AIBU to think that life was easier before I realised the emperor was naked?

[ProfessionalBarren]

Ok I know this isn’t AIBU does anyone else sometimes wish that they hadn’t had their eyes opened to how insane the whole trans ideology is? It was so much easier when I could just nod along with the media coverage and feel sorry for the poor people trapped in the wrong bodies. I felt compassionate and ‘liberal’, both qualities I really value.

Since realising how utterly bananas the whole premise is and the damage it does to women and children I’m genuinely stressed out by it all. I’m gobsmacked by the science denying and furious with the silencing. I’m also really scared for the future of trans children subjected to irreversible medicalised interventions. And the venom aimed at gender critical people is relentless. It’s made easier by being absolutely sure that this is the “right side of history” but yeah, life was easier before, and I kind of blame you lovely lot

I move dramatically between hope and despair about it all, but also without meaning to sound like a ponce, my heart is full of love for you all. I appreciate all the people, mainly women, talking it through, gathering and collating evidence, pulling in references, spreading the word, creating resources, taking risks, speaking in public - all for free - all in your own time. And I know this is poncey again, but you are doing it for love - of humanity, women, children, truth, justice, peace, freedom, equality - all the noblest of motivations. When I think about it I find it overwhelming - the feeling of a full-to-overflowing heart.

But as to wishing i could unsee it all, it is all so bloody horrific. Someone said in either the WPATH thread or the Susie Green one, that TRAs seem to think people are made of lego - you can break down the bits of one persons body and stick them in someone else- just shove a womb in a bloke.

It's all so bloody Dr Frankenstein I am appalled and horrifed there are people who think such twisted things are a great idea.

I wonder how far these people will take it? They wont be stopping at taking the reproductive systems out of living teen girls to implant them in middle age males. What we've learned from Ed Gein there is clearly a market for flaying women for a male to crawl inside our skin. How about that? 'Full skin, breasts and vulva transplant' for a male? How about going the whole hog and putting a male brain inside a woman's head? Then they could feel truly 'cis'. I bet there are psychopath surgeons itching to start doing the experiments and accidentaly destroying people in the process 'whoops!'. The Nazi scientists weren't just 'of their time' - the same cold psychopaths exist today but conditions aren't right for them to practice.

There are so many horror films that you can use to describe all this - Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Dr Frankenstein, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho....

I always thought those films were far-fetched fantasy for the purposes of entertainment, not that there was actual truth in them.

However I can't shake this feeling that all this free stuff all you lot are doing for the love of your hearts is going to win. It's powerful.

I'm in this category too.

I'm struggling with trying to decide what to tell friends, how much to tell them, whether this is something to end an old friendship over or not. I have friends who will proudly say "unfriend me on social media and never talk to me again if you voted for X political party!" and as far as I'm concerned, supporting TRA ideology is as damaging to women as voting for an opposing party would be to someone deeply invested in whatever political issue, but I haven't taken the step of asking 99% of my friends to never speak to me again.

'Ignorance is bliss' - truer than ever.

The situation in Oxford with Jenni Murray's harrassment by students should really be shared!

This is the lecture she has being touring with about her book. It's really worth listening to the specific reasons that led to her writing it.

'Dame Jenni's talk is a polite yet passionate fingers up to history’s attempts to silence women, on the very week Millicent Fawcett’s statue was unveiled on parliament square.

Jenni began writing her a book ‘A History of Britain in 21 Women’ in 2015 after learning that the women’s movement might be erased from the A level history curriculum.

Her lecture is a whirlwind tour of some of the books more colourful characters – from Boadicea to the Iron Lady, Elizabeth I to Ethel Smith, featuring personal anecdotes (interviewing Thatcher after her deposition) and offering fascinating insight into some of suffrage’s lesser known stories (suffragette cricket lessons for more accomplished brick throwing).'

