Feeling really conflicted

[Tittie]

I've been lurking on the GC threads for quite some time, but don't feel articulate enough to contribute, compared to some of the brilliant posters here!

I peaked about 2 years ago. I remember confidently describing Mumsnet as transphobic to my friend not long before that I can't even remember what it was that changed my mind.

Anyway, there seems to be more and more coverage of trans/sex/gender issues in the media at the moment. It's making me incredibly uncomfortable that I find myself agreeing with newspapers, celebrities and politicians that I would ordinarily distance myself from (eg the Daily Mail). I am 100% gender critical, but I have this nagging doubt about who I am both agreeing and disagreeing with. Is anyone else feeling conflicted in this way?

I am not agreeing with the daily fail. I am agreeing with stunning brave women who have opened my eyes to how biology is at the root of our oppression, and how gender is a tool of that oppression. If the daily fail occasionally speaks sense on the topic, well, anyone can have an outbreak of common sense.

If you are agreeing with people you think are bad people usually, then maybe it’s your perspective on trans people that needs to change

Welcome OP. I agree there are some brilliant women on here but then there are also people like me, i.e.someone less articulate than you.

I don't have your reservations about who I'm agreeing/disagreeing with as I've never been 100% onboard with any media source, political party or individual. I prefer the pick and mix method for my beliefs, morals and politics and agreeing on one topic does not mean I agree on everything another person says.

No, I don't feel.conflicted at all.

I know my views and how I reached them, and they are rooted in my views on how women are oppressed as a class, and my opposition to the marginalisation of women from ethnic minorities and women who have been subjected to sexual violence, my opposition to medical negligence being termed 'progressive' and my opposition to people treating me like a damned doormat.

Politics and philosophical conundra are not football matches. You don't decide what side you're on based on the shirt colour of the person saying it.

If the Daily Mail agrees with me, so what? The people at the Daily Mail also agree with me that the Earth orbits the Sun. I'm not going to start claiming the Sun orbits the Earth just to be on the opposite side to the Daily Mail.

No, not in the least. My opinions are arrived at independently, not because they are the tenets of any political party, ideology or section of the press.

I am glad to see any newspaper or broadcaster expose the erasure of women's rights we are suffering, whether on the right or the left. I also know that in some of the seemingly wholly captured titles there are many gender critical journalists in fear they will lose their jobs if they speak out.

That people are threatened with violence and/or the loss of their livelihoods for even daring to suggest there is a potential conflict of interest with women's rights makes it quite easy really. Book burners, death threat makers and opponents of free speech are never going to be on the side I want to join.

There you go again jj equating GC feminism with the far right. Show me the GC feminists who burn books make death threats and try to shut down free speech. You can't. Your mud doesn't stick. So fucking what that someone else thinks the sky is blue and the grass is green. I agree with them on those points and nothing else. I might even agree with you on some points jj but your constant efforts to denigrate GC feminism is tiresome and transparent.

If you are agreeing with people you think are bad people usually, then maybe it’s your perspective on trans people that needs to change

That doesn't hold water. We all agree with bad people on some things. Like, I'm sure there are serial killers who will agree with me that breakfast is the best meal of the day.

Other things I agree with bad people on:

The earth is round
Snow is white
Water is wet
Ice is cold
Sex is binary

@Apollo440

There you go again jj equating GC feminism with the far right. Show me the GC feminists who burn books make death threats and try to shut down free speech. You can't. Your mud doesn't stick. So fucking what that someone else thinks the sky is blue and the grass is green. I agree with them on those points and nothing else. I might even agree with you on some points jj but your constant efforts to denigrate GC feminism is tiresome and transparent.

I didn't equate gender critical activists with the far right, I just pointed out they are on the same side when it comes to trans people, that's why far right figures and conspiracy theorists have worked alongside GC activists like Transgender Trend, Posie etc.

Yes OP I have the same issue. It does my head in.

I'm a leftie and I can't believe some of the people who I've respected my whole life who have said the most appalling things on this issue, or that I am finding myself agreeing with things in the Daily Mail and the Spectator.

But I've been round it all a million times and there is just no possible way that either gender ID makes any sense, or that what is going on is okay.

