Tragic suicide

yes Cake.

Meanwhile this edit button works a treat!

Ugh! Is that ghoul still trying to exploit that poor woman?

As we pointed out, in the past we on MN FWR have been accused of an overwhelming number of incidents. One from another poster with 'Steph' in the name who declared women posting opinions on MN resulted in men assaulting each other at a protest in the USA.

It is remarkable. That Steph making that accusation was a male poster. As OldCrone says, it is an act of misogyny making women responsible in this way. But I doubt we can expect anything different from this poster?

That this poster seems to never quite understand misogyny or their own vile act of politicising a family's grief is all any reader needs to see to understand their motivation here.

Maybe Steph is just trying to warn us where our gender criticalness might lead us. One minute we’re simply concerned about medicating children with experimental treatments/admitting men into our single-sex spaces and sports, then BAM! Suddenly we’re trolling bereaved parents.

It’s a slippery slope.

What’s a shitposter on X got to do with Feminists on Mumsnet?

It's the first rule of misogyny: "Women are responsible for what men do."

What’s a shitposter on X got to do with Feminists on Mumsnet?

Losing a child to suicide is a parent’s nightmare.
You won’t find anyone mocking a recently bereaved mother on Mumsnet.

You seem to be exploiting a family’s distress for your own political aims - I would ask you if you are Susie Green but you really remind me of MargaritaPIE (who has been strangely absent from MN since that time when we caught Marge saying transphobic things about a transgender actor) 🤔

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/vile-account-mocked-a-trans-boy-s-suicide-doxed-his-mother-they-re-making-money-on-x/ar-AA1inBpW

Oh dear another thread allowing itself to be at the beck and call of one poster. Sigh.

re "gender critical"

The original use (in terms of more recent feminism ie 50+ years) was about rejecting gender stereotypes.

ie gender is a social construct that limits both men and women to behave in certain ways and that for women to be free from social constraints gender should be rejected. eg led to the setting up of the Letterbox Library to try and provide books for children that were gender free.

But that was at a time that no one, except maybe a few queer theorists in universities, ever thought anyone would combine the word gender with identity. Why would anyone identify with a concept of people primarilly spread by commercial advertising and reactionary Hollywood films.

So there may still be some who talk about being gender critical in those terms, but also those newer to feminism who see it as rejecting the idea that you can change sex (identify as a "gender"). Presumably the phrase gender identity was coined because originally nobody would have accepted the phrase "identify as a sex".

Cue someone better educated to post about how language can be weaponised.

Always going to be what? Transgender? But what does that mean? I've read that blog post and they say:

Those who argue that being transgender is a “phase” often rely on deeply flawed studies that conflate gender dysphoria with gender non-conforming behavior. That means that these flawed studies lumped children who don't conform to gendered expectations in with transgender children, regardless of how they describe themselves or whether they experience gender dysphoria at all.

But they don't explain what the difference is between gender non-conforming children and 'transgender children'.

It's just "some people are transgender, but we have no definition of what transgender actually is".

The attitude to Keira Bell certainly seemed to be 'Well, you should have known better', even though anyone telling her that at the time would have been called transphobic.

Stephannee: what would you see as the way to help distinguish the Keiras, who need more time to understand themselves, from the young people who must be accelerated through the process? Seriously. How are they to make the right choice?

Or a ban on even exploring other less invasive, permanent and potentially later irreversible approach to support a child. With a view that a few sterilised, medically very vulnerable or unwell and distraught children regretting it down the road is worthwhile collateral damage.

This begins to look like blinkered support for a political agenda over and above support or care, or even basic ethical responsibility, for an individual child.

Yes, it's clearly a fair point to discuss when a coroner is making recommendations, or activists may be using the situation to push a particular narrative.

Of course we need better mental health services for everyone, and long waiting lists can cause distress no doubt.

But this issue has become politicised to the point that people want a ban on trying to cure children of a condition.

I think it may be useful to have a separate thread on that. Although I'm sure it's been discussed before. Its useful that we have an example here of someone trying to use the term 'gc' to apply to someone who is attacking or smearing people, in a clear attempt to malign anyone who may have gc beliefs.

I don't know Porcelina and I hope that someone will come through with an answer.

What I cannot quite work out though is why feminists became supporting of gender stereotypes and gendered role or why anyone thought this would be a mainstream feminist belief. It really seems like the antithesis of feminist principles. A tautology.

As in, as the term was originally used, does "gender critical" involve:

(1) Of course men and women are naturally different at the psychological level, (at least typically), but there is no need for the rigid gender roles that exist in society today.

Or:

(2) Men and women aren't psychologically different by nature. They have just been socialised that way, and "gender" is an unhealthy myth that we have created.

Of course it's possible that different users of the term had different perspectives on this, I'm just wondering if the term originally had a particular meaning.

If original users of the term were critical of transgenderism, are any particular books essential on this?

With the "gender critical" term...

I think feminist criticism of transgenderism goes back to the 70s.

Anyone know when "gender critical" was first used? Were the first users of the term much interested in transgenderism?

Did the position originally involve skepticism of a biological difference in gender traits?

I think it means, "they were always going to be".

Yes.

