Post 9yLz89qHumVlngLSpU by Hibiscus@spinster.xyz
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(DIR) Post #9yLz7ywGSDkvz23a7M by Eurowoman24@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T21:29:23.712447Z
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They’ve moved past singling out black women and have officially started playing racist bingo today #TRAisacult #radfem
(DIR) Post #9yLz7zKN0b2RBnKpgu by gold_bee@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T21:56:39.698796Z
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@Eurowoman24 This is amazingly stupid…. Black and brown women feel sexist oppression most acutely ~because of racism~ so are quick to see the TRA bullshit!
(DIR) Post #9yLz7zx0gvwl7dPgv2 by Ismat@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T22:14:56.772675Z
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@gold_bee @Eurowoman24 They are right on the point about women of color being Transphobic. We generally do not agree to the TRA gaslighting as easily as white women.
(DIR) Post #9yLz81tXSoMH9Rnwmm by Eurowoman24@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T22:25:37.796240Z
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@Ismat @gold_bee To be fair the only white women I’ve seen protesting this bs en masse are british the rest are POC from different cultures.
(DIR) Post #9yLz830fJneYbq99X6 by gold_bee@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T22:34:53.642407Z
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@Eurowoman24 @Ismat I wonder how much of this is cultural… From my highly unscientific survey of Spinster and Ovarit, US women generally seem less aware of the laws in place to protect women’s rights and the need to be actively involved in civic affairs to advance our interests. In addition, white women in the US are heavily socialized to be “good girls” and, along with white men, socialized to see themselves as racially superior, even though following that line of thinking results in outcomes against their their best interest. Case in point are the white women who voted for Trump. I’m only somewhat familiar with UK culture; perhaps women there are comfortable with being politically overt and are more keenly aware of the fragility of women’s rights?
(DIR) Post #9yLz84N2G78opVcX2W by Lilitu@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T22:59:37.989337Z
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@gold_bee @Eurowoman24 @Ismat Having lived in both countries: I think it’s just that TRA’s have made more progress corrupting the UK than they have the US, and therefore the UK is reaching a critical mass of women fighting back earlier.The UK is, after all, the cultural mother country of much of the US. The socialization British women receive is not hugely different from much of the US. They’re still belittled in stem, overworked as spouses and mothers, and paid less for the their labor. The US has pockets that are very culturally distinct from anything British, but on the whole, they’re in the same ballpark.I think there is more traditional misogyny in the US, like anti-choice sentiment and classic manifestations of domestic violence. But there’s more “progressive” misogyny in the UK. Violent fetishes, prostitution, and other forms of sex slavery are more acceptable in the UK than they are in the US.And because “progressive” misogyny has a bigger foothold in the UK, it stands to reason that TRA’s would be able to make faster progress.
(DIR) Post #9yLz85UW5migJ081L6 by grimauld@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T23:13:40.227065Z
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@Lilitu @gold_bee @Eurowoman24 @Ismat I think the socialisation is pretty different. US seems to put a lot more value on enthusiasm-as-politeness. UK has more of a cynical culture. Can’t speak for every context, but in a professional context, working with American colleagues involves being very enthusiastic and using more marketing-speak; working with British colleagues involves being pessimistic about everything and mocking the marketing-speak. So I think people are more likely to say something sounds like bs in the UK, where in the USA that would be regarded as much more rude. And I get the impression UK women are more aware of law-specifics in general, though idk if that’s just the people I know.
(DIR) Post #9yLz86zOWT0sx3aC6i by Lilitu@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T23:27:28.234188Z
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@grimauld @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @gold_bee I think the tones of their cultures are fairly different, but the sex socialization differences aren’t really. And even with tone, you could argument either way, once you look outside of just England.Also I think the honesty thing is very dependent on context and where you are in the US. People are more fake at work in the US because it’s just so cut-throat. But I think Americans are more direct on a personal level, especially if they’re from the Eastern part of the country.But when it comes to comparative sex socialization — meaning how women’s socialization is different from men’s — I think the two are overwhelmingly similar. Their baseline cultures may be substantially different, by the way misogyny is manifest really isn’t.I don’t really think Brits are necessarily more politically aware. I was there the day after the Brexit vote for the mass Googling of “what is the EU?”
