Book 3 of 2022 was something a bit special. Taken from a publisher who highlights “forgotten books” I managed to find on kindle “What I remember” by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the famous suffragist. Her words take you straight back to the 1800s…
She covers her life from her own perspective which is fascinating. Not only to understand the time she lived in (she was 4 when Prince Albert had his great exhibition and 2 at the start of the Irish potato famine) but also to glimpse the world in motion in that era
She met her husband at a party when he overheard her views on Lincoln’s assassination. She was a supporter of the north, horrified by slavery and thought Abe was a hero for fighting against it.
Her husband was blind, after having been accidentally shot by his father. He was a good man, who supported her fight for women’s suffrage and did much of his own great work. One of the beautiful things about this book is getting an even bigger picture of the women’s movement
Not only about the vote, but the whole movement. Access to education, for example, was a key part of what women were fighting for. So was workers rights for women.
MGF’s own sister was determined to be a doctor and to break the particular glass stethoscope men put in her way.
There are so many stories here that made me smile. The hat and the train! The bird eggs and the river! Phillipa’s Victory! The man who wrote a Latin grammar book and held the conceit everyone had read it! Delightful. There’s also lessons to be taken from the past for own movement
For example, the complex nature of women’s relationship with male allies. Now, as then, good men are standing for the cause. Now, as then, there are times of betrayal or dismissal and women who are concerned about potential for that. One notable story saw 104 liberal MPs pledge
To support the enfranchisement of women but, at the final hour, vote against an amendment that would have achieved it. The distrust and misery it caused, MGF believed, was a key cause of the more militant suffragette movement which followed.
There’s a tendency for people to dismiss discussions on here, especially of late,where women try&hold men’s feet to the fire as “drama”. I’ve long seen it more as politics&this book shows it’s practically tradition.Fractures&fissures in a movement are normal,so is talking of them
Clashes of political aims are going to inform the positions we take and for a movement that understands sex matters, some can be a little too squeamish in acknowledging the political relevance of our sex amongst ourselves and that it is important to grasp this
One of my favourite parts of this book was seeing Josephine Butler stand up for women who were considered to be prostitutes and who were being forcibly examined under the contagious diseases act for potential syphilis. Some were locked up for months at a time.
She&the “ladies” stopped that. They were concerned about prostitutions affect on women and girls. Butler,with imperative efforts from W.T Stead helped raise age of consent from 13 as well. Their success eventually led to League of Nations work to protect trafficking victims
The women’s movement has always stood with prostitutes over the men who would buy them, with children over the men who would rape them and with all women over the men who would subjugate them. We’ve always been monstered for it too. The thread remains unbroken.
It is these objectives that clearly distinguish us from anti feminist movements. One amusing point was MGF pointing out that anti suffragist women made a song and a dance about women not being political and needing to stay home….as they politically campaigned&didn’t stay home.
She felt they didn’t really believe the nonsense they came out with (except Mrs.Humphrey Ward who could believe all manner of conflicting things at once). Instead, she felt they just wanted to be on the winning side and believed that side would win.
A vast amount of people are now doing exactly the same. They’ve decided trans “rights” will win (and who can blame them, women are still so easily disregarded) and they wish to appear like champions of a winning cause. They fail to reckon, again, with the courage of our sex
This whole book is intrepid. At one point she, and other women, visited concentration camps in South Africa with the objective of helping improve conditions for women and children there. The book doesn’t properly mention that her Fawcett Commission report confirmed criticisms,
such as those raised by Emily Hobhouse, about the treatment of those in the camps, and recommended more rations, more nurses and a host of other practical considerations should be brought in at once. Contrary to the governments hope of a nice soft whitewash
Reading about the camps still made me uncomfortable as history of course so often does. I worried about how much the Boers suffered in them. With or without improvements which seem an insufficient response to the idea of such camps.

Then she talks of the suffragettes.
She defends them. She talks about years of violence against them before they returned it, and how even when they did they seriously harmed no one. This is another lesson to take from the past: women defending other women, even those who have different tactics.
&even where we seriously disagree on those tactics.We can stand with women,even when we do not stand with everything they say or do

I sincerely believe we need the patient women&the rebel ones

&they need each other
💜🤍💚

P.s I leave the rest for you to discover if you read it

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More from @hatpinwoman

6 Jan
This gives me pause.This is not the direction of my fight. Im not interested in seeing people with DSDs as the problem just because TRAs used them to try&assault women’s boundaries

Yes those with CAIS are genetically male.

They are also taken to be female at birth
Contrary to TRA assertion,women like me don’t want to karyotype people before giving them access to female spaces. CAIS is a special case. If youre born into a world that instantly sees you as female because of how you’ve developed you are at the same risk other girls are
Then,when you discover your medical condition and that you will never be pregnant you must have so much grief as a result. Discovering youre genetically male,contrary to the apparent external appearance&development of your own body must be a dissonance or difficulty for many
Read 5 tweets
5 Jan
I’m amazed at how apologetic I was when i joined this fight. How much I felt the need to soften the blow of every simple truth in order to protect the very people currently removing my rights and threatening me and my fellow women with outrageous harms for not accepting it.
That isn’t compassion,although it pretends to be&feels like it. When someone stamps on your foot hard,&you feel like you need to apologise for putting your foot in their path,that is part of their harm against you. It’s part of their power&it keeps you subordinated to that power
“Please let me justify why I don’t like someone stamping on my foot. Please understand Im not a hateful vindictive person for saying so.”

That’s where many of us start

Guilty for having human needs and monstered for expressing them.
Read 13 tweets
1 Dec 21
I’m intending to reread Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies but in the meantime I thought I’d do a thread with some extracts from the narratives of men with autogynephilia from the book

Understanding this paraphilia is imperative for all of us talking about the erosion of women’s rights
I think reading this book means a lot of confusing things fall into place for women

Such as the constant evocations of being a “girl” that we see from transwomen. As well as the surprising desire to have a cervical smear or “gynaecological care” that we have sometimes seen. Image
Despite the quote attributions, these are the words of anon agp transsexuals, not Lawrence.

This informant explained to me why, perhaps, some transwomen go out in extremely revealing and astonishing outfits. Such as the fishnet, breast revealing, top from yesterday Image
Read 24 tweets

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