Does anyone ever have a "are we the baddies"* moment?

[Menstrualcycledisplayteam]

• it's a Mitchell & Webb sketch, probably on Youtube.

I'm a bit disheartened this week, if I'm honest. I sometimes feel like this is a fight that we're just not going to win. Two main things recently, one personal, one geo-political I suppose.

On the geo-political level, I look across the Pond to the US, where the only people who are saying the same things as us are frigging Rand Paul and Marjorie Taylor Greene, neither of which are people that I associate my politics as being anywhere close to. There is just no bloody way that the Left, my home, will align with us now, given who our "allies" are in the States. They just can't, even those that agree with us will never position themselves as having the same concerns as Marjorie Q-Anon Parkland Taylor Bloody Greene.

The second is personal. I work for a large global organisation in a senior role. We had our Global Leadership "Away Day" a few weeks ago (on Teams, of course) and there was a presentation from some US colleagues on LGBTQ+, being able to bring your whole self to work, that kind of thing, from two gay colleagues, one lesbian one gay. So far, so good - absolutely the right thing for my organisation to be doing. Then they got onto pronouns and how everyone should start every meeting asking what pronouns attendees want to have used and encouraging everyone to put them in our email sign-offs. I'm never going to do that, but I can already see it happening around the organisation (particularly the US, but some of the easily led/want to be noticed over here will soon follow suit).

My husband won't listen to me talk about this sort of stuff anymore - he agrees with me, but says that it is basically like someone saying they "don't agree with all that Black Lives Matter stuff". My best friend works with young people and whilst I've tried to approach it with her very gently, including all of the stats about single sex spaces and how women and children's safety is negatively affected as a result, her reaction is that she gets all of that but she works with children every day who are tortured by their own bodies.

I know that our concerns are justified, I know that women's safety/opportunities are going to be negatively affected but - if I'm completely honest with myself - I just can't see how we're going to stop it. Julie Bindel has a tweet pinned to her feed which is basically that the misogyny at the moment is like a tidal wave and that's how it feels.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this really - certainly not to bring anyone down but there's no-one I can speak to about this in real life. How do you even go about discussing these things when, in my work at least, it would probably get me fired and everyone around me in my personal life has either bought into the nonsense hook line and sinker, or just doesn't want to hear it?

But really.....perhaps some gender criticals need to have some different gender critical thoughts over what they are really out to preserve? I want for my daughters equal opportunity, not sub servience to an antiquated gender control system with jobs for the boys first.

Say what? I am always so surprised at the way people have miscontrued the arguments agains trans ideology. Where does 'girls should be protected from harm and we need to ensure they have an equal chance at success by providing extra support and not holding them back' morph into ' a sub sevience to an antiquated gender control system with jobs for the boys first'?

No, you only feel like that because the gender ideologists present as a 'with us or against us' situation, whereas in reality it is so obviously a case of needing to have an open dialogue about the competing interests of two groups.

And no, because another reason we are in this mess is because of the extremity of the position of the gender ideologists: that any man who says he is a woman, and all they have to do is say it, is literally a woman and so must be treated as one in every sense. That is so obviously a ridiculously extreme position. And the safeguarding risks of it are so obvious.

So its the other side that have stopped this being a reasonable debate, held reasonably. So don't let their ideology trap you into an ' all or nothing' position, because that really isn't what the debate should be about. It should be able protecting the rights and safety of all those affected, those who are women and those who identify as part of the trans umbrella.

And because the misogyny is SO in your face. Right down to GC feminists being told they are 'anti-trans' and 'hate trans people.' Such a classic line when women try to stand up for their own interests. Not really any different from how feminists used to be told that they 'hated men' when they wanted to talk about women's rights.
And the whole ' be kind' 'have empathy' ' step aside and let someone else before you, at cost to yourself' is the role misogyny has put women in for, well, for ever.

Yes I question all the time. But my issue has never been about toilets or denying anyone's existence. My concern has always been about autistic young people, particularly girls, because I was one myself and know how I thought as a child and young person and what I grew up into. It bothers me that children like me are vulnerable to life altering interventions.

There was a thread asking this exact question a couple of years ago.

But really, there is only one side that is routinely threatening to rape, torture and kill the other side; only one side that tries to completely silence the other by trying to get their meetings closed down, reporting them to their employers, banning them from social media; only one side that has been tried and convicted for physical assault against a member of the other side.

