Need a handhold... Made a stand in a public arena

just to say well done OP. I don't have long tonight to post. But yes I recognise the way you feel every single time I post to personal FB or any time I enter a discussion online about women's rights. But there are a growing number of us, we are not wrong, as long as we hold to women's rights. If there is a conflict between women's rights and other rights it is there to be discussed. There is no reason at all not to hold on to that. We are doing this for each other, for our daughters and sons, and trans allies. Big hug to you.

You stood firm for your principles. It was not the easy route but in the long term will cause less pain than living with the cognitive dissonance.

This movement is insidious and has put society in a collective double bind.

Thank you for being so brave OP. 💐 You will always have support here.

Power to you OP. You've done a brave thing and you're helping fight back against a harmful ideology. No-one needs to put pronouns anywhere. It's actually against the Yogyakarta principles as it puts pressure on people to out or misgender themselves if they're not ready to talk about their gender. But no-one cares about that as long as they get their way, of course.

I spoke up at a mayoral candidate meeting. The candidate did engage ‘nicely’ but I did pull them up on my question-it was about women. After the meeting several audience members thanked me & the candidate engaged further. Was scary but once lockdown is over I shall do it again. And again.
Well done you. There’s a lot of us :-)

I did it and it blew up, was worried I was going to get in loads of trouble but it was actually fine. Had loads of support on here and is mostly forgotten about now. There are more of us than you think! X

Well done OP, courage calls to courage

One thing to add re: my experience was that the people who shouted the loudest against me were surprisingly (or perhaps not?) ill informed of the facts.

For example:

• puberty blockers are just a pause button and have zero side effects

• cross sex hormones (and reduced testosterone) negate any and all advantage TW have in sport

• unisex toilets are no more or less safe for women than single sex toilets

• most TW have "fully" transitioned

• TW are far more likely to be murdered than women

And so on......

It's like they've drunk the Kool Aid, liked it, signed up to promote it......but have never bothered to read the label and are thus ignorant about the high sugar content, e-numbers and artificial colour....and get ranty at you when you inform them of the ingredients...

I love this Medium article, posted by Lorelei who you may or may not know from GC Twitter. It's about the fear and shock and loneliness many women feel when they first speak up about this.

medium.com/@hatpinwoman/i-used-to-be-a-terf-until-i-educated-myself-f78d81e08ce

I also plucked up the courage to question something recently, but never received a response. I don't know where to go with it now.

Thank you for standing up for all the women out here.

Handhold, OP.

I've also started to speak up more publically about it. It may have impact on my career. I've thought long and hard and to be honest, I would rather lose work than compromise my principles.

The fact that I feel concerned to speak up shows me that it's even more important that I do so, if that makes sense. It's a shocking situation that we are unable to voice reasonable points of view in a democratic country.

The more of us that speak up the easier it becomes.

I was very heartened recently that in a facebook group, when I spoke up, dozens of women posted to agree. Polite, well-informed, and refusing to go along with the nonsensical claims made by various people trying to argue that TWAW etc. Eventually the post was deleted, but women won't be silent. We know what's happening. We are half of the population, OP.

Well done OP. I'm middle aged with few career ambitions beyond my 'bit of a job' in the NHS - and very fortunate to be in the position where I can speak out (have made a small stand at work but not been pulled up on it as haven't said anything offensive or untrue).

Wouldn't be able to otherwise and DH is always very careful not to 'like' my social media posts.

Solidarity with anyone making a stand against this. Courage OP.

I've done it on a professional forum. Was publicly called a transphobe by six of my professional peers. I stood my ground and asked them to demonstrate where the transphobia was - they couldn't. It boiled down to a typo (I hadn't put a space between "trans" and "woman") and that we fundamentally disagreed with each other. I had thought that disagreement on professional forums was the point of professional forums.

Anyway, I had about a dozen emails from other peers saying that they agreed and wanted to speak up but were too scared.

I am expecting to be reported to my governing body at some point, but, to be honest, I'm fairly well protected professionally and a bit of me would relish it.

I am not transphobic. I say things which are evidence based but uncomfortable truths, that is not a hate crime.

for you Op. Be strong, it;s done now and there will be more backing you than shouting loudly and aggressively (because that's what they do) - well done

What kind of public are we talking?

Well done for coming out publicly. I think it's clear that the tide is now turning so I suspect that most of your friends and family will agree with you, though some may only be able to show their support privately if they are working for a very woke organisation.

Your daughters are lucky to have such a thoughtful mum.

signal their preferred pronouns

I laugh every time I read this sort of instruction now.

Good on you, OP! It’s scary being “out” sometimes, but every time I do it, I get messages from others who agree and didn’t feel confident to say anything. That gives me heart.

It can be tough can't it....

My experience was pretty mixed if I'm honest.

Most people (though generally privately) agreed with me and were pleased someone was brave enough to speak out - though few felt able to do that themselves.

Some didn't want to commit/comment either way.

Others predictably started chanting back Trans Ideology and making claims of transphobia (even though I'd been very clear, measured and careful and my focus was women's/children's rights).

I'm glad I did it overall, though some friendships have suffered/been lost. I frankly decided that if anyone who knew me thought I'd suddenly undergone a personality transplant and turned into a raging transphobe then they didn't actually know me well at all or have any respect for me so were better out of my life.

The issue as I see it is that the ideology has so many holes in it the only come back is full on attack. Reasonable discussion isn't an option because there's no argument that can't be effectively countered.

The problem with that is I think like others having taken the first steps in RL I now feel I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.....so in a way they are "radicalising" me further if I'm honest (though frankly I don't think anything I have to say is radical at all - you cant change sex and sex based rights should be protected).