Creeping feeling I don't belong in this new world

[MothsAreSadButterflies]

It's been hard lockdown no doubt that's added to depression but mind keeps returning to this new world

I've tried to understand it. The ones who fully transition I have less fear of. Their commitment jeans they just fully believe they are opposite sex.

But my mind simply cannot understand trans people who say they opposite sex but are obviously not. It's lying. It feels like gaslighting. Like I am losing my mind. It feels abusive and menacing. Bewildering. Faced with young people especially who demand you to go against your eyes, your senses, your ability to perceive sex. And if you don't you are hateful, sackable, evil.

Cancelled.

In this new world I have no place

@MothsAreSadButterflies

I am reading all your replies. Thank you for taking time to lift me up. I feel I can't talk about it anywhere in real life. It's very close to home with my daughter having trans partner.

Thank you for this recommendation

Viktor E Frankl
Yes To Life In Spite of Everything

Obviously you don’t have to answer if it’s too personal, but did your daughter choose a trans partner, or choose a partner, then have change thrust upon her?

It concerns me that my daughter might fall for a transactivist. She’s lesbian and already caught between fully recognizing my point of view, and feeling for her friends and occasionally pulling me up as she thinks I’ve gone too far. It’s such a difficult balancing act when it’s so close to home.

That document from the student union about "terfs" just demonstrates the foolishness of youth even if highly educated.

Can you get along to any groups, as it definitely helps to speak freely about this stuff to people who think sex is more important than gender identity.

Look up Standing For Women's London meets at the Reformers Tree in Hyde Park.

Also taking action by writing to your MP about your concerns, or organisations that are still outsourcing their thinking to stonewall etc.

Fair Play For Women, WPUK, Sex Matters, gcritical.org all have advice on things you can do.

Even writing to the BBC to say you thought the Nolan podcast was good will help.

Taking action and knowing you are part of the solution will almost certainly make you feel better.

@MothsAreSadButterflies

It's been hard lockdown no doubt that's added to depression but mind keeps returning to this new world

I've tried to understand it. The ones who fully transition I have less fear of. Their commitment jeans they just fully believe they are opposite sex.

But my mind simply cannot understand trans people who say they opposite sex but are obviously not. It's lying. It feels like gaslighting. Like I am losing my mind. It feels abusive and menacing. Bewildering. Faced with young people especially who demand you to go against your eyes, your senses, your ability to perceive sex. And if you don't you are hateful, sackable, evil.

Cancelled.

In this new world I have no place

I think one should be careful judging a trans person on how they look. As far as I am aware its an internal thing, and many of us cis people look different to the "ideal". Not sure it's a lack of commitment thing. Recognising their identity though is common courtesy. Much like getting someone's name right.

A common courtesy like recognising people's choice not to be referred to as 'cis' when they don't identify with it - or do you mean something different when you say 'many of us cis people'?

Anyway, don't be disheartened OP. The tide is definitely turning back to reality.

Not sure it's a lack of commitment thing.

I'm not interested in how "committed" males are, really. It's not relevant to my complete rejection of the ideological belief that males can or should be considered women.

And when I say 'don't identify with it', I mean recognise it as a the made up, nonsensical term it is.

And I'm not "cis", as that's not how I identify and that presupposes the said pseudoscientific belief system. I don't have a gender identity. You can call me a gender atheist.

It's like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I can't get into the mindset of those who follow this impossible ideology. Fortunately my friends are intelligent, sensible people and we share the same GC views. Sadly, and heartbreakingly, I can't say the same for my adult DDs, and I have a tiny DGD too and I worry so much about her being affected by all this insanity when she starts school.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Not sure it's a lack of commitment thing.

I'm not interested in how "committed" males are, really. It's not relevant to my complete rejection of the ideological belief that males can or should be considered women.

This!! (Need a like button.)

Been reading the 'do 1 thing everyday' thread. Lots of good ideas there on positive things to do.

I get how you feel, OP, it really is a horror show, and all you can do it sit back, bewildered, and hope the world will come to its senses.

Both my daughters now identify as non-binary/trans, and keep shooting the "TWAW!" line at me for no good reason that I can see. They don't seem to have noticed that no-one is asking them to parrot "TMAM!", or that transmen barely feature in this brave new world. That they can't see with their own eyes how everything they currently believe is just utter, utter misogyny. Neither identifies as a women, because, well, who would if given the choice. Except men, in which case we must respect them and give them all the rights being stripped from us.

It breaks my heart and terrifies me on a daily basis. My daughters are erasing themselves.

Thing is about common courtesy: it has to work both ways or it doesn't work at all.

Articles in places like the Economist and Daily Express show that it is slowly filtering through to the mainstream...

OP - the vast majority of people in the world still know what a woman is. Even most people in the public eye spouting the TWAW mantra know too, when it suits them. The more sunlight this issue gets, the more the general public have their eyes opened to the illogical doublethink of this ideology, and the more pushback there will be. So when you're feeling overwhelmed by it being everywhere, try to remember it's all more sunlight!

That's interesting that Mishi compares it to getting someone's name right.

As someone who has gone through life with a name that is mispronounced and misspelled, even sometimes by people who know me really well if they're not thinking hard, I've never felt the need to get more than very slightly exasperated about it.

