KJK

here it always ends with yes i use the women's toilets, no I'm not going to stop and I'm flouncing now!

I hadn’t seen Alf’s thread to put the all-important man’s perspective on transwidows until it was mentioned here - what a seeing off he got, it was beautiful!

It was at the bottom of page 3 of the Relationships board when I looked, might be on page 4 now, but it’s an educative experience. Forget the exact title, but contains the words “loved ones”.

The relevancy was explained in the quote ReThinking shared.

To learn how abusers present themselves as non-abusive, and how to tell when they're distorting their stories. Because the face the estranged parent movement presents to the world is false, and good-hearted people are being convinced to aid in the very abuse they want to prevent.

The fact the blogger is primarily talking about estranged parent movements and their behaviours is a red herring.

The strategies are ones used by many others to present a false face, and manipulate others into aiding their abuse. The blog explains the psychology of the behaviours generally. The point is that this blogger who goes into depth of such psychological tactics well known to researchers and therapists, and Lundy Bancroft, a therapist specialising in treatment of male abusers with the prison service, and Chumplady, a wellknown blogger, all have cross over points. They are talking about different specific groups, but they are in essence all talking about the same behaviours that manipulate and control well meaning others into co operating with and enabling them. These are known behaviours. These are known tactics. These are known scripts.

To be honest, I am thoroughly confused and don’t understand what posters here are saying, why they have referred to Issendai’s blog, or what Issendai is saying. So if I want to understand I will need to return to the posts and blog when I can cope with doing so. I assume, as I respect the opinions of the posters, that I am missing something, quite possibly something obvious. But two people have thanked me for my post, so maybe my puzzlement is shared?

Re: Issendai above, that should have read:

"Reading that will plausibly establish that the content of the cited post doesn't apply to some individual readers beyond its value as an exploration of 'missing missing reasons'."

I have had a quick look at this, and will have to return to it when I am feeling a bit more robust. At first glance, Issendai appears to be saying that it is always parents who don’t listen and always their children who are trying to be heard because they don’t want to be estranged from their parents.

Did you miss the message at the top of that post?

This page doesn't apply to all estranged parents, only to estranged parents who are members of estranged parents' forums

And the page to which the message links that closes:

So why study members of estranged parents' forums? For a deeper understanding of how abusers think. To learn how abusers present themselves as non-abusive, and how to tell when they're distorting their stories. Because the face the estranged parent movement presents to the world is false, and good-hearted people are being convinced to aid in the very abuse they want to prevent.

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/why-estranged-parents-forums.html

Reading that will plausibly establish that the content of the cited post doesn't apply to individuals beyond its value as an exploration of 'missing missing reasons'.

Its been said here already but any random blundering onto this site isnt going to have the authority to change anything.

There have been men periodically coming on to this site, and nothing happens. There has never been a big announcement that after talking on mn the trans community have decided not to enter park runs as females, or something.

Its about justifying the individuals behaviour at best. Often its just an excuse to talk about what they do to an outraged audience.

If you want to debate these men, maybe find another space to do it, not critise women for not wanting to do it here.

It's worth noting that Alpha started a thread about "loved ones" and men who transition

After it was made crystal clear that Alpha's presence was not wanted on the trans widows thread. Soon after that, Alpha decided to flounce.

"However, I do refute the suggestion that the only answer is to stop this from happening is to keep transwomen out of discussions. At least I think that's what's being suggested."
This is an ideology that started with #nodebate and has relentlessly sought the cancelling, sacking, silencing and punishing of all women (and many men) who challenge the ideology. The tactics used by this individual are simply a different way of seeking women's compliance. It's worth noting that Alpha started a thread about "loved ones" and men who transition which, as soon as it was moved to the appropriate Relationships board was abandoned. No boundaries to breach on there.

There is no "discussion" at present. The only tactics used by transactivists are intimidatory, bullying and the capture of the State's institutions in order to force compliance from an unwilling public. Evidenced on a daily basis.

That's why Lundy Bancroft was mentioned above. Abusers don't suddenly stop abusing when they don't get their own way - they use different tactics.

Look at the bonfire of child wellbeing, safeguarding and women's rights and tell me that what we should be discussing with these men? Because I can no longer see it.

