Does anyone ever have a "are we the baddies"* moment?

I would say it would also be wise to look elsewhere for sources of information too.

That's not aimed at anything in particular you've said just as a general thing. As of course people will mainly post here stuff that contributes to their opinion. That's perfectly natural and it doesn't mean it's not accurate! But also that there may be other sources of information that do nòt draw the same conclusions or that come from different sources with different biases etc. As it's always going to be present in one form or another

Everyone said we were on the wRoNg SiDe Of HiStOrY for thinking (well knowing) that very young children can't consent to life changing procedures...we were vindicated by the High Court. That's just one example.

Do explain how we're on the ''wrong side'' please.

Sorry I mean the social and cultural perspective of how trans women are portrayed and the threats they are percieved to pose towards women.

It's nothing to do with any other side of it, I just mean it solely changed my perception of trans women (temporarily as it turned out).

If you only get information from these boards, does that mean you never read any of the wonderful resources linked on the posts here?

I've learned about different types of feminism, genetics, the expression of the SRY gene and it's effects, the long term effects of lupron, lots of philosophical and political positions, the effect of puberty on muscle mass and bone density, various dsd disorders, rates of offending in men and women, political linguistics...honestly, I am missing huge amounts of things I have learned from the women on this board.

I've been pointed there by this board, but to say I only got information from this board would be very reductive.

Are you challenging these people at all? If not, what is the worst that could happen if you did? If so, what is the worst thing that could happen if you did more strenuously?

< hollow laugh >

Why do you assume that by talking about transwomen I automatically don't care about women? You sound exactly like an MRA saying feminism shouldn't exist because men suffer too 🤔

It's honestly all I ever see on here. I'm talking about transwomen because it's pertinent to what I'm trying to articulate, quelle surprise!

Women are leaving breathing people who face a lot of adversity too but somehow that never seems to matter 🤔

Yes OP I'm left wing and have always considered myself an LGBTQ ally.

I then saw the mumsnet feminism board and was then shocked at the apparently well presented arguments and information about trans women and it made sense if your only info is from these boards.

I still wasn't vitriolic toward trans people and was uncomfortable with a lot of the general views toward trans people but still believed in the threat they posed to women and their intentions.

I then looked into it further and I no longer feel this way at all. I feel like a lot of information is misrepresented or over stated and there is so much focus on trans "ideology" that the fact that trans women are actual living breathing people, most of whom want to get on with their lives and already face a lot of their own adversity is completely ignored.

I know this will not be well received here but OP yes I also realised this take was the bad take when i realised who the sort of people who also held this view were..

Great post @Blibbyblobby

Latter part of a process of social change? Bollocks.

It is a very specific, and well documented process derived from Postmodern Theory (a marxist offshoot) that uses social psychology to achieve its aims. It cannot suceed longterm because it shuts down debate, denies reality or any underlying truth other than that which we give meaning to and makes new hierachies of oppression and dominant discourses which must then alos be deconstructed.

The genius of Woke is that it weaponises words and captures people who believe they have the moral highground. It's evil is that it destroys the very processes that have the capacity to truly make society fairer, in fact the very processes that have brought our society to the place where tolerance and inclusion are so valued they can be weoponised by a movement.

I will not bend in the face of the mob, because the mob is gravely mistaken.

You are the baddies. You’re going to realise one day you’re on the wrong side of history.

The hub of the problem is male violence and how vulnerable women are to this. I have to some extent lived a charmed life surrounded by wonderful, caring men to whom the idea of hurting a woman is anathema. However, my eyes were opened when someone who babysat my own children was killed by her so called " loving" "pillar of the community" husband. Moreover, my own sexual harassment by numerous male strangers had already made me well aware that all men were not like those with whom I had the good fortune to live.
Transwomen are entitled to live as they wish and not suffer discrimination because of it. However, they remain males with exactly the same patterns of criminality and sexual offending as other males and thus can present a real danger to women when they are vulnerable. Nobody would put a random male prisoner in a female prison, so why is a transwomen different when potentially they present the same danger to female prisoners.
Live as you wish, dress as you please, love whom you wish but sometimes sex matters.

No. I was one of the women who didn't have a problem with it when it was a tiny number of transsexuals who suffered from dysphoria and didn't claim to be literally women. I was on the side of being kind to them, because their lives were difficult enough.

The moment people started claiming that TWAW and that they belonged in every possible women's space, I knew it was wrong. The moment someone called me 'cis' and insisted I had to identify with the stereotypes I've been fighting since literally age four, I knew it was wrong. The moment I read about the 'cotton ceiling'. Lila Perry. Andreya Yearwood. Lily Madigan.

The truth matters - and TWAW, 'sex is a spectrum', literally gendered brains in wrong bodies, and the other associated ideological nonsense is so absurd that I find it difficult to believe anyone genuinely thinks it's true and isn't just saying it because they believe it's 'kind' or 'progressive' - or because they would like it to be true.

