Well, I've just come out as GC on Facebook...

[SapphireSeptember]

I watched this video this evening, and decided I couldn't keep quiet anymore. So I shared it on Facebook, along with the caption 'women are women, women's rights are human rights,' and thanked JK Rowling for standing up for women.

A male friend of mine replied with 'transwomen are women' said it was a TERF-y video and asked if I'd posted it accidentally. Guess he's no loss as a friend.

I've just left the Terry Pratchett FB fan group, We Aten't Dead.
There was an unpleasant post in it yesterday, calling JKR a terf etc.
I reported it for hate speech.
Admin put up a note asking people to not use the term, as it is considered a slur and hate speech - I'm SURE I wasn't the only one to report it! - and BANG - a whole thread, over 280 comments, wherein 90% of them were misogynistic hate-filled TRA supporting rants. Refusal to acknowledge that terf is used in any objectionable way. Refusal to acknowedge that cis is unacceptable to many women.

Too many of them - so I left, because while they're banging on about it "not being a safe space for trans", I know it's now not a safe space for women to stand up for their biological sex-based rights.

I'm fucking pissed off.

I'd hope that if Terry Pratchett were still with us he'd be sticking up for JK Rowling, he always seemed a sensible sort.

The thing that really made me angry is my (female) friend who has worked with victims of DV and sexual violence and yet called JK Rowling a 'transphobic bitch' for being worried about women's rights! Surely she of all people should get why women need single sex spaces? Argh!

I've gone bright red and been shaking with nerves when vaguely skirting round the trans issue with friends in real life, to feel them out as it were! Lol!

Far too scared to reveal myself on Facebook.

Sorry who are the ones who face abuse and are fearful? 🙄

@MrGHardy

I gave him a really sarcastic answer, was utterly unrepentant, and finished it off with 'transwomen are transwomen, no more, no less.'

I had another bloke mansplain to me what being a woman is, nobber. (And was actually making JK Rowling's point, ie reducing women to their biology is pretty shit.)

The angry face reacts are giving me great joy. I can never go back to my LARP thingy, but I don't care. It's expensive anyway, and there are other things I want to do, like go on fancy trains. (I have a thing about trains at the moment.)

"The thing that really made me angry is my (female) friend who has worked with victims of DV and sexual violence and yet called JK Rowling a 'transphobic bitch' for being worried about women's rights! Surely she of all people should get why women need single sex spaces? Argh!"

You'd think, huh. But no! Because she's bought into the fallacy that transwomen are THE MOST abused and THE MOST at risk of violence, so they deserve spaces in refuges same as women. And OF COURSE they won't abuse the other women because THEY ARE WOMEN TOO.

I've actually got someone, a friend, on my timeline coming out with this shit too - not shouting, like I am for emphasis - but it's ALL about their feelings, their validation, their safety - because they are more at risk than the 2+ women per week killed in the UK by a partner/ ex partner, and the 1+ women per week in Australia killed in the same way. So those traumatised women who have escaped from their abusers just have to move over and let in other male-bodied people to their supposed safe space, because. And no, you're not allowed to suggest that there should be a separate refuge for transwomen because that is "othering" and hurts their feelz. Well quite honestly, fuck their feelz. They ARE "other" because they have penises.

Friend is likening it to same-sex marriage, and all the people who came out saying "let them have it but call it something different because of the sanctity of marriage" (bollocks) - and I haven't yet managed to put together a coherent argument that refutes that successfully. I'm working on it but if anyone can help me out with that, I'd be enormously grateful!

a friend in the refuge sector in the uk says theres absolutely a clear divide between the older (45 plus- ish) and the younger staff on this. she tries v much to neutrally bring them together but...v hard.

@CheerfuIPotato

The person who lost her shit at me is gay. Be careful. Not sure if she misunderstood what I was saying and thought I was being homophobic as well as “transphobic” but in hindsight I’d have left it. Although I’m a bit pissed off as her remarks popped up on MY timeline so I commented which I assumed was the point of Facebook...

One of my most outspokenly GC friends on FB is an American gay man. I adore him! He pulls no punches. He even said the other day that he would rather vote for Trump than Biden because the latter is "a misogynistic dotty old man" and the left need to learn a valuable lesson. He said "You should see the way the liberal women in ** try and bend over backwards to appease every man in a dress, to the point of encouraging them to take their jobs, and still claim to be for women’s rights. It’s tragic. These are the people who trans their children. These are the people who want perverts in women’s prisons. These are the people who deny funding to rape shelters because maybe a woman who has been raped doesn’t want to see a penis. I am in a city of hypocrites."

