Why do you care so much about gender issues?

I think it's the gaslighting and that we're being told that this is now the only version of the truth that can now exist that really irks me, as for all we keep hearing that this is a social construct, not in my world it isn't.

About 7/8 yrs back, I asked my DEI lead at work about trans issues. And I said I'm pretty centre left with most things, but I couldn't get on board with this as being something I could agree with. She actually agreed with me and we had a great discussion about sex, and the regressive nature of stereotypes. Fast forward to now and such a conversation with our new DEI lead would not be possible such is the control speak that has developed in the intervening period.

Much of my discomfort from this comes from my own life experience growing up. I really did challenge teachers an conventions at school and can recall one when I was 8 or 9 telling me that I, "Should've been a boy" given my interests and passions, but I was always supported by a really open Mum and grandparents. They were very open and supportive of just following my interests wherever those take me, and never bound by the belief that there were 'girl's toys' or 'boy's toys'. There were times I would have desperately wanted to have been like my friends who were all boys and whose bodies became muscular while mine became curvy, and who gradually left me behind in sports. I had to hide away my bleeding every month (and that started just before my 9th birthday), and I desperately hated being an early developer. I would have taken a way out if anyone had offered it to me back then. Now as I reflect back, I realise it was just growing up and a discomfort with my body not being able to be like my friends and, tbh, it wasn't an option back then to be anything other than a (and I bloody hate the word) 'tomboy'. I used to get the, "You're not really a girly girl" which I now see as shorthand for, "You're not what I think a girl should be" and it's so offensive to assume that there's a right way for a girl to be. I am no less of a girl than those who wore pink and wanted to be a princess than me being obsessed with drawing World War 2 aircraft with my grandfather, playing drums and wanting to be a footballer! How regressive is that for our young women to wish anything other for them than the heights of their own ambition?

I've sat in meetings where I've heard senior NHS staff talk about their 'gender affirming' haircuts and the like and I wonder if this is what we've become? Short hair = something other than woman, and it all just feels depressive, regressive and deeply unambitious for our boys and girls that the rigidities of gender stereotypes have come to play such a defining part of who they are, right down to suggesting their sex matches these gender stereotypes for no reason other than they can't possible believe of a life beyond adherence to these gender stereotypes.

So much this! I mean of course we would be including the excluded ppl except they have tedious opinions like believing in biological reality which is just so unkind amirite?? Therefore it's just best to exclude them so we can congratulate ourselves on how kind we are

they don't know what's best for them anyway

1. Because it's bollocks;
2. Because it's bollocks that is actively insulting to women;
3. Because it's bollocks that is actively harmful to women and children;
4. Because it's bollocks that is messing up legal frameworks;
5. Because it's bollocks that is messing up basic safeguarding;
6. Because it's bollocks that is exposing a deep-seated misogyny that I thought we had left behind some time ago;
7. Because it's bollocks that is exposing a deep inability of a significant portion of the population (including sections that we should absolutely be able to rely on to know better) to exercise the most basic critical reasoning skills, which has disturbing wider implications;
8. Because it's bollocks that was designated as the modern heresy and attempted to gag anyone speaking against it by every possible method.

Because in order to have any hope of living in a reasonably orderly, free society we need to deal in fact and be allowed to speak freely to establish it.

Learning about the Inquisition horrified me. Learning about the witch trials horrified me. Learning about McCarthyism horrified me.

Same bollocks, different day.

This is exactly what happened in the old days of "political correctness".

Back then I was young and naive, and it took me a long time to realise that what on the face of it seemed very progressive and inclusive actually boiled down to "this is what we think the people who are excluded would be saying if they were not excluded" and thinking that was the same as actually including them.

I count myself lucky that the way my life has gone means I have at different times been on equal terms with very different demographics.

I think this is a misrepresentation.

Very few Genderists claim biology is fully mutable.

Common claims are:

Sex isn't biology, it's mental. So people can have the wrong sex for their body. They don't change sex, they just correct their body.

Sex isn't biology, it's cultural constructs wrongly applied to bodies. So you can be either sex, or no sex, regardless of what body features you have.

