Leaving Kindland

Diverze · Today 09:07

I am a psychologist and work with autistic people.

Thank you for your excellent, informative post. Thank goodness that some of you are still rational!

This describes me too. I remember the horror of seeing Madigan appear and the left wing MPs fawning over him and realising that we had a huge fight on our hands.

A very wise martial arts teacher told me "You can be nice, or you can be good. I choose to be good."

I've held that to my heart ever since.

I was in "kindland" along the lines of "they just want to pee" wondering why anyone could have something against a TW going to the ladies toilet.
At the time I thought that every TW would have gone through gender reassignment.
Then I first came across "Cis" and thought hang on a minute, I am a woman, no prefix needed.
Then JKR happened and I was fully peaked.

My sister was of the "be kind" persuasion for much longer until Lia Thomas happened, which peaked her.

I think most people start off in Kindland with a picture of transsexual women who have had complete surgery and just want to get on with their lives.

But at some point you see something that you cannot unsee and then you start to realise more and more that the emperor wears no clothes.

For me it was when I was asked by an organisation what gender I identified as for the purposes of gender-balancing and I realised that they were no longer recording sex.

As I would now put it: if you can’t see sex, you can’t see sexism.

I am a psychologist and work with autistic people.

I think being kind is most people's initial default setting. I always work compassionately and respectfully with any individual person. But it takes only the tiniest amount of information to begin to work out that something is afoot in society. Maybe it's easier for me to see because I was a psychologist long before all this started.

The first 15 years I worked with young people, 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.

The modern gender identity cohort is completely different. Most are bio females, most were happy girls pre puberty, most are autistic or otherwise vulnerable (adopted from care, abuse history). There are hundreds of them and they simply didn't exist 20 years ago.

If once you are aware of this change in cohort and explosion in numbers you don't see any need to scrutinize more widely, but see affirmation as the only kind thing to do, then you aren't imo much of a psychologist. I simply can't understand how so many of my colleagues don't see it - or at least see the need to stand back and say "hang on, what's happening here?"

I actually think I am in kindland, because I think my questioning stance is kinder in the long term than championing sterilizing a generation of autistic and traumatized kids ....

In Kindland I used to think that TW were men who'd had genital surgery, I assumed they all did. I'd think "well any person who has been through that deserves my acceptance as a woman".

I then discovered that less that 5% have any surgery at all which made me wonder a bit about how I'd feel in an intimate women's space with penises, and then around the same time came across the bearded TRA Danielle Muscato who was sleeping in a woman's homeless shelter. That was a real shocker to me. I just couldn't accept DM as a woman and was baffled that anyone did.
Surprise surprise years later it's turned out DM has committed sex offences against vulnerable women who [pronoun redacted] gained access to through the ideology.

Now, I just don't understand how anyone can support gender ideology.
I'm still very sympathetic to people with genuine gender confusion, but I can't pretend they've changed sex.

A women's prison and young offenders. Marvellous🤔

"Because kinks coexist with other kinks like paedophilia, bestiality and sado masochism , and nice people steer clear."

Really? Well, depends which kinks, doesn't it?

Good article. I was never a dweller in Kindland. A colleague transitioned and our mostly-female team had to carry on silently getting on with things while said colleague dressed in the most stereotypical/inappropriate clothes (which no other female employee would ever wear) and proceeded to make everything all about them. To an exhausting degree. It was very instructive, but at the time the whole current debate hadn’t really got going, not even on MN, so I didn’t have anywhere to discuss it. I just knew I couldn’t 'believe'.

What really crystallised it all for me was when the transwoman fell-runner Lauren Jeska was convicted of the attempted murder of an athletics official, Ralph Knibbs, a knife attack that left him with life-changing injuries. Jeska had been told to provide blood samples to test hormone levels but took objection to that.

Oh, and Jeska is not only in a women's prison - Jeska still holds a women's Parkrun record. You couldn’t make it up. So no, I won’t be visiting Kindland anytime soon.

I was always in Kindland, I have a friend who I've known for a lot of years who has a trans sibling (old school dysphoria, who went through much therapy). This clouded my judgement and made me assume that all trans people were the same (I'd never actually heard of the notion of transmen)
I was a lefty SAHM and all my friends were of the same political persuasion. Then about 10 years ago started working in an industry where my colleagues tended to be more centrist politically (which I thought of as being rightwing🙄) I'd never really spent time outside of my echo chamber. At one point I ended up sharing an office with someone who had a biology degree and we got to talking about TW in sport and he asked me if I thought it was fair. I'd never given it any consideration (I am more on the slob end of the sports scale and don't participate in or watch any sports. It's never been on my radar) I found I couldn't justify it but was still of the opinion that TW should have the chance to compete. Fast forward a couple of months and the whole JKR thing kicked off, I discovered FWR and the rest is TERF history.

Seconded, wholeheartedly. 💐GenderlessVoid.

Germaine Greer’s drubbbing on Newsnight make me prick my ears up, but learning that rapists were being placed in women’s prisons did it for me. The ‘ask’ is not acceptable in a civilised society. Someone described this as the greatest unmasking of patriarchy in history. It’s been depressing realising how little value our society places on treating women and girls as equal citizens, how eager it is to dehumanise us and our experiences.

@GenderlessVoid thank you so much for sharing your story. It is one of the most powerful things I've read about surviving abuse, and I say that as another survivor.

Sorry this is so long. It's hard to write so I haven't edited.

I've been dysphoric about my sex most of my life due to persistent sexual abuse when I was very young. That was my normal and, like many kids, I assumed it was most ppls' normal. I dreamed of changing my body but not just my sex: if I could I would not have been human and definitely not a girl or boy. I was young enough to think I could be a dragon or a fairy or starlight. I was a tomboy growing up but also very spacey (i.e., dissociative, tho not labelled as that at the time).

