Reflections on Trans Arguments

When I said I don't know what other posters have said: just because others have previously made similar points shouldn't imply that I should not post at all. If that's the case, why even keep the discussion board alive? Surely every point has already been made more than once in various ways? I was interested in the answer to the political question: if the mainstream progressive parties (lab/lib/greens) do not sufficiently address the issue, what do GC voters do? There are only three options: vote for the parties that let you down on this point but tick other boxes, vote for the opposition that may align on this point but don't tick the other boxes, or abstain and support the winner by default whoever it ends up being.
Simply bringing up this fact is not 'scolding', 'berating', 'blaming' or 'guilt-tripping'. That little GPT summary did not provide an answer either by the way, it just pointed out the same questions I've had. But all I've heard is 'don't tell us what to do', err... which I'm not. I'm pointing out the reality of the choices out there because I too am politically homeless for my own reasons and I was interested. No worries though, I'm not any more.

@FlirtsWithRhinos I think ChatGPT gave a pretty accurate summary.

Somewhere to point the next plopped who accuses us of being right wing evangelicals.

That's very good in fairness 😂

It occured to me that with chatGPT people don't even need to go through the board history to get a basic overview of a topic to date.

Let's try it.

You are assisting a UK politician with a short briefing paper. Can you summarise the main points of contention on the Mumsnet FWR board with respect to Left and Right wing parties in the UK, paying particular attention to the potential for far right parties to make political gains

ChatGPT said:
Certainly. Here's a summary of the main points of contention on the Mumsnet "Feminism: Sex & Gender" board (FWR) relating to left and right-wing UK political parties, with a particular focus on the political vacuum that far-right parties may exploit:
Briefing: Political Sentiments on Mumsnet FWR Board
Context:
The Feminism: Sex & Gender board on Mumsnet (often referred to as FWR) is a high-traffic forum where users discuss gender identity, sex-based rights, and related political matters. It has become a focal point for the "gender critical" movement, which challenges aspects of gender identity ideology.
1. Tensions with Left-Wing Parties
Labour Party:
Frequently criticised for adopting policies seen as prioritising gender identity over sex-based rights.
Accusations that Labour has dismissed or vilified women with gender-critical views (e.g. Rosie Duffield controversy).
Starmer's attempts to straddle both sides often seen as inadequate or insincere.
Alienation of traditional Labour voters who feel the party no longer supports women’s rights in a meaningful way.
Green Party & Liberal Democrats:
Often criticised for having strongly pro-trans platforms with little tolerance for dissenting views.
Perceived as dismissive or hostile toward gender-critical feminists.
Discussion frequently centres on deselections, no-platforming, and internal purges of gender-critical members.
2. Reluctant Sympathy or Tactical Use of Right-Wing Parties
Conservative Party:
Mixed views — some appreciation for ministers (e.g. Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman) who have spoken out about sex-based rights.
However, deep mistrust remains due to broader Conservative policies on austerity, migration, and women's services.
Users often express discomfort at finding themselves more aligned with Tory ministers on this single issue.
Reform UK / Far-Right Concerns:
Main concern: The gender debate is creating a vacuum on the left, which more populist or far-right parties could exploit.
Fears that gender-critical concerns could be co-opted by anti-feminist or anti-LGBTQ+ actors.
Some users warn that disenfranchised women may be drawn to right-wing populists if no mainstream party takes their views seriously.
Clear resistance among most posters to racism or reactionary politics, but also a sense of political homelessness.
3. Key Political Risks
Electoral Drift:
Disillusioned Labour voters may abstain, spoil ballots, or lend tactical support to Tories or independents.
Gender-critical independents (e.g. from the Women’s Rights Network or similar) could split votes in marginal constituencies.
Online Radicalisation:
Absence of representation in mainstream parties risks pushing discussions into unmoderated or extreme spaces.
Perception of Silencing:
Repeated references to cancel culture, deplatforming, and institutional capture (NHS, police, education) feed broader distrust in public institutions.
4. Policy Implications
Clear language on sex vs gender is key.
Women-focused policy platforms must be articulated credibly without pandering to extremes.
Mainstream parties risk long-term damage if they fail to engage constructively with this demographic.

i've just caught up with this thread, I can't Adam and eve it!

Fancy a poster coming along to scold us for the fact that the left/ Labour don't support women's rights. It's almost as though we've seen this all before.

