Does anyone else feel isolated for their views on gender?

[MissBax]

Ended up in a debate last night with a friend who believes pansexual is a legitimate sexuality. I explained how considering there's only two sexes, bisexual covers that.
Anyhoo, I'm just always so surprised by apparently intelligent people thinking that gender is now the default position, and I explained my views on identity politics blah blah blah.
I just feel so isolated and lonely in, what I thought was, a group of educated and intelligent people.
Does anyone else feel like that? Sometimes I feel like you lot on here are the only sane people I know!

Thankfully in real life it's not a problem. Genderism hasn't reached my part of the home counties yet and my children are still at primary school. When I raise the subject with friends they're mostly utterly baffled that it's an issue, and my family are all firmly gc.

Online though, it's completely different. I'm a hobbyist writer and the writing community is gaga for this stuff. I feel very isolated, but shamefully keep my head down and rage in private about the number of brilliant female writers who write so beautifully about women's lives but mindlessly repeat TWAW. I just keep thinking, how can you believe that? How?

I do at times. I suspect that more would agree with me than I know, but I'm hesitant to bring it up in many cases. My dh thinks it's all cracked but isn't terribly political. My parents/siblings etc tend to be in the middle, a little skeptical but not really realising how far things have gone. My sister who is in health care tends to think of it as a sort of polite fiction I think.

A big issue for many of these people is that there is no reporting on it so it just goes under the radar, Canada has no mainstream news that have been looking at this, nothing that compares to the coverage in the UK.

I do have a few close friends who totally get it, one lost a job in academia over stating a public opinion on it, and fairly recently a good friend of mine from my parish brought it up with me. There's a young person in our congregation who's just had a double mastectomy which he was feeling very concerned about. He's a gay man and I think felt it was a little outside his wheelhouse and so he didn't want to make a rash statement, but we had a really good talk about feeling alienated from one's own body and what the teen girl experience was etc. Because of this young person I've found myself having to guard a lot of my discussion and I'm uncomfortable about it, but I feel both that there are several fragile personalities involved in that situation, and several very woke people who would basically try and run me out of my work.

I think this is part of the problem, although I don't know what the solution is. We don't challenge the people who agree with the ideology for fear of upsetting them.

I think it's important to differentiate challenging and badgering. In a political context we need to be able to talk about this stuff openly and I think it's good if people can talk about issues socially as well. But when people disagree, they need to be able to go to their jobs, or meet with their family, without it being constantly brought up.

As far as the number of intelligent, well educated people who believe this, in a way I have not been surprised. I came to the conclusion some time ago that a university degree is no longer a good indication of really being educated, and that seemingly educated people often have few thinking skills. The latter are not the same as having a middle class accent or a professional job or reading books and knowing all the right cultural information. I read something recently which suggested that educated people didn't actually think things through better, they just made more convincing sounding arguments, and that reflects my own experience.

I like my men and my women to be at least sure of themselves, and kind people. All of the trans people I've met I've either felt scared of their behaviour, or wanted to motherly protect

I can understand that you don’t want to date someone emotionally unstable or unpleasant or terminally unhappy with themselves. Some people who have transitioned don’t have dysphoria because it’s been treated.

Whether or not you could fall in love with someone without that being predicated on a particular combination of primary and secondary sex characteristics only you (general you) know. It’s probably more important to most, but not necessarily all.

There are two sexes. Bi sexual are attracted to both.

Yes. But most people expect a woman to have breasts and vagina and a man to have a flat chest, facial hair and penis.

Pan is more a response to people finding themselves able to be attracted to say someone who looks (reasonably) like a woman, has breasts and a penis, or someone with a full beard, flat chest and a vagina. A lot of people see those variants (or hybrids as someone said) as being outside of the expected sex Binary particularly in terms of physical attributes. Even though, yes there are only two reproductive sex classes.

I don't think that's where the term pansexual came from, even if some people use it that way.

In any case, a lot of the discussion about sexualities comes down to how much we see our way of thinking about those categories as being socially or culturally influenced.

I don't mind the term pansexual (apart from it being a trendy thing for teens to identify as).
A lot of gay or bi men are not at all attracted to trans women, for example, why should they be?
But those bi men that are can use pan if they want to distinguish.
Same with bi women, those that are attracted to trans women can call themselves pan, those that don't = bi.

Not that much day-to-day in real world interactions, most of my friends and family think it’s totally batshit thinking and that GC is the ‘common sense’ position. For my group of friends it covers all political affiliations, I’m politically left leaning on most subjects and have friends who are a mix in terms of personal politics.

My young adult children are the ones I see the biggest conflict in. They know and understand the biological facts but there’s so much societal pressure to drink the Kool Aid and accept this ‘new truth’. That conflict is magnified when they have friends who are trans.

If pansexual was simply a way to indicate that a person was open to sex and relationships with trans people, it wouldn't be a big deal.

Yet bisexuality has been taken over to mean attraction to one or more genders. Heterosexual transwomen have taken over the label of lesbian and throw around terms like lady dick and that people shouldn't bat at eyelid at the idea of lesbians having penises.
There is a lot of peer pressure among young people to view sexual orientation as outdated and exclusionary and something to be shunned. The implied message is that pansexuality is the only 'correct' way to be. It is a loaded term that comes with a specific set of ideological viewpoints.

