Why do you care so much about gender issues?

Oh and 6. Men don't get to control everything.

I agree with many, many points here, so I'll just add that I realised it was all so illogical, unscientific, offensive and dangerous.

I thought "someone in authority is going to step in soon and stop all this". But they didn't.

So women did it themselves.

1. I've been sexually harrassed on four separate occasions by 'men-who-say-they-are-trans' in the ladies loos as a child, the first one at age 5. It's badly affected me for 50 years.
2. It's all utter nonsense and lies.
3. I don't agree to conforming to their shitty 'gender' stereotypes.
4. Women need safe single-sex spaces.
5. Children need to be left alone.

People have no end of crazy ideas, and say them out loud, but trans ideology! I was astonished anyone was taking it seriously as anything other than a mental health issue.

I agree with so many points other people have made.

For me, it's also the notion that there is some universal "gender identity" that all women share that is different from the imposed gender roles that society places on biological females. I strongly suspect that I have absolutely nothing in common in terms of my identity with most trans identifying men - who seems to try to be conventionally feminine.

Also, the point of single sex spaces is to keep women safe from men. Trans identifying men have exactly the same offending profile as other men. Possibly more likely to be sexual offenders. That's a more than adequate reason to say that they should never be in women's spaces.

I also worry that it's regressive, and that the entire ideology goes against the notion that you can do whatever you want regardless of your sex. It's built on stereotypes and limiting ideas that your role in life is constrained by your sex.

I've been in some very psychologically controlling environments (mostly connected to left wing politics) so I instinctively kick back at the gaslighting and intimidation.

I'd say that maybe ten years ago I didn't see it as a very important issue, I had trans friends and wanted society to do better by them, and I supposed I'd have aligned with the Helen Lewis position of "I'll say TWAW, though we know it's a polite fiction, but I don't think self-ID is a good idea and I'm against medicalising confused kids."

It became obvious those reasonable reservations couldn't be tolerated, and at the same time I was watching friends saying (and apparently believing) things that were just insane.

So I've become much more hardline, but I'd say I was pushed that way.

Because I can remember when casual sex discrimination was the norm in workplaces and education. When men grabbing a free feel was "just a joke" and "banter".

My dsis remembers not being allowed a mortgage without a male guarantor. My dm remembers being required to resign from her career when she got married.

Women's rights have been hard won, and anything that jeopardises them in any way is a threat to my nieces' and future grand daughters' happiness.

Not something I am willing to tolerate.

I've often wondered that too, I am incensed by this in a way unmatched by any other issue.

For me I think it is the collision of social media and identity politics which has removed people's ability to examine the facts and arrive at their own conclusion. Now you have to believe the 'truths' of your tribe or be banished. Individuals with opinions are no longer freethinkers or radicals, just bigots. I fear for a future where people are not allowed to think their own thoughts.

I too am a Philosophy graduate, and hate the anti-intellectualism of the 'be kind' mob. I am horrified at the number of supposedly intelligent and educated people whose mental contortions to accept that black is white are something to behold.

The authoritarianism implicit in 'No Debate' is horrifying. I was at the pointy end of that in my (gay) swimming club when I dared to question who was allowed in the women's changing rooms. No longer a member, sad.

Because I'm a biologist and gender ideology stuff is just so blatantly scientifically untrue, I will not lie about it just as I'm not prepared to lie to placate creationists or homeopathy believers. Also for many reasons mentioned by others in this thread but truth has always been the biggest reason for me because everything comes from there. I know that this is also the case for dp who is a fellow biologist.

Basically, because I believe as a Feminist that we need:

A) the language to explain how the historic disempowerment and exploitation of the female half of humanity through law and violence muatated into cultural structures and norms that perpetuate the same power imbalances to the detriment of women even when we nominally have equality under law

B) The language to explain how we experience and suffer from male sexual entitlement both directly on our bodies and more diffusely through its impact in society

C)
Physical and cultural spaces that are female only to allow us to relax hypervigilence and man-pleasing/man-awareness and without male overtalking and re-explaining so we can reperceive ourselves, our experiences and our relationships both individually and as a group to recognise common factors and differences

So society endorsing the assertion that some male bodies are so like us there can be no dstinction made in law, lamguage and society, or some female bodies are so unlike us there can be no recognition of any commonality, drives a coach and horses through all if this to the detriment of female people speaking and understanding the truth of what it is to be us in our society.

