To be sad at the lack of compassion

[Gifgirl]

Reading through some threads makes me so sad (and mad) sometimes.

Excluding teenagers from homes due to MH conditions, being cross about flags on stickers cos they are rainbows, encouraging your kids to not date someone cos they have a disability.. etc etc.

Acceptance and kindness is a wonderful thing and would make the world a much lovelier place.

Please encourage your kids to accept and include people even if they are different to you. We won't move on until this happens.

I do teach my child compassion and kindness. I also teach him about consent, respecting the boundaries of others, that sometimes people need their own space and that people believe different things. He's a boy, so I worry less about society influencing him into thinking that his own needs and wants are less important than the other sex, or that it's his job to be kind to everyone, even when they are not treating him fairly. If he were a girl, I would worry about it much more, and would put more work into trying to counteract future social messaging.

I don't think that kindess means "accepting and including people even if they are different to you" though. It means not discriminating on the basis of superficial or irrelevant traits, and it means thinking of other people and trying to help them. But it doesn't mean that you need to include everyone in your friendship group, even if you don't get on with them (or including men in your single space sex, even if they are as a sex class stronger and more violent than your own sex class).

And most of all, acceptance does mean accepting that someone else's world view is true. I will not teach my children that they need to believe and treat as true whatever someone tells them about themselves. Acceptance means that we don't say mean things or make assumptions about a boy who dresses as a girl; we don't exclude him from whole class party invites, we don't refuse to sit next to him. It doesn't mean that if that boy tells us that IS a girl, we just believe that to be the case. In the same way, acceptance means that we don't exclude, say mean things or make assumptions about someone who believes in Jesus or believes that vaccines are harmful. It doesn't mean that we have to accept their view as our own.

And having young adult children I can assure you a hefty proportion of them particularly the young women they mix with aren't buying into all the trans religion.
They see it for what it is

I agree, OP. Some people are incredibly intolerant and narrow-minded.

Everything isn't always that black and white though, is it?

Personally I’m not intolerant, narrow minded etc etc. I am concerned though - 1) that women are being coerced into silence under the be kind labelling and 2) that children and teens are being offered permanent medical solutions to things that previously were just considered people being different and not conforming with societies stereotypes.
But yes let’s all stay silent and wait for the mental health bomb in 10 years time because we should be kind.

Sod Be Kind. Be Kind means ‘don’t make a fuss’ or ‘accept what is said without debate’. Load of misogynistic bs.

And not sharing a belief system isn’t ‘phobic’. Seeing an ideology as something that is provably toxic, misogynistic and homophobic is simply an opinion some don’t like. Much like with religion, there are plenty of individuals who follow gender beliefs who aren’t the above, but as a collective…

Bekind is a silly message....be appropriately considerate is better.

So let's say an elderly lady cannot reach the shelf in the supermarket and asks for help. Yes you should help her. Let's say you see a woman coming through a door with a pram, you should hold it open for her.

But then there's things which you are entitled to say no to without explanation. A lonely man wants to date you...no you don't have to. A man wants to chat to you on public transport...no you don't have to. A mum at the school asks you to babysit her kid every afternoon because she has no childcare...no you don't have to.

Well actually us TERFs care a hell of a lot more about "trans kids" than you #bekind lot. You are quite happy to have them castrated, sterilised and have to live with chronic pain, while facing the disillusionment of finding out that it is impossible to change sex. The transgender movement I know where it is the enemy that is trying to prevent them from being harmed

We should aspire to be fair, rather than to be "kind". Kindness is weaponised against women and girls. Gender identity ideology isn't fair, and therefore I don't support it.

As well as all the other harms it has.

Oh! The other thing I wanted to say is, I think that MN is full of compassion. Sometimes it's the old school tough love type of compassion, but I have been on forums for 20 years now, and I have never anywhere else seen so many women rally around and keep responding to an anonymous poster in distress. There are so many women who have left abusive relationships because of MN. Busy women give up their time to carefully guide the OP through their experience, point them in the right direction, provide morale and practical advice. Sometimes they keep at it with the same person for years. Any real crisis, big or small, has patient and kind advice. Anything from posters upset over their wedding dress, all the way to posters with sick children, or those grieving relatives.

For work, I move in very liberal circles where no one would ever admit to using MN because of the transphobic association. Whenever a man says something disaparaging about the women on here I take great delight in looking shocked and saying something like "Oh sorry, I'm just really surprised to hear a man openly admit to hating a website famous for helping vulnerable women leave abusive men...? Aren't you worried about what people are going to think?". Usually of course they have no idea, and look suitably panicked.

So let’s just forget about people are gay, lesbian, bisexual and so on huh? Pride all of a sudden represents men who are allowed in women’s changing rooms? Get a grip

#bekind and transphobic rolled into one

Hear hear.

It seems mostly that women are looked down on for not ''being kind''. Or in other words shut up and move over back where you belong.

Great post @Comedycook. ‘Be Kind’ is just a woolly platitude that could mean absolutely anything. Most humans would not deliberately be unkind, but being ‘kind’ is context dependent and could mean a variety of different things.

They forgot about all that the moment the changed the Rainbow Flag (which already represented inclusion to everyone who had been ill treated for not being heteronormative) to include the big aggressive ‘AND TRANS’ arrow. If you haven’t noticed, everything Pride is now centred around the T of LGBT. Gay and Lesbian people are now referred to as ‘qu**r’ so not to suggest they’re same-sex attracted. Don’t be so ignorant to think that it’s still anything about the LGB when it comes to Pride.

Yeah, for me pride and the rainbow now screams trans.

It's a shame.

Are you also going to the TRAs and telling them to #BeKind to women? That they should just stop and be accepting that my history of sexual abuse by a man does in fact mean I want to have sex segregated spaces? That the Rape crisis charity I used to work for should have women only groups?

Are you going to them and telling them all of that, and implying they're bigots if they disagree? Why is their misogyny ok, but my 'TERFness' not?

I agree with @Comedycook and @Ereshkigalangcleg

I haven't seen the threads that OP alludes to, but I have a teenage DD who automatically prioritises everyone's needs over her own lest people think she's not being kind enough. "Be kind" is a great concept if applied equally, but men and women are not held equally accountable to it and it's become just another stick to beat women and girls with.

What about the lack of compassion for women who want to protect themselves and their children from trans-ideology? Women who want safe single sex spaces? The lack of compassion on that thread isn't directed at gay people it is anger at men who think that their sexual desires and fetishes and the right to satisfy them trump the rights and safety of women and children. Where is your compassion for them?

How DARE women want single-space spaces free of penis!! Urgh, SO bloody transphobic!!

Why does ‘be kind’ always mean ‘don’t disagree with me, women’ because it’s never aimed at men.

It's disgusting is what it is. When gay men and women are now hounded and villified out of Pride parades, lesbian-only events (ie NO PENIS) etc for being same-sex attracted...trans is now synonymous with bigotry, hatred of anyone who disagrees with them, homophobia, aggression, and intolerance.

What is ‘transphobia’ to you? Because if you see anything transphobic you should absolutely report it and it will be removed. However I suspect ‘you don’t agree with me that you can change sex through the power of belief and hormone replacement therefore you are transphobic’ is probably the more realistic case…