Page 4 | Shon Faye - 'well, it's over' - a brief eulogy for the "trans rights" movement.

CassOle · 2025-09-19T19:37:22+00:00

[[https://shonfaye.substack.com/p/well-its-over https://shonfaye.substack.com/p/well-its-over]] Shon does not understand why the 'trans rights' movement got pushback.

PermanentTemporary · 20/09/2025 08:37

Shon Faye is usually a decent writer and I was glad to read their book, and thought that piece in the Grauniad about being unable to accept themselves as a woman was well crafted (as well as distressing). But that piece is both a mess and quite frightening. They seem to be as angry with ‘those who haven’t medically transitioned’ as with all women, all gay men, transmen (who they clearly still secretly class as despised women), everyone? I wonder if the collapse of the relationship described in the Guarduan piece has really broken them.

Also agree with what @RareGoalsVerge wrote, every word. But I’m not sure it’s achievable. We can hope.

DeanElderberry · 20/09/2025 08:34

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 20/09/2025 08:09

Or trans.

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or queer

Likeliest of all because it sounds on-trend and can mean anything

Now I must face reality in the form of hungry cats

DeanElderberry · 20/09/2025 08:33

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DeanElderberry · 20/09/2025 08:31

The TRAs have been Fascist for the last decade. Grim murderous haters with triumphalist flags and clothes and colours and symbols, targetting the despised out-group 'terfs' and anyone who dares to associate with them.

The old left/right, liberal/authoritarian have been supplemented with a new divide - illusion fantasists versus realists.

Realists accept adulthood, science, social responsibility - all the boring stuff.

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 20/09/2025 08:09

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 07:37

Does anyone else wonder when Jolyon is going to come out as gay?

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Or trans.

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 20/09/2025 08:00

letsallchant · 19/09/2025 22:48

Securing access to reasonable employment is something we should be supporting for trans people. I thought this during the M&S bra fitting debacle. However, that means access to jobs both without discrimination, but also without the job having to be a platform for their reflexive enjoyment of their own identity. Work doesn't have to be all about them being trans. It's probably not wise for M&S to train them as bra fitters, but there are plenty of opportunities for them to be managers, cashiers, cleaners, lorry drivers and so on for M&S where their authentic selves aren't relevant because they just have to show up and do the job. If you can do that, Shon, you'll be ok. Though somehow I doubt you can.

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If I may say, you’re slightly missing the point of what these men want. They don’t want to be an ordinary person, part of an ordinary society, with an ordinary job, because they think they’re special. They WANT to be bra fitters at M&S or wherever because it gives them power over women, power to humiliate us and control us. The last thing these men are is reasonable, and they’re certainly not this vulnerable, marginalised group they try to pretend they are. They’re predators and manipulators, with a deep seated hatred of women, and for the last few years, they’ve been saying the quiet part out loud. Let’s hope this madness really is on its way out.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 20/09/2025 07:57

CliantheLang · 19/09/2025 21:17

I do feel sorry for kids and vulnerable people who were sold that lie and made decisions based on promises that cannot be fulfilled.

Faye's only sorry the grift is coming to an end. He doesn't care about the trail of maimed bodies he's left in his wake.

From Jo Bartosch: fairerdisputations.org/porn-trans-pipeline/

This all day long.
Trans activists deliberately targeted children - in the care of the state, in schools and everywhere children gather, with their toxic message that a sex change could cure all pubertal discomfort.

They went for children too young to have the intellectual, emotional & life experiences to assess and navigate a toxic belief in sex change. We now have countless young people who've been gaslit by these men and face a lifetime of poor health and mental health and must struggle as they seek to come to terms with the damage they've inflicetd on themselves.
A powerful reminder from the excellent Jo Bartosch article linked:

"If there is a duty of care, it is first to the children being targeted and then—reluctantly—to the men already captured by this machinery, to stop them doing further harm to themselves and others. That means saying no to policies that turn womanhood into a fetish and rejecting the idea that men who perform fragility are in any way vulnerable."

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 07:37

RethinkingLife · 20/09/2025 07:32

Some of the grift may be over but the political juggernaut and harm to women continue.

