Is anyone else finding being gender critical has affected their mental health?

Believe what you want! You've associated yourself with a movement whose figureheads regularly call for the eradication of a particular minority group from public life; who actively push to remove legal protections from some of the most vulnerable people in society; who have known links to and funding from shadowy far-right organisations with a well known hate-filled agenda.

This is nothing to do with your personal difference of opinion; you've told people in your life that you support this movement, and this has clearly upset them enough to sever ties.

Just want to send you some support OP. I've been 'excommunicated' by a very close female friendship group because I don't believe men can turn into women and it's extremely painful. Having said that, I don't regret it. I feel a sense of freedom now that I didn't before. I used to sit in silence when they talked about evil terfs, screaming internally. Now if the subject comes up with just about anyone, I say what I think! It's been very liberating.

I find it really quite incredible that women are destroying their relationships with other women because some of us don't think men in dresses are more oppressed than women. Trans ideology really has done a number on so many of us.

I've made new connections too, but I totally relate when you say meeting people in the movement is not the same as relationships with old friends and family. I like to think that in time, the scales will fall from most people's eyes. Might be kidding myself though!

👆I find it helps to read comments like the above.

didn’t want to name names or directly engage with it. But obviously i don’t mean the comment immediately above mine!

Isn’t the gloating comment coming a bit late or did I miss three other iterations of it?

I find it helps to read comments like the above. If the Borg seemed nice, kind and well-balanced, it might be tempting to join it. As it is, it’s an easy no thank you, I’d rather not opt in to spite and misery on top of the strain of constant self-deception.

If you find out a friend or relative is secretly harbouring harmful or distasteful views that are hostile toward a particular demographic, it can really shake the foundations of your relationship - especially if it's a struggle you've faced yourself and overcome in the past, which is generally the case when it comes to trans-hostile views which used to be shared by a majority of the population. I'm not surprised that these people have decided to cut ties - but I'm pretty sure they'll be ready (if initially wary) to reconnect once you're ready.

The next part is up to you.

I try not to bring it up irl - I did once with a friend I knew would be hostile but she had a go at JK Rowling and I lost it a bit - but yeah it’s very hard watching the world contort itself to please fetishistic men while right wing ghouls get to call water wet and be applauded for it. Very hard indeed

Thanks NegevNights!

We could start Salons (not hair studios, I mean a la Bloomsbury Group!). Where you open your sitting room up for conversation with like-minded women. No-one can dictate who we have in our own homes.

We rebuild from the ground up again.

I actually really love this idea!

Although MrsOvertonsWindow that's mad they turned up at a woman's home - I can't imagine how far removed from reality you would need to be to believe that the police would be on your side in breaking down someone's door to enable you to get in to sit down and join their private book group.

”me and daughter disagreed on blokes pretending to be little girls. She thinks it's an innocent expression of God knows what, I think they are fully perverted gross men.”

Just saw this and thought, “I know, right!”

Maybe part of the problem is that so many of those who seem to be particularly active and conspicuous seem to end up getting arrested or kicked out of positions of trust when someone finds out they have some perversion in addition to dressing in women’s clothes and entering women’s spaces. After a while, the pattern becomes impossible to deny. Maybe your daughter, like mine, can’t see past her nice trans friends who wouldn’t hurt a fly. And to admit that her friends are now part of the same group as a load of fully perverted gross men is something she can’t bear to face.

@Colinfromaccounts And yet despite your kind intentions, yours is the most caustic post of recent pages. Going back post by post:

pretty difficult
take a step back
💐to everyone
v strange
maybe I'm overly cynical
I'm learning
please
seems potentially
you all keep me sane
I've had to think very hard
hope they help a little
I'm far more aware of how little I know about the world

versus...

bunch of randos on the internet

Thanks for giving me another chance (there are many from which to choose) to post something I've been wanting to for a long time... Posts that are dismissive or reductive or derogatory are precisely what reassure many of us that these randos may have something worthwhile to say.

As @nepeta said upthread:

We might be losing our ability to see such complicated people without judging them hastily...

You're right that IRL is the best way forward. But this is a thread that is about aggressive silencing IRL, & shows, contrastingly, empathy & thought online.

It shouldn't be like that, you're right! And do beware of total strangers posting from heaven knows where for whatever reason, yes - be careful of sharing information / avoidance 7 doom-scrolling / hunting a clicky dopamine fix, totally!

But a dismissive "bunch of randos on the internet" without further meaningful engagement? I think that's one of the few posts (only post?) in the thread that comes meaningfully close to justifying that warning!

This is absolutely my view and I don't understand how anyone can see differently.

