How much of the argument is in a bubble?

[AtmosClock]

I saw something a little heartwarming yesterday on my FB. A friend of mine (who if I'm going to judge isn't the most educated and engaged person I know) posted something jokingly about there being 100 genders. The comments that came from men and women on her post were all GC (it's a load of shit, you're born male, female, with a small number of intersex people). It was quite heartwarming, and I wondered how much of the TRA argument is really breaking out of the "woke" bubble. What do you think?

Most people aren't comfortable with genderist ideology once they learn about it. Hardly anyone believes TWAW. If they act like they do, it's because they're being kind.

That's what I suspect too. Actually out there amongst the wider public, I think the TRA argument faces almost impossible odds. Not that we shouldn't be on full alert, but I can't ever see it being "the right side of history"

It almost doesn't matter any more when the woke bubble has swallowed our institutions - the police, CPS, the civil service, the EHRC, the BBC, political parties, etc.
I know plenty of ordinary people irl who are fully on board with genderism, including a Tory couple in their 80s!

Yes, the issue is not that the bulk of humanity actually believes all this shit.

The issue is that AWAs have cleverly targeted and focused on those people and groups in powerful positions so that, whatever the wider public know to be true, the policies of those in power will be to privilege those who promote these ideas.

That's what Lang's Institutional Capture thread was trying to highlight.

And this is why it's instructive to understand the relative position of women in our society - because no one ever really notices rights and protections being incrementally stripped away from the groups no one really cares about. When this issue makes headlines, it's always framed 'trans rights'. The fact that the losers are women and girls is denied, dismissed and often just flat out not even noticed. It's at best the secondary point to the trans dramatics that make good copy.

No one in the general public really believes men can actually be any kind of woman. But they do not see, because of our cultural bias, why this would be an issue for women and girls, so if it comes on their radar, they are content to leave it in the hands of authorities - which have already been captured by those actively working against us.

And that's why, when things happen which show the real impact, you get shock and anger from Jo Public who had no idea, and a whole lot of frantic obfuscation from the AWAs and their useful idiots to keep a lid on it.

Conclusion - if patriarchy is simply the overwhelming bias in society that defaults to male interests, and almost completely overlooks the interests of women, the trans movement is the epitome of patriarchy in action.

If you believe in it (gender ideology) you're only doing it to pull yourself up, because you can see, everyone can see, how anyone critical of this men's rights movement gets abused, called names, threatened, no-platformed, etc.

No one actually believes it. They only pretend they do out of self interest.

It's been a very successful movement, because misogyny is easy. It's easy to bully women.

That's what Lang's Institutional Capture thread was trying to highlight.

Indeed it was. There's a massive social engineering project underway. It's entirely elite-based, hence the capture of institutions. But because the initial casualties are women and we live in a sexist society that doesn't give a shit about women, nobody notices or cares.

Look to the top and what's going on there. Women and children may be the first casualties but it won't stop there.

In real life I've yet to meet a single solitary soul who believes TWAW and people I have discussed the matter with use language about trans identifying individuals that would have them banned from Mumsnet in an instant. At best they take the piss.

Of course institutional capture matters, but more troubling to me is what happens when the general public realise their institutions have been captured and especially when they realise what is being done to children. This issue above all others is the one I fear will lead to an actual far right backlash.

This issue above all others is the one I fear will lead to an actual far right backlash.

Without doubt, it will.

There will be a scandal even they can't contain and away we will go.

Yep, I don't know a single real person who believed people can change sex for any reason.
If you were to believe twitter (or tbh mumsnet fwr) you'd think it was the majority.

Most of the public still think trans means ppl who’ve had surgery & hormones & the full malarkey

Show them the brave & stunning pip bunce & their women in business award for example and they are wtf??

However all of the above comes with the caveat that the vast majority of the public are not even aware there’s a battle going on about it...

Very few of the general public are for this.

Unfortunately the people in power are fully behind it all.

LangCleg is right about institutional capture, but I think the most worrying thing is the institutional capture of schools. They're bringing children up to believe this nonsense.

I used to be very strongly TWAW and quite openly so, but when I look back now and ask myself why I can't quite work it out.
I think I had the idea that TW were a) rare and b) the mystical old school transsexual, probably gay, who had serious gender dysphoria, but that's attributing a lot more thought to it than I gave it.
I do remember thinking that Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel et alwere being very unkind from whatever I'd gleaned from the Guardian.

For me, it all collapsed the moment I started paying attention to what trans activists were actually saying and saw so much naked aggression and misogyny, and then there was a real 'oh shit' moment, and now I can't believe I was so naive.

Its certainly taught me to question my own assumptions a lot more.