He has loads of friends and many of the men question him, but so politely! Like, "I wish you would rethink that,..." and "I don't agree" or "why are you so obsessed with trans, it's not your battle".

If he were a woman the same people would be after him with pitchforks! It's on the one side infuriating, on the other side a lot of people DO seem to approve so it's a bit of a sign that not all of the USA has fallen. He has loads of friends and I don't think he has lost any over this.
It's a long slow process but there is hope. I have not yet outed myself on FB. Though I am not an employee who could get sacked I do need contracts and being hounded by people with pitchforks if I were to come out would be the end of all I've been working towards. BUT I know once I get there I will go public with a fury.

Surely:

If you feel uncomfortable about gay marriage, then don’t enter into a gay marriage.
If you feel uncomfortable about transwomen in women’s prisons, showers or boxing rings, you’re stuck because suddenly you are now unable to organise as a group of women (a key women’s right that people seem to forget we fought for).
Is that it?

I think the problem is the use of the word gender in the article when the writer meant 'sex'. Gender is just a nonsense. There's no such thing as a pink brain.

Trans women want the right to be spoken to as women or use a different name. I get that, but ultimately its just pronouns and means nothing.

People want the legal right to 'live as a woman". What is that? It's just a caricature. A stereotype. I don't have the legal right to live as a woman. I have to wear jeans every day, because of the workload dumped on me by a society that doesn't make sure men " live as men" I have to learn how to do every "masculine" task whether I want to or not.
I have literally no time to do what I want to do at all.

Its all just a phallacy. One that has been used to control and subjugate women since time immemorial.

The AIBU Drag thread is interesting at the moment.
Lots of people making the connection between misogyny, bullying, sexual violence and men invading female spaces
without the T word in there anywhere.

Its interesting that actors who just read the words think that TWAW
but writers who create the words
do not

live as a woman
Looking at the pictures of many of my female friends at the moment that is
trackies / jeans
hoodies / sweatshirts
poorly styled greying hair
monobrows and wrinkles
in fact pretty darned androgynous
so yet again
we women have failed as women

Could it possibly be that woman is nothing to do with your dress choices, or hair styles, or skin product choices, or hobbies, or favourite colours, or behaviours?

Could it possibly be that 51% of the human race have actually managed to be sufficiently versatile and individual that the only one characteristic they have in common that forms them into a class, regardless of country, wealth, faith, race, colour, fashion, culture the whole planet over, through the entire of history - is being born with female biology?

You're brave OP, well done. I'm too chicken, although I'm still getting grief. My young autistic adult DD has had enough and is posting stuff to show her clear support of JKR and her reasons why. She's being annihilated by friends and family on FB. Long standing friends deleting her (and me by association). I'm getting messages from others berating me for not berating her. It's really ugly, so ugly that even my DH is deleting people because of aggression they are orchestrating against DD, and normally anything on social media goes over his head. All these are all people we know in real life.

By the time this settles I'll only have DD, DH and the cat as Facebook friends and I've not even said anything.

That’s awful @MashedPotatoBrainz. What kind of stuff are they saying?

Like I said I’ve deleted myself from social media now. I don’t know if I want people who blindly accept trans ideology, seem unable to think for themselves, refuse to engage in debate and believe that women should be silenced (or worse) for disagreeing with them, as my friends. I don’t know why they can’t see that they are being the very opposite of the liberal, tolerant feminists they think they are!

I think I’d be perfectly happy if my world was just me, my husband and the kids anyway!

I know it is difficult but ask yourself why you care what other people think, if they don't care what you think?

I've 'come out' on FB and I havent had one single reply/response in any form

A friend of mine has posted a linked article to be the JKR essay. So I have liked and commented. A group of quite strong minded women have also 'liked'. No-one is daring to argue back

That’s awful @MashedPotatoBrainz. What kind of stuff are they saying?

I think they got the TRA hymn sheet. But basically she's literally kiiling transpeople by agreeing with JKR and she should be ashamed of herself, she's not the person they thought she was, she's a bigot, she needs to educate herself, she needs to reevaluate her life/aggressive ideas, name calling. But then after they've deleted her gloating about to all and sundry who then jump on the band wagon.

