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

Momentarily.

Then I remember I have a tween DD and over my dead body is she going to have to put up with adult male bodies in her single sex spaces. And also for my teen DS, for him to realise that some of these gender stereotypes are from the 1950's and we've moved on a bit since then.

I do, and I think that's part of self-reflection and I know what I think, IYSWIM. I sometimes think if governments and institutions are going along with this, is it me who's misunderstood? But this makes me think it all through (for the umpteenth time) and come back to the same views. The transing of young people via nothing more than stereotypes, the damage done to healthy bodies, the tragic stries of detransitioners, the situation in prisons, and most recently the stories on the anonymous website for academics to tell their stories, reinforce that this is a scary orwellian/mccarthyist situation and we are all in danger. Dissenters are needed now, for anyone who needs to to turn to, and for when it all comes out in the wash - which I very much think it will.

TRAs and trans ideology framing anyone questioning it as evil trans-haters is part of how it works. You have to be strong-minded and hold onto your critical thought capacity to not be bullied down by it. But being able to question your position is part of critical thought.

Oh, and yes, it's embarrassing that our natural allies, the left and far left (radical feminist vegan types who you'd think would be on our side) have abandoned any pretence at feminist views in order to serve the patriarchy, and now our only allies are ultra far right extremists. That's enough on it's own to knock the wind out of me.

Talk to people IRL not Facebook ( yeah. Tricky now)

It's easier for you to spot their interests, are they sporty for example , and it's easier for them to understand your emotions which can influence thier empathy, which means making it personal to you

Dammit it should say “have a grudging admiration” not “admire”

I'm only about 4 months in and I have wobbles. I keep waking up feeling like I have a weight on my chest and sometimes feel I'm obsessing. Then I read up on the days nonsense, I pop on here and remind myself what's at stake and the weight lifts off and my anger/hurt/determination kicks in and I know that I will fight this harmful ideology to the bitter end.

The thing is there are vitally important overarching principles here - reality and biological fact should always trump ideological nonsense. Further, the importance of freedom of speech/freedom to offend and the right to state biological fact without fear of harassment and/or losing one’s job. And further to that, the very present danger of the Orwellian Nightmare - we’re already living in Nineteen Eighty-four in many ways, and if there isn’t enough push back it will only get much worse very quickly.

These issues transcend politics. I don’t have to agree with everything an individual says - if we broadly agree on those principles above, we are allies in this respect.

And yes, I agree with whoever said that ‘sex and gender are different things’ is a politically progressive position. The difference between Left and Right (among those who accept the concept of biological reality) is that the Right generally prefers to support traditional gender roles while the Left wants to disrupt/get rid of them. But both groups accept the reality of biological sex.

We need one of those dual-axis charts with left/right on one axis and biology/TWAW on the other axis ....

Do TRA (I use the term advisedly as opposed to the wider trans population) ever wonder if they are the bad guys what with the choke on my lady dick/it’s fine to give children life altering medication/removing healthy body parts is fine/people who don’t agree with us should be fired or “actively educated”? Do they hell! I admire their single minded relentless focus on what they want

I’m quite happy on the ‘dress as you want/call yourself what you want/perform whatever stereotypes you like/of course trans peoples human rights must be safeguarded you just cannot have woman’s rights because they are for women’ side

Yes. To be honest I feel so exhausted, so tired. So exhausted and tired from trying to explain to people how self-ID negatively affects women, how men who haven't transitioned via operation being in women's spaces affects women. I've been banned from more Facebook groups than I can count. No matter how well I explain it, no matter how gently, softly, how congenial I try to approach it, they just don't understand. They don't want to understand. Even if in a debate I prove someone wrong with a link to something, they just dismiss it and dance around the issue, refusing to even acknowledge it's a problem.

I don't know what to do. I've taken a bit of a break from fighting this war because I feel so exhausted, and yes, on some level occasionally I've had that thought that maybe I'm wrong. But then I remember that person claiming they were a female who sued female spa clinics for not waxing around his balls. I remember the abuse I've copped for merely saying that men ARE stronger physically because of testosterone, and how we are all #MeToo but then expect each other to just put up with having men in our spaces. And it makes me angry at the injustice of it all.

But what can we do? It's like going to the beach and trying to turn the waves back with a household broom. I just don't know what we can do. It really makes me feel so depressed. On occasions I admit I've cried over it (after failing to get people online to see and understand). I feel depressed and exhausted. Angry and frustrated. And I don't know what we can do.

