Confused.

[NiceFace]

Have name changed.

After seeing all the comments on twitter after PP on this morning I'm seriously starting to question my GC views. It seems like common sense to me but when so many disagree and call us bigots... ?

Could we be wrong?

I can't fathom it but surely the majority of people should have the intelligence to see what we do?

We are not wrong!

There are those who don't see, and there are those who turn away because they don't want to see. Because if they looked and saw and understood they would have to speak and act, and what they do see is the cost attached to that.

They are afraid, and rightly so, of the vilification, the abuse that those who speak out receive. That's why we need to stand together, we need to keep on speaking and acting. We can and are influencing those who didn't see it before and we can and are encouraging those who were too frightened to see it.

Thank you for the reply. I hate feeling this way, I feel like I'm letting the side down.

Your first paragraph reminds me of Plato's Cave 😁 excellent. Thanks.

Get them to read the actual consultation. Its a lot more convincing once you can see what is actually being pushed.

Many years ago I read about the experiments done on conformity. You've probably heard of them too. They got a group of people together and showed them lines of differing lengths. Everyone in the group, apart from one, were acting and they all said that the lines were all the same length. Very often, the one person who wasn't in on it, ended up agreeing with the others and also said that the lines were all the same, even though they could see that they weren't.

For many years I didn't really understand the application of that to real life. I do now. It's really hard to be the one person who says out loud what they can see when everyone else is denying it.

It seems to me that for some people, conformity must be easier. But for me, and fortunately, for so many women here, conformity is incredibly hard because it entails a loss of integrity and a loss of self.

It’s what women do - we speak up and ask for consideration and get shouted down. Rather than going, “hang on, I have a point here”, we assume we must be wrong because everyone else is so upset. So we doubt ourselves and keep silent to keep the peace.

I don’t think anyone here denies that trans people have any less right to safe and happy lives than any of us.

All GC women are asking is for the needs of women and girls to be taken into account, and that men not colonise our hard-won spaces.

For me, the big issues are what amounts to medical experiments on children and the certainty that male predators will use the ease of self ID to cause harm.

Beyond that we have enormous social problems with a population willing to forgo science for fantasy. With the increase in misogyny rage against women - to the point where the category of women is colonised by men.

And the narrowing of gender categories to stereotypes so that people believe the only way of expressing themselves is in a simulacrum of the opposite sex.

I suspect that the social context is driving the mutilation of children and invasion of women’s spaces, but we’re not allowed to talk about it.

NiceFace don't mistake online spaces for accurate reflections of population views. 82% of the UK population rejects self-id. There hasn't been a single poll that showed a majority supporting it. Strikingly, even the completely woke university crowd seems to have limits. That poll on pronoun badges only came to people's attention after it finished, so neither side could game it. And still over 80% rejected the pronoun badge idea.

Whatever your views may be of Posie (and there is a large number to chose from) what seems to be the problem is that here's a woman who simply doesn't give a fuck. She has facts, she has the words to convey those facts and she behaves gender-non-conforming by not letting others guilt her into feeling sorry for her opponents. Or abandon reason for the sake of being liked.

We are so not wrong!

If you think about how the lives of women and girls will be in the future if we don't fight this now and then think about how your life might be if, say, the suffragists had worried that maybe they were "wrong"....

There will always be twatters on twitter and other social media calling us names but, for me, I just think of how I want the world to be for my granddaughter...her daughters and granddaughters.... And that's what I'm fighting for. I couldn't give a fuck about contemporary public opinion, quite frankly.
It's certainly not about to change my mind.....

I find it interesting how many concerned "maybe we are wrong" / "do you ever worry we are wrong" posts are plopping up recently.

Plop

It's ok, it's a sign of strength in a debate to acknowledge doubts and vulnerabilities. It's much more dangerous if everyone walked in lockstep, it's perfectly healthy to examine your thoughts and arguments. I also believe women are socialized to look for consensus so it can be stressful when we realize that may not be possible.

What helps me see the clarity of the situation and feel comfortable with my POV is when people deny objective reality and science. When your opponent is doing that it is much easier to see the shallowness of their argument and feel comfortable with where we stand.