The fuck is this 'movement' anymore? I was booted off twitter about a year ago for defending lesbians being lesbians - the worst crime against humanity apparently - but started lurking again after IWD and what on earth is happening?

Only two sane replies to this tweet:

"This is the most abhorrent idea in a long time. The fact Levi Pay is also involved in it with @SexMattersOrg really drags them into the gutter. I am hoping this wouldn’t be @MForstater’s style. I want to fund proper campaigns for women’s rights. #nocompromise"

"They completely miss the insult to women of men impersonating our bodies and sometimes faces. It's like a blm black&white minstrels alliance."

When you read all the history of the feminist movement and women's spaces constantly being invaded by so-called "transsexuals", this is all too familiar, and chillingly so. Dr EM's forced teaming article is all I see, and I feel so much sympathy for the lesbian groups of the 70's every time I see this bullshit.

Read that article and then this thread and the parallels are bone chilling. "We've been here all along" yeah we fucking been knew. That's the fucking problem. Even literally saying, "We are on the same team." No. We are not.

"'This is the most bizarre and dangerous co-optation of lesbian energy and emotion that I can imagine’. This complaint by the Gutter Dyke Collective, that their sisters were being fooled and selling women out – ‘just be kind’ – was made in 1973 and is still being made in 2020."

"One wonders how or if it would be different if the Gutter Dykes had been listened to and supported all those years ago. If women, in the name of just be nice, it’s only one transsexual ally, had not capitulated and excluded their sisters. The Gutter Dykes pointed out that this man, Beth Elliott, claimed ‘he suffered oppression as a female, when I am at least one woman who feels oppressed by his heterosexual male power’. That is the same as what trans widows are saying today. The women inclusive of men were and are happier to exclude women to please the male’s feelings. Nothing has changed over the intervening years."

"One particular ‘transsexual ally’, Beth Elliott, caused the most contention and split the lesbian and women’s movement, destroying their strength from the inside. A member of the Gutter Dykes warned that ‘this particular man is incredibly dangerous because he managed to become vice-president of the San Francisco D.O.B. Chapter and caused a split in that organization’. He had managed to force team the San Francisco branch of Daughters of Bilitis, creating legitimacy for himself – ‘these women accept me’, ‘I’ve been such an ally’ – and silencing critics."

Perfectly illustrated by this Jane Clare Jones tweet which shocked me to my core when I was shown it: "Here's the thing you don't get. We do see [insert name of man here] as a woman - because she identifies with us. She has placed herself in sisterhood with us, and so she is our sister. When you bully us, and erase us, and don't respect our needs, you don't feel like our sisters, at all."

To which a certain AGP replied, "Isn't that the truth?" and was replied to with hearts by JCJ.

No. That isn't the fucking truth. You cannot 'feel like sisters'. You are not 'she' or 'women'. You cannot force yourself into sisterhood by getting breast implants whilst saying you know you're male and suddenly become our sisters. What kind of bullshit fuckery is that? Fuck OFF.

“Feminists try hard to fight for women at the same time maintaining special loyalties to sub-groups of men. How could we not? I have grown sick of those loyalties, which protect brutal acts as if they were heroic.” - Dworkin

"As well as the tactical reasons for joining lesbian and women’s groups, there is also, I would allege, a sexual reason. Not only does it provide access to the male’s sexual target but what could be more of a turn on to an AGP male than the idea of being accepted by lesbians and feminists as a woman?"

These are the paraphilic men claiming to speak for us, and whose voices are amplified and supported by 'feminists': "If we as a society support the right of adults to transition medically and surgically, then I think that legal fictions on passports come as part of that package."

"Elliott was now controlling the narrative and what is almost worse is that women were cheering on a man speaking for them, a man telling women what rights they may or may not have, what women will accept.

The Women’s Movement, the Lesbian Movement, had become unisex. Worse, other women had handed the movement for women’s liberation to a man. The lesbians of the Gutter Dyke Collective knew that these males were not working towards women’s rights, they stated that ‘while appearing to be sincere, these parasitic males are taking energy from women and lesbians on whatever level they can. And they will fight for their sexist survival to the detriment of women’s lives’. The Gutter Dykes complained that ‘As always, a “struggling” man is given precedent over any lesbian’."

And this thread. "The desired effect is to get women to include males who identify as females based on sexist stereotypes inside the feminist movement or women’s parties. To refute allegations of transphobia"

And how much this HURTS trans widows who have no other movement but the feminist movement and to see their abusers be not only platformed but pointed to as speaking for or representing our movement.

What is the purpose of this? Can anyone who supports/ understands this explain this?

And then Julie Bindel, someone who I admire so much, part of the group of feminists calling men "she" and kneeling before AGPs, tweeting that she's not 'gender critical' but 'gender abolitionist' and that she doesn't believe it exists, and people in the replies saying they "like how she phrased it" as though she came up with gender abolition, as though that isn't what feminism is. Has feminism become so diluted that women are shocked by gender abolition? Feminists don't call men "she" even if he's a supposed mate.

