How the hell did we get here?

This article tells part of the story. The author shows how a company selling a product uses standard marketing techniques to draw customers in:

savageminds.substack.com/p/the-marketing-funnel-of-gender-ideology?s=r

It seems that the term banned on here is probably the most appropriate one which is clear. Perhaps it is time for MN to have another look at it ...

It does seem that this is a one off in a democracy. How many other "social justice" movements have been able to so quickly capture all the major institutions, politicians, the law (they even give secret training to judges fgs)? They have wreaked havoc in schools, dabbling with children's mental health with the toxic "you could be born in the wrong body", forcing girls to share toilets, changing rooms etc with boys and have unbelievably been able to undermine fundamental safeguarding principles by falsely telling schools they can transition children in secret from their parents. Add to that persuading society that women no longer exist as a sex class and that sex based language and reality is somehow now wrong..... And there's so much more.

Oh bugger!

This book - The End of the World is Flat by Simon Edge - At all good bookshops

OP, I've been thinking of starting this same thread for a while. I don't understand it either. It seems like a bad dream.

Do you (general you) think getting to where we are now was the intention from the beginning? Or it just got crazier with time?

Trans men makes perfect sense in the way you used it, OP. You mean men who transition. That's the ordinary use of language. But we're not in ordinary usage here. There's the problem.

Thanks for the links, especially the James kirkup article. What other unpopular things have been passed into law using this technique I wonder?

Musomama, interesting that you think transsexual => transwoman was a preference if a community. As far as I remember, it was work or Christine Burns, and 'Press for change', all quite deliberately driven to make the laws and sympathy intended for transsexuals to apply to the 'umbrella'.

The brilliant Jane Clare Jones explains it pretty well here I think:
janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/

You might enjoy this, too op

www.amazon.co.uk/End-World-Flat-Simon-Edge/dp/178563240X?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Second thread this evening confusing "transmen" and "transwomen" but rather than worrying about getting "their" terminology right, why don't we just use the words we've been using for centuries? You know, men and women, male and female. Much clearer. We lose ground when we accept the terma laid out by those with whom we disagree*

Here's my thread from the other day, about Helen Joyce's view on language (in relation to sport, but applicable generally imo). Read her book Trans, if you want to understand how we got here. There are lots and lots of wonderful interviews with her on YouTube where she discusses it at length.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4522995-Helen-Joyce-we-should-stop-saying-trans?msgid=116416158

*I know avoiding the ban hammer is a concern!

Hyperbole, so much hyperbole. Just pain old lying too but my god the hyperbole is off the scale.

Exactly @Signalbox , be kind about No Debate.
That shit is over

By saying things that we didn't believe in order to be kind.

It's truly baffling

Anyone I speak to IRL thinks the whole premis of TW are W is ridiculous. I don't think I actually know anyone who believes this bollocks yet somehow huge corporations and government are going along with it

It's funny how powerful words are.

We teach secondary pupils this, yet somehow it's a lesson that adults keep forgetting.

I remember being absolutely stunned to find that there was this whole parallel world I knew nothing about where people I assumed to be rational professionals were actually ideologues. I genuinely thought that we would just need to explain to school staff why affirming my daughter as a boy would be harmful to her mental health and all would be fine. I had no idea we’d end up effectively being accused of child abuse for not going along with them. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. It is still incomprehensible to me.

Yes, my point being that the fault lies not with you, but with the deliberately wooly language designed to hide the truth.

If my view that males should not be allowed to compete against females in sport is so objectable, why do they not want to say it in that simple language?

It's all, Lia, a transwomen, has come up against criticism for racing cis women.

Not

Lia, A biological male claiming a woman gender identity, who takes hormones which lower testosterone to twice that of her female competitors and retains a penis, has come up against criticism when entered for races with women.

I think the leap from the term 'transsexual man' to 'transwoman' has also been a real sleight of hand.

I can understand why the trans community prefer this term as it makes them feel more authentic, but it has lead to a lot of confusion and now complete boundary crossing.

It's funny how powerful words are.

[quote MrsOvertonsWindow]James Kirkup in the Spectator gives a clear explanation of the Denton's report that demonstrates how to influence social change on the quiet, behind close doors and without democratic scrutiny or accountability:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists[/quote]
Important to remember this. Strategic and deliberate positioning. It is what advocates and lobbyists do, and why we should all be more questioning than we are.

I heard that an innate approach to challenge and stress usually plays out in a personality in one of four ways: people exhibit either a fight, flight, freeze or appease first response.

In terms of GC women the "fighters" are fighting an absurdity, the other 3/4 are looking on.

In terms of teen and young women who have been educated to "be kind" a quarter of those are fighting against GC women. 3/4 are looking on and learning what the world is like - the zeitgeist, if you will.

The 25% of women fighting for the rest are sheros.

I hate to be a pedant op, but trans men is used in your op when you are referring to trans women (biological males transitioning to female)

I can obviously see how the confusion arises though and I think it's a deliberate muddying of terms.

I don't think it's hateful to say that transmen are biological women who believe they have a male gender Id.

And that biological men who believe they have a feminine identify are trans women.

It's facts.