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?

Sometimes. But it passes.

Nope never. I am a young bigot

I know bigots from all age groups.

Not one not one can even believe this madness

Teens I know mock it

My age mock it

And nobody I know overthinks it

It’s just a straight no

I wasn't a tra but initially did support the movement. I read a lot and I don't take much at face value
I read chat groups of transwomen and watched people like Lila Perry demand to be allowed into the girls changing room whilst wearing a short, grey skirt with a semi erection swinging freely under the skirt. I watched and though am I the only person seeing what this really is?
You don't have to do much reading before you become very cynical and disturbed

I did once. A few years ago. I tried really hard to see it from their point of view. But the lack of logic always stops me. It's like 1984 when he's holding 4 fingers and Winston has to say he sees 5. I can't do it, I just can't. I could be forced to say it but in my head I really can't believe it. That's how I feel when people say a person with a penis can be a woman because they say so. When judges force women to refer to their male attackers as female in court. When crimes are recorded as being committed by women when it's men doing it. I just can't. It's wrong. It feels wrong because it is wrong and my gut has never let me down yet.

Hell yes. I'm a natural ally, always supported trans people and trans rights and would probably have been parroting TWAW. I didn't understand it when I heard there was controversy, went to have a look expecting to find bigotry from the usual sorts and instead found a lot of misogyny from TRAs.

I just keep in mind that even though I don't deny anybody's existence, I don't want anyone to die, I will call people whatever name they want and will use their chosen pronouns (to the best of my ability I've not met anybody who uses any unusual ones), I am according to some a hateful bigot who wants trans people wiped out while the people who send death and rape threats are apparently the good guys...

Lila Perry made my late partner finally understand the issue. He looked at me in horror.

Do you know what gaslighting is?

Its making you question yourself when you know something to be true.

Do you think that you can change sex? If you do, then how do humans reproduce?
Is it possible to explain Gender Identity without refering to Gender Stereotypes and clothes?

So are you the baddies? Or are you being gaslight?

I question myself all the time to make sure I'm not slipping into an unreal echo chamber. I see articles that I agree with attract comments that I consider abhorrent and I take that as a warning to be careful where I place my support.

I acknowledge that at times I will agree with a "baddie" that a specific situation is wrong. But I also know we do not agree on the reasons WHY it's wrong, nor on how it should be fixed, so to see them as allies would be deeply mistaken.

I make sure I focus on the fundamentals so I can always articulate (if only to myself) why I believe what I do.

he agrees with me, but says that it is basically like someone saying they "don't agree with all that Black Lives Matter stuff"

Then he doesn't agree with you, OP, because he doesn't understand you. He's conflating sexist, homophobic trans ideologues with the good guys, which doesn't hold water. To take his rather clumsy analogy, the correct version would be you saying you "don't agree with all that British National Party stuff".

As to your question: I ask myself if we are the baddies all the time. I have asked myself that for years. (I also ask myself that on other issues, too.) And so far, the answer has been that christ, no, we are not the bloody baddies, we are the resistance.

I think it is essential to question one's beliefs all the time, lest they become merely dogma. But I keep on coming to the same conclusions, so I will continue to fight for women's rights.

No

I do every so often - ie I question my stance - it's something I try and do anyway by making myself play devil's advocate with different positions that I don't naturally have. I have quite rigid thinking sometimes so I find it helpful.

In questioning like this, I often try and discuss with people putting forward the opposite point of view on here. There have been quite a lot, and the replies, lack of replies, and willful misinterpretations of what's being asked (conflating sex and gender when 'convenient' for sleight of hand arguments) have basically cemented my position - I'm satisfied there's not some 'of course!' aspect I've so far missed.

That's not to say I don't learn something from those (particularly those living it) who do engage, and I try and keep open-minded.

I will never not believe, though, that women as a class are oppressed because of their sex. There would have to be a hell of a lot of evidence coming to light to make me change my mind on that!

I am the bigot/witch/woman that men have warned us about. Lost loads of friends who haven’t seen it . We have to see the small victories and keep going. It will change.

