Women's mental health is being damaged by our forced extinction.

[Womantheonlykind]

I just watched the parliamentary debate.

I am sick of the manipulative fraud, the suicide myth (lie lie lie) and TRA mental health tropes being pushed as a reason to remove women's identity and legal rights. Why is no one quoting the NHS statement on this?

What about our mental health?

I am unable to see an unconflicted peaceful future with me in it at the moment. The more I hear from this debate and the more I see incredibly valid objection to the erasure of women's identity crushed under the heel of the "be nice or be punished" boot together with the dismissal of ongoing violence by men (often in the guise of women) as irrelevant the harder I find it to cope.

The reality of being forced by my government to be complicit to some fantasy that goes against every scientific fact in my head is damaging to my mental health. The instant dismissal of all truthful data collection fries my logic chip.

The way child abuse is being legitimised and has been rushpushed into government health, social and education policy in less than a decade WITH NO ETHICAL EXAMINATION OR STUDY gives me nightmares and makes me sick to my stomach on a daily basis.

I am so angry, so distraught, so appalled that the total class erasure of women is expected to continue unnoticed and unimpeded. I know we are all doing our bit, I feel it is too late, the rug has been pulled from under us.

For me personally this has absolutely devastated me, my world view and self view is irreparably damaged.

Thank you for restoring this thread. Reading back through it I am so sad that it was deemed unfit for MN - glad you’ve had a rethink as there are some heartbreaking testimonies and some excellent links. Sure there are some comments that might have been deemed to overstep the mark and that I wouldn’t personally say but wholesale deletion was wrong and I’m glad you’ve seen that. We all know the ‘rules’ now.

Glad to see this back up. Yes our mental health is suffering through all this shit, and MN should not be contributing by silencing those of us on these boards. We deserve the right to discuss our pain without males being offended. It’s got nothing to do with them or their feelings, except insofar as they are the perpetrators.

@Angryresister

Glad to see this back up. Yes our mental health is suffering through all this shit, and MN should not be contributing by silencing those of us on these boards. We deserve the right to discuss our pain without males being offended. It’s got nothing to do with them or their feelings, except insofar as they are the perpetrators.

This. A thousand times this.

I have two beautiful children in my life (one a godson) who are impacted by their confusion over identity. One is 18 and wants to take hormones and possibly surgery. I feel he has been fed grave health misinformation and I think he's perfect the way he his - healthy and beautiful. Whenever I speak about him the way he has asked us to, I feel like I'm letting him down because we all know it's a lie, but yet we are socially conditioned to perpetuate it. His loving and open-minded family all feel the same way but we are helpless. I make jokes about some things but it's to cover the fear and pain that we've let down a generation of our children.

What I hate is that so much of our precious energy is being used up pointing out biological reality when there are so many other issues that need our attention. We're running just to stand still right now because of trans while, for example, violent porn mushrooms around us.

I feel terribly angry about it all too OP

@Angryresister

Glad to see this back up. Yes our mental health is suffering through all this shit, and MN should not be contributing by silencing those of us on these boards. We deserve the right to discuss our pain without males being offended. It’s got nothing to do with them or their feelings, except insofar as they are the perpetrators.

This exactly. Sick of not having a safe space.

@Antibles

What I hate is that so much of our precious energy is being used up pointing out biological reality when there are so many other issues that need our attention. We're running just to stand still right now because of trans while, for example, violent porn mushrooms around us.

I feel terribly angry about it all too OP

This also, its exhausting having to battle constantly with this absolute travesty to our rights. Men are NOT women ffs.

History shows that some terrible regimes have used the systematic manipulation of children and young people to further their malign aims, through using their natural naivety and youthful passion. It’s a very cynical and damaging approach to get what you want politically.

Glad that the thread is back. It was terribly ironic that MN wanted to erase a thread about the erasure of women and bad mental health...after 2 years.

@TheChampagneGalop

Glad that the thread is back. It was terribly ironic that MN wanted to erase a thread about the erasure of women and bad mental health...after 2 years.

Exactly. You couldn't make it up.

