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?

@Mockolate

I'm not "trying" anything. I was just responding to the posts saying about section 28 and that they can see no similarity anywhere. My post was just saying that actually, yes there are some comparisons.

If you look for long enough you'll find comparisons for anything.

Problem is, as you found out, some of them will be very superficial, others overly simplified. Or like yours, glibly lacking in finesse, trying to bludgeon GC posters into submission via the well worn "ooh, you are nasty" trope.

It hasn't worked for you before. Try a new tack, maybe!

Can you not see or are you not aware that the right wing argument towards gay rights people WERE saying things like they took away rights from others?

Maybe people did argue that, but they were wrong.

We're not. What trans activists are demanding does clash with women's right.

Are you aware that the desire of a transgender rapist to be amongst women in prison is more important than the female prisoners right to safety? It's acknowledged that this puts the women at risk of rape and sexual assault (no shit, Sherlock) but that risk is worth it, because the rapist needs to be validated. Is that not an example of women's rights being taken away?

Including transwomen in women's sports means female athletes, some from poverty, lose out. That's taking away from women.

Defunding rape crisis centres because they focus on women only is taking away from women.

Allowing males into a refuge where vulnerable women are fleeing from domestic violence will put women off seeking help. That's taking away from women.

Rapists and male paedophiles are splashed across the news, referred to as women. Meanwhile actual women are vulva-owners, menstruators, ovary-havers. Rapists and paedophiles are shown more respect than us. That's taking from us, it's taking away our language.

We say they're taking from us, because it's the truth, there for all to see.

Section 28 was government sanctioned repression of homosexuality.

Trans ideology is now seeded into government and many authoritative organizations, and actively focuses on removing women's rights and protections, and also seeks to oppress homosexual freedoms.

The 'similarities' are very much that those promoting the T, and in particular Self ID, are doing so in much the same way as the authorities pressed Section 28.

Ah! You are snark hunting.

Or like yours, glibly lacking in finesse, trying to bludgeon GC posters into submission via the well worn "ooh, you are nasty" trope.

Seriously, where have I even done that lol?!
I literally put my opinion.
Mine.
You're free to have your own opinion and I have never implied otherwise.
Interesting on hearing a different opinion to the usual on here you think you're being "bludgeoned" and I've called you "ooo nasty."
Done nothing of the sort, anywhere.

Section 28 was government sanctioned repression of homosexuality.

T ideology that redefines homosexuality as same gender attracted rather than same sex attracted erases homosexuality rather than represses it, you think that's an improvement on Section 28?

But you wouldn't last 10 seconds on Just A Minute.

Snark hunting, like I said!

Snark hunting?
For putting my opinion up?
Literally not got an actual clue what you're going on about, sorry.

@RedDogsBeg

Section 28 was government sanctioned repression of homosexuality.

T ideology that redefines homosexuality as same gender attracted rather than same sex attracted erases homosexuality rather than represses it, you think that's an improvement on Section 28?

Quite.

I know 😁

But it is logical, and Google will help, should you wish to break with tradition and do some research!

Yes I do reflect and question myself because I (like most people on this thread) M absolutely not used to being accused of being morally wrong, or regressive. All my life I have never been this. And I am not now. Apart from ALL the important points raised so far, it's just simply that I am being told that I cannot speak my reality, that my thoughts are wrong, my "lived experience" worth nothing. And that I'm worthy of abuse.
Thats what told me for sure that something smells wrong about gender identity theory and its extremist proponents.

What is it with using lol at the end of sentences where I doubt the writer is really laughing out loud, or is it being used as some kind of weird punctuation mark?

Mockolate - were you posting an observation that some styles of argument used by one group of people are also used by another?

Or were you arguing that, noting the above, that means these groups of people also share many or all other values, because their arguing style is similar?

It's 'lots of love'. Mockolate is just being affectionate.

[quote Mockolate]@BlueberryCheezecake

History will look back on you in the same way it looks back on people who fearmongered about the gays and opposed LGB equality.

@redapplewreath

I'm LGB. I fought against section 28. This is utter bollocks. It is not the same. Gay rights wanted to take nothing from anyone else.

How is it utter bollocks and not the same?
It's completely the same argument, if you fought against section 28 , surely you must see that a little bit?
You say "gay right wanted to take nothing from anyone else"
Can you not see or are you not aware that the right wing argument towards gay rights people WERE saying things like they took away rights from others?
Some still will hold those views.
These aren't my views by the way but some definitely do think that gay rights
eg marriage - takes away the "proper" meaning of marriage as in man and woman, makes a mockery of etc
Also not wanting children to learn about being gay in schools because they fear that it will be a social contagion and if they know about it or their friends are that means they will want to as well

You really don't see ANY parallels there?
They're the exact same arguments used against trans people on this board.[/quote]
@mockolate

You said it was the same. Can you not remember?

I literally put my opinion.
Mine.

And maybe you'd like to expand your reasons for stating that to fight against the conflicts in the rights for women and children by another group is similar in nature to imposing Section 28 and the opposition to gay and lesbian rights?

I happen to think the two you have chosen are very weak so I would like to hear more. You said you had a 'few'.

@NotTerfNorCis

It's 'lots of love'. Mockolate is just being affectionate.

Oh, I do remember signing all my letters with LOL!

And SWAKCTLWS!

@NotTerfNorCis

It's 'lots of love'. Mockolate is just being affectionate.

