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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Creeping feeling I don't belong in this new world

127 replies

MothsAreSadButterflies · 18/10/2021 16:41

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

OP posts:
RVN123 · 19/10/2021 14:18

I agree.
But even on Mumsnet you have to be very very careful when talking about AGP and specifically against using certain words, or it will get you a deletion or even a ban.
Which is very sad. The truth can't be spoken, 'TWs' must be protected at all costs even if it means the at the expense of the free speech of women voicing their concerns. On a woman's website.

lazylinguist · 19/10/2021 14:28

Well yes, it's not really surprising that TRAs don't want people to know about AGP. It somewhat spoils the narrative that all trans people are marginalised and vulnerable. (Of course some of them really are.)

Blahblah84 · 19/10/2021 14:34

@RVN123

I agree. But even on Mumsnet you have to be very very careful when talking about AGP and specifically against using certain words, or it will get you a deletion or even a ban. Which is very sad. The truth can't be spoken, 'TWs' must be protected at all costs even if it means the at the expense of the free speech of women voicing their concerns. On a woman's website.
I know, it’s pretty disturbing to think that many people are more concerned with facilitating men’s sexual fetishes than protecting women’s privacy and dignity.

Even the safeguarding that had been put in place are not working because they are not being enforced by those whose job it is to do so.

It’s like some sort of collective madness.

Lesserspottedmama · 19/10/2021 14:54

Don’t lose hope, there are more of us waking up all the time. I’m 30 and was fully on board with TWIW. Just completely ignorant and naive and believed all the internet memes I’d seen. I was proud to be woke and wanted to ‘be kind’ and didn’t see the harm. I wanted to be seen as a nice person and was terrified of being judged as discriminatory or hateful. MN opened my eyes a year or so ago and I am so grateful, for myself and my young daughters.

Lesserspottedmama · 19/10/2021 14:55

I think I mean TWAW? Never been very good at acronyms!

AScottishMum · 20/10/2021 10:15

Firstly, OP, I do feel for the fact you're suffering. It's not easy when we feel out of sync, and on unstable ground, left behind. And of course, there's a great deal of fear in your post: and that fear comes from the parts of the brain keyed to survival, flight and fight. The Other has come to threaten you, your worldview, and it's the most natural thing in the world for you to fear, and then to turn that fear into hate. People who are bent on exploiting your fear and radicalising you into a hate movement against a vulnerable group of people know this very well. If they can convince you that the tiny, vulnerable, less-than-one-percent of humans who are trans somehow post you a danger, then they can get you to act in ways which are truly inhuman towards that group.

And I've heard many people talk in the vein you've spoke here. White people who no longer know how to function without their privilege, Men who cannot cope with egalitarian feminism, straight people like my Dad who are threatened by the out existence of queer people, so much so that I can't disclose to him that I'm bixexual. Like you, he frames, and feels that the loss of his privilege is oppressive. It feels like grief. It feels awful.

A step back is needed here, I think. The fact remains is that trans people have always been with us, for as long as there has been recorded human history (the Priesthood of the Sumarian Goddess Inanna, for example, were non-binary and trans, and they lived and worked over 8,000 years ago). In the movement for queer rights, trans people have always played an active role. There's nothing 'new' here, there's just greater awareness, and greater movement to have trans people's human rights recognised, and with that, the social-conservative push-back.

You're feeling threatened, but all that's being challenged is your worldview. Every trans woman before she medically transitions presents masculine, and driving some sort of arbitrary standard of femininity and then using that as an argument for denying the trans community civil, political, and human rights makes us monsters.

Try to parse, within, what it is about the existence of queer people that makes you feel so threatened. Those answers lie within, not externally. And I know that once I started asking those difficult questions I was less likely to lash out and hurt others.

