Thank you for writing this. I’ve been reading your work since that very first article. You are completely right. Thank you for being brave, bring a great writer, and putting into words what I have seen and felt but couldn’t articulate.
‘Be kind’ is what the oppressor says to the oppressed.
my mantra is 'be fair'. And to the men: YOU be kind.
And also, female socialisation in the context of the Patriarchy is the explanation of your friends' (and my friends' inability to centre women and girls), though it's so very painful for some women to acknowledge it (by Jane Clare Jones). "The fact that many many women have also absorbed the core structure of patriarchal gender, and think that men's needs matter more than women, and that we should sympathise with men for being denied women's legal existence, because women are so mean, *is not evidence that this is not patriarchal.*
It is, rather, evidence of exactly how patriarchal gender *works.*
Because if many women were not sucessfully conditioned to put men before themselves, and didn't often have to do a fuckton of consciousness raising in order to be able to centre and assert their own needs, the entire structure would fall apart. Overnight" https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1915383665707692185.
I also think it's because so many of us are mothers and are well used to putting the needs of others before our own, even to our detriment.
Thank you, thank you, Victoria, for expressing reality over and over again in your articles, and especially in this searing, white hot article, brilliantly articulating the anger of so many women. At a family Easter celebration my son's transwoman partner, happy to eat my food and enjoy my (expected) hospitality, left the room in a huff because I'd inadvertently misgendered him. My roiling emotions reeled through shame (at a young person calling me out), embarrassment for both of us and finally landed on anger. I cannot move past the sexism and blatant misogyny of this movement. My anger, like so many women's, is real, truthful and justified.
Thank you for writing this. I can feel your legitimate anger.
I once had a tradesman visit my flat to carry out a repair to my washing machine. At the time I was 21 year old single mother to a toddler.
I was ironing, and as he came into the room he was suddenly unclothed on his top half and handed me his polo shirt. I remember it was turquoise.
He said as you’re doing that can you give my shirt the once-over, I didn’t get time to do it this morning.
In a split second I had to calculate the safest course of action as he stood in front of the ironing board. Could I get around him and leave the room? What might he do if I said no? Could I shout for help? No one would hear me, it was a solidly built Victorian upper floor flat on a small quiet road.
Of course I took the shirt and ironed it while he watched, hands on hips. I handed it back and he put it on, left, and that was that.
I told my Dad about it later and he was visibly angry. “You should’ve punched him!” he said. I just sighed in disappointment at the evident lack of comprehension at how women routinely have to calculate what will be best for their physical safety, how we have to appease and comply in such situations for fear of being overpowered and harmed.
Only female friends reassured me I did the right thing in the circumstances and that I wasn’t a weak disappointment. That it turned out to be quite a small thing but very frightening nonetheless.
Now at 52 I know that such displays of male dominance are a routine part of our lives and that the freedom to associate amongst ourselves without male intrusion (regardless of how he feels) is essential and must be protected.
You can see why so many with a history of being abused have embraced the trans movement. It must feel good to be on the other side of the abusive relationship and have the accolades and sympathy for a change. Giving up truth is a small price to pay.
Fantastic piece! I volley between fury at captured institutions and TRAs, and bewilderment at how everyone capitulated to the idea that men could just declare they were women and we'd have to accept. I'm a scientist by training and to me sex is binary and immutable. Even dsds stick to the binary. However, expressing yourself, dressing as you wish etc is fine (as long as it's not pornographic). But you remain your birth sex until you die.
Beautifully said. That experience of trying to compromise, getting spitting rage in return, and then being blamed for the situation falling apart... the trans movement really does feel a lot like an abusive relationship.
That’s great writing - thank you. In fact your articles were a big part of what woke me up to this horror show. And I still recommend Hags to everyone. You are of course right that our starting position in this is already reasonable and nuanced - and the Supreme Court should give us the courage to say that, and not budge. I have to explain the ruling to a group of lawyers today and am determined to speak plainly and not accept any nonsense. Let’s hope I still have a job tomorrow!
