Leaving Kindland

I was early to the party but as a woman starting work in the '90's in a very male dominated industry they news that an officer in an elite army unit approx 15/20 years ago transitioned (sas, marines can't remember) and was going to be recorded as the first female member of that unit when the path an actual female would have to take to overcome those barriers was so much harder and therefore would never be recognised made me a terf before the word existed

And did lead to an argument about sports with the be kind bunch even then!

But here has been a good place to think about the wider safeguards both protecting women in their safe spaces, and young children from making irreversible decisions before they can adequately assess the implications

(Name)gender: ‘A gender that is best described by one’s name, good for those who aren’t sure what they identify as yet but definitely know that they aren’t cis … it can be used as a catch-all term or a specific identifier, eg, johngender, janegender, (your name here)gender, etc

Welp, there you have it. I thought I was agender (subfaction : gender can get in the bin) but maybe I am just Bezgender. A spicy individual, indeed, definitely not a boring normo middle aged heterosexual person, no siree!

I read this, at about the time it was published. https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

It crystallised all sorts of grumbling concerns and doubts I had had in my mind. I’d been deeply inculcated into “be kind” due to an acquaintance transitioning some years before. I vividly recall at the time we all found out about the proposed transition, a mutual friend (a man) saying to me “they’ll still be a man, you know. Just a man without a penis.” He also said “why not be a gay man/a transvestite and not have surgery.” I was shocked at the time and rather snootily talked about ladybrains but once someone has broken the spell you never quite go back, and it nagged away over the years. Then I read the article and it was like a light being switched on. After that I started reading everything I could.

@BiggerBoat1 No, you haven’t read it correctly. No , I am not associating trans teens with paedophilia and bestiality.

I may be confusing you with a different person, no matter.
But I remember on a different forum a wee while back being told by you, or someone else, in no uncertain terms that becoming more concerned with FWR because I had an infant daughter wasn't at all impressive and I shouldn't have needed that to switch on.
I took my lumps there, it was slightly harsh but fully fair.
Sometimes you need telt, and if you're lucky, you get telt.

Yes. I call it late onset feminism. Sometimes, people just don't have a context for all the sexism, or the words to frame it. The trans issue has brought it into sharp relief.

Yes, exactly. Perfectly put.

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

Yes. I call it late onset feminism. Sometimes, people just don't have a context for all the sexism, or the words to frame it. The trans issue has brought it into sharp relief.

I genuinely think it has created a whole new wave of feminists.

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

Oh my goodness, yes, this! I was a feminist in the seventies (think Germaine Greer, Rosie Boycott, Jill Tweedie) and then I just ... took my eye off the ball. I guess I must have thought it was all going to be plain sailing for the women from now on 🙄.

Imagine my horror to suddenly wake up in this dystopian future!

I recently read Hags - Smith describes very well how young women think of her generation as 'doing feminism wrong' (and of my generation as totally unfeminist). The underlying message is that the fight against the patriarchy is never-ending because it's always reinventing itself. This, and things like porn culture, are just the latest manifestations for us in the UK.

ETA beautiful post btw

Have a understood this correctly? Are you equating trans teens with paedophiles and bestiality?

The whole "kind" thing reminds me very much of men claiming "I'm nice."

Performative kindness is not kindness. Thoughtless kindness with little care for negative consequences for others, is not true kindness. Just as performative niceness is not niceness, and being nice in the hope of positive consequences for yourself, is not true niceness.

Both of these states of being revolve around heavily gendered socialisation (being a pushover / being arrogant and entitled) and both involve, to varying levels, a hope of positive social consequence from the performance. Both are superficial interpretations of positive traits. And both are highly toxic and end up with women wheedled into accepting male erosion of their boundaries.

The main difference I can see is that men are only really pressured into "niceness" by their own libido (and the majority of decent men consciously reject it), whereas women are pressured into it by the whole of society, where it's just the water around the fish.

I'm very kind. Always have been. Always will be. Doesn't mean passive acquiescence, or quietism, or lying for the sake of a quiet life, or martyrdom, or pandering. Kindness can be fierce and stoic and thoughtful.

This. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to support people to come to terms accepting that certain things can't happen.

Yes!

Anyone who's brought up toddlers knows kindness doesn't mean 'going along with everything'.

I'm very kind. Always have been. Always will be. Doesn't mean passive acquiescence, or quietism, or lying for the sake of a quiet life, or martyrdom, or pandering. Kindness can be fierce and stoic and thoughtful.

It has all made me more deeply consider what my values are. My take on kindness and compassion as values have become much more nuanced, and I have realised how much truth and honesty are core values of mine- where perhaps that hadn't been so obvious to me before.

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

Beautifully put.

I disliked the sneaking feeling that I was colluding in what seemed to be a delusion.

Very similar starting place for me (through work) @FinallyASunnyDay

My first thoughts were to question myself. Why, after a whole life thus far, standing with those who were vulnerable and misunderstood (I was deeply in Kindland)- would my instinctive responses in this instance be considered to be on the "side of bigotry". What was I missing?
So discombobulating!

I read everything I could find- from all perspectives.

Found my way from that to the Gender a Wider Lens podcast- and was relieved to find something that explored and voiced all the initial confusions and concerns I had- when all the world around me seemed to have taken as read a belief that I couldn't make sense of.

I was so grateful to read JKR's essay too, and then found FWR. It's been a journey indeed.

It has all made me more deeply consider what my values are. My take on kindness and compassion as values have become much more nuanced, and I have realised how much truth and honesty are core values of mine- where perhaps that hadn't been so obvious to me before.

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

In the dark and scary swamps just outside of Kindland- there is gold and lotus flowers.

