Impact of transgender organisations - who is behind them and how have they become so influential?

[theendisnotnigh]

Looking at the Times article about the government telling the UN that the phrase pregnant people should be used instead of pregnant women . Where has the government got their mandate from from to make these massive changes?
When is some investigative journalist going to take a look behind the scenes at who these massively influential transgender groups are? (Gendered Intelligence, GIRES etc).
How have this tiny percentage of the population had such a significant response? The groups are feted by government, the Dept for Education, the NHS fund and actively promote them.
We know that they have used tactics of threats and intimidation to very successfully silence democratic debate and discussion. We know that they have gained access to politicians (Maris Miller etc) in ways that other political groups can't do. So who are they? Are they funded by the Drugs companies (who have much to gain from the lifelong medication of transgender children to adults).
We know that they are active in schools, local authorities, workplaces. What are their qualifications for changing schools? Do their staff going into schools have DBS checks? Do they work directly with children and young people? Why are the DfE , NHS promoting political activist groups to train educators and health professionals - normally schools are very careful about giving political interest groups direct access in this way?

I think we need to be asking questions of the government about what checks and balances they have made before recommending these groups and why they are getting such preferential treatment? What other massive social change in history has taken place behind closed doors and with active government involvement?

Fair enough, don't engage. A shame, really. But par for the course.

I know. It's such a shame- I really want to know about this stuff and there isn't any proper discussion anywhere that I can find.

Has it gone that fast? Stonewall was a while ago and half the recent action has been (sexist, anti-abortion, anti-contraception) US Republicans putting in bathroom bans.

Look, I’m happy to leave you to your circle-jerk, and like I said I do have quite a lot of sympathy with view that boys that like playing with dolls or girls who like trucks are being told they’re trans rather to left to play.

But apocalyptic scenarios, wilful misreadings of trans-inclusive language, and garbage about shadowy forces isn’t helping with that.

Seriously Bernard, do you think this is all a plot to bring in ‘synthetic humans’? Or is there something ‘sinister and fucking powerful’ behind it?

"Seriously Bernard, do you think this is all a plot to bring in ‘synthetic humans’? Or is there something ‘sinister and fucking powerful’ behind it?"
Nope. But there has to be something behind it. No minority group ever has had such a swift and decisive influence on government policy and on society. How did it happen?

Ok Bernard. So what is it? Who are the secret plotters?

I don't know. Hence the question

How do you think the changes have happened so quickly?

My theory fwiw is that a lot of it is gender critical ideas becoming mainstream, but taking a twist at the end. So, ‘girls can behave in ways traditionally confined to boys’ becomes ‘girls can be boys’. I’m yet to be persuaded that a girl defining herself as genderfluid/non-binary/trans is doing anything different from me twenty years ago with DMs and short hair.

Yeah, I'm with you so far. How have we got from there to propped governement policy being self declaration and a serious suggestion that the census should not include a question about sex?

I don’t think it’s a shadowy conspiracy. I think it’s just a perfect storm of several things combining:

• people like the idea of being “progressive”, on the right side of history, etc (look at the way all opposition to trans activism gets framed as coming from bigoted religious conservatives);

• this is a handy way to be seen as supporting marginalised minorities and progressive thinking, while still getting to believe and enforce very regressive ideas (strict gender roles and chemical/surgical ‘treatment’ of gender non-confirming and gay/lesbian young people);

• most people are firmly aware that anyone who doesn’t conform to gender roles can be harassed and attacked. The trans lobby is very good at making sure nobody gets to hear what “TERFs” actually have to say/making people too scared to speak up about their concerns, so it’s easy to convince people that anyone with any concerns must be an evil bigot who throws bricks at trans people;

• third-wave feminism is not good at dealing with structural, class issues, and is very prone to getting tangled up in navel-gazing individualism and being guilt-tripped over never quite being up to date with the latest approved terminology;

• for men on both the right and left, this is a great opportunity to scream at and intimidate women in the name of being progressive.

Pansies personally, I'm on the fence about what might be behind this. Ultimately, it's is likely to boil down to 'because men want this and men get what they want'.

But it's entirely possible that some powerful people have quietly pushed the agenda whilst nobody was looking for reasons I don't understand probably misogyny or to legitimise their AGP though. I mean, apparently the UN and EU have policies on trans inclusion. How on earth did that happen so quickly?

Apocalyptic comparisons might seem overblown. But it's a reflection of the fact that, for some women, the idea of males in female spaces and the erasure of women is genuinely terrifying.

53rdWay that's very convincing.

"The trans lobby is very good at making sure nobody gets to hear what “TERFs” actually have to say/making people too scared to speak up about their concerns, so it’s easy to convince people that anyone with any concerns must be an evil bigot who throws bricks at trans people;"

And that's another thing. How has that happened? It still seems perfectly fine to say outrageous things about, for example, gay people in a public forum........

Penises

What about this (double) quote?

Strips parents of rights over what medically happens to their children
Very important... children could be effectively sterilised - before the age of consent. Shocking

Can you see why we are alarmed?

It is already happening, albeit with parents who are going along with this because they are 'terrified of their children committing suicide'.

