An invitation to Men: view the world through the eyes of women

I have long been aware of what the woman describes below and been appalled by it. I feel deeply sorrowed by the way women often have to live. Keeping safe can need a lot of work, attention and effort from women.

She goes on to say that men's attitudes need changing in order to improve the situstion but I think that is pissing into the wind. Attitudes will not change much and if they do it may not led to much behavior change. And it is not the actions of "men" that need changing. Men in general are decent. It is just a small and dysfunctional minority of men -- many of them ethnic minorities -- that create the problem

I am afraid to say that I think the only way we can help women is the old-fashioned way -- making a point of escorting them to wherever they want to go as far as we can. Feminists can hiss and scream at that idea but the safety of women should trump their delusions

Last week my boyfriend and I went out for dinner in York. We walked back to our car, taking the stairs down from Lendal bridge to walk along the river, commenting on how it was hard to see the steps in the dark. But we made it down to the riverside without issue and strolled arm in arm along the footpath, the picture of romance, before reaching our car.

Last night we were discussing the issue of women feeling safe after the sentencing of Sarah Everard’s killer and the ludicrous comments by North Yorkshire police boss Philip Allott who revealed his engrained misogynistic beliefs that women need to take responsibility for their own safety by being ‘more streetwise’ about when they can and can’t be arrested. I mean seriously…..

I asked my boyfriend – who is fierce champion of women – if he ever felt unsafe walking on his own. He said that in some foreign, slightly dodgy cities, yes he had been more on his guard.

‘But what about here, in the UK, in York? Do you ever feel unsafe here?’

He said no.

Now York is a safe city and I have often walked home on my own at night. I also regularly hike on my own and wild camp on my own in the moors. I feel relatively safe doing all of that. But, then I thought back to our recent evening out and the dark stairs, which had simply posed a trip hazard, and the quiet footpath along the river.

And I realised that had I been on my own, I wouldn’t have taken that route. Or if I had, I would have walked fast, looking behind me, particularly on the dark stairs and the pitch black nook behind the stairs. I would have breathed a sigh of relief when I reached the lights from the Star in the City restaurant. I would have scanned the riverside footpath ahead for anyone seedy looking. If clear, I’d have walked confidently, car keys clutched in my hand, no earphones in. I would have actively looked for other couples who I might be able to rely on for help should I need it. Once off the footpath, I’d have walked cautiously to the dimly lit car park. I would have walked on the road rather than up the dark snickleway to get there. I’d have scanned all around me while paying for my parking and walked fast to my car, alert to anyone coming out of the shadows.

I realised, as I was describing this to my boyfriend, that I don’t even realise that I am doing any of this stuff at the time. It’s instinctive. As a woman, you constantly make a million tiny assessments about whether something is safe. It is so hard-wired into us that I find it almost impossible to believe that men don’t do this. Because they do this when they are in a foreign, dodgy place. They know when they need to be alert. They make the same nano assessments.

But they don’t do this every day. Because they don’t feel at risk. Women do. And I guess marginalised people at risk of racism, bigotry, homophobia or derision for being different do too. I think the average bloke would be genuinely surprised by the number of micro adjustments women make to their lives every day to keep themselves safe.

I used to live in South Africa. It was only after I left that I realised how much constant fear I lived with. When I got to the UK I relaxed. I could put my groceries in the boot of my car without constantly looking around me, or I could approach my driveway without scanning for hijackers loitering in the bushes. It felt like a load had been taken from me; my adrenalin could chill the F out. Being on guard all the time is exhausting. I don’t think the average man realises just how exhausted women are from this shit.

I don’t know how we fix this either. It will take generations before ‘the fear’ that is passed from mother to daughter, sister to sister, girlfriend to girlfriend dies out. It’s something we’ve been doing for so long that it is now just a part of us. A very, very tiring part. But perhaps a good first step is for all men to realise that this is how women feel.

https://redhouse.medium.com/an-invitation-to-men-view-the-world-through-the-eyes-of-women-93f73f82a449

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Sorry, but you don't become a woman by just saying you are one

KATHLEEN STOCK

Had someone told you, not so long ago, that politicians would be terrified to answer the simple question ‘What is a woman?’ who would have believed it?

