Will we die out?

Personally, whatever shit continues to happen in my lifetime I will continue to have hope, because the truth never dies out.

The truth of what women and girls will lose and the truth that no one changes sex will never disappear even if us dinasaurs become extinct.

It'll come full circle in time.

Yes our opinions adapt as we age and on average people tend to become more conservative. But that doesn't mean that a shift from "be kind" to "men are not women" is a move in a conservative direction. I wouldn't class trans activism as being a left or progressive position in the first place... it is pretty reactionary and authoritarian. But also the shift from "be kind" to "men are not women" often appears to come when a person is adversely and directly affected. An athlete who has to face a male competitor in a race might move very swiftly from one position to the other when faced with the reality of the situation. This is not slowly becoming more conservative with age is it?

It’s certainly a lazy trope but I still think our attitudes and opinions adapt as we age. Those students who are happy handmaidens right now will look back at this on thirty years and wonder what on earth they were doing.

I guess it depends what you mean by "conservative" but I don't view a shift from "be kind" to "reality matters" as a conservative shift.

There is a push amongst trans activists to make this a left/right issue, positioning TWAW as being progressive and those in disagreement as being conservative / far right or fascist. I think it's really important to resist that narrative.

I think it’s the natural order for many. You start life thinking ‘be kind’ is the mantra to uphold and by the time you get to 45 you recognise the patriarchy exists and kindness is overrated.

BabyStopCryin · Today 08:57

They don’t believe what they are shouting. They only believe in screaming at women. We see them.

I think you've hit the nail firmly on the head there.

Recognising reality isn’t really a shift towards being more conservative though is it?

I think everyone gets more conservative as we age. The right wing get militant and the left wing tend to centralise. So no I don’t agree.

I think it's not daring to speak. All this debt that they are taking on and the potential cost of being run out of the university by the blue haired ninjas must weigh heavily on their minds when they are pounced on with a microphone and a conversation filled with thought crime landmines.

we won't die out because fortunately intelligent thoughtful women will keep being born. The vast majority of us older women of the dinosaur persuasion went through a period in our youth of being just as "be kind" and rainbowsparkles as the rest of them, but our lived experience and wisdom eventually brought each of us to a "hang on a moment, we have missed something important" revelation. There will still be grey haired old dinosaurs like us in 200 years time, some of whom manage to spot the sexism early on and never join the sparkle brigade, others of whom spend years on the other side before something clicks.

There is another thread posting a video of a man interviewing students at Portsmouth. University about whether they thought there were ‘more than two genders’ ( sexes?), and then going on to ask if they thought a transwoman, a biological male, with genitalia who had committed sex crimes should go into women’s prisons.

With one exception, they were almost incapable of thinking or speaking with any coherence.

This seemed partly because no matter where logic led them they could not even consider the answer that these criminal men should not go to a women’s prison.

They were extraordinarily inarticulate, and ignorant, given they were university students, but this again may have been from not daring to say or think anything that might be ‘wrong’ and therefore developing a sort of mental stutter.

They don’t believe what they are shouting. They only believe in screaming at women. We see them.

At Sunday’s Reformer Tree I had a long chat with a young man who came to the event because he has seen the trans group’s ‘call out’ to counter protest. He wanted to see what their counter protest was all about.

He was most certainly not motivated the way feminists were to support sex being prioritised over gender where sex matters, and was much more of the opinion that he was never going to allow a group to change material reality.

He was mid 20s and admitted that he only had a few friends who knew he didn’t believe in gender identity, he felt he couldn’t talk freely with all his friends.

The tide is turning. The protest slogans being yelled at me on Sunday as I stood hand in hand with other women were so misaimed it was ridiculous.

These people honestly believed the shite they were yelling. They believed women hated trans people. They believed lesbians should only ever be aligned with trans people. They had no concept they were yelling ‘our streets’ at women, many who have been abused, harassed on ‘our streets’ for decades and many with histories of assault and violence, and how that appeared to those walking past.

The more these extremists protest and publish their falsehoods, the less people feel sympathy for them.