So I don't find it very hard to know which side I'd prefer to be on.

Honestly, I still struggle to see the issue

For anyone who struggles to see the issue, would you really be OK if you or your DD ended up in prison or hospital or a refuge, and had to sleep next to a fully male-bodied person who had identified as a woman and demanded to be there? Even if that person was a convicted sex offender/rapist?

What if your DD was a girl guide and any teen boy who liked could identify as a girl and be left in a tent with her overnight?

Would you be OK if your DD was a promising sportswoman and lost her place in the olympic team to male-bodied people because they said they were women?

This is what's happening. There is a reason we have single sex spaces and categories - because without them, the female sex is at much greater risk and less protected. Of course men can and do attack women anyway in many contexts, and of course women can attack women too - but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to be able to have a safe single-sex space for women when it matters - like when you are asleep, vulnerable, in danger from an aggressive ex, etc.

The other very important thing is that women by which I mean female, biological women are still oppressed and disadvantaged - partly because of prejudice and misogyny (e.g. sex pay gap, women being left with majority of childcare/housework/mental load) and partly because of biology (women give birth taking them out of the labour market, women are on average smaller and weaker making them more at risk from sexual assault, DV etc).

Feminists, and supposedly modern states, are trying to redress this. We can't redress it if categories of people are no longer defined by sex but by "gender identity".

Imagine a future where biological females are no longer active in elite sport because all the place are taken by male bodied people identifying as women. But women can't even challenge that because although they are being eliminated on the basis of sex, the team is still all "women".

Imagine as a woman you miss out on the directorship, pay rise or women in business award which is given to a male who has climbed to the top as a man and then transitioned last year. But you can't complain because they're a woman too.

Oh and if you even dare to question why this is happening, you lose your job.

Still no issues with this?

There was a thread asking this exact question a couple of years ago.

I remember that thread. And I know back then there were concerns about which side is insisting on beliefs that effectively match Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism - I can't seen that those apprehensions were misplaced.

I think it's entirely healthy to re-examine your position on a regular basis. After all, is that not what we are asking the gender extremists to do? I actively seek out the other viewpoint and critically examine it, just in case I am wrong.

However, the more I read and the more I see, the more I am convinced that the gender extremist movement is homophobic, misogynist and more than a little racist and I'm simply not comfortable in that particular church.

I am always so surprised at the way people have misconstrued the arguments agains trans ideology

Absolutely! Fundamental misunderstandings.

On some level, though, I think this misunderstanding has arisen out of the idea that there is no difference between males and females - "except for their genitals". Which is why we always get the " Why are you so focused on genitals" line.

So, the idea is that " Why shouldn't a male become a woman if that is what he wants or how he feels". Of course, this sentiment rests entirely on notions of what a woman 'is like' - usually based on stereotypical caricatures.

@sanluca

But really.....perhaps some gender criticals need to have some different gender critical thoughts over what they are really out to preserve? I want for my daughters equal opportunity, not sub servience to an antiquated gender control system with jobs for the boys first.

Say what? I am always so surprised at the way people have miscontrued the arguments agains trans ideology. Where does 'girls should be protected from harm and we need to ensure they have an equal chance at success by providing extra support and not holding them back' morph into ' a sub sevience to an antiquated gender control system with jobs for the boys first'?

I think maybe this is what happens when people naively believe that GC is aligned with far right and evangelical Christians. When people don’t use any critical thinking for themselves. When they cannot see what just blithely believing the narrative pushed by activists achieves.

Yet coming out as Trans seems to be something lauded and celebrated. Companies leap all over themselves to use trans employees as PR and political parties select them to increase their inclusive credentials. Where is the same detriment?

Exactly. When a group of people had a huge say (and in many cases actually write the policies) for every public service organisation (police, CPS, NHS, All government departments, councils, schools , Scottish government, Welsh government, the BBC, most mainstream media outlets, Google, the employers of 1/4 of the population, most universities etc) I’m not they can claim to be a marginalised, badly treated group.

The policy writing, just to be clear, isn’t just ‘be nice, don’t bully, don’t discriminate against people based on their trans status. That is already fully protected in law in quite a comprehensive way from the moment a person takes the first step to say they are trans.

Much of the policy produced by Stonewall etc for all of the above organisations is a comprehensive list of privileges that override the legal rights of any other protected group. Where Equality Impact Assessments are actually carried out when making a fundamental change in an org like making all the toilets single sex for eg. the needs and legally protected rights of other groups like women or women with religious beliefs are generally ignored.

