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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feeling really conflicted

307 replies

Tittie · 18/02/2021 23:28

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 Blush 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?

OP posts:
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 19/02/2021 12:40

wrt the young girls and their response to the TikTokker about her miscarriage…

I'm so gut-wrenchingly sad. I genuinely wonder if any of these young women will look back at what they did in even a handful of years and be overcome by remorse and regret but with no ready way to apologise.

I think of girls with whom I was at school (Catholic) and how they'd be taken to attend abortion clinic protests. As children, they'd be taught to approach the women going in (couldn't be counted as harassment because of their age) and deliver a set speech (laden with emotional blackmail). As teenagers, they'd join in the shouting, the noise, wave the placards with their ghastly photographs and generally try and intimidate from whatever allowable distance (and if their emotions drove them to accost the women visiting the clinic, their age had some shielding protection again).

I sometimes wonder how many have changed their minds and massively regret both the manipulation from their parents/church/youth groups and their own actions. They can't make amends to individuals but have they found their way in other areas?

thinkingaboutLangCleg · 19/02/2021 12:41

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.

Star
tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz · 19/02/2021 12:41

@Sittingathome

And surely every man and woman who doesn't fit the stereotype is gender fluid. Dh cooks and irons. I have short hair and don't wear dresses. I am more competitive and sporty. I only know I'm a woman cos my body keeps reminding me of that fact, through a fun game of:"are we peri menopausal yet?"
I've often wondered this too but I think our ways of non conforming are a bit dull ... Grin
SunsetBeetch · 19/02/2021 12:45

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?

Same here. If anything I'm embarrassed about my former self, not my current self

thinkingaboutLangCleg · 19/02/2021 12:49

Book burners, death threat makers and opponents of free speech are never going to be on the side I want to join.

Exactly. And the more abusive they get, the more I’ll oppose them. Early on, I had some sympathy for people I thought were genuinely suffering from dysphoria. But seeing what fun they’re having attacking women and dismantling our rights, I’ve realised that when we give them an inch they take a mile.

Sittingathome · 19/02/2021 13:02

Those who are setting the agenda seem to be a toxic mix of people socialised as men, who are doing a very male thing of wanting everything on their terms,supported by a large number of teens/ early 20s who feel injustice is being done. I suspect I would have been one of them if I were young. Teenagers are v passionate, but can be c swayed v easily by causes. That's why schools have prevent training.

jj1968 · 19/02/2021 13:08

BUT. There is a world of difference between a 'no' that comes from a place of, "I don't give a shit about your struggles" and a no that comes from a place of careful thought and compassion for all, even if the immediate conclusion is the same.

But that's not the usual response to questions about how trans people should be able to exist in the world safely and with some dignity. Not women's problem is the usual reply. (not specificlly replying to you with the following but the thread more generally)

The left has a long history of splintering off and going in dubious directons - it's one of the reasons anti-semitism became such a problem. And sadly I've lost more than one friend to conspiracy theories in the last few years.

There were certainly many in the left once who considered themselves perfectly decent progressive people who were opposed to lesbian and gay rights, often because it was something they couldn't empathise with, it made them a bit uncomfortable, they felt it was somehow anti-science and that it represented a theat to children. Had the internet existed in the 80s, and every time a gay person committed an awful crime or said something stupid on social media it was shared by tens of thousands of people, I can well imagine a more militant homophobic movement from across the political spectrum would have emerged.

I think comments I see about how people have 'peaked' or 'woken up' and now things can never be the same again are very revealing. That is the language of conspiracy theorists and suggests a coignitive shift away from the very complex and necessary analysis of the range of factors involved in social change to a much more simplistic one which involves secret plotters behind the scenes. So if an organisation is pro-trans rights it's never because of shifting social attitudes towards LGBT people, combined with the fact they might have a few trans employees they want to support, or they might even lean in a different direction on some of the arguments, or might just want a bit of trendy PR. No, they've been 'captured' by Stonewall. It's always presented as devious plotters behind the scenes whether that's the morid claims of trans Jewish billionaires planning a trans-human take over to more mundane insistance that the local library has been 'captured' by TRAs who are using Drag Queen Story Time to further some insidious agenda.

None of this is how social change works, there are no secretive TRAs running round switching the word sex to gender on forms, there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces, there are just trans people trying to find a way through this muddle and living their lives, and activists, some good, some shouty arseholes like in all political movements and a few charities who carry out the kind of lobbying for their interests that every other charity does. And slowly, with bumps in the road, trans rights have progressed. To claim shadowy malign (usually lefty) actors with untold power behind the scenes is a right wing, conspiratorial analysis - for an example go on a landlord forum after the government has done something perceived as positive for tenants and you'll find landlords ranting about how the homelessness charity Shelter has captured the government and that they now hate landlords and want to destroy them.

And I think the problem is once someone peaks, or red pills, or sees the light, then it becomes an obsession, it becomes all someone can think about and they have an urgent need to spread this secret knowledge they now possess, to evangelicize. At this point anything which strengthens the conspiratorial analysis will be embraced and anything which questions it fiercely rejected.