There really are men who'd love to have been witchfinders and puritans in the Cromwell era aren't there? Childless women, old women, non conforming women all targets, ccolds bridles, ducking stools, burnings- they'd be so happy. So long as they were definitely seen as people with penises and not at risk of being subjected to any of this themselves.

I hope they get over this "boudoir pictures/pole dancing/burlesque is empowering" shit

We seem to have reached a point where the only taboo left in the name of being the Bright Young Things Shocking Society is taking a dump on the street in full sight. The kids of this lot will have to resort to wearing formal suits and bowler hats, being sober and sensible, and voting Tory if they're going to be able to shock and disgust their elders. It's a bit sad really.

Ereshkigalangcleg · Yesterday 15:31

Goodness, I've had disagreements with friends, some of them quite heated, but never that bad. Do you still speak?

I have as little as possible to do with her, but my daughter likes to see her cousins and she's my wife's sister - they have a business and work together. She's done this for years, but she absolutely dominates my wife, who always says that I've provoked her. Obviously. Why would someone react like that, unless provoked, eh?

Because they're a bullying psycho...

I hope they do.
I hope they get over this "boudoir pictures/pole dancing/burlesque is empowering" shit, and start to think about the real power structures.

Lol It’s a new one on me. I thought I’d heard all the insensitive things people say to childless women.

Nah, cos everyone grows up

It’s the ‘knicker elastic’ effect.

Ideas, trends, ideologies get bigger and wilder and more bonkers until it just pings back, often opposite to its original trend.

Seen it alllll before.

Ideologies die out, the truth will always win

Oh God no. I'm 28 and a massive TERF. Not just concerned about men in women's spaces and child safeguarding, but believing that there is no such thing as "gender" only sex and trans people are just deluded...! I just work and live in peak liberal TRA-land so just have to keep quiet about my views. Honestly if I was open about it I might well lose my career and most of my friends. It's starting to upset me more and more though, having to keep quiet, especially when I disagree so profoundly with what people around me say.

I might subtly start challenging some of the views. Thing is though I work in one of the decimated public sector industries where there are so many vulnerable people needing support and so few committed people doing that work. And I'm really passionate about my job. So I don't want to lose my career. Especially not over something like trans rights which I see as very petty and individualistic, and don't understand why so many of my generation are so passionate about it. (Well perhaps it's because most of them have never known hardship so instead have to invent an oppressed category to fit into)

It honestly is difficult though, sometimes I feel like I must be a bad person to feel like this, because of what I hear from people around me. And I feel like I'm becoming even more intolerant of trans people than I otherwise would be, just because I hate being sidelined to this extent.

Thanks!

Of course!

Not having babies (whether a deliberate decision to be childfree or decision taken from us by illness/disability/infertility or a non-decision, put off indefinitely) affects all our lives too.

You don’t need to be a mother to get stuck on the mummy track at work, just being female and under 45 is enough to get you sidelined.

Plus all the horrors of periods, contraception, abortion, menopause and constantly being asked when you are having a baby, and getting pitying looks no matter how confidently your ‘never’ answer comes out
Lesbians might get a bit of a pass on the contraception/abortion front but with contraception prescribed for problem periods, donor sperm pregnancies that have the same ectopic and miscarriage risks as all pregnancies, sexual assault & rape and a good dose of societal comphet making some lesbians into late bloomers, it’s only a little pass, definitely not a universal one, not much of a pass at all really.

Moving through the world with a female body is the one experience we all share, regardless of whether we do motherhood or not.

(BUT it IS true for me that motherhood radicalised me into feminism! Up until I was pregnant I was fortunate enough to not really experience much obvious sex inequality. I was young, fit, gobby and reasonably bright and managed to ‘Not Like The Other Girls’ my way through life fairly successfully.
I was a happy little bird flying around and enjoying the spring sunshine - announcing my pregnancy at work was like flying head first into a patio door and landing in a crumpled heap on the floor.
The Patio Door of Patriarchy cured me of my Not Like Other Girls Bullshit!