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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Does anyone ever wonder how this will end?

609 replies

dyslek · 12/07/2021 21:22

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.
OP posts:
somethinginoffensive · 09/08/2021 18:09

@alkanet

Blimey Talkingtolangcleg,

I'm standing up & raising a very large Jamesons in your general direction.

👏👏👏👏👏💐

Me too. So much sense.
heathspeedwell · 09/08/2021 18:26

Thank you for that wonderful post Talkingtolandcleg. I will re-read it whenever the going gets tough!

AnyOldPrion · 09/08/2021 18:50

Thank you so much to Aparallaxia and TalkingtoLangClegintheDark. Two brilliant posts, one following from the other.

To anyone reading this thread, please bear in mind that threads with truly rousing posts are sometimes targetted, with the aim of getting them removed. If anyone attempts to derail it, please bear that in mind and ignore.

FOJN · 09/08/2021 19:40

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

Thank you for your excellent post.

I saw this on YouTube a few days ago and thought it was very relevant to the time we are living through, your post documents so many things mentioned in it.

Aparallaxia · 10/08/2021 23:03

Thank you TalkingtoLangClegintheDark. I share both your despair and your hope. You expressed them both so well.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 11/08/2021 00:38

We have ALL the evidence on our side. We have ALL the moral justification. All the rationality, the being based in actual material reality - both the physical reality of the two sexes and the sociological/historical reality of males’ oppression of females.

Yes, brava @TalkingtoLangClegintheDark ThanksWine

Hypatia415 · 11/08/2021 18:46

@BlueberryCheezecake

4) Trans acceptance becomes the norm without any catastrophic consequences and the people who opposed it will be looked back on with the same distaste as those who opposed gay marriage equality and supported Section 28.
Also pitching in with support for this.

Despite the domination of trans exclusionary views on these boards, they are a minority view in society (with the majority simply not caring). It's very much in line with the moral panic which targeted gay people but which, to most people, has becoming something of an embarrassment to look back on.

Eventually less and less people will spend time paying attention to transphobic rhetoric and it'll become more and more niche. Really, a lot of people view the nonsense that goes on here with the same attitude as anti-vax, flat-earth and QAnon rubbish.

Enjoy your made up little existential crisis if you will, but sooner or later the 'debate' will be a footnote in history.

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 11/08/2021 18:49

Thanks gyns, as they say on twitter - for a while there I was worried I’d killed the thread with a surfeit of words Grin

Aparallaxia it really is an odd mixture of hope and despair we live with, isn’t it.

Thanks for the video link, FOJN, interesting watching - though I couldn’t help wondering if the creator would turn out to be yet another man who’s all for rationality, truth and understanding till it comes to the subject of “male women”, because you just never know these days - even those who are adept at pointing out the dynamics they observe in certain groups/situations can be blind to the same dynamics operating in a different sphere.

Bit like the women of the Guilty Feminist Podcast, but that’s a whole other surfeit of words.

RadicalFern · 11/08/2021 19:07

Some people believe in special pink ladybrains but we're the ones in with the flat-earthers? Grin

Gibbonsgibbonsgibbons · 11/08/2021 19:10

I just came back to re-read this
But I know we’re not backing down, not giving up, not changing course now. We’ll just have to keep on doing what we’re doing, sticking to the facts and to our feminist/woman-centred principles, and refusing to be intimidated or silenced by misogynistic bullies.

Thanks TalkingtoLangClegintheDark 🥃

nepeta · 11/08/2021 20:24

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark :
As has been said on here so many times, remove the ability to name women as a sex class and you remove the ability to accurately recognise and name sexism and misogyny. And thus the ability to challenge and organise against them. You directly harm the oppressed sex class to the benefit of the oppressor sex class.

This. A thousand times this. My thinking on this topic over the last decade boils down to this admirably expressed short paragraph.

Women have traditionally been oppressed on the basis of sex, and still are in many parts of this world. Sex discrimination is based on sex (or sex as interpreted by others), sexism is based on sex, sexual assaults and harassment are predominantly aimed at one sex. But currently the transgender activists and many feminists are busily erasing our ability to name the group which is damage by those ills.

