Help a brother out

[Glinner]

Hello, you coven of squints far right Nazi witches!

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology and activism. I've also asked on Twitter but thought this might be good for longer answers.

Please tell me your stories!

[KnitFastDieWarm]

Glinner, you utter legend
I first became involved when Maria Mclachlan was punched at speakers corner by a clearly male-bodied person claiming to be female. Until that moment I’d been completely on board with the prevailing mantra and would have been appalled at the thought of deviating from that, but the footage of this incident laid out for me that this was, essentially, not really about genuinely dysphoric and vulnerable individuals as i’d always assumed, but was about male privilege, male entitlement and male violence.
I’m now very happily ensconced with your good self, Martina Navratilova, Alison Moyet, Debbie Hayton and other well-known raging nazi bigots

[VickyEadie]

It was a friend who lives abroad who alerted me to it - I had no idea what was going on with the proposed changes to the GRA, etc in my own country. This was because the government wanted, as they did previously, to keep it as quiet as possible and bring in reforms which, allowing self-id, would permit men to invade women's spaces.

[rememberatime]

Mine was when I had a discussion with a friend and he asked me what I thought about the whole trans thing. I said that I didn't really care much about it, but that a man's lived experience cannot compare to a woman's, so surely they can't claim to BE women.

He looked at me and said, quite seriously "be careful... you can't say that."

This was more than 2 years ago - I've been saying it ever since. I didn't understand then why I couldn't say it and I still don't understand.

I never want to be told what I am allowed to say.

My friend and I have since had very reasonable and fair discussions about this issue - even though our viewpoints don't always merge, we are the perfect example of how two people who are essentially kind, can agree to disagree and the world doesn't stop or cave in.

[TeenTimesTwo]

When I read elsewhere on MN (about a year ago) that Girl Guides were letting male bodied guides share tents with girls without knowledge or consent of the girls or their parents.

Prior to that I had skimmed over stories as either not relevant to me, or in a kind of 'that's ridiculous, they'll never do that' way.

[BernardBlacksWineIcelolly]

It was Jennifer James's crowdfunder

the sight of males taking places designed to offset the disadvantages and discrimination women face due to their biology just blew my mind

and then watching those same males post pictures of themselves pole dancing in PVC on twitter and still being considered as viable political candidates blew my mind again

these days my mind is blown approximately once every 37.2 seconds so I'm used to it

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Women's spaces started me off: Trans activists say "we are the most vulnerable to murder and assault" when 137 women are murdered every single day in the world by men that they know. Male violence is the problem, not gender dysphoria.

Also, I grew up in the 80s. Men in make up and androgynous women were ten a penny. Can't see why people can't just do that instead of giving kids experimental drugs and stealing women's rights.

Also, I work in health care. The only encounters I have had with patients who are trans have been deeply unpleasant and borderline threatening - trans women who do not get what they want are just as scary as entitled men who are not getting what they want.

Also, the evidence isn't there. I've seen neo-vaginas, and that is in no way the same as my smashing wee fanny. I've seen mastectomy scars and they in no way look like male pectoral muscles. I've seen "front holes" that have been on testosterone for five years, and a more sore looking vulva I've yet to see on a post menopausal woman. It's a lie - the trans communities are sold a lie, you can't change sex.

Also, the kids. What the actual fuck are we doing? If there was a 5000% spike in the number of young kids presenting with diabetes there would be, at the very least, some concern amongst medics. This, though? My kid's school has 10 trans boys now, in a school of about 800 kids. My friend's daughter came home as a son, having come out at lunchtime to school...and that afternoon, got "himself" a girl friend. The kid is a little baby lesbian, but, genuinely believes that the next step is hormones in their perfect, 15 year old, female body.

Also, thank you for what you do. In all seriousness, it must be pretty fucking wearing dealing with the woke and transactivists day in day out.

Also, hope you are keeping well

[AbsintheFriends]

India Willoughby lecturing the nation on Woman's Hour (early 2017??) about how women have a duty to shave their legs, and those who don't look dirty.

