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 I think about doing a slow hand clap and saying, "Well played, male sex class, well played. You oppressed females from time immemorial and when females began to fight back and demand their rights, you clung onto your privilege for all you were worth. And when females finally prevailed, but knew there was still much work to do, you invented a loophole that rendered women's rights meaningless, because you said anyone could be a woman. Not content with rendering those rights meaningless, you managed to make females the baddies for resisting their own erasure. And your crowning achievement, and the one that must really give you the greatest satisfaction, is that while it is true many females were brave and risked their safety and reputations to retain their rights, you somehow convinced many more women to cheer you on while you dismantled all the gains that women have made in the past century. Well played, male sex class, well played."

A society at the university of Bristol put these up.

How dare they suggest I would assume someone's gender. I wouldn't assume their gender, heaven forfend, but I might think that their sex doesn't match the sign on the door

1. If the stranger's presence means you have to leave, we don't care. There aren't any other facilities. If you have a disability, history of trauma, race or culture or faith that means you're excluded - that's your problem.

1. If you get harassed, threatened or assaulted, we still don't think you should worry. You can always call the police.

That sign makes no sense. They are saying people are going into the loo that doesn't match their gender (not sex)? Why? So e.g. a transwomen in a men's toilet?
Or do they literally mean that a gender can somehow match a sign? How would you tell - do they mean the colour of the sign, or the font?
Also what's "you you"?

Oh... don't forget ...

1. If you leave because you are uncomfortable, this will be considered a micro-aggression and may be noted and reported. You are NOT allowed to leave or show that you are discomforted in anyway as it will be considered hostile and equivalent to wanting that person to not exist.

Helleofabore

That also happens to be the most sinister one.

Indeed andy

Reading that recently had a very chilling effect on me. Particularly the reporting of it.

I just wonder about all the "LGBT+" labelled propaganda. How much input do the LGBs have? Surely Ls and female Bs don't want blokes in their changing rooms?
Nope, I've never felt like a baddy. We're entitled to pen1s-free spaces...

Surely Ls and female Bs don't want blokes in their changing rooms?

It’s also not clear how the instructions on the Bristol uni poster help trans women, if your idea of a trans woman is Hayley Cropper. It’s just permission for every incel to do whatever they want wherever they want, and then claim victim hood if challenged.

I wonder if applications to study at Bristol will fall off a cliff , like at Evergreen State ?

I wonder if applications to study at Bristol will fall off a cliff , like at Evergreen State ?

Doubt it. It's just plain old fashioned misogyny, and women have always had to deal with that in academic institutions.