When, oh when, will the tide turn?

The people urging you to be kind always mean "to men", though.

I'm all for being kind to women and girls

From Malcolm Clarke's threadreader (linked upthread)

"A thread. The Scottish govt wants to enshrine the concept of 'gender identity' in law. But what is 'gender identity' and where did this seemingly innocent idea come from? Welcome to a dark tale of scientific malpractice, psychiatric abuse and...an epidemic of amputations.

In 1955 Dr John Money borrowed the word 'gender' from linguistics to describe what had till then been known as 'sex'. The science of sexology was dominated by biologists and if an ambitious psychiatrist like him was ever to shine he knew he needed to elbow out the biologists.
He was also frank that 'sexology' was unlikely ever to be fully respectable if it sounded like it was obsessed with the S word. Money went on to invent the terms 'gender role' and our friend 'gender identity', as he became the global go-to expert in transsexual studies.

I came across Money when my colleagues at BBC Horizon made a heart-rending episode on the story of David Reimer. As a baby David lost his penis when his circumcision went wrong. His parents were sent with David to John Money.

Money argued 'gender identity' was a social construction that you could change in any child before the age of 2. He decided to give David hormones, create a surgical vagina and told his parents to bring him up as a girl. Here's the script for the show.
www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/boyturnedgirl.shtml

Money later made 6 year old David and his twin brother strip naked and play sex games which he photographed. Research apparently. He wrote the case up as a huge success and said it helped explain 'transsexuality'. A transsexual's identity he said was fixed socially..

..at an early age just as he'd fixed David's and doctors should do what he'd done: affirm the identity & make the body fit it. What Money didn't reveal was that David actually hated his 'girl' identity and later committed suicide. When this came out Money's career was ruined. But rather than David's case being seen as proof biological SEX was immutable experts now tweaked Money's view of transsexuality & argued instead that our inner sense of 'gender identity' was not formed by society but entirely innate. So innate you could never change it. " (continues)

John Money's abusive & unethical practice should be a core concern to anyone relying on his 'work' as a foundation for their beliefs and/or policies.
current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3884596-award-winning-article-from-1997-on-david-reimer

see also other 'sexologists' eg Harry Benjamin:
stoptransingkids.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/who-was-harry-benjamin/amp/

Alfred Kinsey
thesexualdevolution.blogspot.com/2018/01/alfred-kinsey-was-american-biologist.html

That didn’t show the idea of gender identity to be fraudulent though

Maybe not, but having a 'gender identity' as a distinct & discrete psychological 'item' is simply not something that most people recognise; although if you buy into the idea that such a thing exists, then identify yourself with it - then that is another issue.

Fomation of important international group of professionals:

"Society For Evidence Based Medicine

About Us
We are an international group of nearly 100 clinicians and researchers concerned about the lack of quality evidence for the use of hormonal and surgical interventions as first-line treatment for young people with gender dysphoria. We represent expertise from a range of clinical disciplines.

Our objectives include evaluating current interventions for gender dysphoria, providing balanced evidence summaries, promoting the development of effective and supportive psychosocial approaches for the care of young people with gender dysphoria and generating good, answerable questions for research.

Young people with gender dysphoria deserve respect, compassion, and high quality care. Please join us in our mission to promote evidence-based care for children, adolescents, and young adults that prioritizes life (i.e. measures of mortality), quality of life, long-term outcomes, and fully informed consent. SEGM is free from political, ideological, religious, or financial influences.

We are currently in the process of forming a 501(c) nonprofit organization."

www.segm.org/

"Be kind" is invariably used by people whose beliefs have consequences that are not at all kind to underrepresented people such as female prisoners and rape victims. It is used to suggest that talking about bad things that have happened is worse than the events themselves.

Even the Guardian has given up with the cissing, right now we have the return of our words & their meanings but for how long?

I read a Guardian journalist stating the importance of "recording accurate sex-disaggregated data" the other day and nearly fell off my chair. It's going to make it a hell of a lot harder for people to argue "sex is a construct" or "sex is a spectrum" or even "sex is irrelevant" with a straight face post-coronavirus. Turns out we all knew what male/female was all along and no it's not "assigned at birth".

“Be kind” always sounds to me like a six year old bully trying to get his/her own way.

"Be kind" is often a synonym for "be uncritical". On the assumption that "being critical" means "being nasty". In reality, examining things critically is often a good idea. Also, some things really do need to be criticised.

We need to change be kind to be truthful.

The "be kind" thing is beginning to really annoy me. I see it parroted everywhere now, in every second Facebook post about any issue whatsoever; it's become a virtue-signalling slogan you drop into conversation to show how very compassionate you are, and by women especially.

Which means that they'll use it - unthinkingly -- in support of trans rights as well, without giving a thought to the actual consequences for real women. How can you say anything when a woman argues for transwomen entering women's spaces just by smugly saying be kind?

And yet, instinctively we all know.

I was watching an old episode of 4 in a Bed the other day and the group was taken to a glamping site. Every single one of the rival B&B owners complained that the shower area was "mixed sex" (yes, that was the word they used) and that that was a huge no-no for them.

These were ordinary people who had probably never given a thought to trans issues before.