This is an unprecedented and unlawful disregard for the rights and protections of people, mainly women. That is nothing like the gay rights movement at all.

When you're being constantly told that you're evil and deserve to be beaten up and killed, and when left-wingers you once respected are condemning you, it's natural to have doubts. Few people like being told that they're beneath contempt and don't deserve a job or even to be alive because of their views. Worse, the genderist side is constantly accusing feminists of believing things that they don't, or of doing things that they haven't. I think that the effect of this aggressive criticism is to make gender critical feminists constantly re-examine their views, but we almost never desert them. Gender critical views themselves are sound.

And as other people have pointed out, it's the genderist side who're making these awful, dehumanising comments, not the gender critical side. Another score for 'we are not the baddies'.

The only thing that ever causes me any doubt is the insistence that there is 'scientific evidence' of people having the wrong brain in their body; and also the stories of young children who fix on the idea of being in the wrong body. But I don't believe that anyone really is wired, from birth, to feel like they're in the wrong body. Something has happened in their environment. And even if they were, it doesn't mean they are the opposite sex. Yes we should be tolerant and accepting to a point, but not to the point of reducing the definition of woman to 'an identity that anyone can have'.

@RoyalCorgi

There was a thread asking this exact question a couple of years ago.

But really, there is only one side that is routinely threatening to rape, torture and kill the other side; only one side that tries to completely silence the other by trying to get their meetings closed down, reporting them to their employers, banning them from social media; only one side that has been tried and convicted for physical assault against a member of the other side.

So I don't find it very hard to know which side I'd prefer to be on.

Well, exactly.

And the fact that we're basically here wondering if all that abuse is justified is... something that makes me feel very uncomfortable. As if we feel like there must be something that we're missing that would make all that shit acceptable.

As a PP said, we try and find solutions. And we're met with more abuse, threats and a distinct air of superiority and 'I will do what I want, you're not the boss of me'.

I was lurking on the relationships board over the weekend though, so maybe that's where I'm drawing parallels from.

The other thing that this issue has shown me is how utterly lacking in understanding most men are about women's experiences. Which is the root to understanding the GC position now.

I was talking to a friend who a lightbulb moment because he hadn't realised the constant risk-assessments women make when they go for a run - especially after dark, if they are brave enough to do that.

He was also staggered to learn that women feel responsible if/when they are attacked, because we are taught from such a young age to be responsible for our own safety - take an alarm, follow well-lit routes, tell someone where you are..

And if the worst happens, risk being told 'well going out running alone was a silly thing to do, wasn't it?'

We do these things because men, as a class, are dangerous to us. And unless men understand that, they really won't get why we don't want men in our spaces. They simply don't understand it. I'm not sure how we solve that.

I remember really vividly as a child of around 9/10 going into the toilets in a restaurant with my 5 year old sister. A trans woman came in while I was washing my hands. It was the 2 of us alone with this tall, well built man in a wig and high heels and I froze in fear.

She didn't behave like women do either, as she started a conversation with me about my dress.

I had to wait for my little sis to finish up and then almost ran out of there with her.

Why the reaction? Because female children are warned against being approached by strange men.

Is that socialisation we really want to dismantle? Should my mother have said 'that was an unkind reaction. It was just a woman using the toilet.'?

It wasn't a feeling in my control. I was just automatically afraid - and that reaction is what would have kept me safe if a strange man had bad intentions. I wouldn't want to squash a gut reaction in a vulnerable child like that.

So how do we square safeguarding with total inclusion? I just don't think it's possible.

You need to think what is driving the american model, private healthcare, lifelong patients could add billions to their cosmetic surgery combined with large swathes of the population being very religious and homophobic, transing non conforming children isnt too disimilar to the why people transition in Iran. Add into that the liberal elites looking to wave the flag for a new cause . Thank non existent god , that we are not like America and following their path. We are not on the wrong side, it makes no clinical sense to treat gender dysphoria with sugery and lifelong hormones unless thorough psychological assessment / support has been carried out for several years to ensure that the only solution to reducing distress is lifeling medical intervention. There are too many detransitioners who are gay and lesbian for this not be be an ethical and safeguarding issue.

I don’t know enough about this and I’m not well versed like most on this thread. However, I am bothered.