Indeed, to name that group is viewed as transphobia. This makes much of traditional feminism incredibly difficult.

Consider trying to make sense out of rape statistics if inclusiveness requires you to write about the majority of the victims as just 'people' (as is done now in lots of places when pregnant women are corrected to 'pregnant people'). Ultimately it will then be 'people' who predominantly rape 'people', and, as one nonbinary activist argues, in this new world such a statement would be actually wrong only if women and men were not people.

Well, they (singular) said that about replacing 'women' in the context of 'pregnant people', but the same concerns apply.

I now have tremendous difficulty trying to see what terms I can use for which groups. People who have female bodies will be exposed to sex-based treatment unless they take testosterone and have mastectomies. Nonbinary female-bodied people will suffer from sexism but we are not allowed to point that out. And so on.

The second wave feminists sometimes wrote about naming being power. The un-naming and erasure of names is power, too. Astonishingly, it is being done by the progressives and feminists today.

The whole problem would have been avoided if the gender identity ideology had created a new set of terms for identities and left 'women' and 'men' alone. But given that they wish to erase the biological connotations of 'women' (and only 'women', by the way), what is happening will be terrible for anyone wanting to fight sex-based injustices.

MaudTheInvincible · 11/08/2021 21:24

@Gibbonsgibbonsgibbons

I just came back to re-read this But I know we’re not backing down, not giving up, not changing course now. We’ll just have to keep on doing what we’re doing, sticking to the facts and to our feminist/woman-centred principles, and refusing to be intimidated or silenced by misogynistic bullies.

Thanks TalkingtoLangClegintheDark 🥃

I love reading MN FWR for the high quality of writing from clever, erudite, and thoughtful women. They frequently uplift and educate me. Thanks

Does anyone ever wonder how this will end?
Ereshkigalangcleg · 11/08/2021 22:01

Despite the domination of trans exclusionary views on these boards, they are a minority view in society (with the majority simply not caring).

Except that according to polls the public don't want to make it easier to get a GRA, they don't support males in women's sports, and their support for males in women's changing rooms and toilets is dependent on whether they have had genital reconstruction surgery.

mollythemeerkat · 12/08/2021 01:29

TalkingtoLangCleg - loving your post - one of the occasions when a "surfeit of words" (it wasnt by the way), was absolutely and completely spot on.

nepeta · 12/08/2021 04:28

As to how all this will end... I have no idea. I mostly think that we are living during a particular type of social contagion, a bubble similar to earlier ones about Satanic rituals and false memories during the 1990s.

Those bubbles just silently deflate at some point.

But this one has a lot of money to back it and lots and lots of people who wish to be kind and progressive and have not done the deep thinking about the many complex aspects in this particular case. It also doesn't inconvenience men much at all.

So I don't know.

Fieldofgreycorn · 12/08/2021 12:21

How did such a huge, monstrous, irrational, indefensible lie take hold of modern, secular society in the late 20th/early 21st century?

It’s not all a lie though. Most of the mental health/ psychiatric/ scientific communities believe there is such a thing as gender identity. Gender identity being the sex you identify as. Just as we know we’re human and have a human identity, part of that identity is gendered.

For most people they feel they are the sex their body is. For a minority they feel they are not, and for some of them there are thought to be a mixture of genetic, biological, psychological, environmental and cultural causes behind that. That best explains what has been observed clinically and from what is known about embryology, mammalian development and cross cultural anthropology. In terms of both what the problems are and the solutions.

Given that we have not been able to change people’s gender identity (in the main) the most humane solution is to support these people to live as what feels to them as the right sex as much as possible. (Easily dismissed as ‘be kind’). Physically, biologically and socially. As much as modern medicine and the legal system can provide.