Because the movement wants to compel me to say right is left and left is right and I can't carry that cognitive dissonance in my brain. We are a diamorphic species. That's a biological fact . We are not Seahorses.

I will not be told that I must say something that isn't true to keep the other person happy. I won't reinforce the delusions of the mentally ill, because it is a delusion to believe you can actually change sex!!!! Santa isn't real , neither is the tooth fairy and humans cannot change sex.
That felt good!

I'm completely baffled by the capture of Philosophy departments on this.

My Feminism (!) lecturer has written papers criticising GC women for using 'dog whistles' against TRAs. 😢 (The dog whistles included 'biological women's iirc 🥴)

She was such an inspiration to me back in day, but is now firmly on the GI train (as are many others). Just how??!

I agree with most things posted above. I think the "no debate" thing really touched a nerve with me though. What do you mean "no debate"? It is so sinister. Why are even the champions of free speech agreeing not to touch this subject? It really frightens me.

Initially I found it incredibly offensive, that a man would say he was a woman on the inside. I had a white older man tell me he felt black inside once because he liked soul and gospel music so much, it feels like that. Very fucking rude. how dare you reduce my experience of being female to whatever womanly tropes you are thinking of?
How dare you? How is it not cultural appropriation?

But the more you see it, and the unfairness it leads to and the oppression that comes with it, the angrier you get.

I hate the lying / gaslighting. This movement has affected the way I feel about humans - how so many people just don't seem to care about the truth and will sacrifice it in order to be "on trend". How educated people, including scientists, are happy to deny basic reality rather than risk being disapproved of socially or at work. If they're not consciously doing that, then they're frighteningly stupid. How almost all our institutions, which are meant to protect us, have fallen to this. How people and institutions are so easily cowed. So few people are prepared to stand up to this. If this movement can do so well so quickly and easily, then anything can and will happen and there is no safety anywhere.

My first degree is in Philosophy. The sheer lack of logic and reason on the TRA side offends me to the point that I sometimes feel physically uncomfortable thinking about it. Plus all the stuff you said, OP.

For me, I think it’s a strong reaction to the discovery that there is a massive movement that has taken over the western world in which women (and others) are being gaslighted on an enormous scale, to the absolute detriment of hard won women’s rights.

Not sure why it took over my brain to the extent it did, but I suspect that part of the reason was the shock (still ongoing) of just how deeply it has been embedded and how easily transactivism has transformed government, laws, police and so much else.

It’s obviously the same for others. Glinner and JK Rowling are two prominent people who have suffered hugely without having any obvious skin in the game, so it’s not a unique experience to find it so compelling that it can’t be ignored, even when it would be difficult to name a direct personal effect of the increasing number of people claiming to be trans on my life.

All of those reasons resonate with me OP (although I haven't had cancer myself, I'm sorry to hear you've been through all that).

To be honest, other than it occasionally coming up at work (where obviously I don't feel I can say anything), it doesn't impact me on a day to day basis. So I have also wondered why it bothers me so much.

I think the thing that really keeps the issue niggling away at me is the lies. It's all a lie. No-one can change sex (or, indeed, be neither sex). I feel like I'm surrounded by flat earthers and somehow I'm the weird one for still believing what, I'm fairly sure, pretty much everyone thought just a few years ago. There's this strange wide-eyed disingenuous-ness about the whole thing. About both the causes and the effects. I just want to stamp my foot and yell "But it's NOT TRUE!"

I do feel a little better having got that off my chest. Thanks OP!

Like another poster said upthread this whole thing makes no sense whatsoever

none…not even vaguely

how does it make sense that someone says they are something and it becomes fact 😳

how does it make sense that a man can say he is a woman and that means that all his male physical advantages disappear 😳

i will be honest at the start of this i was (slightly) be kind cos these men have issues but then all the AGP men rebranded themselves and then pip bunce decided they could swap and that makes even less sense

its just so stupid