So, what has suddenly happened for the tide to change?

I wouldn't be taking a victory lap just yet. Scotland is a horror show, Ireland not far behind. I can see Marion Millar being used to demonstrate that Scotland and England differ wrt trans rights. America may be lost.

This worries me. I think the SNP want to be vocal in their differences to England. Destoying women’s rights is now their only mantle. There is an element of this in Ireland too. However, I assume some government departments are not devolved and therefore the push by Westminster to get rid of SW will have some effect on Scotland whether the SNP want it or not?

America - when it catches cold, the whole world sneezes.

I hope Scotland is not past the point of no return but with the incumbent government (which appears to be permanent ) I don't think we'll get that far. Legislation is being introduced, court cases are being lost, women are threatened by police. It's only a matter of time until we see a Keira Bell style court case coming from the Sandyford and maybe it will be defended, just to see what happens and make a point that we're so different up here. Who knows.

I think "paperchase pandemic" is such a good phrase.

I think the truth is very few people truly believed the "stonewall ideology" but those who didn't felt silenced, and for good reason.

Let's not forget women have lost their jobs, hounded off social media, doxed, threatened with sexual assault, criminalised, cancelled, been physically assaulted and threatened with legal action over this issue.

I don't know what the future holds and I also don't know what the next generation (under 18s) will believe and value. They are inhereting a tough old world.

Interesting question.

I think JK Rowling had a lot to do with it and brought the issues into mainstream conversation.

The Keira Bell case.

Trans women in sport is a big one that makes people see the stark unfairness of blindly supporting TWAW.

TRAs colonising women's spaces and turning on their allies everywhere. Particularly online women's groups.

Women realising they are expected to be called 'birthing parents, cervix havers, menstruators'

Lesbians being called transphobic for not dating 'women' with penises.

The good women of Mumsnet tirelessly raising awareness about what is happening.

If you read the news or use social media it's impossible not to have noticed any of these things.

Goodness, even Adoption UK are having their say on the workplace equality index - because ‘parent who gave birth’ excludes people like me - an adoptive mother of two. I really did not expect them to Wade in on this...seems like people are more willing to speak out now. The tweet is tame - but any criticism was once something that just wouldn’t have happened.

I wouldn't be taking a victory lap just yet. Scotland is a horror show, Ireland not far behind. I can see Marion Millar being used to demonstrate that Scotland and England differ wrt trans rights. America may be lost.

The Labour, lib dems and the greens, no sense of any change there. Dawn butler I think cannot row back, she will have to be moved on, and I can't see Kier finding the backbone for that. I also think he won't pick another fight with Angela rayner anytime soon.

Stonewall and mermaids are wounded, and wounded animals can do a lot of damage.

I think all the recent events have put trans rights issues on people's radar, without the SW spin, so the naked truth is there. It's not just a bunch of scare mongering women.

Also, I think the very very broad definition that SW created around trans has caused them issues. Marginal people like that little turd of an incel in Brunel found themselves a lovely banner to wrap themselves in to get the acceptance and protection they would never have had. Without the trans tag, he would have been the weird kid everyone stayed clear of, and for good reason. Bringing people like him (and some of the rest of you, we see you) into the fold I think did some damage.

And at looooonnnnnnggggg last people are actually beginning to wake up that in a modern democracy #nodebate has no place that is is a tactic used to oppress women.

The tide is hopefully turning, but we have a long way to go and most worrying of all, we don't have a destination. Where will trans people be left once this has all blown up?

It has been years of work by many many women. Mumsnet deserves credit too.

I think it is unstoppable: I have a friend who is/was a Stonewall trustee and full on TWAW etc. Yesterday in Facebook he wrote a long post saying he could not celebrate Pride this year because of things going so wrong and being so divided. He didn’t quite say they were wrong but it was a huge huge step. And he wasn’t berated for it either. I was proud of him for publicly declaring his disquiet. But that marked a huge sea change for me: if he could disavow Stonewall publicly then the change is well afoot.