You view everything through a sex class analysis. Not everyone does. James Barrett estimates there are 120,000 individuals in the U.K. that have made some sort of transition. If 20% have full surgery that’s 24,000 post ops. There’s no evidence that those transitioned after 1989 offend at higher rates. Although if you include the wide ‘trans umbrella’ I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case as there’s no reason to think male cross dressers etc don’t violently offend at the same rates as other males. (With no altered hormone levels etc).

Most people (IMO) are going to think that those who are medically transitioning under supervision should be supported to live as their acquired sex as much as possible whether m to f or f to m. You don’t think that. It’s a difference of opinion.

The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes and I believe there will be a sensible resolution. But not everyone is going to be happy. Most women and men will be though. The hardline GCs (no one should legally change sex or use some public facilities for their transitioned sex) and fantasist TRAs (anyone’s a woman if they say they are) won’t.

Wrongsideofhistorymyarse · 12/08/2021 12:44

It’s not all a lie though. Most of the mental health/ psychiatric/ scientific communities believe there is such a thing as gender identity. Gender identity being the sex you identify as. Just as we know we’re human and have a human identity, part of that identity is gendered.

Evidence please?

HoliHormonalTigerlilly · 12/08/2021 13:07

@BlueberryCheezecake

4) Trans acceptance becomes the norm without any catastrophic consequences and the people who opposed it will be looked back on with the same distaste as those who opposed gay marriage equality and supported Section 28.
Yes silly little women. Caring about their sex based rights. Tsk! 🦄💖🌈🤸🏻‍♀️🤸
Jaysmith71 · 12/08/2021 13:11

But in order to accept people who are trans, we need a functional definition of trans, and "anyone who says they are" does not meet that requirement.

PartyofPun · 12/08/2021 13:25

@Fieldofgreycorn

How did such a huge, monstrous, irrational, indefensible lie take hold of modern, secular society in the late 20th/early 21st century?

It’s not all a lie though. Most of the mental health/ psychiatric/ scientific communities believe there is such a thing as gender identity. Gender identity being the sex you identify as. Just as we know we’re human and have a human identity, part of that identity is gendered.

For most people they feel they are the sex their body is. For a minority they feel they are not, and for some of them there are thought to be a mixture of genetic, biological, psychological, environmental and cultural causes behind that. That best explains what has been observed clinically and from what is known about embryology, mammalian development and cross cultural anthropology. In terms of both what the problems are and the solutions.

Given that we have not been able to change people’s gender identity (in the main) the most humane solution is to support these people to live as what feels to them as the right sex as much as possible. (Easily dismissed as ‘be kind’). Physically, biologically and socially. As much as modern medicine and the legal system can provide.

You view everything through a sex class analysis. Not everyone does. James Barrett estimates there are 120,000 individuals in the U.K. that have made some sort of transition. If 20% have full surgery that’s 24,000 post ops. There’s no evidence that those transitioned after 1989 offend at higher rates. Although if you include the wide ‘trans umbrella’ I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case as there’s no reason to think male cross dressers etc don’t violently offend at the same rates as other males. (With no altered hormone levels etc).

Most people (IMO) are going to think that those who are medically transitioning under supervision should be supported to live as their acquired sex as much as possible whether m to f or f to m. You don’t think that. It’s a difference of opinion.

The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes and I believe there will be a sensible resolution. But not everyone is going to be happy. Most women and men will be though. The hardline GCs (no one should legally change sex or use some public facilities for their transitioned sex) and fantasist TRAs (anyone’s a woman if they say they are) won’t.

You know that ‘full surgery’ is a massive deal and very rare? If even 20% have had ‘surgery’ that actually generally means breast implants or reductions, nose jobs or face feminisation etc. Transition can just mean wearing clothes.

Are you happy for women’s sports, prisons, changing rooms, domestic violence units to be open to anyone? There are really vulnerable blind women, elderly women, disabled women, young women, religious women, disadvantaged women who will be seriously impacted by this on a daily basis.

StrangeLookingParasite · 12/08/2021 13:45

If 20% have full surgery that’s 24,000 post ops. There’s no evidence that those transitioned after 1989 offend at higher rates.