I take it back, i see i wasn’t responding to your post…

I have pointed out, abstaining also contributes to the victory of whoever gets in. It's merely stating a fact.

i don’t abstain either…merely stating a fact

and my post was aimed at all the posters who say this, not just you so I probably missed part of your original post as i wasn’t really aiming it at you iyswim

I see a lot of references to previous threads and posters. I don't know what other posters have written

With respect, given that all the historic posts are still available and MN has a search function (to be fair not a great one, but MN threads are also crawled by Google so that's another option), is that not a little arrogant?

If you had spent some time reading existing threads on the topic, you might have started with the insights you now have, and could have built on that rather than going through what might be a first round for you, but is just going over old ground for the people you want to engage with you.

I don't care about blame, just the result

If you think this is about blame you have misunderstood. The reason we are pushing at the Left rather than the Right is that we (perhaps foolishly) still believe the Left can be moved (because this authoriarian, sexist version of Genderism when interrogated properly is so unaligned with their other values), while the Right are just being who they are. It's about effectiveness. And the time to be effective is before the votes are cast, when the risk of losing our votes matters.

C) Social media gives people the impression that they have become expert just by watching some nutjob on YouTube. "Do your own research" only works if you possess critical thinking skills & know how to do actually do your own research.

Hardly. It is the Populists, who hide the complexity of problems and sell flattering snake oil solutions rather than lay them out openly so the electorate can make informed decisions, that treat the "common people" (whoever they are - I have lived all over the country and done jobs from minimum wage to 6 figures and I've never met them) with disdain.

Someone who tells you the truth even though you don't like it respects you enough to think you deserve to know and to make decsions based on what is possible. Someone who tells you what you want to hear doesn't respect you, they just see you as a problem to be managed by telling you whatever you need to hear to be useful to them.

And yes, unfortunately politics has over the last twenty years gone more and more down the "we can't tell them what the real situation is because that opens a gap for the other side to claim we are wrong and it is easy to fix". I don't think it's a coincidence that social media is about twenty years old.

Words are just labels for things.

You seemed to be asking why Populism is a dirty word based on one definition you found. I explained that the reason it's treated with suspicion is because in that context it's used with a different, also very common, meaning.

The people who are suspicious of Populism are suspicious of politicians who offer easy, crowd pleasing answers to complex subjects, dismiss people saying it won't work not by engaging with that argument and proving them wrong but with ad hominem attacks on the individual or their motives based on a group they can be claimed to belong to, and often blame complex problems or popular dissatisfaction on scapegoats rather than admitting the problem is hard to solve or the population's expectations are unachieveable with the resources available.

The bit in bold is the difference between "trying an idea that didn't work" and the Populism I'm describing. It's the willful refusual to listen to criticism or warnings about The Big Idea, The Easy Fix, instead degitimising them by delegitimising the source. "Enemy of the People", "the Elite", "the Jews", "the Bourgoise". Genuine people trying to solve complex problems take as many different views and concerns as they can and make sure they understand them and understand the risks or tradeoffs of their approach. If you really want to solve something you don't look for reasons why you must be right, you look for reasons why you might be wrong.

If you don't think that Populism is what I described then of course those people's suspicions don't apply to "Populism", but it does not stop these being valid and important criticisms about the type of politics and politician I did describe. (And probably worth keeping an eye on the Populist politicians that you think are ok, just in case they start to slip over).

So to your question about sex based rights. Recognising it is important to a large majority that sex based rights and women's language are not compromised by the inclusion of trans identifying men is not (bad meaning of) Populist per se. However the way someone like Trump is approaching it, which is all playing to the crowd and demonising or ridiculing "the other side" rather than understanding why Genderists think what they do (and as I've said before, I think behind the loud arseholes there is a huge rump of #BeKind who are basically gender critical in that they don't want people to be constrined by sexism and gender roles, but have got a bit turned round by the flags and glitter to thinking saying sex is fixed is sexist) is a Populist approach, and while it's giving some benefits to Feminists for now in protecting women's sports, spaces etc, it's based on a simplistic understanding of sex and gender and therefore is going to exacerbate rather than heal divisions and cause unnecessary damage to trans identifying people and also probably to women in the long term.

Feminism is also not generally a popular crowd pleaser.

And the common people are so thick they can't have what they want, they must have what we think is best for them.

Maintaining trust in experts was a lot easier to achieve when ...

A) The pool from which these 'experts' were recruited from was much smaller and barriers to entry were much high.

