Leaving Kindland

I think you mean Terfstory

I like the phrase “Good men stay out so that bad men stand out”.

The reality is that people like Jess Phillips aren't just opening up women's spaces to a small number of trans women, which may only have a tiny impact on women as a whole. They are opening up women's spaces to literally anyone who decides to enter them, for any reason.

Exactly. They are opening up women's spaces to every predator in the land. Every bully, misogynist and creep.

Because that's who will want access to unconsenting women.

I never went to kindland although I knew it existed. I had a discussion with my teenage daughter who had a couple of they/them friends where I said I didn't understand why people had to change gender to express who they are. I saw a horrific queer eye with a f to m transgender man having a mastectomy. The self mutilation involved in turning themselves into a parody of a man was so upsetting. I kind of assumed it was one of those things that older people don't understand. Then I saw Isla Bryson the rapist and realised what it all really meant for women. At that point I truly got angry about the whole desperate shit show. The cognitive dissonance involved. The misogynistic dismissal of women's concerns and the way they are made out to be far right. I am deeply glad that we have brave women and men standing up against this. I am not a brave woman but I am contributing to fighting funds and writing letters to MPs.

The numbers game argument is a curious one.

You can certainly make the point that allowing a small number of trans women into women's single sex spaces is unlikely to have much impact overall. I think this one can be argued both for and against.

But I am yet to hear anybody explain how it is possible to allow a small number of trans women into single sex spaces, whilst keeping all "cis men" out of them.

Sure, some people will point out that if, for example, a sexual predator wants access to a women's changing room, he only has to walk through the door. A sign on the door saying "women" isn't going to stop him from entering that space if he is determined to do so. But this has always been the case. The only defence we have ever had against that happening is the common societal knowledge that men shouldn't be in women only spaces, and that if you see a man in a women only space, then depending on your assessment of the situation, you ask them what they're doing in there, you tell them to leave, you go and complain to the manager, you scream and run away, whatever seems like the best course of action at the time. Now we don't even have that. In some places we even have pink, white and blue posters in the toilets telling us that if we see someone who looks like they shouldn't be in there, we should ignore our instincts and trust that they have as much right to be there as we do. Even if it means that we can no longer use that space because we don't feel safe or because it is against our religious beliefs to do so.

The reality is that people like Jess Phillips aren't just opening up women's spaces to a small number of trans women, which may only have a tiny impact on women as a whole. They are opening up women's spaces to literally anyone who decides to enter them, for any reason.

I don't know if anyone has ever publicly pointed this out to Jess Phillips or any other politican, but if they have, I'd love to know what the response was.

I found this one a thread about Jess Philips from 2021 that I think Barracker has worded well that fits this thread. It was a thread that I found enlightening in other ways too. It almost directly answered some questions that had sprung in my mind over the past 4-5 days that I couldn't quite see answers to.

But this stood out and it really does say what many of us have said over and over but each in our own ways.

Barracker · 11/03/2021 11:35

Women must be enabled to live safe from male violence, she says, ushering men into women's spaces and castigating women for resisting it.

You cannot both decry male violence and facilitate it.
You cannot both raise up women's defences, and still punish those who would defend themselves.

What would Jess say to a woman who was made a victim of a man, if that man's identity gained him access to her, and Jess the protagonist who argued for that to be facilitated?

If you sacrifice the truth you lose everything. You cannot trade off one woman's life for another. Make one woman safer, at the cost of endangering others. Bargain for the safety of some women, paid for with the concession that others are placed at risk.

Jess perhaps thinks this is a numbers game. That she can negotiate for a limited number of men to have the right to destroy women's boundaries, by exempting only them from her loud objections to the other men who do it.

Only a fool would not realise that to argue against any woman's boundaries means you are endangering all women.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/4189035-This-is-why-I-love-Jess-Phillips

I'm sorry Zeev, that's awful. And so sad that you couldn't get any proper support.

