@Goldencurtain
Thank you for the additional background information, it's helpful to me. Maybe align wasn't quite the right word - I'm not looking for some kind of leader - but I guess I want to be fully informed about whose company I keep, e.g. I know Douglas Murray is supportive, and I know he can also be a bit right wing about immigration.
To those who doubted my intentions, you've had a lot of people being dicks for years so I guess I can't blame you...just through a few weeks of being on twitter... I'm absolutely appalled. But at the same time the thing that pushed me over to start trying to be more active was how I was treated on other groups that were meant to be for women, and I did feel a bit sad to see elements of the same.
If interested, the top 3 things that have pushed me were:
- Borrowing another mum's floral sleepsuit for my son after forgetting a change of clothes and she said when he wore it "oh he suits it! Maybe he'll be trans". There I was, dressing him in bunny rabbits and pink thinking gendered stereotypes needed to be defeated. I had no idea things had got so ridiculous that instead of "boys cant wear pink" it had now moved into "if boys wear pink they must be a girl"
- Going on an 'Evidence Based birthing' group after trying to process a traumatic birth and having my comment deleted and then banned after suggesting that calling women 'birthers' was dehumanising
- Joining a menstrual cup group because my insides are fucked and it took 2 days to get over the pain of putting in a tampon after my first post childbirth period. And then seeing whole swathes of comments deleted on a pro-trans post (the rules were you couldn't get even refer to 'women'). My comment in support stating it wasn't hate speech and I wasn't an evil person for thinking that gender stereotypes aren't true was also deleted.
These may seem like small things to those of you that have been involved for years, but I found it so personally hurtful and also really scary. Scary how mainstream it has become and pretty terrifying how dissent is not even debated; it's deleted.
It's very frightening, isn't it. The totalitarian silencing of women, the aggressive misogyny under the most skimpy of figleaves, with apparently intelligent women who claim to be feminists meekly genuflecting to male people insisting they are far better placed to determine what a woman is.
I don't know how the hell we are in a place where a genuine wish to be kind to people with a rare identity disorder, so they could live happy, fulfilled lives, has ended with aggressive women-hating misogynists seeking to erase us as a legal entity, erase our access to single sex spaces, sports, political representation... altering even our crime recording. It's all well and good people scoffing at the latter, but given 3 years ago there were 60 transwomen sex offenders and only just over double that number women, how is it arguable? That would be a 50% increase in offending, and it wouldn't be natal women responsible at all. Yet in many police forces now they accept self ID in crime reporting.
The whole thing is a cross between Orwell and The Handmaid's Tale. And it's all happening by stealth - people have no idea that it is, and that is actually entirely intentional. It's a strategic decision to silence everyone while they indoctrinate kids into a belief system their parents do not share.
The best thing we can do, really, and sadly, is find women who feel as we do, and work together. Sometimes, people will fall out, men and women alike. Personalities clash. But I don't care who likes whom. I care that this essential work is done - and I should add that I welcome the kind, sane voices of a lot of trans people who are appalled at what is being done in their name, and completely acknowledge the impact of sex, and sexism, on our lives.
It's painful. None of us want to be here. Nobody likes being demonised, but sadly, women have always been demonised when defending women's rights, including by other women, because men have more power. That's how this shitfest has been snuck in, behind our backs and when our guard was down, because we thought these battles had already been won.
Women are a sex class. Men are a sex class. The argument that some small studies indicate that some transwomen, after a considerable time (and medical interventions, and without controlling for sexuality) have some similarities to our brains is a red herring. If it weren't, they'd not bother with psychiatric interventions before starting treatment: they'd simply scan brains. None of it - NONE of it - makes a lick of sense.
It's very frightening, isn't it. But this is actually what most women think. What they know. And there are so, so many of us, and when we unite, we can achieve a lot - look at what has already been achieved, in terms of insisting our existing rights remain protected, and we don't lose more. Thanks to Maya Forstater and Allison Bailey and many, many more we may find our freedom of speech is restored to us sometime soon. Because this ideology really makes no sense. And that is precisely why the aggressive, hateful attempts to silence us are happening: because when people point out the Emperor is naked, others start to see it, too.