We had the big ‘pronouns talk’ in work too. We had to listen to someone explain how he calls everyone ‘she’ - his male friends, his husband, his dad. This was met with smiles and fondness. I felt - how is that respectful to ME? - a female, having my sex thrown about like a catch-all phrase, explicitly including men?? Am I wrong?? I felt really insulted.

I would be scared to express this in work, as D&I is the latest big thing and and if you are not with us 100% you are AGAINST us, and therefore burned at the stake. Or fired.

I feel, the world, the corporate world, is sexist. I am new to my role abs I’ve been asked for my impressions of the company, by several VPs. I never like being provocative but my response seemed to stun - I said it’s a bit crazy, there are so few women in leadership, it’s hard to look at that list, and then you all have a female PA, a “girl”, or an office assistant doing all your admin. I said how strange it was! And then realised jaws were dropping. I was only stating the most obvious!

People just don’t want to hear it.

The best thing I heard Michelle Obama say was ... oh yes aim high yada yada yada... but remember, you have to elbow someone out of their seat to take it, and their friends won’t like it either. That’s where the fight still is.

@AradiaGC Your view is exactly like mine. Back then, transsexuals with dysphoria who knew they weren't literally female but went through the process of getting a GRC and the surgery, yes I did feel for them.

But now, the boundaries kept being pushed further and further to the point where the boundary no longer exists. Now it's practically anyone who doesn't feel like a manly man straight into all female spaces.

Now you have photos of people in a female only shelter showing off an erection. Someone else in a female bathroom with a dress on, brandishing a fucking SWORD and boasting about frightening off a woman who came in. Women forced to call rapists "she" in court adding further distress, and if the rapist is found guilty it's now a woman's crime and they go to a women's prison, with the penis they used to rape still attached and functioning. What an absolute shitshow.

Despite there being clear exceptions in the law that can refuse transwomen in certain female only spaces, Stonewall have now got their narrative into every institution going to the point that it isn't applied. Sex isn't listed as a protected characteristic any more, replaced by gender. Blurring those lines.

Now there seems to be nowhere, absolutely nowhere that excludes males. And if somewhere is found that is, they are relentlessly hounded by screams of TRANSPHOBE! BIGOT! NAZI! until they relent. Another female space destroyed.

Women's online support groups being taken over by males, then those males demanding women stop talking about themselves in sex based language and start focusing on them. See that awful Facebook group where a male pretended to go through pregnancy and a stillbirth FFS and if the women on the group didn't fawn over him and support him they were kicked out.

Women's refuge charities denied funding because they don't focus enough on males.

Clear as the day males, on lesbian dating sites. Lesbian women being told they can date who they like but if they refuse anyone with a penis they're bigots.

And I've seen some TW on twitter stating they ARE female, the female SEX, they were born female, no difference at all between them and us.

And no surgery, no GRC, no dysphoria. About as far removed from the scenario at the start of this post as you can get.

And I haven't even mentioned sport yet, or women's jobs, awards etc.

But those transsexuals are still out there, and I do still feel for them because they never asked for this shower of shite or even imagined it would get this far.

I don't want to see anyone in distress but I cannot support my own erasure, or my daughters, to facilitate the crazy shit.

It wasn't a feeling in my control. I was just automatically afraid - and that reaction is what would have kept me safe if a strange man had bad intentions. I wouldn't want to squash a gut reaction in a vulnerable child like that.

No, and this is a really important issue which often men are completely ignorant about, because they're not accustomed to being socialised to ignore their discomfort.

@NotTerfNorCis

When you're being constantly told that you're evil and deserve to be beaten up and killed, and when left-wingers you once respected are condemning you, it's natural to have doubts. Few people like being told that they're beneath contempt and don't deserve a job or even to be alive because of their views. Worse, the genderist side is constantly accusing feminists of believing things that they don't, or of doing things that they haven't. I think that the effect of this aggressive criticism is to make gender critical feminists constantly re-examine their views, but we almost never desert them. Gender critical views themselves are sound.

And as other people have pointed out, it's the genderist side who're making these awful, dehumanising comments, not the gender critical side. Another score for 'we are not the baddies'.

The only thing that ever causes me any doubt is the insistence that there is 'scientific evidence' of people having the wrong brain in their body; and also the stories of young children who fix on the idea of being in the wrong body. But I don't believe that anyone really is wired, from birth, to feel like they're in the wrong body. Something has happened in their environment. And even if they were, it doesn't mean they are the opposite sex. Yes we should be tolerant and accepting to a point, but not to the point of reducing the definition of woman to 'an identity that anyone can have'.