Shon Faye and SF’s GRC were part of a cabinet in the British Library exhibition: Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights (2020-3021).

Shon Faye and others will continue to be feted and courted (does Jolyon still announce ‘slipping into SF’s DMs’)?

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Does anyone else wonder when Jolyon is going to come out as gay?

RethinkingLife · 20/09/2025 07:32

DabOfPistachio · 19/09/2025 20:49

Yeah, not much sympathy here either. Faye is quite clear that he's done well out of this all. He's financially secure and mostly seems sad that trans women are no longer making big money on speaking engagements and DEI.
I'll save my sympathies for the women who have lost their jobs for telling men no and the young people subjected to irreversible physical damage from the policies Faye and his cronies have pushed.

Some of the grift may be over but the political juggernaut and harm to women continue.

Shon Faye and SF’s GRC were part of a cabinet in the British Library exhibition: Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights (2020-3021).

Shon Faye and others will continue to be feted and courted (does Jolyon still announce ‘slipping into SF’s DMs’)?

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 06:56

ThatBlackCat · 20/09/2025 06:56

Christ! It is the trans movement that created this current right wing fascism. So blame THEM. They are solely to blame for the current right wing fascism and for any rights women will lose from it. Wake up!

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Exactly. Trans rights activists have made the alternative to fascism so unappealing that the fascists are winning.

ThatBlackCat · 20/09/2025 06:56

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

Christ! It is the trans movement that created this current right wing fascism. So blame THEM. They are solely to blame for the current right wing fascism and for any rights women will lose from it. Wake up!

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 06:53

TheCatsTongue · 20/09/2025 00:48

Ah, the old "abortion is dependent on trans rights" trope.

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Yes, let's unpack this.

What they seem to be suggesting is that you have a choice between (1) the people who know what a woman is and don't want us to have access to safe and legal abortions, or (2) the people who want us to have access to safe and legal abortions but otherwise refuse to acknowledge that we exist as a sex class and need rights on that basis.

Why?

Why is that the choice?

For what it's worth, I think that is the choice in the US (which goes a long way towards explaining why Trump is now serving his second term), but not in the UK. Because in the UK we have people on the political left who respect and fight for women's rights, and even among the political right there is no serious appetite for restricting our access to abortions.

And as for the US, it also explains why women don't have many (or arguably any) sex based rights. This is what I now say to any US-based liberal "feminist" who tries to tell me that gender critical feminism isn't real feminism because it doesn't include all women. I do not need advice about what feminism is from people who live in the only country in the developed world where women don't have the right to maternity leave. You are shit at feminism! Feminism in America has failed. And it's almost certainly because feminism in America is tainted by association with people like Judith Butler who pretends not to be a woman or even know what one is because she thinks that's so desperately uncool. Unsurprisingly, real women don't relate to that or see how it's supposed to help them in any way.

And Trump gets re-elected and they're all like, "Why? How? I can't believe voters are so stupid that they would choose Trump over the alternative! Why would women not vote for the people who wibble on about pronouns and trans inclusion and have abjectly failed to secure any actual rights for women every time they've been in power?"

Gee, it's a mystery, isn't it?

Kucinghitam · 20/09/2025 06:47

The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s

He actually admitted it

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 06:41

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

You do realise the UK is not the same as the US, right?

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 20/09/2025 06:36

eatfigs · 19/09/2025 21:23

I do think that, in the UK context, the all-encompassing focus on the Gender Recognition Act reform from 2017 to 2020 was a grave mistake.

I think he can now see clearly where it all started to go downhill for his activist movement. He and many other men like him were taken by surprise at the tenacity and determination and wisdom and collaboration of so many women to oppose this. Much of it based here on Mumsnet of course!

In the UK, we – transsexuals - are about to become significantly less employable as a class. Especially trans women. The segregation law and reduced access to medical care have rendered us ‘undesirables’ and this will affect how we make money to survive.

I think he's right to be worried about this. It's about to swing way too far in the other direction. Being unemployable and actively discriminated against in society is not a good place to be.