I’m saying that there are many people who believe that they have been. I’m saying that outright stating this is impossible is not conducive to working towards understanding. Those with gender dysphoria have been dealt a shitty hand, and are not the people I have any issue with, any more than I have an issue with those who are anorexic. I don’t agree that the right way to deal with gender dysphoria is damaging medication and surgery, and I don’t agree with self ID, but I also don’t want to belittle or demean those with gender dysphoria.

At no point did I conflate that specific view with being right wing, but sure, feel free to dismiss what I’m saying and we will go round and round in the same circles.

Just as a technical point, if you were the 'bad guys' then you wouldn't really expect trans people to be going through this same introspection.

Why? It's a healthy thing to do? Blindly going along with what your in group tells you is right is not.

I thought @Daca’s post articulated the wider political context extremely well.

I occasionally have a sense-check on whatever the latest campaign by feminist groups is (at the moment it’s the Census), just to make sure I’m still in agreement with the general direction of travel. But no, I never worry that I’m part of the bad guys. Because:

• I think often about what would have happened to the teenage me if I was growing up in this generation and it scares the shit out of me;

• my best friend, who does politics by instinct, is reliably wrong on everything and usually - after a period of between two and ten years - shifts their position without ever really acknowledging that they were wrong, & is very TWAW. So that’s a useful barometer of what’s going to change in the next few years;

• someone else I know who is EXTREMELY TWAW and identifies as ‘genderqueer’ spent an enjoyable (for me) afternoon on social media recently discussing with their circle how best to refer in a work document to someone who is biologically female. But of course the concept of being biologically female was so alien that none of them came up with anything along those lines. It was a joy to watch them floundering around in confusion, gradually edging closer to the sense that there was something they were missing ... If only they could put their finger on it ....

WRT the extreme right wingers, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. We might agree with them that sex is real but not about the consequences of that.

It is good to check your position and test it, particularly over a contentious issue which has a tendancy to push the two sides further apart. But like PPs I keep coming back to the red lines: e.g. prisons, sport, children. And the HOL debate this week showed that this is important and we are getting through to those who matter.

Deathgrip

Are you implying that those stating no one is born in the wrong body are right wing? Or that it is a ‘the sky is blue’ point of view?

No, never - why would I? I don't believe in an ideology which is harmful to children, to women, to vulnerable people.

I have always held the opinion that people are free to dress and live how they want. Great and all but that just isn't what is happening.

People are being forced to lie. They are being forced to say things they don't believe. Language is being twisted and as a result women are being erased as a sex class which has a huge effect on our lives- all in the name of 'kindness'. However this 'kindness' only extends one way.

We're no longer women but menstruators, cervix havers, chest feeders. Even the word Mother and female is under threat.

Children are being given harmful drugs and having surgery at an age when they are not mature enough to make such a decision.
Girls and women are losing our places on sports teams and being placed in danger. Women's sport is being decimated.

Our ability to represent ourselves is being taken away by males who insist they can speak for us on issues which they will never experience.

Women are being threatened with rape, with death. People are being reported to the police if the say the 'wrong' thing. Women can not gather to discuss OUR rights without having to include males in the discussion, if we do we get a mob standing and shouting outside, bomb threats. Men and women are being hounded at home, on social media, they are losing jobs, having to have police escorts. We get called bigots, transphobes, t@rfs, get given labels to describe us that are not needed. Funding is being removed from Dv shelters.

We have to scrabble for every single bit of money just to raise funds to fight for our rights, yet this harmful ideology has the backing of world governments because people have been convinced it is the 'right' thing to do. The police, big companies and institutions have been captured.

Even International Women's Day is centred around men who identify as women. The one day of the year that we are supposed to celebrate our sex we are not allowed to have.

So no, we are not the baddies.

I am pro-woman.

Being pro-woman doesn't make you anti-trans. I support people who have dysphoria but I have to ask how are the TRA's helping these vulnerable people? When this all ends, which it will inevitably as these things do and society moves on to the next cause de jour, what will happen to those with dysphoria? What happens to the children given drugs and mutilated all in the name of progressiveness? What happens to those with a mark against them because they told the truth? What happens to those who have lost their jobs?

I guarantee that all those that chant TWAW won't be around to pick up the pieces.