Sorry, Chumplady - cake must have been heavily on my mind at the time along with insufficient coffee.

https://www.chumplady.com/

Well worth a read.

I have had a quick look at this, and will have to return to it when I am feeling a bit more robust. At first glance, Issendai appears to be saying that it is always parents who don’t listen and always their children who are trying to be heard because they don’t want to be estranged from their parents. Gender critical parents of adult transgender children have a different perspective, typically that their children have been indoctrinated into believing that disagreement means that their parents hate them, are transphobic and bigoted. Frequently there are further complexities.

In my case, we are not totally estranged, my wife is not in exactly the same position as I am, and my son is not in exactly the same position as his partner, and there other family members involved in the tangled web of strained relationships. One person, and one person only, is unwilling or unable to talk and listen, and that is not a parent.

I am not in a position to talk about the ‘missing reasons’ somewhere as public as this, even if it was of any interest to anyone outside our particular family situation. But I could quote, fairly accurately, what was said to me, in which ‘transphobic’ and ‘bigoted’ featured entirely predictably.

What is cake lady’s blog please?

However, I do refute the suggestion that the only answer is to stop this from happening is to keep transwomen out of discussions. At least I think that's what's being suggested.

It wasn't a good faith discussion, as other pp have also said the poster came to Mumsnet for attention and as a power trip. Which is what that poster got. It's territory marking. Women here have seen this happen many times, validating wordy, tedious screeds of male narcissism is not really what the feminist board is for.

Possible, Beetle. I'd actually forgotten about the gendershift, perhaps that is the source of the problem.

Just ideally wondering as you are no longer Arabella but Arthur are you sure it isn't just indigestion and trapped wind? Surely you no longer suffer with womanly issues now?

I'm really not ignoring what I'm hearing. It all summarises up to what KJK told me: that I'm "part of the problem". I will again say that I don't believe I am and that there are different ways engage in all of this.

I would never want to put any women in a position where they were being abused, and I would never want to think that I had been used as a "weapon" to achieve this. However, I do refute the suggestion that the only answer is to stop this from happening is to keep transwomen out of discussions. At least I think that's what's being suggested. Obviously derails deserve to be ignored and/or shut down but it sounds like the same suggestion is being applied to any type of engagement from transwomen. How is that any better than the No Debate coming from the other side? Surely if there is debate then it's an acceptable risk (although not in support threads of course) that any transwoman who joins in may not have entirely altruistic goals? How each of us chooses to mitigate that risk is our own choice.

If the solution is that only women (no men/transwomen) are allowed on to this board because it's considered a women's space only, so be it. That's not something I would personally want though. There are plenty of people here who are concerned about the impact of gender identity belief, both including and beyond the rights of women and girls, who aren't women (just as there are plenty of women on this Mumsnet board who aren't mums).

There were plenty of women asking Alpha what Alpha meant by the asserted belief that Alpha was a woman. I didn't ever ask this - I did pass comment on the stereotypes but I didn't ask any questions relating to this feeling. I focused instead on what a solution might look like in a scenario where it was accepted that there was a difference in beliefs (Alpha believes Alpha is a woman, I do not - and stated this) and where it was not accepted that transwomen should be in women's spaces.

And without trying to get closer to doxxing myself, there is absolutely no way that I would have had an extended discussion with the head of EDI in a global organisation - about why the company policies (which have now been changed to match the Equality Act) and compelled gender identity belief in the mandatory and voluntary training - if I was taking a zero tolerance approach to preferred pronouns in my day to day role and engagements at work. I don't need to take this approach and I remain happy to use preferred pronouns in some circumstances. Most particularly in relation to my adult colleagues who hold a different belief from me. But equally, I stated in clear language in my discussion with the EDI head that I didn't want to see transwomen in the women's toilets because they didn't belong there solely on the basis of their belief in gender identity, when the EHRC guidance on single sex spaces made it clear that this shouldn't happen (I had already shared this guidance). I'm challenging the impact, not the belief.

Transgressors will carry on transgressing, especially when they're emboldened by successfully placing themselves as victims in a victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle.