Except there's no evidence of either of those, and evidence that transition does not alter offending rates - transwomen offend at the same rate as untransitioned men.

mollythemeerkat · 12/08/2021 14:25

Most people (IMO) are going to think that those who are medically transitioning under supervision should be supported to live as their acquired sex as much as possible whether m to f or f to m. You don’t think that. It’s a difference of opinion.

Is that what the poster said though?

DonkeySkin · 12/08/2021 15:05

Except that according to polls the public don't want to make it easier to get a GRA, they don't support males in women's sports, and their support for males in women's changing rooms and toilets is dependent on whether they have had genital reconstruction surgery.

It's true that most people don't support the radical TRA agenda, but that doesn't mean that it won't succeed.

This article explains it well:

medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15

It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.

TRAs are succeeding in large part by being intransigent, and by making it very, very costly to oppose them.

Notice that they NEVER concede that sexual biology might be relevant to anything, ever: they never say, OK, well we want men to be considered women if they say so, but we understand that sports might be a separate issue; or, we want male prisoners to be housed in women's jails if they desire, but we understand that some dangerous men might exploit this, so for safety reasons not all gender identities should be automatically recognised...

Instead, they unswervingly insist that gender identity trumps biology in all contexts, and then smear and persecute anyone who has the temerity to say, 'Hang on a minute...'. They work to destroy people's reputations and get them fired. They accuse them, baselessly, of causing harm and suicide, making the tenor of the debate so ugly that anyone who values his or her peace and sanity decides it's wiser to just mouth a platitude or not say anything at all. And they don't stop, ever. They are ruthless and relentless. Witness their 5-year-plus smear campaign against US journalist Jesse Singal, because he wrote about the ethical issues around giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children. The TRAs and their libfem goons spread false rumours that Singal was a sexual harrasser of trans people, lies which they continue to amplify today.

They have not managed to destroy Singal's career, but they have injured his reputation in progressive circles and almost certainly made it impossible for him to be published in mainstream leftist outlets. What is the point of such a campaign, against a journalist who is largely supportive of the TRA agenda? It is to damage and demoralise the individual targeted by it, obviously, but it also serves the larger purpose of demonstrating to other leftist journalists what happens if you scrutinise the paediatric transition industry. What bright, young leftist journalist (or even old and grizzled, for that matter) would dare take on the issue of 'trans' kids in the US today?

Again, witness the campaign against Rosie Duffield, for the crime of stating that women's health messages should reference women. Note that the ferocity of the TRA reaction was totally out of proportion to Duffield's actual comments: she said something very mild that the vast majority of the public would agree with, but the TRAs responded as if her views would horrify all decent and right-thinking people and demanded her expulsion from the Labour Party. This is key to their success: to treat even the mildest dissent from their agenda as the gravest of sins, which somehow erases the humanity of a vulnerable minority and literally causes their deaths. Most people don't have the desire or ability to endure such sustained opprobrium, so most people decide to stay well out of it. This is how 'the most intolerant wins', and how a minority of extremists end up imposing their wishes on the majority.

Chickenyhead · 12/08/2021 15:10

@donkeyskin great post

Mulletsaremisunderstood · 12/08/2021 17:01

@nepeta

As to how all this will end... I have no idea. I mostly think that we are living during a particular type of social contagion, a bubble similar to earlier ones about Satanic rituals and false memories during the 1990s.

Those bubbles just silently deflate at some point.

But this one has a lot of money to back it and lots and lots of people who wish to be kind and progressive and have not done the deep thinking about the many complex aspects in this particular case. It also doesn't inconvenience men much at all.

So I don't know.

I heard Helen Joyce reference the false memories therapeutic scandal, and said that the main reason it stopped happening was because there was an onslaught of lawsuits, so then the insurance companies in the US stopped providing coverage for that type of therapy.

I think that's what will happen, once those teenage girls grow up and realise that has been done to them they may be very angry and sue. They would definitely have a case for lack of medical ethics, or lack of proper consent.