How to deal with DH response re trans issues

It must be extremely frustrating living with someone who has so little concern for women and girls rights and saftey.

What does he think about Karen White, Aimee Challenors lies and Jess (NUS person, sorry can’t remember surname). These people have been able to behave as they have because they are surrounded by people with the same attitude as him. Every single one of them were waving big red flags and it was women like you OP, who shouted “look, this isn’t right, do something” and fuckers like your H told people like you to stop worrying your pretty little head and to stop being transphobic.

I don’t think he’s a feminist at all.

Carikube my DH has, for a long time, nodded sagely and said he agreed with me, but not really "got" it, I'd mention stories as they came out, get the nodding head, "hmmm very interesting". And then the Challenor story broke, and the issue of safeguarding within the political structures. DH is politically active in the LP, and this was his "peaktrans" moment. He has so peaked that he is challenging people who post in LP Facebook groups, he is asking questions in public. He hasn't even said NAMALT in weeks!

I'm sure something will happen to cause your DH to "get it", it just needs to be the right story and the right time.

Discuss it in Orwellian-1984 or cognitive dissonance terms.
Does he not mind the fact that stating the obvious (eg a person with a penis is not a woman) is being twisted into being described as hatespeak?
It is the erosion of liberty (not just females' but his, too) that worries me. It is like Martin Niemöller's First they came... poem. By the time your DH wakes up it may be too late.

To my mind this is about a fundamental cultural shift which is about far more than a few transsexuals. It's about boundaries being blurred or eroded and a very nasty group of men throwing their weight around and getting exactly what they want to the detriment of everyone.

It's an argument about what a woman is. If you change the definition so anyone can be female, you suddenly can't keep a great many biological females safe. To my mind it isn't even really about the men who will identify as women to cause trouble - although of course some will and will get away with it. Am I ok with the fabric of society changing so completely? Am I ok with the fact that on principle women everywhere will be less safe? Absolutely no way. Women are valued so little as it is. It's pulling us backwards. Everything regarding our safety hinges on us being defined by our biology.

My dh knew nothing about the issue until it happened in his own house. He was furious! We host teenage foreign language students dh one strict rule is that we only host girls as their room next to our dds one student we were allocated was clearly a boy but with eye shadow, sharing a room with a fellow female student and we had to accept this. Dd aged 7 said loudly "but he's a boy mummy". Confused girls, furious dh and me in breach of the no mixed sex students in one room rule. Brave new world.

No, yep isn't a new poster, I recognise her style.

But I reckon her attitude and your DH's (and my DH's, come to that) are a bit complacent.
They don't care about privacy.
They don't care about religious minorities.
They don't care about the dignity of pubescent girls. Or boys.
They don't care about women's sport.
They don't care about health statistics.
They don't care about crime statistics.
They don't care about equalities policies designed to even out disadvantages.
They don't care about the biological differences that since time immemorial have made women into second class citizens, or even not citizens at all but chattels.
They don't care about the biological differences which first attracted your DH and you in the first place.
They care more about the feelings of a tiny percentage of men than the feelings (and safety - it's not all about safety but some of it is) of a large number of women.

But don't tell him this all at once. I asked my DH to google Alex Drummond, and he said "(AH) is taking the piss, isn't (AH)?" But if AH (who may for all I know be a very nice person) is a woman, how can we tell the difference between a woman and a man, and why should this matter?

Got to dash now or I'd cite examples and sources of all the above.

But worth bearing in mind DH is entitled to his own opinion, but he's not entitled to yours and your DDs'. And vice versa.

The fact my ex husband failed to take my concerns about women's equality seriously was a large part of the reason he's an ex. It underscores a general attitude about women's rights to express themselves about facts that men find uncomfortable. He felt I hated men and therefore him. In the end, I did.

My DH doesn't know I'm the local 'stickerwoman' or that I've written to my MP.

He won't discuss it either...just assumes I'm having one of my ranty episodes. So taking direct, albeit somewhat cloak-and-dagger, action is making me feel so much better. Let's face it, what difference would it actually make it he did agree?

I don’t know about “quite the feminist “ to be honest. Men telling women that there “are bigger things to worry about” and instructing women on where to “focus their anger’ are not feminists.