I do sometimes question myself, but I think that is my own insecurity as there are a lot of loud voices online telling me I am wrong, and a few US liberal commentators or writers that I rate who have really drunk the Kool - Aid.
But I realise that I can like someone’s work and disagree with them on this. They would block me in an instant though.

However, I don’t think I am wrong.

The thing that always gets me back is this;
Safeguarding is not sexy. It’s not rainbow flags, glitter, and being in the cool gang where you get lots of praise from people with pronouns or avatars in their profiles.

Safeguarding is saying no to stuff. It’s the filling out of forms, thinking about the daily grind and how children are affected in loads of mundane ways, and picking up the pieces when it all goes wrong.

I may be stretching the analogy a bit, but it’s like being the boring parent whose first job, above all else, is to keep their child safe. And that job does not make you popular.

No makes t shirts with “yay! My Mum’s concerns ensured I would have full sexual function when I was 35!” On them.

Do I consider whether I am aligned with the ‘baddies’?

Well, whenever a new study comes out I read it and adjust my thinking if the new evidence persuaded me to. I believe many on this board do this. Is that a ‘are we the baddies moment’? Maybe.

I have never wholly aligned with any political party in my life as there is always good and bad aspects to their manifestos and policies. That’s maybe why I don’t get caught up in the ‘am I agreeing with the right wingers’ issue. I have always found myself disagreeing with things from either alignment.

And I think someone using that as an excuse to silence another person or change their mind is completely lacking in critical thinking. Of course there will be cross overs on this issue, just like on others.

I try to live my life authenticly. Sometimes this means acknowledging things that are very painful that I wish were different. I also seek truthfulness and evidence on important issues.

I find the lack of evidence or the squaring of round pegs to fit from those demanding that people believe is too discordant. I find those repeating these falsehoods to be either misinformed or to be someone who benefits in some way from this falsehood. Even if it is just allowing them to optimistically believe their ideal future will happen eventually.

I find the abusive nature of those forcing others to believe in their reality which I find built on falsehoods to be abhorrent. To be clear, I mean those who threaten, those that seek to silence others, those that deny the conflicts are even there.

I am so concerned for my own child’s mental health with all this happening. Those who seek to destabilize societies knowledge of sex, not gender, but sex need to look at exactly who benefits from this. All the players. Not just their kindly friends or children. All the players.

It is always good to reassess your position. It is important and shows you are always open to taking on new information.

"no child is born in the wrong body”

How did we get to a place where this is even remotely controversial? The compassionate stance is to help any child struggling with their body to reach to a place of love, acceptance and respect for themselves, as they are, not to put them on a lifelong pathway of drugs and surgery. Even Mermaids have distanced themselves from "wrong body" theory because they see that it's a hugely negative approach - let's be honest it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It relies on the notion that identifying with (sexist) gender stereotypes attached to the opposite sex makes you "wrong". Above all else how can anyone empirically demonstrate that the 'soul' is sexed rather than the body?

On the front page of TT it states in a large font “no child is born in the wrong body”. Plenty of people with gender dysphoria genuinely believe that they have been - saying that this doesn’t exist is bound to be affronting. It reinforces the idea that the GC position is to deny the existence of trans people. It’s not a good place from which to start.

That’s just from a quick click on the front page. I’m sure there are many more things that would make many people click away.

I have a friend who has a trans teenager - she believes that the right thing to do is to fully affirm her child’s new identity. Any material I could pass on to her would have to be gentle, not an attack.

And I agree that GC views are not inherently right wing, so why are so many GC voices sharing content of far right wingers just because their views align on this? It’s highly likely that even where are views align, it’s for very different reasons.

Also adding to my comment about feeling conflicted when you see someone who is making a go of transitioning and doing it successfully and whose mental health has been helped by doing so. I have thought that it isn't kind to let people transition because the surgery is risky and never completely successful, statistics say they often end up no better off mentally. But then you see someone who is making a go of it, who has been helped by transitioning and who you would consider to pass as the opposite sex.
It makes me doubt myself. However I do have 3 transpeople in my life, one is deeply unpleasant and the other 2 are not being helped by affirmation, so it swings me back the other way.

It’s not a left vs. right issue at all.

And maybe another thought: the fact that many right-wingers subscribe to GC views does not mean that these views are wrong. More on the Left need to speak out - for the sake of the movement. Sadly, the opposite seems to be happening as more women become politically homeless and end up voting for the only party that hasn’t lost the plot on this.