Of course Arabella. We should tighten it up and post it in break it down so anyone can C&P it with their own modifications because someone posts the explanation painstakingly at least once a week.

Is anyone else getting vibes of a known poster who thrives on humiliation from some of these posts yet?

LGBT LIVES MATTER

Well of course they do. And if there is a possibility that medical transition is increasing the risk to those lives, it's important to know that. It certainly has some heavy side effects that shouldn't be taken lightly.

Do you actually have it in for transgender people, Stephannee? You are very cavalier about their long-term health.

Thanks for typing all that out, Helle. I may copy and save it, if that's okay.

I think it is possible that some readers can see similarities in posting styles categorised as ‘shit posting’. Albeit perhaps not in the same degree.

The hypocrisy here is two fold tonight. A poster who claims to be supportive of trans people has just politicised a tragic event for their own purpose. While also then mischaracterising the abuser as being ‘gender critical’ when any one seeing the account can see it is a purely trolling account. I can’t see anything on there except trolling tweets. Yet the account is being used to characterise people who are, in this poster’s eyes, ‘gender critical’. (I am assuming GCA is gender critical activist)

This shows a distinct ignorance about what the term gender critical actually means. Extreme trans activists use this tactic regularly.

So here goes for any reader who hasn’t caught on to what this poster and those extreme activists have done.

The term ‘gender critical’ was first used as the term ‘gender critical feminist’. More specifically a feminist who rejected gender roles and gender stereotypes. Who incidentally also believed that sex cannot be changed in any human being.

For those who seek to abuse feminists for their stance, extreme trans activist in this instance, the feminist was dropped from the term. They did this because they then wanted to lever in an overwhelmingly huge number of people from different groups with very different, in some case opposite, motivations under the term they now made into an umbrella term. Many of those groups being wedged in were politically motivated by right wing objectives and some were extreme right wing. For instance, this troll account posted in this quoted post seems to be posting nazi supportive content which may be part of their trolling activity or it may be their belief, either way, it is abhorrent.

So with the term feminist removed, and the term being used by extreme trans activists being just the ‘gender critical’ part, the term has now lost all meaning. Because now reasonable people are expected to believe that feminists are allied with Nazis and with groups who have the opposite political aims of feminists, all because people with weak or nonexistent logic have abusively changed the term to make this now huge grouping of people ‘aligned’.

The only thing that ties these groups together is the universally held belief that sex cannot change in humans.

This has been proven and well established in science for a very long time. This is despite a group of people who are desperate for others to believe it is possible and actively using emotional manipulation to convince others it is possible.

Loosely, it could be said that the groups wish to prevent laws and policies from prioritising gender over sex where sex matter. However, any person looking beyond the very superficial labelling of each campaign point would see that the end outcome sought likely differs. Because the motivations differ. Only someone who is ignorant of the political aims of these groups OR ignorantly seeking to force team them portrays the outcomes as being shared.

Many of those groups wedged under this now huge umbrella, believe in gender stereotypes and gendered roles. Hence, they render the term ‘gender critical’ meaningless.

In fact, it could be said that using the same logic that those extreme trans activists who rely on gender stereotypes and gender roles for the definition of themselves are closely aligned with those very same groups they have tried to shame and silence feminists with.

So on one hand, feminists are supposedly aligned with the ‘far right extremists’ through believing the scientifically proven fact that humans can not change sex. And hypocritically, on the other hand, those activists using the term ‘gender critical’ as a term of abuse such as seen on this thread tonight, may be just as aligned with those same groups through their belief in gender stereotypes and gender roles.

Yet, they either cannot see that connection or don’t wish to.

This abusive mischaracterisation of feminists has led to some, likely many, feminists to reject the term ‘gender critical’ as it has been used here on this thread. And it is abusive. It is used to shame and silence women rightfully speaking and campaigning for the
sexed based rights that benefit all female people and not male people.

Just to clarify my use of extreme trans activist. To me, this term encompasses those who make extreme demands on society that people believe that humans can change sex and that male people
should access any female single
sex spaces or provisions developed to progress female people after millennia of negative sexist discrimination. It does not refer to all trans people. Merely a
group of trans people, along with other groups who are not transgender themselves, yet seem to set themselves up as spokespeople for transgender people. Hypocritical because transgender people are most definitely not homogenous in believing humans can change sex either!

The people using this ridiculous falsity may as well call all people
who believe water is wet ‘Nazis’. It is the same premise.

TLDR: this poster has hypocritically politicised this tragedy for their own agenda.

In doing so, this poster hypocritically has also used the term ‘gender critical’ to force team feminists with an abhorrent person. Because that person seems to believe humans cannot change sex . Ie using the same metric, this person is aligned with the vast majority of people on earth, this poster uses that as a tool to shame and silence feminists on a feminist board.

This is not a GC feminist account, this is some random shitposter with 24 followers, probably a 4channer teenager.

Do you ever stop and think before you post misinformation?

If you truly believe Mumsnet is full of transphobes, why on earth would you bring this mother’s tragic bereavement to the attention of posters here?

unless you don’t give a shit about this woman at all and just want to use her dead child as a metaphorical stick to beat uppity feminists with?