[Closed] Silencing of free speech (gender 'wars')

I said I was was ignoring it, so your response is to have a go at me?

Pretty much standard fare from that one, so don't think you're special 🙂

A 'TrollFarmWorld' thread would be much more interesting you know inept.. go on, show us yer troll farm!!

I’m bewildered at the best of times, but this thread is a real eye opener. WTF is that chart all about, Barbie and GI Joe, really? Women not violent, gender wars, police queuing outside Greggs. What’s happening?

It's not quite correct to say greer outed Rachael Padman- she had been living as a woman for nearly 2 decades and had been open about it at work and in her circle, so it wasn't a secret.

But what Greer did was take her life and privacy and blow it up into a news story. Since it's Greer, there's no way to know if she did it because of genuine transphobia, or just because she's a horrible publicity seeking arse- it could be that she resented the fact that she totally lost the argument within the college and so decided to make it into a massive public mess out of spite. Or it could be that she just sensed a way to get in the headlines again, just before her new book. For sure she used the language and arguments of transphobia but that might have been cynicism or convenience rather than a genuine belief- wouldn't be the first or last time.

(Weirdly Padman wasn't the first trans person in the all-woman college, she was just the first that was unlucky enough to annoy Germaine Greer. She was, otoh, the first woman at her previous all-male college, but apparently that's the wrong sort of feminism)

Anyway, Greer got to resign from the college before she was kicked out, and never made any retraction or apology, so she probably thought she'd done just fine- bizarrely she got a public apology from the Guardian who accused her of essentially being a horrible arse, and quoted her unsympathetically yet accurately, but Padman never received any apology. I met her one time at work, she's pretty sound and a huge credit to cambridge.

Technicallyinept

A pensioner saying they’d defend themselves against thugs (in their twenties) is threatening violence?

Yes. That's the situation you described. My point is that she was allowed to speak despite there now apparently being threats of violence from both sides (according to you and no reason to doubt it).

However, Angelos wasn't allowed to speak as he [i]couldn't[/i] be protected. I think that's called victim blaming.

SquirrelKing

Maybe as a man it’s not really your place to be defining what is and isn’t misogynistic. Just a thought…

Why? An appeal to authority if ever there were. Only women can define mysogyny? I know so f-ing stupid women.

Technicallyinept

A pensioner saying they’d defend themselves against thugs (in their twenties) is threatening violence?

makecoldplacehistory

Yes. That’s the situation you described. My point is that she was allowed to speak despite there now apparently being threats of violence from both sides (according to you and no reason to doubt it).

That's bollocks. A woman joking about self-defence is not threatening violence.

The threats in this 'debate' are mostly one sided. I'm not going to claim entirely one-sided but it may as well be, there is simply no-comparison either volume or nature.

Linda Bellos' comments vs TRAs online posting selfies with barbed-wire wrapped baseball bats and suggested that TERF lesbians should be ****ed with them and have their insides ripped out are in no-way comparable.

In Liverpool and Manchester stickers bearing the words 'women don't have penises' or 'women, noun: adult human female' were called hate speech. Liverpool council and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were quick to instigate a witch hunt.

This week, stickers appeared in Manchester bearing the words 'Protect Trans Kids. TRANS KIDS BURN TERFS'

Not a ****ing peep from GMP or Andy Burnham

ps. Angelos turned up at the meeting (as a member of the audience), the audience insisted he speak. Apparently lots of interesting discussion were had.

I thought things would settle down after the UK GRA consultation but they seem to be escalating.

As they behaviour of these TRAs makes it way into the mainstream press (e.g. the mail covering the case of a breast-feeding, menstruating mother arrested and held in police cells for 7 hours, away from her children and without sanitary protection), there is a very real risk of a backlash against the transsexuals quietly going about their lives, plus lesbians and gays.

The comments on the mail article above were disgusting

It's interesting that no-one commented on the other item in the original post, the removal of a poster campaign in New Zealand (funded by a small group of women). All they women were asking for was to be consulted on policy changes they think will affect them.

GeeTee has been banned? Gosh, only ever saw evidence of him being sinned against rather than sinning, one less reason to spend time on this site.

I was baited and I bit and I used pretty sweary language directed at Edukator. Actually I first tried to post an image with the language I wanted to use knowing that the site would automatically censor the words and when that didn't work, I used asterisks.

I knew it would result in a ban and have no issue with that decision. I think it's right and proper that it happened.

On the other hand, the way that some other people, like Edukator and Binners like to misrepresent people whose views they don't agree with, or even go as far as accusing them of being something vile and entirely other than they really are (I mean come on guys, you've never even met me in person; you know nothing about me really), is a fine line that seems to result in more tolerance.

I think that's a good thing; I think that represents free speech even if it is often wrong or misplaced.

I mistakenly assumed it was of a more permanent nature, well that's all good.

I mistakenly assumed it was of a more permanent nature, well that’s all good.

So does that mean you're staying?