What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?

[FredFlintstonesTunic]

For me, it's really exposed how large media platforms (i.e., a few very rich and powerful people) can shape public perceptions (e.g., by blocking, shaming, nudging and belittling certain ideas and/or people, and promoting others).

I'm no longer so quick to dismiss other people's unusual opinions, or to label them "conspiracists" without looking as openly as possible into what they're talking about (including from sources associated with intelligent people not necessarily in the mainstream media). I don't trust Wikipedia (or Urban Dictionary) without question (which I shouldn't have anyway, but...). I have more respect for people who are willing to say unpopular things (e.g., left-wingers who don't like the EU). In general, I'm far more likely to take news stories with a pinch of salt.

Anyone else?

I've been shocked to the core how easy it is to persuade large numbers of apparently rational adults to parrot something that they know cannot possibly be true, because they want to go along with the crowd and not be unpopular.

I'm not talking about the misogynists, but the people who are prepared to turn a blind eye to their behaviour and pretend it will all turn out ok.

Yes, I think part of my unpleasant shock was not the existence of men who have pure contempt for women, I sadly knew that. It wasn't even how women eagerly form part of the system to shunt all women down, I knew that too.

It's the amount of people who disavow both of those positions and still support and promote those positions as long as they are packaged more neatly, and act as the brute squad against those who object.

Safeguarding. I knew nothing about safeguarding until I started reading Lisa Muggeridge, very early after the attack on Maria which was what first alerted me to the violent males hiding behind the trans veneer.

Any rights for which women have fought, including the vote and not being 'owned by' a man, were granted by men. it has rarely been directly stated (except by MRAs TRAs, men who cannot pressure a woman into a relationship, etc), but is often implied, is we are now at a point where some men are actively attempting to have these 'rights' removed.

How can something be a 'right' if it is granted by one group who also have the power to remove that right?

As others have said on this thread, many men see women as sub men, broken men or not really human.

Great thread and great posts!

For me, how utterly divorced from the physical, natural world some people are. I wonder how much of this would disappear if they went to live in the forest with no Wi-Fi or mirrors for a while...

And I've been utterly baffled by the equating of asking honest, logical questions with causing harm. Or being screamed at to just be kind. How readily people shut down thinking if they're accused of being mean - we really are attached to an image of ourselves as 'a nice person'
How did kind = uncritically letting people (especially kids!) do whatever they want = society's highest good?!

Everything you said in your OP and I value freedom of speech much more after the experience if the past few years.

I’d been cheering Laurence Fox on for his GC views and initially got a bit of a shock over his Question Time performance, but it made me realise that actually he should have the right to voice an opinion and we should all be free to agree or disagree. Also that it’s important that minority or unfathomable views get airtime or print space in the MSM. No societal problem has ever been made worse by polite discussion.

Unfashionable views, nit so much the unfathomable views

I've learned just how DEEPLY men hate womem, especially after looking at the "Terf is a slur: documenting" site.

I’ve become a much more vociferous defender of free speech. Let others say their piece, because you never know when your own perfectly reasonable beliefs such as facts, science and biology will also be deemed “offensive” and be outside the Overton window.

I no longer view the press as being divided into “good” and “bad” and a newspaper or media organisation’s supposed political slant - left or right wing - doesn’t mean anything any more. All there is is good reporting and bad reporting and all of the main media organisations are capable of both. I won’t respect or hate any particular news media publication just because of perceptions about their editorial stances on any issue. Individual journalists are much more important.

I have most of all been astonished that many of my medical colleagues are utterly divorced from biological reality. The fact that no one seems to care that “assigned male/female at birth” is so utterly wrong and yet is being written into legislation shows that many doctors are blind to such issues.

I will also no longer be complicit in blowing smoke up the arses of our so-called eminent medical institutions. The semi-joke in Australia is that the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne models itself as the 4th best children’s hospital in the world, but they fully support a clinic that is taking the healthy bodies of children and altering them for life and setting them up for a lifetime of medicalisation based on poor evidence, and no one - not the hospital itself, not the state or federal government - seems bothered by it. So I now no longer believe anyone is free from scrutiny on the basis of reputation and social standing. “Because the Children’s Hospital does it” is not good enough justification for anything any more, it still needs good evidence.

Any rights for which women have fought, including the vote and not being 'owned by' a man, were granted by men.

YY. And we're not allowed to forget it.

That people will flat out lie and claim to believe things that they know not to be true if they think it benefits them to do so. Obviously I always knew some people would, but the sheer number who have has surprised me.