I gave up on a different body as I got older: even if I could have transferred my brain to an unsexed alien, I would have all my memories. They are what made me "me". I can't separate a pure, blank slate mind from my sexed body and still be myself. I didn't think of it as gender dysphoria. It seemed like anger and fear about the misogyny that led to not only my abuse but society not believing me or caring about it or worrying about how acknowledging it would affect my abusers (not me) bc I was a girl. I guess it is gender dysphoria, tho, bc I've never been comfortable in my sexed body.

In college, my landlady was a trans woman. I liked her. We often had tea in her apartment. She had her struggles but seemed happy to be more like her mum, who she identified with. She looked like a trucker but so did her mum. (She had her mum's picture on the wall.) I didn't think about trans issues much, except her struggles made me sad.

The first time I left Kindland was when feminists insisted that transwomen must be allowed in women's rape shelters. As someone w CPTSD, I knew that would mean that some cis women wouldn't be able to use the services. I was told that those ppl were bigots and they should get over their PTSD, as if that is easy or even possible for many ppl. They insisted that the only possible reason that someone might be triggered (in the PTSD sense) was bc they thought transwomen were dangerous and, if they just educated themselves, all would be well. I tried to explain that I have had to stop seeing close friends, who I thought were very good ppl, bc they triggered me. I cognitively know they're not dangerous to me but part of my brain does not know that and I have intrusive PTSD symtoms even though I 100% know that these are good ppl and who I love and trust on an intellectual level but my emotions react differently. They would have none of it and I was a bigot for not immediately stopping any PTSD reaction I might possibly have. (Which made no sense at all; anyone would stop their PTSD reaction if they could, regardless of what triggered it.)

Then I learned about the cotton ceiling and male prisoners, including sexual predators, IDing as women so they could be transferred to women's prisons. I felt horrible for those women. It's not a search for kindness or fairness: it's rape culture. I will not support rape culture.

I don't think I was even in Kindland, not just with gender stuff, but in general. I guess it's always seemed clear to me that being kind isn't always best, or on many cases even the best way to be helpful to someone.

I'm not sure why, but I remember as a teenager having an argument with my mother about something (don't remember what), and she asked me if I would say the same about my own kids, and I said I thought it was more important to know what was true than be happy. These days I might put some caveats around that, but in general I don't think you can be kind by being false.

There was a time I thought that maybe transition was an effective way of dealing with what seemed to be a real medical issue for some, but I no longer think that is true.

Cyclist Emily was my ticket to ride. Comparing the photos of Emily sitting down demurely gazing wistfully into the far distance with Emily the 6 foot 4 cyclist with legs like tree trunks made me realise that something was very rotten in the kingdom of Kind.

Same here. I was one of those left wing women who were accepting of the very rare trans identifying men back in the day, while never accepting that humans could change sex - for me the very notion was rooted in misogynistic stereotypes and homophobia.
I think I peaked my sister in law, shortly before I fell out with her husband, my brother, on this subject and some family issues. The falling out over trans really opened my eyes to his contempt for women, and me. I miss my sister in law much more than my brother.

I never accepted the lie that humans could change sex, but I was pretty fucking shocked to realise how easily women were thrown under the bus for the sake of at best, delusional, and at worst, perverted men.

When I realised Kindland was totally unaccepting of detransitioners like Keira Bell, that’s what did it for me.

Ive never been in Kindland or anywhere near it because I'm obsessive about truth, honesty, and hard facts. Delighted and proud I have a 25 yo DD who has never wavered in her belief in truth either, despite being surrounded by peers who are fully subscribed twaw etc.

Great article - and some fantastic comments on this thread

I was in Kindland, but never a true believer. I had quite a few trans friends / acquaintances and would sometimes accompany to the ladies' toilets etc. if we were out together.

(In case anyone queries the likelihood of me knowing all these trans people: I lived somewhere with a higher than average population of LGBT people in general and people tend to form social circles around commonalities)

There was a lot that nudged me out.

• Noticing the entitlement in the expectation that I'll be the toilet bodyguard, be the one that has to try and explain pronouns to non-believers and end up looking foolish, including in a professional context. Realising how one-sided being an ally is, and how much discomfort you're expected to suck up for the cause.
• When travelling abroad, a TW acquaintance was put in a women's dormitory. Some of the women were hijabi and I have no idea if the other women would have consented. The acquaintance told everyone they were a biological woman but had a masculinising genetic condition. I was expected to go along with that lie.
• Seeing the online fantasies of violence against TERFs and JKR especially. Seeing the offline vitriol directed towards them and realising my friendships were very conditional on me banging the drum.
• Being propositioned by a TW I'd already turned down, and realising the she/her pronouns had clouded my risk assessment of being alone together in a bedroom.
• Despite reluctantly chanting the TWAW mantra, a very close friend of several years stopped speaking to me overnight because I wasn't convincing enough.
• Having no actual defence to my arguments if someone countered them. I wish I could say this was higher up on my list.

I was hovering on the edge of kindland thinking "wtf" for ages then the Challoners (or is it Challenors?) steamed into view.
Yeah, that shattered any illusions.

I was in KindLand but made occasional forays into the real world. Gradually I found I spent less and less time in KindLand but being demonised as a terrible person, a monster and someone who was entirely undeserving of even basic courtesy for having the temerity to say that gender ideology was not good was the thing that made me chuck my KindLand passport into the bin as I left for good.

I was in Kindland until I read about the 'cotton ceiling' and was so appalled I quickly taught dd that she must never sacrifice herself to be kind.

I came to mumsnet to read about tongue tie and somehow ended up rapidly ascending thanks to FWR.