Would I be happier if I'd never visited this board?

[partystress]

Not really even a light-heated question. I feel so utterly depressed by the misogyny that I've become aware of through following threads here and broadening who I follow on Twitter. My 'D' H says he can't see the problem with the recent cricket and rugby changes and when I challenged him to consider how he'd feel if our DD missed a place on a team due to a TW, said he would be happy she was living in a more tolerant world than we grew up in.

My DS sees the whole issue through the lens of pleasant, identity exploring uni friends and thinks I'm rabidly obsessed when I talk about regressive stereotypes and risks.

My DD, still at school, thinks sex work and porn are part of a new era of positive empowerment for women. If I question the normalisation of anal sex, and its inclusion in a teen magazine, she says I'm oppressing girls and women.

I feel there is a bubble of people who get it, but the war is lost. The institutions have fallen and the worst possible type of people (those who feel their privilege is under threat, but who actually still exercise massive power) are now in charge of almost everything. For me, it's all entangled with Trump and Johnson and the era of shamelessness being a career and electoral asset.

I am feeling so low about it all, I have got to the point of wishing I'd never heard about any of it. Are there any real lights at the end of this awful tunnel? Boosts needed!

I think sports will definitely change. There is a clear risk to health and safety of women in contact sport from larger heavier trans women.

Adults and teenagers will continue to transition (to more or maybe less a degree) until a better evidence based treatment comes along.

how he'd feel if our DD missed a place on a team due to a TW, said he would be happy she was living in a more tolerant world than we grew up in

How would he feel if said penis person was also sharing her changing room after the match.

I know it’s slow, but awareness is rising, particularly amongst women. I have three young adult children, all gender critical, including one who drew his own conclusions after meeting many trans people. He lives in a place where everything trans is super popular and says he has never met a trans person who wasn’t utterly messed up in other ways too.

Daylight is needed and it’s coming. Fight when and where you can. Take breaks when you need.

What you're seeing is the gradual emergence of a women's rights movement that's going to make the suffragettes and the 1960s look like a kiddies tea party. It is going to have to swing far enough for the movement to get big enough and angry enough, and yes I am furiously raging about the over sexist misogyny, the racism, the homophobia that is getting more and more overt and confident and goes right to the very top of British institutions.

But. A look on this board and how it has changed over the past couple of years shows, once women's rights was something a very small group of women often with specialist academic backgrounds talked about. Now it's something that ordinary women from all kinds of backgrounds are talking about because they're seeing the problems. And as women so often say here, once you see it you can't unsee it.

Those women have friends, family, children, social media, workplace positions, this has spread further and more strongly here so far than in any other country that has thoughtlessly (and secretly) embraced this assault on women and their equality. The result has been to push this into public awareness, it's in the papers, and the TRA lobby position has become more and more overt. It will take time and things to get bad enough before most women reach the stage of rage and the brand new, rapidly increasing women's movements go viral and become something many to most women know of.

I would add that my daughter, who is a lesbian, thinks the Olympics will be a huge turning point as the unfairness will be so obvious and will disgust so many people that it will become impossible to ignore.

So awful as it is for those women who are going to lose out, perhaps it will be better for women in the long run if the committee hold onto their bigotry for a while longer.

Would I be happier if I'd never visited this board?
For a while, until reality hit you in real life.

There isn't going to be any one event that makes people wake up and realise they've gone too far.
People in the past have been happy to go along with genocide, then pretend afterwards it was nothing to do with them. People now like to believe they couldn't possibly tolerate such a thing while they create the conditions leading up to it.

Yes you would be, I'd be happier and more productive.

I felt a little bad as I peak transed a younger female relative recently. Being oblivious to the problem is an easier way to live - right until it starts affecting you personally.

However we need to get annoyed at this to build the momentum to make change

Would I be happier if I'd never visited this board?

Well they do say ignorance is bliss.

But it would only be a matter of time before you stumbled upon an obvious man in the ladies, or worse in a changing room or hospital ward. No one can stay ignorant forever.

For what it's worth in my decidedly 'unwoke' area no one believes TWAW and no one is afraid of saying so in terms that would have them kicked of Mumsnet in a heartbeat. It is a very middle/upper class movement in my experience. The plebs aren't buying it.

I think one problem is that few people really understand what's going on with autogynephilia

As a woman and a feminist and a lesbian and a socialist with a spiritual path that is anti-materialistic I sometimes look at friends who live a life that seems more 'straight-forward' and think they have it easier than me.

They don't get angry at injustice or change their shopping habits or speak out about challenges to women's rights or spend their evenings in draughty church halls or marching in protest at the wrongs of this world.

Then I read about the Amazon burning or girls being injured by a man identifying as a woman and playing women's rugby and I know I am glad to be myself, to have this awareness and the opportunity to speak out in the fight for justice that is so important in present day society.