People get my name wrong even when they're replying to an email where it's right in my signature. Even when I'm wearing a name badge. Even when I say it first for them (because it's not obvious how to pronounce it).

When someone gets my name wrong I continue to exist even. I'm not erased. It's literally just someone getting my name wrong - even if they're doing it to be annoying or rude.

I've never felt the need to try to get someone cancelled for getting my name wrong, and people would think I was absolutely barking and unreasonable if I did.

Were it just like getting someone's name wrong. What a happy world for women that would be.

@youkiddingme

There are so many things going on in the world right now that I think are incomprehensible and just pants. I muddle along by focusing on the small positives in my life and the few people I can relate to. I'll probably end up an eccentric recluse.

Me too! That's my strategy for life. In fact, I already am an eccentric recluse 😋

Unfortunately it sounds as though OP is directly affected by these issues, via her daughter's DP. A difficult minefield to tread, so sorry OP

I totally understand how you feel OP.
Having two daughters has never frightened me more in the current climate. They are both young teenagers now and the stuff they are hearing and being taught at school is ridiculous and scary at best.
In their circle of friends alone there are three girls who are now identifying as male, and one boy who identifies as a girl, is now using the girls facilities and goes by a female name.
This person is also a former bully of my daughter and by all accounts a child with many behavioural issues.
I just really feel for both the children involved and the other kids who are being made to swallow and accept this gender crap.
All I can do is make sure they hear the truth, and science based fact when they get home. I'm glad I come from a scientific background and an able to counter some of the nonsense they are encountering at school and from their peers, but I worry for the children of those parents who perhaps either don't take an interest, think its important or don't care / don't realise what their kids are being exposed to.
It really is The Emperor's New Clothes.
'Wrong think' and 'wrong speak' are a terrifying new reality.

It's been about 12 years now since a TW arrived in a women's group I used to run and told us that if we rejected him he'd bring down the little local organisation that funded and hosted us. We told him it was a women-only group and asked him to leave. Within a year the place had lost its funding and folded.

I spent much of the next decade trying to alert people to what was going on and very few would listen. Only those who'd had similar experiences understood. The trans movement seemed to develop by stealth — and we now know that Stonewall was funding it and pushing from behind the scenes and asking people to sign gagging orders so that it remained a secret.

Now, at last, it feels as if the truth is out there, staring us in the face — and still no one with power or authority, except for Liz Truss, will acknowledge it. I'm hoping that it's true that the darkest hour comes before the dawn and that the sun is about to rise.

You're in the right place here, OP, among company that understands exactly where you're coming from.

God that's appalling, Shedbuilder. What a nasty, petulant, selfish person that TW was.

On “just like getting someone’s name right”:

It really isn’t the same thing. If someone says they want to be called “Caroline”, say, and that is also my name, calling them “Caroline” too has no impact on me at all, because simply sharing a name says nothing at all about the individuals who share it.

Whereas when someone male appropriates the name of my sex to label their feeling of gender, it is redefining the meaning of the word itself. This is bad for me in two ways:

1. It erroneously allows the new bearer of the name access to the various rights, spaces and protections that were set up under the original meaning without going through any process to reassess whether those things that were created under the assumption of single sex are still fit for purpose and able to deliver their objectives as mixed sex.

2. It labels me as having a mind and/or personality which is innately different to a man, whereas I see myself as the same as men other than the fact of being female-bodied and the implications that carries. So it imposes on me a gender identity which I do not have. One of the core TRA logic fails is not to realise that there is no difference whatsoever between misgendering someone by using the wrong label, and misgendering them by changing the definition of the label they currently use.

So very different in both the practical impact and impact on my right to self-definition .

I have never witnessed anything as facinating, and terrible, as what is going on now.

Moths you have not failed your daughter. Both you and her are doing your best in an imperfect world.

The main thing is to keep communicating with her and supporting her.

It's part of being a parent to adult children that you have to accept that they will make choices you don't agree with, and mistakes, as well as having successes of their own.

the psychological stress has really damaged me/ us and can't imagine what it's like for Kathleen Stock of Jo Phoenix or others taking it every day. It really is enough to drive a person mad.

A similar observation led to a brief discussion of a Kornbluth short story on another thread. Spoiler : Mrs Garvy isn't mad, she has correct memories and she's being gaslighted by society and everyone into believing she's wrong or mentally ill.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/a4376336-Parents-of-teenagers-If-you-haven-t-listened-to-all-episodes-of-this-yet-then-you-are-out-of-touch?msgid=111683879

He was only the second TW I'd met in my life at that point. Both what I now understand to be straight autogynephile men.

I wish more of the general public were aware of autogynephilia. And I wish there were stats telling us more about the typical presentations of TW compared with TM. I have only the impressions I've gathered from stuff I've read, and I don't know if they are justified- i.e. that amongst TM, young, neurodivergent and/or otherwise vulnerable and traumatised (pre-dating transition) girls are over-represented. And among TW, middle-aged heterosexual men are over-represented. I think a lot of kind but uninformed people still think that all trans people have genuine dysphoria and were 'born in the wrong body'.