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.

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.

That's not quite what I was saying re. 'normal people' but for instance there would never have been gay marriage if heterosexuals hadn't supported it. There is only so much a marginalized group can do.

Maybe people put their heads in the sand because they can't handle the cognitive dissonance.

I think the snowball effect can and might come into play, but I don’t think that will happen because people suddenly realise what’s going on and put a stop to it. I think more than enough people already know and understand fine well. They don’t speak up because it’s easier not to, or because women simply don’t rate as important to them (including to actual women) or because they are actively all for the benefits this brings them if self id comes in. I feel like plenty of men are sitting behind their desks drumming their fingers like Smithers from Simpson’s, salivating at the thought of getting control back over the women who have dared not to cater to their dick. But I do think people speaking up can snowball and could make real things happen, just that if that happens it comes from being honest and voicing it, not from blinkers suddenly coming off because I think they have been for years for the most part.

Thing is though, for the snowball effect to occur we need to start it and speak up continually to gain momentum. We can’t just wait for other women or supportive men to do it, no one is coming to save us. Women here may be avoiding speaking up to maintain a sense of safety or avoid threat now, but that’s just an illusion. We need to face what this is. Not voicing our concerns for our rights (because this is a women’s rights issue not a trans rights one) is the equivalent of POC not fighting against slavery being reinstated, or Jews volunteering for the gas chamber.

Laws mean nothing if they aren’t put into place. Women’s rights protections can not be actioned if the legal definition of women includes men. Ever. For any right at all. It’s the equivalent of poc accepting slavery being reinstated or Jewish people lining up for the gas chambers. It’s the same thing women are doing now if we don’t speak up. If we do something now maybe some of us face discomfort and lost relationships and jobs and threats and violence, even death. If we don’t speak up we all face it down the line, and it’s a very short line the way things stand.

Double - women maybe a marginalised group but we are also 52% of the population.

I’m not sold marginalised groups can only do so much. Nelson Mandela is credited with eradicating appartied. He was just a political prisoner who handed together with other political prisoners when their freedoms were taken from them. Martin Luther King didn’t have the impact he did just because some white people stood by him, we don’t hand over all credit for such revolutions to white people do we? We don’t centre men who supported suffragettes in the discussion of votes for women. The psychology of how minority groups influence social change shows how it has been done before. And we have men who support us, a fair few who speak up publicly and I know the men in my life will speak up as I tell them. But they are the side support, we can’t just sit back and accept rights they deem to grant to us, because as we are seeing now what they give us they can just as easily take away again. This is our fight and we must speak up and do something about ensuring we take our rights back in a way they can’t be taken from us again ever. I don’t know how that’s done but it’s clearly possible as the idea that white people can own poc again is clearly not one poc would ever ‘accept/allow’ (for want if a better phrase-sorry). When we look at the world we live in now there’s just no way apartide would ever be put back in place in our life time, and we know fine well if there was a second Hitler in a western country at present there’s just no way there would be a second holocaust. There are obviously ways that the oppressed minority groups gain freedom and create real permanent social change, because we see it in these groups everyday. I just haven’t ever found an example where the minority group contains men.

Doesn’t contain men- sorry, my joints are flaring up & typos everywhere but I hope it’s clear anyways.

@Fffffs - If white people in English speaking countries had not firstly been aware of the situation in South Africa and secondly had not boycotted and campaigned etc. Mandela would have died in prison and apartheid would have continued.

I am not suggesting passivity but it's going to take all of us. The zeitgeist can change but a critical mass has to be reached. 50 GC women on the feminist boards are not critical mass but they have certainly got the boulder moving.

I’ve no idea why my post was deleted. How do you find out @MNHQ - the rules didn’t tell me anything!

Yes this has badly affected my mental health.

We get told we are erasing people's existences but it's us who are being erased.

The choice is explicitly deny your sex class or accept to being classed as a walking stereotype. My sex doesn't exist now it's just a gender identity. It is victim blaming and it's so tiring. Nearly everyone who should be fighting our corner has turned against us. This battle has been going on for years now and sometimes I hope I'll wake up and it will all have been a dream.

Despite that I still feel hopeful. They're have been positive steps and the people, men and women, who are fighting this, has got bigger than ever. It's being talked about where it was ignored before, so I do feel we are making progress but it's a bit of a two steps forward, one step back, situation.

It has come as a shock to me how little social and political power women have, and it does hurt.
The shocking thing is that a lot of people you would hope to defend women's rights just turn the other way, I feel dismayed at the direction things are going in

I don’t doubt we need the help of men to change this, but we can’t wait for it. Plenty don’t care or want this, and too many women here, or elsewhere, don’t talk to their husbands about this.

No white person would ever have cared if poc didn’t stand up and speak out. If they remained silent no white people would have realised change was needed. Right now women either say they are with tra’s or they don’t say anything, which is the same thing.

All the studies on conformity and social influence suggest that an early dissenter has a much more significant influence on resisting the majority influence - the implication being if women disagree they need to speak up right away to have a bigger impact on enabling other women to question tran ideology and also speak up. Sadly, the implication becomes despite men being the class with the power, women speaking up against this actually makes it more possible for them to also speak up, and there by provoke change that support our rights. It doesn’t sit right that the vulnerable have to do this on a personal level but it’s what holds true in psychological research.

