Some clarity in how the trans movement became so embedded, so preeminent

Um, that's Ahistorical news to the definition of feminism which is the "belief in and advocacy for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes"
which all the different waves of feminism specifically fought for

First-Wave Feminism (Late 19th to Early 20th Century)

• Women's Suffrage: Gained the legal right to vote through milestones like the 19th Amendment in the U.S. (1920) and similar acts internationally. 1, 2, 3]
• Property and Contract Rights: Won basic legal recognition to own property, sign contracts, and retain independent control over earned wages after marriage. src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5TfiW-BVymI&vl=en?start=3" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> 1, 2]
• Access to Education: Secured initial entry into higher education institutions previously reserved strictly for men. 1]

Second-Wave Feminism (1960s to 1980s)

• Workplace Equality: Outlawed gender-based employment discrimination through measures like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and bans on sex-segregated job advertisements. 1, 2, 3]
• Educational Protections: Prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded education programs via Title IX (1972). 1]
• Reproductive Autonomy: Legalized abortion access through Roe v. Wade (1973) and gained legal access to oral contraceptives. 1, 2]
• Financial Independence: Banned credit discrimination against women via the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. 1]
• Protection from Abuse: Established domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and legal recognition of marital rape and domestic abuse. 1, 2,

Third-Wave Feminism (1990s to 2010s)
Intersectionality and Diversity: Broadened the movement to embrace diverse identities, acknowledging how race, class, and sexuality intersect with gender (the concept coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw).
Workplace Harassment Protections: Brought systemic visibility and legal accountability to workplace sexual harassment, highlighted by cultural milestones like the Anita Hill hearings.
Individual and Sex-Positive Expression: Challenged rigid definitions of femininity, promoting bodily autonomy, individual empowerment, and personal expression. 1, 2, 3, , 6, 7]

Fourth-Wave Feminism (Mid-2010s to Present)
Digital Mobilization and Accountability: Leveraged social media platforms and viral movements like #MeToo to expose widespread sexual assault and hold powerful figures accountable.
Transgender and Inclusion Rights: Centered trans inclusivity, non-binary rights, and a global rejection of exclusionary or "white feminism".
Systemic and Structural Reform: Fought against continuous issues regarding systemic misogyny, rape culture, body shaming, and equal pay gaps globally. 1, 2, 3, 4,

Maybe sit this one out given you can't resist bending history to your own shape.

But aren’t the government limiting social media use in children in part because of the fact children are being pressured and bullied into actions that are not for their benefit? I mean, grooming is a thing is it not? Are you saying everyone should have total bodily autonomy? Even if they wish to pursue paths that are not healthy?
should we allow anorexics to starve themselves because that is their choice?
ehat about people with BID? Should we allow them to have healthy limbs removed because it’s their body their choice?

I see NorthernBaileyGoodnewsGretel... is here to bore us all into a coma again.

The driving force behind feminism is female liberation from systemic oppression in a patriarchal system. Equality of opportunity does not mean equal everything: we are physically and physiologically different in consequential ways which our society needs to recognise and accommodate appropriately, I mean, we are more than 50% of the population so are rights must be recognised as human rights, not special favours granted by the male powerbrokers. And equality of opportunity is to be a consequence of our liberation, not as the driving force.
Thanks for mansplaining feminism to us though.

That you need to rely on a minuscule cohort to deny trans identity doesn't reflect well on the security of your argument.

I don’t deny trans identity. I deny trans identity is something innate and biological.

Howse the security of that argument working out for you?

I'm not even reading that. Liked so many previously reputable outlets, Wikipedia is completely captured. Any GC information is removed asap.
Also, @MarcTheGenderSkeptic - your male POV is most welcome and I am enjoying this thread, including your helpful feedback to the men's rights apologists.

but there's only one group negating girls completely, and that's the one encouraging the confused ones that they're not girls at all.

Again, you are denying autonomy here…& unsurprisingly only for females. When it comes to males you don't….they seem to know what they are doing for 'some reason'.

The idea that society somehow pressures people into non conforming identities is an oldie but a goody that the conservative mentality needs to cling to in order to assuage the psychic chasm they experience at the thought of individuality. 'If only we could protect them from the big bad ideas/perversions/degeneracy from others they would be just like us'.

This is more about you than you think. Monkey see monkey do 'analysis' is but a means to deny individuals their authenticity. Its also a well worn authoritarian tactic to suggest 'degeneracy' is a learned contagious impulse. Just ask the Nazis.

As for cosmetic plastic surgery, I think you'll find it's the very women you despise, the GCs, who most raise dissent to the objectivation of women this way.
Yet if you had your way, a whole new cadre of females will have operations, this time to remove not add.

