Losing friends, feeling defeated

[quote ArtemesiaK]@CreepingDeath 6 years!? I had no idea this stuff had been going on for so long! Sinister indeed! :([/quote]
Yes, in Ireland Self ID law was introduced in 2015!! Which means the secret lobbying started a while before that.

I certainly had no idea until very recently. If you read the Denton's report, it was strategically planned that way, they didn't want people to know .

good post, @Blessex.

I find that because is seems just SO nutty when you spell it out (men in women's prisons, men taking female awards, men thinking they can invade women's changing rooms) that WE seem the mad women. No-one can believe it.

Good advice here. Listen to the Nolan podcasts (hurrah!) Get in contact with others in real life. Campaign

OP I am 100% with you. I knew this was rumbling on in the background but it was only recently I spent the time investigating and joining the dots. The thing that peaked me was listening to Helen Joyce at the Conservative party conference - listening to Kier Starmer talking about Rosie Duffield being unable to attend the Labour Party Conference - and then Kathleen Stock. That’s when I started digging deeper (I knew the Kiera Bell case, JKRowling abuse and things like feminist leaving the Guardian).

I am absolutely furious. So furious it is obsessing me. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. I am desperately trying to get my intelligent female friends onside. I am bombarding them with reading material etc. Some kind of see it and say they do - but they don’t seem that angry. Others I have no idea but I have a lot of younger female friends on my social media and I am posting articles and links and POV almost daily (there is a story daily at the moment). I am at a stage where if somebody gets upset then let them. I have been cancelled by one friend with zero chat or understanding - and basically she can eff off. If she can cancel me that easily and think I am unkind then that’s her loss honestly.

I am really hoping the latest crisis is peaking more people. I am sending friends articles and the stonewall podcast. Some are listening and are shocked. Others keep saying they are ‘too busy’ yeah well whilst you are too busy - the stupid are on Twitter changing laws and telling our kids crap. Women are getting hurt. But go on - get on with your lives. Pisses me off honestly and has certainly opened my eyes up to the women who give a shit and want to invest time learning. Because many haven’t scratched the surface. They haven’t investigated it all. They are still being inclusive and kind. I am daily sending out articles that I am over being kind when women are being hurt, raped, silenced, cancelled, threatened.

Solidarity OP. We are here and we will be heard and slowly slowly the zombies may start to wake up. We need critical mass of voices for others to feel safe to express their views. I am less fearful now.

Keep going.

OP, please also consider the current definition of transwoman by Stonewall. Any man who says he is a woman needs to be accepted without question.

We don’t even know if the people in the article had any dysphoria. We just know that they told the lesbians that they were lesbians (whilst having male genitalia).

To silence this discussion is giving a free pass to any male who wants access to women and girls to Self-ID and then fly under the radar.

We have to discuss this. And to protect “genuine” transwomen we need to be able to distinguish them from male predators.

@CreepingDeath 6 years!? I had no idea this stuff had been going on for so long! Sinister indeed! :(

Friend, here.

I'm in Ireland where there is no discourse about this, pretty much none. Most people have no idea what is happening, or that there are males in women's prisons, that young people are being indoctrinated into hormones and surgery, that our government are lowering the age of consent for this to 16 , that Self ID law is already in place and has been for 6 years! We weren't told about this. It's infuriating. If you asked 100 random people on the street, I doubt most of them would know what you are on about.

Our media reports on men who identify as women and commit crimes as actual women so most people are none the wiser. The media capture has been so sinister. What happened to journalists digging for the truth at all costs?

Fistbump of solidarity, youdonthavtobehood. That sounds v tough.

It’s also extraordinary that someone who describes themself as a feminist, as your friends do, could then dismiss, diminish and disbelieve women’s stories of sexual assault, coercion and rape. Did you ask them how on earth that aligns with feminism?? Can I ask if it happened on social media? As social media is kryptonite to productive conversation on this (and many other) topics. In person is far, far better, even with close friends.

Some good ideas for your here to connect. Also, just so you know, it’s completely normal to meet people from here in real life - we all exist in the real world! Maybe there’s someone who is a similar age who lives near you…? (Usual caveats re Internet safety apply).

I hate the fact that you can't been seen to have an opposite opinion to it all without being verbally abused (transphobe, bigot, terf etc). So now we all have to put up and shut up and dare not have an opposing opinion.

I think a lot of the supporters of TWAW haven't actually looked into what's happening that closely and think that we really are being cruel to poor little girly boys who just want to pee. I really don't know what we can do to raise their awareness of the real nature of some of the men who want to do more than that...
Incidentally, who do some of these men want to BE us when they so clearly despise us so much?(Rhetorical question!)

I'm absolutely astonished (and dismayed) at how so many women are 'useful idiots' in all this TWAW stuff and collaborating in dogma that is so damaging for women. Nice that the trans lobby can get women to help do their dirty work for them.

I'm especially looking at women who others regard as being particularly intelligent - think leading journalists, academics, women in position of influence.

Why shouldn't the BBC cover the issue? Like they cover a thousand other issues?

This is kind of key. The very fact that this whole area is not treated "normally", either by the media or politicians, indicates a deep institutional rot.

