Does anyone ever wonder how this will end?

Run along dear.
The grownups are talking.

*in the realm of gender

This person has a penis/vulva -- observing sex
This person is a man/woman -- assigning a social category, whether or not you base it on sex

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"Only one with a well documented history of violent rhetoric and ultra misogynistic rape and death threats against the other, mind."

There's a well documented history of GC people making outright genocidal statements about trans people.

twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1417795260051333123

‘You can't distinguish the identities of "man" and "woman" social categories built around sex from sex itself.’

Men and women are the sexes in our species. What do you think sex is?

If you acknowledge that men as a class are a risk factor to women, it doesn’t seem to be very sensible to massively increase the opportunities for men as a class to prey upon women as a class, does it now.

Unless you really, really don’t give a shit about women and just see them as dispensable cannon fodder in the pursuit of men’s rights to do whatever they bleeding well want at any given moment.

And safeguarding children

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to achieve posting all this. As I’ve said, I don’t think compromise is possible. I don’t think there is “common ground” to be found. I’m not looking to find ways to work with someone like Bluebirds because there’s nothing for either of us to work with.

I think it’s just existential angst about this whole shitshow. The whole how did we get here, what the fuck happened, where did it all go so wrong and how are we ever going to get out of this when it’s all so badly fucked up kind of thing.

How did such a huge, monstrous, irrational, indefensible lie take hold of modern, secular society in the late 20th/early 21st century?

Why was nobody in charge keeping an eye on things and stopping it before it got too mad?

I mean, I kind of know some of the answers.

But it still shocks me. Even though I should be used to this being the way things are by now.

And here we still are, with two doggedly opposed camps, both claiming to represent the vulnerable and the forgotten, both thinking only their way is the way forward.

Only one with a well documented history of violent rhetoric and ultra misogynistic rape and death threats against the other, mind.

Anyway. I guess it’ll all come out in the wash, sooner or later.

In the meantime, here’s some Life of Brian (no, not that bit):

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"You have shown here, as is typical for those who argue from the same position as you, that you cannot, just cannot, grasp the distinction between sex and gender."

It seems to me that you can't.

You can't distinguish the identities of "man" and "woman" social categories built around sex from sex itself.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"One side is going to lose and there will be a lot of unhappy people whichever side that is."

Well, you sure seem to be winning in the UK. Just don't be surprised once the "biological reality" argument zeroes in on its original targets, which was gay people.

"LGB Alliance" types have already been effectively leaving out the B, and gay men are already being accused of misogyny on spurious grounds. It's only a matter of time.

Maintaining women's rights and protections is my current focus.

What's yours?

And there you are, BluebirdsSong, just demonstrating everything I was talking about.

You have based your whole worldview on an entirely false premise.

That means you are not someone whose views I am interested in or whose judgement I trust in any way.

There is no point in me engaging with you because afaic you are so far divorced from reality that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful conversation. You have shown here, as is typical for those who argue from the same position as you, that you cannot, just cannot, grasp the distinction between sex and gender. So what’s the point?

You don’t respect me or my views. You think I’m a transphobic bigot.

I don’t respect you or your views. I think you’re a misogynistic, reality denying bigot.

Neither of us wants to see the other side’s viewpoint prevail.

But our two opposing views can’t exist in harmony. There is no compromise to be had between believing TWAW and believing TWAM.

So how is this going to play out? You can keep calling us bigots and insisting TWAW. It won’t make it true and it won’t make us go away.

We can keep fighting back and saying you’re the bigots and TWAM. It won’t convince you and it won’t make you go away.

One side is going to lose and there will be a lot of unhappy people whichever side that is. And Indyref and Brexit will look like a choice betwee tea and coffee compared to this. This strikes at the heart of how we order society, how we perceive ourselves and others, how we understand human rights, equality, civilisation. It goes to the core of what we understand humanity to be.

Two sides shouting into the void is never going to resolve it.

Happy days.

@FloralBunting
"and men as a class are a risk factor for women, whatever gender they feel they are."

Now go ahead and tell me how you intend to go about changing that. What exactly do you think we should do?

Do you even have some kind of vision of a better society and a way to achieve it, or does your entire ideology boil down to simply repeating "men bad" over and over until the end of time?

God this shit is boring.

Sex is immutable. Gender is arbitrary, and men as a class are a risk factor for women, whatever gender they feel they are.

