Can we talk about the mental impact of being told the definition of woman is changing?

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

I’d like to hear specifically from women who feel their mental health has been in any way impacted by being told the definition of “woman” has or will change so that it either excludes them or includes men. Has anyone felt their mental health has been impacted by the “erasure” of woman.

I have long term therapy as part of treatment for PTSD and GAD both of which are centred around abuse from various men in my life. I had been able to control both to a manageable state thanks to this treatment until the past 3-6 months.
I am now unable to use places such as gyms, swimming pools, changing rooms and similar settings because of my fear of being in intimate spaces with unknown male bodied people. This is now starting to have a knock on impact for my work.

[Ereshkigal]

As I pointed out to you Vicky, this is not just about the GRA. It's about the effect experiencing the misogyny inherent in transgender politics and the shameful pandering to the trans lobby by service providers and organisations has on us personally. We need a place to talk about that. This is a support thread for women with anxiety, PTSD etc which is being made worse by a complete lack of concern or consideration for the rights and feelings of women. Have some fucking respect.

[Ereshkigal]

I am a former victim of coercive control in an abusive relationship and the gaslighting being done by and in the name of transactivists feels so similar to me that it's very difficult to cope with. Stop trying to silence women. It's not your place to tell us how to feel.

[SirVixofVixHall]

Agree Ereshkigal. I feel the same.

[thebewilderness]

Transgenders is not a noun.

If I use it as a noun transgenders, cross dressers, doctors, farriers, are all nouns.
This is a support thread for the women that people like you are abusing. And yet here you are harassing women over parts of speech.

[quixote9]

This thread has been pulling at me because, no, I can't honestly say the whole peak trans problem has affected my mental health. I'm lucky to have one of the easiest lives on the planet, so I'm fairly insulated from feeling effects. And yet.

The whole trans thing, by which I mean the whole my-feelings-are-worth-way-more-than-yours, boiled up out of nowhere for me some five or six years ago. Like everybody concerned with truth, justice, and the whole nine yards, I assumed I was on the side of discriminated-against trans people.

But it was freaky how discrimination against me was unimportant to them. I might be on their side but they didn't seem to be on mine. At first I thought it was a misunderstanding. Then it struck me like the standard ton of bricks that the mtf transwomen were behaving just like all the other full-of-themselves, selfish men of my experience. So much for being truly women, I said to myself but not in the discussion because there wasn't any point talking to them.

Time went by and it just got worse. The female side of things was nowhere (with a few shining exceptions like Miranda Yardley and similar transpeople). The strident mtf transactivists were everywhere.

Not female-to-male interestingly enough. Just male-to-female. That was another red flag for me. Something was going on here besides equal rights for all.

The last surprise in this journey for me was the speed with which the transactivist, identity politics view took over the general mindset. Say what? 50% of the population counts for nothing?

And that's when the general appeal of the transactivists' ideas finally got through to me. They're saying the differences between men and women are real. What more could patriarchy want? Of course everybody fell all over themselves to line up on that side. So much better than learning to value all humans for what they are and painfully dismantling bigotry stone by bloody stone.

That's when the rage hit. Again. Like that marcher's sign: "I can't believe it's 2018 and I'm still protesting this shit."

Except that women can occupy a wider variety of jobs, we're going backward so fast it makes my heart hurt. Porn is orders of magnitude worse. Whole sets of "progressive" people try to imagine that prostitution isn't buying people, aka slavery. For a while there, it was cool to pretend that rape was a joke. The sex-segregation of clothing is back to 1950s levels. (All skin tight on one side, all bags on the other.) The dawning understanding that maybe women (and men) shouldn't be in all these stupid suffocating gender boxes seems to have evaporated right back to 1850s levels.

So, yes, the whole trans thing has had an effect on me. Not mental health exactly. But huge rage. That we've been robbed of our progress. That we have to fight the same battle over and over and over and over and over again. Enough already.

[Ereshkigal]

But it was freaky how discrimination against me was unimportant to them. I might be on their side but they didn't seem to be on mine. At first I thought it was a misunderstanding. Then it struck me like the standard ton of bricks that the mtf transwomen were behaving just like all the other full-of-themselves, selfish men of my experience.

