Changing gender without any medical care/advice/opinion - just saying 'I'm a woman' and it being so

Sorry, just to continue my rant - how much can these overso right-on people really care about women's oppression, when they're not listening to our concerns? It's almost as if they've been virtue signalling all along (losing my faith in human nature emoji)

Why can't we discuss our concerns?! I've never felt silenced like this before. I mean, I've experienced negative reactions to 'banging on' about feminism, but this is a whole new level.

Was just about to post about that Indominus

All but one of my (leftie) friends are completely on board with this.

I'm genuinely sad because I consider them my gang, where I belong, and I agree with them on everything else. I daren't speak out

And now we are going to be compared to FUCKING Trump for sending up for our rights . I am very much against what he's just done but also very much against the self identification proposal.

Oh and re the spiked article linked upthread, I don't think the author realises that the retrospectively changed birth certificates are ALREADY in existence here and have been for some years now (don't know if the 2004 act or the 2010 one?).

It's Brendan O’Neill. He's no stranger to adjusting reality to suit his argument. That said though I do largely agree with the article.

And then where does the polite pretence stop? When he's claiming a scholarship for elderly Chinese women? When he wants to represent elderly Chinese women at a student body meeting? When he wants to represent elderly Chinese women in a debate about discriminating against Asian people in the US? Would they be happy for him to do all of those things?

I wish the interviewer had gone further and asked those things. Because suddenly rights will clash.

He should have said he was a black woman and has applied to talk about the oppression of black women in society.

I'd love to see them go on record saying that was okay.

And then led it back to saying so if that's not okay, is it okay for a man to say he's a woman and talk about feminism.

Assassinated Would they be happy for him to do all of those things?
At the moment, I actually think the zeitgeist is such that they would. They would actually go along with all that (albeit somewhat uncomfortably) rather than challenge the central doctrine of identity politics, "I am who I say I am because I say I am". If no one has called "Danielle" Muscato on his bullshit yet, that must be the case.

It really is a religious dogma that brooks no deviation from the doctrine. And the world seems to be swimming with paid up believers. To quote from that spiked article: As trans-sceptical feminists have discovered, the utterance ‘Men cannot become women’ is to the early 21st century what ‘Jesus is not the Christ’ was to the 15th.

Those young people in the video... they know that he isn't an elderly Chinese woman, but they're prepared to go along with his pretence out of kindness/a desire to appear tolerant and accepting. I'd be amazed if any of them were prepared to say that they know he's an elderly Chinese woman. So we have the situation where a polite pretence has replaced the truth. And then where does the polite pretence stop? When he's claiming a scholarship for elderly Chinese women? When he wants to represent elderly Chinese women at a student body meeting? When he wants to represent elderly Chinese women in a debate about discriminating against Asian people in the US? Would they be happy for him to do all of those things?

Dear God, that video. How are these idiots going to be able to make decisions like should we go to war? Should children be vaccinated? Should the age of consent be abolished? How about paedophiles? Should they be able to access children?

If you can't accurately describe what is in front of your very eyes and make a judgement based on that description, how are you ever going to hold down a job? Be a manager? Plan sick leave and maternity leave for people? Tell someone off for taking a two hour lunch break? Raise a family? Run a country?

They know full well the emperor has no clothes. They are just hoping that there are enough people to collude with them in the delusion so that everything will be fine.

That and the fact that real life hasn't yet happened to them.

Sorry, one more rant... re the whole "where's the harm if you believe something that's clearly untrue" bullshit, where would we end up if you took that to its logical conclusion? How would that work in a court of law? No need for "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" any more.

Do you identify as the person who raped this woman/murdered that man?

No, I firmly believe I didn't do it, even though the evidence proves overwhelmingly that I did.

Oh, ok, if you believe you're not guilty that's all we need, not guilty, off you go.

Oh and re the spiked article linked upthread, I don't think the author realises that the retrospectively changed birth certificates are ALREADY in existence here and have been for some years now (don't know if the 2004 act or the 2010 one?). The only difference with the proposed changes will be that you no longer have to wait two years and go before a medical panel to get your GRC and your shiny new untrue birth cert.

That was one of the things that made my brain explode the most when I first became aware of all this. I was outraged at the current legislation never mind what they want to bring in. I just think most people - and the author of that article demonstrates this - just have NO IDEA what legal changes have taken place over the last 13 years. I certainly had none until I was enlightened here on MN, thanks to the brave souls daring to speak up when all around were shouting burn the witch transphobic bigot at anyone with a grasp on reality.

OMG that video. This is what we're dealing with: a whole generation of young people who have no real understanding of what truth is or why it matters. They really are so close to a totalitarian state - it's like Kim Jong whichever one it is now telling the people of North Korea they're living in the best place in the world, and they believe it because they've been brainwashed. Does a lie like that not matter either?

They really can't see why it might be... problematic... to have an adult male as a class member with a group of actual 6/7 yo first graders. If they can't see that then no wonder they can't see the problem with males in women's toilets etc.

