Help a brother out

[Glinner]

Hello, you coven of squints far right Nazi witches!

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology and activism. I've also asked on Twitter but thought this might be good for longer answers.

Please tell me your stories!

And then along came trans groups who told us that everything we know about child development, parenting and safeguarding doesn't apply to these children.

This, this, this!

This is what keeps me up at night. The very people who say they are advocating for these children are the ones painting targets on their backs.

And all authority: government, services, institutions - in complete denial.

TRAs blocking Julie B's access to the Bristol event. The visual of male-bodied people physically stopping a group of women entering a room to talk to each other really hit home. Also the fact they were wearing fucking balaclavas / face coverings. Had 'intimidation' written all over them.

Really, Mumsnet? My first ever deletion (as far as I know) and it was a post about my mother dying of Ovarian cancer?

Hello Glinner! Thank you for asking the question.
I’ve always had a niggling doubt about he issue, but erred on the side of supporting trans people because it seemed kind.
It was Jenni Murray getting cautioned for asking questions about trans ideology that got me interested. And that led me here following the Spartacus threads.
Jenni had interviewed Rev Carol Stone who has transitioned to a woman and whose prime concern was choosing what dress to wear in front of the congregation. The absolute lack of any acknowledgement by this person of how women have struggled for equal representation in the Church compared to their obsession with lipstick and dresses was stark.
Hence research. Hence activism!

I'm another class of 2015 IOC decision. I read a thread about it here I think. Couldn't believe it and looked up whether women's sporting organisations were fighting it only to find they had all drunk the kool aid.

It's been a steady peaking since then. I always think I'm fully peaked and then there's another thing.

Can I also add I might have peaked a lot earlier, but left Twitter about 18m ago after getting some pretty shitty contact from men during the Repeal 8th debate, including offers to send me pictures of miscarriages.

I think it was late 2016 or early 2017. Wandered onto the FWR board and read something about how we’re now called c*s women and thought bugger that for a game of marbles, I don’t need to be definite in relation to a man who thinks he’s a woman. Then read about the cotton ceiling, Muscato, Caitlin Jenner’s interest in their 10 year old daughter’s underwear and the realisation that for many transwomen it’s a fetish. I feel like I fell down a rabbit hole, have met some amazing women down here but I can’t ever go back the way I came. I can’t unknow the things I’ve read and heard and seen.

Yes @hebemumsnet I thought Betty's post was pretty moving (understatement) and I missed any breach of rules on speech. Could you edit rather than delete?

A middle-aged friend of my ex declared that he wanted to transition and it set me thinking about how you can never be a woman if you haven't grown up as one. Years later with the consultation I learnt a lot more on mumsnet. But what really gave me the rage is the confusion and medicalisation of children.

Really, Mumsnet? My first ever deletion (as far as I know) and it was a post about my mother dying of Ovarian cancer?

Wow.

It was a moving post Betty. Sorry about your mother

@AnotherLass
And then I realised that I was actually frightened to tell people that I was worried about what was going on, which shocked me even more.
And then I started looking into it and I honestly felt like I'd woken up in a dystopian 1984 alternate reality where people are terrified to say basic truths and everyone has to say that they believe that 2+2=5. And I realised that I have to stand up to this.

This is exactly what happened to me. It was people I liked, sensible American feminists, who were saying things like "if you are transphobic you can unfriend me right now", and finding out that transphobic meant not believing that transwomen are literally women. I did not unfriend them because I want to see where this goes. But I have been silent on their FB pages, and I have noted that they have said nothing, nothing at all, since the Martina story broke. It's almost as if they are starting to question -- one would hope!

I was following the FPFW GRA campaign very closely and talking about it to people I actually know. Then I went abroad for three months and then the Martina story broke.

Oh, what on earth was wrong with Betty's post?

Can I say "today, again, when a woman posted about her mum dying of ovarian cancer on a feminist chat board, and someone was moved only to report it as being breach of talk guidelines"

I imagine given the OP the monitors will be sending MNHQ many many reports.

Hello Glinner. Massive respect for you putting your head above the parapet so publicly.

I was largely unaware until I started lurking on this board: I've learned about Lily Madigan's attention seeking vendettas, the Girl Guides thinking it's absolutely fine to let men have sleepovers with young girls, and the unfairness of letting men compete against women in sports.

One of the first threads I followed was by the 'ManFriday' men ladies which really opened my eyes to the absurdity of it all. Every day I read another tweet or news article that scares me, the latest being about the compulsory, not opt-out teaching of the trans agenda to children as young as four. Come what may, my kids won't be in those lessons.

For me (as a liberal leftie) it was an initial slow progression up the foothills that turned into a swift climb to the peak.

For a while I really didn't see what the problem was. I'd worked with a number of Transwomen and found them to be polite and respectful. I had no problem sharing bathroom facilities or in one case a shared company house with them.

Their gender dysphoria was both very real and very painful. I felt a great deal of compassion.

I now realise I had encountered Transexuals - as they would now identify. They knew they could never become a woman but felt a very strong empathy and respect for women and felt that their mental health would be best served by living (and by investing in intense and invasive medication and surgery) as far as possible a "female" life.

The TS I shared a house with asked prior to the arrangement if I was ok with it. Schedules for the bathroom etc were all agreed. They did their utmost to make me feel secure and comfortable and I respected them for it.

So what happened....

Well I started out defending Trans rights. Politely and certainly not with a TWAW mantra.

