Does anyone ever wonder how this will end?

[dyslek]

I can see three scenarios.

1. women lose and we end up living in some nightmarish high tec version of ancient Rome, where woman and children is a sub human resource to be exploited in anyway a man wants at an given moment.
2. the mass hysteria quietly dies down and every kind of pretents this was never a thing (and in fact it was only those nasty feminists making a fuss that caused all this misunderstanding in the first place).
3. due to the sheer insanity of gender idology, society slowly starts to listen to women and the horror of the unfairness wakes everyone up to womans humanity and gender stereotypes and finally totally abandoned and we all live happly ever after.

Curious Panda you have an odd view of biology. Sex is biological, not a social construct. Men have a penis and testes, at, and before, birth. Women have a vulva with vagina and clitoris (plus internal organs for gestating a child}, and have this at, and before, birth. Some people have some bits missing or have an extra X or Y chromosome but they are still either biologically male or female, a man or a woman. Woman's biology makes her the bearer of reproduction and child nurturing activities and also impacts on her social and economic power in a capitalist society.
Gender is socially constructed. Gender norms are what suggest little girls should play with dolls and wear dresses and little boys play with cars and wear trousers (in western society - in some societies the boys were kaftans and the girls wear salwar kameze i.e. dress code is reversed}. A girl who likes playing with cars and reading science fiction is gender non-conforming, apparently, as is a boy who likes cooking and fancies that kaftan. Being gender non-conforming does not affect a person's sex. The girl with Lego is still a girl, the boy baking cup cakes is still a boy. They may grow up to be gay, but they may just as likely to grow up being a heterosexual woman who becomes an architect and a heterosexual man who becomes a chef.
Do not confuse sex with gender. Even better, stop saying the lie that sex is socially constructed. It isn't, it is a biological fact. Gender is just in your head and quite irrelevant to sex.

I think CuriousPanda has left the building Grammarnut.

Well. That was a lot of foot-stamping and screeching from a certain black and white poster. How embarrassing.

I think that's for me one of the more interesting threads on this.

I think it's a pbp but not sure.

I worry a bit about people like this. It can't be good psychologically surely to go into what you see as full of really horrible people and keep at it like that.

In terms of the range of the arguments and the trampling on so many things- I can't remember now but stuff like saying same sex attraction is a recent concept invented to harm others, that the idea that on the whole male people are bigger and physically stronger than female people is a lie. Pushed by feminists and resulting in women and girls limiting themselves because they have internalised that idea.

And on and on.

With some posters in the past I have got a bit concerned and said this must be difficult, maybe you should step away for a bit.

I mean I have no desire to go into I dunno an incel forum or an anti-abortion one and do this.

I know it would be pointless and upsetting.

Although, when I had pnd and anxiety I was drawn to threads about a certain thing that I knew would really make me anxious and upset me.

I dunno I just feel a bit worried sometimes.

In the end given the sort of things posted and not knowing anything about the poster. Then not responding to say what on earth is not the thing to do, for me.

I’m just bringing this back because this is such a huge question and one I think about a lot.

Where will this end, really? We have been making some advances, for sure, but the “other side” are so convinced they’re right. They are digging in so hard. They still have so much support on their side in the form of institutional capture and funding, and young people are still being given an often entirely one sided picture of the whole issue.

How is this going to be resolved? When people like Owen Jones are so messianic in their fervour, when no one from “that side” is even willing to listen to any arguments, when it’s all gone so far beyond reason? Is there a way back?

And how do women like us move forward now we know the scale of the misogyny we’re dealing with? I feel such loathing and contempt for the men who’ve pushed this agenda, and the women too - so disappointed and betrayed by those I thought were on our side, as women, but who I now see as nothing less than the enemy, tbh, as in they are the enemy of the kind of world I would like to live in.

It does feel like a civil war, a war particularly between different aspects of the so called liberal left. Those who want to see themselves as progressive, on the side of social justice and equality. Both groups are laying claim to that mantle but it’s impossible for both groups to actually be the voice of progress when we are in such extreme opposition to each other.

I’m rambling, not sure what I’m trying to say - I suppose it’s partly that I do recognise that for some of the TRA/ally camp at least - maybe even most - they are genuinely motivated by the belief they’re doing the right thing, caring about a vulnerable minority, fighting for civil rights etc. And that makes it so much harder to combat them, so much harder than when it was liberals against Thatcher and Section 28, and it was nice and neat as to who was on which side.