Yes, I was one poster responsible for the 'insidious' quotes, but many of us have followed this for years and were told not to be so reactive and 'hysterical', yet it's now happening. It begs the question Why, How and Who?

We would walk alongside the transgender movement to support their flight but the movement is now trying to redefine women and this has massive implications.

Are we wrong to be concerned?

There are a number of elements in common with the way minority groups have been stirred up in the past few decades in other (political) spheres. They have caused civil unrest, divided countries and destabilized eons-old systems and, it seems, a few names crop up regularly.

"... Wilson Cruz, an LGBT activist, told CNN at the time. “Do not get in the way of this train, because it will run you over.”
To ensure things ran full-steam ahead, billionaire George Soros, through his Foundation to Promote Open Society, dedicated at least $2.7 million to the cause that year, according to his tax returns."

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/11/george-soros-the-money-behind-the-transgender-move/

Soros! We have alt-right bingo. Honestly, just say ‘Jews’ if you’re saying Soros. It’s hardly a code word any more.

And parents’ medical rights over children have been limited for a long time. Or would you rather 16 year olds had to have parental permission to abort?

My issue is that letting very young adults take medication that will may make them sterile would be treated with huge amounts of restraint if it was for any other issue. We’ve all read/met people whose doctors won’t let them/their partners be sterilised in their 20s & 30s in case they change their minds, why are doctors so happy to prescribe hormones to people who are not old enough to vote rather than forcing them to examine why they want to change so enormously. The number of young people who are unhappy with their birth body is enormous. I think it is only those who have regular contact with teens who realise what a big issue this is and how rapidly it has spread.

I don’t think it’s been quite as fast as some in here seem to think. Organisations like GIRES and Mermaids have been lobbying effectively since at least the early 2000s. I worked in an Equalities post in a large NHS organisation in the mid-2000s and when I took up post the organisation had already been working with GIRES and other trans organisations for several years. We were signposting people to Mermaids and discussing the ethics of puberty blockers even then.

We also worked very closely with Stonewall, who were then an LGB group. They were known across the sector for being one of the most effective lobbying groups around. We used to send newbie workers to them for a day so they could see how effective lobbying worked. Once Stonewall had jumped on the trans bandwagon they put all their skills and contacts to use in that cause, which I think has advanced trans issues greatly on a policy level (Stonewall used to be able to just phone government ministers, I assume that’s still true).

I agree with the ‘perfect storm’ theory, plus that this is male entitlement writ large. No other alleged social justice movement has been led by straight white able bodied males and that’s made a huge difference. Then there’s all the social contagion stuff much discussed on here. Plus trans is sexy, often literally, and involves self-expression, and none of that is true for disability activism.

I truly hope the tide is starting to turn with the recent press coverage of the implications of self-identification. And that the current explosion in numbers is a passing fad.

Oh and I’m with pansies: the shadowy conspiracy/Soros stuff is offensive nonsense and picks up very old anti-Semitic tropes.

53rd your list sounds very plausible to me. This ‘debate’ (there hasn’t been much actual debate at all as others have said) apparently legitimises quite a lot of would-be virtuous political actors to attack (and possibly legally obscure) women and girls as a class.

I think the straightforward answer to this question of who is behind trans lobbying is simply "men are".

As women we are taken aback by the speedy progress made by the trans movement because it is new for us to experience a men's rights movement which is going after something men don't already have.

Men run society and dominate on all sociopolitical levels so when they want change they don't have to protest from outside power circles the way that women and real minorities do. When men want change they lobby from within power circles and they lobby from a position of high status - they don't have to start their protest with time and energy wasting pleas to be considered as fully human and legitimate in the way that women have to.

Once you add in the fact that this men's rights movement is deeply anti woman and women's rights + a money spinner + a jolly interesting medical experiment (if you are that way inclined and much of the medical industry is) + numerous other fucked up factors that I haven't thought about and it's no wonder that the whole thing has become a powerful and fast moving juggernaut.

Plus we are currently in a neoliberal, postmodern, identity politics dominated, post critical thinking social context.

Plus the role of an increasingly messed up human sexuality as influenced by porn culture, rape culture, pedophile culture, objectification of women and fetishisation of our body parts.

Plus the internet and the huge impact it has on both movements and individuals.

Plus, and I think this is not much talked about but hugely important factor; men's (as a class) God complex and hatred of women for being the ones who carry and birth babies. (And their desire to take that ability away from us and at least control it themselves if not have it themselves; see history, religion, gendercide, abortion and reproductive rights, the institutions of marriage, motherhood and virginity, medical reproductive interventions, etc.)

Great post beachcomber, that’s just what I meant to say, but much better expressed.

"Oh and I’m with pansies: the shadowy conspiracy/Soros stuff is offensive nonsense and picks up very old anti-Semitic tropes."

I find the fact that George Soros is immune from challenge because because anyone doing it is risking an accusation of anti semitism problematic too.

I don’t think he’s immune from challenge. I’d like him to be challenged for stuff he’s actually done, rather than for having a nefarious and secret agenda to bring down Western society, a la Protocols of the Elders of Zion