I cried reading this. After the surprise and relief has come tension, and again, like you it was the same after the Cass Review. It's really anger struggling to get out. I can't bear that we are being asked to solve men's problems for them again. I am so tired of being calm. Thank you
My eldest sister has BPD. I see trans activists and their allys as sharing many behaviour traits. They will never, never apologise. They do see us as inferior. They see our trying to enforce simple boundaries as a personal attack on them. They constantly flip the script and employ DARVO.
Nothing you could have written would have escaped criticism. If you had have been completely honest in your original piece, it probably wouldn't have been published.
There's never going to be common ground without women losing our voices, freedoms and rights. Never. They are a subset of men and need to be seen as that by society.
And, my mother put all my teenage diaries in the incinerator, so, I am very happy you still have yours.
Thankyou for a wonderfully written piece of honesty.
This is so interesting. I think that when you understand Cluster B personality disorder and autogynephilia then you have covered all the reasons that virtually all trans- identifying men identify as women. The heterosexual ones, certainly. Then when you add in at the very least, the disdain, and the very most, the misogyny of (male and female) 'allies' you can explain how something so unreasonable gained traction.
This was a brilliant piece, thank you so much. And thank you also for tracing your changing (outward) position and what drove that - I know I was once a "less heat" person too. It is exasperating and cruelly unfair to be told to be more kind, but it's often like getting a message from yourself in the past.
One of the frustrating things about the likes of Keir Starmer is he will never write something like this, explaining his thinking and how it evolved over time. I have always wanted to understand people on the other side of this debate, but I don't think they understand themselves.
A wonderful piece brimming with entirely justfied, righteous anger.
"Or that if you are going to define a tiny subset of male people as less likely to attack you (simply because, in mathematical terms, they are a minority), maybe you could start with ‘men called Derek’ or ‘male people who like budgies’ as opposed to ‘the one group of male people actively demanding special access to female-only spaces and throwing a massive tantrum when denied it’."
I like this phrase: "Good men stay out so bad men stand out". The boundary-breaking is the very evidence that these are not 'good men'. Not that they are necessarily predatory; but they are not 'kind', they are incredibly selfish; they are not empathic; they may be abusers or voyeurs. Their wants come first with no thought to those they claim to 'identify' with. They are nothing like me or the women I know. They are nothing like the men who I think are worthy of my love or care. They are not special and they are not brave. We are fucking brave
Thank you! As an autistic woman, I'm sick of walking on eggshells around the subject when I already struggle with phrasing things in such a way as to not offend people. It's another angle the trans lobby attacks us: look at how that poor autistic teenage girl was brutalised by police in her own home for innocently, if bluntly, observing that an officer "looked like a lesbian like [her] Nana", or another was banned from her football games for asking a male opponent "are you a man?"
It's not enough that they prey on our social discomfort and desire to fit in and sell us the cure with gender clinics (the Tavistock's intake was 48% kids with autistic traits, 35% moderate to severe autistic traits, when we're less than 2% of the general population), which leaves us sterile and unable to pass on the autistic genes in the biggest disability eugenics scheme since Aktion-T4 even if unintentionally so. They police our language and punish us, when inadvertently offending people is such a common trait that it's even in the diagnostic test. It's misogynistic and homophobic most obviously, but also ableist.
Thank you for the catharsis of reading that. So much of it is familiar to me, including in most conversations about the ruling even with those sympathetic to my perspective. The response to it - both the apparently rational “both sides“ & the violent anger, & particularly the irony of these standing alongside each other - has upset me deeply. I think I I feel, if anything, more vulnerable, as a woman, to political weakness than ever before.
The depth of misogyny, the unconscious denial of or complicity in this, &, above all, the readiness to display it as in some way ethically superior, has been terrifying to see. Starmer‘s pathetic flip-flopping on MY rights has genuinely frightened me.
And I write that knowing damn well that if he were ever to read this, he’d instantly foreground transwomen‘s professed fear in his response. Even the bloody spell check is pressuring me to demean myself by writing trans women with a validating space at my own expense.