I disliked the sneaking feeling that I was colluding in what seemed to be a delusion - I wouldn't collude with a psychotic or demented person, so why this poor girl?

This is such an important point - we are not expected to do this for any other form of distress or mental illness. Even other types of body dymorphia like anorexia is not treated in the same way. Can you imagine a clinician telling a young patient with anorexia 'yes, yes, you're too fat, keep starving yourself'. It would be a violation of first do no harm.
This shows that gender dysphoria is expected to be treated so differently, even to the detriment of the patient themselves. Encouraging self harm (in the form of surgery and hormones) as a form of treatment.

Thank you for the bravery and humility in this post. I hope your housing is more stable now!

Working as a junior Dr in hospital, I saw a teenage girl who had 'overdosed' (not a serious attempt) after being misgendered by a teacher. I then accidentally 'misgendered' her to her dad who was sitting silently in the corner. I felt very terrible and started thinking and talking about it with others - I disliked the sneaking feeling that I was colluding in what seemed to be a delusion - I wouldn't collude with a psychotic or demented person, so why this poor girl?

This was probably 2020 - I had managed to be utterly unaware of the debate until then despite having two daughters who were by then teens. It simply didn't affect me.

So I read Irreversible Damage and Material Girls. I somehow found this board. I read the medical guidelines and started gathering medical literature about transition. I peaked my colleagues and my eldest DD and my DH just by asking questions that they couldn't answer. I am working my way round friends and wider family.

It has been a gateway to me out of my lefty kind bubble and I look at conservative attitudes much more generously than previous. Kindland is behind me.

I was still in a senior corporate role about 6 or 7 years ago and involved in DEI when the gay man in charge of the LGBTetcetc stream started lobbying for solidarity on trans issues, aided and abetted by Stonewall. It was all about pronouns and access to spaces in the workplace and the “most vulnerable, most oppressed” narrative. I have been a feminist all my life and am well aware of domestic violence (been a statistic once) and rape culture and unequal pay and crap prospects after maternity and so on, and immediately smelled a rat. It also irked me beyond words to hear “cis” - it’s such a made up piece of fakery. I remained non committal, steered clear and occasionally raised the direct clash of rights.

After I left that workplace and rejoined MN after a long hiatus I realised how lucky I was to leave all that bullshit behind.

Then JKR, Lea Thomas and Isla Bryson happened. The cat was out of the bag.

Just this week whilst travelling, I sat in a restaurant and saw a couple at another table. They caught my eye because they were wearing exactly the same patterned fleece (90s Howard and Hilda style but they can’t have been more than 26). The young man had a goatee and a wispy moustache and glasses. I double taked his partner, who also had goatee stubble and a fine moustache and glasses, but whose build, hands and jawline showed to be incontrovertibly a woman. I just felt sad looking at someone who had so utterly lost herself, and wondered what she would be like had she allowed herself to assert her own adult identity.

Aisla Bryson and her rather wonderful pink leggings woke me up

Because I'm not on social media I didn't become aware of this issue until the Mayor of Liverpool threatened to have women arrested for a 'hate crime' - for the abominable act of putting tiny little stickers on some of Anthony Gormley's Iron Men ( naked casts of the artist's body) on Crosby beach ( 2018). The stickers proclaimed 'Women don't have penises'.

The resulting manufactured outrage in the local press took me by complete surprise. I looked into the issue and immediately thought " No way, fuck that" or something quite simlilar....

I'd been teaching in secondary schools until 2010 and 'trans' just wasn't a thing at all....and in the intervening years I'd been spending lots of time getting into photography and was totally absorbed photograping everything that moved, and didn't move, in the city, and elsewhere. Admittedly I, also, used to be a regular photographer at Pride events - but somehow didn't notice the creep towards 'trans'.

I immediately reached out to see if anyone else was feeling the same anger as me. I genuinely didn't know If I was pretty much alone in being outraged.... and not very 'kind' at all...and fortunately discovered the Resisters.

The rest is history.

I'm quite a direct and outspoken person, so have always found it near to impossible to disguise any profound disagreement that I have with anything.

Unfortunately for me that’s not the case. I’m also expected to play the gender games, and when I don’t I’m told (by women!) I’m transphobic and morally bankrupt. I accept that women have it harder than men, but men (perhaps particularly fathers, who are the most likely to push against genderism) are also told they are wrong and bigoted for objecting to compelled, or coerced, speech. We’re just as much “On The Wrong Side Of History” for daring to be sceptical. I’m not a cis man, I’m just a man.

I'm a sleeper in Kindland, because I have trans friends of many years standing (pre- and post-transition). I relate to them as an atheist relates to religionists and they tolerate me as someone who doesn't quite get it ('illtempered is so literal-minded🙄').

Because I got my news from the BBC and not social media, I didn't notice anything was up until my TF started complaining about the transphobia. I couldn't believe people would even bother to be mean to trans people just for the sake of it, and eg I can remember reading the 'cotton ceiling' as being about a misguided individual trying to help TW find love. (When I later watched the AHF film and heard a lesbian talk about how lesbian-only spaces have been affected, it was a real duck/rabbit moment.)

I felt I should find out what the enemy was saying, as the quickest route to understanding, so I read Helen Joyce's book.

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I don't believe my principles have changed, only my knowledge. On here, I can be robust, because it's not trans people per se I'm annoyed with, but the politicians, lobbyists, bullies and grifters. With my TF I'm honest but circumspect. Because our worldviews are so different, I don't think I have the power to persuade them of the changes needed, although I do try (their rebuttals are wild!). Change will have to come from above, and then they will find out that the world didn't end after all.