Does anyone else resent the gender/ TERF wars?

Yes, I resent it.

I resent that it means I, who have always been able to be open with my friends and they with me, am having to tread on eggshells and be fearful of expressing myself in a way I never imagined was possible. And that I've realised that I have to be wary of certain friends who I previously trusted innately.

The damage this bullshit has done to so many women (including people I know well, literally none of them even "centre right" let alone "far right") with some friends, especially my fellow lefties, utterly oblivious and/or joining in the abuse and spouting irrational misinformation, has been disheartening, upsetting and stressful, to put it mildly. I now have to be VERY careful what I say and to whom. I used to live in Eastern Europe just post the fall of the Berlin wall; it reminds of those 'before' times, what people I knew there told me about the fear they used to live under, how careful you had to be. Not being able to speak my mind openly for fear of being accused of having beliefs that I do not hold and being the recipient of the persecution I have seen women I know well undergo, sometimes across whole professions, is deeply, deeply scary. Anyone who STILL handwaves this away as a mere "culture war started by conservatives" is an unprincipled, easily-led, ill-informed idiot, frankly

What it has revealed about SOME people, human nature and the capacity for gullibility, lazy tribalism and what actions many are happy to tolerate or even cheer on if it's by "the right side" has been both frightening and illuminating to watch. An utterly toxic ideology. On the other hand, it has revealed some truly good eggs, those who really WOULD have "been in the Resistance" back in the day, and wouldn't have been blindly pandering to whichever murdering bastards were in charge.

The other thing I resent is how much time and energy having to deal with it has wasted for women's rights as a whole. It's utterly exhausting having to waste valuable time battling your supposed "own side" who seem incapable of understanding that if you don't know what a woman actually is, no amount of "be kinding" or slogan-brandishing or shouting abuse at other women on behalf of the men who are appropriating us is going to prevent all the other misogynistic abuses against women escalating, nor of the legal rights we fought for for decades being dismantled and a lot of the fight having to start all over again.

The short answer is yes, I resent it massively. It seems such a no-brainer that men can't be women and such a waste of everyone's time having to argue about it. However, I do think that a) I have been forced to clarify my thinking and knowledge having jogged through life not having to think about women's rights too much and b) it has completely freed me from believing that the left wing is good and the right wing is bad. It is annoying to have to judge each situation on its merits but it is probably better that I do so. I'm really sorry for the people who have lost friends and family on this issue.

I've been lucky that most of my friends feel as I do but I'm retired and my age group are far more likely to believe in sex than gender. It's one if the reasons the TRA dislike older women, plus of course we're too old to be of any sexual interest to them so serve no purpose.
I do resent that women in general keep being pushed to one side, for every new law to protect them there's a TRA/MRA jumping up and down whining it's unfair.

Lol yes I misread your OP, "the first two hours were magical" I read as "the first two hours at the musical" thinking the thread was about Mrs Doubtfire.

I'm very sorry to hear that @unlimiteddilutingjuice. You are not alone! And you're not in a minority. I've been kicked from a few FB groups and unfriended by a couple of people online. One of which I regret. But I've never met any twaw folk in real life. Unlike my DCs . They endured an attempted cancellation a few years ago , orchestrated by two now ex friends. It was the 'euphoria ' period of the madness around 2019 iirc. But it had some positive outcomes. We all dumped Twitter , Reddit and uninstalled or disabled FB. I've been forced to examine my politics more carefully- critical thinking I suppose. And of course my reading list has certainly expanded.
I doubt there will be any reckoning though - certainly not in what's left of my lifetime. Some future historian of mad millennarian cults will have to sort it out!

I'm amused at the link between 'posh and academic' and trans. Although some of the transmen I know do sort of fit into that, the most visible transwomen locally (as distinct from the ones in the media) are smelly drug-and-alcohol-addled social-welfare dependents, in some cases in and out of court for petty crimes - and in one case not-so-petty - threatening women who wouldn't let him take stuff he wanted from the shops they worked in.