Um, you have me confused with someone else. Either way as a feminist I don't consider it my business to mess with the bodily autonomy of others nor do I have a problem with others expressing/embracing their sexuality…that's the domain of the Victorian sexually repressed gender critical movement. My comment about breast implants was purely to show the inconsistency in social acceptance. And just because expressing sexuality is also a patriarchal expectation doesn't make it only about them or ….for them. That the gender critical movement looks upon such sexual expressions as a damaging stereotype rather than a naturally occurring evolutionary expression that people enjoy for this reason tells you exactly how dysfunctional this movement is.

The point you are spectacularly missing here is the biologically natural consequences that are at work here. Males & females sharing psychological & cognitive traits always implicated ambiguity between the sexes. In fact It's the driving force behind feminism. Equality between the sexes was legitimised by the psychological & cognitive commonalities not our morphological differences. There's a reason why apes aren’t entitled to the same rights as humans…& its related to brain not bodily function.

That females & males are now accepted as psychologically & cognitively interchangeable was an inevitable consequence of the liberty feminism enabled ….so its no surprise that men rights activists blame feminism for trans genderism becoming normalised for this reason.

Gender critical 'feminists' misguidedly believe that if they can kill the language they can kill the idea but the idea is actually part of the human condition of what we are .…so good luck with that.

Wow, imagine believing 'if the Government agrees with my views they must be right'.

You can't make this delusional thinking up.

The problem with this 'analysis' is that not all trans people are 'detransitioners' in fact most of them aren't. And those that do mostly do so for other reasons than a rejection of a their trans identity.

That you need to rely on a minuscule cohort to deny trans identity doesn't reflect well on the security of your argument.

Always the same lines trotted out….sans a causal pathway. Hence your avoiding ROGD being roundly discredited. Science 101: Correlation is not causation.

That autism & mental health problems coincide with trans identification in no way proves causation. In fact autism being associated with sensitivity & rejection of social expectations points to an understanding of self authenticity hence the likelihood of 'standing their ground' on identity issues.

we're seeing the tragedy of girls fooled into believing they're boys as the infertility, osteoporosis, double mastectomies ramp up, the receipts are piling up.

Again with the denial of female self autonomy & erasure of masculine 'butch' females as 'confused tomboys'. That modernity provides the technology for humans to further embrace their gendered traits is nothing new. Women have been getting breast implants for decades. Its interesting how stitching giant plastic bags of silicone to one's torso is seen as socially acceptable..….as long as it's in pursuit of the male gaze.

You act as if tradeoffs in medicine aren't thoroughly routine where costs & benefits aren't weighed & that better mental health isn't a consideration in those benefits. But that's just your centering your own priorities onto others. The self aggrandisement of what is good for you should be good for all is off the charts here.

But underneath that for me is that how practised it is about misogyny. That how it was spoken about and acted on was all in relation to what men wanted. How men wanted women to be subservient.

Even if Women's Studies had not been ousted by Gender Studies, and those leaving University were filled with enthusiasm for Women's Rights, some how I suspect society as a whole would not have been to willing to take up the cause.

Oh absolutely, the Universities and the subsequent luvvies seeded enthusiastically. The media and entertainment industry have done more damage to women's rights than we realised - we nodded happily along with it. Any programme made today will get promoted relentlessly if it has queer theory in it.

Do they even get made without any queer theory in it? Less and less, I think. The BBC programme - Riot Women? - I seem to have remembered that somewhere, someone said that there was a trans character in that....but not really part of the story, just hanging around. Why was that character there, then? I mean, I know this is pure speculation, but I see patterns.

The term gender becoming ubiquitous instead of sex - so much so that we rarely use the term 'sex' even on these boards, a place I consider the vanguard for sex-based rights.

You're correct. It's not an accident.

That was the point I was making earlier on in the thread.

It was the growth of queer politics not on the fringe but by cuckooing into Universities.

First casualties were women's studies and in cam gender studies.

Then as the years went by all those who have been part of universities where queer thinking and gender not sex became the "norm".

And this group of people were those who went into the media, not just entertainment by news papers.

Not forgetting the editor of the Guardian has said, "queer politics influences everything I do".

So the result of this was the introduction into tv, etc., of the cahnging of the word sex to gender etc..

So that then a far wider number of people than those who went to universities came under the influence.

As some have said of other beliefs, "Give me the child for the first seven years and I'll give you the man."

None of this is an accident.

Lights doesn't care whether the girls are happier or not. He just wants to win points.