Waitwhat23 · 20/10/2021 10:59

I genuinely can't roll my eyes enough at the last post. If you are a 'Scottish Mummy', you'll be presumably aware of the Hate Crime Bill in Scotland excluding sex as a category to be protected under hate crime legislation? The fact that elected representatives in Scotland voted against rape survivors being able to request a female medical examiner? Rape survivors self excluding from rape crisis services because there are no longer single sex spaces left? Stickers which say 'women won't wheesht' being investigated as a hate crime while rape has essentially been decriminalised? The word woman being taken out of Scottish Government maternity policies at the behest of lobbying group with no consultation with women, at all?

Gender ideology is systematically removing women's single sex spaces and even the language we use to describe ourselves. And we're meant to just shrug our shoulders and just say 'OK then!'

No. No, thank you. Women won't wheesht.

ArabellaScott · 20/10/2021 11:02

the movement for queer rights

You are a supporter of queer theory, then, and all that entails?

ArabellaScott · 20/10/2021 11:03

Genuine question, AScottishMum!

ArabellaScott · 20/10/2021 11:05

Try to parse, within, what it is about the existence of queer people that makes you feel so threatened. Those answers lie within, not externally.

The existence of 'queer people' is okay if those are consenting adults.

(This doesn't include children, who are unable to grasp the implications of 'queering'.)

Changing legislation to remove protections and safeguarding really does make me feel threatened.

terryleather · 20/10/2021 11:06

* And I know that once I started asking those difficult questions I was less likely to lash out and hurt others.*

For some reason I'm reminded of this...

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself."

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 20/10/2021 11:10

And I know that once I started asking those difficult questions I was less likely to lash out and hurt others.

When you say less likely , I hope that you've canvassed whether the people you were abusing (it sounds like you got physical?) are of the same opinion.

In a tangential and related vein, there's an interesting comment on Maya's thread about why the judiciary have been so susceptible to the training of lobby groups: they have been persuaded to second-guess themselves and their perspectives so have adopted those of others without any critical thinking involved.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4379444-Maya-back-in-court-tomorrow-20th-Oct?msgid=111784806

1Week · 20/10/2021 11:20

No, ScottishMum, the threat is indeed external.
It's males, and their powerful enablers, as ever.

8000 years ago and today.

Shedbuilder · 20/10/2021 11:23

@AScottishMum

Firstly, OP, I do feel for the fact you're suffering. It's not easy when we feel out of sync, and on unstable ground, left behind. And of course, there's a great deal of fear in your post: and that fear comes from the parts of the brain keyed to survival, flight and fight. The Other has come to threaten you, your worldview, and it's the most natural thing in the world for you to fear, and then to turn that fear into hate. People who are bent on exploiting your fear and radicalising you into a hate movement against a vulnerable group of people know this very well. If they can convince you that the tiny, vulnerable, less-than-one-percent of humans who are trans somehow post you a danger, then they can get you to act in ways which are truly inhuman towards that group.

And I've heard many people talk in the vein you've spoke here. White people who no longer know how to function without their privilege, Men who cannot cope with egalitarian feminism, straight people like my Dad who are threatened by the out existence of queer people, so much so that I can't disclose to him that I'm bixexual. Like you, he frames, and feels that the loss of his privilege is oppressive. It feels like grief. It feels awful.

A step back is needed here, I think. The fact remains is that trans people have always been with us, for as long as there has been recorded human history (the Priesthood of the Sumarian Goddess Inanna, for example, were non-binary and trans, and they lived and worked over 8,000 years ago). In the movement for queer rights, trans people have always played an active role. There's nothing 'new' here, there's just greater awareness, and greater movement to have trans people's human rights recognised, and with that, the social-conservative push-back.

You're feeling threatened, but all that's being challenged is your worldview. Every trans woman before she medically transitions presents masculine, and driving some sort of arbitrary standard of femininity and then using that as an argument for denying the trans community civil, political, and human rights makes us monsters.