I listened with my mouth open. When Jenni Murray subsequently wrote an article about it I thought thank Christ it's not just me. And then the baying for her blood started...

[RiverTam]

It was the IOC decision back end of 2015 to allow men to compete in women's sports if they had 'lived as a woman' for a year and brought their testosterone down to an amount 3 times more than the highest a woman would ever have.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/2555638-Trans-people-being-allowed-to-compete-against-women-in-the-Olympics

[insertamusingIDhere]

I did a Twitter search about the David Challenor case and after clicking through various tweets I stumbled across Glinner's account, read through that and there must have been a few tweets name checking mumsnet so I ended up here. I can't say I even knew any of this way going on beforehand.

[theultimatehousekeeper]

Totally star-struck by Glinner, hello!

We, to give you a timeline, I was first peak-patriarchied by MN back in 2009 when Roman Polanski was arrested and half of Hollywood defended his rape of a child.

So that was the start of me becoming a feminist and that was largely through these boards with Dittany et al.

I then didn't come here so often once I was fully converted (because I found it very painful as I have 2 female children).

It was on the main boards I noticed a lot of talk about 'transphobia' and I didn't really get why that be happening here. I knew transphobia must be a bad thing as all woolly liberals do.

Then, about a year ago, someone I really respected made a comment about gender reassignment and I had a knee jerk "omg he's transphobic" moment which did not match up with my experience at all.

So I talked to him about it - he's been a practising psychotherapist for decades now and he told me the first client he ever had was someone who transitioned male to female and then regretted it.

And about how it felt to counsel someone through the loss, basically, of a very important body part.

And, weirdly, for the first time I began to think about what is actually involved in gender reassignment and I knew it was being discussed here and I popped on over and was peak transed in seconds.

It really was a multiple peak-trans experience. Medicalising children, removing female safe spaces were the key ones for me because I work with troubled children and also Im a survivor of sexual abuse so those were the big two, initially.

Now I'm pissed off about sport, sexist stereotypes, chest-feeding and all the rest of it. I really am as cantankerous as all hell about every aspect of it now.

[Pythagonal]

I gradually became aware of things like the cotton ceiling, and it slowly built up from there. I was pretty much live and let live and would even have considered myself a trans ally.

It was when I discovered that a drug I'd been given for six months only to treat endometriosis (buserelin) was being given to children as a puberty blocker long term that the scales finally fell from my eyes. The drug puts a woman into a temporary menopause and the side effects were horrendous. I knew why I was being given the treatment, the pain of endometriosis was crippling each month, but I really did struggle to complete the six months of treatment. I was given the drug as a nasal spray, so stopping it would have been easy.

There's no way that you can convince me that a child could fully comprehend and therefore consent what using these drugs will do to them. I have been left with lasting joint and muscle pain - had I known then what I know now about this class of drugs, I would never have agreed to take it.

[picklemepopcorn]

It happened very fast for me. I stumbled across something on here, read a bit, researched a bit...

Danielle Moscato, TWs in women's refuges, TWs in sport, Stephonknee, Lilly Madigan campaigning to get a woman removed from her post.

Jenny Murray's newspaper article, and the treatment she received as a result, were defining for me. No one puts Jenny in the corner.

[MillytantForceit]

The attack on Germaine Greer. I thought, 'Oi, wass goin on?'

[theultimatehousekeeper]

Also wax my balls is a oneperson peak trans machine.

[Xiaoxiong]

Mine was Caitlin Jenner and the whole thing about wearing dresses and painting nails. At the time I had just had DS1 following a nightmare pregnancy, days of labour and an emergency CS, and was commuting, pumping breast milk in the office, rushing home for the second shift with an EBF baby and watching the male hierarchy in my firm slowly but surely freezing me out of projects because of assumptions I couldn't commit 100% because I had a baby at home. To read that Caitlin Jenner pontificating on the cover of Vogue about the hardest thing about being a woman just made my blood boil. It just seemed the perfect example of male privilege and someone socialised as male demanding airtime and mansplaining. Following that, it was Pips Bunce and finally the legal ramifications of self ID that really finished me off.