The role of the rescuer/benevolent flying monkey is well-described above.

We've all blundered into scenarios we don't understand but this is unlike IRL interactions where it might not be safe to warn the blunderer what is happening. Online, when people are repeatedly advised as to the reality of what is happening and the blunderers prefer to maintain their own perception of reality, that says a lot about where they are in their journey and their insight into collateral damage.

NB: blunderers here != the transgressors nor are they responsible for it (the transgressor is) but they are facilitators of the transgression and have some contribution to the harm that it produces.

Oh. I had missed the post(s) about Alpha having / having had a wife. Now I regret my reference to 'wandering' into the trans widows thread - I don't see how there can possibly have been anything unknowing or random or reckless about it.

More of the same light really, but I guess yes because I'm pretty shocked that anyone who isn't a transwidow would join the conversation

Do you know who wasn't shocked? Tinsel. Because she knows that it's just another act of boundary violation. Alpha's very presence on that specific thread is. They're drawn to it, like a bloody moth to a flame.

I cannot tell you the number of transwomen who come one here to start their conversations with a professed wish to find a middle ground. Those who don't want to violate women's boundaries, just don't do it. They just don't show up.

Why do you think alpha singled me out? Because I post a lot and my boundaries are clearly hard. Faux flattery and claiming we would get on in real life, was the preferred method of trying to wheedle his way round them. Alpha enjoys the game, not realising how fucking tedious is to everyone else.

🤣

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html

And let's face it, there was no attempt to 'negotiate'.

For what? Why? To what end?

Are women hoping that one by one they can convince any activist that comes here that women matter too, and solutions can't be that women just shut up and hand over their words, rights and access?

It's always meeting male need. Whether in terms of curiosity, or an attempt at paternal good will (look up Hayton's threads: careful listening, at the end they patted women on the head and said 'ok, heard you out, nothing I think is important, so I'll do what suits me and you'll just have to cope or be excluded, soz') or because it's exciting and fun to post on Twitter about 'ooh look at me poking women who think they can have equality' and 'look what SHE said, the sinner, she's damned for heresy!' or because they are posting one handed and having a really lovely time personally with their own boat being floated.

Is there really a belief that an extremist group can be reasoned out of their faith any more than women with trauma can just be told to re frame it, or that women of minority faiths will just abandon their faith (and home, and family, and culture, and social circle) rather than distress a male who wants her to take her clothes off for him?

Or is this about the behaviour of many abused women without personality disorders, clinging onto the belief that if they just explain enough and well enough and long enough the other person will go OH and stop being abusive and be totally reasonable and lovely to live with?

Please read Issendai's blog, particularly the famous article 'the missing missing reasons'. Many abusive people will insist - and believe themselves - that the other party is just being randomly weird and unreasonable and has never been willing to discuss or explain what the issue is. Even after repeated meetings and discussions and sometimes explanations in writing: they will still insist they haven't been told, it hasn't been discussed. It is never that an abuser hasn't been told, or hasn't understood. They just haven't yet been given a reason that they agree with. And they enjoy the arguing and the stage in which to enact their own dramas every time someone open up a floor and provides them with space, audience and attention. Because they are using the behaviours and your reactions to meet their own needs? They are never going to agree with you that they should stop. So your reasons (and feelings, and facts, and links and explanations) are just.... meaningless burble. Irrelevant.

A man claiming the identity of a woman is an affront to women. How dare he?

He can have no fucking idea what it's like to 'live as a woman'. No man can know what it is to be a woman. The very idea is absurd.

In the act of declaring himself a woman he declares himself a boundary abuser, a mocker of women, a fantasist.

I have some sympathy for any younger men who were fed the myth that they could change sex or fix their problems through 'gender affirmative' treatment.

But a married man who declares he's a woman?

Nope.

I have never listened to the lyrics before. For some reason it's making me quite emotional.

Edit: Oh. I have PMT. That figures.

As you were!

Its a bit like idea of the good men staying out of womens changing rooms, so the bad men stand out.

Men dont need to negotiate the definition of women here, even if they are sweethearts. If they arent happy with the direction of TRA they can sort it out in a million other places.

This isnt the place to negotiate what a woman is.