If it was more women than men in the fatalities do you think the language obfuscation would have carried on? Headlines like non men more affected, some women & lots of cis, I think so

I doubt there would be headlines as they wouldn’t be bothered or if they were it would still be ‘women’ and they would wheel out a selection of transwomen to say how worried they were and how they needed more rights to be treated speschul

@DJLippy Professor Sarah Gilbert on Andrew Marr using clear language to describe why her Oxford team believe more men than women have died because of covid, a possibility of genetic differences in our immune systems, only the terms men & women used, no cis, no spectrum of sexes, cant find her being branded a terf for it on twitter but you never know, Harrop could be hunting her down as I write this. Even the Guardian has given up with the cissing, right now we have the return of our words & their meanings but for how long? If it was more women than men in the fatalities do you think the language obfuscation would have carried on? Headlines like non men more affected, some women & lots of cis, I think so. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/coronavirus-hits-men-harder-evidence-risk

This Twitter thread explains the background of the concept of 'gender identity'.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224766770805866499.html

It is related to people who are perfectly healthy and able bodied but claim to have an 'innate identity' of a disabled person and therefore need to have their limbs amputated.

from this thread shows that in the late-90s the "scientific" underpinning of gender identity ideology was shown to be largely fraudulent put together by people having harmful motivations and even though a scandal erupted, somehow the ideology was able to start regaining lost ground and then far exceed the lost ground not many years afterward.

That didn’t show the idea of gender identity to be fraudulent though, just that you can’t forcibly change someone’s gender identity anymore than you can change their sexuality.

OP, stay strong. Transgenderism is well-funded and it cleverly hitched a ride on the LGB movement, which no decent liberal would oppose.

It took off at astonishing speed and was entrenched in government departments, charity, academia etc while most of us were still saying WTF???

But the more people read and hear about it, the more the rest of the population is noticing that this isn't the harmless oppressed group they had imagined. The propaganda can no longer counteract the reality.

As others have said on Mumsnet, it's the cleansing power of sunlight. So let's stay strong. People are slowly waking up to what's happening.

As a note of caution, this article:

www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan

from this thread shows that in the late-90s the "scientific" underpinning of gender identity ideology was shown to be largely fraudulent put together by people having harmful motivations and even though a scandal erupted, somehow the ideology was able to start regaining lost ground and then far exceed the lost ground not many years afterward.

In contemporary, liberal, individualistic societies individuals have been free to explore a wide range of expression and behaviour....and civil equality laws have enabled that regardless of one's sex, background, race, culture etc

In more conservative, traditional societies the roles of men and women are heavily prescribed, and shaped by assumptions based on biological sex alone. It is the social unit or the group that is more important than individualistic expression.

I think we have to be careful not to underestimate the role that technology plays in this difference. If for just a moment we imagine that we had a pre-20th century ability to control reproduction, ( not to mention identify parentage, or prosecute crime, or treat STIs) what would our liberal society look like in terms of freedom from sex based roles? I think we'd not see nearly as much difference from traditional societies. In a real way it's the inability to suppress or manipulate the biological situation that gives us the ability to give people as much freedom to express themselves as they have.

I think this is very much connected by the tendency to see progress in terms of a science-fiction kind of thinking, a domination of nature rather than working within it.

...I also did say based on assumptions around biological sex. Different societies have different myths, different stories and different narratives.....but what they do have in common are sex based divisions.

That's not true. Traditional societies usually constrain women's rights for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with sex, even though sex may used as an excuse

I'm not so much passing judgment on the sex based practices of different societies, more noting that they exist in the first place; and that in more 'traditional' societies all individuals are a lot more constrained in their permitted expressions.

In more conservative, traditional societies the roles of men and women are heavily prescribed, and shaped by assumptions based on biological sex alone.

That's not true. Traditional societies usually constrain women's rights for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with sex, even though sex may used as an excuse. Menstruation huts in Nepal, FGM, women denied the right to own property despite doing most of the work - sex may be the excuse, but the assumptions underlying these constraints (women are dirty/promiscuous/untrustworthy) have no basis in biology.

My feeling is that unless we get back closer to nature and its essentials.......the planet and its eco-systems have had it

I see transgender ideology as arising from this particular time in contemporary western, liberal society.......but also out of a society in which scientific exploration and 'science fiction becoming fact' is king. The idea of virtual realities; technology driven, tailor made individual worlds; medical and surgical 'advances' ( or nightmares, depending on your view); 'Second Life'; gaming etc - all feed it.

If you are hoping for society to wake up you will be waiting all day. What's more, I'm not sure i want that to happen - it will set back gay rights for years and years

I agree that thinking or expecting for people to "wake up" one day causing the whole 'thing' to collapse is wishful, magical thinking. That is not how it will happen. It will take time, and consequence, to play out. I do see this as an inevitability, though - certainly if as a planetary society we decide to move towards a more natural, earth based way of living; rather than towards some high tech, sci-fi, fantasy future in which technology is seen as God.

This present Covid crisis is highlighting both possibilities...which we we go only time will tell. My feeling is that unless we get back closer to nature and its essentials.......the planet and its eco-systems have had it.

You can see how much of the development of feminism in that period was affected by what was then thought of as cutting edge knowledge about the differences between the sexes being socially created only. And then at the same time, coming out of that misconception, you get the concept of interior gender identity being solidified as something which we all just know which has been used to shore up theory about transgenderism.I think there may need to be a really full scale unpicking, but it won't happen until it can be done in some way that isn't ideologically constrained

The idea that 'gender is a spectrum' is a weird kind of inversion of the fact that whilst having some essential differences, male and female people/human beings do exist along a spectrum of possibility, in terms of personal attributes and qualities. Whilst there are inherent sex based differences there is also a wide spectrum of possible expression within each sex.

I've never felt at all comfortable or convinced that all 'gendered expressions' are completely socially manufactured. It seems obvious to me that persona & individual expression is a mixture of nature and nurture.

In contemporary, liberal, individualistic societies individuals have been free to explore a wide range of expression and behaviour....and civil equality laws have enabled that regardless of one's sex, background, race, culture etc

In more conservative, traditional societies the roles of men and women are heavily prescribed, and shaped by assumptions based on biological sex alone. It is the social unit or the group that is more important than individualistic expression.