Have a read of this. Good analysis of Starmer I think: https://archive.ph/aBhv1. It's an archived Spectator article by Stephen Daisley. And I love this paragraph: "Too many Labour people and progressives more generally have come to believe in their own superior virtue. They are the good people, the smart people, the people who care, and so they gravitate towards ideas and policies that seem good, smart and caring. That their opponents, who are wicked, unenlightened and cruel, disagree with them only confirms the righteousness of these positions. In time, vibes harden into dogma, the absurd becomes doctrine, doubt is damned as heresy, and pluralism surrenders to catechism. It is no longer a matter of politics or policy but sheep and goats. However, it is a moralism in which virtue attaches not to actions but to those who perform them, which is why Starmer was noble when he said trans women were women and noble when he said they weren’t. When you’re always on the right side of history, it doesn’t matter if you switch sides".
Absolutely fantastic. My awareness of the issues arose from mid 2010s screaming rows with my daughter about TIMs and my sheer incredulity that anyone could be suggesting that men with d*cks should share single sex spaces with women. I don't think either of us has changed our views, but I have, at least reassured many other women that they are neither mad or alone.
So good that I had to read it twice. Thank you for the honesty and the insight. Women really do need to ‘think their thoughts right through to the end’. And somehow - somehow- not be afraid to keep telling their truth to male power.
Thank you for writing this. I’ve been reading your work since that very first article. You are completely right. Thank you for being brave, bring a great writer, and putting into words what I have seen and felt but couldn’t articulate.
‘Be kind’ is what the oppressor says to the oppressed.
"'Be kind' is what the oppressor says to the oppressed" Yes
It means “Shut up. Stop struggling”. It’s so sinister. All those bloody childrens t shirts (for girls of course).
But many of my female friends say it too, all older women...... I haven't worked out the best response yet
This may give you some ideas (Janice Turner article, Times :https://www.thetimes.com/article/436927d0-e156-419a-966b-a1d1e449ec29?shareToken=d7b1877ad2d8a14529e02a6d7e1f7d53.
my mantra is 'be fair'. And to the men: YOU be kind.
And also, female socialisation in the context of the Patriarchy is the explanation of your friends' (and my friends' inability to centre women and girls), though it's so very painful for some women to acknowledge it (by Jane Clare Jones). "The fact that many many women have also absorbed the core structure of patriarchal gender, and think that men's needs matter more than women, and that we should sympathise with men for being denied women's legal existence, because women are so mean, *is not evidence that this is not patriarchal.*
It is, rather, evidence of exactly how patriarchal gender *works.*
Because if many women were not sucessfully conditioned to put men before themselves, and didn't often have to do a fuckton of consciousness raising in order to be able to centre and assert their own needs, the entire structure would fall apart. Overnight" https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1915383665707692185.
I also think it's because so many of us are mothers and are well used to putting the needs of others before our own, even to our detriment.
Thank you, thank you, Victoria, for expressing reality over and over again in your articles, and especially in this searing, white hot article, brilliantly articulating the anger of so many women. At a family Easter celebration my son's transwoman partner, happy to eat my food and enjoy my (expected) hospitality, left the room in a huff because I'd inadvertently misgendered him. My roiling emotions reeled through shame (at a young person calling me out), embarrassment for both of us and finally landed on anger. I cannot move past the sexism and blatant misogyny of this movement. My anger, like so many women's, is real, truthful and justified.
Thank you for writing this. I can feel your legitimate anger.
I once had a tradesman visit my flat to carry out a repair to my washing machine. At the time I was 21 year old single mother to a toddler.
I was ironing, and as he came into the room he was suddenly unclothed on his top half and handed me his polo shirt. I remember it was turquoise.
He said as you’re doing that can you give my shirt the once-over, I didn’t get time to do it this morning.
In a split second I had to calculate the safest course of action as he stood in front of the ironing board. Could I get around him and leave the room? What might he do if I said no? Could I shout for help? No one would hear me, it was a solidly built Victorian upper floor flat on a small quiet road.