Aside from the "narrow" problem of the attack on women's rights, it provides evidence that our foundations are crumbling. My hope is that as part of fixing the women's rights thing we do some work to repairing some of those foundations.

Helen Joyce is great on this - just insisting that everyone just needs to do their job as they normally would, and not disengage their brains. Go and watch all her interviews.

You are right to be angry, however try and let their opinions wash over you. You can smile in a mysterious manner because you know the secret to life, the universe and everything. You know how babies are made, who can get prostate cancer, what a man is, what a woman is, and all kinds of other interesting stuff they don't want to learn.

I'm sorry OP, I know it's really hard. As someone on here said before, you feel like you are shouting into the void. I have one friend who understands, but doesn't seem that bothered about it. She agrees that it is bullshit, but isn't as angry as I am.

I also haven't (yet) said much to some other friends who are gay, and I worry they will think I'm attacking their lifestyle or something. Which is totally ridiculous when you think about it, because the trans orthodoxy is incredibly homophobic.

I get really angry about it sometimes, and have to step away for a bit, but I keep coming back because it is too important to ignore. It always shocks me how many women just go along with this stuff, maybe they just want to be left alone and not targeted, or think it will all just work out somehow . Those of us with a little life experience know why safeguarding and boundaries need to be kept in place.

We just need to keep talking about it/ fundraising / supporting other women. That's what is going to keep us going. This will likely get worse before it gets better, unfortunately I think it will take more ridiculousness to wake up the majority of people to the reality of this nonsense. In the meantime we just keep going...

I heartily recommend you read both these articles.

They discuss the same concept but from totally different perspectives.

thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6

newdiscourses.com/2020/06/woke-breaking-point/

You are absolutely not alone.

As I said to another poster today, GC people in our generation are very reticent to say what they think, because of high risks for people in our generation (precarious employment/risk of social ostracism) which is a vicious circle.

Thirty something gender critical here, you are far from alone! I've shared my views with my closest friends (who agree), there are some old acquaintances who would no doubt presume I'm some sort of bigot, I doubt they would debate respectfully and in good faith with me so I simply don't raise it. I think for some people who are very bought into the ideology it is painful to expose all the internal contradictions and the underlying misogyny. All the people i know who think TWAW are well meaning people, they just can't bring themselves to see the problems.

OP

You will find plenty of people in the same situation here. And plenty of conversation to be had.

JK Rowling's line about 'doing what is right' compared to 'doing what is easy' is relevant here. It's also worth noting that almost every woman here started from not seeing the problem and happily nodding along and believing the surface level information.

Once you've seen the problems beneath it, you can't unsee them. More and more people are realising this.

It's also worth noting; it isn't people with questions and concerns about this political agenda rushing about silencing and defriending and playing purity politics, or shouting sinner repent (or shaking tambourines in people's faces) while demanding the sinner reflect.

Step away from the drama. All you need to do is read widely, reach your own conclusions and have the courage to stand by them and stand up for what is right - that all needs get met, all diversity matters equally, and solutions must be found that work for everyone and are based on tolerance of other beliefs and needs. Instead of winners, losers and a desperate plan of 'don't talk about the problems ever'.

You're in good company OP. The one good thing about this awful mess for women is that some absolute heroes have arisen in the form of ordinary women.

OP, please keep reading widely. And women here are very open to discuss everything.

There is a clash between trans interests and the interests of women and girls. Unless we discuss it, we cannot solve it.

I have found that people sometimes tries to cover up assaults on females in the order to not make trans people look bad in any way.

Please read about what happened to the poor girl in Laundoun.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4360759-More-than-one-woman-a-week-prosecuted-for-rape?pg=20

My summary is on the last page. A 14/15 year old girl was raped (sodomised) in the girls toilets by a boy in a skirt. The school board and management tried to cover it up, ignored all sexual assaults in the school, tried to get the girl’s dad arrested, lied about it and the girl is now slut shamed.

The boy is convicted of the rape - and an additional sexual assault on a second girl.

But they did manage to implement more trans friendly policies in the school in order for boys identifying as girls to easier access the girls’ toilets…. I guess this was more important than the girls?

Do you think you might be reading biased sources, hence your 'anger'? If your friends are distancing from you, they're not doing so without good reason. Time for some reflection.

There is an immediate belief that anyone that might disagree that transitioned males are women don’t read widely and with a balanced view.

It doesn’t take long though for someone to come along and tell people to ‘educate yourself’ on a support thread with a complete lack of empathy.

Many, many of us ‘educated ourselves’, hence why we don’t believe that gender should prioritise sex in most instances.

That’s a hard situation OP. Perhaps in years to come your friends will be more understanding of your perspective and appreciate your feminist standpoint. I refused to lose friends over Brexit and so far I haven’t actually fallen out with people I care about (apart from my university aged children who think I’m a dinosaur.)

This Board and the wise words here have changed me. I can’t go back and like you, I can’t pretend I’m not angry. I’m furious!

Not much advice here but perhaps ask them questions rather than volunteer your knowledge? I’m sure you are more tactful than this middle aged stegosaurus….

I’m happy to be your friend though!