(DIR) Post #9yLz87j7mRapEsyiO0 by grimauld@spinster.xyz
2020-08-19T23:59:00.237752Z
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@Lilitu @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @gold_bee Well, no rigorous scientific study here, but I find they have a different feel! Based on a handful of people I know and the media: US seems a lot more rigid with gender, with more emphasis on appearance, and a lot less skeptical as a culture. I think misogyny manifests a little differently as the UK has more of a drinking problem. And I wouldn’t claim that UK people are more politically aware overall, but I get the impression women have more of a sense of themselves as a political class, and in general there’s more of a tendency to think in terms of classes and systems, rather than individuals, and to organise as a group. US resources for women seem to have much more emphasis on individual circumstances, and self-defence. US men I know can talk about their feelings, UK men generally haven’t worked out quite how. US women are more likely to say something if they have an issue, but I feel like there’s more pressure on them to be ‘kind’ to random men.So that is my carefully-researched analysis, and I will be publishing it the AJP soon.
(DIR) Post #9yLz88WOpF0Zhi24Bs by Lilitu@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T00:23:04.224378Z
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@grimauld @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @gold_bee Honestly, this has been something I notice a lot, about the way people think of other countries: they go by what’s in the media. As someone who’s traveled a lot, the media is almost always a bad way to judge a culture. You’re only seeing the most privileged subset of one part of an entire country, and then the people at the very bottom that this privileged subset hate the most. It’s why people abroad think that all Americans are basically southern Californians and inbred Alabamians. I have my own opinions on the class sabotage of the South as a tool to dismiss its modern radicalism and resistance, but that’s another issue entirely…I definitely don’t think the US is more rigid with gender, at all. The UK still very much has a norm of women still being servile to their husband and children. And I actually think that in some ways, the US is actually less restrictive because it’s not too far away from its pioneering age, where trying to force half the population to be physically and economically inactive just wasn’t realistically possible. For example, I think it is more ubiquitous for British women to have a more complex and restrictive “beauty routine” than American women do, based on what I saw on the streets of most major cities in each respective country. Keep in mind: Yes, they’re more liberal, but “libfem” just reenforces gender restrictions, it doesn’t dismantle them.I’d also very much disagree that the US is less skeptical. If anything, it’s so skeptical that it’s prone to paranoia and conspiracy thinking. Not that that’s better obviously, but the US is almost hyper-skeptical, compared to the UK tending to over-trust its institutions even when they’re being harmed by them. See: how they’re just kinda… letting the NHS be dismantled, because they assume some benevolent politician will swoop in to save them. The US is the opposite: so critical of its politicians that it refuses to let them do much of anything at all.But also, the UK isn’t just London and Manchester. A lot of it is still small communities with totally different realities from those major cities, and actually very similar to small Midatlantic American communities. Some of them even share accents from the same branch of the English family tree, even after all these centuries. And then there’s also the several different countries within the UK’s borders, which even have their own languages. The political concept the Irish have of themselves is totally different from the outward-facing London English “woke-ism” that is basically the sole experience of the UK that we see in the media.I think if women had more of a cohesive sense of themselves, we never would have gotten to the point we’re at with TRA’s. And that’s something the Us and UK share: they are still in the wake of a functionally misogynist system to such a severe degree that they really have very little ties to each other such that this could have been prevented sooner.
(DIR) Post #9yLz89IxufrA8KkqtE by grimauld@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T01:00:03.405498Z
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@Lilitu @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @gold_bee Ah, I was thinking more of the combination of stuff in the media with how I see people around me react to it, what strikes them as weird, what doesn’t, etc. Though I was also thinking that British TV tends to star more everyday-looking people, whereas US seems to cast more models. Some years ago, I heard that more actors come to TV shows from the stage in the UK, whereas more come to TV shows from advertising and model work in the USA, though idk if that’s true. But I think the different images of ‘normal’ may go some way to accounting for differences in plastic surgery numbers, etc, even if that only affects some segments of the population.The point about hyper-skepticalness is interesting; I’m inclined to think in the UK there’s more trust in institutions and less in individuals. I don’t get the impression people are letting the NHS be dismantled, so much as feel powerless to stop that from happening.I think the situation re: TRAs in the UK is bad more because of pre-existing restrictive laws and structures that they were able to exploit, rather than an overabundance of women buying into their philosophy or failing to organise. Though I think women surrounded by men are more likely to buy into it, and those positions correlate with power, because of the misogyny inherent in the system.
