Struggling with the misogyny of female TRAs

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism

The most aggressive one I know is open about having massive issues with her mother. (Probably would benefit from some of the MN threads about growing up with narcissists but she wouldn't be caught dead on MN!).

Also - the part in the video where Peterson cries is because he says the girls who look at instagram and are influenced to do things perhaps bad for them "do not have anyone who loves them enough" to stop them. This is upsetting, I see why he struggles emotionally because it is a very upsetting thought - but it isn't quite true. Perhaps more upsetting is that the parents, the authority figures as I am sure he would approvingly see them, do not know how to love protectively, in some cases. they do not have the confidence to say no, or are not empowered to by the culture we are in.
Sometimes though, perhaps it is wrong to say no? Authority is not always right.
I think about this a lot, with my own kids (11 and 13). Often, even about really trivial things, my attempts at gentle consensus backfire - because the lack of boundaries allow the situation to devolve into a power struggle between the two of them, or for some other reason. Or because what they need and will enjoy involves getting over some initial barrier of effort. So when I say "shall we go for a walk? where shall we go?" it's a disaster. But when I say in advance, as if they have no choice, "tomorrow we're going for a walk at x" they do it. They might complain in the moment, because inertia, but we all go and and they get a lot out of it and really enjoy it. I am not sure I am always right about when to give them choices and when not but it is also true that constantly denying your children choice is oppressive. It's tricky.
I think Peterson puts his finger on something important when he says that kids need boundaries; and that people in general need to have a measure of discipline, and self discipline, to be happy and fulfilled. But boundaries and discipline are not the only important things. At their best they create conditions within which fulfillment can grow (from love, from success, from achievement, from successful relationships) but they are not in themselves fulfilling.

@MangyInseam - "I don't quite see where you are disagreeing with him here. He is saying young women are sold an idea by our culture that their professional life is the most important thing for their happiness/value - that is likely to prove to be inadequate and won't make most happy. But when young, many believe it, and this is one thing that drives their conflict with older women, who have in many cases come to understand this."

I see what you mean but I think my issue is that he locates the problem with women. He seems to be framing this in a certain way as if women are silly wilful creatures who are grabbing hold of ideas they don't understand, and getting greedily involved with structures that will hurt them. Actually women are rational people forced to make their way in a patriarchal materialistic culture, who will be ridden roughshod over unless they can assert their value in the terms insisted upon by patriarchy and neo liberal capitalism.

I think it's because on first glance acceptance of trans identities seems to flow naturally from rejecting gender stereotypes.

Why shouldn't a male person wear dresses? Why shouldn't a male person be soft and nurturing? Why shouldn't a male person be a simmering sexpot? Why shouldn't a male person occupy the social constructions we've historically reserved for women? Why shouldn't a male person who occupies the social constructions of a woman also occupy the physical spaces we've historically reserved for women? Why shouldn't a male person meeting society's social constructions of womanhood actually be a woman if that's who they feel they are?

The step between 4 and 5, and 4 and 6, is totally different to steps 1 to 4 in that it moves from accepting gender non-conformity and challenging gender norms for men into defining gender non-conforming men as not men at all but actually women, which is in fact the exact opposite to steps 1 to 4. But unless you think about it properly, and think not just in terms of abstract equality but also the concrete cumulative impact of patriarchy on our own minds, it could easily just all feel like the same thing.

It's odd, particularly when they claim to be feminists.

One of the school mums seems very contradictory in her thinking. Has DDs and is very much supposedly against gender stereotypes, hates gendered toys, buys them 'strong women' type books they're in cubs, rather than brownies etc etc. Yet is a very vocal self-proclaimed TWAW ally...

I think part of it is very much virtue signalling, she is also a staunch advocate for refugees' rights yet was very much opposed to house-building in our village. Partly I think rebelling against her middle-class, private school educated upbringing which she still benefits from by way of financial help for house buying

Also she seems to have a weird almost a kink obsession with drag queens in the way that some straight women in their 30s seem to have.

Tbh I think she's just a stereotypical champagne socialist...

I'm glad you got there in the end, trytopullyoursocksup. Here's the link to the original discussion about the JP/HJ discussion. As you will see, I was initially less than impressed!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4632899-helen-joyce-on-jordan-petersons-podcast

I've asked the question in the OP myself a thousand times and come up with all the usual answers in the responses above, and it seemed to me that this was breaking new ground — and made me think harder about the effect that women' reproductive role has on the psyche.

I don't quite see where you are disagreeing with him here. He is saying young women are sold an idea by our culture that their professional life is the most important thing for their happiness/value - that is likely to prove to be inadequate and won't make most happy. But when young, many believe it, and this is one thing that drives their conflict with older women, who have in many cases come to understand this.