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people who call themselves pansexual would not genuinely find the 'hybrid' bodies of some trans people attractive. They have possibly not even spent much time contemplating such encounters. It is a convenient label to signify to your social group how progressive you are, and it keeps the nosy / aggressive TRA types from asking you too many questions or confronting you about your political views in terms of transgender ideology.

There has been sexual interest in trans people long before the politicised term pansexual was invented. For example, there are niche porn categories of people with breasts and penis etc that are popular with some men.

I think the term pansexual is useful to trans people so they know whether a person they are interested in would open to dating them.

It people could just stick to the following that would be fine by me.

Trans woman WLTM pansexual woman = fine

Trans woman WLTM lesbian = not fine

Trans woman WLTM bisexual woman = not fine

Sometimes.

Some friends (ok let's face it mainly misogynistic gay male friends, woke bro straight Labour activists who are loving the chance to tell women to shut up, and a few North American women who are desperate to reject the strict gender norms they grew up with and think this stuff is radical) are vocally TWAW and so I avoid talking to them about it. I also make a downwards revision in my estimation of their thinking and our friendship.

A whole load more, especially the most conventional ones, get nervous and 'Oo so controversial and difficult' if I mention it.

And then there's a lot of others who I've got to know better and value more because of shared GC views. Varied group from lesbians scared to say anything publicly to Catholics to activists.

So it's all been rather mixed and sometimes painful but overall I've found stronger relationships with women who I can respect

I generally avoid the topic online (except here anonymously). I don't use Twitter and I see Facebook as a way of keeping in touch with friends rather than have political arguments, plus I'm wary of attracting attention from the more scary TRA types. I do have one FB friend (more an acquaintance) who's v vocal about trans rights and other fashionable issues; I muted her recently after she went into a rant about JKR being a t*f.

I've had a few discussions in real life, and most agree that TWANW even though sometimes it's kind to treat them like women. But they're seldom aware of the more dodgy cases, like J Yaniv or Karen White, and I think I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I br

(oops posted too soon)

think I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I bring up the problems with "just be kind" in every case.

I'm a hobbyist writer and the writing community is gaga for this stuff.

Me too. The online writing community has seriously lost its mind on this issue, some of my favourite authors among them. Fortunately I'm just a hobbyist so it doesn't affect me too much, but I pity anyone who has GC views and wants to be published in today's market.

I remember first bringing this up in a private facebook group a couple of years ago, thinking all the women in there would immediately see how absurd the TWAW mantra was. It had been mentioned a couple of times before, but I really was getting very worried about it at the time.
A couple of the 'dominant' members of the group decided I was basically a terrible bigot (without ever explicitly saying so) and consequently the debate got shut down.
Despite support from a large number of group members privately, people just were too afraid of causing offence so it is now one of the 'Subjects We Must Never Mention'.
I remain horrified that women could be so willing to throw other women under the bus. I understand some people have to keep quiet because of their jobs or roles (even private group posts can of course be screen-shotted) But the collusion of those who were willing to support me privately but not in the actual group still rankles.

I work in a very woke organisation (Stonewall top 50) and I'm careful about how I speak at work.
My sister in law and her wife, who are bisexual, think I'm completely wrong, which saddens me as I love them dearly. We just don't talk about it. I have a few very GC friends and am involved in setting up a meeting in our part of Scotland. I have spoken about the issue to close friends who broadly agree with me.
My 72 year old dad sent me a link about Selina Todd the other day - I was very proud.
DH would definitely like me to shut up!

I don't feel lonely or isolated thankfully. Many of the people I know are GC. I don't work in an overly woke environment.
I do know quite a few people who aren't GC or are ambivalent and that's fine too. I'll discuss my thoughts and perspectives but respect other people can hold different views.
I'm more passionate about the damage potentially done to children swept up in this though.
I don't feel strongly about 'pan' - language evolves, although I have pointed out the erasure of homosexuality by this shift to some friends.
I am grateful to be able to discuss these issues on MN as I don't use Twitter and only use Facebook for friends and nonsense.

Went to a funeral today, sat chatting with two fairly random women, one 50ish, one 30ish, me 40ish. Two of us have a ROGD kid in our restaurant W robe families and the other has a best friend with a ROGD kid.

This is the thing we need to talk about. If everyone says it out loud they realise it’s not just their family, and that it’s everywhere. And it makes so sense to go from no trans kids in an average British school 5-10 years ago to now, everyone knows one.

Where are the anorexics? The self harmers? The goths ? FFS.

One of my neighbours brought up all the gender stuff on BBC kids website the other day. She’s worried about her GNC daughter who is 11 and dreading puberty and all the seeming limitations that come with growing up female.

It’s the detransitioners who will blow the lid off ALL this woke stuff. It’s up to us to make sure as few kids as is humanely possible are harmed in the meantime.

Talk about the kids.

restaurant W robe should read ‘immediate family’ 😂 a combo of phone typing without my reading glasses and auto correct.

