The cost

[Glinner]

Question for my gender-critical homies.

What was the closest friendship you lost because of your beliefs? Or not even the closest, just one that surprised you or knocked you back? We all know about losing livelihoods due to 'cancellation', but I want to show people the social cost of it.

My gay best friend of 20+ years ditched me when I asked questions about Pride.

A friend of a friend, also a gay man, ditched me after I questioned Sex Ed content - he compared it to section 28.

An ex colleague asked if I knew any trans people and maybe I should speak to some before I share content from bigots.

The only one that hurt was the first one. Since then I've had questions abut my position and accusations of bigotry etc levelled at me and I've come to expect it, but now I have more friends than ever, IRL and online and I feel more connected and supported than before.

In the end it wasn't much of a loss.

Can't help am afraid. Have a mouth as big as the grand canyon and all my pals know it. If I have something to say, I say it and am very unlikely to notice if anyone's offended.

Selfish or what😁

@highame

Can't help am afraid. Have a mouth as big as the grand canyon and all my pals know it. If I have something to say, I say it and am very unlikely to notice if anyone's offended.

Selfish or what😁

This is me too. I'm sure I often bore people to death with it but it won't stop me! But to be fair, everyone I've discussed it with agrees with me. Well that's what hey tell me after I've ranted!

Maybe it's the threatening looks at the meat clever, that usually help with the compliance

@highame

Maybe it's the threatening looks at the meat clever, that usually help with the compliance

I’ve lost touch with a good friend of 20 years standing who is full TWAW and actively campaigning for self ID

We used to have similar views along the lines of be kind/most oppressed minority ever but as time has gone on she’s bought into everything & called me a TERF and I’ve gone completely GC

Can’t get past it sadly. I might have been able to live with TWAW but I can’t with the pro active campaigning for self ID

For me it isn't friends that are the problem, it's discussions with my adult children, and more importantly my nieces and nephews and other of that generation.

My kids believe it's all a load of bollocks, and a particularly angry with male people entering women's spaces (especially sport for my son, medical and abuse situations for my daughter). But they have forbidden me to talk about it, they are afraid to say anything themselves, it's a taboo subject.

I also have other friends who I never discuss it with as I know they are in be kind mode and one of them has a trans sibling.

I regularly met a group of women for a meal. They broadly agreed with me, but when election time came voted green, labour or Lib Dem as I would have in previous years. I spoilt my ballot, and feel that they now think I'm a right wing loon. 🤷🏼‍♀️
Another distant friend tried to turn me against JKR. I politely pushed back- as she's pretty fragile- and she told me she was glad I was listening, and that it's enough for now. I muttered under my breath that i hoped she was listening too!

A really good friend just ghosted me because I'm GC. He worked with me, we were creative together, and he's just disappeared. It's really sad but he's incapable of even trying to see my viewpoint so perhaps no great loss.

The women in my life who I have spoken to have all been right in there with me bar 1 acquaintance.

I grew up rejected by my peers and escaped online. There I finally found people who got me, who didn't judge me, who were just as weird as me. I found people I could connect with intellectually. People who accepted me as human.

Lost 'em all over this.

The one that hurt the most is the best friend of a decade. She wasn't just an online friend, she was like a brain twin. We knew each other inside and out. Losing her over my perceived bigotry was the worst. Especially because she's a biologist.

I am sorry to read of these losses. So far I’ve only had one not-too-close friend cut me off entirely. A very close friend of 30 years has drawn back from me over this though, even though we never discuss it.

What perplexes me is that the people who are dumping friends are always from the TWAW side of the debate- the side that calls itself tolerant and inclusive, and urges people to be kind. I hardly ever (never?) hear of GC people dumping friends for being trans allies. Which is weird, if it’s us that are supposed to be so vile and intolerant- we sure do seem to be able to rub along with and tolerate other people with views that we find upsetting.

I’m well able to be friends with people with different viewpoints, in fact I think it would be quite sad and limiting if I wasn’t.

