Do you hide your GC views under a bushel?

My teen daughter is, it turns out, more outspoken than I am in some ways. I’m amazed and proud!

She was actually totally captured for a long time (even briefly mentioned questioning her own gender but it was during an awful episode of poor MH in lockdown etc… compounded no doubt by tiktok which she no longer uses). She’s been with her boyfriend for over a year now, but for over half that time he identified as a girl. We respected pronouns etc and I kept my GC views very quiet at home although I did say a few things like how dangerous binders are (she had FTM friends at school).

But then her boyfriend became more comfortable again and in his words “is just a guy in touch with his feminine side” and they have a great group of friends who just rolled with it and didn’t make him feel bad about backtracking.

Around this time she heard about one of the awful sports cases and was incensed about the injustice of competing against, and changing with males. Now I’m a lot more open with her although I am still careful not to overdo it. But she’s aware of the changes to pride and that a lot of the LGB community are distancing themselves from the TQ+, and why. Yesterday she and BF arrived home ranting about the progress flag.

Biggest thing though is that she was recently involved in a community project and actually spoke spontaneously about the risks of physical transition (it was relevant but wouldn’t have come up if she hadn’t said it IYSWIM). I wouldn’t have actually done that in that circumstance now let alone at 16!

She is going to a captured college in September unfortunately and I’m a bit worried she will speak out in the wrong place and get ostracised or worse. She does respect pronouns etc. But I don’t want to make her scared or ashamed of her own opinion - as per my previous post in this thread, I don’t want her ending up being silent like me.

I am out about my views with family, who are mainly in agreement (including teenage kids who are fed up of the pandering at school, and wider family of all ages/ political leanings).

At work - no way. I work in a university and would be too scared of the consequences. I know it's awful but that's how it is. It may well be a protected belief but seriously, how many of us would be prepared to challenge this all the way through the court system, with all the stress and money involved? Not me. I need my salary, to put it bluntly.

I hide. But I think it's too easy to call it cowardice. I have two friends, one very close, whose DC are fully signed up to transitioning, with operations booked while they are in their teens. And the friends support them totally. One was just so relieved the suicide attempts had stopped. The other is just brow beaten. I'm not in their shoes, so I can't understand fully how it feels to be the mother of an adamantly trans teen and so I am supportive and never voice concerns. An old friend had a trans teen decades before it was as high profile as it is now. I questioned gently and was shut down so fiercely at the time. She just said I had no idea wat I was talking about and it was true. I didn't. Her MTF child s now an adult and happy in their skin afaik.

As a feminist I loathe and despise how misogynist predators are freeloading on the back of the woke TWAW community and I really wish trans people would side with women on this. And I despair of the entitled nonsense that is trans women in sport. I also privately worry very deeply for some of the trans teens I know undertaking surgery at an age when they can change their minds about anything.

But I don't think waving a GC flag in the face of friends and their teens going through things I can't really understand is worth doing. It wouldn't change their minds. I do know one mother who has said - to the letter - everything I'd think of saying to her FTM child and it has caused a total breakdown in family dynamics. She's argued that her daughter can wear what she likes, do what she likes, live as she pleases and never conform to a single female stereotype but the child still thinks it is literal violence to suggest that being born female makes them female.

My RL bushel is so thick and heavy not a glimmer of light escapes. I am deeply ashamed and guilty about it, but my children would find it incredibly hard to accept me as GC, and I am scared that I will lose them.

I’m getting braver. I’ve had a few GC friends for a while, but in the last year I’ve had so many one on one conversations with other friends that I realised the majority of people I know feel the same as I do. And every single one has said the same thing about feeling like they were a bigot and being scared to speak out.

I work for a SEND charity, and although gender doesn’t come up directly in our work, I have encountered issues related to it (we also work closely with quite a captured council). I have realised that some colleagues have the same views and concerns as I do, and because I’d hinted at my concerns (about teens and hormones - during an autism/mental health related meeting) someone in NHS we work with brought up the subject with us too.

Recently I did some training where I brought up the subject - it felt like a huge deal but it was a very small, safe group and it was from the angle of my own actual (autistic) experience too. I was still a bit nervous but it went really well and it’s good to know that people “on the ground” are skeptical.

TBH though the other reason I’m getting braver is very personal. A few months ago due to a bereavement I had to see my (early childhood) abuser for the first time in 20 years. That brought up a fuckton of past stuff, of realising I’ve spent my whole life being quiet, putting everyone else’s feelings before my own, not being honest about my needs. And I’m done with that. I don’t want to be quiet anymore.

Had a really good chat with a friend last week, who was singing from same hymn sheet.

Other people, more cautious, and I tend to go in softly and see how the land lies. I’ll always stick up for woman, but may not be so outspoken.

DH just doesn’t get it, and really appreciate what’s happening in the big bad world.

I have brought it up with several people and it’s heartening to find that with a couple of exceptions everyone is GC. The ones who aren’t have been able to have a debate without falling out.

I even went to a Let Women Speak event where on the way I asked a couple of young female trans activists, why they were going to the demo and I told them my views, that you can wear what you want etc… I think they were surprised that I wasn’t homophobic and they were like I was before I came onto this board. It was a very civilised exchange of views. I wouldn’t have approached a man in those circumstances though.

This is exactly me and it's really depressing, to be honest.