Today's articles:
Times
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woman-s-hour-host-accused-of-transphobia-pulls-out-of-oxford-talk-k58pmbcgb?shareToken=05dedf9ff8b21cf1eaa21b75da46fbbd

Spectator:
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/even-oxford-university-cant-save-jenni-murray-from-the-transgender-activist-mob/

Telegraph:
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/11/07/jenni-murray-pulls-oxford-talk-students-try-no-platform-transphobic/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3416980-Oxford-students-going-after-Jenni-Murray-again

I’ve discovered I’m actually for women’s liberation, not equality. Liberation from life under the patriarchy - not seeking equality within its systems.

Me too.

bigkite glad I'm not the only one to have spotted that. I thought I was going nuts for a while but it really is everywhere. Mind, I did read one this week that I thought was going down the TRA route only to find it was "why can't a boy dance and a girl fight, it doesn't change who they are?". I was delighted to see that! Still concerned the sequel may go a different way, though.

It's possible that certain postcard sized flyers may have lodged in certain novels towards the end of the consultation...

Yes oh and I just thought of the emperors new clothes yesterday. Such a weird twist in this life that the mass media and many ordinary folk think it’s all so great.
Did anyone see that guy in the news from the Netherlands who is 69 and has asked the courts to change his age to 20 years younger so he can get better jobs and a better dating profile? He believes he is right in asking this. The courts have said we can’t just delete 20 years of your life to legally change this for him. However we now live in an age where we can legally change the fact that a baby, born a girl. can by age 10 take medication and have surgery to become a boy.

Life is much easier with your head in the sand. But it's not an attractive stance. I've never known such a fearful time, seen so much I took for granted being dismantled while, curiously, most of those around me don't know about it. One friend told me she thinks it may be 'fake news'. One daughter is refusing to talk about it at all, she so disagrees with me. And it is painful to me that I brought her up and she thinks like that. How has that happened? She told me that it's ok for men to be in women's refuges as the women in them are only frightened of the man who attacked them, not other men. She has several degrees: how can she think so uncritically? And so I take the blame for this, as so much else. But I salute you all.

I can't emphasise enough what a relief it's been to find like minded people here and in real life to discuss all of this.

I'm middle aged and I thought I knew about misogyny, but I also thought we'd been making progress (all be it slowly), however I have to agree with pps who've said that one of the horrifying side effects of all this is being shown so clearly just how much women are hated and how little it takes for men to put the boot in when given the chance.
Adherence to the TRAs dogma lets them do just that and have a clear conscience - they identify as good right thinkers and so they must be.

And yes, I am now for women's liberation!

I used to think that Germaine Greer was being ridiculous when she said that women have very little idea of how much men hate them. But I absolutely get it now. Things haven’t moved on anywhere near as much as I’d thought they had. Something else I wish I could unsee sometimes but it’s real and it matters.

Ughhh I know! I took the blue pill!
I’ve had a mental break away from it all. Then my mate told me about her newly come out cross dressing window cleaner today, who now thinks he is a lesbian, but only part time, and he ONLY uses the women’s locker room when he is dressed as a women, oh and he says he gets loads of action from hetro women, (like all the other lesbians of course.) and that blue pill just came right up and I spat it out. No going back.

The blue pill Carrots😂 that’s great.

Trans ideology hurt me so much. I diminished and destroyed myself for them and I will never get back those years. I'm slowly coming to terms with that. So no, I don't wish the emperor had his clothes back on, because he would stand behind me and grind on my ass and say 'I'm not doing anything to you, I'm standing on the other side of the room and I'm wearing clothes, what is the problem'.

Express your compassion and liberalism towards women and girls. Remember they are fully human and as deserving of your love and respect as any other person. Whenever I waver, I remind myself of that. I was guilty of terrible double standards in my compassion for so long. You don't have to give them more, just the same amount. Think about how you would respond to someone, not a trans person, making the same arguments and how you would respond.

When I did this, I realised these things:

Women and girls don't beg me to 'be nicer' or say 'we just want to pee in peace' or bleat about their rates of mental illness and the extent to which they are suicidal or self-harming.