I think that most people on our side politically WOULD agree with us if they really knew what was going on - they just haven't a clue. But yes, it's very distressing and causes me a lot of internal conflict too.

Welcome op. The good thing is that we don't have to agree with people on all their beliefs. I have reached my own conclusions and it so happens that the daily mail are in line with some of those views and not on others. It really doesn't matter that much. Although I am glad that any paper is shining a light on these issues. Its taken long enough.

I’m more concerned about why outlets like the bbc, independent and the guardian aren’t covering it in an unbiased manner. Doesn’t that worry you?

The definition of ‘Lesbian’ has been changed beyond all recognition; world rugby have done a honest investigation on safety/inclusion/fairness of the impact of males joining women’s rugby teams; a black lesbian barrister has written evidence that Stonewall tried to dissuade (to put it mildly) her from speaking about LGB & woman’s rights; Kiera Bells case (and all the whistleblowers) has highlighted the downsides around the medical treatment of teens; JK Rowling has drawn attention to women in refuges and prisons; people are being called bigots for saying sex is binary, we’re already seeing unsavoury characters emerging....

And yet these outlets are only rolling out ‘vulnerable’ ‘just want to pee’ ‘look at the happy progressive rainbow’. It’s not journalism. I feel horribly manipulated.

I really wouldn’t worry about it. Tribalism is one of the core thinking errors underpinning many of our troubles in the modern world at the moment, and to begin to accept and consider nuance, not blanket dismiss or deride, not be reflexively or reactionarily defined by things, is a sure sign of actual maturity (not the false sense of maturity you get from setting everything neatly into boxes and thinking you’ve got the world sussed). This polarisation we see happening is so damaging. Agreeing on one thing doesn’t mean you have to agree with a person on everything. Disagreement does not equal hatred. I listen to people when they talk sense on a subject, it really is as simple as that. The thing I have soul searched about within my own politics (as a formally far more fervent and vocal leftie), is how many times in the past have I dismissed something a Tory has said as hatred, without looking deeper into the issue? How many times in the past have I jumped wholeheartedly behind causes and slogans without fully understanding what it is I’m supporting?

The male dominated political left have long been obsessed with identity politics OP. This is what has made this issue so confusing for many.

Lots of people waking up to reality now though. Stay strong. It's not bigoted to care about the rights of women.

More mudslinging jj. STILL trying to equate right wing bigots with GC feminists. Yes they both think gender ideology is batshit. That doesn't mean transgender trend are working alongside the far right. How about Julie Bindel, JK Rowling, Martina Navratilova, Sharon Davis, all noted right wing bigots? As the Tory MP David Davis pointed out, the people who came to him were all left wing women. Infact, I'd say opposition in the UK has been mainly from the clued up left wing. But carry on mate I think most people can see you for what you are. I certainly will not be shamed by your attempts at guilt by association.

Hitler loved his dogs. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Stalin was hot when he was younger. Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister.

This ad hominem bullshit that assumes that just because Piers Morgan is a cunt, that means every single thing he says is wrong is stupid, reductive nonsense. It reminds me of that Monty Python bit, "we're all individuals!" "I'm not".

The way I see it is like this. Men look after their own interests. Different men have different interests. I am not a man.

I sometimes feel conflicted too. Not because of who agrees with me, but I sometimes wonder whether I am wrong and at some point society will reach a stable position where men are accepted as women and despite the negative effects on some women, it will be accepted as the new societal norm, and those who objected will be seen as having been over the top.

I was listening to Germaine Greer the other day and though she continues to believe men are not women, she said she’s not really interested as it isn’t that important. I wondered whether she meant that there were other more pressing feminist problems (I think that’s what she was implying) or whether she thought the fad would pass, it would more or less sort itself out, and we’d settle into a new pattern like the one I mentioned above.

But deep inside, I continue to think there is something very wrong. I don’t think it can work for men to simply be able to choose whether they should have women’s rights. I think, if the fad does continue, we need to be looking at alternative separate spaces, and I argue for those wherever possible.