Of course I took the shirt and ironed it while he watched, hands on hips. I handed it back and he put it on, left, and that was that.
I told my Dad about it later and he was visibly angry. “You should’ve punched him!” he said. I just sighed in disappointment at the evident lack of comprehension at how women routinely have to calculate what will be best for their physical safety, how we have to appease and comply in such situations for fear of being overpowered and harmed.
Only female friends reassured me I did the right thing in the circumstances and that I wasn’t a weak disappointment. That it turned out to be quite a small thing but very frightening nonetheless.
Now at 52 I know that such displays of male dominance are a routine part of our lives and that the freedom to associate amongst ourselves without male intrusion (regardless of how he feels) is essential and must be protected.
You can see why so many with a history of being abused have embraced the trans movement. It must feel good to be on the other side of the abusive relationship and have the accolades and sympathy for a change. Giving up truth is a small price to pay.
Fantastic piece! I volley between fury at captured institutions and TRAs, and bewilderment at how everyone capitulated to the idea that men could just declare they were women and we'd have to accept. I'm a scientist by training and to me sex is binary and immutable. Even dsds stick to the binary. However, expressing yourself, dressing as you wish etc is fine (as long as it's not pornographic). But you remain your birth sex until you die.
I used to think that anyone with a brain knew this, but sadly and inexplicably no..........
Beautifully said. That experience of trying to compromise, getting spitting rage in return, and then being blamed for the situation falling apart... the trans movement really does feel a lot like an abusive relationship.
So good. The women who saw it first and most clearly and who said so out loud —- like Sheila Jeffreys — are owed so many apologies.
That’s great writing - thank you. In fact your articles were a big part of what woke me up to this horror show. And I still recommend Hags to everyone. You are of course right that our starting position in this is already reasonable and nuanced - and the Supreme Court should give us the courage to say that, and not budge. I have to explain the ruling to a group of lawyers today and am determined to speak plainly and not accept any nonsense. Let’s hope I still have a job tomorrow!
Good luck, Sue.
I cried reading this. After the surprise and relief has come tension, and again, like you it was the same after the Cass Review. It's really anger struggling to get out. I can't bear that we are being asked to solve men's problems for them again. I am so tired of being calm. Thank you
My eldest sister has BPD. I see trans activists and their allys as sharing many behaviour traits. They will never, never apologise. They do see us as inferior. They see our trying to enforce simple boundaries as a personal attack on them. They constantly flip the script and employ DARVO.
Nothing you could have written would have escaped criticism. If you had have been completely honest in your original piece, it probably wouldn't have been published.
There's never going to be common ground without women losing our voices, freedoms and rights. Never. They are a subset of men and need to be seen as that by society.
And, my mother put all my teenage diaries in the incinerator, so, I am very happy you still have yours.
Thankyou for a wonderfully written piece of honesty.
This is so interesting. I think that when you understand Cluster B personality disorder and autogynephilia then you have covered all the reasons that virtually all trans- identifying men identify as women. The heterosexual ones, certainly. Then when you add in at the very least, the disdain, and the very most, the misogyny of (male and female) 'allies' you can explain how something so unreasonable gained traction.
True. However, I will probably never understand how women and mothers have put their weight behind it.... the media can all go to hell.
This was a brilliant piece, thank you so much. And thank you also for tracing your changing (outward) position and what drove that - I know I was once a "less heat" person too. It is exasperating and cruelly unfair to be told to be more kind, but it's often like getting a message from yourself in the past.
One of the frustrating things about the likes of Keir Starmer is he will never write something like this, explaining his thinking and how it evolved over time. I have always wanted to understand people on the other side of this debate, but I don't think they understand themselves.
He couldn't do it because he hasn't thought deeply enough about it. He doesn't care enough to do that.
He was reading what he thought was the room. Vocal idiots around him.
Nothing more.
The room changed. So he did.
It makes a laughing stock of his position.
As does the apparently one percent of women with a penis remark.
