What can we do?

[BrandineDelRoy]

I felt empowered tonight (by some wine) to challenge what Biden's done this week. I (in the US) approached two law school friends, one former boyfriend, my best friend from high school, and my sister in law on the trans women in sport issue.

None of them seemed to know what I was talking about. And when I tried to explain it, they didn't care because TW are so few.

How can we fight this?

I have a daughter, and feel so low.

Check out this post and others on the same thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4144806-Does-Joe-Biden-really-understand-the-controversy-behind-his-executive-order-on-trans-rights-Suzanne-Moore?msgid=103977883

I asked my friend who's 39, and she was totally TWAW. My other friend, my age at 45, told me the other friend wouldn't get it and to drop it. Is there a hard break between the tail end of Gen X and the Millenials?

I don’t know but there are young’uns who “get it” - and then get sacked for speaking out of turn but they are fighting back, eg.

”Advice for Gender Critical Teens and Twenty-somethings”

www.identitycrisis.xyz/get-updates

I just can't believe 40 year oldish people don't get the misogyny in this.

There are many factors in whether people, men or women, see the underlying misogyny in the movement. The T activists have very successfully attached themselves to the LGB rights despite identity having little in common with sexuality. Obviously, many people are against homophobia and therefore support gay rights, and if they've not given it much critical thought, will assume trans rights is the logical extension of that. Gay rights was never about compelled speech, cancellation, threats, denial of reality, or lies.

We also see to the slogan, "trans rights are human rights", but the activists get a bit slippery when you want them to explain what rights they feel they don't have. They obviously should have the same rights against discrimination we all do, no debate there. But refusing to acknowledge that women and girls lose out when a man self-identifies into their spaces is not only ignorant but dangerous. The chanting is to trick people into thinking GC feminists are against trans people and their human rights.

How did "you must address me based on what I say I am" become a right, where non-compliance can be punishable by threats of job loss, harrassment, criminal charges, or violence? It's narcissism on steroids.

Gay rights did not disadvantage any other groups of people, they did not demand people to speak untruths or deny reality. Check out Arty Morty on YouTube for a more detailed explanation of the nuances of the two movements.

I just can't believe my very educated female friends can't see this as a problem.

My misogynistic dad would have seen this a mile off.

I guess I'm just sad. I thought I'd get more support.

”Why Smart People Do Stupid Things”
Video
www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07r0zdj/why-smart-people-do-stupid-things

“Why smart people do stupid things - and how not to”
The Telegraph

Could greater intelligence, rather than protecting us from error, sometimes make us more stupid? In my new book, The Intelligence Trap, I argue that this is indeed the case. There is no doubt that measures of intelligence – such as IQ tests or SAT scores – correlate with many valuable outcomes in life, including your academic achievement, your income, and your performance in many jobs. But the latest psychological research shows that they do not always contribute to wiser judgement in many areas of life.

Consider a process called “motivated reasoning”. When we feel emotional about an issue, we tend to apply our intelligence in a one-sided, biased way that serves our own beliefs and preconceptions, so that we always get the answer we want to see. That may involve only searching for evidence that backs up your point of view while also using elaborate reasoning to explain away any criticisms or disagreements (even if they are perfectly valid). And the more intelligent you are, the easier that is to build more creative arguments that support your own beliefs.

Continued at

archive.is/TTtAi

I was once where you are now, OP, and similarly incredulous. My take:

• yes, there is a dividing line between late Gen X and millennials (not sure why)

• maybe your dad isn’t quite the misogynist you thought he was, why don’t you talk to him? As we move through life, we sometimes come to understand an issue more fully, helping us to build bridges with those we may have dismissed in the past.

• keep talking, OP

xx

Thanks, Daca, and I mean it, but my dad has been dead for 25 years.

But I think you're entirely correct about a late Gen X v early Millennial thing.

Sorry for your loss, OP, I should have thought of that.

@BrandineDelRoy

I just can't believe 40 year oldish people don't get the misogyny in this.

I’m under 40 and get it. My teenage daughter has been thoroughly brainwashed though.

[quote MoleSmokes]I don’t know but there are young’uns who “get it” - and then get sacked for speaking out of turn but they are fighting back, eg.

”Advice for Gender Critical Teens and Twenty-somethings”

www.identitycrisis.xyz/get-updates[/quote]
Thank you!!! So much for this.
I am not even (that) young in my 30s but feel I am going insane sometimes.

I think maybe the dividing line is that gen X remembers real discrimination. We know how gays were opposed, we remember the resulting stigma of AIDS, and our mothers were the first generation to make mass inroads into the workplace as male peers, so we have that more common second-hand knowledge too.

People younger than us do not have any contemporary memory of real, direct, institutional discrimination, embedded into law. Gay rights was the last real battle.