I was talking to a woman yesterday, who was telling me how her much younger sister had announced over the Sunday dinner table to her 90yr+ staunchly religious West African (great?)grandmother that she was in a r'ship with another woman, quoting pansexual, bi-curious, non-binary blah blah blah - clearly angling for a huge reaction from her big statement.

Grandma laughed and told her she loved her no less, she could be with who she liked and all the silly labels were meaningless. "Just be happy".

Apparently the deflating "but I'm SPESHUL!" ego was a sight to see.

I think the wider public are blissfully unaware of most of this debate, despite its heat in places like Twitter.
Chatting with some male gay friends of mine recently was interesting, their only perception of trans was what we would call old school transexuals. They were totally oblivious to the self declared aspect and assumed trans = surgery.
I'm not so sure that all young people are believing genderism either. My DD and her peers talk about this and are perplexed by the challenging of gender stereotypes ending up at a conclusion which reinforces it - i.e. if you like certain things that determines your gender. They know that's not true.

"Of course institutional capture matters, but more troubling to me is what happens when the general public realise their institutions have been captured and especially when they realise what is being done to children."

This issue above all others is the one I fear will lead to an actual far right backlash.

It will not lead to a far right backlash

You only have to look at Russian media to see that the far right backlash has been occurring for some time

The UK is portrayed as a land of evil child abusers where the police are all gay and prance around at Pride marches

The trans kids issue is all about child abuse and if we do not grasp the nettle and deal with it we will be in serious trouble, both in terms of letting down children and vulnerable adults but also in terms of appearing to be a nation complicit in child abuse.

Given the chaos of brexit and the UK's increasing isolation on the international stage this is an extremely vulnerably and scary position to be in

This is one of the many reasons why we must keen on fighting, not against the vulnerable people who identify as trans, but against the structures that use them as mascots, human shields and agent provocateurs

Comments in the Times are almost always 100% GC with lots of recommends. I comment in my own name but have never had any problem with TRAs. As I don't have an employer there's no-one they can go to to hassle me, and if saying that it's impossible to change sex makes me 'transphobic' then I'm proud to be a transphobe. Having been to a WPUK event and met a few soggy young men and women shouting 'call yourself a feminist!' (well yes I do actually - cos I am, y'know, a WOMAN and I'm at least twice as old as you), I don't think there are really many of them, they just shout very loudly. It's institutional capture that's the problem, and convincing politicians that most of their constituents think that self-id is bollocks and women's rights matter. I've heard that the consultation found support in a few pockets in London and the university towns and no support anywhere else in the country. Don't know if that's true, but it sounds about right to me.

I don't know that anyone I know believes that people can change sex, but I do know people who seem to sincerely believe that your genitals have nothing to do with your being a man or woman. They also come from all kinds of backgrounds, from quite religious to militant skeptic atheists. What they have in common in my experience is a very black and white way of understanding reality.

I do think however that even here in Canada, many people do not believe what they are supposed to, including many people who see themselves as progressive. But many also simply seem to believe that this is the next step in the realisation of rights for marginalised groups.

It's another manifestation of the people vs the elite.
It will add fuel to rw fire, imo.

I'm not sure how successful the attempts to indoctrinate children are proving, to be honest. DS and his mates quite often strike absurd attitudes, cast their hand to their brow and loudly proclaim "did you just assume ma gendah?" I think they mentally file it alongside "stuff the RE teacher tells you", as in, some teachers believe clearly batshit things, but we ain't going along with it.

Given that teens in particular are massively driven by puberty and all those new hormones giving them a sex drive for the first time, I think very few of them are particularly fooled by people claiming to be the opposite sex from the one they self-evidently are. Which is not to say they don't understand the need to be kind, just that they're not buying into the denial of reality wholesale. (If for no other reason that the peak tumblr "I identify as two spirit/non binary/a-sexual, grey-romantic demi-tasse frappuchino" generation are now 10 years older than the up-and-coming teens, and there's nothing so unhip for a teenager as last decade's fads).

I'm not sure how successful the attempts to indoctrinate children are proving, to be honest.

They are going younger and younger, at some point they will find the sweet spot to start molding them.

I don't know that kids joking about "are you assuming my gender" means many aren't buying into it. It seems to be very prevalent in the schools here, in any case, both young people transitioning, in Rainbow clubs, and so on. That's at all levels, elementary to high schools.

Take a look at the Strava thread: the replies beneath the 'McKinnon a brave, stunning woman' Tweet show that away from the world of TRAs arguing with GC feminists almost nobody believes that TWAW.

Recalling the guy in 2015 who thought the Liberal Democrats were 'Demo-Cats,' the majority of the electorate in 1992 who thought John Major had been to university and Neil Kinnock hadn't, and numerous other examples, I am fairly confident most ordinary folk would assume a transman was a male-bodied person who had transitioned to a female lifestyle, and vice versa for a transwoman.