Battle fatigue setting in?

[Shedbuilder]

Like so many here my life seems to be dominated by the fight to protect my sex and sexuality from obliteration. But I'm noticing that quite a few women around me, who this time last year seemed equally as GC, are slowly backing out.

Over the summer my partner and I met up on various occasions (outdoors, socially-distanced) with various small groups of friends and contacts who were once full-on resisters and are now saying 'Just don't go there.' There's an obscure little messageboard I've belonged to for donkeys years where we've had gender critical threads and most people have been supportive. It's a tiny population most of whom have been posting for ages. Now there's been a drift to 'It's more complicated than you make out' and general disapproval of those who start GC threads. There are lesbians on there who agree that lesbians are under attack and don't like it, but tell GC posters they're too strident and too black and white and they don't like the tone of the debate. Basically hand-wringing while telling GC women to shut up.

And to top it all, today my partner and I have discovered that we haven't been invited to a Zoom Christmas gathering involving some of our closest friends. One of those invited has said that if we're included she won't attend because of our transphobia — and they've gone with her. These are people who've eaten at our table, attended our parties, accompanied us on weekends away, asked us to dog-sit and babysit and keep an eye on their mum during Covid, and now we're so hateful we must be excluded.

It seems to me that many women of my acquaintance are looking for some nuanced, 'nice' way out of this, unaware they are dealing with a foe who will only accept total capitulation.

Is anyone else noticing something similar? My partner has said that this is the price of courage: when it really comes to it, you're largely on your own — and at least we have each other. Social distanced hugs to everyone else going through similar.

Shed, my sympathies . I've not been able to have many of these conversations with anyone beyond FWR, such a sacred cow is this. I've fallen out with friends about it. I'm surrounded by many 'woke', 'be kind' and pretty indifferent people who are lovely, but preoccupied with their lives and not keen to understand the nuances of the debate. They don't want to SEE. I've run into difficulties in work, although that is one place where I've been able to make a stand. Even my DP, who is a bright and kind chap and someone who gets it really, doesn't want to go there. It's a lonely old road. I'm sorry you're being ostracised. I think sometimes people can only hold the line for as long as they see they're changing minds and it's hard to remain strident in the face of accusations of bigotry, wrong think, or indeed (as we see with lots of public figures friends and family who've gone full born in the wrong body magical thinking). No one wants to think of themselves as a bad person if the prevailing narrative is that non-compliance is evil. Plus the narrative makes you doubt yourself, you start to think maybe I'm in the wrong, you worry you'll get found out and accused of being a witch and suffer real life consequences. It's exhausting and I can see why people back away. I take comfort from the changes that have been brought about by resistance and campaigning in the last year - the GRA, Keira and a sense that voices in opposition of 'transing' children in particular are getting louder. But I am always reminded that feminism is never done. This is a battle that will always need to be fought because misogyny is such a powerful and addictive poison.

(NB if it's getting you down take a break and take care of yourself)

I've found the opposite. I'm much more engaged than I was, partly because Labour is finally sorting out its anti-Semitism problem, so I have a break from one existential threat so can focus on another.

I think JK Rowling radicalised a huge load of women over the summer.

Look at today's Observer headline. Look at the noise Suzanne Moore's leaving the Guardian generated.

I think this is finally going mainstream.

I'm so sorry OP but I'm actually not surprised. People are watching others lose their jobs, being openly silenced, threatened with actual violence and the rest. When you see the vitriol aimed at a 'powerful' wealthy woman like JKR, of course you are going to be petrified and protect yourself from the rest of the unhinged mob by chanting all the mantras and just agreeing for the sake of a quiet safe life.
I am hopeful the the judicial review will generate a bit of a shift and allow everyone who is quietly horrified but anxious for their safety to start to acknowledge the issues relating to children. It will take a while but now there is open evidence about the extent of harm done to children, schools, local authorities, the NHS etc are going to have to review their policies & practices - not matter how many tantrums the lobby groups throw. And that means people will have to speak about this and ensure that their institution is on the right side of the law and child safeguarding. But it's going to take ages.

Thanks for the flowers and sympathy. The Christmas thing has really got under my skin. I feel the need to point out that I/ we try really, really hard not to be transgender bores and spend a lot of time listening and paying attention to the things going in friends' lives.

I'm trying to work out a strategy for countering those women who have started saying 'It's complicated' where in the past they might have said 'Be kind' or similar. As my partner points out, the change indicates that we've got through. No one is saying TWAW or 'Be kind' any more. But it's still a phrase intended to shut people up and make those watching and learning wary of getting involved.

Christmas and lockdown no doubt! What a shitty year.

I think this is finally going mainstream.

I agree with this. I do feel for you, OP, and yet I also feel that those people who are accusing you of being transphobic will start back-pedalling pretty furiously soon. We are winning. Or at least we have won some battles and while we may not have won the war, and although our enemies won't go down without a fight, we can win.

, @Shedbuilder. That sounds really tough. Glad you have your partner on side, at least.

It is exhausting, and the thing is that as these gains are made, the TRA rhetoric is ramped up, and it's so emotional and manipulative that the level of energy needed to counter it (even in your own head) becomes more and more.

I think actually the general public - and people like my family - are starting to realise that there are problems in the way the UK addresses certain trans issues (kids, prisons, elite & contact sport).

Meanwhile in ultra woke circles - including both mine and DW’s professions, and among most of our friends - it has become even more unacceptable lately to question any social justice orthodoxy, and ostracism for heresy has become both more rapid and more pervasive. This bunker mentality, like the latter days of a cult, has been initiated by those who see their personal power waning, and is parroted in solidarity by people too stressed to exercise their critical faculties, or too anxious to take a stand. Eventually the intellectual contortions required will have become so extreme, and so many of the wokerati will have found themselves pilloried for blasphemy, that continued collusion will start to look less attractive to those who remain, and those of us who care about social justice will be able to have open conversations again.

With well-intentioned but misguided friends, some not dissimilar perhaps to those shunning you, I’ve had some success with the kind of tactics recommended with any cult victim: reminding them of the human connection between you, asking questions rather than delivering monologues, and exploring their own most deeply held values, so they can evaluate for themselves whether their current beliefs are actually in line with their ethics.

Good luck!

Dratalanta, as I said upthread, we're careful not to be trans bores. We've been consciousness-raising in our friendship circle for years — possible because neither of us has any employment fears. For the last couple of years most of the women we know have been on-side and there have been discussions. Now there's a definite cooling. Don't know whether it's the influence of one or two influential trans allies in our wider circle (there are two pro-trans medics whom people look to as experts, even if they're barking) and I think a lot of lesbian groups have become inured to the presence of men who say they are lesbians.