Is anyone else struggling with the obvious unfairness of this issue

[Fariha31]

I am begining to find the obvious unfairness of how woman are being treated, combined with the seemingly universality of the voices going along with it, is begining to affect my mental health?
I dont know if its triggering things from my past or if its just the insanity of this moment but I am wondering how other people are copping with all this?

[quote Daisyxo]@Waitwhat23. You’re wrong. Sex is not being pushed as a spectrum. Sex is biological. However sex can be changed through an operation called a sex change.. What you mean is gender which is a spectrum because it is a social construct invented by humans[/quote]
And there is no operation that can change your biological sex - it is in every cell of your body...

It's hard, and sometimes things seem very dark and endless. I read this today, it's a really powerful piece of writing. I so hope she's right and that the struggles we are going through are the curve of the turn.

merchedcymru.wales/2021/10/04/how-to-live/

Oh look, first two links on Google if you type in 'sex is a spectrum' -

massivesci.com/articles/sex-gender-intersex-transgender-identity-discrimination-title-ix/

"Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum - Scientific American Blog Network" blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/

Sex is being pushed as a spectrum by those with a vested interest. They use DSD's as a 'gotcha' despite the use of karotyping and chromosone testing to pinpoint a person's sex.

I’m really despairing about it too

I’m old and knackered and really fucking angry

I’m contributing to crown funders (Allison Bailey, unruly women at Bristol uni), I support the organisation Sex Matters

sex-matters.org/

I challenge bullshit where I hear it, including with my teenage children.

And it will change my vote - I won’t vote labour while Starmer thinks men have cervixes. Otoh Raab is a twat too. Don’t get me started on the Greens.

But I am scared to post what I think on Twitter or other social media in case I’m threatened.

It’s a depressing time to be a woman but thank god for

JK Rowling
Maya Forstater
Jess Phillips
JaniceTurner
Jenni Murray
The feminists at Bristol uni’s unruly women group
Rosie Duffield
Liz Truss
Posie Parker

And all those challenging the vile misogyny and doublespeak out there

And there is no operation that can change your biological sex - it is in every cell of your body...

I think we're all in raging agreement that sex is not a spectrum.

The argument that sex is a spectrum has taken hold in a surprising number of places and has a lot of scientists pushing it. This doesn't make it true. It is plain that it is confusing the public. It may even be messing with people's understanding of informed consent when they're having gender reassignment/affirmation surgery that is also known as SRS.

@RealhousewifeofBarnardCastle

To add to your list -
Murray, Blackburn and MacKenzie
Joanna Cherry
Joan McAlpine
Allison Bailey
For Women Scotland
Fair Play for Women
Keep Prisons Single Sex
Birdy Rose
And all the Women ribboning, stickering, slating, signing petitions, writing to their elected representatives, fundraising etc etc.

It all gives me hope.

@Helleofabore

I think that most of these threads get deleted sadly. Any time anyone starts discussing how it makes them feel or the events causing them to form their opinion, it tends to get deleted.

You are not alone though OP

And this is shocking in itself - why are WE not allowed to say how this makes us feel? How it affects OUR mental health? There is a great deal of talk about feelings in other discussions, feelings lead to our words being policed, suspensions and bans but heaven forbid we should express the toll this takes on our mental health daily. FTR it has really affected me, it is why I am on here less, why I have to take breaks from it. REALLY seeing what this world thinks of women can make me feel desperate some days and yes, I have wondered if it is all worth it. If this thread is taken down like the last one I will be beyond angry about it.

The gender ideology issue, the dehumanising of women by taking away our words or referring to us by body parts or functions, the women being killed, the absolute shambolic misogynistic, violent so called 'sex industry' and the apologists working hard to gaslight us about the lot of it can be overwhelming sometimes and we should be able to talk to one another about that on a website which is predominantly for women.

@PankhurstConnection well said
I don’t see why this would be deleted, if it is I’ll be pissed off too

You are not the only one feeling like this.
My mum was refused her own bank account in the '60's (she was divorced) without a male guarantor. Until 1970 women did not own their own wages or inheritance - all belonged to the husband. At school in the 70's I was told girls could not study science at A level unless they got grade A at O level - no such restrictions on the boys. At my first professional job interview (1980) I was asked if I had my husband's permission to have a career.

Gradually the law and society changed until by the late '90s my daughter and her friends could not believe how things used to be.

Yet here we are. At the point where we cannot even name ourselves as women.

Oh look, first two links on Google if you type in 'sex is a spectrum'

Google is indeed massively pushing this. Whether internally, or via external people gaming it, I don't know.

I suggest DuckDuckGo.

