Oh yay! More of us on MN!!
Whereas you moved to HV (I am supposing), we moved to the ‘huge smoke’ of London. And we lived ‘north’ of Clover’s jurisdiction too.
I am horrified that so much harm has been done in Australia with so much uncertainty because Julia Gillard slipped in gender into the anti-discrimination act. No one has tested it, yet Kieran Perkins referred to it as a basis for the Sports Australia decision.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4873436-australian-legislation-discussion-to-avoid-derailing-other-threads?reply=128581747
So now we also have lesbians in some states not being able to hold meetings and events that exclude men who believe they too are lesbians. And we have a continuous stream of people on MN such as OP and others who, it seems, would declare that it is the lesbians who are intolerant and lack compassion.
I see you have stressed that you are kind and compassionate and tolerant all through your post. And I am sure you are using the original meaning of the words as much you have described is what so many posters also support. However, I have learned reading on MN that these words, just like the word woman and girl and now female (yes, this too is now a word used by males to describe themselves), have been dramatically changed to now include the opposite meaning of the original intended meaning.
That the words are used by the very people to describe themselves, such as OP, who display the opposite values towards those who don’t agree with them. Which is the very opposite of kindness or tolerance or compassion. So, I now accept the supposed insults flung at me for my posts on MN, that I am ‘intolerant’, ‘unkind’ and ‘lacking compassion’. Because people like the OP make such declarations about those raising valid and researched concerns as ‘hate’.
These days posts such as the OP’s shine the light where those determined to be ‘kind’ don’t want it shone. Because then they are forced to start to discuss and understand where their attempts at silencing and scolding those who see the issues and concerns lead society. To a place that lacks high quality health care for children and adolescents who deserve better and evidence based care, and a society that lacks robust safeguarding for women and girls. Often their ‘compassion’ and ‘kindness’ excludes compassion for women and girls.
So, now if someone tells me I lack compassion because I raise concerns about children and adolescent health care, or sports for women and girls, or raise the exploitative nature of surrogacy, or that we still need single sex spaces to be single sex, I understand that they choose not to do the depth of research to think critically through these issues. And it takes a long time to do that research. Because these days you cannot quite trust the ABC or most Australian mainstream media on this topic. They often lack balance. In saying that occasionally you get gems like this:
Here, the BBC also cannot be fully trusted either and every article needs to go back to original source to understand the real story. For instance, Caster Semenya is a male athlete with a DSD yet that is not reported on the BBC despite promoting Semenya’s book- how kind is that to the women that athlete’s inclusion negatively impacted.
So, finding the facts and evaluating those does make it harder. I understand that the time is just not available to others. It is the attitude of those who react with the hyperbole that the OP and others do though that shows perhaps the ‘ignorance’ is not quite the direction they are pointing. It is rarely ‘hate’ that causes people to disagree with people like the OP. The thread they referred to was about a sticker for a child that had a political symbol on a cute cartoon animal. Here is the link:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4937464-transpride-flag-in-childrens-stickers?page=1
It is a crazy world, Smokey, when kindness and compassion have become such misused words.