"TERF Island" - Pondering why we're so "TERFy"

@WitchyWitcherson "BTW my use of TERF throughout my post is used tongue-in-cheek, it's my experience that many women, myself included, do not wish to "exclude" trans people in any way, only to use sex as a determining factor when there is a need to define humans e.g. for medical/sport/undressing reasons.)"

I would agree. I think most of us wouldn't have wanted the 'exclusion' of the transvestites, or transsexuals of the past because the vast, vast majority of them understood that it was physically impossible to change sex. They 'stayed in their lane'.

Unfortunately, the TRA have made these people's position untenable, so their acceptance (as well as gay-acceptance, alarmingly) is being pushed back in the face of this loud, violent, aggressive movement forcing women to cede their hard won sex-privileged spaces to fetishistic men.

Do I recall that in a poll, newspaper-lead, I believe, 30% of people didn't know that a trans woman is actually a man? And the MSM get tied up in knots, misusing TiM and trans man interchangeably, for example.

How long did it take for it to be ascertained that Audrey Hale (Nashville school shooter) was a TiF- is that right??

I think many more people would go 'hang on' if they realised the #BeKind of allowing men in dresses to use female WCs also allows them to access female changing rooms and prisons.

Sturgeon found out the hard way.

Personally, I don't miss an opportunity to 'educate' via the medium of making the assumption that any sane person would call out this gender bollocks.

I've had to 'spell it out'a time or two, but I've almost never encountered anyone who thinks humans can change sex, or who think it's okay for men to appropriate womanhood. Interestingly, it's often the wealthier who are more equivocal. I guess they can't imagine a situation where their sex-based rights might be challenged.

So keep up the good work, denizens of TERF Island!

I very much doubt gender ideaology would be on the list of top 10 concerns for 90% of the population.

Well that depends on who you ask, what you ask them about and how you frame the questions, and how big your sample size is, Aaron.

I wonder whether it's also partly down to relative stability.
Continental Europe has suffered terrible wars and huge population migrations; the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a lot of recent immigrants and/or geographical mobility.
In the UK it's not unusual to know about the lives of family members going back three or four generations - what they did, where they lived, where they went to school etc.

Therefore narratives about socio-sexual matters that go "it's always been this way" can be evaluated against what you know. Sometimes you look back and oh, yes Uncle Frank who never married and, er, ah, ohhhhh.

Other times you look back and go, no, this seems to be a new thing, what is going on?

Add MN on top of that as a forum where "old enough to remember" women can swap stories, and...

Helen Joyce talks about this in her book. She certainly cites the existence of Mumsnet as one of the reasons why the UK is so Terfy. I think she's right - so many other platforms (Twitter, Reddit etc) have censored any criticism of gender ideology, making it difficult to find like-minded people. Mumsnet is a huge forum where women gather to discuss matters that are important to them. It also has the advantage of being pseudonymous, allowing people to express their thoughts freely.

Another reason she gives is that the UK is quite small, so it's been easy to organise across the country - look, for example, at FiLiA, which every year draws people from around the UK, or the number of public meetings WPUK has held attended by hundreds of people.

It's also true that our political system is less polarised than the US, though I'm not sure about other English-speaking countries.

Our press is also less craven than in other countries - for all the faults we have with our media, we still have a spirited, defiant, anti-authority attitude that has allowed certain journalists, such as Janice Turner and Julie Bindel, to investigate what's going on and write about it.

I think the one other factor is the accident of timing. Countries such as Canada and Ireland followed the Denton's playbook, bringing in self-ID legislation under the radar by tying it to other legislation such as same-sex marriage. By the time the UK government put forward its self-ID proposals in 2017, people were starting to wise up to what was going on and were able to organise.

For me the difference is in who the resistance is coming from.

In most of the West it's the religious or conservative groups who are interested in maintaining gender roles based on the underlying sex.

However in the UK it's mostly coming from feminists who acknowledge sex but reject the regressive gender stereotypes.

It's a fundamentally different objection, and those from abroad, or who only consume media from the US, wouldn't appreciate this.

Agree

We are quite a small island (easy to establish networks) and we have Mumsnet.

Not sure about anyone else but for me it was having generations of women in my family that know what reality is and can recognise bullshit at a glance and refuse to back down !

This image makes me proud. This was engagement on Twitter after the whole Laurel Hubbard cheating bullshit.

I personally think it's a mix of what you mention in your OP. Women willing to say 'fuck no' and the Scottish Government making absolute fannies of themselves are the main ones imo.

Maybe its linked to an acceptance of non conformity... we are used to non mainstream presentations so this latest iteration with people claiming they are actually something different looks like bollocks.

I remember reading years ago that in countries where homophobia was rife and gender conformity was enforced, transgenderism was accepted as a way to escape that stigma.

As PP said - we have a history of critical thinking and ridiculing false logic.

This and also the consultation on self ID. In other countries it was just brought in on the coattails of other legislation

I think there were people who realised what was happening early on (2010s) and were outspoken about it before everything got shut down or called transphobic.

The Tara Hudson story is what made me think about what people apparently accept to be "a woman", and Maria Miller and the GRA.

I think people are going through the same thought processes now but it's more pressured to not think those things so discussion is suppressed and people are doing more mental gymnastics without thinking about it. So just being aware early doors was a big factor.

I think we are still a mostly pragmatic country. There's a strong tradition of live and let live and gender expression is nothing new.
But when asked to swallow the proposition that man/woman are meaningless or interchangeable terms then I don't think that flies.

If we boil it down, the thing that has made the big material difference here is Maya and her appeal.

@Aaron95 If 90% of people aren't concerned about gender ideology, I think it's because they haven't looked into it enough.

Do they have bigger concerns- yes, many do, but I think if they were aware of the extent of the changes gender ideology is pushing then they would be concerned.

Is it that different? Is the case of Amy Hamm that different to Maya Forstater? IMO likely the same outcome at first instance (though I hope I’m wrong)!

In a single word... Mumsnet... the UK has a virtual platform that allowed (to a certain extent) critical discussion of gender ideas, and led to RL campaign groups/activism.