Particularly disturbing to discover my husband thinks it's perfectly fine for a any male rapist to suddenly discover womanhood post arrest and be taken completely seriously and treated entirely as a woman. Oh, and perfectly ok for the legal system to compel victims to affirm their rapist's new identity and be forced to use the new pronouns. He sees nothing wrong with that at all, even when it's abundantly clear from the circumstances that it's almost definitely a man taking advantage of the system. This chat was before more safeguards were put into the system, but many years after I'd disclosed to my husband that I was raped by a TW (or I guess a part-time TW...it's a whole thing...wish I could turn off being female a few days a week :/) and all the complete number it's done on me over the years. It made me lose a lot of respect for him and trust in him, if I'm honest, and that's really horrible.

And I feel I can't even talk openly about my rape and its effects on me with a therapist in case I say something 'wrong' and get corrected. And can't talk to my sisters or friends about it either. So I don't talk about it, and I let it eat away at me. And I acutely feel the pain of other women in a similar boat who too have to suffer in silence for fear (or out of experience) of being called a bigot or threatened with violence for not quite believing the horrible man who did those things to them is 'a woman just like you!'. Anyway, sorry to piggyback on your post with a trauma dump, but it just hurts, doesn't it? It's not fair. I'm not a bigot, I'm not cruel. Wish I had even one friend I could be open with about it.

Nope. I'm open about my views.

Seeing a bad ideology rise up but saying nothing doesn't sit well with me, particularly as a Jew.

I'm open. If it loses me friends, so be it. It hasn't so far: most of the people I've discussed this with (calmly and rationally, referencing the science) say something like 'thank goodness I'm not the only one). Unwillingness to speak your views is the way that minorities can bully majorities. We will only have ourselves to blame if we lose this battle.

I’m very new to gender criticalness - and am retired so thankfully undoxxable - but most friends and family I’ve mentioned it to are broadly in agreement with me on the crazy stuff like rapists in women’s prisons and men winning women’s sports competitions. My leftie 28-year old niece works in a university and positively BRISTLED when I joked to her “I’m a terf now, you know” - but she too was appalled when I mentioned Isla Bryson (which she hadn’t heard about before).

“No Debate” has had a chilling effect up until the last year when crazy case after crazy case has been highlighted. Hannah Barnes’ book Time to Think converted my sister, who has passed it around friends and colleagues - it’s so factual and damning it’s a valuable weapon in debate.

I don't hide my views, but I do try and have measured calm conversations if it comes up and make sure I listen as least as much as I talk. I haven't fallen out with anyone yet. A few conversations have had slightly tense moments but generally it's been immense relief from the other person to find someone willing to have a discussion about this without them feeling shot down or attacked.

I am open with family and friends. At work I have to be discreet as it would cause massive problems for me and my employer and indirectly my colleagues.

I'm open to an extent to a few people but am pretty cowardly and meally-mouthed.

People stay their birth sex, sex is a protected characteristic as is sexual orientation, race, religion and gender reassignment etc, but people should be able to present how they like without discrimination or hate or fear of violence.

It's just women aren't collectively obliged to solve the issue.

If you feel you have nothing to be ashamed off with your GC views by Loud and Proud people!

otherwise why hide? You have a protected belief. Love it proudly and literally wear the T-shirt.

people who don’t want to be in your life because of it we’re never your real friends.

I'm open to close family and friends, I have discussed it with my teenage daughters but it hasn't been an issue for them yet. I'm much more cautious what I say at work as I'm concerned some people would complain and put my role in jeopardy. I'm a bit ashamed of this and can't wait to be in a position where I can retire and be much more open.

I was very careful to research the subject and concluded that i'm strongly GC. so I'm now very open about it. i'm not very good at explaining things/argue in a debate so i don't bother. Just by showing which side I'm on, i hope to open up their minds slowly. they know i'm not a bigot. so maybe the so-called "contradiction" will snag

Open with most of my family. All inlaws bar one are GC, encouragingly so are all the teens on both sides of the family.

The one family member that is a full TWAW won't have a harry potter book in her house. I reckon though that she'll peak nicely in time given she's got two little girls who are into all sorts of sport and hobbies that require changing rooms.

At work, the CEO thinks it's all a load of shite so there's nothing pushing it at work thankfully - still though I've a TWAW colleague so I just don't get into it in the work place. Everyone on both sides of the debate are helpfully ignoring the elephant in the room.

I’m completely undercover but I say things that are GC all the time and the wokiest people agree with me. It’s say we as a society—and as feminists—need to overcome gender stereotypes. Everyone wholeheartedly agrees. So far I don’t think the penny has dropped for any of them but I live in hope.

I worked for a county council for 13 years and had to hide my feelings/bite my lip on all sorts of things in order to have a job. Naturally, the place leant heavily to the left. What it's like there now with all the trans stuff God alone knows.

I also have two daughters, and have to be very guarded in what I say about gender issues in their presence. The only person with whom I can be myself is my wonderful partner. Luckily, we are on the same page on this, and other issues.

With family and sone friends im
out but at work, definitely not. I need my job and I work in the voluntary sector which is stonewalled to the eyeballs. I’d be sacked or forced to undergo some bloody awful beeee kiiiiiiind training

I uses to be quite open about it but after being cruelly cut off by a sibling and former friend, I keep my mouth shut now.

Which means more people keep their mouth shut in turn and the whole thing relies on silencing dissenters.

Those who I've come 'out' to have shot me down and made me feel like a bigot. I'm pretty sure I've lost one friend because of it.

Self-employed in the arts and quite a big crossover between work and friends. So I do have to be careful, as I know I wouldn't be considered for some work if I was very vocal.