That the right actually does support freedom of speech in a way the left doesn't. This was probably the most challenging realization for me on a personal level, as a lifelong leftist, the fact that the authoritarian left has decisively won the battle for control over leftist groups and organizations, leaving those of us who're left and anti authoritarian without any clear political home.

That many people are so horrified by gender non conformity in children that they will do literally anything to make it go away, no matter what the cost is to the kids, even if those kids are their own.

The weaknesses of lefty media. It was the Cologne article that was the final straw for me in terms of The Guardian, but really the underlying causes are the same ones that lead to them covering trans issues so poorly.

How common personality disorders are at a population level, and how easily even a small number of people with those disorders can wreak havoc when given a tool that can be used to manipulate people.

That most people don't really have strong political or ethical beliefs and will just sort of go along with whatever the current trend is without asking too many questions.

The rampant misogyny unfortunately was not a surprise, as I figured that one out as a small child.

That most people don't really have strong political or ethical beliefs and will just sort of go along with whatever the current trend is without asking too many questions.

Yes that was a shock to me. Especially when they then act as if they are incredibly moral.

This has been such an interesting thread. It would be good if someone could turn it into a list or even an article.

“I've been shocked to the core how easy it is to persuade large numbers of apparently rational adults to parrot something that they know cannot possibly be true, because they want to go along with the crowd and not be unpopular.”

Yes this. How are intelligent people going around talking about ‘sex assigned at birth”? EVERYONE knows this is nonsense. I can’t get my head round it.

RoyalCorgi - yes it has revealed so much including things that Feminism could campaign on going forward.

How some people, not huge amounts but enough to cause trouble, can believe something so utterly, blatantly impossible to such a fanatical degree that they will literally attack people, physically, to protect themselves from hearing tha truth. I know there are religious fanatics, but nobody can prove there isn’t a god, even if the idea of there being one seems so completely impossible to lots of us, but believing that people can change sex is not just imaginary friend teratory, it’s blatant delusion.

That a small number of fanatics can influence every aspect of society no matter how fucking mental their beliefs.

That there are some very clever calculating people out there, a lot it would seem, who will bend almost anything to their nefarious purposes.

And how apathetic most of the public are, even when having utter delusion forced upon them and being forced to act as if it were true.

That’s quite a big realisation, and now I’m inclined to view anything in the MSM with a suspicious eye. I’m also ready to accept that even the most bonkers conspiracy theory has a grain of truth buried in it somewhere.

I always thought the story of the Emperor's new clothes was ridiculous.

Not so much anymore.

It's made me realise that left and right are two wings of the same patriarchal bird
Should've realised a lot sooner, really, but the breadth and depth of the Left's misogyny problem came as a shock

Beautifully put.

Porn. Obviously I was aware of the inherent issues with porn before but fairly naive as to the new wave the internet has brought about. Furries, adult babies, anime etc... how much of a crossover there is with the TRA movement and how much young people are being groomed by this type of stuff, often in plain sight. How it leads to disordered thinking and a loss of a grasp on reality. Very disturbing and eye opening.

How little people care about women's rights really. It was like looking into a terrifying chasm.

How people think that women’s rights are a joke - but if a male asks for/takes the same rights, people fall over themselves.

Also: how far educational standards have fallen. I'm not being unkind - I was misguided and often wrong when I was young but I've never seen anything like the ignorance and stupidity of this generation. I think the internet carries a lot of the blame - the poor attention span, the urge to communicate in bite-sized punchlines for likes and approval rather than putting forth complex arguments, the endless chatter surrounding them so they never have quiet time alone in their heads. Their aggression and nastiness when confronted with different opinions. The willingness to cancel, ban, ruin careers. The endless parade of self-diagnosed disabilities, illnesses and conditions.

And wtf is the bizarre cult of Judith Butler? How has one charlatan academic, who never was a feminist, centred in what were once feminist / women's studies courses? I don't get it. She appeared around the time I was a student and that kind of thinking was definitely creeping in - I think we were bored of tired old angry 70s feminism, it was our mums basically - but we still had some grasp of material reality. We did not think prostitution was a job like any other and which should be legalised, or that men could become women.

I don't want to be some harrumphing old git, complaining about the young. (please no-one wheel out the probably misattributed Socrates quote!) I know they aren't all like this. But unless something very big happens to their thinking, I am really scared of the day when this generation is in charge.

I work with young people. I agree with you. I also think that social media is lagely to blame tbf.

Have to add that as a parent I have a big stake in this. I try to do as much as I can to counter the negative influences but it's hard.