It's very telling that the middle aged blokes always want to be girls, or very young women - not age appropriate peri or menopausal women. I guess that's not sexy enough for them. Which tells you everything you need to know about the motivation behind it.

I left Kindland when my burly, 6'5" bearded STEM-career-climbing weightlifter then-husband decided he had always been a girl, and started dressing up in girl clothing (and I mean girl clothing. Not women's clothing. He was in his 50s.)

And everyone expected me to help him, to cheerlead him, to celebrate him finding his "true self" while his true self seemed to be someone who now watched sissy porn 24/7 and flashed his family members because his short skirt was "accidentally" too short. I talked about this with my closest friends, who told me I had cis privilege and that I should be more understanding, more kind. Because there isn't a more oppressed creature on this Earth than a trans woman.

Sorry, that last sentence came out wrong, I was interrupted when I pressed post. It sounded like 'if I were you I'd want to know'. That's not what I meant.

I think it's because transactivism will absolutely have it that there is some kind of chemical reason for it or a biological reason.

So if it's not any of the current theories, it would be really interesting to know if there was anything else to account for it.

GenderlessVoid · Today 12:13

Thank you for your kind words. I'm sorry that there are so many of us.

I'm so sorry for you, that you were forced to undergo such horrible, horrible experiences and have ended up, unsurprisingly, with PTSD. I don't have the experience to advise you, all I can say is that the people who are cruel and put you down are nasty idiots, not worth a light.

I'd just say - try not to give them any thought.

Melroses · Today 11:15

I was in be kind, live and let live land whilst not being a believer.

That pretty well echoes my view, just let them get on with it, don't stare etc. It was when I was trying to get my then 5 year old into a sport, that I came across men taking women's places and I thought "WTAF?!" That's not right!

I took an interest and saw all the abuse and threats etc and I didn't so much pick a side, as was picked. Once seen, it's impossible to unsee.

The more I think about it, the more I think that living in Kindland is not actually about wanting to be kind, but wanting to be liked.

I know many women currently living in Kindland. They aren't stupid. They do care about women's rights. And yet if I even hint at questioning whether trans women are actually women, they shut down. They don't even say, "Look, obviously trans women aren't actually women, but it's important to them for us to say that they are, so let's just be kind." They do not want to engage with the subject at all.

They know. They all know. They know they can't explain why they believe a trans woman is a woman, or what they believe a woman is, in a way that makes sense. So they are terrified to even go there.

The question is, why?

In my opinion, it all comes down to social conditioning. Women have by and large been socially conditioned to be kind and caring and to put others' needs before their own. It is important to society for women to be willing to put others' needs before their own, because if they didn't, a huge source of undervalued and low or unpaid labour would simply disappear. Men would have to do their fair share of taking care of children and old people, or help shoulder the financial burden of this being done by other people for fair wages, either directly from their take home pay or through taxation. Men, on the other hand, are allowed to be selfish. They are allowed to put themselves first, to pursue their own ambitions, to spend time and money on themselves, and they think it is normal for the women in their lives to facilitate them in this.

Of course, these are huge sweeping generalisations. But I think it goes some way to explaining this phenomenon, and in particular why women are more likely to say that trans women are women, for example, even though they understand what being a woman means far better than any man does, and even though they are the ones suffering the negative consequences of losing their single sex spaces, not men.

Men who pride themselves on being progressive and say that trans women are women tend not to see things from the point of view of the women being required to put others' needs before their own, because to them this is what women are supposed to do. Men who are more gender critical are less afraid to say so out loud because society doesn't really value kindness or niceness in men, so there are unlikely to be any consequences for failing to be kind and nice. They certainly aren't getting rape or death threats for saying that only women menstruate. Women who say that trans women are women may actually believe that this is a kind thing to say, and have thoroughly internalised the idea that they must be kind at all costs, or alternatively they might simply be afraid of the backlash if they say or do anything which is perceived to be unkind. I think I know women in both camps.

