To be really frightened

[TheXXFactor]

I know, I know - you're sick of trans threads. But please take 1 minute to read this because it's not about trans, it's about women's right to free speech.

In the last few days, a woman has been physically attacked by a mob of 20-30 people and had to be rescued by the police - link. Her 'crime'? She had attended a meeting held by Women's Place UK about the Gender Reform Act. These meetings are moderate and respectful - they have trans women speakers as well as biological women. Purely because she attended this meeting, the woman, who happened to be a trades unionist, was stalked, followed to a picket line days later, surrounded and violently attacked.

Also this week, a woman who expressed gender critical views on Twitter was questioned under caution by the police and told she cannot leave the country link

AIBU to think this is terrifying? Whatever our beliefs about the trans movements - even if we support self-ID - don't we all support the right to peaceful debate and freedom of expression? This isn't happening to men - male journalists and men on social media who express gender critical views aren't being stalked and attacked. This is a concerted effort to silence women. I am genuinely scared.

[Efrig]

George Orwell meets Margaret Atwood.

Women aren’t going to go away despite how much we’re threatened.

Their agenda will die a death once the transed kids become old enough to realise what’s been done to them and kick back, sue, seek prosecution, whatever.

They should concentrate on being decent human beings instead of the utter failures they are for their violence.

#whininglittleshites

[UpstartCrow]

YANBU, we are watching the rise of Fascism.

[LangCleg]

YANBU if you are afraid. You should be. Women must rise up and say no.

[BiologyMatters]

This is appalling. I think i might stick my head above the parapet and write to my MP. Im scared of outing myself as gender critical but this can't be allowed to continue, really. Im just an ordinary woman raising her family to be hopefully decent human beings. Live and let live. But not while women are being attacked and silenced by aggressive MEN and the media doesnt give a shit.

[icedtea]

Their agenda will die a death once the transed kids become old enough to realise what’s been done to them and kick back, sue, seek prosecution, whatever

Although I hope this is what would happens and the agenda dies, I am very much afraid such transed kids will be silenced and not allowed to sue. In the meantime all kids will be forced to become gender neutral from birth. Very frightening prospect indeed.

[papayasareyum]

I started a thread a few days ago which was deleted because I used the wrong pronouns to discuss Caitlyn Jenner. I typed it out quickly and just wrote instinctively (and accurately, she’s a he biologically) but it went Zap, along with other threads previously. Women are not being silenced, we have been silenced. It’s terrifying.

[Beansonapost]

I'm neither frightened nor scared!

I am fucking fed up!

I want more people not just women but men as well to open their eyes and ears and be more critical! Criticism is not denying anyone's rights it's examining and questioning things.

I am very much let people live... but this whole thing is now going way beyond someone wanting to be their "true self" and is now infringing and trampling on everyone's rights! I don't seem to recall the LGB movement doing this much damage!

[Datun]

It's a horribly circular issue.

Women are concerned about the reforms to the GRA. But it's a complex subject and people have a, quite understandable, knee-jerk reaction to anything involving LGBT.

Generally, when they understand a bit more, they see the implications. But they are not being allowed the luxury of getting to understand it, because women are being shut down.

Any political movement/ideology that can't bear to be scrutinised or questioned, has to be treated with suspicion.

There are a vanishingly few number of transactivists willing to debate this in public. Most of them say I refuse to debate my existence. By which they mean, you can't point out biological sex. Which is, of course, the crux of the entire matter. And the implications based on it.

Women, however, are desperate to debate this in public. Because their argument holds weight.

And they are relentlessly, violently prevented from doing so.

It should make anyone sit up and think.

I'm not easily scared, but I do find the almost science-fiction nature of this deeply worrying.

Like one of those films where whoever you turn to, has become the enemy.

[GoodyMog]

YANBU, not at all. It's awful.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

I'm not fucking frightened, I'm fucking furious

They can't arrest us all. Keep talking. Keep tweeting.

Anyone on twitter, please support Posie by RT #MoreBallsThanMillwall

[Twunk]

I am also furious. I’m not scared (don’t live in the UK) but I’m scared for my fellow women. I stand with Posie, who is immensely brave - I am in awe of her.

Anyone should be worried about this - demanding that people ignore reality in favour of subjective belief is Orwellian, regardless of the issue. Debate on an issue that directly impacts women and children should never be silenced.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

This is very frightening. I was horrified at what the CEO of Mermaids did to her own child - had her son surgically castrated on his 16th birthday. We need to speak up.

A mumsnetter did speak up. PosieParker is the one referred to in the OP, who is now under police investigation. She is posting on this thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3190731-Woman-questioned-under-caution-and-banned-from-leaving-the-country-for-criticising-Mermaids?msgid=76264214#76264214

[CircleSquareCircleSquare]

I’m frightened and I can understand why women are scared to talk about this.
If I lose my business, my children go without - that’s a bloody terrifying prospect.