I feel this way a lot too - getting involved in GC politics has done nothing for my friendships or my mental health.

Can't really not, though. Now I've seen it I can't unsee it. While I could stop engaging, get off social media, frolick in the sunshine, I'd feel like a massive moral coward. I don't do nearly as much as I'd like to, but not doing anything when in full knowledge of the situation just doesn't feel ethical.

Argh, your DH, though. Does he actually need it spelling out about the differences in muscle mass, heart/lung capacity, bone density etc? Or does he think DD just needs to have a (literally) bigger heart to be in with a chance?

Unfortunately I agree with the OP. We are too far down the various rabbit holes. Especially the sporting one as, despite very high profile sports personalities fighting this it still carries on regardless. I have given up and I think the GRA changes will just make it worse.

I don’t know anybody who believes TWAW. DC are uni age and they don’t.

The impression my DC has of the identity exploring types at university is that they have serious mental health problems that they aren’t coping with.

the identity exploring types at university is that they have serious mental health problems that they aren’t coping with

In my professional role, I've had contact with roughly 30 transgender people, all but one MtF; some fully transitioned and others just starting.

They all had MH problems. They all thought transition would solve everything. It didn't. It was a bitter pill when they realised.

Some wanted to detransition but had by then gained enough insight to know that they could never go back to what they were.

Now it's something that ordinary women from all kinds of backgrounds are talking about because they're seeing the problems.

I was always GC, I just didn’t know there was a label for what I felt.
Ignorance is bliss. Wisdom is blisters.

But what I get in return for my pain is other people ‘getting’ it.

I have (to be 18 next month) nieces now posting GC memes, and their friends, and their friends friends are now not too scared to talk, to be out of the ‘norm’.
My DH gets it and now there is a huge thread on his football forum that talks about it.
My friends, who I started the convo with already got it, they were just waiting for someone to say something.

Every day each one of us ‘ordinary woman’ says something, we start something.

I’m proud of my blisters.

Your eyes have been opened to reality and it's uncomfortable. It seems to me that the vast majority of people agree with the GC position but they never need to think about it. It's easier to be nice and indulge the delusion. That will change, and I think TW visibly in women's sport will swing it.

Oh, definitely. Ignorance is bliss after all.

I would add that my daughter, who is a lesbian, thinks the Olympics will be a huge turning point as the unfairness will be so obvious and will disgust so many people that it will become impossible to ignore.

This is what I believe too. And sorry as I am for those women who will lose out, I think it will help to peak trans a huge amount of ordinary people who have not heard of the issues in depth before.

We (GC people) are everywhere, but mostly invisible because we don't talk about it openly. We are like those early Christians who used the sign of the fish to recognise each other. Maybe we also need a secret symbol.

My daughter told me the other day that the mother of one of her close friends is GC and on Mumsnet all the time... yes, we are everywhere. I have no idea which of you she is, but it's exciting to think that one day we can all come out.

it's exciting to think that one day we can all come out.

Will probably never happen. Give it a few years and most of you will be like the racists and homophobes of old, keeping your heads down in a slightly embarrassed 'were we really that vile?' manner.

Give it a few years and most of you will be like the racists and homophobes of old, keeping your heads down in a slightly embarrassed 'were we really that vile?' manner.

Nah, mate. Homophobia is fundamental to trans ideology. It's TRAs who are bullying young lesbians into heterosexual sex. It's revolting.

Hardly anyone actually believes TWAW, but lots of people nod along because they either think it's "kind" or because they don't actually understand what's being demanded.

Maybe we also need a secret symbol.

There is the mumsnet scarf, maybe we also need the mumsnet lapel pin - I’d love a symbol of solidarity

Gosh that's a very low bar you're setting there for deletion @MNHQ. Can I have an email explaining how that offended please?

It is a very middle/upper class movement in my experience. The plebs aren't buying it.

Very true.

And no, sue don’t think I’m ever going to be embarrassed. I’m that weird butch dyke that desperately wanted to be a boy. Right from my earliest ever memories. I spent all of puberty contemplating suicide. I would 100% have believed, had i been told age 11, I was born in the Wrong body and am really a boy.

It’s a beguiling idea to me even now. My wish to be male isn’t springing from some innate gender feelings, it’s me, picking up subconsciously on all the homophobia and misogyny I’ve been exposed to. Of being told (at times whilst being physically attacked) that I’m not a ‘proper‘ girl. That I’m doing female wrong. That I’d be pretty if...

But if I transitioned to a facsimile of a male, I’d still not fit in. Not fully they’d know. I’d know. That cognitive dissonance wouldn’t go, it would be worse. It would be the same problem, but now with unpleasant lifelong side effects from medication and surgery. The children who are being pushed to transition are being sold a lie. It won’t fix the problem. I know. I’ve lived this for 40+ years.