Leading like a lemming.
A wonderful piece brimming with entirely justfied, righteous anger.
"Or that if you are going to define a tiny subset of male people as less likely to attack you (simply because, in mathematical terms, they are a minority), maybe you could start with ‘men called Derek’ or ‘male people who like budgies’ as opposed to ‘the one group of male people actively demanding special access to female-only spaces and throwing a massive tantrum when denied it’."
Well said.
I like this phrase: "Good men stay out so bad men stand out". The boundary-breaking is the very evidence that these are not 'good men'. Not that they are necessarily predatory; but they are not 'kind', they are incredibly selfish; they are not empathic; they may be abusers or voyeurs. Their wants come first with no thought to those they claim to 'identify' with. They are nothing like me or the women I know. They are nothing like the men who I think are worthy of my love or care. They are not special and they are not brave. We are fucking brave
I liked this bit too. I'm going to remember it and use it
Thank you! As an autistic woman, I'm sick of walking on eggshells around the subject when I already struggle with phrasing things in such a way as to not offend people. It's another angle the trans lobby attacks us: look at how that poor autistic teenage girl was brutalised by police in her own home for innocently, if bluntly, observing that an officer "looked like a lesbian like [her] Nana", or another was banned from her football games for asking a male opponent "are you a man?"
It's not enough that they prey on our social discomfort and desire to fit in and sell us the cure with gender clinics (the Tavistock's intake was 48% kids with autistic traits, 35% moderate to severe autistic traits, when we're less than 2% of the general population), which leaves us sterile and unable to pass on the autistic genes in the biggest disability eugenics scheme since Aktion-T4 even if unintentionally so. They police our language and punish us, when inadvertently offending people is such a common trait that it's even in the diagnostic test. It's misogynistic and homophobic most obviously, but also ableist.
Another great piece of writing. Your work over the last few years has really helped me understand and I thank you for that.
Thank you for the catharsis of reading that. So much of it is familiar to me, including in most conversations about the ruling even with those sympathetic to my perspective. The response to it - both the apparently rational “both sides“ & the violent anger, & particularly the irony of these standing alongside each other - has upset me deeply. I think I I feel, if anything, more vulnerable, as a woman, to political weakness than ever before.
The depth of misogyny, the unconscious denial of or complicity in this, &, above all, the readiness to display it as in some way ethically superior, has been terrifying to see. Starmer‘s pathetic flip-flopping on MY rights has genuinely frightened me.
And I write that knowing damn well that if he were ever to read this, he’d instantly foreground transwomen‘s professed fear in his response. Even the bloody spell check is pressuring me to demean myself by writing trans women with a validating space at my own expense.
Have a read of this. Good analysis of Starmer I think: https://archive.ph/aBhv1. It's an archived Spectator article by Stephen Daisley. And I love this paragraph: "Too many Labour people and progressives more generally have come to believe in their own superior virtue. They are the good people, the smart people, the people who care, and so they gravitate towards ideas and policies that seem good, smart and caring. That their opponents, who are wicked, unenlightened and cruel, disagree with them only confirms the righteousness of these positions. In time, vibes harden into dogma, the absurd becomes doctrine, doubt is damned as heresy, and pluralism surrenders to catechism. It is no longer a matter of politics or policy but sheep and goats. However, it is a moralism in which virtue attaches not to actions but to those who perform them, which is why Starmer was noble when he said trans women were women and noble when he said they weren’t. When you’re always on the right side of history, it doesn’t matter if you switch sides".
I agree with everything you have said. Thank you.
Absolutely fantastic. My awareness of the issues arose from mid 2010s screaming rows with my daughter about TIMs and my sheer incredulity that anyone could be suggesting that men with d*cks should share single sex spaces with women. I don't think either of us has changed our views, but I have, at least reassured many other women that they are neither mad or alone.
So good that I had to read it twice. Thank you for the honesty and the insight. Women really do need to ‘think their thoughts right through to the end’. And somehow - somehow- not be afraid to keep telling their truth to male power.