well feel uncomfortable in running the risk of being seen as unkind, being painted into a corner and ridiculed as hysterical. The onus is always on the woman to prove she is not acting out of hate. And she cannot win it; they will find a way to portray her as hateful. They will ridicule her, accuse her of using dog whistles, or they will reply with insults and an instant block.

It's a bizarrely powerful expectation that we, as women, are to be the kind ones, the ones who should be moved to compassion and sharing. To kiss every scraped knee. The tropes that run against 'bad' women are older than the hills.

Difficult women, who convey their abject misery by being mean, spiteful, frigid, uptight or by happily putting it about but not to all. The Witch, the Bitch and the Whore.

Worthless, old, cruel and always in the fucking way. Past it and obsessed with genitals, with other people's sex lives like a slut shaming voyeur.

'Sex positive feminism' - where, luckily, all the punters are accommodated.

This is especially potent if you have any leaning toward socialism or an eye on social justice. The idea that you, uppity bitch, are hoarding your privilege and denying dignity and safety to this tiny, vulnerable, victimised community is sometimes too much to bear.

'TERF' - that word which centres women as the prime aggressor and oppressor of trans people - it's often used as synonymous with white supremacy, isn't it? It's the vindictive white woman who falsely accuses black boys of rape, smiling as their nooses are hitched up the tree.

It's all of the stigmas above. It's colonialism, apparently, enforcing strict gender roles on innocent, peaceful native folk who had more understanding of the gendered soul. It's leaving Rosa Parks to bloody well stand up at the back of the bus and even driving a gay son to suicide.

In many ways, it's even worse; it's hatred of men.

Because, if we look beyond sound bites, it's a well worn and familiar characterisation, but it's not logical. 'TERFs' are often lesbians, including those who really go out of their way to hurt men - by refusing any penis, even it identifies otherwise.

The liberal feminism of corporate America is fun. It might be a pain in the arse sometimes, but it also takes it up the arse, which clearly makes all the difference.

The corporate feminism of 'sex work is real work', that keeps itself busy 'liberating' women and girls*. Women and girls who may be escorting a man to that business dinner and then up to his hotel room, or dancing in a g-string while they have drinks: but, there's probably another woman there who's on the board, which is feminism! 

The brave 'sex work is real work' right-on good persons, who don't personally want to do it, but 'won't judge those who do!' Who say 'you go girl!' and 'fuck SWERFs' with wide eyed excitement.

(*Those girls, who are also often the poorest. Who normally first start while still in their teens, often become addicts and are extremely likely to have been abused in childhood and adulthood. Who is paying exorbitant fees to a business which is probably male run, or perhaps to a brothel owner who sells themselves as a progressive, keeping women safe. Often, it's a boyfriend. A boyfriend who couldn't possibly cope with all the inherent liberation of bending over and thinking of equality on instruction)

This capitalist repackaging that prides itself in equality by pasting BLM frames on profile pictures, rainbow flags and Pride events, but doesn't like to talk about period huts, child marriage or FGM. Which should, FYI, be just 'Genital Mutilation'. Because not every vulva belongs to a woman (see here for the abuse FGM survivors receive from trans activists) It also tends to incubate in the young as self-declared anti-fascism, as communism or (and sometimes also) anarchy. Cos that's a fairly easy state to achieve, while maintaining equality... And it looks so radical and edgy.

I'm sure it stands up against some racism, the sexism of some adverts or excesses of particular movie producers. But would it be ok, good even, if the actresses were paid, not just bribed into putting out? Is there actually a difference? And its reach beyond capitalist systems? These, I would argue, are minimal. They take our words and spaces, they sell them back to us as better, more accessible and generic.

Building a hierarchy of individuals is fine if it's upside down. It's iconoclastic! Refreshing, huh?! 

The fact that trans people in the U.K. are more likely to be convicted of murder than be the victim of it; That the murder rate of trans people in America is, according to Wilfred Riley at Kentucky state university 'surprisingly low' - 1.48 out of a 100,000 - significantly lower than that of men, who are murdered 6.68 to every 100,00. And a fraction of black men, who are murdered at a rate of 18.8 (please see Sex, Lies and an Invidious Landscape for more on this).