I really want to post on my social media but am scared of the work fallout...reading all the misogyny that JK, and women, have been subjected to, is giving me the rage. Also this idea that 'old feminists' are wrong and the new, 'young generation' are sooo much more tolerant! As a 40-something, I am very happy to call myself an 'old bitter' feminist if that means advocating for sex-based rights.

@MashedPotatoBrainz

You're brave OP, well done. I'm too chicken, although I'm still getting grief. My young autistic adult DD has had enough and is posting stuff to show her clear support of JKR and her reasons why. She's being annihilated by friends and family on FB. Long standing friends deleting her (and me by association). I'm getting messages from others berating me for not berating her. It's really ugly, so ugly that even my DH is deleting people because of aggression they are orchestrating against DD, and normally anything on social media goes over his head. All these are all people we know in real life.

By the time this settles I'll only have DD, DH and the cat as Facebook friends and I've not even said anything.

That is absolutely dreadful! What awful people they are, to think it's ok to attack your DD and the rest of you by association like that.

I'm so sorry. :(

Here is a useful article that your DD might like. medium.com/@aeso/istandwithjkr-is-metoo2-0-8827bae0c390

I've sent it to her.

Thank you.

A FB friend of mine has posted today #dontbuythesun. My heart leaped: I recognised it as a secret code.

The post has 20 likes and three shares. I thought it was pretty obvious what she was trying to say but the comments show that many are oblivious:
"what have they done now?" "never have and never will" "#neverhave" etc. I think the code might be a little too secret.

People want the legal right to 'live as a woman". What is that? It's just a caricature. A stereotype.

I live atm with my 35 year old son. He is a man, obviously. We live in exactly the same way. We eat, drink, sleep, wee, poop, wear similar clothes, trousers, tshirts and shoes.
I wear a bra, he doesn't.

The main difference between us: He is much stronger. I had some Ikea flatpack boxes delivered yesterday and he carried them up and into the flat as if they weighed nothing; I struggled to even get one pack off the floor.
But it was I who actually built the storage unit, by myself - yes, I know how to use a hammer and screwdriver. He then moved the heavy unit into it's final place.
He wears bigger clothes and shoes than I do.

I can't really think of any other differences between living as a man and living as a woman. Heck, I don't even have periods any more, and he sits to wee (raised in Germany).

Is it "wearing a bra" that identifies me as a woman? But isn't that because of my BIOLOGY, as well as my son's strength and bigger size clothes?

My conclusion: to live as a woman you have to actually BE a woman.

@MashedPotatoBrainz

You're brave OP, well done. I'm too chicken, although I'm still getting grief. My young autistic adult DD has had enough and is posting stuff to show her clear support of JKR and her reasons why. She's being annihilated by friends and family on FB. Long standing friends deleting her (and me by association). I'm getting messages from others berating me for not berating her. It's really ugly, so ugly that even my DH is deleting people because of aggression they are orchestrating against DD, and normally anything on social media goes over his head. All these are all people we know in real life.

By the time this settles I'll only have DD, DH and the cat as Facebook friends and I've not even said anything.

This is vile. It's hard to believe that normal people can react like this -- I thought the silent majority of us were sensible? One of the reasons I am reluctant to come out on FB is that I bloody well know that there would be such vile reactions among MY friends and I can't bear to see it. I also know that one day the dam will break and it will happen.

Not about me being GC on FB< but I figured this would fit best here as not worthy of its own thread.

But one of my close friends, who was quite..TRA like until today has been rampaging all over the wokebros and its been glorious tbh. Best thing I have seen from her today? Someone asked what on earth a TERF is.

A woman who refuses to believe that straight white males are the most oppressed people on the planet

That is rotten, MashedPotato. I'm sorry for your brave dd - even if I didn't agree with her, it takes a hell of a lot of guts to speak up in this climate. Look how many older more battle-scarred women are too wary to do so.

I've made some quiet, small steps. All very nice and calm. Just asking questions, when people post about it, has prompted some very interesting conversations. And sometimes just saying I support JK. I'm thinking of it as my calm, steady, take-your-time standing up. I am standing up, just very slowly.

I won't stop.