‘Bigot’, like ‘literal’, ‘violence’, ‘woman’, and many other words has had its meaning changed and distorted to a point that is almost opposite its true meaning. ‘Bigot’ not means someone who is tolerant and prepared to listen to all arguments and perspectives (as opposed to those who shout out this world who are intolerant of everyone who does not agree with them),

Argh. Typos.
*now not not
*word not world

Lost one of my dearest friends (a trans man) of over a decade over my 'hateful' views. It's also severely undermined my relationship with a work colleague and mentor I was good mates with (another trans man). The situation with my trans friends saddens me but I can understand it, I suppose - they're heavily personally invested. Far more hurtful are the friends who are not trans who have deleted me or accused me of bigotry without even having a discussion with me first. One of these is a typical 'wokebro' but we've known each other since we were 5. So yes, the personal costs have been very high :-(

Yep

A colleague who was a ‘brain twin‘ someone I had known and worked closely with for over 10 years.

One of the very true male feminists I have ever known, who took me by surprise in a meeting at work the first time we met, by listening and agreeing when I made a mildly feminist point (instead of whatabouting or dismissing)

A true champion of civil rights, hes a very active local politician and true lefty who has fought for the underdog since forever.

He has a trans family member. And when he started muttering darkly about T4RFS I knew we were on the way out. It is mad because deep down the ideology is SO at odds with everything he stands for really. But he has too much personal investment. (The FM has had multiple surgeries, and been on meds and in therapy for years, this is a whole family effort)

Utterly gutted, I have rarely had such respect for someone. (And as a pp mentioned. I have no issue with nonGC friends, but they do,with me)

Tyro, I was reading on another thread the correlation between TWAW and gaming. There was a suggestion that people living in a very virtual world where we can all be whatever avatar we invest in were more inclined to forget the very real limitations of physical reality. That could explain your friends' susceptibility to trans ideology.

Not that eases the hurt any. 💐

I've actually been the person pulling back with a young (slightly distant) female family member who has gone fully down the t*rfs deserve violence route. I was polite about it but I don't want to see that rhetoric being posted.

I've pulled away from someone in the industry I was friendly with over her use of the term t*rf and her hissy fit over JKR

Absolutely, picklemewalnuts, but in my case it was fandom rather than gaming. The physical body really doesn't feel like it matters when you're living in a collaborative world made of words. We've had threads on it before but I wish there could be some proper research into who ends up living online instead of off, and why, and what the ramifications are. And then a comparison run with the typical rogd profile - anecdotally, the holy trinity of abused, neurodiverse, not-straight was rife in fandom twenty years ago.

Tyro, may I ask if you were also in the fanfiction scene?

@TyroSaysMeow

Absolutely, picklemewalnuts, but in my case it was fandom rather than gaming. The physical body really doesn't feel like it matters when you're living in a collaborative world made of words. We've had threads on it before but I wish there could be some proper research into who ends up living online instead of off, and why, and what the ramifications are. And then a comparison run with the typical rogd profile - anecdotally, the holy trinity of abused, neurodiverse, not-straight was rife in fandom twenty years ago.

Oh yes, I hear you. The proportion of women in fandom ticking one or more boxes of your trinity is much much higher than the female population at large.

I have to admit I'm a coward - I just steer well away from the issue with my fandom friends (and I write in a fandom that isn't really susceptible to woke reinterpretations).

I'm out to all my RL friends, though, including a very close friend who is a lesbian and very trans-inclusive (we just seem to have a tacit agreement not to talk about it - it came up via an initiative round inclusivity, and I just quietly said "well, I think sometimes the feature underlying oppression is biology, and I'm gender critical", and she said "well, think of it as including transmen", and we agreed on a compromise with that.)

My own husband disagrees with me which is a bit depressing(he thinks JK Rowling was punching down, that the actions of a few shouldn'tchase for the many, that most people mean no harm so just let them be). We've agreed to just not talk about it for the sake of our marriage but I am obsessing about it a bit so I feel like I'm not being very honest with him

I was indeed, Highwind. Although I don't want to be too precise because it's potentially very outing, I was part of a collaborative multi-fandom writing community for several years. It was actually really good fun!

I hope, one day, a time will come that that fun activity can reconvene in an inclusive kind way Tyro. 💐

Because there are many many people who still need it, many of them vulnerable, and in ne3d of a safer space than is currently available,