We act from deep and well-thought-out conviction. But...

[JellySlice]

Today we look back appalled at the women who fought against giving women the vote.

In 100 years' time will history look back on us, on gender-critical women, in the same way?

The suffragette wanted mostly their own spaces like public toilets for women that didn't exist until their activism... And equal representation in politics and public life. They did not create a whole belief system based on lies, like Transgender activists are doing.
Also, the women in the article were against other women fighting for votes for women, being handmaidens of patriarchy. So they have a lot in common with the handmaidens of patriarchy we see in this #nodebate debate.

Trans activism is the male-led backlash. Women have "too much" men need to take it back.
Radical feminists can see right through this and are standing ground, fighting for women and having to put up with handmaidens happy to give up everything to please men (men who say they're women).

So totally disagree with you, OP.

"However, we are the ones opposing a change in the law, and in society."

Which is only an issue if you believe that things only ever get better and never go backwards.

Plus the '100 years' mob -- this is tiny compared with the thousands of years (at least) that the patriarchy has existed. Radfems never expected that the effects could all be removed overnight (with gradual steps at least unless we were going to really have a revolution....).

Anyway, I'm not scared by the wrong-side of history, I'm a scientist and I'll stick to the correct side of biology. I have our whole evolutionary history to fall back on as well............Plus objective categorisations rather than subjective always a good idea.

I want an autocarrot!

Food for thought eh?
100 years ago it was the suffragettes, 50 years ago it was gay people, these days it's trans people.

100 years ago it was the suffragettes, 50 years ago it was gay people, these days it's trans people.

Except it isn't trans people, is it? It's transwomen - trans identified men - who are the ones causing all this shit and trying to take away women's spaces and steal their resources. And last time I looked men weren't an oppressed class. So, not like women or gay people at all.

And "50 years ago it was gay people"? Tell that to the lesbians now being bullied and attacked by transwomen for being lesbian.

Which is only an issue if you believe that things only ever get better and never go backwards.

That's a really interesting point. I think for a lot of us born maybe post WW2 onwards and certainly upwards of the 1960s there has been an overall sense that things only get better (Blair told us that ).

Yes there have certainly been blips, a lot of the 70s and 80s weren't rosy but as someone born in the 70s I think I have held onto the belief until recently that of course the only way is upwards and progressive, especially where women were concerned.

I have wondered sometimes if being a 'Thatchers child' gave me slightly false ideas about the way of the world. Her politics aside I can remember being impressed as a child that in my country both the Prime-minister and Head of State were women.

Have people forgotten that the vote was taken from women and they were fighting to get it back and expand it?
When trans advocates lobbied to change gender dysphoria from a mental illness like body dysmorphia, anorexia and bulemia for example, and make it a medical condition that must be treated as the trans identified person chooses it became obvious that we are dealing with men and their fetishes.

People don't like change. They find new concepts scary. Allowing women to vote, accepting ethnic minorities, voting in gay marriage, acknowledging trans people as the gender they identify with. These things always take time. There will always be those that resist but thankfully we live in a progressive society and change is gradually adopted. Or the resisters get old and die.

Also I am a bit offended that being in favor of women's right to bodily autonomy and safety is being characterized as being on the wrong side of history. These are the sort of men who burned down the first women's loo that was built in London to prevent women having access to the public sphere.

Yanno, men have been waiting for the uppity women to die off for 100 generations and I am here to testify that it will never happen. We will not submit to male dominance any more than our grandmothers did.

They find new concepts scary

Male bodied people controlling and invading female spaces isn't a new concept though is it? It's one as old as time.

I agree with SomeRandomBird.

I have wondered that. I think that while the majority of women (globally) are treated as leas than second class citizens the trans thing is just not an issue that feminists need to engage with other than demonstrate its idiocy.

Also biology is a big factor to why I think we are on the right side of the debate.

southboundagain SomeRandomBird

What do women in Iran and Afghanistan think? They protested against the hijab and they lost.

I think it's incredibly important we look at this and consider our place in history and question whether we are right or wrong, bulldozing over everything and shouting No Debate is unhelpful to either side. I was going to say a good scientist always questions and is ready for new evidence and willing to change their opinion but a good scientist also knows their biology.