At this point objectivity has gone out the window, and it's why someone previously of the left can say well on this matter the Daily Mail are really rather sensible. The Daily Mail write about trans people in exactly the same way they attack all other marginalised groups - it's not like some magic ethical mist descends on the news room every time someone writes about trans people. Every single word they write is designed to make you frightened of trans people and angry about trans rights - if you've lost the ability to analyse that, even if you might agree with some of it, then you've lost objectivity.

Of course the constant evangelicizing won't work because most people haven't undergone this coignitive shift and so 99% of people will be like yeah what ev's because they've got more important things to worry about and are sick of someone going on about trans people all the time. But some people will get drawn in, sometimes vulnerable people but often highly intelligent educated people, especially at a time of widespread social unease when we're all a bit wobbly anyway and so it spreads, becoming stronger with every new recruit. I remember when David Icke could barely get a book published, now he can sell out Wembley Arena and his audience is full of educated intelligent and often formely quite lefty people who've gone sideways after their own experience of 'peaking'.

andyoldlabour · 19/02/2021 13:08

PronounssheRa

"I also agreed with the mail when they kept up the pressure after the murder of Stephen Lawrence and printed this on the front page. I stopped reading the guardian after they failed to acknowledge the mass sexual assault of women in cologne"

The did it for me with the Guardian. Also Labour MP Jess Phillips on Question Time:

She told the audience: "A very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be describing Broad Street in Birmingham every week, where women are baited and heckled."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-35440954

Deliriumoftheendless · 19/02/2021 13:13

I don’t read any newspaper these days (read the Guardian/Observer for about 20 years) but remind me again which newspaper called out the murderers of Stephen Lawrence on the front page and which dismissed the Cologne sexual assaults in a column.

Deliriumoftheendless · 19/02/2021 13:14

Well that’ll teach me not to read the full thread 🤣

Helmetbymidnight · 19/02/2021 13:30

Once again, I'm astonished why JJ constantly post on the feminist threads when their words drip distain for feminists.

It is not progress for women to be named menstruators. It is not progress to pretend that you can change sex. It is not progress to think that 50-50 representation for women means 2/4 people on a panel are not women. It is not progress to pretend puberty blockers are reversible or to foist them on questioning girls. It is not progress to have women run away from men in refuges. It is not progress to have women beaten by men in sports. It is not progress to force women to be intimately examined by men. It is not progress to silence women in universities, in media, and in publishing. It is not progress to harangue women who campaign against FGM, or women enduring miscarriage.

We are right to stand up for those things and it does not make us conspiracy theorists and we are not anti gay rights.
The constant constant insinuations wear thin, JJ.

7Days · 19/02/2021 13:33

A lot of people like to conflate totally separate things to smear others. It is a well worn tactic and often the person totally believes it themself.

Most social change has happened because groups fought for their own rights, and their own language.

The trans rights movement is different . Their campaigns are about removing another groups rights and changing other groups' language. I'm sure they do a lot of good work for their own ccommunity as well, and most people will support that - we just don't tend to hear about small positive changes which have modest yet incremental benefits.
But that's not where the problem lies, the problem is when women's rights to single sex spaces in certain limited circumstances is removed, or when we are referred to in dehumanising terms, or when minors are subjected to medical treatments which they can't really understand the long term consequences of.

Not only are these things happening, you have the added layer of not being allowed to talk about it, or notice it. You might not notice at first but when it comes to your door you notice. And then you realise you can't speak about your own rights having been given away.

Helmetbymidnight · 19/02/2021 13:34

Those who are setting the agenda seem to be a toxic mix of people socialised as men, who are doing a very male thing of wanting everything on their terms,

Yeah, yeah, do read the 50:50 parliament posts if you can. It's brilliantly illuminating.

OldCrone · 19/02/2021 13:38

Just posting another link to this thread for anyone who wants an antidote to jj's latest rant.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4169150-Pseudo-realities-Power-and-Language-Games

The OP starts with a quote from James Lindsay's article "Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism"

newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/

Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult “realities” in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.

Pseudo-realities are always social fictions, which, in light of the above, means political fictions. That is, they are maintained not because they are true, in the sense that they correspond to reality, either material or human, but because a sufficient quantity of people in the society they attack either believe them or refuse to challenge them. This implies that pseudo-realities are linguistic phenomena above all else, and where power-granting linguistic distortions are present, it is likely that they are there to create and prop up some pseudo-reality. This also means that they require power, coercion, manipulation, and eventually force to keep them in place. Thus, they are the natural playground of psychopaths, and they are enabled by cowards and rationalizers. Most importantly, pseudo-realities do not attempt to describe reality as it is but rather as it “should be,” as determined by the relatively small fraction of the population who cannot bear living in reality unless it is bent to enable their own psychopathologies, which will be projected upon their enemies, which means all normal people.

OldCrone · 19/02/2021 13:40

It is not progress for women to be named menstruators. It is not progress to pretend that you can change sex. It is not progress to think that 50-50 representation for women means 2/4 people on a panel are not women. It is not progress to pretend puberty blockers are reversible or to foist them on questioning girls. It is not progress to have women run away from men in refuges. It is not progress to have women beaten by men in sports. It is not progress to force women to be intimately examined by men. It is not progress to silence women in universities, in media, and in publishing. It is not progress to harangue women who campaign against FGM, or women enduring miscarriage.

