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?

@OvaHere

Yes. We had a thread like this a couple of years ago that ended up being derailed and removed.

I'm in my mid 40s and I've never experienced a worse time to be a woman or girl. Now women much older than me may disagree with that because women of my mother and grandmother's generation undoubtedly had far less freedoms and rights.

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.

It makes me feel like the first half of my life was just a bit of an illusion and it's really hard to stay positive in this current dystopian headfuck era.

@OvaHere - this exactly for me - I feel I could have written this. The sheer mind boggling gaslighting on a mass scale about this issue feels like it’s driving me crazy. It’s like all the normal working assumptions we have lived with are just being upended and people can cheerfully go about saying black is white with no check at all, a bit like living in Donald Trump’s psyche even though he himself has gone.

@beguilingeyes

I have long thought that we're going backwards in terms of women's rights. The pornification of society is hugely depressing. Dominic Raab saying that misogyny against men is wrong too is just mind-boggling. The man's a lawyer? Sometimes (most of the time) it feels that there's no hope.

My eight year old daughter had a male TA in school who was telling all the girls that they were not to say anything “mean” about boys ever as that was sexism. DD came home quite upset saying “I told him that wasn’t sexism and you can’t be sexist against men” - and then she was getting told off for this. Same TA was telling the kids that women don’t have to have a uterus after their first PSHE anatomy lessons. Thankfully he’s now left, but I was fuming about small kids being indoctrinated and gaslit with this stuff.

Trouble is that a lot of old misogynists believe in the “the pendulum has swung too far and now men are oppressed”; and that oh so neatly synthesises with the new woke misogyny about how oppressive and privileged “cis” women are.

Meanwhile in the real world, young girls and women are constantly sexually harassed and threatened or even murdered, domestic violence skyrockets, porn dominates many men’s lives, children are abused in huge numbers, women get pushed out of the workforce and the pay gap widens again.

But we are all supposed to pretend none of that is happening because it’s fashionable to say that the most oppressed people ever are middle-aged white transwomen, and even our politicians go along with it and nobody in charge seems to want to stand up and say this is all wrong.

Very glad to hear that, LemonSwan. And yes, I think I know what you mean.

Unfotunately there is a long history of women being shown and told how unimportant we are. Kept in seclusion, not permitted to leave the house, opinions not valued, ideas and work stolen and presented under the name of the theif, branded as witches, heretics, evil... And the list continues.

Once again we are branded as evil, silly, uninformed and told we really do not know what we are talking about.

We do know. Sex is real. Gender is a made up concept that deserves as much respect as the belief that we live on Disc World or Atlantis.

Those who have an agenda to push their rights above all others only display their contempt and arrogance. Imagine placing your 'feelings' above the importance of addressing climate change, medical assistance for people with real health issues and the discrimination on race, religion and sex prevalent all around the world not forgetting all the other issues.

Imagine placing your 'feelings' above the importance of addressing climate change, medical assistance for people with real health issues and the discrimination on race, religion and sex prevalent all around the world not forgetting all the other issues.

I’m always amazed that my students, who you’d think would be bothered about the big issues like climate crisis, Brexit, globalism, student debt, housing, and the fact they are basically economically fucked - are more bothered about pronouns than any of that. The “feminist” students are all totally pro-porn and pro sex work and don’t seem to see any of the problems with any of it.

It really is like watching one of those early 20thc ideological movements spring up - or being in the GDR or Maoist China or similar. You keep wondering why all these people are saying things that are just patently not true. But I think it’s not an accident that most of the most fervent woke ideologists are under 25. They never grew up in the long shadow of the postwar where people above all feared totalitarianism. The postwar culture, despite everything wrong about it, nevertheless retained a deep commitment to ideas of personal freedoms, and freedom of speech, that is now coming under threat from those who see nothing wrong in coercive control of speech and thought as long as it fits their ideology. It’s quite terrifying because we all know how those movements go. And to think we thought that the days of being captured by dangerous ideologies were over.

I remember in the 90s doing the ubiquitous Nazi Germany topic for GCSE and A-level history, and so much of the historiography was academics wondering how on Earth so many people went along with it all, and surely they didn’t actually know what was going on? Sadly these days it isn’t a mystery any more, post Trump, post truth and post fact.

The “feminist” students are all totally pro-porn and pro sex work and don’t seem to see any of the problems with any of it.

Do they happily walk home alone at night?
I mean, if you think porn's fine, sex work's fine, I would think you'd accept being accosted by kerb crawlers and groped by random men as acceptable behaviour. And happily go out an about.

What are the Tories up to?
I can't see them becoming pro trans before the next election - I don't have loyalty to anyone really but would feel seriously betrayed if the Cons changed, decided introduce laws on changing gender easier etc
I think I'd vote labour just to spite them as I'd feel so angry.

All the best to you LemonSwan

Tories generally are interesting. They are a mix.

As far as govt goes.

Very generally I'd say that-

Trans issues are not interesting to them. Nor are women's issues.

They are also I'd say generally of little interest to their voter base.
And for a portion of their voter base, given I imagine many are more 'traditional'

Gender roles are important. Neat and tidy. Clear places in society. Hierarchy obvious. I mean some. Not all by any means. And also not an exclusionary conservative view. (Although may be expressed in different ways for those people in other parties).

Also strangely.

While obv not being keen on feminists (who is!) or having much concern for women generally and the myriad issues we face including many they have brought about.

They are for women in their group as it were, alright.
Two female prime minister's.
Hardly an absence of strong opinionated vocal women.
Etc.

So in the end while personally I would never vote for them. And find many/ most of the more prominent over the years genuinely just awful - men and women.

When it comes to their general group as it were. There seem to be far fewer issues with their attitude to women.

And conservative women group are very vocal on this.

So no. They will just want to stay well away. Will make vague noises.

IMO.

I’m always amazed that my students, who you’d think would be bothered about the big issues like climate crisis, Brexit, globalism, student debt, housing, and the fact they are basically economically fucked - are more bothered about pronouns than any of that. The “feminist” students are all totally pro-porn and pro sex work and don’t seem to see any of the problems with any of it.

I'm trying to remember how I thought at that age. It would have been the early 70s. So, supposedly, women had it all, so we were pretty upbeat. Could take the pill. I think though prostitution, men's behaviour to women was then to me a class thing, educated people didn't have this problem, it was the lower classes. I was a student. Didn't see it as my problem. I also assumed the Gov were sorting stuff - 3 day week for one. My parents voted Cons so I followed that.

Perhaps that still remains and today's female students have nice male friends and don't associate so much with the sexist ones.
It will be interesting to see how their views develop/ or not, over the next 10 years.

@OvaHere

Yes. We had a thread like this a couple of years ago that ended up being derailed and removed.

I'm in my mid 40s and I've never experienced a worse time to be a woman or girl. Now women much older than me may disagree with that because women of my mother and grandmother's generation undoubtedly had far less freedoms and rights.

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.

It makes me feel like the first half of my life was just a bit of an illusion and it's really hard to stay positive in this current dystopian headfuck era.

Exactly how I feel. Never a day goes by now where I'm not astonished at where we are now. I frequently feel gaslit to the point where I think I might actually go crazy.

On the positive side, I now thoroughly understand what people had to go through under communism, or even in Germany during the Third Reich. If you make the penalty for speaking the truth or speaking out so high that people dare not do it, then you pave the way for atrocity and injustice.

@foxgoosefinch Agree with your every word too.