@calllaaalllaaammma

It has come as a shock to me how little social and political power women have, and it does hurt. The shocking thing is that a lot of people you would hope to defend women's rights just turn the other way, I feel dismayed at the direction things are going in

This. The odd murky, diffuse smell of vague misogyny everywhere. That isn't even the right description. Perhaps more that women are seen as some bleached-out backdrop for focused pictures on worthier groups needing attention? Or as support role people.

In any case, any and all negative consequences for women are regarded as acceptable sacrifices. Any and all. That is what truly shocked me.

BTW my posts keep being flagged and I have had two strikes for saying very ordinary things in my mind. I guess this site has become a lot more heavily policed than when I use to use it more a couple of years ago.

That's yet another problem, men can say anything they want on Reddit but women cannot have open free speech when talking about issues that directly affect our rights. Very depressing. But I'm not giving up!! Waves fist!

Wishingstarr
The rules on the feminism board are different and much stricter than elsewhere on MN.
Add to that the fact that posts and posters are closely monitored by external people who then report to MN.
If you get another strike you will get banned, so you have to be really careful.

When this stuff gets to affect men in some way, the backlash will start. I know Fathers are very concerned. Polls show a lot less support for transwomen having access to various women's spaces and sports among men, even though through third wave feminists may support this, men definitely don't.

Perhaps this is why the concept of men as a sex class has been left alone by the trans activists who spend so much effort on erasing the concept of women as a sex class?

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.

This. And almost every comment on this thread.

It’s a terrible subject, and it hurts to read about so many women's pain. But at the same time, saying these things, getting the truth out there, is like taking a huge breath of fresh air.

I guess this site has become a lot more heavily policed than when I use to use it more a couple of years ago.

It definitely has. You'll note that there's no sweary anger, the arguments are extremely polite. Anything else is "not in the spirit". You are not allowed to correctly sex a man who says he's a woman unless he has committed a crime, at which point apparently we are allowed to speak more freely.

You are not allowed to mention a specific fetish in relation to men presenting as women, even though some have described it themselves.

You are not allowed to use phrases which are remotely disrespectful. So Dave Chappell's "alphabet people" for LGBTQ+ would get deleted. Hopefully I am allowed it in this case to explain what would be offensive, were I to use it in a discussion.

It's best not to mention specific people at all, as that will likely get a deletion, unless you are praising them.

The effect all these restrictions have is to make us very polite, and very able to make our case articulately. (Feel my grammar went astray there)

I think that covers most of the things people slip up on.

Nepeta- no no no, there’s nothing vague about the misogyny at all, we’ve just been well conditioned to see it as normal so it appears as a subtle backdrop to everything and is harder to see it as it is- it is not vague at all, it’s clear as day all the time in our faces and men know this fine well too.

There’s also no need for tra’s to go after men as a sex class- it would be transmen, women, who that would ‘benefit’ and women just don’t matter at all to tra’s, even those who identify as trans. It’s not about not going after men to avoid sparking resistance, they just simply don’t give a fuck about women of any sort, we are just sub humans to them. And going after men as a sex class would do nothing anyways- men don’t feel threatened by transmen in their spaces, they don’t care if transmen go up against real men in sports, men loose zero rights protections if men becomes ‘men and anyone who feels like a man’. What’s the worst that could ever cause- titles pass to transmen? Access to men’s clubs like stone masons or whatever? No one whose socialised as a woman put themselves forward to fight for these things. A man might face a prostrate exam from a transman? We all know it’s still the woman at risk in that situation.

I find it upsetting because of the level of misogyny it's exposed. That and the thought I could be expected to accept a trans woman provide treatment if I ask for a woman nurse/doctor, as a survivor of CSA I could find it very difficult to object if I were in a room on my own with them (I also find the attitude of TRA types to victims of male violence upsetting, the idea that you're transphobic because your trauma can't tell the difference between a male and female penis...)

And once you join the TRA side you're not allowed to deviate from their beliefs, I've seen it on Twitter, someone will tentatively say they see problems with, say, sport, and they're immediately rounded on - 'that sounds like a terf thing to say' - and they back down. No doubt is allowed.

Grolliffethedragon:
I find it upsetting because of the level of misogyny it's exposed.

This. Though it is not quite explicit misogyny I observe; it is something more nebulous, a widespread understanding that women, as a class, do not matter and should be silent if not supportive of the concerns for others. The eruptions of anger at 'TERFS' is based on that expectation and that is why it is far less strong when men say things which would be interpreted as terfy.

Then there are the woke feminists who tweet that rights are not a pie and that boring entitled women are not losing anything from inclusiveness, even though the definition of 'woman' is being erased, which means erasing everything having to do with living in a female body. The process is the reverse of what happened in the second wave when women were finally able to name the things which happened to women as a class. Now that power of naming is taken away and complaining about that is seen as bigotry.

This is extremely tiring and destabilising.

Also this
And once you join the TRA side you're not allowed to deviate from their beliefs, I've seen it on Twitter, someone will tentatively say they see problems with, say, sport, and they're immediately rounded on - 'that sounds like a terf thing to say' - and they back down. No doubt is allowed.

There are no nuances and no compromise ever is possible, though it is also true that all compromises would be about taking away some traditional and hard-earned women's rights. But even when we are willing to consider that, compromise is still seen as unacceptable.
I think no amount of bending over backwards will ever suffice for validation purposes.

I've just remembered a joky slogan from decades ago, which is now true:

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND. THERE IS A FAULT IN REALITY.