Yet guess what? Whilst I had some very thought provoking and polite conversations with GC feminists I was utterly scorned by TRA's.

It became clear how the far the Trans bandwagon had been hijacked - imho not just to the detriment of women but also negatively towards the very transsexuals I'd sought to defend in the first place.

Stonewalls trans umbrella was a nail in the coffin for me. Again imho the amalgamation of cross dressers/"part-time" women/AGP's with people suffering from genuine GD into a single group marked a clear (and I would say deliberate) shift in policy that was harmful to women and the LGB/TS community and could not be intellectually squared as not being homophobic or misogynistic.

After that the hits just kept on coming....

Maria at speakers corner, the intimidating protests at women's meetings, girl guides policy, mermaids, sport, the LibDem LGBT twitter feed, the Challenor scandal, Jenner winning woman of the year, Poise's caution, your caution Gilner, the misogyny of Dr Harrop, India/Munroe's self indulgent rants...I could go on.

It was like opening Pandora's box.

Each revelation, each toxic tweet, every opportunity to shut down debate, every pouty photo showing an overtly sexualised vision of "what a women is" by a man pretending to be one, "revelations" that TW's have periods, denial of ROGD in children, listening to the recording of the Mermaids Barbie speech in schools ...pushed me further up the mountain.

Even now when I feel I must be at the summit a TRA comes out with more testosterone fuelled bollocks and I peak a bit more.

That's my story.

Yours,

DRM

(floating somewhere above Everest)

For me it was when I realised, that there was this new view that it was okay to give CHILDREN hormone and other treatments, possibly even surgery, because they believed they were the wrong gender. I couldn't get my head around that. And the more I looked at it, the more I got freaked out by the fact that these children were expected to make life decisions at this ridiculously young age that were irreversible. I equated it to the fact that as a teenager I was absolutely adamant that I would NEVER have children. And now I have two. Thank god I didn't get myself sterilised aged 16....

And THEN... having looked at it, I started getting even more concerned when I realised that it appeared to be "contagious". I was shocked when suddenly schools had multiple children who all wanted to be a different gender. And I just couldn't believe for one second that something that should and is so incredibly rare would show up in multiple children in multiple schools at the same time. That really worried me.

I'm still somewhat on the fence on how I feel about adult transgender women but am broadly sympathetic to those who have actually gone through the entire surgery etc. But self identification and remaining in a male/female body while claiming to be the opposite gender in terms of spaces, sports etc just blows my mind.

Finally, the FT awarding a MAN who SOMETIMES presents as a women in its top most influential women had me wanting to commit murder.

Greer being no-platformed - GREER how dare they!!! then Jenny Murray & then it’s been endless ever since.
Humans can’t change sex, I don’t believe in male & female souls & the homophobia blows my mind.

Thank you for continuing to stick your neck out publicly while so many others cower in the shadows, the personal cost to you & your family must be hard to bear 🌻🌻🌻

Mine started with Stonewall training, when I worked at a local council. We had been equality and diversity trained to death to be honest over the years, to the extent that I could probably deliver the training myself, backwards.

However, there came a point when I (and my colleagues), had to try really, really hard to understand what we were being taught, scratching our heads and squinting a lot. Like those magic eye pictures.

Also, L Madigan. Nuff said.

Way back in 2003 I wrote a very gender critical dissertation, I have always been a bit of feminist and very anti all the gender rubbish. I raised an eyebrow at Jenner being woman of the year. What, I thought, so no real women this year of the woman then?

My other eyebrow went stratospheric when an old work colleague who I was friends with on Facebook started posting about Labour and trans women standing on AWS. I was signposted to the witches coven AKA Mumsnet, and here we are. Peak trans was, of course, the cotton ceiling. And almost daily I am peaked all over again.

Really, Mumsnet? My first ever deletion (as far as I know) and it was a post about my mother dying of Ovarian cancer?

Hey, @MNHQ - can we have some rationale for you deleting this? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like someone complained because a woman talked about a woman's issue on a Feminist chat forum.

Key moment: when I realised that as a woman in 2019 I could not state my opinion as a sexual abuse survivor about not wanting to share women's spaces with men's potential violence without the threat of losing my job. Under his eye indeed.

"Greer being no-platformed - GREER how dare they!!!"

Yes. She may be a mad old bat now like your nan at Christmas going on about the war, but you just say, 'Yes, Nan,' let her speak and offer her another gin and Campari.

Betty Your poor mum (and what the fuck with the deletion).

I like the idea of floating above Everest. I'm two thirds of the way up the Abruzzi Ridge on K2 I think.

A slow realisation that I was being acused of womaning wrong.

An awareness that there was an agenda that was sidelining women and at the same time doing a gross disservice to some of the very people, trans activists claim to help.

Concerns about vulnerable people being funnelled towards stereotypes (oh, the irony) and not allowed to be the individuals they truly are.

But actually the summit of peak trans for me is, attempts to control language. Chest feeders, menstraters, pregnant people. No. No. No. We need to hold onto our language and our biology.

In the old days. When I was expected to call a bearded male she...and who then pushed his way to the bar in a very aggressive fashion, pushing many smaller frailer women out of the way...then too, the feeling of deception when these guys appeared in women's workshops, conferences and friendship groups demanding recognition from us. When numerous women's organisations groups and discussions were taken over and our time wasted, let alone them beginning to defer to these entitled beings. Having the name of a gay and lesbian choir altered to include T. And just about everything else mentioned here since about 2000. And now our lesbia and gay Young people. Enough