My husband is woke

[WizbetisaNizbet]

Just that really.

He spotted something I wrote on here and stated it was “hate filled.” Nope it was an innocuous comment of the signatories of the letter in the Scottish Herald. He’s quoted Owen Jones at me “you’re on the wrong side of history.”

He ignores what I say when I try to talk about why I don’t agree with what is going, on telling me that I am denying trans people their rights. I ask him how my refuse to use pronouns denies anyone thier rights or what rights are being denied but he can’t seem to answer me. When I give him examples in answer to his questions he doesn’t want to talk about specific examples that are relevant.

He can’t see what the problem is about women’s sports, self-ID etc. He also keeps telling me I side with Trump (no). To be honest i’m fed up and upset that he won’t listen to my trying to explain to him why women are so upset and angry.

This is just a vent by the way.

If DP or DS come out with something I don’t agree with, my first response is, ‘so why do you think that?’ Fortunately my DP is full t**f, she’s even got the T-shirt. DS is like ‘well der,’ of course people can’t change sex and men shouldn’t compete against women in sports. The challenge is more to teach him to moderate his speech in public and at school.Not that he’s an unpleasant or disrespectful child, just that he’s not quite discovered how much trouble knowing basic biology can land him in yet. He got told off last year at a club for misgendering a male presenting, obviously male child and it confused and annoyed him, but he knows he did nothing wrong so he kicks back against it. He’s got a lot of his mother in him.

I’m going to ask for the thread to be deleted.

Before you do, can I ask why? It isn't identifying and is clearly an issue that a lot of us face, so a worthwhile discussion to have.

My husband couldn’t understand the whole cotton ceiling thing until I asked him if he’d be happy to go to bed with a ‘woman’ with a penis. Thing is that he (and men in general I think) do not feel any threat from women and hence find it hard to understand why a strange naked man in a confined space means something quite different to a woman than a naked woman would to a man in the same position. If you have daughters maybe ask if he would be happy for your 12 year old daughter to go into the woman’s changing room and come face to face with a full set of male genitalia belonging to a man who yesterday filled in an internet form saying he was a woman. Is this being on ‘the right side of history’?

I had a look for the OPs post on the thread she mentions... if I've got the right one it seems temperate, and explicitly supportive of transsexuals.

Does your DH know about the Miranda Yardley farcical court case?

When I first ranted brought it up with DP he thought I was being mean, and that trans "couldn't go in the men's because they would get beaten up."
He thought all transwomen had had the op.
I pointed out that I don't feel safe sharing with men, most haven't had the op, and besides..a woman is not a castrated man!
I showed him the stuff about Karen White and the stats on ROGD in girls.
He thought I was taking in nonsense off the Internet and the things I was telling him couldn't possibly be real, but once the penny dropped he was 100% behind protecting women and girls rights and HORRIFIED at the idea of an intact man bring allowed to follow a girl into a changing room, or be in prison with women.
Ds is a fan of women's football and an athlete himself and knows full well males and females should not be competing in the same class.
I don't know how any man could know the facts and still not step up for WAGs. In fact I would feel like they were just being a dick on purpose!

I'm a man and I disagree with the OPs husband. I fully understand why women wouldn't want and shouldn't be dictated to by trans women on matters that they feel endanger them. It's one of the few things I actually do agree on with regard to the views generally expressed by the Mumsnet FWR flavour of feminism.

But on the whole, I think men in general, and partners in particular, should give feminism a wide berth. Discussion is best avoided. Let women get on with feminism.

Dh is extremely on side but doesn't engage in any discussion with me as a) it's all obvious apparently (never actually said that but makes it clear) and b) Brexit is apparently much more important.

The thing is the trans debate potentially affects me directly at work whereas Brexit sort of will affect his work.

Our children are not quite at the age where he'll really need to pay attention; when they are I know he'll be wanting to talk a lot.

Op I'd talk about any children you have or relatives physically changing sex or a female lesbian relative being made to feel ashamed for being lesbian.

Bad luck op. My dh is naturally suspicious of men’s motives so unless proved otherwise tends to automatically take women’s side. He has proper female friends sees women as real people - complains when our group socialises too much single sex he prefers mixed groups finds all men abit dull. At first he didn’t believe me but is totally gender critical and aghast at the sport thing our dds enjoy their sports and we often watch the girls teams at the university as a family.

Would he consider reading any of Miranda Yardley's stuff?

Or Seven Hex's blog who is writing from her experiences as a trans woman but is appalled at the shit show against women and children.

I think if I'm honest my dh knew he really wouldn't be able to have a relationship with a trans woman being heterosexual.

He has a gay friend who couldn't be with a trans man.

I'm fortunate to have a DH who gets it. We're both scientists, and his awareness of sexism in general has been sharpened by having a DD who's been set on becoming an engineer since she was a small child (and a teacher told her girls couldn't...). Good old fashioned 2nd wave stuff.

He reads the guardian and bbc news but also the Times, Mail etc ... just about all available online news sources. He reads actively looking for bias and spin on both the left and right. It's a good habit if you have the time.

Occasionally if we've been discussing feminist issues, and I've been a bit more impassioned than is my usual style he's said something like 'no need to get angry' ... but then accepted my rebuttal of this, that I've every right to get angry about issues which affect women and girls.

Might be an idea to point out how many gay people are against this proposal including a founder of Stonewall.

Thank the goddesses, my husband and parents are gender-critical (although my mum is too nicey nicey to be outspoken about it). My brother, on the other hand, is Wokey McWokeface and my sister is a "genderqueer" libfem (that kind of queer that entails being in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, but with tattoos).