Women and girls have never demanded the 'human right' to 'be believed' (gods, that Stonewall video makes me SO ANGRY).

Women and girls don't shout that people are trying to 'erase them out of existence' or 'take away their basic human rights'.

Whenever I see a women or girl defending trans rights, I imagine them flipped and see if I can imagine the same; a trans person, shouting about the pain that women and girls go through, and I realise I have never seen it happen.

Whenever someone tells me about how much trans-feminists have done for women and girls, I imagine them telling a trans-rights activist how much 'cis'-feminists have done for transwomen and realise I will never see it happen.

I flipped everything and I hand on heart can say it helped me see clearly that I didn't care enough about female feelings and that I never had. I was absolutely ashamed. I remind myself, each and every day, that women and girls have feelings, women and girls have a 'lived experience', women and girls have lives - that are just as vivid, valuable, and worthy as any trans person does.

Trans 'women' claim all the time that 'cis' women are respected in 'who they are' but that's utter bollocks. It's just a damn lie. 'Who we are' is used as a stick to beat us and now, to tell us that it's a privilege too? Honestly damn anyone who says that and the horse he rode in on. I'm done with being gaslit by males, and it doesn't matter what that male is wearing and what that male calls himself. I'm not having it any more.

silentcrow no it does seem to be everywhere - though I love the idea of flyers being put in books.

The Orville - Seth MacFarlane- start trek type series had an episode where male species had a rare girl born and crew try and change mind about gender reassignment - one Dad's mind is change not by obvious methods but by showing him Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and letting him make connections to his situation - it's done in way that's funny in line with the show but you see the point.

I guess I'm trying to do the same - role models in areas traditionally dominated by other sex - changes over time different roles in society and fashions and science - sci-fi - that poses questions all in everyday background and letting them reach conclusions.

I’m basically “Rudolphing” and some of the questions and observations DD1 13 is coming out suggest it’s having a positive effect.

I supposed books, where there is an unquestioning acceptance of sexist stereotypes and causal unquestioning acceptance of trans ideology and it's often seem to be done in a no big deal way, is jumping out at me and then I’m realising target audience is my older two children.

What riles me, is that if 'men' want to be 'women', why can't they want to be strong women who can stand a bit of robust debate rather than the 'stereotypical' snowflake women who might be hurt if we breathed a hint of disagreement on them?

Yes, yes, yes! Wish I could bury my head in the sand about this acne not know about it or wish I was a Handmaiden blithely spouting TWAW to be nice and "inclusive" instead of the discomfort and anger that goes with actually knowing and thinking about this! Except now I do know, I can't really wish that as I'd be part of the problem and I really need to fight against this nonsense... I thought I was angry and upset about Brexit, turns out that was nothing...!

@maniacmagpie you are so, so right. I am just sick to death of transwomen tellling ME how awful it is to be them, how painful transition is and then watch all my male friends say sympathetically 'you poor dear,how horrible for you'. I want to shout at them 'how about us REAL women? How about your mysogeny towards US?' But, of course, it's men supporting men. Again.

I think we're sleep walking towards the erasure of real women. Soon, our only choice will be to stand in line behind a man in a dress, or to wrap ourselves in a shapeless black dress and walk behind a man.

I'm surrounded by "but this young girl I know I is a Transman right now, he's, sorry I mean she's, no he's had a rotten time, I just want the best for her until she works it out so where's the harm in TWs are women"

Well there's the harm love, you're not talking about men and women except you are, you just changed the words. Still focused on mens mantra but talking about young womens misery

Really wish I was looking at gold robes and embroidery rather than the usual important men and the miserable women being ignored unless useful

Yes, a lot of the realisations have been depressing. The authoritarianism and silencing. Being called a bigot for the first time in my life, despite my views not actually changing (I remember reading Julie Bindel years ago on this and thinking - well, yeah? We all get this, right? ). Transpires that all along I prob wasn't as "libfem" as I thought I was!

What did it was the shock of realising what's actually being said and supported uncritically. By "my' side. And that even educated people can be really really stupid.