I was never a popular kid at school. As much as I wanted to be, I just couldn't figure out the unwritten social rules about what you have to say and how you have to act for people to like you. It took me probably until my early 20s to figure out what the rules were well enough to be able to blend in. And then I hit the "no fucks given" stage by the time I turned 30. So for me, there was relatively little overlap between being able to make people like me, and caring about being liked. As a result, I haven't really spent much time being a people pleaser, and so never got sucked into living in Kindland.

I know an American woman who I would describe as a liberal feminist. I didn't know her when we were teenagers but I've seen some of her old photos and it's clear that she was a pretty, fun, popular, party girl. She is now a high school science teacher. She knows. I know she knows. We've talked a bit about this. She knows it doesn't make any sense. She knows that humans can't change sex. She knows it's not right that there are male sex offenders in women's prisons and that women can't get single sex rape crisis support. But she and I both know that if she ever said this stuff out loud to anyone in her social circle she would be an instant social pariah. And in her position I would probably care a bit more about being perceived to be kind as well.

It seems to me that this affliction is best described as "sex dysphoria" or perhaps "sex dysmorphia".

Most GC and GNC people are uncomfortable with their gender, i.e. with the expectations placed on them by society according to their sex. It's why we object to being called "cis".

Many young people going through puberty (especially girls) are uncomfortable with their bodies. Some of this will be hard-wired sex dysphoria, but most is probably just a wish to escape the prison of gender. Once the hormones have subsided we have a chance to discover which is which. Often it turns out to have been a problem with heteronormativity.

I still want to be kind to those with sex dysphoria. But we are fighting a rearguard action against an existential threat. We gave an inch, and the AGP males took a mile. So now we have to draw a hard line and insist that sex is sex.

On the matter of pronouns, I would actually prefer it if English transitioned to sexless. "They" sounds odd to us now, but "they male" and "they female" could one day sound as normal as when we say "you singular" and "you plural" in the occasional situation where disambiguation is required. Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian and other languages manage fine without sexed pronouns. The only problem is that if I say "they" it currently sounds like I'm buying into Queer Theory, which I am keen to make clear I most certainly am not.

A few years ago there was an AMA thread on MN by a child psychologist. She said the same as you - that a decade or two ago, she did see cases of classic persistent gender identity disorder did exist, but they were "vanishingly rare" (I think was the phrase she used).

Excellent post. Thankyou for sharing your difficult experiences x

I have two young daughters and i tell them that they don't have to be kind, just don't be unkind. Might have to tweak that

@Crankywiddershins@BettyFilous,

Thank you for your kind words. I'm sorry that there are so many of us.

I try to speak up when I can, especially now that the trans rights activists are trying to make sex irrelevant. As @moderate said, "if you can't see sex, you can't see sexism." You can't talk about your sexual abuse as abuse directed at women and girls bc of their female bodies.

It seems even worse than mansplaining what a woman is (which is probably the most ridiculous thing a man could explain to a woman).

I feel like I'm being silenced bc of my sex. If talking about my experiences as a girl/woman in a female body is not allowed/bigoted, how can I talk about the abuse I suffered bc of my sex - CSA, being told I was lesser, not being believed, being told that my abusers were more valuable than I would ever be, being told that I was a slut/whore bc of what men/boys had done to me, being told that my primary value was as a sex toy - all bc I was a female in a female body. Gender had nothing to do with it. But I can't talk about that bc it's invalidating to trans women. And somehow their discomfort is more important than my discomfort at being silenced or told that I'm a bad person for even mentioning it (which re-creates aspects of my abuse, which triggers my PTSD).

And, of course, I'm a bigot bc I have PTSD. It's ableist as hell but that doesn't matter either bc only trans pain counts (esp if it's a transwoman, funny how that works).

Yes, I can't remember the source now, but it was something like one or two children a year showed what you describe.

Personally, because the current views that it's homophobia, or past sexual trauma, or autism, strike such a chord with me, I would to know what else it could possibly be.

It's so interesting to read everyone's stories. The first time I remember getting really angry about it was Lily Madigan's appointment as a women's officer.