If he can only think in terms of direct threats to his daughters then you’ll have to limit yourself to the limits of his understanding. Talk to him about safeguarding while his daughters are children; the effects if they play sports and are faced with having to compete with male bodied “women”; if they have trouble dealing with an increasingly pornified culture and are convinced that cutting their breasts off and poisoning themselves with testosterone is an escape; if they are lesbian and are denied the right to set their own sexual boundaries.

Talk to him about how defining “woman” as a bundle of stereotypes is
damaging to his daughters; show him the sexist lists of “feminine” qualities that his daughters will be expected to live by.

Explain to him that feminism is about the rights of women and girls and that there is more to it than the right not to be raped. Women’s rights are under attack - explain to him that, as a mother, you want your daughters to live in a better world for women, not one in which rights already won are lost. Maybe he thinks none of this will effect his daughters- that he will somehow be able to protect them; but he cannot protect them from the world they have to live in.

If after all this he still patronisingly dismisses your concerns then you’ll just have to accept that either he is not capable of understanding or he doesn’t care.

I look on it from a risk assessment pov. Yes he's right in that there's a very low likelihood of you/your dd's directly encountering risk but if you do the severity could be very high. This is enough for any decent risk assessment to trigger action to minimise that risk.

He's allowed to have a different opinion to you.

Welcome to Mumsnet yepthisisanewone

OP - it's small steps. Most of us on here started from the 'of course transwomen are women' and wanting to be inclusive and kind. It's only been as the threats, the intimidation and the nature of some of the people leading this have been revealed , that you start to question it. This is the biggest threat to women that I've ever seen in my lifetime and the rolling back of safeguarding for children that TRAs are attempting is frightening.

As MangoSplit says, play the long game. Things are starting to unravel publicly so there's much more awareness of what is happening as TRAs are no longer as successful in censoring the news as they were.

Always nice to hear from the "real" feMANists who are verbally abusive to women and totes have their priorities in order.

I think you have posted this so that you can have your views validated and have everyone nod and agree and say ‘oh yes, you are so right, your terrible DH and his lack of understanding’ etc etc ad nauseum. If so then you have come to absolutely the right place. This is an echo chamber of the highest order.

However, just to change it up a bit here (I know it is unusual, but I’m a feminist with a different view..) - you really need to understand this board is like being in the kkk if you are a racist. Of course everyone will agree with you here, but it doesn’t mean it’s ok. If you actually expressed your very niche ideas with the wider, more tolerant and let’s face it more realistic & less ‘oh fuck my biggest fear is that there will be a big beardy man in a dress waiting to rape me in every toilet’ world then very few people would agree with you. It’s just not true.

Ive been on MN for 12 years & I worry about this board when I come across it, despite having once been part of it, but then I remember it’s really not a thing, just a very tiny minority shouting loudly in a box in a corner of the internet that no one else can hear, or rather nobody is listening & those that are are mostly .

TBH Your DH sounds great, he’s making a perfectly valid point, maybe try & see his point of view? Most of us old school feminists who don’t hold these views have long gone from this board, I mean there is literally no point pissing in the wind.

For perspective maybe try & think instead how you would feel if your DD got in with a group of extremists & could no longer listen to both sides of an argument, even when it started to threaten relationships with people she loved and respected. Perhaps if that happened you’d encourage her to try & have a bit of perspective? See both sides?

I know this is pointless, hence the name change - I still enjoy MN despite all this & don’t want to be hunted down with the burning crosses & pointy hats. But seriously- it’s not worth the real life argument with your DH, this has no actual real impact in real life, and I’m just stepping in NOTE & I’m sorry - won’t be back, won’t come & look at the vultures trying to pick apart my words & frankly couldn’t care less...I’ve read the propoganda, I don’t agree - you do your thing, I’ll do mine, let’s see what happens eh!

Just trying to give you a bit of perspective OP. I hope you are rational enough to listen or at least accept that perhaps other people have other opinions which are valid
and maybe you’ve got in a little
deep in here & actually it’ll all be fine & there are far more important things to worry about - not least of which is actual feminism...