Is it? I thought David Cameron got caught out thinking it meant that?

SWAKCTLWS?

Sealed with a kiss is as far as I can get

[quote MsMarvellous]@Waitwhat23

What is a pirates favourite letter?

Arrrrrrr?

No. You would think it would be arrr, but 'it's the C

[/quote]
Love it . Going in my joke bank, thank you!

I rather think this is a splendid time to link to and quote from Jane Clare Jones' excellent essay on the question of whether or not objections made against the doctrine of gender identity and its political implications are the same as objections made against equal rights for gay people.

It's called
GAY RIGHTS AND TRANS RIGHTS – A COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Here's a few pertinent quotes, but I would urge you Mockolate to read all of it.

So, to get down to it. The discourse of ‘homophobia’ fundamentally relies on the idea that gay-people are discriminated against on the basis of moral disgust. And inside that are two more interwoven ideas. One, that moral disgust is not a legitimate basis for telling people what not to do. (Correct) Especially not when your disgust-feels are causing serious harm to other people. (Also correct) And even more especially given that moral disgust is a nasty, vicious emotion that tends to shade very easily into violence (and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense of ‘literal violence’). Two, that because discrimination against homosexuality was entirely mediated by moral disgust, there was, in fact, no legitimate basis for that discrimination, and all objections were, effectively, moral disgust in drag. That is, the success of gay rights was substantially down to disseminating the idea that that were no good reasons for anyone to object to their agenda, and that everyone objecting was just a nasty evil bigot whose ideas shouldn’t be given any weight as part of democratic political debate.

This structure has basically been transferred wholesale to the concept of ‘transphobia.’ And it’s doing important work for the trans rights movement in several ways. First, the idea of the visceral virulence of moral disgust has been taken and amplified to the hundredth power. Our response to things that disgust us is to try and eradicate them, and I think this resonance of the ‘phobia’ designation is doing a lot to undergird trans activist’s claims that any objection to their demands amounts to a ‘denial of their existence,’ or an effort to ‘exclude’ them bordering on intent to exterminate. (It’s also a key element of the endlessly recycled claim that a bunch of mostly left-wing feminist women are in cahoots with people who’d blend seamlessly into the Westboro Baptist Church or some such nonsense. (It’s wall-to-wall self-hating lesbians over here, honest)).

Second, and we’ll deal with this in detail because it’s crucial. The use of the concept of ‘homophobia’ to dismiss objections to gay rights carried a ton of weight because the basis for a legitimate moral or political objection would be that something causes a harm, and in the case of gay rights there is a complete dearth of convincing arguments as to why homosexuality is a harm. It doesn’t harm homosexuals (whereas repressing it evidently does), and it doesn’t harm anyone else.[1] But this is precisely where the ‘homophobia-transphobia’ parallel falls completely apart. Because in the case of the trans rights agenda there is actually a load of potential harms we might reasonably be worried about. Indeed, there is a kind of dull thudding irony to the fact that the very week Momentum decide to remind us that we’re all scaremongering bigots on the wrong side of history it also became public knowledge that Karen White – a trans woman on remand for rape – had been sent to a women’s jail where they sexually assaulted four inmates. (Who could have predicted it?)

The key thing to understand about trans rights activism is that, unlike gay rights activism, it is not just a movement seeking to ensure that trans people are not discriminated against. It is, rather, a movement committed to a fundamental reconceptualization of the very idea of what makes someone a man or a woman. In theory, this equally affects both men and women, but in practice, almost all the social pressure is coming from trans women towards the idea of ‘woman’ and the rights of women. And that’s because, when it comes down to it, this whole thing is being driven by male people who want something female people have, and that something, is, in fact, our very existence. Moreover, it turns out – who knew? – that male people have the inclination and social power to exert extreme coercive pressure on female people, and to court the sympathy and support of other males when they do so. (It’s almost as if sex is a thing and that it has something to do with power after all mmmm?).

It isn’t that children are being taught about trans people that’s an issue. It’s saying liking stereotypes associated with the opposite sex might mean you are trans.

Section 28 was just about homophobia. It wasn’t schools saying to kids “you like musical theatre? Not keen on sport? You’re probably gay! (Insert own stereotypes)”. If it was I think many people would have issues with that, including LGB people.

What kids are being told is dolls are for girls so if a boy plays with dolls he’s a girl. This is nonsense. Teach kids trans people are people but don’t indicate stereotypes mean anything.

I also don’t recall any gay people threatening engaged couples with rape and murder. Or threatening to bomb register offices until gay marriage was made equal. Some people would need to learn a lot more about dignity and compassion before they can compare TRAs to gay rights campaigners.

You can keep trying to make out being concerned for women’s rights (and of course all posts about that are swerved because the only argument you have is the erroneous you’re right wing”) whilst specialists at gender clinics themselves have raised issues that parents have wanted their kids to transition rather than grow up to be gay adults but frankly the whole ideology reeks of homophobia these days. So maybe address that before you expect women to welcome rapists into women’s prisons where they rape, assault and terrorise women.

Of course you won’t because “right wing!” (Rolls eyes, knocks self out).

I wonder if it's homophobic to say that being gay means being same-sex attracted?

What is it with using lol at the end of sentences where I doubt the writer is really laughing out loud

I actually did, but I must admit on reading what I was supposed to have said but actually didn't, I did do a lol but it came out in a WTF type of confused snort instead

Sealed with a kiss cos the lick won't stick!