I think it’s been coming for a while but the key thing was the Essex Uni report. It was written by a lawyer, and it was damning. Once a proper lawyer had pointed out what Stonewall was up to, even though we’d all been pointing it out for years, it gave the green light to organisations to start leaving the scheme. It also gave newspapers the confidence to realise that there was a story here worth pursuing, and it wasn’t just a bunch of feminists making a fuss. The whole thing was then given a massive boost by (sadly) Marion’s case and by the decision of Mermaids et al to challenge the LGBA’s charitable status, which, to anyone normal, looks unhinged.

Lord, yes, I hope it percolates into the US at some point. The whole place is still mumbling "TWAW!" with glazed eyes.

I'm in New Zealand, where our very own much-praised PM put her ear to the ground five years ago, figured out TWAW was the popular performance, and has been kindly pointing out we should Be Kind ever since. If it gets sufficiently questionable, I'm betting we'll see her drop the BS in a heartbeat and never once admit that she changed her mind. Can't wait.

Once the pandemic is done, could we get lots of enlightened UK missionairies to come for holidays and change minds while they're here? (Speak Up For Women does great work, but largely alone. They could use some help.)

The fight is just beginning in scotland. Utterly terrifying what is happening

None of you have mentioned mumsnet. You ladies have opened our eyes. You’ve brought intellectual discussion to the phones of mainly ordinary mothers and others who use this site, who don’t, like me, have the brains or the time to research and understand the legal-ese.

So please don’t underestimate mumsnet’s importance. Why after all does mumsnet get attacked, or attract trolls.

I think the pandemic helped too. Businesses scraping to get by are going to ditch the fluffy extras to save money and staff redundancies. They’re not going to waste money on schemes that they can now see as political. Labour losing the election has shown them that their customers are mostly anti-identity politics, and will view this all in a negative light.

I think it's been a fashion, like any other, and just as being a goth or emo became passé so this will too.

I tend to agree with this. I think though it will take institutions that have bought into Stonewall law to be honest and self-reflective about the changes that have been made that undermine women and perpetuate a political ideology and to reverse them.

SmokedDuck

I think that there are a huge number of people, especially in the under-35 category, who are adherents to a very odd quasi-religious ideology of Progressivism, and they also really believe the idea that conflicts of rights are not possible.

They see the march of history as a kind of unfolding of a true understanding of justice and it's instantiation in society in every way, and they think there is some sort of inevitability about it all. And it fits together perfectly - they can be no conflict of rights because truth cannot conflict.

It means it's not wrong, from their perspective, to push aside those who stand in the way - they are asserting untruths and harm others in trying to stop the unfolding of justice.

It sounds crazy but I see it played out on a seemingly daily basis.

Oh yes, the belief in the inevitable march of enlightenment! So trusting, so dangerous. I'm afraid that belief is so fundamental with so many people it's going to be hard to shift.

--What, you mean penis people are still pushing us around, telling us to be quiet, telling us what to believe?

I think it has been the 'small' conversations.

I had a post deleted for using a articular phrase but I've been talking tot he lady who does my nails, starting with the Yannick case, and she's thought about how she would react.

Sometimes other customers have heard and asked. A month or so ago another customer asked and we discussed the girl guides, she said she would not let her daughter sleep in a tent with a male bodied person and was horrified that she would not be told ahead of time.

Then, most recently is the crime of tweeting a picture of a ribbon.

My carer has not really got things until this week. I told him about Marion Miller and I could feel him getting angry down the phone.

Yesterday he turned up wearing a suffragette badge.

The other day my brother-in-law calmly told me that sex wasn't a binary, that the link between chromosomes and anatomy was only a hypothesis, and that we should stop forcing people to be female or male

You'd seriously have to question the intelligence and/or integrity of a man that came out with shit like this.
Remove the words male and female entirely and there would still be only two sexes, and the ones with the penises would still know who to use, abuse and oppress.