When we know that most American trans people are white males and earn above $50,000 a year, that supposed vulnerability looks different. But hush. This could be seen as 'misleading'. 

How anarchic is it to have hate crime laws which stifle discussion? To scream down meetings of women who have concerns about newly written law? How anti-fascist, feminist or democratic is it to be excluding women who say factual, sometimes inconvenient, counter-narrative things, from political parties? Or screaming them down and using threats of sexual violence? Or portraying them as guilty when one non-binary male kills a trans woman? How socialist is the surgical and pharmaceutical industry? How on earth does post-modernist gender ideology, which posits (unobservable, self described) gender is the only metric worth considering, certainly more than natal sex, sit alongside a Marxist philosophy that holds material analysis as central? How does the anti-establishment cloak of gender activism manage to hide all of the gaudy sponsor stickers from Coca-Cola, Disney, Exxon Mobil, Google, Amazon and 89% of the Fortune 500?

In Marxism, the material is key (Queering marxism - the wokest pantomime). The systems, ideas, the rules and laws are based entirely on the material; the observable. If they contradict the material facts it is untenable, it fractures, crumbles and breaks. These absolutist, unwavering and unwittingly ideological fools who reel off their ego-grooming politics with acronyms, catchphrases, esoteric-sounding terms do not have a fucking clue.

How does gender ideology fight against racism while consistently using racist, masculine stereotypes against black women? When it places trans and black women together, constantly, in a 'same difference' narrative? When refugees who have suffered and campaign against FGM are consistently berated for using the word female? 

Mainly, to return to the point - How do we tell who is a predatory man and who is a trans woman? At what stage do I get to call out the person following too close behind me? Who touches me, maybe accidentally? Who pushes the toilet or changing room door open on me? If you're in that bar, when I shout and object, will you wait to hear what's happened before jumping to proud, ideological conclusions?

Of the hundreds, probably thousands, of sex offenders who have used a trans identity, how many have made their trans identity revoked? Karen White still gets female pronouns. So does Katie Dolotowski. So does Jessica Yaniv. It's funny how it slides from the predator vs trans narrative to 'Karen White is just a bad person, a danger with or without a penis'? isn't it odd how that slippery slope from disbelief, denial to defence always happens?

Trying to educate this lovely guy on that being exactly what proper single sex spaces are for was a lost cause.

Morgane Oger gleefully forced the end of funding for the only single sex rape support in Canada 

How do we tell? Or are we just human shields and collateral damage? How many women and children can be raped in this brave new world before we give this some thought?

Contrary to what are normally core tenets of social justice, this comes from a staggering lack of compassion, and breathtakingly privileged talking down. I've yet to speak to one gender ideologue who has been in prison or in a refuge; who has been left to sleep on the streets, with no parents ready to helicopter in. 

Women are not ok, we are raped and murdered by men. We are primed to be 'kind', acquiescent, to conform and not make a scene. I have been raped, beaten, homeless, and I have been afraid for much of my life. 

My only respite has been age, which is now used against me, to shame, discount and dismiss me as past it, of not understanding. After decades, since I was a small girl, of weird, creeping men, of men who think I owe them because of a drink or a lift, or sexual assault in crowded gigs, or being raped, or being followed and groped. Unable to walk home at night. Scared of walking up the road because of the shouts the builders make every day, and walking round the long way. Or walking with my keys poking through the fingers of my clenched fists. Of watching what i wear, of crossing the road when a man walks behind me. Of talking loudly about my boyfriend who's coming to meet me now. Or locking the windows on a hot night. Of never camping out alone. Of self defence classes and learning to take down my ponytail or make a man look at me as I try to talk and humanise myself. To let him know I've seen his face. To know when to leave a house or a party.

My spaces are not your refuges to usher in the miscellaneous vulnerable, so you can feel benevolent and righteous. Your quick, jingoistic phrases shows your closed mind. Your instant self-satisfaction with your role in this is a terrible tell. We all know it. You don't have a clue.