DH has always been pretty supportive of my position but has upset me at times.
There were things happening which he refused to believe were real. He'd turn around and say it was exaggerated, never happened or were pure propaganda that was twisted. He questioned sources and reliability of information.
I always said to him this was so disrespectful to me given my education. I always checked and always did due diligence about what I was reading and whilst it wasn't from the trusted sources the stories were excellent in detail and journalistic integrity and this has always stood out to me. As well as reasons why they were rejected by mainstream media.
Something was going on and my own journalist instincts kicked in about the sheer number, where they were coming from and who was writing them. It wasn't nutjob groups with over zealous individuals. It wasn't written in overly emotional wording. It wasn't over the top. It was incredibly sensible women stating things which seemed implausible and had everything to lose from doing it.
And this total lack of willingness to even consider the possibility that there was a real problem and truth which was in line with my own personal experience which he was not only well aware of but had been, at times, on the recieving end of really annoyed me.
But this falls into a habit of human behaviour: one that shattered for me as a teen.
The 'nothing that bad could possibly happen to me, because I live in a nice world' bubble. You are trained not to believe all manner of terrible things could happen - and this protects us as humans from becoming gibbering wrecks. But there's also plenty of people who have ultimately survived all manner of situations because they could see something was off and reacted before others did - they realised it wasn't unwarranted anxiety but a legitimate concern. I do think it's very difficult to tell the difference at times.
In the run up to COVID there was a bunch of posters here who said "hmm this one isn't just a daily mail 'everyone is going die of cancer next week' type headline". There was a clear pattern of problem, escalation, out of control state before it got taken seriously by most people. There were people who panicked and blew it up out context too. But theres this firm group of level headers who logiked in a way that was sensible and that's what you look for. Authenticity and level headedness. The ones that don't emote too much.
This is also why Graham Linehan and Caroline Farrow in particular, have had issues. They fail 'the sensibles' test. Maya Forstater, Jo Phoenix and JKRowling all pass. It's the measured language and the way they argue in a robust but clear way.
TRAs hate it. They used the propaganda techniques of blowing up emotions and guilt to push through ideas and The Sensibles cut through that and show it's lack of substance.
But back to my original point. I almost had to convince and show the difference to DH over a very long period. No I haven't lost my mind and entered a conspiracy theory world. I was identifying a major issue that had been deliberately allowed to develop without accountability and scrutiny. Aka a scandal.
I guess he only really started to take it seriously when Newsnight started to cover the Tavistock. He needed the heavyweight journalism and reputation to see what I was seeing (and note the Newsnight journalists also used their instincts to take seriously). At that point he started to realise all these little incidents which mirrored the ones we'd personally had weren't so isolated or out of the ordinary. And indeed many women and children were experiencing far worse because activists had been encouraged and allowed to get out of control without any accountability.
It took him a long time to get over "it's bollocks it's in The Fail" mentality and bias. He just didn't WANT to acknowledge it because it shattered his own world view. One where he wanted to believe that all trans people were just vulnerable and were otherwise nice and completely reasonable, despite what he'd seen with his own eyes.
It's like he's been trailing me in realising the scale of the problem for years. Even though he partly got it. What hurt is he'd rather believe I was crazy and hysterical than take my concerns seriously. That has stayed with me - he knew better even though it was my area of expertise so to speak.
When last year we were sat on hay bails and two tittering men with beards sat down to listen to a talk on women in the outdoors and I whispered to him what was about to happen - a grab to intimidate and silence women and ruin something really important in the sport he loved and had been trained to recognise in terms of how women respond differently to coaching techniques due to skill, confidence and strength differences, I think that's probably been the last bit of the wool falling from his eyes.
He had recognised there's were extremists and nutjob activists who were dominating discourse well before that point. But that point was it colliding with his world, his values and experience and was a sort of normal everyday almost incidious pissing to mark territory and power over women in a fashion and on a topic which has well established creditials as being a legitimate need and a legitimate problem.
My point is even if people see it partly, they often don't want to see it in full because it exposes how dark and deeply it extends and how complicit they themselves have almost been in it for not questioning more sooner and being trusting of those trusted establishments and organisations. It's seeing things and people to value and respect behaviour in a way that's been totally unprofessional, unthinking and lacking in appropriate due diligence. And that's really hard.
It's a smashing of innocence. An innocence that people want to hold onto dearly and believe that something bad isn't happening.
If something bad is happening it challenges you to do something about it. It requires effort. And apathy is also a driver because people don't want confrontation or to do anything. They'd rather just go along with it and hope it goes away.
MN became home to the sensibles. It recognised the integrity. It questioned the stories and filtered crazy from concerning. It raises accountability issues and safeguarding issues.
But most of all it was a space where people facing these real life experiences first hand ended up gathering and exchanging notes. And that's the biggest misconception and mistakes the ploppers make.
They almost, without fail, say "well if you knew and cared about transpeople in your real life, you'd think / do differently".
They bring their prejudices here. It's easy to dismiss us as extremists, right wing nutjobs, conspiracy theorists, aging dinosaurs who don't like change, to characterise us as not understanding the rights and the law, to make out we are hysterical and to dismiss us as angry menopausal women who just hate all men.
The problem is, we are none of those. We are the sensibles. We talk in a way that cuts through the nonsense. It's hated because we get it, because we are educated and because we have our own valid life experiences. We are hated for being articulate and being able to cut through arguments that are so momentumally weak and flawed, it causes embarrassment on the part of the arguer to be challenged so easily and be unable to come up with a credible response other than 'well that's what I was told I should believe'.
It takes time for people facing this to come to terms with it, even if they have one foot through the door. It's hard to see the world as it is, rather than through the lens of a potential perfect utopia of progressive thinking where everyone is accepted for who they are without any issues. It's hard to notice the unintended consequences of this thinking. It's hard to see the dark undercurrents and dark side of humans exploiting other humans for their own power and kicks. Because that means we have to challenge our own lives and how we have been blinkered to something so widespread and been part of the problem from our lack of willingness to listen to the troubles of others who really don't have a voice. We want to believe were listening to the most vulnerable and it comes as a shock that we may have been duped and mislead and actively controlled into closing our ears to those who don't have advocacy and agency from institutions. We thought we were being nice when really we were being staggeringly naive to the point that not everyone is nice.
DH now thinks it's a social cult with mass support which needs to be dealt with and challenged properly. But it took a long time to get here. He no longer thinks I've been reading too much bullshit online and doesn't patronise my integrity. It's not been easy.