And so many of them say "how does it hurt me what you believe about yourself" - well it hurts you if you are then obliged to say you too believe the obvious lie, you chump. It hurts everyone if deluded people are indulged in their delusions, in so many ways.

This is so scary. And the frighteningly large numbers of people who are old enough to know better who have gone along with it too. Why do people have this collective need to deny reality? What are they getting out of it?

Shame that video was made (predictably) by a group that appears to be classic Christian Right, pro life and no doubt homophobic etc. What a strange new world we find ourselves in, when our allies are the people who we are fundamentally opposed to.

In terms of identity and 'I am what I say I am,' this video is very interesting:

Okay, it's just a small number of students, but the idea that it's necessary to be polite and not disagree even when that means flatly contradicting objective reality just strikes me as utterly bizarre. Very Emperor's New Clothes.

In my view, much that is driving this is a search for identity in a world becoming very complex indeed. A key part of this is social media which seems to be an environment very difficult to navigate in terms of what it demands. Appearance and fitting in are everything and I think it must be hell for those who feel they are falling short. I think trans provides young people with an alternative to feelings of failure and inadequacy.

There'll be other reasons too of course.

Whenever I grumble to myself about getting older I think "well, at least you grew up before social media came on the scene".

One of the things that gets to me most is the way that the likes of Maria Miller don't even engage with the objections properly They don't even bother to respond. How the fuck are they getting away with this?

That's not what I said. I was trying to be quite careful.

It seems like there could become sort of a link between neuro atypical and a tendency to transgender but they're not caused by the same thing.

And not every autist is transgender and not every trans person is neuro atypical.

That read like I think you can be trans - that's not what I mean. I just meant the NAS stats show that.

If you're autistic you are more likely to be gender questioning/fluid but the leap to say that means trans has the same cause leaves me agog! I've worked with a lot of autistic people and the back and white thinking some have would make it easy to think 'I don't fit with X group so I must be Y' and having that treated as trans rather than seeing it as an expression of a general experience of not fitting is very worrying!

Argh bloody phone: "the tools of structural analysis"

Clearly my phone is programmed to sabotage Marxist feminist statements.

Also, I have taught queer theory and the philosophical underpinnings of trans activism are there.

But

It's complex stuff and the version of Judith Butler parroted by some TRA is a poorly misunderstood reading. And a lot of queer theory is quite anti-feminist. Reflecting the dirty secret of a lot of gay male activism: misogyny. But we know that!

Re trans and autism. There has been a murmuring in medical research circles about a connection between the two. I know contiguity is not causation or necessarily correlation, but I've observed myself people transitioning whom I would describe as autists.

I guess if you're neuro atypical you might also find gender roles -- masculinity and femininity- quite difficult.

I'm fascinated by why this happened so quickly as well. And why transgender is "right on" but transracial is not.

My thoughts:
Young people today (the 16-25 yos ) have. Even brought up in the wake of 70s women's lib - a mix of radical feminism with liberal or reformist feminism. The latter necessary to get much needed equality reforms such as equal pay (ha!) etc

There was that thought in popular culture that we were post-feminist now and that it was all sorted.

Clearly not. The told of a structural analysis and critique of sex and gender which I was taught, are not being taught to young people today.

Then there's the desire to rebel, to stake out territory different to that of your parents' generation. So eschewing "old fashioned " feminism (the discourse around Germaine Greer is frankly shockingly dismissive of her) is a way to be different and more virtuously radical etc etc etc

And because we're obviously NOT in a post-feminist world -as if- then women's voices, views, experience. - women's very culture - is as usual erased, made Other, seen as aberrant.

It's depressing...

Oh, just to add to the depression, a psychiatrist I worked with considers trans to be a developmental condition 'like autism'. She has no evidence of that, it's just what she thinks. That means she sees it is somehow inevitable so she assumes anyone presenting is trans. So don't think the medics are better informed or thinking about this. They aren't. She worked in a gender clinic by the way...

The survey: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/national-lgbt-survey

Do fill it in, there tends to be low take up of these surveys so what you put in will matter and will stop it being so skewed!

Perhaps it's part of the Backlash against women and feminism. There will always be takers for that.

Hi everyone, I'm new to MN and have been brought here by the increasingly worrying trans agenda and its threats to women's safety, privacy and achievements. The silencing of women and attempts to no-platform dissenters is truly horrifying.

Great article that Puffpaw linked to. To okay the rewriting of birth certificates is to nurture a new Orwellian era in which past events can be altered upon the whim of contemporary prejudice or hysteria...It would lie to us, and to future generations. Shouldn’t this concern us, this official approval of misinformation?

I'm also bemused as to how this appears to be happening so quickly. Why, all of a sudden, are otherwise intelligent people claiming that a man is a woman if he says he is? Why are all these people claiming that they can see the Emperor's new clothes? I honestly can't get my head round this.