I beg to differ. If you are a misogynist who believes that women are subhuman and should have no rights, all those things represent progress.

IvyTwines · 19/02/2021 13:47

@Sittingathome

Those who are setting the agenda seem to be a toxic mix of people socialised as men, who are doing a very male thing of wanting everything on their terms,supported by a large number of teens/ early 20s who feel injustice is being done. I suspect I would have been one of them if I were young. Teenagers are v passionate, but can be c swayed v easily by causes. That's why schools have prevent training.
Agreed, and teenagers want to have a cause of their own, and so many of the causes we'd associate with the Left have become mainstream, like gay rights, racial equality, vegetarianism/veganism, environmentalism, or off limits, when it comes to the non-European issues that were popular when I was a student, for fear of being seen as having a 'white saviour complex'.

There has also always been a serious issue with the way good causes can be used as a cover for bullying and coercive control, even as a way to groom and abuse young people and then silence them for fear of betraying the wider noble cause, whether that's political or religious. There was a horrific video recently of male vegan activists branding young women, which I wish I hadn't seen but really made the power dynamic and abuse clear. I saw behaviour like this, but on a less violent scale, at university and from the activist boyfriends of teenage friends.

Helmetbymidnight · 19/02/2021 13:51

You're right, OldCrone.

Ugh, revolting to see a poster here, try to smear feminists as conspiracy theorists, anti-gay rights or anti-semites or perhaps [head tilt] vulnerable intelligent people who are just a bit "wobbly".

TheBuffster · 19/02/2021 13:55

There was a horrific video recently of male vegan activists branding young women, which I wish I hadn't seen but really made the power dynamic and abuse clear. I saw behaviour like this, but on a less violent scale, at university and from the activist boyfriends of teenage friends

That's awful, but a far cry from peaceful, eloquent, compassionate vegan activists like Earthling Ed and Akala. It sounds like a PETA stunt and they are awfully misogynistic and extreme.

Vegan means cause the least harm so flies in the face of that.

Just goes to show those kind of people will use a cause as a good cover for horrific behaviour.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 19/02/2021 14:04

I find it amazing that on an FWR thread a poster can write such a long post without really recognising that women have any rights they may be concerned about losing. In a world where women are fighting to be allowed to call themselves women and speak about their biological reality it feels deliberate obfuscation and diversion.

jj1968 · 19/02/2021 14:06

@Helmetbymidnight

You're right, OldCrone.

Ugh, revolting to see a poster here, try to smear feminists as conspiracy theorists, anti-gay rights or anti-semites or perhaps [head tilt] vulnerable intelligent people who are just a bit "wobbly".

I neither implied people were anti-gay rights or anti-semites, I merely pointed out that some people on the left had been and some still are so the left is not immune to such sentiments.

I don't think the vast majority of feminists are conspiracy theorists by the way, just the small number in the UK who seem to have veered off in that direction and been joined by associated social conservatives and worried liberals. But I would never dream of ascribing views to feminism based on a splinter movement that from a global perspective is miniscule within the feminist movement - and which stands in oppostition to a lot of long held feminist ideas.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 19/02/2021 14:11

Yes jj I agree you represent a splinter group of feminism but I won’t hold it against you!

jj1968 · 19/02/2021 14:11

Just posting another link to this thread for anyone who wants an antidote to jj's latest rant.

Haha, nothing like responding to accusations of conspiratorial thinking by posting a rant from some intellectual dark web gobshite edgelord about how psychopaths are secretly creating a totalitarian society by brainwashing everyone into believing a pseudo-reality.

MrsWooster · 19/02/2021 14:11

” None of this is how social change works, there are no secretive TRAs running round switching the word sex to gender on forms, there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”
You were saying, JJ?
www.lawgazette.co.uk/obiter/dentons-goes-bashful-over-transgender-children-campaign/5102607.article

jj1968 · 19/02/2021 14:17

[quote MrsWooster]” None of this is how social change works, there are no secretive TRAs running round switching the word sex to gender on forms, there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”
You were saying, JJ?
www.lawgazette.co.uk/obiter/dentons-goes-bashful-over-transgender-children-campaign/5102607.article[/quote]
This is a perfect example of what I mean. It's one report out of probably thousands which discusses perfectly normal lobbying and other techniques which have been common to all political and social movements for decades. As if trans people invented trying to tack something onto an uncontroversial political bill to minimise objections to it - its parliamentary democracy 101, politicians have been playing such tricks for centuries.

And who gives an actual fuck about Dentons anyway. This is exactly how conspiracy theorists work, take some report from some think tank that no-one ever probably even read and use it as proof of some grand plot behind the scenes. If only the world were that exciting. Remember when they were all going on about Common Purpose, a small training company a few years ago, using reports like this to claim they were secretly controlling the Blair government. It's not how things work.

BigWindow · 19/02/2021 14:18

‘there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”

No, there is just the patriarchy, darling. Sitting back and letting all the work be done by TRAs.