The vast majority of people didn't think they had anything to bring to the table on most topics. Now with so many more people going to university, this perception of exclusivity and authority has been shattered

B) Before social media gave everyone a voice, making it much harder to maintain clear 'top down' narratives. It also makes it more challenging to cover up mistakes/vested interests and quench dissenting views.

We aren't going back on any of these btw.

On experts. Whenever I hear the word experts used I always see in my head that scene from Yes Minister where the minister is talking to an expert and Sir Humphrey is furious that the minister is talking to the wrong expert who is going to tell the minister stuff that undermines Sir Humphrey's position instead of talking to Sir Humphrey's expert.

Trust in authority and authoritative sources is down across the board. I 've read several stories over the last few years about how much fraud is rising in academic papers. e.g. falsifying data to make the data show what you want. Being an expert doesn't make you honest.

Often I think fibs get told with the best of intentions, but if you get caught in a lie, even a well meaning lie, it undermines all of your credibility even when you're telling the truth.

Populism is promising "the people" what they want whether or not there is any prospect of being able to actually give "the people" what they want e.g. promising to end inward migration & deport illegal migrants.

@FlirtsWithRhinos
I think your definition sort of supports what I said about the word populism. I was deliberately vague and didn't link any topic to the word or even hint. I just discussed how it's used as a dirty word. It seems to me you defended using it as a dirty word by trying to link it to a subject - "scapegoat". You justified why it should be used as a dirty word.
Populism is giving "the people" what they want regardless of whether it will work or not or even make things worse. Often by blaming and punishing a scapegoat instead of tackling hard problems or telling "the people" what they want is not in fact possible.
So although you thought that wasn't a good definition of populism you defended it and justified it. I also want to point out that an idea working out or not and possibly making a situation worse is an opinion. It might turn out as you say, it might actually turn out to be a solution that works. People can have opinions on how something might turn out, but they are just opinions.
I googled the definition of populism and got this back as the first result "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups". A lot of people do seem to feel their concerns are being ignored by those in power these days.
Choosing a topic that's relevant to this board. Are women's sex based rights populism? A big majority of people seem to not want males in female sports and changing rooms. Is that populism? Does that make women's sex based rights and sex segregated areas bad because it could be described as populism?

It’s “if you will lie about something so obvious, I will assume you lie about everything” Sal Grover

"No debate" and opinion polarisation in Universities (well - ousting of 'the other opinions') has led to mistrust of experts because previously there was a way for people to argue their points and findings openly and for people to listen and decide which was the one that seemed to work the best. But now academics are only allowed to believe and research the things that aren't "wrongthink", we can't trust the science.

I am an environmentalist with a master's degree in an environmental science - but I totally understand why people are climate change sceptics because dissenting voices are stamped out rather than debated robustly.

....because the experts lose their funding and will never get tenure if they say the 'wrong thing'.

Exactly. I think this issue has damaged public trust considerably without people necessarily even being aware that they no longer trust what they are told.

If an expert is telling me that humans can change sex, what I take from that is that we shouldn't put our faith in experts.

Because apparently, being an expert and being an idiot are not mutually exclusive.

Because most of the people lying are not experts? Media ? As an example of expert?

because it shows a lack of critical thinking if you think an expert will be right every time rather than reflecting the best understanding at this point of time?

because an expert who is paid by a vested interest is the vested interest first and an expert second and people need to learn the difference

because if you refuse to learn from evidence - which is my working definition of expert - you either become the expert ( and no one can become expert in lots of things) or you accept that things will go down the pan very quickly

refuse to let an expert service your car and sooner or later it won’t work. Although I think that manual things often get classed as “common man” not expert for some reason / simpler for a none expert to see and understand the direct impact ?

'Populism is giving "the people" what they want regardless of whether it will work or not or even make things worse. Often by blaming and punishing a scapegoat instead of tackling hard problems or telling "the people" what they want is not in fact possible.'

Well, that seems to just about cover all the political parties all over the UK over the last 10-20 years. The only differences between them being which "the people" they choose to focus on and which they pretend don't exist.

Unfortunately many experts and authority figures have have taken their eye off the ball in terms of the high standards they need to uphold to maintain people's trust.

Experts aren't owed trust/confidence. They have to earn and maintain it.

Why do you think people should listen to “experts” when they are told things which are patently not true on a regular basis? That trust in the media and in authorities is never going to be won back IMO.