YY. Agree this is quite a realisation when it hits.

[Ereshkigal]

So, yes, the whole trans thing has had an effect on me. Not mental health exactly. But huge rage. That we've been robbed of our progress. That we have to fight the same battle over and over and over and over and over again. Enough already.

YY. Well said. It is utterly rage-making.

[ChattyLion]

Yes the prospect of legal self ID and a lot of the current measures including the inadequacy of Equality Act provisions for protecting single sex spaces and opportunities makes me very anxious for women and for children in terms of our permanently compromising our safety and opportunities. Men can and will take advantages for bad reasons.

I feel very anxious for young people who are being ‘affirmed’ with hormones drugs binding and surgeries instead of being offered appropriate psychological support. We know that a large proportion will detransition so why are permanent measures allowed?

I already have to share a (women’s-labelled) unadapted toilet at work with male bodied people (no idea if they have a GRC, no consultation with staff or information given ) who I would say have an AGP type presentation which makes me feel uncomfortable and undermined as a woman at work.
No privacy, no dignity, no rights to complain is given to women staff. I am not even safe to discuss this with other colleagues in case I am accused of bullying those individuals. This definitely affects my mental health at work.

[BiologyIsReal]

Yes I have read the GRA consultation, there was nothing in it about the GRA changes giving men the right to enter womens' safe spaces.

Sarah: you are not doing yourself any favours by pretending to be so stupid that you don't understand.

Under self ID those trans women who insist they are women will be able to enter women's safe spaces because they have self ID as women. Real women will be able to do nothing about it.

[Datun]

I am really concerned that people's mental health is being undermined by allowing fear to over take this debate rather than actually looking at the consequences of any change

Ok. So let's talk about the people on this very thread. We have had our speech curtailed, our tone moderated and our vocabulary limited. All of us.

We have watched men come on here and deliberately say the most distressing and hurtful things they can, in order to goad women into a reaction.

We have, in real time, watched infertile women type that they are in tears over being compared to men who are hopping mad that they can't gestate.

We have been reported for stating facts and refusing to lie. Taken to its logical conclusion we are being punished for not being nice, which is another way of saying failure to comply with men's damaging demands.

That's just here, on these threads. On Mumsnet alone.

I really don't know why you continue to pretend that real harm is not being perpetrated. It's making you look manipulative and deceitful.

[Ereshkigal]

https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/transphobes-as-victims/

Here's an example of the callousness of TRAs. Clare read this thread and decided to take the piss out of every single one of us. This thread is a reaction to coercive control and women being bullied and silenced. You can stop doing that Clare. I can't make you a woman however much you want to be one. Sorry.

Beware those who know they are righteous.

Indeed.

[FloralBunting]

Pah. Didn't grow up in a fundamentalist church, but ta for pretending to give a shit while you just dismiss the issues in the thread.
Hint: It's not about 'We feel worse than you do'. It's about one set of people denying reality and feeling upset when reality is referenced, and the other set of people being forced to lie and accommodate a class of human who have done them significant damage.

There is no moral equivalence there.

[Ereshkigal]

Well said Floral.

[Datun]

Ugh. How anyone can take the piss out of every woman on here, the reasons for their PTSD and their distress at the hands of men, and then say yes I totally get it.

Every single time they put pen to paper they expose themselves. Relentlessly. Blindingly.

Our solution to this is leave us alone, please.

We need nothing from trans people.

Unfortunately, they cannot say the same.

As a wise woman said, they need us in order to exist. I, an adult human female, can exist as a concept, without any reference to men or transwomen.

They cannot.

[SirVixofVixHall]

Agree Datun and Floral. Like a crappy cover band need the Beatles.

[RedSaidBread]

I write this as a woman who has direct experience with transgender issues from many sides, stretching back 20 years. Close people, people I have known, loved, procreated with even. Not coming here having had my 'hysteria' piqued by some strident meanies.

What I've found has upset me has been being gaslighted and feeling forced to accommodate an ever-changing array of issues, needs, wants and desires - with no consultation and without seeming to consider that it might present any kind of difficulty in several ways, including cognitively. That even having an issue or a difficulty in accepting certain things related to this subject must mean I am a terrible person.

