STOP MIS GENDERING ME JUST SAY SHE

Which is a shame because there’s been an amazing discussion over the past 10 pages in particular. I appreciate Detective repeatedly coming back when many other ‘bekind’ posters have not because it’s resulted in all these great thought provoking posts.

Hopefully the comments have given her and any lurkers food for thought as to why many women on these threads do not believe that men (‘some trans’) should ever be treated as the ‘gender they wish to/feel they are’ in terms of accessing female spaces, including podiums, hospital wards, toilets, prison estates, discussion groups, lesbian dating sites, changing rooms, awards, political short lists etc etc etc.

And @Helleofabore comment here is worth repeating given just how many posters come by with their one ‘you’re all mean’ comments (sometimes dressed up in a more vitriolic tone ‘you’re all despicable bigots’) whilst being oblivious to how their authoritarian demand to ‘right think’ is actually being ‘mean’.

It is becoming quite clear that some people who believe they are the kind ones demand others accept the dissonance that they choose to ignore and they do this in their belief that they are kind and respectful. When did it become kind and respectful to expect others to comply with demands to treat someone’s personalised belief in their subjective reality as if it is material reality?

’Discrimination’ is a word loaded with emotional reactions. And a lot of the time, rightly so.

It is important for any discussion about the needs of female people though to make sure the two types are acknowledged. I think what happens is that some people, usually through academic discussion on social media by people with influence, forget the entirety of the word’s use and they then conflate legitimate and illegitimate.

We have seen the outcome of that type of discussion in posts on FWR for years.

But another problem is that I don’t think a lot of these people [...] are using “discrimination” to mean what it actually means. They think it means being mean to someone or not agreeing with them or not sticking up for them.

Great point. Linda Blade had a great example on their similar unthinking use of "inclusion" in an interview a few years back, about men in women's sports.

Reposting my transcription from an old thread.

I say, "Paul, I'm reading your policy here. Can you please explain to me what is going on here? How you came into this conclusion that this should be correct? How this doesn't hurt women?"

And all he could tell me was, "we have a value of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion." And he just kept he just kept spewing that out like "Inshallah", and I just kept saying, "But, Paul, stop," I said, "stop. Don't you understand that if you include a male body in a woman's sport, you're exclusive not inclusive. You exclude. Don't you understand it's not safe, it's not equitable, it's not diverse. You're actually making sure that sport is only male. How are you... what are you even saying?"

"No, we believe in Equity, Diversity, Inclusion."

2

Really good posts on the common misunderstandings over discrimination from @Helleofabore and @WhatterySquash here @DetectiveDouche

@RedToothBrush you’ve expressed what I’ve felt on many occasions about how the aim of being told to use wrong sex pronouns, even in the absence of the person in question, is a subtle power play designed to force my submission to gender ideology. For that reason alone, I see them as harmful.

I've talked about how wrong sex pronouns massively affect family dynamics - partners, parents, children, siblings which declare themselves trans disrupt and harm the identities and power and agency of those closest to them with these type of demands. It's unspoken, but the mental stress on relatives is enormous. Many end up with mental health issues of their own. But it's so taboo no one talks about it. They cease to manner. They are invisible. They are secondary to the demands of the trans family member. All their feelings and internal conflicts are not just irrelevant they are bigoted. They are bad people for even thinking of their relative as they were. Their entire history is damned and prejudiced.

This is so true and so many people are ready to get up in arms and be righteously opposed to any form of “discrimination” against any “minority” or “community” or of course anyone who they have identified as belonging to a legally protected category (which is of course everyone as we all have a sex, religious beliefs or lack of them, etc.).

But another problem is that I don’t think a lot of these people (the woke left, bandwagon-hopping but ill-informed diversity officers, well-meaning but short on critical thinking teachers/journalists etc) are using “discrimination” to mean what it actually means. They think it means being mean to someone or not agreeing with them or not sticking up for them.

But most people if you walked them through it do understand and support the concept of legal, necessary discrimination in almost all contexts. Age and disability and weight categories for sports, age checks for buying alcohol or getting your pension, height requirements for rides, ID checks/documents to make sure someone really is a police officer or security guard and not an impostor, Rachel Dolezal being forced to leave her role in a black activism organisation when it was revealed she wasn’t black. No one is bleating about “inclusion” and the evils of “gatekeeping” in these situations. Everyone gets the need for categories that some people are left out of.

I think the problem is more that when a particular characteristic becomes a sacred caste that you can signal your virtue by supporting, all sensible considerations go out the window in the rush to not be seen as a bad person/institution.

Also, this thread is not appearing in active.

Interesting which ones they restrict and which ones they don't.