I'm hoping now Ofsted have stopped using Stonewall that the new free to be shit Stonewall is planning to push into primary schools can be stopped.

More people are aware now. The absurdity of it all.

They see the march of history as a kind of unfolding of a true understanding of justice and it's instantiation in society in every way, and they think there is some sort of inevitability about it all. And it fits together perfectly - they can be no conflict of rights because truth cannot conflict.

It means it's not wrong, from their perspective, to push aside those who stand in the way - they are asserting untruths and harm others in trying to stop the unfolding of justice.

It sounds crazy but I see it played out on a seemingly daily basis.

I think it's been a fashion, like any other, and just as being a goth or emo became passé so this will too.

Increasingly, the strongest adherents of the genderist worldview are in their 30s, and the cool kids are unlikely to see a rather sad looking Elliot Page as much of a role model; they might feel pity for Page, but have no desire to copy.

Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of regressive genderists, young people are again welcoming gender nonconformity. Harry Styles is very popular. Maneskin, who won Eurovision, speak a lot about the importance of everyone being able to wear what they like and have made men in make up (who are still without any question men) cool again.

So I think the fashion is starting to change. Legal cases, particularly the amazing Keira Bell's, have played a HUGE part in ensuring that the law also changes. And Tory women like the redoubtable Baroness have undoubtedly been pushing a lot behind the scenes.

But agree this is still at best the end of the beginning. There's still a long way to go.
But compared to even a year ago, when there were almost no stories on this, the amount of sunlight getting in now gives hope.

But still a long way to go yet.

I had my moment of clarity on this in 1997 and I've been getting banned from websites for talking about it since about 2011. I think the difference now is that some people are starting to feel the real world consequences. I know people who were full-on 'TWAW' but who now have autistic or lesbian daughters who want to be a man. I know people who were supportive until a bloke where they work kept his beard and changed his name and now gets to use the women's toilets and locker-room. I know one person whose activity group was joined by a male who identifies as a woman (not a problem) but who also turned out to be a pension-age male who identifies as a teenage girl (eek!). I know loads of people who work in education who are terrified of losing their jobs for saying the slightest verboten thing. Mainly I know a lot of people who'd never considered this issue and who thought of transwomen as basically a type of gay man, but they are now reading about rapists in women's prisons or males competing in the women's weightlifting at the Olympics and they can all see that it is batshit crazy.

I'm only just beginning to be hopeful. It's like a boulder. (I hope no one gets crushed.) Like others, I'm v concerned about the next generation growing up with all this ideology, and the legacy with their teachers and lecturers who will never shake it off. The maimed bodies are another story, a deeply tragic one - and the degree to which people will be able to talk about that will be a measure of progress.

Meanwhile, The Guardian sometimes gets things right, and this account of the power of the patriarchy - never underestimate it - is cold water. We can never rest.
As Covid-19 has swept the world there has been an explosion of violence against women, and a full-blown assault on their rights. It’s time to fight back against a system that allows women to be sacrificed, erased and violated

V (formerly Eve Ensler)
Tue 1 Jun 2021 06.00 BST
Covid has unleashed the most severe setback to women’s liberation in my lifetime. While watching this happen, I have started to think we are witnessing an outbreak of disaster patriarchy.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/01/disaster-patriarchy-how-the-pandemic-has-unleashed-a-war-on-women

Just seen an interesting article posted on another thread about the legal implications for those who have bought into the Stonewall ideology.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4263278-Lawyers-know-the-truth-well-most-do

There is part of me that still cant quite get to grips with how easily so many people just accepted that women should step aside, sacrifice themselves for others (more worthy), as always.

I really think a lot of people think that. Yes we know women have a raw deal, but really women should just keep quiet and do what's best for everyone else.

I also wouldn't discount the cost issue for participation in virtue signalling schemes. The pandemic has hit a lot of businesses and the government at the bottom line.

As long as these elements remain, I think there is real danger.