First three there in a private window are:

Is Sex A Spectrum? (Andy Lewis, GC)

Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum (SciAm infographic nonsense)

Is sex a spectrum? Or is sex binary? (Fair Play for Women)

In a non-private window I get

"Sex is a Spectrum!" - The Gender Critical inserted at number two, among those three.

That seems pretty good - you've got the offending article, and things criticising it.

It all gives me hope.

If we're doing inspirational lists of people to be grateful for, this was quite good, but it's a bit out-of-date. Many, many new faces in the fight since mid-2018.

We've come a long way.

The "thankyou roll" of State Media's Gender Ideology (end of 2020) is also good, but you'll have to put names to faces yourself...

The transwomen in sport absolutely did it for me - thank heavens it looks like common sense might eventually prevail but it meant I lost any remaining sliver of respect I had for those in authority, the educated elite in academia, in government, the media, I mean what snivelling cowards. I'll never trust them again.

Although cheered up a lot yesterday when a friend said out of nowhere she thought pansexual was bollox and they were just bisexual.

In many cases they're not even that. They've never had and would never consider a same-sex partner. But because they once went out with someone who identified as "non-binary", they can claim woke points.

You’re very much not alone although it feels it when the activists have us all so scared to speak out. I find it illogical that so many will go along with what they know is false but am reminded of the many times dangerous ideologies have taken hold in history.

I find a donation to a legal case every so often helps me feel I am contributing to real change. I do the odd protest to organisations in the hope that there are others. And I tentatively sound out other women to find who else in my world disagrees with this (almost all it turns out but not all think it is a significant enough problem to actively protest).

I think it's time this had another outing.
Always cheers me up!

m.youtube.com/watch?v=TZt53xZog_w

This is uplifting:

To all these people who take a step back - how do you do this? I find when I try to preserve my sanity and avoid the topic - it's everywhere I look regardless, queer theory is being rammed down my throat from every direction. Probably doesn't help that I'm a student. But really staying connected with places like this is the only way to feel sane when the whole world is apparently adamant that up is down.

I am Jewish and the way we have been treated and gaslighted and tormented over the past few years, in particular by what I thought were my political allies/friends, has been deeply destructive to my mental health and wellbeing.

I've lost lifelong friendships and feel completely betrayed by so many people. There are a lot of parallels with what's happening to women now.

I say this a lot but - anthropologists have long recognised that

1. Biological sex is not a spectrum

1. However, cultural attitudes towards biological sex are on a great big fucking mentalist spectrum, of bewilderingly varied historical specificities.

I agree. I'm not Jewish but hearing friends defending the indefensible in recent years was surreal. The Labour Party is dead.

I keep thinking about Animal Farm, George Orwell..."All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Top level = TW (men),
Top level = men
Bottom = subsets of men, the not-men group, the ones who cannot be equal, the ones who are just body parts.

I keep thinking about Animal Farm, George Orwell..."All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Sheila Jeffreys describes sex castes. Inevitably, it's trans men at the bottom (for interesting reasons in line with yours but I can't find them right now).

“Men's ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men's rule over them. They do not represent 'truth' but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology.”
― Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism

“As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position.”
― Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism

“Men's sexual freedom has depended, and still does to a large extent, upon their ownership of women's bodies. Men have bought, sold and traded women as things to be used. Women are still regularly raped in marriage, even though most Western countries have now changed their laws to recognize that wives have a right not to be raped. Women are still bought and sold in marriage in many countries, and in the vast majority of countries of the world their bodies are still legally owned by their husbands. In prostitution and pornography, the mail-order bride business and reproductive surrogacy, the international trade in women is a burgeoning industry. Men's ownership of women's bodies has been the substrate on which their idea of sexual freedom was born and given its meaning. This is why it includes the right to buy access to women, men, and children as an important way of demonstrating that freedom. At the base of men's sexual freedom agenda is the concept of the rights of the male individual. Pateman points out that women cannot gain recognition as individuals, since the very concept of the 'individual' is male.”

“Women do not decide at some time in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity’. Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex.”
― Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism

@Franca123

I agree. I'm not Jewish but hearing friends defending the indefensible in recent years was surreal. The Labour Party is dead.

Thank you @Franca123 It always means a hell of a lot to hear non-Jews who can see it for what it is. I really appreciate your post.

Nevertheless for someone who came of age in the 90s with the sense that big equality battles had been won it's shock to realise these things are not linear and they can and do go backwards.
This, so much this. Leaving a single sex school in the 90s we were told & believed we could do & be anything.

I am in the "don't get mad get even" camp & am fighting, but I do despair frequently.

I think of the attached poem often...

I saw some "hateful haberdashery" ribbons tied to a tree in a local park today and a sticker that women wouldn't be silenced. Gave me a brief flare of hope.