I reckon most of the Genderist regulars here stopped caring whether any of this is helping trans people a long time ago. I'm sure they did once, but like so many activists and politicians tribalism has taken over and now it's just all about needing to beat the other side. They have totally disconnected from the big picture in favour of winning tiny points on an online forum according to some weird scoreboard that only exists in their mind.

That's why the same weird non-sequiteurs pop out again and again. It has become ritualised rather than thoughtful.

Well that’s the thing, in a patriarchal system, women are told - move over, make yourself small, put other people first, prioritise kindness.

The cult movement also makes out all these men are vulnerable somehow so that it can gaslight women into feeling guilty for wanting their own space. Just like an abusive partner might claim mental health issues as an excuse for their crap behaviour and that it makes you mean therefore for calling them out on it.

And the irony is that the men who do claim to have a problem with trans women - they’re often quick to call out “liberal lefty women “ for it, when it’s patriarchy and social gaslighting which has caused these women to “vote for it“ in the first place. Again blaming women for patriarchal failings.

The problem is, weak men who dislike women who are happy to see our rights diminished. And patriarchy that socialises women into making space for their own rights to be taken away.

Have not RTFT, but wanted to share a thought here: have we considered how the TV and entertainment industry contributed to the embedding of this ideology?

I think it was seeded into popular programmes as far back as the 70s? Wasn't there a storyline on Agony? Also, The character Hayley in coronation street played by a female actress was a win because right, she honestly used to be a man, honest, so it's totally possible. And she looks just like a woman! There's nothing to see here, very non-threatening.

Certainly in recent times, any storyline is woven around queer theory (the harlen coben thriller with Lenny Henry, the denouement, oh my God YOU WERE ABLE TO LIVE YOUR TRUTH), popular quizzes get trans contestants who often 'win' (except for one on that makeup show Glow up who was extremely pissed off and couldn't believe he was being booted early), and let's look at big brother's Nadia. Wow, I think that person 'won', right? Then... Didn't something similar happen in Eurovision? There was a win for someone with a beard, right? Huge wins happening all over at about the same time. Nothing to see here, move along.

More recently, the BBC. Drag characters are invited for comment on absolutely everything, and the diamond report notes that representation is skewed towards the positive for queer people: more represented than they are in the general population, in fact.

Going to libraries and Waterstones, if you're on digital reading apps, queer books are bumped to the top of the choices, in physical libraries, GC books are not displayed, whereas queer books are in Waterstones.

Schools: after 2010 I know that the primary schools had books confidently asserting that boys can become girls (my child was sent one home to read, I was furious).

This has been a long game, and when you're looking, you can see the embedding happen in front of you. The media industry have very much been a part of it.

Well said @Sodthesystem and women acquiesce to men and end up supporting the ones larping as women buying into the oppression felt by trans people.

I do have to say that for such a small percentage of the population we seem to have a huge number of trans people in the media spotlight.

It is ok to say I believe in reality, and speaking the truth is far kinder than going along with a delusion. I am interested in the young women who have had surgery - what stats are there on their previous co morbidities such as a previous self harmer or an eating disorder? My gut feeling tells me they are likely linked - I speak as having witnessed this phenomena in academic settings over the past 15 years or so. Retired now but when I reflect it was rarely the healthy kids who went down this rabbit hole.

The men who also presented themselves as women were also very much lingering in the toilet adjusting their makeup etc where as most women dash in and dash out.

I’d vote - because of misogyny. Men quite like the idea of being able to invade women’s spaces so they aren’t inclined to call out this bs for what it is.

@Mouldemort I am a sex realist. I am not critical of anything. I use truth and reality to think about things logically.

Dress how you want, express yourself as effeminate males or butch female. Where any form of criticism arises is when as a woman I am affected be it in a women only space or sport. The toilets are pretty low on my agenda. Fairness for women who have many challenges in life, menstruation, pregnancy, feeling unsafe around men generally is higher on my agenda. No man who decides he feels like a woman will ever experience what women experience.

And frankly ‘woman face’ is insulting as ‘black face’ was. We have spent decades berating people for cultural misappropriation yet as women we just have to suck up woman face.

So we have a group of girls who have opted out of woman hood and some have undergone double mastectomies. Where does the surgeon draw the line if the next social contagion is removing your arm because you are triggered by having an arm? The boundaries continue to blur and where does the adult in the room say ‘enought?’

Mental health funding may fall short for such people but surely surgery is not the long term fix. I will caveat this by also saying I do not think the trend for cosmetic procedures is healthy either.

Men don’t have the right to access women’s single-sex spaces. They aren’t asserting their rights; they’re trying to assert their dominance.