[Xiaoxiong]

Oh yes and also the Get the L Out protests at Pride last year. That revealed the whole cotton ceiling thing which just flies so far in the face of everything I believe about consent.

[WowWowWomen]

Woman of the Year awarded to a man was my WTF? moment.

There was an extremely short be nice adjustment phase but that was all about the disbelief then sickening sinking realisation that a war on women was just an adjunct to a war on children.

Now I am just like a statistic loaded pitching machine with a zero tolerance approach to bullshit. I feel sick to my stomach everyday with the knowledge of what is happening here, quiet is not an option.

[Callmejudith]

Mine was also back in 2015 - combination of the IOC guidelines (I remember saying to my PT "surely this can't be right??") and Caitlin Jenner winning Woman of the Year.

I was already a prolific mumsnet lurker and noticed a few threads and I have been utterly obsessed ever since.

In 2016 a friend's brother who lives in the US came out as trans. Utterly typical AGP, works in IT blah blah blah. Completely shafted their wife and teenage children. The wife said I was the only person who messaged her support and outrage rather than the usual brave and stunning narrative. When this person started posting pictures of themselves at a Lesbians in IT conference and with a F on their passport I just couldn't believe it.

[SoulSaver]

Mine was when Jenni Murray, someone who dedicates their life and career to shedding light on the challenges women face and lived female experiences, was trounced left, right and centre for saying something eminently sensible.

Still makes me cross

[WTFIsAGleepglorp]

It was a wanted poster of a man wearing a dangly earring and identified as a woman.

'She' had sexually assaulted a young girl and police were looking for 'her'.

Can't find the story now.

[Dinneratbreadsticks]

It was the Travis Alabanza Top Shop changing rooms thing that did it for me.

Travis didn't want to use the men's changing rooms as Travis didn't feel safe around men changing, so kicked up a fuss. Top Shop announces all its fitting rooms are unisex anyway so men can use either changing room. So how is Travis safer anyway? If men can use the mens or womens changing rooms, how has kicking up a fuss made things safer for anyone? The men Travis was scared of can now be in the women's changing rooms anyway.

The futile, selfish stupidity of it blew my mind.

[averylongtimeago]

It was the no platforming of Germaine Greer, plus reading on here. Swiftly followed by Muscato and the many attacks on women's spaces.
The final straw was the change in Girl Guiding policy - I and a number of friends were blocked from the leaders Facebook groups for daring to ask questions about safeguarding if male and female teens share sleeping accommodation, other leaders were kicked out and their leaders sacked.
Since then, there is something just about everyday which pushes me further up the "peak trans" mountain.

[LangCleg]

I was never on the bandwagon in the first place. The answer to the question "What shall we do about the unusual male people?" was never "Call them women, of course!" in my mind.

A TS person I know kept telling me it was getting out of control and I was busy with austerity so basically ignored them as drama-lamaing for ages. Eventually looked into it and shit my pants! I've been peaking daily ever since.

Main topics of concern: child safeguarding and the fate of women at the bottom of the pile. Not that fussed by Pippa Bunce swanning around the City.

[AngelsSins]

IOC allowing men to compete as women was my moment, especially when you compare it to the hoops Oscar Pistorius had to jump through to run against able bodied men in the olympics. They were extremely concerned with being fair and making sure he didn’t have any advantage.

[mimivanne]

I've always voted Labour (over 50 years) and I was thrilled when Jeremy became leader of the LP,with the possibility of change to the damaging austerity policies .
I joined the LP for the first time to offer more support.
And then I saw the pic of L Madigan ,Labour Womens Officer and JC who was very clear that in his view TWAW.
Initially I couldn't believe it ,I still can't to be honest,the sheer insanity of trying to force women to accept that males can change sex and be accepted into sex segregated spaces,womens sports ,girl guide tents ,or be branded bigots,terfs and transphobes.
We won't accept males can become female.
Ever.