On your last paragraph - I think it's possible that there are rare anomalies that appear to be people having brains that don't match their body in terms of sex. But I see these anomalies as a bit like the people who can taste in colour, or people who wake up from a blow to the head and can speak a foreign language. They are extremely rare, and warrant study for our understanding of the brain, which I think is accepted as being the most complex thing in the universe.

But this is very different from the numbers of people who are declaring themselves as transgender.

I'm also very happy to hear contrary views as I hold my hand up to these just being my musings rather than based on any sound research.

I would be scared to express this in work, as D&I is the latest big thing and and if you are not with us 100% you are AGAINST us, and therefore burned at the stake. Or fired.

And yet, it's perfectly fine to continue to hold meetings that aren't accessible to people with boring disabilities or organise workplaces and workflows in that way - but it seems that always has, and always will be, the wrong sort of diversity.

It's unreasonable to expect colleagues to make [relatively trivial sort of accommodation] but fine to insist everyone should re-language, accept statements that they know to be a scientific nonsense etc.

So, I was deleted for mentioning medical procedures occurring in paediatrics. It was not bluntly explicit as I know it must not be called out for what it is. Some very dodgy folks out there.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

I would be scared to express this in work, as D&I is the latest big thing and and if you are not with us 100% you are AGAINST us, and therefore burned at the stake. Or fired.

And yet, it's perfectly fine to continue to hold meetings that aren't accessible to people with boring disabilities or organise workplaces and workflows in that way - but it seems that always has, and always will be, the wrong sort of diversity.

It's unreasonable to expect colleagues to make [relatively trivial sort of accommodation] but fine to insist everyone should re-language, accept statements that they know to be a scientific nonsense etc.

Yes, (it was me that said that bit you quoted) yes I agree with you. There is so much bollox about “bringing your authentic self to work”. It’s the thought police more like. The conversation is just all wrong wrong wrong. There is no room for conversation, which just might open up minds... instead the format is polarised thinking. Are you in or are you out? Are you an ally or the opposition? There’s just no room.

Re the huge increase in numbers of people now identifying as trans - of course they are. It's no surprise when anyone who feels uncomfortable in their body, feels like they have never fitted in, feels they don't easily conform to narrow gender roles etc - is being told (in children's books, in online communities, in work training sessions, in schools and universities, etc etc etc) that they could or must be trans. It must seem like a ready made answer on a plate.

Not only that, but identifying into it means you automatically get endless praise, are categorised as an oppressed minority and can shout down anyone who challenges you on anything at all, as transphobic. FFS you can even do all this by identifying as non-binary which means nothing at all, except that, like 99% of people, you're not strictly defined by a single set of gender norms.

No wonder that hordes of people are doing this, with a whole range from genuinely confused and vulnerable, to narcissistic, to predatory, to simply unwell. Affirming all these people as not being their biological sex on their say-so is mindboggling. It's also taking resources away from those who really struggle with severe dysphoria, that very small minority who used to make up the transsexual community. (Many of whom are also hated by TRAs)

There is likely an element of social contagion as well. Particularly amongst girls.

I’m sure I read somewhere that apparently a large number of girls fell away from identifying as trans when lockdown happened - possibly as a result of feeling less pressure and stress in social terms or maybe as a result of less pressure overall due to not having to navigate school daily.

The only thing that ever causes me any doubt is the insistence that there is 'scientific evidence' of people having the wrong brain in their body

I've gone through the same thought process and come to the conclusion that we are asking the wrong question. What does a "female brain" even mean if it is in a male body? If there was such a thing then surely that's just evidence that brains are all different and not a direct function of our reproductive systems.

I also wonder why it should matter. The "I was born this way" claim has historically been a way to defend against conversion therapy. But in a progressive society it shouldn't matter if you were born this way, became this way or chose this way.

‘Bring you whole self to work’ is one of the most obnoxious concepts one could come up with!

There are a lot of people who absolutely should not be bringing their whole selves to work. I don’t want to be involved in your hobbies or what you do in your free time or what kinks you have or whatnot. I’m at work to work and I should be free to do so without it meaning an acceptance in my space, in my work time, of all manner of potential things.

Tolerance is tolerance. It means live and let live. It doesn’t mean I need to like what you do, celebrate what you do, or accept you doing it around me.