So many people whose views would largely concur with mine on many other topics are on the opposite side to me in this arena. And while I can see that some/many of them are motivated by sincerely good intentions, however misguided and misinformed I obviously think those intentions are, it’s starkly noticeable that those on the TRA side never acknowledge the possibility of good faith on our side. Never. We are just demonised and dehumanised all the way.

Everything is so inverted with angry, misogynistic men/ male people comparing us to Nazis, saying how evil we are - while threatening us with the worse kind of violence/sexual violence. I saw one blue tick American guy (a Uni professor?) who actually wished for JKR to suffer a traumatic vaginal injury, but still managed to believe he’s on the right side of history.

Both sides believe they’re standing up for children, against child abuse. We just have completely opposing ideas about what keeping children safe means.

How the fuck does this holy mess get resolved? And even if we’ve got a chance here, how on earth does this play out in the USA/Canada, where things have gone so much further?

Sorry. No answers, just questions. I get heartened by the the steps forward, but then there’s always another new insanity that comes along and is lauded as something marvellous. We’re fucked, aren’t we? Can this really ever come to a reasonable conclusion? If we get the scenario we want, there will still be countless warriors on the TRA side very unhappy and still fighting against it; if things go more the way they want, we’re going to be the ones still angry and fighting.

I think this is going to be a very long civil war. I can’t see how it can resolve even in a few years. I fear it will be decades at least.

But god, I’d love to be wrong. (As long as the earlier resolution was in our favour of course!)

It will end with some pop nostalgia channel in 2050 called "Remember the 2020s?" or some such, in which young people who weren't even born when it happened mock the many absurdities of the decade:

"Misgenedering? Man, what were they on?"

I’d certainly like to think so.

“Can you believe it, they actually argued for putting rapists in women’s prisons and on women’s hospital wards, and not just that but they actually did it, what was going on with them?!”

But I’m still not sure how we can get from here to there.

Not with the degree of belief among those sections of the population who do believe.

But yes, I suppose we have to put our faith in the younger generations - the ones coming up behind the present crop of acolytes, if we can manage to protect them from the worst of the one-sided propaganda.

Actually even with all that some of them will see through it. Some of them are seeing through it now.

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

And how do women like us move forward now we know the scale of the misogyny we’re dealing with? I feel such loathing and contempt for the men who’ve pushed this agenda, and the women too - so disappointed and betrayed by those I thought were on our side, as women, but who I now see as nothing less than the enemy, tbh, as in they are the enemy of the kind of world I would like to live in.

I completely agree with all this, it feels overwhelming sometimes and when you pull back the curtain you realise how much has been done in the background already which means it will take years to claw back that which we thought we already had secured. And how many seemingly intelligent, normal people just jump on board with this and denounce anyone who dares step out of line.

I'm so angry at the government for not even attempting to critically analyse this. Or maybe they just don't care. They must take us all for fools. That's why I urge everyone to contact your elected representatives and tell them you object. They need to hear us roar!

I suppose the civil war reference is quite apt. I feel like it is a quiet war as such, bubbling under the surface - and I feel both invigorated and terrified at the prospect of fighting this for the next few years. As NiceGerbil says, it's helpful to take a break and step back for a while. I know that there are many great women who are fighting this too, and we will push back together. If anything has come out of this, it is a whole new swathe of angry feminists .

Unfortunately, it will get messy. Those who are benefitting from this will not let go of the reigns peacefully, they will lash out and maybe show themselves up for who they really are in the end.
I know I sound defensive, but that's because I'm feeling attacked. We are being attacked. And while we are punched in the stomach, we are being told that nothing is happening, we are imagining it.

I don't want to walk around and pretend everything is fine and dandy when it isn't, and pretend that I'm ok with this when I am very much not. The sky is not green, and I will not be bullied into pretending that it is.

Sorry that was a big messy rant. I don't know how it will end, I don't think it ever will really. It will lose power and fall out of favour though, maybe in a few years. It will go quiet, maybe once the class action lawsuits start.

And the people who championed it will slither away and pretend like nothing happened. But we will remember them.

Looking at the history of women's lib, I think it will get worse before it gets better. Our biggest gains were made after two world wars when it was in the economic interest of the Government to include us.