Very few, I think. Yet today the question has become so toxic that elected representatives try desperately to change the subject when it’s raised. Or they stammer something nonsensical by way of reply.

For we live in a world where to state a simple truth — that ‘a woman is an adult human female’, or ‘women don’t have penises’ — is deemed so offensive you could be banned from social media, rebuked by your teacher, disciplined by your employer or even cautioned by the police. And I should know.

Last year, I was harassed out of my university job of 18 years for saying such things. Masked men with flares came on to the campus, putting up posters and holding banners saying I should be fired.

Some of my colleagues took to social media to say they agreed with them. Eventually, I felt I had no choice but to leave.

Extreme as it was, my case is part of a wider pattern, one that is affecting ever greater numbers of ordinary people.

This is why I welcome the new campaign to protect women’s rights: Respect My Sex If You Want My X.

The sooner we wake up to the dangers, the faster we can get to a world that is both safe and fair for women.

This should concern everyone, not least because we have arrived here through profoundly anti-democratic means, including orchestrated campaigns, internet mobs and relentless lobbying.

Campaigning groups, and in particular the charity Stonewall, have influenced business, public institutions and government alike. And they have done this so effectively that hundreds of thousands of people feel frightened into silence.

It takes some bravery to question the Stonewall orthodoxy — that, to count as a woman, a male doesn’t need surgery or hormones, a legal sex change or a medical diagnosis of a health condition.

He doesn’t even need to dress like a woman. As long as he says so, he — or rather ‘she’ now — is a woman.

This is a radical view with profound and troubling implications. Yet thanks to aggressive and sometimes coercive campaigning, it is increasingly regarded as mainstream.

When Conservative MP Jamie Wallis announced he was trans last week, he was applauded for bravery — even though it seems he will continue to be in all other ways a man, including how he dresses.

This policy of accepting whatever people say about their own gender, irrespective of the physical facts, is what is known as ‘self-identification’ or ‘self-ID’.

Stonewall wants it recognised in law. And although the group has failed so far in England, it has succeeded in Scotland, where self-ID will soon be the only thing required for a legally acknowledged gender recognition certificate.

The principal victims in all this are women.

Pressure groups have persuaded public bodies that a biological male who believes he is a woman should have access to female changing rooms, sports teams, hospital wards, rape crisis services and domestic violence refuges.

They have persuaded some police forces to record a male-bodied rapist as ‘female’ if he asks to be. Some biologically male criminals who self-identify as women are sent to women’s jails.

Yet in losing the meanings of the words ‘woman’, ‘girl’ and ‘female’, we have lost the power to communicate clearly about the needs and interests of females: a group that makes up half the population.

The most visible effect is the blatant unfairness of women athletes having to compete against biological males whom they haven’t a hope of beating, given their respective body types.

In addition, there are the negative effects on female sexual assault victims, anxiously having to face the possibility of predatory male-bodied people in changing rooms or hospital wards, and even of being obliged to call their own attackers ‘she’ in court.

With the ideas behind self-ID being championed in schools, youth groups and universities, many young people are confused about what a woman or man is.

This confusion has contributed to a huge rise in troubled young people demanding medication to change their bodies permanently. Many are then receiving it, even though doctors know little about the long-term effects.

These ideas have been adopted without proper consultation, mainly by frightening people into compliance, which is dangerous and coercive.

I believe it is one of the greatest of the many threats to free speech now blighting our society. From the start of their crusade, campaigners have argued that merely to question self-ID renders you ‘transphobic’. This is a grotesque insinuation — and is totally false in my case.

I have backed strong legal protections for trans people throughout my writing and speaking on the subject.

Stonewall states that people’s reasonably founded worries about the risks involved in self-ID policies must be the result of bigotry. That they stem from the belief that ‘all’ trans women are predators.

Of course, this is false. Most trans women aren’t dangerous, just as most men aren’t dangerous, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to protect women from the few males that are.

Inevitably, attempts to smear those who dare to question self-ID have made people very afraid.