Sex is biology but because there is overlap between secondary characteristics like height and strength, and because DSDs and gender medical interventions mean biological features of one sex can appear in the other, means no one can ever really assess someone else's sex so you just need to take their word for it

Saying women are a certain sex is reducing women to baby makers and we don't think that is ok any more so why can't male people be women?

These ideas get treated like a pic n mix, so you quite often find the same person using contradictory arguments at different times, or even at different times in the same conversation.

Yet for all the handwaving, none of them ever explain why, if biological sex isn't important to who is a man or a woman, is it so important that the pre-existing language and provisions that were set up because of biological sex and the impact has on us, that only exist because of biological sex, are nevertheless exactly the right ones that need to be used for the thing that is definitely not biological sex, and that any language or activity or support or social analysis that is based on biological sex can't exist alongside it but has to stop being done altogether.

Because honestly, some of those ideas I would actually be entirely comfortable with if they were just following their own logic and treating Gender as something totally separate to body sex.

Just give this thing that is not sex a different name to the names of the sexes, and let us carry on also having names, rights and recogition of the impact of our bodies and the history of sex and sexism on especially women.

More than anything I simply find it fascinating, and I think it touches on so many modern issues.

Meghan Daum was asked this in a recent interview and she gave the same answer but put it much better than I could, from 1:32:40

Also, why do supporters of the gender identity movement get away with being so nebulous about their central tenet?

They change gender, and expect the rest of us to pretend they've changed sex.

Sex is inescapably a biological reality. All women will live and die female, all men will live and die male.
There are differences between the sexes.
Some of the most relevant differences biologically are that men are on average bigger, stronger, faster and more aggressive than women. They are more prone to develop sex fetishes and other paraphilias, and to commit violent crimes and sex offences.
Culturally, women are disadvantaged throughout most of the world, and are openly denied human rights in many countries.

Men may like wearing clothes traditionally worn by women, or performing other stereotypes of femininity, but it doesn't affect their sex. People may use hormones and surgery to look more like someone of the other sex, but again it doesn't change which sex they are.

Gender is an element of some people's personalities. It's as (ir)relevant to anyone else as your star sign or your favourite band. Currently, 'gender' is used to mean performing the sex stereotypes of one or the other sex.

A lot of transactivists say they don't deny biological reality, that they change gender, not sex. That would be fine if it was true, if the men just tried to look like women and act in what they see as a feminine way.

But they never stop at that. They demand the right to use our facilities and services, take our jobs and prizes, and have access to our private spaces. Basically, they're demanding the right to have everything that's ours. When men make these demands, and expect to have them agreed to, that's male supremacism. It's not in any way about equality. It's about obliterating women's rights.

What they're demanding is to be treated as the other sex, not the other gender. Which shows how meaningless their talk of 'gender' identity really is.

I’m a biochemist and the whole changing sex concept is just complete garbage; gender identity is just regressive stereotyping (lipstick, long hair and playing with dolls) that I’d thought we’d got rid of years ago. I grew up reading Germaine Greer (I dont care).

What peaked me was listening to nurses talking about men in women’s wards, when I was in hospital - I hadn’t really realised what was going on until then. I’ve been a victim of SA more than once so I would freak out if there was a bloke in a wig in the next hospital bed.
I even broke the habit of a lifetime and voted Tory at the last GE, because women’s rights and safety are an absolute priority for me.

One of the first things that peaked me was Émilia Decaudin getting the rules in the New York State election codes which had been bound by “one man, one woman”, changed to different genders and ended up being two men elected, IIRC, and I just knew this was bad news for the gains made for women.

@GCScot Yes. And you're right on all counts

1. I'm a lifelong feminist. Gender ideology causes so many issues for women. But the attempted redefinition of the very word woman feels like an actual existential threat

That's it for me. I was a baby teen feminist in the late 1970s. Never did I dream that middle-aged fat pervy men would try to bully me about the very definition of what I am, and what women & girls are.

It's fundamental.

Nothing about us without us.

It's particularly strange that it's often women leading the pro-gender ideology charge. At my work it is women who are vehemently pushing pronoun badges/claiming men can have cervixes/calling for GC groups to be cancelled.

You said you work at a university, right? While I don't actually work at a uni, I have a lot of contact with that sector and my experience is the same. What is it about so many women in higher ed that makes them enthusiastic adherents of all this?