So they find themselves fighting phantoms. And they have a desperation to latch onto any perceived new "civil rights" cause because they want to have one, like previous generations did.

They're looking for something new, which "trans rights" is, while not realising how recent and fragile the gains we've made are, and there's no interest in maintaining those (boring!). They can't even conceive that they might be undermining them. (And if they do, cool, cos they're tearing down the system!)

The rhetoric you here about how this is the same as the anti-gay movement rings totally false to me. I was straight, and young, so didn't directly affect me, but I remember the media + politics. The gay rights people were up there debating, and the opponents - mainly conservatives and religious - were struggling to make coherent arguments. But as long as all that was being demanded were the same rights as straight people had - hospital visiting rights (remember that - gay partners versus family?), inheritance, marriage - it was hard to justify saying no.

There were attempts to link to paedophilia, which were countered by removing the paedophiles from the movement. Not denying them, or attempting to undermine safeguarding, or insisting on a lower age of consent than heterosexuals because "man-boy love is important for gay people".

There was tabloid sensationalism/fearmongering. But it was irrational bluster with nothing actually behind it. And people could (eventually) see that. The more it was discussed the clearer it was that the anti-gay forces had no real arguments for denying the same rights straights had.

That fight was not carried out like this one. Because the LGB knew they were in the right. They had nothing to hide. They had no need for a Dentons report ("get back channels into government and use your mates there to smuggle changes in behind more popular legislation"). They didn't deny real issues - they addressed them. Then they got the public on side, and the government flipped when the public did.

And the certainly campaign wasn't top-down from government + companies! They just agreed when it was safe. Because there WAS real anti-gay sentiment in the public. There ISN'T any sort of remotely comparable anti-trans sentiment in the public, which is why organisations have no fear pushing this stuff (in vague "trans rights" terms, at least). The public doesn't have a problem with trans people in the way it used to have a problem with gay people. "Trans" wasn't remotely a public concern, until they started trying to erode women's rights. It's not a cultural issue, it's a rights issue. The push-back arises from the rights claims, as people find out what "trans rights" means.

What I don't get is people like Michael Cashman - he was joining in with Owen Jones the other day. Attached. JCJ surmises it's because he doesn't see women. Does he really think this is the same? "Dehumanisation?" Is he listening to us? At all?

I'd really want to see his arguments and views. How did he get there? He used to debate - I remember it. Why won't he now? I want to see him on TV, debating with someone like Julie Bindel or Helen Joyce, explaining why women can't have female-only sports, or giving us his views on the goings-on around the Tavistock. If he (or the rest of Stonewall) is not willing to defend his position, maybe we should just start ignoring them. They're not serious.

Oh, and check out JCJ's older piece:

Gay Rights and Trans Rights - A Compare and Contrast

@BrandineDelRoy

I just can't believe 40 year oldish people don't get the misogyny in this.

I think they've really swallowed the TWAW thing. If you believe that, then there's no clash of rights at all.

It is quite frustrating to have friends refuse to discuss it. I think it could be partly to do with not being ready or able to acknowledge that a) women’s rights are way worse than we realised (before I got into this I thought we were ok) and b) it takes time and effort fully understand the sheer scale of the problem and if you can’t or won’t engage with that it is far more comfortable to dismiss it on the grounds that it is ‘just a few people’ and ‘that will never happen’.

Anyway, onto the positive- I have never written so many letters in my life! I have been onto my MP (sympathetic I think), the BBC, various NHS bodies, Virgin Healthcare re gathering gender data rather than sex. I answered the call to arms from the amazing Baroness Nicholson and signed up for the Conservatives Women’s group (being a conservative voter is not necessary), and various other groups. We can all write letters and respond to the government consultations (listed on a helpful thread on here somewhere) and dig for the many fundraisers.

There is so much we can do and I must say that taking action makes me feel slightly more positive. If things don’t get better it won’t be for a lack of effort on our part.

eople younger than us do not have any contemporary memory of real, direct, institutional discrimination, embedded into law. Gay rights was the last real battle

The sad thing is that there are issues they could take up - for example (in the US) threats to women's reproductive rights and everywhere else violence against women and the appalling outcomes of rape trials. Also, discrimination in the workplace is not dead.

I thought your account was excellent - the only aspect I would add to it is that they do seem blind to patriarchy and women's oppression and the rights and so-on we are yet to win.

I've lost track of what generation I am but am 27 and not at all twaw. Neither are any friends or colleagues of similar ages, or my sister who is 16. It is only in the last few years that I've started to notice just how misogynistic the world around me is and scarily recent improvements in equality have been.

Necessary, while I've been busy writing my post in between doing other things you've covered everything beautifully in yours, and more eloquently than I can.