I'm more concerned about the perfectly unobjectionable trans people who will now be less employable and more at risk of discrimination due to the behaviour of people like Shon Faye over the last decade.

Mapletree1985 · 20/09/2025 06:08

RareGoalsVerge · 19/09/2025 23:25

I'll agree with Shon this far - the concept of "passing" is very unhealthy

Passing offers a flimsy form of acceptance based on being presumed to be something other than you are. I see passing dolls bragging about it all the time now – insecurity and fear transmuted into intracommunity meanness. It’s really nothing to feel superior about – it’s merely a different form of inferiority to enjoy safety and dignity in public only because (of your disguise - my wording because Shon's description of women as the "oppressors" of men is ridiculous.

I hope that in the future transwomen will be free and liberated to live openly as who they are - male people who utterly reject male stereotypes and embrace female ones, consciously destroying those stereotypes as a part of a progressive and liberal society. Entirely accepted within a context where everyone knows that sex and gender are two different things, and that the existence of single sex spaces and opportunities does not reduce the rights and freedoms of trans people because it's clear the spaces and opportunities are single sex not singie gender and everyone understands the difference and attempts to muddy the waters are spotted and called out.

Acceptance and dignity for transwomen as male people who are entirely valid and not criticised for their lifestyle choice, valued and safe, still understood as male but never forced into a masculine role, is an important step to defusing the harmful vitriol that a relatively minor proportion of trans activists push. "Passing" then doesn't need to be a goal because nothing is gained thereby, due to there being no difference in the respect and dignity afforded to a transwoman who is very far from passing vs one who is closer to passing. Indeed, "passing" would gradually become in some sense "stigmatised" because if society gives transwomen respect and dignity regardless of "passing", the desire to "pass" is only going to remain for those whose main goal is to abuse single-sex spaces - ie the ones who are actively dangerous.

They could have had all this so easily, and if they'd gone that route JKR would have been one of their greatest advocates. But for some reason, it wasn't what they wanted.

Mapletree1985 · 20/09/2025 06:06

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

The USA may be. Europe and the UK are not.

Namelessnelly · 20/09/2025 06:06

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

Are you ok hun? Do you need a lie down and a nice cup of tea?

Mapletree1985 · 20/09/2025 06:04

eatfigs · 19/09/2025 21:23

I do think that, in the UK context, the all-encompassing focus on the Gender Recognition Act reform from 2017 to 2020 was a grave mistake.

I think he can now see clearly where it all started to go downhill for his activist movement. He and many other men like him were taken by surprise at the tenacity and determination and wisdom and collaboration of so many women to oppose this. Much of it based here on Mumsnet of course!

In the UK, we – transsexuals - are about to become significantly less employable as a class. Especially trans women. The segregation law and reduced access to medical care have rendered us ‘undesirables’ and this will affect how we make money to survive.

I think he's right to be worried about this. It's about to swing way too far in the other direction. Being unemployable and actively discriminated against in society is not a good place to be.

They made themselves unemployable through their well-earned reputation for creating HR nightmares.

WallaceinAnderland · 20/09/2025 03:17

The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s

Middle class is right. GI is very much a privileged white man movement.

Apollo441 · 20/09/2025 02:23

WTF is he talking about electrotherapy coming back to treat transexuals. That was never endorsed in this country. Usual catastrophising bollocks.

BoreOfWhabylon · 20/09/2025 02:00

Schadenfreude, thy name is Shon.

It's all a bit Icarus-like isn't it?
Crashing into the ocean and drowning because, despite warnings, he flew too high on wings that were a but poor imitation of the real thing.
Sad times.

Here's a blast from the past
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3356992-Shon-Faye-and-the-Stickers

Toseland · 20/09/2025 01:11

Transexual now eh?!

TheCatsTongue · 20/09/2025 00:48

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

Ah, the old "abortion is dependent on trans rights" trope.

JazzyJelly · 19/09/2025 23:46

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

'The same people' as in mostly normal, generally left-leaning women like those of FWS and their supporters? Blimey, they don't put their plans for a fascist takeover of the UK in their update emails! Sensible cardigans just don't have the same je ne sais quoi as jackboots and black shirts.