Looking ahead, I can see at least one resource ear brewing thanks to climate change and I will be surprised if China and India remains peaceful in the next 20 years, given the gender imbalance they have going. It's worth noting that the more misogynistic the country is, the fewer females want to become mother's as bearing children impacts on their career and quality of life.

Fewer women, the women who make it to adulthood don’t want to have children

So forced childbearing becomes more likely?

Another route to Gilead. A terrifying future indeed.

I don't really see this as something where men are on one side and women on another. Maybe because apart from a certain group of transwomen-activists, the strongest voices I see promoting this are just as, or more often, women.

I do think it's interesting to think that at one time the culture wars (or what would become them) seemed to be conservatives vs liberals or progressives, whereas now there is a real split among the former. However, I've come to think that some of the current problem may be rooted in that earlier state of affairs, where conservative views and concerns were characterised as evil or uncaring. In hindsight, some of the things that were flagged as potentially being dangerous are the same things we are now talking about - hate speech and hate crime legislation is a really good example of this, where conservatives arguing that adding that kind of categorisation to things that were already crimes could lead to hierarchical ranking of crimes, or that hate speech laws could become a way to control speech.

Gender ideology though is one facet of a larger construct, coming out of critical theory and identity politics. As long as that paradigm has one the day in other areas of thought, be it women's studies, LGB rights, race issues, etc, it's going to be very difficult to fight it in the area of gender.

So I guess I would say, when envisioning the "how to get there" I think it's going to have to include challenging CT and id politics across the board, in institutions and academia. And that is going to be really hard for many people who feel committed to an idea of being progressive, because it's going to mean taking another look at all of the social movements that have bene impacted. I've seen a people do it, myself included. I had one friend describe to me how she had to rethink her stance on the American gay-wedding cake controversy, and how difficult she found that. Given though how many people just consider "the other side" evil, especially in the US, I'm not sure how to make people feel they can do that.

Oops - should say above the latter - a split among liberals.

I don't really see this as something where men are on one side and women on another.

Clearly it isn’t, as I said too there are large numbers of women promoting this too, and that’s one of the scariest,:most difficult things to deal with.

What I find so intractable is the absolute certitude of those on the side of the TRA cause that they have the moral high ground, that they are the voice of equality and justice and we are the vile bigots trying to prevent the glorious march of progress. There doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt or self questioning whatsoever, nary a chink in the wall of self righteous fervour.

Although it’s interesting that quite a lot of women on here seem to have come over from the TRA side to the GC side, for want of better descriptors. I really don’t believe that many people travel in the opposite direction, despite all the tweets about “I used to be GC but now I’m not”, because not one of those people ever shows that they ever understood the GC position in the first place; they all misrepresent it as some kind of “let’s force gender roles on everybody” shite.

So there are exceptions. But in the meantime, it’s just so grim to see the two sides both engaged in this endless war of attrition, both sides going “we're right” “no WE’RE right” ad infinitum.

I mean, I have no doubts personally about which side I’m on, so I suppose I can’t really talk about the other side not having any doubts, and I personally don’t see any kind of compromise being a way forward as it’s all misogyny and (structural) abuse as far as I’m concerned and there’s no amount of that that’s acceptable - but I can see that those on the other side are every bit as committed to their cause as I am to mine. They feel just as justified, they are as convinced this is “hate” as much as I am convinced that what they are promoting is abuse.

I think what they’re doing is deeply wrong and completely unjustifiable - but I can sort of see how it makes sense to them. It all starts from a fundamentally wrong premise IMO but I can see how if you accept that premise, then theirs is the logical conclusion. And that premise seems to be iron clad for those who believe it, batshit and delusional though it seems to me.

Maybe I just want to know a better way to fight it. A better way to put the emphasis on truth and reality. But you can’t force people in denial to come out of their denial. And I think their denial really is very, very seductive and has them in a vice like grip. And it does my head in.

Maybe I’ve just got Twitter fatigue…

I think there’s a lot of food for thought in your post SmokedDuck.

And yea, it’s really worrying to think where women’s rights are headed globally, given the number of missing girls/women there are now and how that number is still rising.

Misogyny and male violence. Some things never seem to change.

What I find so intractable is the absolute certitude of those on the side of the TRA cause that they have the moral high ground, that they are the voice of equality and justice and we are the vile bigots trying to prevent the glorious march of progress. There doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt or self questioning whatsoever, nary a chink in the wall of self righteous fervour.