Going back to the M+W reference...

The intolerant woke (the ones who believe they are tolerant yet demand total obedience and believe it’s justified to use violence and blackmail to silence opposing views because people can’t be trusted to hear them and make the “right” decisions) think of Nazism as being a culture so intolerant of specific people - Jewish people, gay people, Romany people, people who aren’t white - that they actually murdered them. To the intolerant woke, calling someone a “Nazi” is just a super-charged version of calling them a “Bigot”.

But they never think about the mechanisms the Nazis used to create that culture in the first place: the threats, the black and white positions, the book burning, the purging of wrongthink, the manipulation of the media, the control of education and local government, the “we good people are at terrible risk of an enemy who hates us and wants to destroy us” narrative, the duty to identify and inform on anyone not part of the group ideology, the requirement to engage in public performances of allegiance, the use of public shame and denouncement to discourage dissent, the gradual leverage of social pressure to move a whole population to accept dreadful things.

Those of us who lived through the mid and late twentieth century know this risk because we saw it played out, not only the Nazis but also the purges in Soviet Russia, the Chinese cultural revolutions, the secret police in the satellite states of the Eastern bloc. The horror of the Nazi was not only how evil individual humans can be, but how totalitarianism, social control and suppression of dissent can support evil on an industrial scale.

That awareness seems to have dropped out of popular (online) discourse, turning the Nazis into simple “baddies who are bad because they are bad” and therefore someone the woke can safely use as a boogyman even as they start to embrace the same methods and mindset.

I know l’m not a “baddie” because I don’t want to stop trans people existing, or talking, or organising together, or marching, or loving. All I want is a recognition that female people also exist, and while we all wish sexism had gone away the reality is female are still marginalised, under-represented and at times abused because of our sex, so female people should also be able to talk together, organise, support, protect and love each other without being required to include males in all things.

It doesn’t make me a baddie to say that gender identity needs to exist alongside the reality of sex not replace it.

You might think that there won't be enough to skew the figures significantly but how do we know that? We didn't think that 2 out of 6 panellists on the 5050 Parliament (getting women into politics) event would have been male born late transitioners but they were there speaking as women (despite openly having no interest in the issues of women).

Equality laws are there for a reason. Employers cannot all be trusted to treat their employees fairly, hence they have to be forced in law to not discriminate against people. Even though there are laws to prevent it, discrimination still happens.

Do you think for one minute that unscrupulous employers will not take advantage of being allowed to count self identified women in their equality stats?

No, because we can't change sex. The whole thing is a lie

And remember what we do support; we support freedom of gendered expression and gender non-conformity, we support trans rights, we support women's sex-based rights, we support same-sex relationships, we support freedom of choice, we support a child-centred holistic non-labelling flexible approach to working with children and young people with gender issues - but we can't support a lie.

This deserves to be in bold.

A million times this.

Part of the problem I see with the whole thing is not just that it's IMO factually and logically bollocks, but the scary absolutism and insistence that everyone has to think the same way. Aside from what they actually believe, that in itself is a massive problem that any intelligent person should be able to see is comparable to some of the most regrettable episodes in history.

This. We have been here many times before, with truly horrendous consequences. And yet, people don’t learn.

‘The only thing we learn from history...’

If I ever find myself wavering, I read some of the detransitioner stories, which are sadly increasing in number, or I look back at the abuse, vitriol and hatred directed at (mainly) women by those pushing this toxic orthodoxy. Usually does the trick and concentrates my resolve.

It's funny that the trans ideological view is that we're coming round to their way of thinking, because we're prepared to debate, consider evidence and review our thoughts, while they're not.

Part of the problem I see with the whole thing is not just that it's IMO factually and logically bollocks, but the scary absolutism and insistence that everyone has to think the same way. Aside from what they actually believe, that in itself is a massive problem that any intelligent person should be able to see is comparable to some of the most regrettable episodes in history.

it's on twitter as well - they hope that OP will lose her job (sorry to report that OP) and think that we are all evil.

Anyone hoping that a randomer on the internet will lose their job really needs to ask themselves, "Are we the baddies?"

to have better representation in boardrooms.

And that's great, but when transwomen who've had full careers are counted as women on a company board, it's still the same old patriarchal rules, innit.

Personally I sort of gave up when I realised prisons have never been single sex. And even then I was like, this isn’t a fight that effects me every day. Women have been give the short straw in coronavirus job losses, I want to fight for their rights, for more companies to have equal pay, to have better representation in boardrooms.

You're falling for the same man in different trousers.

Always the same gynaephobia or misogyny in whatever the current fashions are and always in line with what benefis the patriarchy.

Jeeze just wasted 5 mins reading Twitter.

Exactly that garden.