[TheGoalIsToStayOutOfTheHole]

YANBU. Its terrifying really.

[Purplehammer]

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

George Orwell.

[Somerford]

don't we all support the right to peaceful debate and freedom of expression?

No, no we don't. Not at all. We don't give a flying fuck about free speech in this country and we react gleefully when people with opinions that we find uncomfortable are attacked. Or sacked from their jobs, or have speaking engagements disrupted and cancelled. Whatever means we have at our disposal to allow us to silence dissenting views, we'll use them without a moment's hesitation and it's all fair game. By any means necessary as they say. That's how we do things in Britain, if we haven't done anything to fight that culture we can have no complaints when it's our turn to suffer censorship.

I have been banging this drum for as long as I can remember. Empowering the authoritarian left is a disaster. No amount of power will ever be enough for them and they will always be searching for new ways to assert control over anyone and everyone. Authoritarianism is fucking evil, whether it comes from the right or the left and we should never have allowed it to fester in the way that it has.

[bellasuewow]

It is scary and a huge issue that more and more people are becoming aware of. I am scared but I have written to my mp, donated to campaigns, posted support on twitter and spoken up in real life and taken part in surveys. I am doing my bit because I have a daughter and I don’t want to say that I did nothing. Mermaids are a deeply troubling organisation in my view and I am glad they are starting to attract some scrutiny. However there seems to be a regressive left pushing this deeply misogynistic and homophobic agenda.

[Brazenhussy0]

Silencing and arresting women for speaking about biological science and for calling out child abuse... disturbing to say the least, on multiple fronts.

[CigarsofthePharoahs]

Anyone with a logical head on their body knows you can't change sex. You can approximate with surgery and hormones, but that's all.
I have immense sympathy for people with gender dysphoria. Or with women hoping to identify out of female oppression.
Lying to vulnerable people isn't going to help anyone. Opening the door to make it easier for sexual predators to reach their targets makes life difficult for everyone, women in particular.
Violently closing down the debate is just terrifying. Totalitarian regimes behave like this. Anything pushing #nodebate is dangerous.

[Strigiformes]

I'm starting get pretty worried now. No one I know seems concerned yet which I find to be really strange. Hopefully things will continue to be reported in the press. Thank goodness for mumsnet allowing us the freedom to discuss transactivism.

[Rainbunny]

I've been trying to understand all sides of this issue but it's hard when no proper discussion is allowed to take place. I think this article does a very good job of calmly and neutrally laying out the real concerns that exist here (I'm not a Tory voter or a regular reader of the Spectator btw).

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/can-we-have-an-honest-debate-about-gender/

Seriously though, I wonder how many female voters Labour will lose if they carry on like this, not to mention the anti-semitism problem.

[FencingFightingTorture35]

No one I know seems concerned yet which I find to be really strange.

It's because there are so few places where you can talk freely about this.

If I wasn't on MN I wouldn't have come across this issue ir be remotely concerned.

People have no idea at all that their rights are under threat.

[therealposieparker]

Free speech doesn't really exist in the UK we just arrogantly assume we have these rights.

[TheXXFactor]

No one I know seems concerned yet which I find to be really strange.
It's because there are so few places where you can talk freely about this.

I think it's partly that and partly that it is so unbelievable that people can''t believe it is true. To most people, it is so self-evidently nonsense that penises can be female and that it's safe to let men who self-ID as female into women's spaces, that they can't believe it's actually happening.

[Somerford]

Free speech doesn't really exist in the UK we just arrogantly assume we have these rights.

I expect this assumption comes from consumption of media from the USA. Freedom of speech may not be constitutionally protected here but it is still a value which I hold dear. I think it's crucial and I have become increasingly repulsed by wing politics as the authoritarian factions have grown in stature. I have argued with people on this very forum about the tacit approval of censorship in its various forms and the eagerness to frivolously discard individual liberty to allow the state to legislate our problems away. I have argued the same points on various social media platforms and perhaps it was inevitable that my personal details were shared online, allowing various left leaning activists to make all kinds of threats, one of which was carried out, and to try to damage my livelihood. There was no hate speech. No racism, nothing that could be considered offensive. Just a debate which I approached from a libertarian perspective. That was enough to warrant people trying to harm me physically and damage my business which could have had serious implications.

I didn't see many people clamouring for protection of free speech then. I was very much alone in that battle. If we want to protect freedom of expression we must fight for it even when we don't like the views that someone is expressing. We don't get to sit back and allow others to be silenced and then act surprised when it happens to us. We can't wheel out "freedom of expression" as a shield as and when we need it, we either respect it and uphold it consistently or we don't. At present, we don't.