How did this happen?

I think its hard to see institutionalised, deeply ingrained sexism because its the water we swim in.

Many many studies have revealed unconscious sexist bias.

I agree that misogyny is endemic and perpetual, but how did law-making, corporations and the media get so completely taken over by weird fringe ideology about women having penises?

It's also that real commitment to beliefs and values such as inclusion has become a wholly empty 'keeping up with the Jones's' and fashion statement/progressive fad thing. It's like the next award you claim and shove up the plaque/add it to your logo/speak the corporate buzzwords thing. One is dumped quickly when the New Thing appears.

There was never any real understanding, feeling, application of the belief and care as how to integrate it with new insights, new developments, it's just the dash to join the In Crowd.

Sadly the TQ+ lobby are going to join women, disabled and people of other faiths when the Next Fad emerges, and it's going to shock the hell out of them, but considering how they have exploited this without any glimmer of conscience, my compassion's been a bit burned out.

Misogyny has been going strong for thousands of years. The last 100 years are just a blip.
Every generation is a new crop of loud misogynistic men where the decent majority are always quiet and think it's all a bit of a laugh. And for women, sadly there's a new crop of hand maidens with a smaller number of loud strong feminist girls.
It takes women a few more years and life experience to become feminists. By then we are already on a backfoot.

The MeToo movement I think is over estimated by women who were in the thick of it. It was women speaking out but there wasn't much actual (any?) action or change stemming from it. And of course lip service while plotting and waiting their turn from misogynists.

I've just posted this in another thread and have lazily copied and pasted it here.

In this country I think the Civil Service dictate the way ministers think and as it is captured the advice the ministers get is biased. Add in that MPs of all stripes often have children who have been steeped in the ideology so they are getting the message that everyone is for this approach from both home and work.

"I think the problem here is the Civil Service. When departments get a new minister a briefing is put together of all the main points and lines to take. The Civil Service is completely captured and pushes gender ideology at all times. A new staff network has been set up to support those who believe that sex matters, and the daily vitriol and complaints they are getting that the network is allowed to exist is frightening."

I think it dates back far longer than that.

There was a huge backlash against the advances made by women's liberationists, and the media (surprise surprise) just treated that as the new trend.

3rd wave feminism then made it legitimate to be scornful of older feminists as being out of touch, and anti men, etc., etc.. But most importantly 3rd wavers were the generation who have gone through university when queer politics had taken hold, and women's studies were dumped in favour of gender studies.

They moved into positions of influence, eg the editor of the Guardian a woman, has said queer politics guide all her decisions. And long before the trans issue became so wide spread the Guardian would delete comments form women about feminism being about the sex class of women being discriminated against by the sex class of men.

I am sure someone on FWR has written about how the concept of gender rather than sex led to what had been a few people with actual gender dysphoria wanting to transition, being turned into a policy about identity. And effectively the GRA, created to get round the ban on same sex marriages, became the trojan horse that let a far wider group get GRC.

And then of course Stonewall, and other LGB groups, seemed to look round for ways of continuing to need to exist, and via the influence of queer politics, included the T. Although logically it made no sense to do that as both L and G about about same sex attraction.

I think, particularly in America, MeToo started to be seen as part of a "woke" agenda given the language used. But this is more those who appropriate leadership of this movement, than what happened at a grass roots level. And what Me Too did show is how misogyny and violence against women had never gone away. And look where we are now with the increase in incel culture, pick up artists.

The campaign against the proposed reforms to the GRA did mean a lot more women became aware, but I'm afraid that for more than 40 years feminism has not been "fashionable".

So even though 2 women a week are killed by a man she knows, somehow this just seems to be non news worthy.

But any implication that someone who is trans may have been misnamed is taken as a far worse tragedy.

I think it is totally about the value, or rather the lack of value, that women have in society.

It is so deeply depressing to see this in the context of MeToo but yes, it appears it was all empty virtue signalling.

Almost immediately after, we had what happened to Amber Heard to put us firmly back in our places too.

The people who only a short time ago would have thrown themselves behind women's issues - now are so dismissive.

I agree, it's shocking. They never meant it. It was just virtue signalling.

Yes, I think this is in response to the Me Too movement. Women were speaking up and supporting each other. Now women are no longer free to speak up, unless it's in support of males.

For me personally, complacency being a young adult in the early 1990s. I didn't know anything about feminism really. Then I was in an abusive relationship for a long time so when I came out of that I was focused on domestic violence issues and getting my life back together. After that I was very much live and let live and it is such a small number what does it matter. Then my amazing friend introduced me to the topic and then I was deep diving into all sorts of rabbit holes and there was no coming back. Filling in the GRA reform consultation (2018) was my first bit of action.

I listened to a you tube by Wombs with a View and they mentioned the Denton's playbook and how the first stage was to get men in women's prisons, once this was achieved it would be easy from then on.