Now toddle off and play with your homophobic, cheat-backing, rapist-enabling pals, there's a 'progressive' dear.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"It does feel like a civil war, a war particularly between different aspects of the so called liberal left. Those who want to see themselves as progressive, on the side of social justice and equality. Both groups are laying claim to that mantle but it’s impossible for both groups to actually be the voice of progress when we are in such extreme opposition to each other."

Well, to make things easier to determine which side is conservative and which side is progressive -- only one side is being praised and backed up by conservative figures and media outlets like Tucker Carlson, The Federalist, The Spectator, etc.

Think about why that is.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"I really don’t believe that many people travel in the opposite direction, despite all the tweets about “I used to be GC but now I’m not”, because not one of those people ever shows that they ever understood the GC position in the first place; they all misrepresent it as some kind of “let’s force gender roles on everybody” shite."

What do you think you are doing when you categorize everyone as "men" and "women" strictly based on their genitals, chromosomes, gametes, or whatever else it is this month, regardless of how deeply uncomfortable they are with those gendered labels?

Those who leave the GC movement do so because they moved past the lies the GC movement tells themselves and others. Specifically, the lie that you are supportive of gender non-conformity or actually aim to "abolish gender". In practice, you are not, and do not.

In practice, you are quick to accuse any feminine-presenting male of being a "predatory fetishist". How is that supporting gender non-conformity?

What I find so intractable is the absolute certitude of those on the side of the TRA cause that they have the moral high ground, that they are the voice of equality and justice and we are the vile bigots trying to prevent the glorious march of progress. There doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt or self questioning whatsoever, nary a chink in the wall of self righteous fervour.

Yes, but you know any time there is a thread here about voting, there are any number of posts that state categorically that although the other parties may have some bad, even really bad policies, the CP is made up of people who are explicitly evil, with evil policies, and only someone divorced from their morals could vote for them, much less consider themselves politically conservative.

So while I think quite a few people on the left who have resisted gender ideology have had their eyes opened by all of this and now are willing to read and take seriously people like Douglas Murray or Andrew Sullivan, there are still plenty for whom there is an absolute divide and gender issues are just a weird exception to that.

And yea, it’s really worrying to think where women’s rights are headed globally, given the number of missing girls/women there are now and how that number is still rising.

Misogyny and male violence. Some things never seem to change.

I think there’s a lot of food for thought in your post SmokedDuck.

I don't really see this as something where men are on one side and women on another.

Clearly it isn’t, as I said too there are large numbers of women promoting this too, and that’s one of the scariest,:most difficult things to deal with.

What I find so intractable is the absolute certitude of those on the side of the TRA cause that they have the moral high ground, that they are the voice of equality and justice and we are the vile bigots trying to prevent the glorious march of progress. There doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt or self questioning whatsoever, nary a chink in the wall of self righteous fervour.

Although it’s interesting that quite a lot of women on here seem to have come over from the TRA side to the GC side, for want of better descriptors. I really don’t believe that many people travel in the opposite direction, despite all the tweets about “I used to be GC but now I’m not”, because not one of those people ever shows that they ever understood the GC position in the first place; they all misrepresent it as some kind of “let’s force gender roles on everybody” shite.

So there are exceptions. But in the meantime, it’s just so grim to see the two sides both engaged in this endless war of attrition, both sides going “we're right” “no WE’RE right” ad infinitum.

I mean, I have no doubts personally about which side I’m on, so I suppose I can’t really talk about the other side not having any doubts, and I personally don’t see any kind of compromise being a way forward as it’s all misogyny and (structural) abuse as far as I’m concerned and there’s no amount of that that’s acceptable - but I can see that those on the other side are every bit as committed to their cause as I am to mine. They feel just as justified, they are as convinced this is “hate” as much as I am convinced that what they are promoting is abuse.

I think what they’re doing is deeply wrong and completely unjustifiable - but I can sort of see how it makes sense to them. It all starts from a fundamentally wrong premise IMO but I can see how if you accept that premise, then theirs is the logical conclusion. And that premise seems to be iron clad for those who believe it, batshit and delusional though it seems to me.

Maybe I just want to know a better way to fight it. A better way to put the emphasis on truth and reality. But you can’t force people in denial to come out of their denial. And I think their denial really is very, very seductive and has them in a vice like grip. And it does my head in.

