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?

@2319inprogress great poem - I've not seen it before

Some days I just can’t internet any more. This pushed me over the edge today. I almost vomited.

Gaslighting, misogyny, pillaging of women rights because of the menz feelz. I have never been so angry.

@2319inprogress

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...

Love the poem. Really resonates.

@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?

You are not alone - I feel exactly the same. I have learned that, when I feel especially overwhelmed, I need to turn off from the issue for a while - avoid news items/FB posts/threads about the issue - and I think that is the right thing to do, when you need to.

It's all so frustrating. No one is 'against' trans having safe spaces and rights. Just not to co-opt our own. Sex is real but you don't hear any establishment asserting this and if it's a balance then it seems like women have to cede

And I don't want to. It's not for me... I'm not vulnerable a prisoner or an athlete but it's unfair

Yes, I feel the same as you @Fariha31 and @OvaHere.

You are not alone. And I have no answers. And it makes me despondent.

@Babdoc

There are only two options here. Give in and let women’s rights go back to the dark ages. Or fight. I know which I prefer! I may add, I’m a sixty something radfem, who goes back before the Equal pay act, before legal abortion, and I think the current war on women is more shocking than anything I lived through - because it is being conducted by terrifyingly blinkered woke idiots who are convinced of their moral superiority and are trying to block any discussion. It is like the days of the Maoist cultural revolution or the McCarthy witch hunts. Old time sexists were a doddle by comparison, and were willing to engage in debate and change misogynistic laws.

Sadly I agree with Babdoc. I was a teenager when the Sex Discrimination Act came in in the mid-1970s....that was a hopeful period...a female PM was even elected in 1979 (although she wasn't that much of a friend to women i.m.h.o).....I went to University and got a job in a man's world....but it felt like things were improving....I now feel that my right to freedom of speech has been curtailed (in Scotland) and that women's sex-based rights will have to be fought for once again.

Yep same here.
And the feeling we have gone backwards in loads of ways, especially what women can hope for.

Because basically young women are told they now have equality, there is nothing left to fight for. Which also means that what we have (which is nowhere near equality and even safety) is the best we will ever have :(

@PowerNap

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.

PowerNap I’m not Jewish but can well imagine how infuriating and bewildering the left’s view towards Jews is. I find it abhorrent and agree there are parallels. It’s my other reason for despairing about ever being able to vote for Labour again

@WitchButNotTheFunKind thank you It genuinely gives me hope for humanity to know that there are people who can see through it.

I agree OP, and I regularly feel the way you do. It's simultaneously depressing, and infuriating. I also give thanks for the women of FWR, otherwise I would have gone insane by now.

I walk around with this low level anxiety, constantly thinking about it, like a restlessness bubbling inside me all the time now. Feeling like I'm not doing enough, and there's so much to be done, and I should really be out on the streets shouting and waving banners and burning my bra. But everyone else carries on as normal, I don't know why - it's like the house is burning down, and people don't even see it, just carry on making the tea..

There's a little spreadsheet in my head called 'all the stupid bullshit things that have pissed me off today'. And it's usually filled with lists of genderwoo nonsense that I read in the paper, or on here, It seems never ending. My inner monologue is an angry, shouty, maniac who just want to let loose on people for not even seeing, or caring about what is happening right in front of our eyes. Even when you explain it to them, their eyes glaze over. It's just not important.

I was also a teenager in the late 90's, when it seemed like we really were equal and the battle was won. I guess I was wrong. But I know that we won't stop talking about this, and fighting back. I can't, I can't pretend that this is ok, and go about my life as normal ignoring it. I just can't. And I won't.

Unfortunately, it will be a marathon, not a sprint. So I also recommend taking a break when you need to, go hug a tree or something .

I feel exactly the same, the NHS whistle blower article sent me to the edge today, thank god I found this thread, it’s really helped me feel less alone.

I swing between rage and despair whenever I think about it and I think about it a lot.
My mumbled rants around the kitchen are like a broken record.

OP, I agree it is unfair and @EmbarrassingAdmissions
I agree with your post on one of the key issues being the global male "ownership of women's bodies".

There's still a long battle to go. We may have the vote, the right to apply for work of our choosing, but we still end up with a pay gap, at risk of male violence, and viewed as body parts

We WOMEN need to look out for each other. It's good to share on here and not feel swamped by it.

Thank you to all the women posting here . Yes our mental health is being severel6 affected but this is seen as nothing in comparison to the most discriminated against and vulnerable males. Our anger makes us stronger and just occasionally we are able to make a difference, maybe on an individual level by talking about our concerns and politics. Recently I felt enormously cheered after numerous fallings out with friends, to meet in real life other strong active rad fem women including young women who have resisted. But I still can’t believe it has come to this and weep for what we have lost.