Yes, I have been told exact same thing by woman and wait for it ... if its hysterical, its historical. no I kid you not. and told It won't affect me. Well it already is.

Womens sport
Crime stats ( Karen white committing sexual assault with HER penis)
Lesbians told they are transphobic if they are not open to women penis.
your daughters no longer having rights to all female spaces, does he want a man standing beside his daughter while she showers in her locker room. It will happen, anyone saying it won't, is minimising.
your daughters access to female hospital wards
and female medical professionals for smears etc
how about female police officers if ,god forbid they ever had to report assault
medical stats, how can we accurately calculate breast cancer / prostate cancer etc survival rates
does he want your daughters to have women representing them in parliament.

why don't you identify as a man. Then he will be gay and could be a LBGT advisor to Labour.

This is minimising and I know it is so hard when it happens to us. Have you looked at Fair Play for Women's site. also their is a thread with lots of resources. could someone post it, if they know where it is.

If I were you I'd play the long game OP. You don't need to convince him all in one go. Just keep chipping away at it (by mentioning relevant news stories etc). As others have said, try to relate it to your own DDs where possible. But at the end of the day he needs to make up his own mind. It's not a requirement of marriage that you agree on everything!

The teaching in schools and the social contagion is what does my head in. In Scotland, choosing your gender is going on the 5-9 year olds curriculum, without the possibility of opting out.

Does he understand the 85% of transgender women having a penis statistic?
If your daughter goes on a residential school trip is he OK that she shares a room with a boy who declares he's a lesbian girl?

You may think this a bit extreme but if my H told me there were more important things to worry about than the safely of my daughter I would tell him that he is the one who needs to get his priorities straight.

Women and girls face harassment and abuse every day. Self ID allows those abusive men access to women in women's spaces where they are vulnerable and possibly alone. All men. Not just men IDing as women, all men. Any man who wants into the girls changing room. Now what kind of man wants into the girls changing room?

But also what are you asking him to do? Go out and campaign? Start a Twitter fight with Owen Jones? Or just acknowledge your fears? 'Cos if it's just the last one and he won't do that because it's beneath his notice then you have a bigger problem than transactivism I'd say...

Your DH and his apathy is part of the problems they will face. He's minimising. He's able to because he doesn't feel it will affect him.

At this rate, when your DD's go to Uni, they won't have a women only dorm, or toilets. They won't have women only hospital wards. Thats about their privacy, not just the risk of being attacked.

One of the things they'll have to deal with Carikube is the concept that they are inferior as women to men.

The genderist ideology says that women are innately aligned with the gender stereotypes assigned to females. This is the oldest sexism, it doesn't matter whether men are feeling the bumps on our heads and deciding we're innately inferior, or measuring our brains and deciding we're innately inferior, or making up Aesop's Fables and calling it evolutionary psychology (women are naturally easily distracted flibbertigibbets because we had to be to spot berries easily!), or inventing "gender identity" and declaring that real women identify with being innately inferior and anyone who doesn't isn't really a woman.

It's all the same stuff and it's a lot more immediately harmful to girls than the remote risk of stranger attack, whether that stranger identifies as a man or not.

And yes, I agree with sports. Maybe he can listen to Joe Rogan talking about Fallon Fox.

If the 'small risk' was that your purse might get stolen, then sure. But the risk is about really serious crimes like rape. So while the risk may be small the impact is very very high. Plus we have to factor in that we don't know from looking who is a rapist and who isn't so we have to protect ourselves generally.

It is important to make sure that female women can name themselves and their biology because that is how we make sure we are protected in terms of rights.

And yes, Brexit is important but so is protecting oneself against assault and legal/social erasure.

Tell him to stop being a patronising nob mansplainer. Who is he to say you are focusing on the wrong things, overblowing things etc? You are a grown woman who knows fine well what you are worried about and why.

No, because this gender ideology stuff is going to be taught to DDs in school.
Get him to watch some Riley J Dennis videos, and that godawful BISH thing www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3357713-BISH-proudly-supported-by.
This is the kind of shit that the kids will learn. AND if your children end up having same-sex attraction, they might get bullied for their "genital preferences."