I did watch the whole thing. I agree, it really does help with that question. he is such a funny person / thinker though, every now and then he uses a word in a certain way that exposes a deep divergence with me, in certain aspects of how he sorts values - the way he casually talks of conservative values as conscientious and self-critical as if we all accept that this is what conservatism is - when I think many people of conservative (yes, small c) values are using established rigidity to avoid self criticism and lead to complacency and therefore cruelty.
I think his, and Joyce's, chat around the 2-year-olds reflexism and narcissism was interesting.
I always appreciate it when thinkers promote values that transcend neo liberal capitalism. I am used to that resistance coming from the left but I sent my children to a faith primary school because I wanted them to be in an environment, when very young, that has the sacredness of the person at its heart rather than targets defined in money. And that calming, positive "you do matter, sit up straight and put your best foot forward" vibe that I get from Peterson comes from that, in the face of my extreme ideological difficulty with much of what he says

I know, I had the same reaction. I hated him to start with. Then I realised he's coming from an academic position where he's aware that women's psychology has been developed over thousands of years around the process of bearing and raising children and doing what it takes to get those children to maturity. I'm not much of an academic myself, but I think what he's saying is that the modern requirement of women to work causes strain and psychological discomfort in many women. Not me, who has never wanted children, but I can see that I'am not typical in this.

Try and stick with it till you get to the point where he cries when talking about the unbearable pressures young women are under and he and Helen Joyce talk about the psychic response to transgender issues. I think he's the father of girls and I think he does understand the issues deeply, even if his natural entitlement and egoism don't always make it seem that way. I felt (and I wasn't the only one on the original thread who to feel so) that it took the 'why are some women oblivious to the damage gender ideology does?' question into new territory.

I am trying to watch that Jordan Peterson and Helen Joyce youtube clip. It's interesting, but it's long. I am not sure if this belongs here, as it's a slightly separate point, but this is making me so angry (Peterson):

“It's complicated but you know, younger women are told in no uncertain terms that the only important thing for them - and what will be vital to their identity and what should be vital to their identity if they're decent and honourable and ambitious young women - is their career; and that's simply not true for most women, and it's also not true for most men by the way. It's definitely true for a subset of men, but for most women the optimal life - and I think most women discover this in their 30s - is well-balanced aggregation of family, marriage and career.
And I'll tell you every time I've made that comment people have clipped out say three minutes of me talking about that idea - um - I get the most vitriol comments that I've ever got when I've ever discussed anything and all of them come from young women, and they're so vicious that it’s beyond - it's actually beyond belief”

I'm so furious with this. I am not a young woman but when I was, it was very clear to me that work was rather a racket and my emotional life was just as, or more, important (and I believe that this is the case for lots of men too). I am now 51 and I work really really fucking hard because I have two children and no one supports us. But it has never, ever been the case that I have believed that work was the source of my personal meaning or identity, neither have I represented it as as such.

I think that women in general are the voices of reason that are attempting to position work as only part of a life that is healthy and happy and makes sense to us and those we love; and I'm furious that Peterson is positioning women, particularly deluded young women, at the centre of some mad mission to make it more than that. Oh yes - the mission exists - but it's a racket and it's not women's mission.

I feel so funny about Peterson. In my opinion he is violently wrong about so much. But the clarity and confidence with which he speaks makes me feel sort of calm and positive. It makes me want to do my exercises and floss my teeth properly and do a good job - and makes me feel I can. I feel as if I have spent my whole life trying to be good and flunking out, trying to be good and flunking out, and Peterson gives me the lovely feelings of being back in the game and having another shot, believing I can be good this time. Despite me having no desire to be good in any of the literal ways that he represents.

I wasn't sure if @user1471465329 was attempting some form of humour with that post...

Dare I point out that 86% of the British population is white.. and 69% is middle class (based on the jobs they do) though 49% identify as working class but many of those who identify as working class hold 'conservative' values ... so the idea of the working class, left leaning, non white feminist is not representative of the majorty of feminists.. we are much more likely to be white, middle class and not all that radical either... but still hold the position that biologically, we cannot change sex and that we should retain women's spaces and the ability to be counted together with others of our sex class but not discriminated against on that basis.

There's so many great responses on this thread! From my own experiences I think it's an interconnected mix of:

Political tribalism and needing to show you identify on the 'progressive' side of the American culture wars (if you're not TWAW then you're a right wing, evangelist, Trump-loving Nazi).

The impact of Twitter on creating the above.

Getting older and feeling the need to show off your I'm still a cool girl/not-a-Karen/pick me credentials.

Thinking feminism IS corporate and individualist third wave feminism - girl power/sex work is work/nudity is empowering etc etc, and not knowing the first thing about second wave, collectivist feminism and power structures. So there's just no framework for understanding the demands that our feminism be 'intersectional' of trans women is just another exercise in male power.

Generational - really relate to @Girlsontour comments about Gen X v Millennials and Gen Z and differing attitudes to gender non-conformity, especially how the 'what would you even know mum?' attitude (which we all had at 15 too!) is now made a million times worse by social media.

Hipster cultural elitism - my term for it anyway! Similar to @JustStopOilyPoshKids if you have any connection to arts and media or move in those circles, unquestioning, uncritical acceptance of all aspects of queer ideology is part of the tribal uniform.