But it's also crystallised and confirmed a lot of my personal values and the thoughts I'd been having for long while regarding the current problems on the left in particular. That for a lot of people it's just an identity about what tribe you're in, where ideology overrides reality, no critical thought. The cognitive dissonance has been astonishing.

But it's been heartening to hear so many sensible voices It's going to be tough, but we'll win this..

maniacmagpie - what you said really hit home with me, & brought tears to my eyes. Particularly:

Women and girls don't beg me to 'be nicer' or say 'we just want to pee in peace' or bleat about their rates of mental illness and the extent to which they are suicidal or self-harming.

Women and girls have never demanded the 'human right' to 'be believed' (gods, that Stonewall video makes me SO ANGRY).

Women and girls don't shout that people are trying to 'erase them out of existence' or 'take away their basic human rights'.

All this shrieking by trans folk about their rates of mental illness, self-harming & suicidality has always struck me as totally bizarre. And beside the point.

Until now, populations with high rates of mental illness & self-harming usually have been seen as sick. That's not to diminish their humanity: mentally-ill people are human & so have human rights; but they're still sick. The TR movement, however, contends that trans people's proclivity for mental illness, self-harming & suicidality somehow makes them morally superior & confers upon them special/extra rights. Further, it frees trans people from having to mount rational, logical, sustainable arguments for their cause. They are given license to simply shriek, claim & demand.

I'm not articulating this well. But I can't imagine civil rights would've advanced much if figures like Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela & Larry Kramer had taken the position, "accede to our demands, or we'll harm & kill ourselves." The misogynists, racists/white supremacists & homophobes of yore would've said, "Fine. Harm & kill yourselves then. We don't care! In fact, it's what we'd prefer. Good riddance."

bigkite agreed - I really liked that ep of Orville (though I was on pins all the way through!), the ending was clever and unexpected. I need to catch up and see where the arc's gone. I hear they're getting a second season so there may be more room to explore the topic.

On fiction, I am seriously worried about YA and have been for the last year or so. One particular publisher (who I loved for some really smart books) seems to have gone full kool-aid with the adoption of a certain author and they're now all over the place writing teenage girls like they have any damn idea what it's like. Actually I would love to do some discussion/reviewing/recommendations around this topic (without derailing this thread!) - there are some great YA books out there that don't have this influence and don't feel the need to be "inclusive" for the sake of it, but they're being buried by the fad. At the very least we need to be presenting an alternate viewpoint and not allowing women's voices to be drowned out. Books about lesbian and bi teens are tough to find, and I'm yet to come across a detransitioner's voice. Likewise I'm not aware of these voices on TV or YouTube, but that may just be because books are my particular world.

It may also amuse you to know that those books that might just have been leafleted a few weeks ago have not actually been sold despite being on prominent display...I would be very interested to see some sales figures.

Actually I would love to do some discussion/reviewing/recommendations around this topic (without derailing this thread!) - there are some great YA books out there that don't have this influence

It would be useful - I'm already making note of books as and when they get mentioned on here - both for me and the children.

It may also amuse you to know that those books that might just have been leafleted a few weeks ago have not actually been sold despite being on prominent display...I would be very interested to see some sales figures.

Book shop sales must be being hit by alternative sources amazon, The book people and supermarkets, and alternatives like audio of kindle sales. It’s rare we actually buy books form a physical book shop so that might be playing a part.

Though figures would be interesting as I wonder how big a market it is and how many sales are to people like me outside the supposed age range.

Certainly at this age I was being pushed towards classics - not just usual one Sci and horror classics and books my parents had loved – Agatha Christie and Jane Eyre – as well as influence by TV programs James Herriot books and Cadfael, Hitch Hikers guide to galaxy, Jeeves and Wooster. Both DH and I are getting books we liked for them in various formats as well many still being on our shelves and thus available for them.

I also think there less reading going on in this age group but yes I do wonder if the marketed books just aren't appealing either to youth market or people buying books for them.