You're so right. I'm 60 and I grew up with a mum who had to leave school at 15 and start work to support the family while her brother continued in education. She would have loved to have been a teacher. She was also expected to marry and have children: not achieving those goals was seen as failure. She and I were both aware that her life was one of untapped potential because of her sex — not that she ever expressed it in that way. But there was buried resentment and regret.

When I started work in the early 80s I was routinely questioned about boyfriends and my plans to marry and have children and I was also judged on my looks. I had several middle-aged male interviewers comment adversely on my weight (I'm attractive in my own way but I'm one of those naturally chunky, strong women, and have never performed femininity particularly well) and I failed to land jobs because (they told me to my face) I wasn't suitable for client-facing type roles where glamorous slender blondes were the norm. I had managers tell me, again to my face, that although I was the best person for a promotion they had decided to give the job to Dave/ Rob/ Mike, because Dave/ Rob/ Mike had a wife and child or children to support and I was childless. Of course if I'd been married with a child I wouldn't have got the promotion because of the assumption that I'd be forever taking time off to look after my offspring... Women are totally shafted.

In 1995 I went from working for a small company where most of the women were my age or older and shared similar experiences. Most had never read a feminist book, some had never been on a march to defend abortion rights or whatever, but we'd all grown up in a climate when we, or women we knew, had faced institutionalised, legal sexism, where they'd had back street abortions, where the pill had meant that every young woman was expected to be up for it... I learned a lot from those women.

At the end of that year I moved to a much bigger company on a start-up project where I was the oldest in the team at 35. I managed several younger women, most of them just a couple of years out of university and almost immediately I began hearing them saying 'I'm not a feminist, but...' as if they were apologising for having an opinion based on their experience of being female. I used to ask them why they weren't proud to be feminists. Life was all boyfriends and clubbing and E at that time and they thought I was a dinosaur. 90% of them were white middle class university graduates and it was quite clear that they had the luxury of not being feminists, or not being women-focussed, because of all the women of the past who'd created a route to education, suffrage, birth control, equal pay and rights etc.

They were still subject to the kind of sexism I'd faced, but by the 90s it had gone underground. Everyone did what they had to to avoid an employment tribunal situation but women with children were missing out on promotions because they had kids. I sat on many interview panels where the women were the best candidates but somehow a man got the job.

We thought Stonewall had done a good job on homophobia and LGB rights but the homophobia is just leaking out sideways and lots of us older lesbians are aware of how fragile our right to be lesbians, even to call ourselves women, is. We thought equality law had done the job for women — and now look, a man has only to say he's a woman and he is, and a Fawcett Society speaker said she'd be fine if all the women on an all-women shortlist had been born male.

You might suspect that sexism and homophobia are hard-wired and immutable. Whack it down here and up it pops, wearing a pink beret, over there...

I've found my nieces in their mid twenties are both TWAW indoctrinated and think I'm a bigot.

DD age 12 thinks it's fine for boys to think they are girls but doesn't think they should use the girls toilets.

My Dad in his 70's doesn't think trans women should access to women's spaces if they still have a penis but it's ok if they've had it chopped off, his words.

DH mid 40s thinks I'm a bigot, won't talk about it but was shocked that Eddie Izzard now says he's a woman despite not having and treatment or surgery.

Both my siblings are in their 50s and quite different politically but are both concerned about safeguarding and women's spaces.

Mixed bag really. I'm slowly mentioning it to various friends but then we don't really see anyone now so it's hard to make progress.

This isn't designed to sound contentious at all, genuine curiosity here but what actually is the issue with trans identifying individuals? Not trying to sound precocious but would love some insight as to how this undermines women's rights(....as a male to female transsexual are they not....women?! How can they sabotage their own rights?!)

Have seen a lot of threads regarding the anti trans movement lately and must admit I'm shocked at the aversion to it here on MN. Just looking for some honest opinions?

@BabyBee93

This isn't designed to sound contentious at all, genuine curiosity here but what actually is the issue with trans identifying individuals? Not trying to sound precocious but would love some insight as to how this undermines women's rights(....as a male to female transsexual are they not....women?! How can they sabotage their own rights?!)

Have seen a lot of threads regarding the anti trans movement lately and must admit I'm shocked at the aversion to it here on MN. Just looking for some honest opinions?

How do you define woman?

Good question. Naturally the first answer that springs to mind would be "vagina" which I'm assuming supports your anti-trans argument? But I'm naturally a red head and I dye my hair brown...that doesn't take anything away from natural brunettes right?

I think it's easy to assume that "woman" means "vagina" but from a feminist perspective isn't that a bit reductionist and dehumanising? To think we're only defined by our genitals?

What's your stance on transfems who have had the reassignment surgery? Are they separate from transfems who still have male genitalia?

(Hard to convey tone over message but please don't take this as argumentative, really trying to be neutral and I'm really curious about the stance on this thread)