For me it's the whole plethora of the appalling situations of women around the world. The current constant stream of just women and girls being treated appalling in such a massive range of ways.

The incredibly slow, patchy rate of progress we make. If any at all and what we gain can be reversed so fast. It's happened and continues to happen. This is all about various countries, some better some worse. Some at huge risk of women being put back to square 1. The square where we are essentially back to being low or no value. To do as we are told. To be tightly controlled etc.

Eg recently the reversal of all the massive progress for women and girls (and men and boys) just wiped out in such a short space of time in Afghanistan.

I've been a feminist forever and these things still anger me. Still are felt deeply.

Add on top of all that shit.

Seemingly all of the orgs in just about anything where women had anything for us, about us, protecting us. Just change massive things behind the scenes. Keep it quiet for so long. NHS wards unisex. Female prisons unisex. Awards for our achievements in any number of areas. Unisex. I mean even GG and all women shortlists unisex. Even though GG are now breaking their charter and the law and excluding groups of girls. And opening women's shortlists to some male people not all is in law discrimination and illegal....

And on top of all THAT. Taking the very words that we need to talk about our lives our issues. To gather as one and march, agitate. Not just woman girl. But the words sex and female are going as we speak. To see this endorsed so widely.

And the myriad ways the language is used totally inconsistently.

Menstruators in the UK.
Women in Afghanistan.
Men men men men no change.

It's so obviously a load of nonsense and targeted at girls and women only. And political parties NHS police etc all just going along with it.

Yes it's totally shit.

When it gets too much. Just give yourself a break from it. Do things that make you happy and relaxed. Let it drop further back in your thoughts.

[quote Waitwhat23]@Daisyxo we have seen many, many posters insist that sex is a spectrum. We have seen dodgy YouTube videos given as 'evidence' that this is so. Sex and gender is being deliberately conflated by organisations such as Stonewall.

Sex is immutable and binary. It is unchanging.

Gender is a social construct and is indeed on a spectrum.

There is no such thing as a 'sex change' operation. There are certainly some cosmetic changes which can be made (breast implants for example) but no operation can make someone 'change sex'.[/quote]
Forgive me, but I need to ask a question here.

Sex is clearly not a spectrum, of course. But how is gender a spectrum, either?

The term "spectrum" implies some sort of organisation, some way in which the conditions on the spectrum identifiably vary from each other in a progressive sense along a continuum from one extreme to the other. So you need to be able to identify and define these extremes for the continuum to make any kind of sense.

So tetrisgender varies from agender in which direction along the continuum and how do you know?

Yes I am starting to get more and more angry. Especially when characters like David Lammy call us ‘dinosaurs’. How dare he…

And I have never ever voted conservative before but will now. They are the only party upholding women’s rights at the moment.

Sex is clearly not a spectrum, of course. But how is gender a spectrum, either?

Correct. It isn't. You couldn't stick them on a line.

Or even sort them in a multidimensional space. No-one could agree on the axes, or even the values.

Some of this reminds me of the classic scene from Donnie Darko. I'd like to imagine them sorting genders on the Life Line.

(Do check out "jack dalziel"s comment on that video...)

Although I note rewatching that that Donnie himself (mis)uses "spectrum" as a counterpoint to the Life Line.

I was thinking the Life Line as shown there would be a spectrum, but it's not, because there's nothing between fear and love, only mixtures of them. It's like a red-magenta-blue fade line.

So we have a similar situation. The Life Line is wrong because not everything is just a mixture of Love and Fear - there are more than 2 emotions. But Donnie's wrong to call human emotion a "spectrum" because you couldn't sort them in order.

Similarly sex is not a spectrum, because there really are just two of them - Male and Female. And you can't draw a "Sex Line" because you can't really measure proportions for a "mix"- and even if you could a "mixture" doesn't make a spectrum. But genders are not a spectrum either because you couldn't sort them in order.

@NecessaryScene

Thanks for that. I have never seen that film. But it's about time I did, perhaps!

But "spectrum" can be used metaphorically, as in "broad spectrum antibiotic". But the difference there is that no one is actually claiming you can line up antibiotics in order. I got the impression that Donnie in that clip was using it in this metaphorical sense.

There is a difference between saying "a spectrum of genders" and "gender is a spectrum".

Perhaps!

I got the impression that Donnie in that clip was using it in this metaphorical sense.

Yep, and I never noticed and found fault with that use, having seen it many times. I only spotted it in this very discussion.

And I'm sure a lot of people are just meaning "there's lots of them, not just 2". Or "there's no clear dividing line".

But when you get Scientific American having an infographic trying to put DSDs on a line, it's time to nit-pick a little...

(I've ranted about things-that-aren't-spectrums before - here's a link to my Ovarit post on it, for real geeks only).