I am also very worried about the effect on children. I genuinely don’t think any child has the mental capacity to understand the consequences of puberty blockers. Nor do I believe an 18 year old can understand the consequences of unnecessary mastectomy, or taking drugs that will permanently affect whether they can ever use female spaces without making the women in those spaces uncomfortable. Given their female socialisation, I suspect that will weigh more heavily on them than the men who use our spaces without a second thought.

So painful though it is that we have to pay lawyers to defend our current legal situation and our right to speak out, I think we have to persevere with the court cases and judicial reviews. Every time the judges agree with us, I am reassured that we are ultimately right and something is already far wrong. I hope that with all the appeals, that things will continue to go in what I see as the right direction.

So that’s where I’m at. It worries me how many people I previously would have respected believe I’m a bigot, but I don’t believe I am. I can justify my position and given I’ve always considered myself a reasonable person who can see nuance, I don’t think it’s me that’s suddenly changed. I think the situation has changed slowly, but that it has been done under the radar, hence the feeling that something has suddenly shifted a long way and everything feels out of place.

That makes me uncomfortable, but when I see the reach that Stonewall has, that’s another little jerk that tells me that something is wrong. Children as young as twelve having mastectomies. The police recording male crimes as female. Those things have to be wrong. Women in court having to pretend that their male assailants are women can’t be right. Men in women’s prisons: definitively wrong.

When I look at those things, I can tell it isn’t just me having this out of proportion. And if those things are wrong, then the rest is likely wrong too. We’re not imagining this and we’re not wrong to object and that is the conclusion I keep reaching any time I feel that doubt.

Thing is, it's mostly the same sorts of journalists writing for all the papers, they're just given an 'angle'. A journalist I like was chastised for writing in the mail and she replied 'can't all write for the guardian babe, I'd starve!'. Plus the guardian is full of public school /oxbridge grads.
The first thing I was taught studying politics was to read the tabloids, it's important to know what the majority of people are reading.
Also on the mail - they have a new editor who has banned all the anti immigration stuff, and they were removed from the 'stop funding hate' campaign.

@anyOldPrion

I go with the 'what's more likely'
What's more likely - that an unconnected group of left wing, progressive, gender non-conforming, gay-rights supporting feminists, many of whom have spent their whole careers supporting women and girls through terrible adversity-have suddenly, all at once, become right - wing, homophobic, pearl clutching bigots. Or, could there just be a conflict of interest and a threat to the safety, dignity and fragile equality gains of women that we feel compelled to act, despite huge personal risk.

[quote Mn753]@anyOldPrion

I go with the 'what's more likely'
What's more likely - that an unconnected group of left wing, progressive, gender non-conforming, gay-rights supporting feminists, many of whom have spent their whole careers supporting women and girls through terrible adversity-have suddenly, all at once, become right - wing, homophobic, pearl clutching bigots. Or, could there just be a conflict of interest and a threat to the safety, dignity and fragile equality gains of women that we feel compelled to act, despite huge personal risk.[/quote]
Stunningly unlikely that we have all suddenly gone from being reasonable to collectively bigoted.

But I am relatively new to all this, so those people are also new to me and though I can see that what you say is also true, I like to be able to objectively justify my position regardless of who agrees with me.

Well put it this way

I look at Allison Bailey - a black working class lesbian who has managed against the odds to become a QC

And then I look at the board of stonewall littered with corporate lawyers and bankers who pressurised her employers to freeze her out (allegedly as the court case is ongoing) and Don’t feel conflicted at all.

Angry & sad & bewildered that people I’d previously thought intelligent, have fallen for such utter nonsense but not conflicted

YES I feel exactly the same OP!

It's not just that I'm on a different side to all the newspapers I usually read, but also feel I can't discuss it with my friends (all sensible intelligent 40 somethings, not woke 15 year olds).

Sometimes I wonder if I have accidentally fallen down an internet rabbit hole, like people who end up believing in QAnon or that the earth is flat. I keep doubting myself.

The other worrying thing to me is that if I didn't read this board I simply wouldn't be aware of the issue, except perhaps the Keira Bell case. I've always got my news from the Guardian or the BBC, not the Mail, Times or Spectator, so this issue would be almost invisible to me, and probably is to a lot of my friends.

My view op is that sub contracting your thinking to anyone else - whether it's the Mail or the Guardian - is a big and dangerous mistake.