Since then I have read a great deal from both sides, watched many videos and listened to podcasts, but my views have basically stayed the same. And I'm still angry.

I think that person had classic "gender identity disorder" as it was then described in DSM. It was a time when kids didn't really get Internet access much, and there wasn't anything on TV. I was not directly involved (this would have been in early 2000s, and they would have been 10 ish) and don't know whether their dysphoria resolved after puberty.

I do think of that person as an example of what actual gender dysphoria, untouched by media influence, looked like and that it did exist, and was very rare indeed.

I once had a discussion with a woman who described herself as a non binary person raising two non binary children. When I asked her what that meant, she said she was raising them without a gender and when they were old enough they could choose whether they wanted to be a girl or a boy or non binary.

Without even getting into the issue of what happens if her male child decides he wants to be a girl, i.e. will puberty blockers etc. be involved, I asked her what her children think a boy is and what they think a girl is. She claimed not to understand the question. So I said that when I was little I understood that a girl is a child with female genitalia and a boy is a child with male genitalia, (although my level of understanding at the time was more along the lines of "boys have willies") and I was interested to know what her children think a boy is and what they think a girl is, if it is not that.

She called me a pervert for talking about children's genitalia and refused to engage with me any further.

I kind of have to assume that she knew full well that the only alternative is regressive stereotypes, but didn't want to admit it.

I was in be kind, live and let live land whilst not being a believer. However, once I started to understand the laws we had in the run up to the Gender Recognition Act reform consultation in 2018, my complacency ended.

The thing that really did it was listening to BBC R4 telling me, uncritically, about parents who were bringing up 4 year olds as gender free where they could choose, or the opposite sex because, coming from a family that worked and had friends working in childcare etc, none of it sounded real.

Then shortly afterwards, there was the child J case (you can find links in Transgender Trend's blog) where a 4 yo had been affirmed as the opposite sex (with the guidance of mermaids) and after a long period of court involvement and assessment was placed into the care of the father and given the space to be who he was, ironically. This confirmed the banal, everyday humdrum abuse involved and was actually a lot worse than I could have imagined.

I am still peeling off layers of Be Kind though, but I have learned so much. Educating Yourself is so enlightening 🌞

I don't really remember when I first became aware of trans people, as such. When I was in my teens, we found out that the son of some family friends had transitioned, using some inheritance money to pay for the "sex change operation". My mum really struggled with the concept and I remember patiently explaining to her that John had had a sex change and was now Jane, and we should call him Jane/she/her from now on. But I don't think it was really about kindness, as such, since I have only met Jane a handful of times and we are unlikely to ever come into contact again. I think I just, quite simply, hadn't ever really given much thought to what the word "woman" actually means, and indeed whether it even means anything at all once you remove biological sex from the definition. With my lack of life experience, I assumed that the reason my mum struggled with the idea that a man could become a woman was because she was older and stuck in her ways. Looking back, it is obvious to me why a woman who had given birth to two children and was going through the menopause would struggle with the concept a lot more than I did.

I find it difficult to pinpoint the timeline of my views changing after that. I suspect the answer is that I just didn't think about trans people much at all for many years, until this issue started to become a hot political topic. I don't remember exactly when that was. What I do remember is that in 2017, I bought a new, long-awaited book by an author I liked, and was disappointed to find out that it focused a lot on a group of trans people's identities. I didn't finish the book, but I might pick it up again now and have another go. The reason I was disappointed by the plot of the book was because, in 2017, I was bored of trans issues. No hatred towards trans people, I'm just wasn't interested in other people's personal identities, didn't think they were relevant to me or my life, and was already sick of hearing about them. So that tells me that in 2017, trans issues were already being discussed quite a lot and I was not living in Kindland even back then.

The real turning point for me was about four years ago, when I started hearing from multiple sources that JK Rowling was a horrible bigot who had been radicalised by the far right into spreading hate about trans people.

This, I think, was where, to quote Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a wood and I took the path less travelled by.