I don't think that's where the term pansexual came from, even if some people use it that way.
I first heard it being used by/about Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who (played by John Barrowman) - meaning he’d go with men, women, alien, anything.... so now I have an image of Layla Moran with a multi-limbed Star Wars-type character 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yes. But most people expect a woman to have breasts and vagina and a man to have a flat chest, facial hair and penis.

I dont know anyone who doesn't have a close friend or family member who has had a mastectomy due to breast cancer diagnosis or as a preventative due to BRCA risk. They are all women.

All humans have facial hair- both sexes.
Women who have more obvious facial hair which may be due to hirsutism, PCOS, changes in hormones due to menopause etc are all women.

I really do wonder about these 'people' whose classification of sex & 'expectations' seem naive & oblivious to the implications.

I see so much of the wokeness from my friends. I definitely dare not bring it up on Facebook where some people were frothing about JKR. My mum is firmly GC and has been educating my brothers, sister and dad about it and worrying about my 4-year-old niece. (Like me she learnt about what's going on from here.)
I have no idea about my colleagues, they're more into Love Island than politics. Might try bringing it up discretely one day and see what happens.
Church is the one place I can think of where people would agree with me (for some of the wrong reasons.) Being GC doesn't fit in with the idea of clearly defined gender roles in a traditional, conservative, patriarchal organisation. I don't know what to make of that sometimes.

A number of months ago I spoke to DC who lives in Canada. We do not speak often. She is an educated and intelligent person and considers herself very woke and inclusive. We had a long skype conversation, which went all over the place but included at the end a discussion that flipped from straightforward to weird. It was a discussion of a person who lives down my street who was outwardly male-appearing for years (married, father of three) before becoming a fish-net wearing Barbie-type transwoman. To me this person is a classic AGP. In my youth they would have been called either a cross dresser or a transvestite, but since we are told by Stonewall that cross dressers are under the "trans umbrella", I called this person (and they call themselves) a transwoman. Our discussion was about a row this person was having with another neighbour (so not initially about TW).

I don't think the descriptive words are different in Canada but DC was shocked at my vocabulary and said I was mistaken. "This is not a transwoman, and just because you put on a dress it does not make you a woman". So, DC believes TWAW, but not this one. I think she sees herself as someone very inclusive of the T in the LGBT but doesn't know what the T really entails, or what she is being inclusive of. I suspect that is the case with a lot of people in Canada because the gender issue is not something that is covered by the press. For whatever reason (no debate).

DC accused me of being horrible, and of labeling the cross dresser as trans because of appearance, as though I was catagorising them by their clothing (hmmm...yes, that's what's happening I guess, but not my fault). DC was clearly shocked by my "stupidity" and asked what she believed was a killer question: What is a man, then? Huh? Huh? I think she expected me to answer 'no make-up, men's clothing...'

Me: well for starters a man is generally a person with a penis.

DC: Not all people with penises are men. Some men are women. (So she believes TWAW, but not cross dressers, fair enough).

Me: what now? Did you hear what just came out of your mouth? Men are women??

She faltered here, but only a little. DC: Yes some men are really women. They feel inside that they are women and so they are women.

Me: Someone born with a penis is a man, that is his sex. Won't change. But he may choose feminised clothing if it makes him happy, his decision.

DC: He doesn't choose, he doesn't have a choice!

Me: He doesn't choose his sex (male) but he may well choose to wear (gendered) feminine clothing to feel more comfortable in his skin, for instance. To me that's fine but he is still a man. And in the strange world we live in, a cross dresser with no dysphoria can also call himself a transwoman. So define a woman for me. What makes you KNOW you are a woman?

DC had obviously never thought about this before, ever (because Canada). DC: (answering as if speaking to a simpleton) I am a woman because of my boobs and my uterus and ovaries.

Me: If that is what makes you a woman, then how is that person born with a penis really a woman?

DC: (huge hesitation)...and a feeling deep in my gut...

My DC has not spoken to me since, and if she has gone away thinking I am a bigot, well, maybe she has also been forced to think things through a bit more. I know that I need to understand the issue better, and I am immersed in it. Whatever conclusion she comes to is up to her but for me our conversation illustrates that many people just don't know what it is they are supporting in saying TWAW, and therefore getting angry at their "horrid" family and friends. But hey, no debate. I guess it has worked so far.

@Kit19 same here re work, I feel so alone

You're not alone. Some people will always prefer to go with the crowd...and social acceptability is the most important thing. That goes for all sorts of issues...not just this one. Most people will not speak, or stand, up.......That may mean that in your life you will have fewer, albeit more meaningful, friendships...but that is fine.

DC accused me of being horrible, and of labeling the cross dresser as trans because of appearance, as though I was catagorising them by their clothing (hmmm...yes, that's what's happening I guess, but not my fault). DC was clearly shocked by my "stupidity" and asked what she believed was a killer question: What is a man, then? Huh? Huh? I think she expected me to answer 'no make-up, men's clothing

Just shows the complete mess people get themselves into when they are trying to be politically correct, against all of their instincts. This is what being told what to think ends up looking like...you can no longer think or judge for yourself.