We try not to speak of it, but Twitter likes to tell me whenever they like Juno or retweet Paris. Presumably Twitter is grassing me up too...

My parter is / was woke. So was I. When I started paying attention to what was happening to women’s rights and safeguarding it was all we talked about for many nights. Now he completely gets it and has written to our MP amongst other things.

I didn't say this to him at the time but this issue would have been a deal breaker. Female biology and crap experienced due to it have touched so many parts of my life & the lives of the vulnerable people I work with. We also have a non dysphoric but very GNC primary age child. If my partner had not understood my arguments I would have lost respect for his intelligence. I would also not have been able to let him touch my body.

I can cope with friends having differing view points, although it's really interesting to note which personalities agree with me and which don't. So far the ones on side are, yes, the odd right winger, but overwhelmingly they are lefties and the most thoughtful and conscientious people I know. (Much more so than me!). They are all people without massive egos. Some of my more reactive, tribal or less reflective friends certainly don't get it yet. Believing in trans activist ideology has been sold to people as part of a group of viewpoints. It can be hard for people to step back from that and apply their own critical thinking.

Questioning trans ideology hasn't changed our other viewpoints which are probably quite identikit leftie woke. (Although I do query everything a lot more now and I don't trust most politicians. I no longer say stuff like "the Mail should be banned" even though 99%of what they print makes me want to vomit).

PLEASE don't delete this thread! It's full of good info and I think it will be very helpful to other women in a similar situation.

Can you show him some photos of protests at Greenham Common? And ask him if he thinks it likely that these women are now part of a far right hate group? And ask, what have left wing lesbians got to gain from being transphobic?
My husband is usually sympathetic, but ocassionally veers to the whole "same side as Trump, siding with right wingers" rhetoric, and this usually sorts him out, as he can recognise that the overlap is very coincidental.
I also find that little Venn Diagram schematic that goes around to be very helpful.

Does he have a beard?

Is he a lazy arse when it comes to housework?

Is he a disney dad with the children, if you have any?

Personally, I couldn't live with anyone who said I was on the wrong side of history.

I suspect he's got a younger model to replace you.

If he's not bothered about women being pushed out of sports, maybe present it to him from the angle of "Oh look, this mediocre male athlete is now a world record breaker because they've identified as a woman!" This seems to irritate men more than the idea of women losing out...

The Leeds Spinners said it best.

The wrong side of history nonsense is irritating, but for many people they don't really even question the idea of "progress" over history. They assume they see progress because their own bias things that "right now" just happens to be the most correct viewpoint about everything there ever has been. A lot of people don't seem to realise that every person at every time who happens to agree with the mainstream thought the same thing - it would look like that even if every popular idea was in some objective way regressive.

I think the other struggle is that many people, for years, have accepted certain ideas about what is "hate-filled" or what is progressive, what is bigoted. And some made sense in those contexts, but some actually were just bad, emotive arguments. And the same arguments are being made in terms of trans ideology.

When a lot of people are confronted with challenges to these, their unconscious response is, if I give up this argument here, it must be invalid in these other instances too. They don't see the difference clearly and they also aren't comfortable with the fact that some causes that are good may have bad but popular arguments and rhetoric associated with them.

People get scared they would have to rethink everything they accept and value. Or maybe they are uncomfortable that if they have to admit that being against the trans lobby does not mean you hate trans people, it might also be true that people they called bigots over other rights issues might also not be hateful.

I think this issue is hard for woke people because it can require a whole change in their self-image, and one which they fear might unravel the other things they see as anchoring values, not just the trans issue. So their reaction can actually be a lot more aggressive than it really should be, it's a kind of attempt at self-preservation.

Do all these woke DHs believe that it’s ok for a white woman to identify as black, and take funding and opportunities that are earmarked for black women? Are they Team Dolezal?

My mum agrees with my GC views. DH also agrees although it took a while (mostly because he enjoys debating with me so will always take the opposite position - he stopped when he realised how important this is to me I think plus he is very interested in the freedom of speech / thought crime angle which has become more apparent lately).

My sister is very much anti-GC but we've been discussing the issues and she hasn't called me a bigot yet. It's interesting to discuss it with her without the emotionally charged aspect of the debate that you get on twitter etc. I think the discussion might have ended at an impasse though because she believes TWAW whereas I don't. I'll keep speaking to her about it but I don't think she'll ever agree.

Just ask him if he would fuck a woman with a penis. His reply will indicate how "woke" he is then.

Please don't delete the thread!

Most of my family/friends are totally on board with GC views, either instinctively (the women) or through patient discussion. But recently one of my friends burst into tears and had a "panic attack" when I said I didn't support self-ID. I was so bewildered. She had to leave the room, it was ridiculous. Another (ex) friend, a woke bloke, yelled and screamed at me over this and told me I wasn't allowed to say the things I was saying. I presume because he didn't have anything useful to say in response/I had shot down all his arguments already.

There seems to be a lot of emotional blackmail and manipulation that goes on instead of actual argument and discussion. Thank goddess that most of the people I talk to about this (and I talk to people about it every day!) can easily make sense of it.

This makes me so cross - another man dismissing a woman's lived experience shaping her opinions and thoughts! I'm sure your DH is a lovely man, OP but FFS - try listening to the person who is an actual woman!

I agree with.

And as my DH says, men have beeen misogynistic twats for millennia. It’s going to take quite a long time for them to stop acting in ways which don’t put them and their feelz, at the very centre of fucking everything!