I used to. But then it turned out that the stuff that sounded ridiculous was actually happening.

Surely no-one is actually going to let males in women's prisons.

Or in women's sports.

And I'm sure Stonewall aren't really campaigning to abolish single-sex spaces.

Oh and of course the medical professionals dealing with dysphoric children are keeping accurate data and following up long term.

Oh, wait...

I would love to be proved wrong. Unfortunately, those claiming to be working on behalf of trans people keep proving the women of FWR right.

Plus I've read 1984.

Whilst Brexit was being argued thought I THOUGHT leaving the EU was a stupid idea, but realised the Brexiters were running a fearful campaign that seemed to capture a good many, usually reasonable people.

Whilst GC issues are being argued about I KNOW deep down with every fibre of my being that TRAs are running a fearful campaign that seems to have captured a good many, usually reasonable people.

I also question myself a lot. I recently quit my job though, as I found I can't in all honesty accept the pronouns and lies. I can't go along with it. I am continually surprised at what I see to be the moral cowardice of my peers. So I guess, yes I do doubt. But when it comes down to it I can't reconcile myself to accepting lies.

Yeah I think so dalyesque

It’s so much like being suffragettes in the past

Guess their friends were like what were you thinking

But here we are.

None of my friends or family have any truck with this madness

Maybe because... you are?

Great contribution, blackice

And maybe not. Maybe it's the people who are medicalising children for life with little concern for the ones who would get past their gender questioning phase. Maybe it's the ones sending death and rape threats, and those who want validation of their personal identity by destroying all the hard won sex based rights of the oppressed sex class, who are the baddies.

And no, I did in the past consider this, but I don't any more, for reasons which I won't share here.

I do. I have 2 daughters that think I should just 'be kind' and I spent 15 years working in secondary schools seeing more and more of the girls I supported, particularly autistic girls, identify as transgender.
And yet, I'm convinced I'm not the 'baddie'. I'm a middle aged woman that has been the victim of male violence and misogyny. I know that so many rights that women have ,have been hard fought for and only recently won. If we don't defend what we have, we will lose it.
I'm glad my kids don't fear male violence the way I do. I'm glad they haven't grown up in such an overtly sexist time as I did. This gives them a false sense of security that all will be well. They don't understand yet what they risk losing - I hope they never do.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

And maybe not. Maybe it's the people who are medicalising children for life with little concern for the ones who would get past their gender questioning phase. Maybe it's the ones sending death and rape threats, and those who want validation of their personal identity by destroying all the hard won sex based rights of the oppressed sex class, who are the baddies.

This ^

I'm with those who wonder this.

But I think it through and have always settled on No. You can't change sex.
Sometimes objective sex trumps gender identity.

Nothing has changed about human sex. It's the same as it's always been, show me if it's not.

Nothings changed about human behaviour either, unfortunately. It's still the ones of the make sex that carry out most of the murders, rapes, all the way down to arse grabbing on dance floors.

It's nice to feel 98% safer. So I support single sex spaces.

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?

My husband finds the whole topic intensely uncomfortable and quite honestly hasn’t got the mental bandwidth to deal with it (huge stuff going on at work) so, while I know he agrees about the major issue, we can’t discuss it.

I had a disastrous conversation with friends nearly a year ago when I had started to discover the problems but didn’t have enough facts at my fingertips to counter their ‘gender is a spectrum, sex is a social construct’ argument (we have 14 kids between us and waay too much wine in board to deal with objections to all my points x 3 We haven’t managed to talk about it since and I’m not sure that they will twig until something major happens directly to one of them.

I have directed my efforts to writing letters and challenging the bazillion policies in government organisations (hospitals, schools etc) and staying involved in the conversations on here which are a constant source of learning.

I think that many people find the topic too vast. The rot has gone so deep a d it can feel quite overwhelming. I am only now, after more than a year of immersion in this, feeling like a) we are making some progress and b) I understand the issues effectively enough that I can challenge the lies and misinformation and underhand tactics.