STOP MIS GENDERING ME JUST SAY SHE

I was talking about the quality of the degree course, you called it shit yourself earlier? That’s why I was referring to the capture.

Has social science taught people to assume that if they read that a group of people that they have not interacted with personally, and not actually read or listened to personally, are ignorant and bigoted, that they should just trust that description rather than taking the time to understand the point of view and then making a decision for themselves?

Yes.. I realised that belatedly. I don't actually think it was shit all.. I was paraphrasing what someone else had said.. (and wondering wtf I felt the need to tell you guys the other night I had it; probably ill-advisedly trying to prove I wasn't a completely thick twat) .. it was 'of its time' I guess.. and didn't include much of anything about gender issues.. but the content was otherwise good and pretty balanced and expansive

On balance, I'd hazard a... no?

Hey DD.

Thanks for getting back to me - I'm really glad to read this. These issues aren't easy to engage with, and I appreciate you looking into them more. I'd be interested to know what you think afterwards.

Re: the different approaches taken on this thread, context really is everything. It's not very often at all that "visitors" appear to respond more thoughtfully. The usual trend is posts like yours shifting from patronising to abusive. As with your own earlier posts in particular, sarcasm, mocking smileys and sniping abound. There are also also a lot of people who think they're being oh, so cleverly artful in their faux concern about trans people (and sometimes even women!), while clearly playing a long game for their own sad amusement. Every-so-often, one even gets through... before, inevitably, eventually revealing their true colours.

So we never lose that mistrust - and nor should we. It's a sad world where this is necessary, but here we are. And it's all to the good in one fairly depressing sense - in a debate about defending women's spaces, all this does, yet again, is demonstrate our point (I mean, duh! - it really is win-win for us). And this point includes how important it is for women to call out uncomfortable and strange behaviour. Far too many girls now are taught to wholeheartedly trust "I am what I say I am" and to "be kind" instead. And it does, quite honestly, feel strange very strange - to see the confidence with which streams of visitors delightedly condemn GC feminism without the faintest idea what it is or interest in it.

It's great to see someone appear to take a different tack.

Good luck.

your first comment on here:

I'm always mildly taken aback by the amount of trans denial in evidence on mumsnet. It's a recognised thing whether the middle class MM majority recognise it or not.

This is exactly what you did on this thread, you thought a group of people that you had not interacted with personally were ignorant or bigoted and only when people pushed you to explain your understanding, which you could not, did you crack to maybe the people on here have a point.

If you say so @Shedmistress . Or maybe I went away and read up on a few things as I was prompted to do. I really have been frequently taken aback by what appear to be a certain attitude towards trans. I now understand this a little better. If this is "cracking" and you want to believe I was just making trouble then that's up to you.

@Catiette. All so true. I was not in a particularly patient mood yesterday as I have a menopausal headache that has lasted the best part of a week

Taken aback by a certain attitude towards trans.

It isn't a certain attitude towards trans.

It is a certain attitude towards men.

Because men as a class are a threat to women and girls as a class.

It is not rocket science.

Well done Detective, for coming back and for being thoughtful. It's rare!

Do fire any questions on here if you have any. Lots of us know far more than we'd ever have wanted to on many aspects of the issues.

I said what appeared to be.

DD - thanks for coming back. Sorry I lost my patience a bit 😬.

If you like podcasts, I'd recommend ones with Sella O'Malley (Gender:a Wider Lense and Beyond Gender). Stella is a psychotherapist and works with young people questioning gender. She has interviewed detransitioners and parents, psychiatrists and others with in-depth knowledge on the subject.

I second the Gender: A Wider Lens podcast. Stella and Sasha (Ayad) had so many really knowledgeable and insightful guests, and they really gave them all space to speak. I came to them early in my enpeakening, and found them an invaluable resource.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder and you are still reacting to perceived insults from the women here.

No one is calling you stupid. I assume people have called you stupid in the past, or maybe you worry about your own intelligence? You seem primed to fight against the perception that people view you as unintelligent, but again, no one here is saying that!

Agree with Helleofabore's post
· Today 17:25
Has social science taught people to assume that if they read that a group of people that they have not interacted with personally, and not actually read or listened to personally, are ignorant and bigoted, that they should just trust that description rather than taking the time to understand the point of view and then making a decision for themselves?