Yes, but you know any time there is a thread here about voting, there are any number of posts that state categorically that although the other parties may have some bad, even really bad policies, the CP is made up of people who are explicitly evil, with evil policies, and only someone divorced from their morals could vote for them, much less consider themselves politically conservative.

So while I think quite a few people on the left who have resisted gender ideology have had their eyes opened by all of this and now are willing to read and take seriously people like Douglas Murray or Andrew Sullivan, there are still plenty for whom there is an absolute divide and gender issues are just a weird exception to that.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"It does feel like a civil war, a war particularly between different aspects of the so called liberal left. Those who want to see themselves as progressive, on the side of social justice and equality. Both groups are laying claim to that mantle but it’s impossible for both groups to actually be the voice of progress when we are in such extreme opposition to each other."

Well, to make things easier to determine which side is conservative and which side is progressive -- only one side is being praised and backed up by conservative figures and media outlets like Tucker Carlson, The Federalist, The Spectator, etc.

Think about why that is.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"I really don’t believe that many people travel in the opposite direction, despite all the tweets about “I used to be GC but now I’m not”, because not one of those people ever shows that they ever understood the GC position in the first place; they all misrepresent it as some kind of “let’s force gender roles on everybody” shite."

What do you think you are doing when you categorize everyone as "men" and "women" strictly based on their genitals, chromosomes, gametes, or whatever else it is this month, regardless of how deeply uncomfortable they are with those gendered labels?

Those who leave the GC movement do so because they moved past the lies the GC movement tells themselves and others. Specifically, the lie that you are supportive of gender non-conformity or actually aim to "abolish gender". In practice, you are not, and do not.

In practice, you are quick to accuse any feminine-presenting male of being a "predatory fetishist". How is that supporting gender non-conformity?

God this shit is boring.

Sex is immutable. Gender is arbitrary, and men as a class are a risk factor for women, whatever gender they feel they are.

Now toddle off and play with your homophobic, cheat-backing, rapist-enabling pals, there's a 'progressive' dear.

@FloralBunting
"and men as a class are a risk factor for women, whatever gender they feel they are."

Now go ahead and tell me how you intend to go about changing that. What exactly do you think we should do?

Do you even have some kind of vision of a better society and a way to achieve it, or does your entire ideology boil down to simply repeating "men bad" over and over until the end of time?

And there you are, BluebirdsSong, just demonstrating everything I was talking about.

You have based your whole worldview on an entirely false premise.

That means you are not someone whose views I am interested in or whose judgement I trust in any way.

There is no point in me engaging with you because afaic you are so far divorced from reality that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful conversation. You have shown here, as is typical for those who argue from the same position as you, that you cannot, just cannot, grasp the distinction between sex and gender. So what’s the point?

You don’t respect me or my views. You think I’m a transphobic bigot.

I don’t respect you or your views. I think you’re a misogynistic, reality denying bigot.

Neither of us wants to see the other side’s viewpoint prevail.

But our two opposing views can’t exist in harmony. There is no compromise to be had between believing TWAW and believing TWAM.

So how is this going to play out? You can keep calling us bigots and insisting TWAW. It won’t make it true and it won’t make us go away.

We can keep fighting back and saying you’re the bigots and TWAM. It won’t convince you and it won’t make you go away.

One side is going to lose and there will be a lot of unhappy people whichever side that is. And Indyref and Brexit will look like a choice betwee tea and coffee compared to this. This strikes at the heart of how we order society, how we perceive ourselves and others, how we understand human rights, equality, civilisation. It goes to the core of what we understand humanity to be.

Two sides shouting into the void is never going to resolve it.

Happy days.

Maintaining women's rights and protections is my current focus.

What's yours?

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"You have shown here, as is typical for those who argue from the same position as you, that you cannot, just cannot, grasp the distinction between sex and gender."

It seems to me that you can't.

You can't distinguish the identities of "man" and "woman" social categories built around sex from sex itself.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"One side is going to lose and there will be a lot of unhappy people whichever side that is."

Well, you sure seem to be winning in the UK. Just don't be surprised once the "biological reality" argument zeroes in on its original targets, which was gay people.

"LGB Alliance" types have already been effectively leaving out the B, and gay men are already being accused of misogyny on spurious grounds. It's only a matter of time.