One of my gripes about GI is that nobody consulted women about admitting men into their spaces. But what if women had been asked? What if these women had been asked? We'd be in pretty much the same position as we're in now.

I didn't realise what was happening until my niece came home and declared herself non-binary. She hadn't even had sex at that point. It appears that at her school the groups for autistic and ADHD children were spreading ideas with no critical or alternative viewpoints. Her parents tried to talk things through and talk to the school but this started a schism that is still unresolved.

Trans people also became more prominent in my family and friends families. Although i had met Trans people and cross dressers and drag queens through work and social life previously something felt different.

Notably these were now children and although parents and families were supportive the children (some now adults) were leading unhappy lives even in their new 'identities'. They were isolated, often not working other than a low status job or living independantly and were dependant on family or trans friends. They weren't making friends out of the trans subgroup or small groups that had similar interests. There was a lot of therapy going on.

My gay friends started talking about how different the Pride type events and most stopped going. They weren't happy with Trans and other groups being added.

I feel ashamed that I was so ignorant about what was happening. My usual sources let me down.

There’s an LGB Alliance demo outside the Dept of Health on Victoria Street on Wednesday from 1pm, if anyone is inclined?

I’d go but DS has his final mock exam and I am his only means of transport. When I pack him off to uni in 9m I have decided to start putting myself out there…

I don't like how aggressive they are, the funny thing is, this behaviour is mostly done by men, so by forcing their ideology on us, they are just reinforcing the fact that they are men to me. You don't see that many transgender men raging about their right. Seems that they are just getting on with their life.... exactly like a woman.

Brilliant post.

Yes, this.

I'm encouraged that, in general, the GC viewpoint is gaining much more traction amongst wider society, as the populace wakes up to the madness. But this is the point that hasn't yet properly seen the light of day amongst the general public, I don't think. And it really, really needs to.

The trouble is, I think it may be so shocking and worrying - so unbelievable - that people are thinking we must be exaggerating. We have to be, because surely that can't be right - nobody in the lanyard classes and higher would be deliberately pushing that kind of agenda.... would they?

Back in the 1970s, I was prepared to suspend my disbelief of leftie men who said they really, reeeaaaally supported women's rights, but they couldn't do anything to help right now because other issues were more urgent. I didn't believe all the other issues were more urgent, but I believed the men thought so.

Now, seeing how almost every trade union stamps on female members who try to defend their rights at work, I realise I was much too trusting. They don't just not give a damn. They really do despise us.

As Germaine Greer said back then, women have no idea how much men hate them. At the time, much as I loved Germaine, I thought she was being a bit unfair. Sorry, Germaine. you were right and I was wrong.

Children.
The open grooming of children to accept that their bodies could be flawed but a sex change is the cure.
The deliberate targeting of children - especially vulnerable children, children in care of the state, children with autism, eating disorders, self harm and anxiety. All these organisations (many run by middle aged men) openly targeting schools, charities and any organisation that works with children.

This powerful lobby has entrenched itself in regulatory bodies to ensure that safeguarding and safe, ethical child healthcare is neutralised so that the ideology can be sold to children with the right wing bigots parents, carers and other responsible adults being forbidden from intervening to safeguard them.

We're looking at a form of domestic terrorism with the population being openly bullied, threatened, coerced and gaslit into abandoning children in favour of this adult ideology that should be nowhere near children.

I’ve remembered two more

1. Because after no consultation with women, but after careful development with trans employees, my former employer (v large MNC) proudly launched its Trans inclusion policy opening up the ladies loos to anyone.
2. the much lauded menopause policy talks of cis women when it had to specify, and avoided women as much as possible. An absolute disgrace

I agree with most of what PP have said, but the bottom line for me is the assault on democracy. As a society we have to be able to debate issues openly otherwise the electorate becomes (even more) cynical and the elites ever more powerful. If we lose democracy, we lose everything.

I agree with many of the points raised, but fundamentally it comes down to the fact I will NOT stand by and allow women and girls' hard-won rights to be given up to men. Again.

No fucking way. They're not better than us. They don't deserve more than us and they're not having it.

Not on my watch.