Because the inhabitants of Kindland reacted to this by saying, "Oh gosh, how sad and disapppointing. I can't believe JK Rowling hates trans people. Poor innocent trans people, what have they ever done to her? Cancel her immediately." Whereas my reaction was, "JK Rowling? The JK Rowling who has donated millions of pounds to the Labour Party and is friends with Gordon and Sarah Brown? And who has spent years criticising the political right on social media? Radicalised by the far right? The JK Rowling who wrote a series of books about a pure hearted boy who helped overthrow an evil regime which persecuted and killed innocent people? The JK Rowling who gives huge amounts of time and money to help vulnerable children worldwide? Really? Are we talking about the same JK Rowling here?"

In other words, my initial reaction to that was scepticism, and I went to find out what she had actually written about the subject, rather than relying on other people to tell me what to think.

As many other posters have noted, there is actually nothing kind about Kindland, once you scratch the surface. I have never lived in Kindland, and have never had any particular desire to go there.

There are many things which are deeply unkind about Kindland. Male rapists in women's prisons. Male athletes competing in female categories. No single sex rape crisis support for female rape survivors. When it comes to these issues, all that needs to be said is that what is "kind" to the people born male is clearly unkind to the people born female. Every. Single. Time. I am yet to come across an example of where allowing people to be classified by their gender identity rather than their sex benefits people born female to the detriment of people born male. So for me, that completely goes against all my feminist principles, and I am astounded that so many people who call themselves feminists don't see it that way.

If I had to pick one thing, the thing I find the least kind about all of this, I would say it is the transitioning of young children. Young children don't really have any concept of sex, only gender. Other than the ten minutes a day when my son and daughter are naked in the bath together, they only see other children fully clothed and I don't think either of them are particularly aware of the fact that half the children in their class at nursery have different anatomy under their nappies. Gender stereotypes are imposed on our children whether we like it or not. So although I try to counteract them, I'm fairly sure my son believes that boys are children who like to play with trucks and cars.

If you allow a four year old to socially transition on the grounds that they like dressing up and playing with dolls with their little girl friends, or they like wearing shorts and playing with cars with their little boy friends, they will actually believe that they are the opposite sex for quite a few years before they start to get closer to puberty and learn about sex, and how their bodies are going to start changing. If you let a child "live as" the opposite sex from the age of four to the age of ten, whatever follows will necessarily be traumatic for them. Either they will have to go through what they believe is "the wrong puberty", or they will be put on a medical pathway involving puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and eventual surgery, ensuring that they will never have a normal adult sex life or be able to have biological children. Even the phrase "the wrong puberty" is horrifying to me. You only get one puberty, your puberty. You either go through it, and become a sexually mature adult of the same sex you were born as, or you don't go through it at all, and your reproductive system will never develop as it should. There is no option to go through the "opposite puberty". That medical process simply does not exist. So I find the idea of letting children choose not to go through their normal, healthy puberty in pursuit of an impossible goal unspeakably cruel and evil.

I have at times attempted to masquerade as an inhabitant of Kindland, and I frequently moderate my language to appeal to those who live there. But thanks to the sunlight now being shone on this issue, it is becoming easier and easier to speak the truth.

, I was aware of 1 young person who expressed persistently and consistently from their earliest days that they were not in fact a boy, but were a girl. That child never wavered on this, was not autistic, and there were no worrying background facts such as abuse.

Did you ever get to the bottom of why this particular child felt that way, Diverze? Did you have any viewpoint yourself about what might have caused it?

Kindland is not a place I've visited. I was brought up by a very rational and logical GP and have always been a realist myself. In 2019 I was peaking already but when the general election came around, the then LibDem leader Jo Swinson (remember her?) based her leadership campaign on 'TWAW!'. I recall there was a great deal of 'Say after me' with the mantras being recited, the mantras were also projected onto buildings and 'No debate' was everywhere. From that time on there was no turning back in my peaking and it simply gets stronger all the time.

I will not comply.