Maybe I’ve just got Twitter fatigue…

Oops - should say above the latter - a split among liberals.

I don't really see this as something where men are on one side and women on another. Maybe because apart from a certain group of transwomen-activists, the strongest voices I see promoting this are just as, or more often, women.

I do think it's interesting to think that at one time the culture wars (or what would become them) seemed to be conservatives vs liberals or progressives, whereas now there is a real split among the former. However, I've come to think that some of the current problem may be rooted in that earlier state of affairs, where conservative views and concerns were characterised as evil or uncaring. In hindsight, some of the things that were flagged as potentially being dangerous are the same things we are now talking about - hate speech and hate crime legislation is a really good example of this, where conservatives arguing that adding that kind of categorisation to things that were already crimes could lead to hierarchical ranking of crimes, or that hate speech laws could become a way to control speech.

Gender ideology though is one facet of a larger construct, coming out of critical theory and identity politics. As long as that paradigm has one the day in other areas of thought, be it women's studies, LGB rights, race issues, etc, it's going to be very difficult to fight it in the area of gender.

So I guess I would say, when envisioning the "how to get there" I think it's going to have to include challenging CT and id politics across the board, in institutions and academia. And that is going to be really hard for many people who feel committed to an idea of being progressive, because it's going to mean taking another look at all of the social movements that have bene impacted. I've seen a people do it, myself included. I had one friend describe to me how she had to rethink her stance on the American gay-wedding cake controversy, and how difficult she found that. Given though how many people just consider "the other side" evil, especially in the US, I'm not sure how to make people feel they can do that.

Fewer women, the women who make it to adulthood don’t want to have children

So forced childbearing becomes more likely?

Another route to Gilead. A terrifying future indeed.

Looking at the history of women's lib, I think it will get worse before it gets better. Our biggest gains were made after two world wars when it was in the economic interest of the Government to include us.

Looking ahead, I can see at least one resource ear brewing thanks to climate change and I will be surprised if China and India remains peaceful in the next 20 years, given the gender imbalance they have going. It's worth noting that the more misogynistic the country is, the fewer females want to become mother's as bearing children impacts on their career and quality of life.

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

And how do women like us move forward now we know the scale of the misogyny we’re dealing with? I feel such loathing and contempt for the men who’ve pushed this agenda, and the women too - so disappointed and betrayed by those I thought were on our side, as women, but who I now see as nothing less than the enemy, tbh, as in they are the enemy of the kind of world I would like to live in.

I completely agree with all this, it feels overwhelming sometimes and when you pull back the curtain you realise how much has been done in the background already which means it will take years to claw back that which we thought we already had secured. And how many seemingly intelligent, normal people just jump on board with this and denounce anyone who dares step out of line.

I'm so angry at the government for not even attempting to critically analyse this. Or maybe they just don't care. They must take us all for fools. That's why I urge everyone to contact your elected representatives and tell them you object. They need to hear us roar!

I suppose the civil war reference is quite apt. I feel like it is a quiet war as such, bubbling under the surface - and I feel both invigorated and terrified at the prospect of fighting this for the next few years. As NiceGerbil says, it's helpful to take a break and step back for a while. I know that there are many great women who are fighting this too, and we will push back together. If anything has come out of this, it is a whole new swathe of angry feminists .

Unfortunately, it will get messy. Those who are benefitting from this will not let go of the reigns peacefully, they will lash out and maybe show themselves up for who they really are in the end.
I know I sound defensive, but that's because I'm feeling attacked. We are being attacked. And while we are punched in the stomach, we are being told that nothing is happening, we are imagining it.

I don't want to walk around and pretend everything is fine and dandy when it isn't, and pretend that I'm ok with this when I am very much not. The sky is not green, and I will not be bullied into pretending that it is.

Sorry that was a big messy rant. I don't know how it will end, I don't think it ever will really. It will lose power and fall out of favour though, maybe in a few years. It will go quiet, maybe once the class action lawsuits start.

And the people who championed it will slither away and pretend like nothing happened. But we will remember them.

But yes, I suppose we have to put our faith in the younger generations - the ones coming up behind the present crop of acolytes, if we can manage to protect them from the worst of the one-sided propaganda.

Actually even with all that some of them will see through it. Some of them are seeing through it now.