You have fallen into the trap so many people have. You've outsourced your thinking to other people and fallen for the "Believing in this makes people Good People, and believing in that makes people Bad People" gender ideology propaganda.

I suggest reading some more of the FWR posts on this board. Perhaps start with the It Never Happens threads, the Break It Down For Me thread, then when you're feeling strong of stomach try TERF is a slur | Documenting the abuse, harassment and misogyny of transgender identity politics, and read some of the articles on Home - Reduxx.

No one here is a transphobic bigot. It is not the same as homophobia, it is not the same as racism. No one here is a far right fascist. No one here is a sexual racist. No one here is a transmisogynist (all names I've been called for believing that no one can change sex, lesbianism is the descriptor for same sex attracted females, and that women deserve to retain their rights!).

The posters here just want to preserve women's rights. That's all.

Hi @CohensDiamondTeeth I don't think I'm doing that. I just put a couple of responses to some posts I hadn't seen. Not sure about the chip you speak of. I'll ponder that one.

well, you admitted you had seen other people’s assessment of the board and then you commented :

I'm always mildly taken aback by the amount of trans denial in evidence on mumsnet.

I understand that you have now started exploring further. But i read your first posts and they did seem to come from a position that you had a prejudged position about this board and that you assumed people posting here were ignorant and hateful.

I don't think it is a chip on your shoulder, i think you may come from a left perspective, and fear critiquing your political home, which happened to me. You can hold tight to your foundational politics without succumbing to some tidal wave of nonsense, from your own political home. It is discombobulating for sure.

the way i see it is i hold my own left analysis politically, but am happy ally with any woman in this feminist cause, party politics do not come in to it.

Well that's how you are coming across to me, chip on the shoulder or just already on the defensive maybe because you seem to think we are terrible people, maybe because you think we are attacking you, we aren't.

You seem to be perceiving personal attacks where there are none, although there is a lot of frustration though.

You are reacting as though people are calling you stupid when we absolutely aren't. You don't seem able to appreciate the difference between "That argument is bad/weak/stupid because... here's some actual information", and "You are stupid".

There is a difference, and no one is saying the second quote to you. You've had a lot of "no you're wrong, here's what the craic is and here's some further reading" though.

And again, this has been trundling away more or less behind the scenes for 20 years (and more tbh!) now, women are bound to be frustrated at having to try and get people to realise the harms done to us by an ideology which benefits mostly men at the detriment of all girls and women. It's misogyny to tell women the harms done to them aren't a big deal, or to just put up and deal with it.

A lot of the women here tried to offer to campaign for trans people so they could have better, well evidenced health care, we worry about the harms done to them by gender surgery which is still just riddled with problems that cause serious health issues for those that go through with it. We tried to offer help to campaign for extra spaces, tried to be accommodating socially where possible without giving up women's rights to their single sex spaces etc - a lot of us didn't see the harm in pronouns at first but soon realised that once given that inch, they'd had our collective arm off and taken a mile!

You know what happened to the women who offered all that compassion, funding, time, care, help? They were violently abused online (see TERF is a slur website I linked above), and in real life and received death and rape threats.

Women were ostricised and fired, discriminated against, de-platformed, and physically attacked (do you think a man in his 20s(I think he was that age?) punching a 70 year old woman fracturing her orbital socket is a reasonable response to a gathering of women who wanted to talk about women's rights? I don't!). Women have been hounded for believing that women and girls deserve their own spaces away from men, however they identify, that we are a group who have our own specific needs and rights.

The genderist propaganda machine has pulled a blinder by managing to get everyone and their dog to parrot the line that women speaking about women's rights are "anti-trans".

Gender ideology is abusive and full of gaslighting and it's all directed at women. You may have stumbled onto this thread by accident, but wow is it a great opportunity for you to see what's really been happening.

If you decide to read up a bit on this, you are going realise you had it all backwards, and you frankly are going to be in for a shock!

Most of us started from a "Be kind" position, thinking this was just the new gay rights or just wanting people to be safe to present how they wanted without being attacked or discriminated. We quickly found that was not the case. This is not actually a progressive movement, it's a deeply harmful, misogynistic and homophobic ideology.

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.

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.

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.

Ditto right back at you ha ha!

I feel exactly the same about all of this!

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.

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.

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