Also if you want to see just where universities have been, look at Evergreen, mainly filmed by Benjamin Boyce during his time there and the insanity that ensued just because a man just went to work one day, same as any other day.

Benjamin did a recent 'watch along' with his wife on you tube if you want to take one section at a time. The Boyce of Reason. Take a seat and make yourself a drink.

It really does revolve around knowing the difference between legitimate and illegitimate discrimination.

And this is where so much of the discussion by some people, particularly ill-informed activists on media, fail in their arguments. They view any discrimination as wrong and immoral. However. for equitable outcomes to deliver equality in opportunity, discrimination has always been a tool for positive outcomes when some groups need it. That is where legitimate discrimination is used.

Sex segregation is part of legitimate discrimination used to allow female people to be safe and to have privacy and dignity.

Allowing one group of male people to access female single sex provisions (above about 8-10 years old) and not the rest of the male population is an example of illegitimate discrimination. Because the basis for exclusion is sex and every person belongs to one sex category or the other and cannot change sex category.

On the topic of university discussion. I remember being very surprised by the early Peter Boghossian videos which he did at uni campuses.

https://m.youtube.com/@drpeterboghossian?ra=m

There were some universities that contacted security or senior academics to get him off the campus because some people claimed he was causing them harm.

Don’t let’s forget the Jo Pheonix employment tribunal with the Open University.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5558078-jo-phoenix-the-ou-are-still-causing-problems

And the constant attempts to drown out any organised film viewings (Edinburgh) or debates (Cambridge and Oxford) that have been organised to prevent feminist speaking events to happen at universities.

Sorry I am quoting myself, but I missed out a word in point 2)

1. It should read: Trans identifying men CAN claim they are being unlawfully discriminated against, but only if they have been treated differently to other MEN.

https://x.com/mrmennotweets/status/2081048279240847863?s=46

Another sign for those who wish to believe that both sides are as bad as each other and that feminists are just as bad as the male people who demand that their subjective reality that is not reflective of material reality is treated as being materially real.

For those without twitter, Menno videoed this sign at Pride ‘90% of pigs in the UK are gassed to death, but terfs still exist’.

All because some feminists took organisations to court and got the laws around legitimate discrimination that the laws of the UK allowed clarified. And women had to do this because organisations such as stonewall had been telling the UK organisations who paid for advice, the interpretation of the law as they wanted it to be not as it was. Because also an extreme transgender rights activist was involved in writing the EHRC’s guidance for the EA 2010 the first time around.

Thousands might have attended but either nobody bothered to count them or they did count & found the numbers embarrassingly lower than last year so preferred not to publicise the fact.

The BBC has asked organisers for the number of people in attendance. The Metropolitan Police said it did not have that data.

And still, the BBC report on Trans Pride (which to be fair, puts the law, and what women are fighting for in there), does not explain central misunderstood points (that Douche also didn't know):

1. We are allowed, in certain ways, in law to discriminate the against trans identifying people - male trans people aren't allowed to be treated as if they were women - they aren't allowed in places set aside for women and girls.

2. Trans identifying men claim they are being unlawfully discriminated against, but only if they have been treated differently to other MEN.

3. It's not discrimination or harassment to say that men can't become women or that transwomen are men.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgv1v084j0o

All those smiley men in that picture - good for you, be happy. I hope no-one ever threatens you or stops you getting a job (unless it's a job set aside for women, like a counsellor in a rape crisis service for women). But you aren't women.

Sorry you thought you could change sex. Sorry you thought you could do whatever you wanted, but that's on Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Press for Change and all the media who failed to tell you the truth, not us women. Oh, and also you for not listening to us, but then some of you are absolute misogynists who really enjoy power over women, so that would make sense.

Anyone who is willing to look into this with anything other than a completely deaf and blind mind soon realises how insane the world has become. It's frightening to see that women are treated as unimportant. Then you discover some of your friends are total bigots.

Theer is nothing progressive about gender ideology, quite the opposite. It wants to force gender stereotypes on both sexes, it wants to tell same sex attracted people to have sex with the other sex. It's deeply homophobic and misogynistic. It feels like going back to the 1950s but with even less regard for women as men were supposed to protect women and children then!

@DetectiveDoucheI'd be interested to know what info/posts shifted your view?

This type of unhinged bloke exactly epitomises WHY women don’t say anything when men turn up in women’s changing rooms and toilets. We don’t accept them. We don’t think they pass. We are afraid of confrontation.

I hear you! Good God it's been a big pile of shit. Please can people wake up as soon?

From just the last 2 days...

Blog on Brighton and Hove council discussions on single-sex spaces:

There was repeated reference to the effect of the judgment and Code upon transgender and non-binary people. There was reference to the TNBI Roundtable, trans inclusion, pain and harm.