I've also found that in recent years what has upset me has been the aggression and tone and demands of many people I know who seem to think that respect, validation, listening and support is only a one-way street and I should offer it on demand, without question lest I be called a bigot.

I'm also a little upset about spending most of my life overcoming the ingrained assumptions about women and what it meant for me to be one, only to discover just as I come to terms with all that I'm being told actually I'm wrong and I don't experience things the way I do - or it doesn't matter...by people who often haven't been a woman for very long (no matter how long they have told me they have felt that way.)

It's especially galling when it has happened from people who were formally men and caused me gender-related issues AS men, who are now causing me gender-related issues as women. Except now I'm not allowed to say 'ouch' because my pain is transphobic.

Yea, stuff like that. Add it to the general nastiness, the aggressiveness, the lack of compassion and feeling gaslit and whatever I do it's not good enough and the goalposts will be moved - very triggering for previous abuse experience. From men. Who are now women.

That sort of fucks my mental health up a bit. But you know, I KOKO, try to be 'nice' try to process my hurt and confusion and anger, be a good girl. Do all the shitwork related to that. And in return, I am not attacked too much.

So really I guess i should be grateful.

[SheCameToStay]

It feels good to do something positive for women and girls. I have joined my local Soroptimists as a result of all the bullshit online.

[ChattyLion]

to everyone affected by the issues discussed on this thread.

[bd67th]

See the BACP threads for context. (main thread and accidental doppelganger thread)

I'm a mental health patient (NOT a "service user", I'm ill and under medical supervision for that illness and that makes me a PATIENT) and have been since childhood. When I change medication dose or type, I am at a high risk of suicide and it's common to hospitalise a patient during a meds change for that reason. It's bad enough knowing that, should I find myself a psychiatric in-patient, I may be sharing sleeping and showering accommodation with a male on a "female" ward. Now I find that the leading trade body for some of the HCPs I might be treated by as an in- or out-patient are

1. endorsing regressive harmful stereotypes about gender roles that I have spent my whole life trying to escape from and are a major contributor to my depression*, and
   
2. have redefined woman in such a way that I can no longer feel confident framing my sexual assault history as sex-based oppression during therapy.
   
   The mental health of sexually-assaulted women is discarded for the sake of woke points, including our access to healthcare.
   
   
   

• Being sexually assaulted and bullied because you don't want to play at house with the other girls but would rather play with lego and train sets will do that to you.

[bd67th]

Can't help but notice that that Flourish hatchet piece didn't once mention Aunt Lydia's abuse testimony. It's almost like Flourish doesn't have an answer that can stand up to such an appalling act of male violence and its aftermath.

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

I need to talk further about this.

My mental health is being so badly impacted by this. I am currently under the community mental health team purely because this situation has impacted me so terribly.

However I cannot stop on this fight. I would sooner die than give up this fight.

This is a WAR ON WOMEN.

[LemonJello]

Cath

Yes it is a war on women. But you are not responsible for holding the front line by yourself 🤝

You must look after yourself and other women will hold the fort while you do.

One thing I wondered about that might be helpful for people feeling overwhelmed by this (myself included) is if some kind soul would do a round up thread with just the key nuggets of each days developments.

There are so many new issues and new threads every day it is overwhelming and easy to feel swamped and that you are missing important things.

If there was a round up thread just used to highlight the major developments, without any discussion but maybe with links to discussion threads, this would enable people to stay in the loop without having to wade through a volume of distressing information.

I can’t commit to doing a regular round up but I would start the thread if others think this would be helpful.

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

I appreciate that thread, thank you.

I can’t however take time away from this. It is my first and last thought of every day. I will talk to every person I know or meet about it. I’ll keep going at this now even if it kills me.
I will not let my daughters face this.

[VickyEadie]

It is my first and last thought of every day.

Me too. And the crippling anxiety which forced me out of my high-stress job 11 years ago has come back with a vengeance, but this time, hello chest pains.

The only thing that keeps me sane is taking to women on here.

[lunarain]

Dear women survivors. I am from FOVAS. fovas.wordpress.com You may have seen our blog piece - a survivors open letter on women only spaces. We are asking survivors to submit their stories if anyone wants your story on our blog or to write a blog piece about this? You can submit them anonymously