From that piece "the cultural fear at the time, that if women got the vote, they may then ask to be allowed to stand for Parliament and this is going to upset the whole gender order" is as relevant now as it was then, we got the vote, we became politicians and lawyers and members of the board and surgeons and upset the patriarchies idea of the whole gender order and they've been trying to push us back down ever since. This is just another manifestation of that, nothing has changed.

Oh, the number of times a day I peak trans at the moment, never, ever, thought I'd use the words 'the patriarchies'. I don't even know if I spelt it correctly.

I think there are two points here.

One is that it is equally likely people will look back in 40 years time on the transing of children on the back of a transactivist movement trying to piggy-back on gay rights, and see it as akin to the moment in the 1970s when PIE (the Paedophile Information Exchange) tried to piggy-back on gay rights.

The second thing is this naive Whiggish view of history which sees history as going somewhere and always progressing. It doesn't. (See Upstart's excellent point about women in Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s wearing miniskirts and no headscarves.) In the words of Alan Bennett's working-class character in The History Boys it's just one fucking thing after another (actually a very clever joke about historiography!)

Afghanistan and Iran are infinitely more complicated than just a protest against a hijab, and I also don't really see what the hijab has to do with your recognition of a person's gender status.

I think transgender advocacy will be viewed by history the way we view prefrontal lobotomy and Dr Mengele's experiments.

Head... desk...

The hijab is illustrative of the point that history doesn't always go forwards towards greater liberalism. Of course we all know it's more complicated than just the hijab alone, don't be bloody daft (or deliberately disingenuous). It's symbolic, okay? Women in Afghanistan used to be able to have careers, go out without a male chaperone, practice medicine, go to school... and go around unveiled. Now they can't. Human rights they used to have have now been removed from them.

The point Upstart and I are making with this example is that just because a group of people at a certain later time look back on how things used to be and say "they were different back then" doesn't mean things are automatically better at the later time - because there are concrete examples of things getting worse. Hence "being on the right side of history" is a painfully naive thing to say about history.

The second point though is that that the analogies transactivists make with women getting the vote, or with overcoming homophobia, should not be taken at face value. Women getting the vote did not take anything from men. Transactivism does take things from women (the right to ask for a medical practitioner of the same sex, the right not to be housed in prison with people of the opposite sex, the right of free association, the right to play sports against people of the same sex... the list is fucking endless). Also transactivism should not be compared to the fight for gay rights because a huge amount of transactivism is deeply homophobic (the cotton ceiling rape culture, the "trans-away-the-gay" approach to children who are non gender conforming).

Nope.

I also don't really see what the hijab has to do with your recognition of a person's gender status.

TIMs defining 'woman' by how you dress. TIMs describing being wolf-whistled and catcalled as affirmative and good. If such attitudes become protected in law, become mainstream, how long before women (not real, not cis, just women) feel obliged to cover up for self-preservation? If self-serving, self-aggrandising TIMs, with no true interest in sisterhood with women, get to define 'woman', how long before such dress codes become obligatory?

Sounds hysterical and melodramatic? Unbelievable? A few years ago would you have believed India Willoughby's hysteria and melodrama could ever get airtime and be treated seriously? A few years ago would you have believed the GRA would be considered? Could you even have conceived of the GRA?

I think transgender advocacy will be viewed by history the way we view prefrontal lobotomy and Dr Mengele's experiments.

Particularly WRT transing children!

Comparing paedophiles piggy backing on the gay movement to trans people piggy backing on the gay movement had one big difference - the majority of LGBs welcome and embrace trans people while paedophilia was never accepted or mainstream.

I also haven't heard of any parents, white or black, who seek out hormone blockers for their children lightly.

Particularly WRT transing children!

Exactly. History is rarely on the side of people who mutilate healthy bodies and sterilise children.

There's nothing good about this movement. It's promoting medicalisation and surgical alteration of healthy bodies. It's very pornified. It promotes restrictive gender stereotypes. It advocates removing yourself from those who know you and love you most if they express any concerns. It advocates lying to your family, doctors etc to get what you want. It feels like a cult to me.