(DIR) Post #9yLz89qHumVlngLSpU by Hibiscus@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T04:25:09.503036Z
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@grimauld @Lilitu @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @gold_bee The Feminist Current podcast with Kathleen Stock and Natasha Chart from Feb 2019 goes into some of the ways the UK and the US differ. Natasha pointed out how dispersed those of us who are gender critical in the US are. This matters for having people turn out for an event or organizing a conference. Much of the US lacks train service too so it is much harder for ordinary women from around the country to meet up.From what I’ve gathered,the proposed changes to the GRA drove some of the UK organizing. We haven’t had something comparable.On a national level, our two-party system works very differently from a parliamentary form of government. I think we have fewer processes where regular citizens can have an impact.Here many decisions are at the state level, so there are 50 legislatures to watch.Culturally, a big difference is the degree of religiosity. Lots more Americans attend church regularly, and even many who don’t define themselves as believers. And this doesn’t neatly split the way you might think. I have one family member whose acceptance of transgenderism is rooted in the socially progressive church she is part of, and other family members who likely reject transgender beliefs because they are practicing Catholics. So oftentimes, it’s not whether someone is religious or not, but which branch of which religion.Here in the US we seem to have far less awareness, let alone activism, around this overall. I would like that to change. We have lots to learn from our sisters in the UK!
(DIR) Post #9yLz8AbR5UE29uP7Jo by Siouxsie@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T19:10:16.058249Z
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@Hibiscus @grimauld @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @Lilitu @gold_bee I think geography plays a big part in why it’s been easier to organise here plus as you say the GRA reform created the inciting incident to motivate us into action.I would love to see something like the ReSisters network happening in the US, localised groups but under one umbrella of support. The US seems to have so many things that have to be tackled at a state level and it varies widely as to what that is!I think our US sisters would also benefit from something similar to MurrayBlackburnMacKenzie, who are a policy think tank in Scotland. They crowdfunded to get it going and their purpose is looking closely at proposed legislation from a women’s rights perspective then generating journal articles, submissions to committees etc…I’d also love to see something happening to support children that isn’t 100% affirmation. Transgender Trend have been brilliant in that regard and I think the knowledge base could be transferable to someone with the drive to do similar in the US.It might be that stuff is going on there that I don’t know about but it definitely seems more of an uphill struggle to bring women together and find the funding. I know many of us in UK do contribute to US crowdfunders when they have occurred.Sport seems like it might be the one thing that can unite people in the States, I think people of all political stripes can see the inherent unfairness and danger.
(DIR) Post #9yLz8BalPTHXE765uS by DejaVu@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T19:16:28.744936Z
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@Siouxsie “plus as you say the GRA reform created the inciting incident to motivate us into action.”Indeed, it gave women their first opportunity to say what they felt about the imposition of the GRA 2004 and its impact on women and girls against their consent. It seems women took that opportunity with both hands and said what needed to be said. The Labour govt at the time totally ignored women and has done ever since in this regard.@Hibiscus @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @Lilitu @gold_bee @grimauld
(DIR) Post #9yLz8Cg7N39ub0bstU by gold_bee@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T21:22:47.890391Z
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Hopping in to say that I love the idea of a crowdfunded policy thinktank!Generally speaking, the more autonomous feminist groups there are, the better the outcome for women. From the linked document:“Using an original dataset of social movements and VAW policies in 70 countries over four decades, we show that feminist mobilization in civil society—not intra-legislative political phenomena such as leftist parties or women in government or economic factors like national wealth—accounts for variation in policy development. In addition, we demonstrate that autonomous movements produce an enduring impact on VAW policy through the institutionalization of feminist ideas in international norms.” http://www.ncdsv.org/images/APSR_CivicOriginsProgressivePolicyChangeCombatingVAWinGlobalPerspective-1975-2005_8-2012.pdf@DejaVu @Siouxsie @Eurowoman24 @Hibiscus @Ismat @Lilitu @grimauld
(DIR) Post #9yLz8DCjPnFME9rvjE by Eah@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T21:28:19.408757Z
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@gold_bee @DejaVu @Eurowoman24 @Hibiscus @Ismat @Lilitu @Siouxsie @grimauld :1000:
(DIR) Post #9yLz8E6O4rlZ0luNTk by Hibiscus@spinster.xyz
2020-08-20T23:06:27.666327Z
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@Eah @gold_bee @DejaVu @Eurowoman24 @Ismat @Lilitu @Siouxsie @grimauld I so appreciate being part of this intelligent and thoughtful conversation! Thanks to all and to @mk and @spinster for this platform.