And how can you not believe in something you're trying to abolish? Of course gender exists. Gender is the oppressive hierarchy that has globally and historically relegated women to a lesser status simply because we were born with a female body. The oppressive hierarchy which deems women subservient, submissive, less than, lower class. 'Gender identity', a belief which seeks to claim gender as something innate and keep us as lower class, doesn't exist. But the sexist hierarchy of gender roles / cultural gender scripts exists, of course it does, otherwise what would we be fighting against/ fighting to abolish? What has and continues to oppress women? Am I misunderstanding?

And I say again, what is this absolute shite alliance? I ask again, what is the purpose of it?

What is this movement, if one half say that men are women and 'she' and 'sisters' if they say they know they're actually male, or if they have the proper doctor's note/ surgery/ hormones, and their voices are platformed, and the other half say men are never women and told we are out for 'bloodlust' (ArtyMorty) or should be 'marginalised' (Jack Appleby) or this fucking disgusting shite about feminists and trans widows in Kathleen Stock's book. We are not required to empathise with those who parody our existence and the very characteristics for which we are oppressed and raped and murdered. This demand for empathy from women for this perversion by some FEMINISTS is some kind of cruel twisted joke.

What is it the first half are trying to accomplish? What is their end goal if they coddle the 'true trans' at the expense of feminists and trans widows and lesbians, and use the slur "terf" in their 'alliance' to do it, which has the unfortunate association with feminists when nobody in that wretched 'alliance' is a feminist.

I guess I don't care if these 'feminists' and real feminists said different things but worked towards the same goal. But they are never clear about what exactly they want to accomplish. Are they against men in women's spaces or not? What do they want? These self-described gender abolitionist radical feminists raise 10,000 pounds for a man's feminisation surgery which to me felt like paying for fresh black paint so a racist yt could better perform in minstrel shows, and they constantly talk of 'building bridges' and 'alliances' and 'being nice' by lying and not calling men 'men', but to what end? What do they want? What possible 'alliance' can there be with men who parody and degrade and denigrate and dehumanise our very existence? What am I missing here?

There's a user on here, BlackCirce, and every time she posts/comments I fist pump. And she is much more eloquent than I am and it sometimes makes me want to jump inside her brain and live there:

"But what gender critical pragmatists often don't say is what results they're aiming to achieve, which makes it difficult for me to support them, even though I want to."

"There's a privileging of the present that happens where everyone seems to think the trans problem began when they personally became aware of it."

"I can only speak for myself but "peaking people" isn't necessarily what I would call a working result. Because I don't know what positions those who "peaked" hold. You can believe that a trans identifying man is male and still believe he should be in women's spaces if he meets certain criteria. If so, while I'm glad if someone releases the fiction that women can be male, their being "peaked" is of little use to me politically. We are still on opposite sides of the issue of women's rights. This is something I'm struggling with. I am happy to support pragmatists even though I'm not one myself. But they're never specific about what they're accomplishing or what their goals are or what policies they support. If you want 100% of men out of women's sex-segregated spaces, we are on the same side."

What exactly has this divide become, and why does it make my blood boil, and why are the goals never clear, and why does history continue to repeat itself ad nauseam. The stuff I quoted at the top was in the 70s. I was born in the 90s and I'm bloody aware of it. This has always happened. Every women's movement, women's spaces, invaded by men, constantly. And they keep finding ways to do it, even within the bloody movement to keep them out!

"All space becomes male space unless females maintain a concerted effort to mark a space for themselves." - SJ, on Ovarit's footer christ's sake.

So tired of this. Sorry for ranting I guess. I used to be so disappointed by men in this movement but now expectations for them have sunk so low I'm no longer disappointed. It's just funny now; I can almost hear the countdown in my head tick-tock tick-tock until another male 'ally' shows his true colours.

But it physically hurts me to see women turn their backs on other women, especially women like trans widows, whose voices deserve to not just be heard but actually listened to, and if these women had done for more than just a polite cursory tokenistic "oh yes I heard you" while sucking AGP cock in his tweet replies- if these 'feminists' had actually listened, they could not possibly continue to do this. Wives speaking out in 1998!! about transsexual abuse, and still some 'feminists' claim in their published books that there's 'not enough research' or ignore their voices while platforming and praising men in womanbody. I just don't get it.

“Prominent female academics and journalists seem willing to begin talking about AGP now,yet only cite old articles written by AGPs themselves, they don’t acknowledge the many testimonies of trans widows.Why? Are our exes considered more reliable than we are, even by feminists?”

“I can't think of any other situation when women who have survived & understand abusive male behaviours firsthand are so widely ignored by women who claim to be feminist writers….”

Sorry this was all over the place. I've linked and quoted everywhere and this is probably unreadable, I'll probably delete after rereading clearheaded. Just sad and angry and confused and disappointed I guess. My default lately