This is bullshit thread #3

[HornyTortoise]

Following on from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/2716917-This-is-bullshit-Thread-2

Open ongoing discussion welcome for anyone to join in.

Just tried to reply to see max posts were reached, hope this is OK to do...

Posted on the wrong thread, here is posies email...
(She has said I can share)

oh dear! Bit embarrassing for MNHQ, no?

Apologies if my withdrawn post was misleading or confusing. I did indeed feel I'd overshared to the point of potentially being identifiable. It's best I don't post after I've taken my the strong painkillers to be honest!

This from micro on the other thread - 'If trans ideology is robust, consistent and logical, it should stand up to rigorous challenge and debate. That is the point of free speech - good ideas will always stand, regardless of what is thown at them. Winning a debate is about getting other people to agree with you through the use of evidence, reasoning and logic. It isn't about silencing and erasing every statement that challenges your motion.'

This resonates for me. Massively.

So I made this post on Facebook. It's addressed to Alex Drummond and I took some care over my wording. If you like it, you're welcome to share it. It's time people started talking.

I'm interested to know what response you've had, Cherry.

Excellent post from micro, thank you Plectrum. Yes, it should be shared as it sums up the whole issue, that we're being asked to believe nonsense and then, when we bring up science and reason, the only response is to try to shut us down.

Love your facebook post, Cherry. Please keep us posted. Rather suspect he'll ignore it. Question too difficult.

thanks Prawn and Plectrum :) pretty sure I've paraphrased something said by Ayaan Hirsi Ali there, so don't want to claim all the credit (female socialisation runs deep, doesn't it?) but yes I think it's a very important point. If we can't debate ideas, we can't progress, it's as simple as that.

cherry, great post, and you're very brave to put it out there. I'd share it but I have suspended my FB account because I just find the liberal echo chamber depressing. This trans issue has opened my eyes to how dogmatic and hypocritical the left really is. I'm still massively left-wing but there is so much now that you're not allowed to talk critically about, everyone has just become so submissive to ideology, everybody parrots the same bullshit. I see now how insufferably smug and self-righteous I must have seemed myself on certain issues. I can't face it anymore. And my cousin - who literally never displayed a single stereotypically feminine characteristic in his whole life - has come out as transgender, so I can't talk about any of this on FB without landing myself in hot water. Sorry to merail. I'm just so sick of this shit.

Micro, what you said really resonated with me too. And it is apparent on these threads. People are consistently and politely being asked for examples on these threads of hatred and bigotry, or for definitions of the words they are using, to no avail. I agree about talking critically in the left at the moment.

Lovely post, Cherry.

there is so much now that you're not allowed to talk critically about, everyone has just become so submissive to ideology

Oh amen.

On another thread I asked for an explanation of how something was intolerant this morning and the answer I got was that I was too batshit to be bothered with and the poster flounced.

It seriously is 'if you question the ideology you are revolting'.

And it's usually pushed by people who pride themselves on their tolerance, liberality and equality.

Micro having been a lifelong lefty I'm getting more and more disillusioned. The hard left is profoundly misogynistic and once you've seen that examples just keep coming.

It's not just that they fall uncritically for all the trans bullshit. They also support Islamists against the "Zios" (ugly word) despite the fact that the people they're supporting oppress women hideously under sharia. For years Labour councils refused to examine hundreds of allegations of child rape because they were more concerned about being accused of racism, and the Guardian shut down debate about the Cologne New Year attacks on women for the same reason.

I took part in debates on the Guardian's Comment is Free for years. Their proud boast is "Comment is free, but facts are sacred."

This is no longer true. In the past couple of years any dissension from the trans narrative is met with deletion. When I was told that from now on my posts were being pre-modded for this reason, I emailed telling them that what they were doing was anti-factual and censorship. Then I flounced.

I don't post there any more, and won't again unless they change their policy. The left has become an unhealthy place for me, and the demand that we are submissive to trans ideology has destroyed my faith in the Guardian as a worthwhile place to spend my time. I very, very much hope that the same won't happen here.

Thanks, Jed and Prawn! There've been some good comments, including this from Helen:

I'm perfectly happy with the concept of "queering gender" and "expanding the bandwidth of what is to be a woman". But let's let women do that. Alex join me in expanding the bandwidth of what it is to be a man.

Think I might asphyxiate if I hold my breath ;)

Oh, and micro, sorry! How very awkward that you now have a surprise transrelative, Micro.

I agree with the above comments about earnestly unquestioning "leftiness" but am still in fight mode. I've got to believe there are intelligent people on all sides of every debate. It feels to me that some important issues are reaching critical levels (fight to the death kind of thing.) I'm only a small voice but these are conditions in which I won't shut up.

Prawn , are you actually my alter ego? I've had literally almost the same experience. I started to realise exactly what Germaine Greer was talking about when she said that women don't understand how much men really hate them - once my eyes were opened by the trans debate, things unravelled before my eyes.

I too have started to see the hypocrisy on the left we have on leaving Muslim women to hideous oppression and abuse just because they are brown and we don't want to be accused of "cultural imperialism". Oh fuck off with your cowardly white guilt. If it's cultural imperialism to say that women and girls should be equal to men and boys, that females shouldn't have to face honour violence, controlling behaviour, and policing of their "modesty" and "purity" then I am a cultural imperialist. Most people however are much more afraid to be called racist than they are to call out misogyny. It's pathetic, and like the trans issue, it shows that women will always be at the bottom of the heap when it comes to the left's priorities.

I've stopped bothering with the guardian too, partly because of Owen Jones et al and particularly after the thousand tedious chin-stroking thinkpieces that were launched in the wake of burkini-gate. I'm no fan of stripping middle-aged women on beaches but I found some of the opinions from these liberal masochists claiming that bikinis are just as oppressive (oh get bent) and that burkinis are "empowering" and "feminist" so ludicrous that I had to unsubscribe. I read a great piece by an ex-Muslim on how all these false equivalences people are making completely deny and erase the coercion, oppression and control that Muslim women are subjected to. I'll link it in a bit.

Sorry to derail a bit, will stick to the subject in hand for all further posts!

Micro and Prawn. Yep, totally agree.

Seems timely and relevant for a new Spartacus thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/2722081-I-am-still-Spartacus