Lol.

I think usersomerandomnumbers bobbing up advising boring, old, white radfems to catch up n get with the programme beautifully illustrates the "I'm not a Karen" point @WinterTrees made

Sigh! There's no arguing/ acknowledging specific points/ positions/ experiences is there? Just attacks. Classic DARVO.

Yes, this is also my conclusion.

I can't get beyond time to catch up with reality

From someone who would have us believe that a person with a penis can be a woman.

I think it’s because some young women haven’t really realised how shit stuff is for women. Also things like domestic violence, rape centres etc are not particularly glamorous, they are the ugly end of life. In the podcast (thanks for that found it interesting) Joyce points out that many younger women despise older women in a way young men don’t despise older men. They don’t want to become old and “useless” - probably because society does doesn’t treat men like that, you can be a silver fox etc.

I wonder if there is a similar process of distancing yourself from the “kind of women” that “kind of thing” happens to. It’s painful, difficult to face and ugly. Activism for “oppressed minorities” is glamorous, it’s an easy win you are fighting for a just cause at little real cost to yourself. You aren’t offering to raise money to keep a crisis centre open or listening to a woman who has become stuck in a cycle of abusive relationships.

What is obtuse is the absolute vitriol and rejection that detransitions received from the trans and lgbt+ community when they confess that transitioning didn’t work out for them.

Watching this happen in real time with a friend to the point that it made them attempt suicide was what ultimately turned me off to TRA’s.

That and the insidious way they were gaslighted into contributing a treatment that was not working for them because they were told they had not made a mistake! This is all just internalized transphobia. You will feel better soon! Keep at it! So they listened until there was no return. Their body was destroyed in ways they cannot reverse. Absolutely diabolical!

You won’t be able to bury your heads in the sand to it for much longer. More and more of them are going to start coming out. If you keep rejecting them like that they are just going to turn to conservatives for support. You could have kept many of them on as supporters giving educated, lived constructive criticism. But instead they are turned around as if they are lepers.

Follow the money. It might have once been about civil rights… but it’s definitely not about that anymore…

mainly middle class white women

Would you like to repeat your classist racism a bit more to make clear which women are de personed and should not be listened to in your world?

many preaching political lesbianism even when partnered up with men

And many preaching forcible conversion lesbianism where the person feeling entitled to sexual access to lesbians is a male and part of a group of males painting homosexuality as females unfairly denying them sex, which should entail conversion therapy or punishment including death.

Lesbians aren't political footballs thanks.

Is it helpful to label people 'anti women'? When I perceive them as acting against women and girls' rights and fail to understand why in order to support TQ+ politics (not people... not all TQ+ people agree with this by any means, you are solely supporting and advocating one rather extremist political view) you must subordinate female humans to male ones, you must strip females of equality and you must exclude some from any space so that males can have their preferred choice of all the spaces. I mean that logic baffles me. Honestly. To me it's just straight forward male supremacist: it values those born with penises far higher than the utter disregard and exclusion of those born without penises, while at the same time uttering the crazy statement 'sex doesn't exist'.

Or does throwing labels and rude names around end any possibility of a rational, adult conversation?

Most feminists and women in general support trans women as women.

You are saying this only because you've heard it. This has never been measured, voted on, in any way fairly ascertained, this is not based in any evidence. Almost every survey online radically states this is actually not true and while women care about the needs of TQ+ people and want them to have equality they do not agree with males in female only spaces.

Time to catch up with reality.

Oh mate.

Cass report. Mermaids. Females raped in prisons. Females without rape crisis. Females raped in hospital wards.

This isn't working for females in reality is it? I'm sorry if you have the belief that it doesn't matter, that females don't have the right to equality of care with male TQ+ people, but this is a niche belief.

Your radical feminism is actually incredibly conservative

No, love. Extremist totalitarian authoritarianism and gender ridigity such as the TQ+ political movement believes in is actually incredibly conservative, and incredibly similar to extremist religious movements. It's part of the whole if you swing to the extreme end left you meet the extreme end right and have a lot in common. Women here want equality of rights for females with males, they want everyone able to live any way they want but without this removing anyone elses rights, no hierarchies where some get and some give. And they want females to know they can be and do anything they want while still being female. You don't have to change and harm your body.

and hopefully finally on the way out.

Sorry, but the pendulum is starting to swing back and the more mess that comes out, the more and more people are going to realise how women here have been predicting and whistleblowing for years. The major failing was that the establishment bought into a lot of hot marketing and manipulative behaviours and didn't listen to basic common sense.

How obtuse.

Most of the women currently derided as ‘terfs’ (including those posting on this very forum) are Gen Xers, so your timeline is batshit.

Prostition is definitely shit for women and girls though, so you got that bit right.

Lol @user1471465329 trans women are men, they’re not sisters

trans ppl in the UK have exactly the same human rights as everyone else. They just don’t have the right to force ppl to disbelieve the evidence of their eyes