There was no comparable acknowledgment of why sex-based provisions exist or of the people whose rights and needs they protect.

Women and girls were absent from the answer.

So were survivors of sexual violence, users of female-only services, disabled women requiring intimate care, religious women and others for whom sex-based privacy may be important.

Times report on NHS Scotland discussions on single-sex spaces:

He also “emphasised the need to support trans staff and those undergoing gender reassignment and to ensure appropriate measures were in place”.

He did not directly raise the importance of protecting women’s single-sex spaces, according to meeting minutes disclosed after a freedom of information request.

It's really frightening.

Not even so much that the law is under discussion (worrying though this is), and not that people informally disagree with it (fine - that's their right) - but that women don't. even. figure. At all.

I'll never rest of my laurels as regards our supposed equality in the UK again.

In the earlier days I remember feeling utterly lost and very upset after discussing what was happening with people in real life.

People would look at you as though you were some mad conspiracy theorist that had grown two heads, either outright disbelieving that these things were actually happening, or thinking that it wasn't nearly as mad/bad, or sad as you were making it sound.

Then there was such a rapid shift on exactly those things. People went from that "you've lost your tin foil hat" kind of goggling disbelief, to total acceptance of it all as completely rational, progressive and right, with punishments and social ostracism as your reward if you didn't vocally agree.

Utterly mind blowing!

Without other women to talk to about this I would have felt totally lost, mumsnet has been such an important part of that for me even though I usually lurk and read more than I post.

Ditto right back at you ha ha!

I feel exactly the same about all of this!

Ditto, that exploring this ideology can really change how you view the world.

It hurts, tbh, and while that may explain why so few people are prepare to countenance looking more closely, it also explains the strength of feeling on the GC side.

Even after everything I've read and asked, on both sides and of both sides, I still can't quite believe what's been allowed to happen, and how trusting the majority have been in enabling it. It's really helped me understand how the horrors of the past - Salem, Mao etc. - came about, and how vulnerable we are to the same. Really, it only feels like a matter of time, though whether it'll come from Left or Right is anybody's guess - both show themselves to have the potential.

It's also made me feel deeply, profoundly vulnerable as a woman, in a way I never dreamt I could in a liberal society. And left me more worried about some of the people stuffed under that maddening umbrella than I ever was before, tbh!

I hope you find it interesting at least, Detective, whatever conclusions you yourself draw.

Yes @BettyBooper "The utter rocking of your world when you realise that every institution you have grown up respecting and believing in has fallen for complete bullshit is quite literally mind-blowing and devastating."

It really is. I look back at my younger self who thought we were making good progress for women's rights and think "oh you sweet summer child".

About a decade or so back I thought ok, yeah it's not great really but at least we are making progress as a society. Hurrah for gay rights! Hurrah for getting there (slowly) on women's rights! Hurrah for progress, how lovely for everyone!

Then the reality of what was really happening under cover of this new "progressive" gender ideology hit me like a tonne of bricks. Women's rights effectively revoked, women being attacked, women being punished, children being harmed, and people everywhere lying that this is good, this is progress. The weird mob like consensus that bad women deserve what they get for committing crimes such as calling men "men", "saying hang on what about the women?", or for pointing out the safeguarding failures for children waiting to happen. Institutions breaking the law and getting away with it. So many men who from their actions sometimes just don't see women as real people who deserve consideration too, or who from their violent words, actions and behaviour obviously just really, really hate women, being pandered to by society.

The world is upside down, it's been a frightening shift.

I too am glad to have mumsnet. It's not perfect but it weathered the storm in the early days when there were calls to separate the boards, to shut us down, silence us. I lurked for quite some time but I peaked from reading the thoughtful posts on MN.

The posters here I have found to be so compassionate, intelligent, articulate, determined, and very, very funny! They are also totally open to good faith discussion, and are willing to share their evidence, which is always solid, well researched stuff.

@DetectiveDouche I found some of the more "direct" talk a bit shocking when I first started reading this board, but it's actually really nice to have a place where open debate can happen, even if it gets a bit heated at times. It really is worth sticking around and reading for a while.

I have learned a lot of unpleasant things I could easily wish I didn't know reading this board, but I'll be forever grateful to the posters here for talking honestly about what is going on, working together, campaigning, fundraising, and fighting back for women's rights and child safeguarding.

Great post @CohensDiamondTeeth . Agree.

The utter rocking of your world when you realise that every institution you have grown up respecting and believing in has fallen for complete bullshit is quite literally mind-blowing and devastating.

But the truth is important. And unless we have that, all else is lost.

I have long since clung to the absolute truth that humans can't change sex to navigate this. I stick to it like a limpet sticks to rock in a stormy sea.

And I'm so thankful for being able to have this board as a place of discussion and free thought.