I find it very difficult because it does feel like gaslighting. There’s an attempt to force me into saying things that I know are not true, and then horrible abuse and being told I’m a bigot or stupid if I don’t capitulate. And having been properly gaslighted when young, that’s something I want very much to avoid.

I also find myself (even on here sometimes) trying to post in ways that don’t make me sound like a conspiracy theorist. The levels of regulatory capture in government, the civil service, the NHS and even various previously trusted international bodies is astonishing, but there is evidence, in the form of the Denton’s document that indicate that is partly as a result of a deliberate policy.

There are still times though, when I catch myself wondering whether I might have got it wrong, but any time I try to challenge my own thought processes, it’s impossible to see things in any other way, so I’m stuck with it and can’t pretend otherwise, however much I might want to.

It does worry me that I might have to face it at work sometime, and then I know there will be difficult choices to make. I keep hoping the tide is turning, but then another layer of that capture is revealed and then I feel unsure that it’s ever going to end.

But the worst of it is that I have two family members with whom I can’t even discuss it as they would 100% regard me as an evil bigot. And they’re intelligent women that surely should know I’m not evil. Then again, I think they’re brainwashed and illogical, which is something I would never have expected of either of them. It’s impossible to discuss it though as it stimulates immediate anger. This whole thing is a horrible mess.

And if you’ve survived to the end of all that, I wish you well, OP. In short, yes, this situation messes with my mind too.

Like many other posters, I have had the 'are we the baddies' moment. Those times when you think it's just you and you think you're going mad because no-one else can see what you see.

So this is what I do. I ask myself, what if there had never been any resistance.

What if we had just accepted the ideology. Lets agree that men become women if they say they are. Lets give them everything they want.

Males in female sports
Males in female prisons
Males in female refugees
Males on all women shortlists
Males counted as females for equality and representation
Males in female changing rooms
Males in female single sex spaces
Male crime recorded as female crime
Males can be lesbians
Males can be mothers

How does that world look?

Children can those their own sex
Children can be prescribed puberty blockers
Adolescents can be prescribed cross sex hormones
Young adults can have sex reassignment procedures

How does that world look?

No-one allowed to voice a different opinion or view
No-one allowed to think differently
Anyone under the umbrella is valid including MAPs

How does that world look?

When I think this, I know I'm not wrong. It grounds me. It reassures me that resistance is necessary.

For some of us the irl people are the problem so it can be pretty difficult.

I mean this kindly, but maybe you should trust the people who care about you irl rather than a bunch of randos on the internet

I'm GC but don't let it consume me. I try and move through life fighting the good fight. I try and be an ally for those that need it. I have a severe mental illness and am disabled so have to deal with huge discrimination on a daily basis. I find some people on here very dogmatic about being GC and have to bring it up all the time in every context. They don't realise that this can bring the cause down. For those of us fighting many causes we know that the battle is short but the war long. Take a step back, pick your battles, if you come across someone who has fallen for it hook line and sinker don't try more than once. Move on to the undecided, the person that is sort of going along with it but is interested when you offer another viewpoint. That battle is easier.

It does do a number on your mental health. Having no go areas with close family and friends is fucking horrible. to everyone who is dealing with this.

Yeah, me and my sister fell out over it. Tbh she is odd, we fell out because once I didn't think Richard Dawkins was the be all and all of truth. She was already a twitter addict to be fair, I think a lot of those wedded to gender bollocks are fairly idealistic, me and daughter disagreed on blokes pretending to be little girls. She thinks it's an innocent expression of God knows what, I think they are fully perverted gross men.

Maybe I'm overly cynical, I think not though.

And your measured response right there shows that you're thinking carefully & empathetically in a way he doesn't seem to be (I'm trying to be careful to be hypothetical in all responses now!)

My next steps following my more challenging convos have been to reflect on how to proceed from then on: what to bring up, when & how. I'm technically prepared to give my view & then promise relative silence henceforth (as someone else suggested upthread). But when I have done that, it's put some pressure on me that I feel was rather unjust - we all hear things we don't like to some degree, & should be tolerant of that, especially when they're important to someone we care about.

As such, I feel degree is the key word here. Ideally, there shouldn't be an expectation of all-or-nothing, speak or be silent, in a relationship, as this demands a disproportionately absolute concession on the part of the one for whom speaking about this is deeply, viscerally important. On the other side, though, I'm learning (ongoing process!) to pick my times, limit time spent, & choose my arguments very carefully. I'm definitely not there yet! I think I may not have got to the "all or nothing" promise I made to someone a while ago (since then, they've actually become more open to brief convos, thankfully) had I been more tactical in my expressions of concern about this to them beforehand.

@BluebellBlueballs BluebellBlueballs

Which womens groups have you joined please