Invasion of the body snatchers

[RadandMad]

I've had a horrible week. At work someone in my office I've known and liked for years started commenting to a nodding colleague about how Graham Linehan is clearly mentally ill, and going on about how bigots and transphobes like JKR and anyone who agrees with her have set feminism back years. A couple of days later a friend announced that following a conversation with her son - as if teenage boys are now the authority on what a woman is - she now agrees trans are the most vulnerable people in the society and women's spaces aren't really that important compared to their suffering.

I feel like one of the remaining sane humans surrounded by a sea of people who have been infected by some kind of terrible mind virus. I can't deal with it. It's really really getting me down.

As mentioned, the person I was arguing with above was my sister. We've always had a habit of discussing politics, feminism, everything. I know her too well to believe it was deliberate. She genuinely believed it and she was genuinely upset that I 'believed' what she thought I did even as I struggled to explain that I didn't

Apologies, Turtle. I should have been clearer. I don’t think your sister and people like her are deliberately misrepresenting GC beliefs, but I do believe that those they’re getting these ideas from are purposely misrepresenting our beliefs. So, if someone new to the topic saw a comment about gender critical on Twitter, they might search further to see what it meant and then they may well come across one of the major trans accounts that ‘explains’ what GC is - and then they think they know our beliefs when, in fact, they’ve been deceived purposely.

I hope that makes better sense! I saw a thread a ‘trans’ friend retweeted and it was ‘those GC people are so awful’ and then underneath others had replied repeating misinformation and expressing horror that we ‘believe the things we do’. But none of the beliefs attributed to us were right at all. Many of them were, in fact, the complete opposite of what we believe. I don’t think anyone in that thread was purposely misrepresenting us - the vast majority had been misinformed by others.

Yes, someone was saying this on the Terry Pratchett thread the other day: every time someone attempted to correctly define GC on a Facebook fansite the comments were deleted, so all that was left to see was the TRA's misinformation.

I sometimes wonder if the people who instantly accuse others of transphobia are overcompensating for the fact that deep down they actually are transphobic but don't want to admit i
Definitely. There was a twitter thread a little while back that took off amongst trans twitter which was all about people stating how they'd once been transphobic or homophobic and used the t**y or fg words and other slurs, but had since seen the light and were now trans themselves.
And I just thought: I've never used those words. Not once. Not now. Not fifteen years ago.
If I'd had a twitter account that long and someone searched all the way back, they'd find nothing of the sort because it has never been the type of language I would use about other human beings.
The truth is that they've just taken those same old tired sexist and homophobic beliefs and just put a new spin on them.
Now, those same people are just using new slurs for women, gay people and yes, trans people.
For example, I think that 'truscum' is one of the nastiest most dehumanising and transphobic words I've come across and yet you'll see people of twitter eagerly spitting it at trans people while patting themselves on how they've overcome their transphobia.

I keep seeing ' the left' used in this debate. Mostly to describe supporters of Twaw et al. This is confusing too - being a socialist is a big part of why I just don't buy it. Are some / most of these TRAs just pretendy socialists to garner support.Rather as they continually reference BLM or blather about ' two spirit ' people in cultures they are completely ignorant about? The corollary being the Toytown lefties in GP or Labour who pretend to support TWAW.