Also if you have to use the term "right wing" you have lost the argument. There is nothing right wing about believing in biology. About recognising the challenges girls and women face are different from the challenges of boys and men. Also the challenges of those who identify as transwomen are completely different from those of transmen. In many aspects of life sex does not matter (thank goodness) but sometimes it does. We need to be able to talk about some without the ridiculous use of the term right wing

To be fair it’s not an oppression Olympics. One friend lost is a friend too many as it is deeply sad to lose an old friend.

I think this is all you can do. Readdress balance in your own environment

That's amazing. I'm sure nobody has come up with this solution before!

Silly right wingers eh, should have asked you all along.

Problem solved!

I feel strongly that while we are understandably angry at the freedom genderism has given to abusive men to expand their activities, young women and girls have also been directly damaged quite horribly by this ideology. I suggest anyone who doubts that reads this thread, started a few years ago but revived yesterday.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4565480-harrowing-first-person-account-of-transboy-culture

Oh... so it was THAT easy all along!

I am somehow maintaining a job in DEI at this point constantly navigating a path to champion what I think still needs a loud voice. But it’s a tightrope. I do it because I genuinely think I’ve been able to deliver balance at times when it really matters. But it means keeping quiet - I know I’d be in a really difficult position if I spoke out. Ditto with some of my friends. I refuse to lose friendships that are decades old with people I care about very much over this one issue - one which I know they are supporting because their view is that this is inclusion. We can disagree safely over other things. It’s just this that is toxic.

I don’t know what that adds really. I am fighting my fight as much as seems useful on a practical basis.

I try not to talk about it unless someone raises it with me. But I have started asking "do you mean sex or gender?" If someone uses gender. Not in an agressive way but in a "but they now mean different things don't they?" type way. I think there is a rise of the use of gender and I don't think we should let it unless it is for talking about stereotypes

Ive obviously mixed up two threads, or misread this one. Easily done. I had assumed it said she saw the two hour Mrs doubtfire musical.

Early mornings with 2 kids 🤷

Why would you say that?

Nowhere in the OP did she indicate her and her friend went out anywhere, let alone saw a play, let alone that it was Mrs Doubtfire?

As someone who was one of those people who got most of their info from sources like the Guardian and BBC, I'm baffled that other readers/viewers just lap this up without apparently engaging their brains.

It was the Guardian and BBC fawning over people like Caitlyn Jenner, Jane Fae, Kellie Maloney and Paris Lees which eventually led me to mumsnet and this haven of sanity. I couldn't understand why they seemed to believe that these men had actually changed sex. In the case of Jane Fae (John Ozimek) and Kellie (Frank) Maloney, their previous history of domestic violence (Maloney) and promoting extreme porn (Ozimek) was swept under the carpet and forgotten. And the BBC was happy to broadcast Lees calling Germaine Greer a bigot.

Guardian readers have traditionally been educated people who I would have expected to think more about what they're being told. It still surprises me that supposedly intelligent and educated people aren't doing this.

Exactly!

The days of #bekind are long behind us.

One spoiled evening is pretty minor compared to what trans widows, children of transitioners and ROGD parents have lost.

@User3456 If we just say we need single toilet/changing room cubicles and that people born male can't compete in women's sports at a competitive level that's all too simple isn't it.

Yes

Because that ignores prisons, and rape crisis centres, and domestic violence shelters, and hospital wards, and psychiatric hospitals, and provision of personal care to the elderly and disabled, and changing rooms, and dressing rooms, and the left-over affirmative provisions for equal employment rights for women, and attempts to get representation of women in politics, and equal pay, and competitions in literature and art and performance, and freedom to have single-sex organisations, and, and, and . . . .

it's much too simple.

You've misunderstood my post.

The OP has probably been to see Mrs Doubtfire the musical.

IM NOT COMPARING ANYTHING TO ANYTHING.

You cannot seriously compare Robin Williams' character who dressed up as a dowdy great grandmother to see his kids, to men who, some of them have a fetish and dress up in womens clothes and truly believe they have actually become women.

I didn't read your reply try to reword it.

Do feel free to post your third space solution on any trans forum you like and see the response

there is no way to compromise with people who refuse to accept the reality that a man can never be a woman no more than an aardvark can become a rabbit or a cow can become a giraffe