I feel exactly the same, @Womantheonlykind - I am really struggling with the effect this is having on my mental health.

@Stonecrop

History shows that some terrible regimes have used the systematic manipulation of children and young people to further their malign aims, through using their natural naivety and youthful passion. It’s a very cynical and damaging approach to get what you want politically.

Yes. I agree. Usurping the same language of legitimately oppressed groups to fight for mens rights (often white men) because it sounds like civil rights.

Citiesof bismuth: My mental health has suffered a great deal due to this attack on my group. Truth, observable facts and accuracy are what keep me sane. ... if I'm faced with fakery I feel frightened, if I'm asked to lie I can't.

I sympathise, Cities, and I have some of the same feelings although not autistic. I hate hearing lies and I feel terribly stressed if I’m backed into a corner and have to either lie or get into an argument that I haven’t chosen. I feel a bit dirty every time I call someone ‘they’ when I know what sex they are.

to you and everyone trying to stay sane under this tyranny. We all have each other.

You are not alone

I have found this hugely helpful

The gaslighting reminds me of being in an abusive relationship. And it makes me furious.

I don't want to be compelled to lie, for own mental health.

@Cocothefirst

The gaslighting reminds me of being in an abusive relationship. And it makes me furious.

I don't want to be compelled to lie, for own mental health.

Yes I notice many tactics that abusers use in relationships used towards women as a group. It can be seriously triggering sometimes.

I’ve always felt that way anyways. So it isn’t a direct change for me and not something I’ve found surprising or unexpected or shocking the way I see friends respond.

But I’ve always felt that way about me within my world, I’ve always viewed other women as having mire rights, safer lives. And although I felt that way within my world I think I had got to the stage of accepting it might be my misconception as a survivor, my permanent hyper vigilance, and not necessarily representative of reality. Now I’m back to thinking I was right all along, and seeing others beginning to perceive the world I do is terrifying, although somewhat validating in a strange way (and I apologise for that to anyone who finds that offensive or insensitive).

I regret having children because of this. I feel horribly guilty for bringing them into this mess when I knew I never let go of feeling it was this mess at my core, I feel like I have betrayed them just by having them.

It dramatically affects women’s mh. Isn’t that partly the point? To erradicate any strength we have so we roll over and self exterminate. Or we realise how vulnerable we are so seek protection of men - the same way women stick with less than ideal men in dystopian films?

I think though the reality is that if our legal rights protections can be wiped out so easily they were never really ours in the first place. We thought they were, we were told they were, we accepted that fact and behaved as such (although I never really have connected to that) but reality is we were granted them by men who have power and they exercise their power over us by taking them back just because they feel like it.

I think I take some comfort from other women taking off the blinders about that. (And I’m sorry too for that, but that’s how I feels).

Within psychological studies on conformity there was found to be a boomerang effect. Where when greater pressure and cruelty was applied to those commanded to obey they opposite of the expected increase in obedience was seen, especially in situations where freedoms were violated. And especially where those victimised were able to find support from others resisting conformity. I guess I hope somewhat that’s what’s happening now, even if just at the start of it. That’s how some consentration camp survivors resisted obedience, how Nelson Mandela changed apartheid, so the small minority can cause real change despite having no power, no rights. I’ve yet to come across examples where the groups doing so aren’t at least partly men, which I think speaks to how little power women anywhere have. I might be wrong, I’m by far an expert, it just feels that way.

Normal people have no idea what is actually going on. This will all end very swiftly when they find out the outragous lie of it all.

Step away from the toxicity and take care of yourself.

It's heartbreaking how little care and attention is paid to female mental health.

I think it links back to our social role as support humans. We're not supposed to malfunction, and if we do, we're supposed to do it in a way that doesn't impact on the real humans (men).

It's easier for men (and women who are strongly tied to their identity as support humans for men) to deny the impact on our mental health by calling us hysterical or hyperbolic. It's a way of protecting themselves from having to consider us as individuals, not functions.

One of the ways I know we don't live in a post feminist world is by observing the way, on this issue, male emotion and mental health is taken very seriously and respectfully by 'progressives' at the same time as discussion of the cost of catering to males on women's mental health is ridiculed.