There is now a ‘hate crime’ law that says someone can get a heavier sentence if an initial crime was accompanied by transphobia.

When perceptions of trans- phobia can include telling an adult biological male that he is not, in fact, female, this is a very scary state of affairs indeed.

No wonder politicians are frightened to say what a woman is.

The fact is that feeling or believing or saying you are a woman doesn’t make you a woman, no matter what campaigners, the police, your boss, The Guardian, or anyone else may think.

Human biology is unaffected by thoughts or words.

Even getting a gender recognition certificate or having medical treatment doesn’t affect the basic facts about biology. Just saying something doesn’t make it so.

If politicians can’t say what a woman is, how can they be expected to represent women’s interests?

At a time when violence against women is on the increase and prosecutions at an unprecedented low, women and girls desperately need advocates.

Trans people deserve more sensible representation, too.

Indeed, I know that many are deeply concerned about the direction Stonewall has taken in their name. They fear a backlash.

In the meantime, too many public figures hope this mess will clear itself up. But it won’t.

You can’t change material reality by unilaterally changing words. Instead, you merely create misunderstanding and set groups of people against each other.

What we need is a free, open and honest debate that acknowledges the biological facts, one that elected politicians cannot shirk.

We owe it to ourselves as members of a democratic nation.

We owe it to trans people. Most of all, we owe it to women.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10682091/Professor-KATHLEEN-STOCK-Sorry-dont-woman-just-saying-one.html

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Conservative claims victory in Hungary election

Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has scored a fourth consecutive landslide win in general elections, as voters endorsed his ambition of a conservative, “illiberal” state and shrugged off concerns over Budapest’s close ties with Moscow.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had appeared to upend Orban’s campaign in recent weeks, forcing him into awkward manoeuvring to explain decade-old cosy business relations with President Vladimir Putin.

But he mounted a successful campaign to persuade his Fidesz party’s core electorate that the six-party opposition alliance, United For Hungary, of Peter Marki-Zay promising to mend ties with the European Union could lead the country into war, an accusation the opposition denied.

Surrounded by leading party members, a triumphant Orban, 58, said the victory came against all odds.

“We have scored a victory so big, that it can be seen even from the moon. We have defended Hungary’s sovereignty and freedom,” said Orban, who has often been condemned by the European Union for democratic backsliding and alleged corruption.

“The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future,” Orban said.

Preliminary results with about 98 per cent of national party list votes counted showed Fidesz party leading with 53.1 per cent of votes versus 35 per cent for Marki-Zay’s opposition alliance. Fidesz was also winning 88 of 106 single-member constituencies.

Based on preliminary results, the National Election Office said Fidesz would have 135 seats, a two-thirds majority, and the opposition alliance would have 56 seats. A far-right party called Our Homeland would also make it into Parliament, winning seven seats.

His comfortable victory could embolden Orban, 58, in his policy agenda which critics say amounts to a subversion of democratic norms, media freedom and the rights of minorities, particularly gay people.

Orban — a fierce critic of immigration, LGBTQI+ rights and “EU bureaucrats” — has garnered the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America. He has taken many of Hungary’s democratic institutions under his control and depicted himself as a defender of European Christendom against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby”.

Conceding defeat, Marki-Zay, 49, said Fidesz’s win was due to what he called its vast propaganda machine, including media dominance.

“I don’t want to hide my disappointment, my sadness ... We knew this would be an uneven playing field,” he said. “We admit that Fidesz got a huge majority of the votes. But we still dispute whether this election was democratic and free.”

The contest was expected to be the closest since Orban took power in 2010, thanks to Hungary’s six main opposition parties putting aside their ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz.

Marki-Zay had promised to end to what he alleged was rampant government corruption and raise living standards by increasing funding to ailing healthcare and schools.

Opposition parties and international observers have noted structural impediments to defeating Orban, highlighting pervasive pro-government bias in the public media, the domination of commercial news outlets by Orban allies and a heavily gerrymandered electoral map.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/hungary-s-orban-leads-in-partial-vote-count-from-countryside-20220404-p5aais.html

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Conservative victory in Serbia’s national elections

Claims of a corrupted electoral system are common in Europe but it is unlikely that they are are more corrupt than the electoral system that made Joe Biden president

Opposition claims of widespread irregularities marked Serbia’s national election in which President Aleksandar Vucic and his ruling populists hoped to extend their 10-year grip on power.