Plenty normal people know double.

I talk about it plenty in real life and explain it to everyone from teachers to kids parents. They get it clearly, then stick their heads back in the sand. I’ve yet to meet anyone in real life who doesn’t get it even if I’m the first person explaining it, outside of teenagers and students, I just see lots of people brushing it aside because it’s too terrifying to face.

(I’m sorry in advance because I don’t mean this to be insensitive or aggressive) but I don’t get why everyone vendors themselves in real life. If your son was advocating for rape to be legal would you simply shut up to maintain that relationship? At the expense of your daughters? Would you accept family members who join the KKK and just shut up? Would you be silent at work if your boss went around preaching homophobia? Women routinely stand up and fight for causes that aren’t ours, we organise and support and publicly voice our loyalty to plenty other causes that could make us face violence, why not when the cause is us?? It’s the cliche about how people can agree to disagree about politics when they have the luxuary of our lives not being at risk. We no longer (never have had really) that luxuary any more. If ever there was a reason to speak up and draw boundaries it’s now. Not doing so might give you some false sense of protection from violence now but it’s just delaying what will be much much worse violence if we don’t fight back now. This is war, our very lives at risk as are our daughters, heads in the sand doesn’t save us.

for you, Ffffs (sorry if I have the number of Fs wrong!

Yours is an extremely important post, and I think you get to the heart of it with this:

I think though the reality is that if our legal rights protections can be wiped out so easily they were never really ours in the first place

I’m not a woman who grew up thinking women had achieved full citizenship anywhere in the world, but even so I thought that we were on the right track and would proceed in the same direction. Watching rights our grandmothers won rolled back now, as my daughters go through childhood, has taken my breath away at times—and steeled my determination. Solidarity to all my sisters.

From your second post,

They get it clearly, then stick their heads back in the sand.

I thought immediately of Dworkin:

Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.

I think my number of fffs are growing Spinach. I’m getting more and more outraged all the time.

People everywhere understand this, they already know about this. There is going to be no amazing wave of recognition and change when people finally learn about this because they already know and do nothing. We can’t wait and hope for ‘normal people’ to swoop in and save us, we need to fight and not until we just have ‘back’ some token legal rights protections that can be taken from us when the next trend comes along. I have zero idea of how any of that could be done, but I think seeing reality for what it is is always the starting point and nothing can change until that happens.

Yep i agree with that too Spinach. I see myself very much in that too from when I was young. This is horribly judgemental I know but I feel so angry that adult women still adopt that, I feel like if I had to grow out of that blindness as a teenager then so the fuck should they. I don’t think that, but I feel that if that makes sense.

My mother knowingly, without any threat to herself, handed me over for repeated sexual abuse. I know it’s partly an emotive response from projecting that, but I also feel it’s valid too, that adult women who may have much less power than men, but still much more than my girls, and knowingly, willingly sacrificing my daughters just to avoid discomfort to themselves now. It feels a betrayal. I don’t think that, and I recognise it’s my problem not others, but it doesn’t change how it feels that way to me.

Oh, F, I am so sorry you suffered not only that abuse but also the unimaginable betrayal by your own mother. Absolutely heartbreaking; I hope the joy of your own children — and your own role being the loving mother you never had as a child — brings you some measure of peace and lots of happiness now.

There is going to be no amazing wave of recognition and change when people finally learn about this because they already know and do nothing.

I’m not so sure about this. Not to say AT ALL that I think most people are ready to see the big picture, but I do see some small hope for change, piece by piece.

I’ve had really encouraging conversations with a few local political candidates recently. No big names; no one very powerful. And yet, they understood my concerns immediately and one even made an immediate change to their public platform. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I would love to see more women making similar contacts. In the aggregate, there are an awful lot of us and we can make our voices heard.

Are we guaranteed to succeed? No. But I sleep better at night knowing that at least I’m fighting, in my own way.

This is just what’s helping my MH at the moment; not at all meant as a prescription for anyone else’s actions or feelings.