Vucic secured about 59 per cent of the vote in the presidential contest, more than enough to secure a second term in office without a run-off ballot, according to a partial count taken by the non-governmental Centre for Free Elections and Democracy.

The Serbian President accused Australia of “torturing and tormenting” Novak Djokovic and treating him “like a mass murderer” when it deported the tennis star in January for not being vaccinated against COVID-19.

Some 6.5 million voters were eligible to choose the country’s president and a new parliament, and elections were being held as well for local authorities in the capital, Belgrade, and in over a dozen other towns and municipalities. Turnout was reported about 55 per cent an hour before polls closed, higher than in most Serbian elections.

His Progressive Party-led bloc won about 43 per cent of the vote, while a coalition of centre-left opposition parties running as United for Serbia’s Victory took 13 per cent, the early count by the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy showed.

IPSOS and CESID pollsters, which have proven reliable in previous Serbian ballots, predicted Vucic would end up with nearly 60 per cent of the votes.

Opinion surveys ahead of the vote predicted that Vucic would win another five-year term and that his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party would yet again dominate the 250-member assembly. But opposition groups stood a chance of winning in Belgrade, analysts said, which would deal a serious blow to Vucic’s increasingly autocratic rule.

Opposition groups multiple irregularities were spotted during the vote. Opposition election controllers reported widespread ghost voting — voting under the names of people who are dead or don’t exist — as well ruling party activists offering money in exchange for votes.

One opposition leader was attacked outside Vucic’s party offices in a Belgrade suburb, suffering facial injuries. A ruling party official was reportedly attacked in the central town of Nis.

Vucic, a former ultranationalist who has boasted of his close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has sought to portray himself as a guarantor of stability amid the turmoil raging in Europe due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Speaking after voting in Belgrade, Vucic said he expected Serbia to continue on the path of “stability, tranquillity and peace”.

“I believe in a significant and convincing victory and I believe everyone will get what they deserve,” he said.

In a country that went through a series of wars in the 1990s and a NATO bombing in 1999, fears of a conflict spilling over have played into Vucic’s hands. Although Serbia is formally seeking entry into the 27-nation European Union, Vucic has fostered close ties with Russia and China, counting on the Serbs’ resentment of the West over the 1999 NATO air war.

Serbia has supported a UN resolution that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Belgrade has not joined Western sanctions against Moscow, a historic Slavic ally.

Beleaguered opposition groups have also mostly refrained from publicly advocating a tougher line on Moscow. Russia has supported Serbia’s claim on Kosovo, a former province that declared Western-backed independence in 2008.

After boycotting Serbia’s previous vote in 2020, the main opposition parties said Sunday’s vote was also far from free and fair because of Vucic’s domination over the mainstream media and the state institutions.

Vucic’s main opponent in the presidential election comes from a centrist-conservative coalition, United for Victory of Serbia, which comprises the main opposition parties. General Zdravko Ponos, a Western-educated former army chief of staff, was hoping to push Vucic into a second round in the presidential ballot.

“These elections are going to [bring] serious change in Serbia,” Ponos said after casting his ballot. “I hope citizens of Serbia are going to take [a] chance today.”

Ahead of the vote, reports emerged of ballots being sent to addresses for people who don’t live there, prompting opposition warnings of potential fraud. But ruling populists have denied manipulating ballots or pressuring voters.

Their standing in the capital has been lower than the rest of the country due partly to a number of corruption-plagued construction projects that have devastated Belgrade’s urban core.

A green-left coalition, Moramo, or We Must, ran in the election for the first time, campaigning on the discontent in Belgrade and on anger over Serbia’s numerous environmental problems. The group has drawn thousands to protests against lithium mining in the country and to demand cleaner air, rivers and land.

Since his party came to power in 2012, Vucic has served as defence minister, prime minister and president.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/claims-of-widespread-irregularities-in-serbia-s-national-elections-20220404-p5aaj2.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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