Try to parse, within, what it is about the existence of queer people that makes you feel so threatened. Those answers lie within, not externally. And I know that once I started asking those difficult questions I was less likely to lash out and hurt others.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

'I am wiser and know more than you. You're too old/ ugly/ stupid/ white/ middle class/ straight to understand what's going on. To understand you have to have a degree in gender studies. Lie down, accept your annihilation, accept that everything you ever knew, ever said, ever were was wrong and give your power to queer people.'

tenor.com/view/magdalen-berns-fuck-off-wanker-annoyed-snapping-gif-15090740

Waitwhat23 · 20/10/2021 11:30

Oh, and I've thought of some more instances in which gender ideology is systematically eroding women's rights in Scotland.

Women being locked up (and in some instances sexually abused) by convicted sex offender transwomen in the female prison estate, bearing in mind that the Scottish judicial system have essentially introduced self id. Domestic abuse shelters losing funding from the Scottish Government for not being 'inclusive' enough despite women being the main users of their services. Female MSP's receiving death and rape threats for expressing a rational opinion (protected by law in fact) which are essentially condoned by the Scottish Government. Katie Dolatowski and similar situations arising from the 'non threat' to women in single sex spaces ('it'll never happen? Right?'). This travesty of a document in which incorrect suicide stats were used for 'illustrative purposes' - www.gov.scot/publications/supporting-transgender-young-people-schools-guidance-scottish-schools/pages/2/

I could keep going, there's lots more. And all these just in Scotland.

NecessaryScene · 20/10/2021 11:33

Try to parse, within, what it is about the existence of queer people that makes you feel so threatened. Those answers lie within, not externally.

I'm reminded of the way Robin DiAngelo writes about all her weird hang-ups about black people and problems she has interacting with them as if they were normal humans.

She's convinced that everyone else is as racist as she is.

terryleather · 20/10/2021 11:40

"He loved Big Brother."

Creeping feeling I don't belong in this new world
Shedbuilder · 20/10/2021 11:49

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Blibbyblobby · 20/10/2021 12:31

Oh dear. You seem like a nice person, if a little self-important, but you've been given some very wrong information about us. Let's take a step back and unpick a few key misunderstandings.

what it is about the existence of queer people that makes you feel so threatened

The first one, the big one, is that. Some people are undoubtably threatened by the existence of queer people. They are typically coming from a place of toxic and rigid social gender stereotypes which they attach to the two human human sexes. They are the people who react with hate and sometimes violence, who you perhaps feel are trying to push you back in your box.

But we are not those people.

We believe toxic and rigid social gender stereotypes are a bad thing. People's bodies exist. Male and Female are body types with different baseline capabilities and as things stand social advantages or disadvantages due to a sexist society but that is all. They say nothing about what personality someone should have. They just are.

So we are not threatened because queer people exist. Many of us are what you would consider queer, although we may not choose to label ourselves that way.

What threatens us as female-bodied people is not the existence of queer people, but a recent, politically motivated movement that has repainted queer acceptance from what it should be, an open-minded acceptance of difference and a rejection of gender stereotypes, into a rigid and repressive insistence that gender identity does not just stand beside physical sex as an entirely separate and unrelated aspect of a person, but replaces it socially, legally and politically in every way.

And we, who know what it is to have a female body in a sexist society and so understand why the single sex provisions that exist were originally put in place, cannot accept that.

Trans people's existence does not sadly solve society's sexism. So it is not fair for the genderist movement to demand that female people give up our ability to name, fight and organise around our expreince of sex-based oppression, which is different to gender-based oppression, or else be branded unfairly as transphobes.

There must be a better way.

Every trans woman before she medically transitions presents masculine, and driving some sort of arbitrary standard of femininity

You are confusing Masculinity and Femininity, which are aspects of personality, with the simple fact of body sex. That's not your fault. The people who have "taught" you have deliberately taken the words that meant sex - Man and Woman - and appropriated them to label gender, thereby making it impossible to even frame the discussion about how sex and gender intersect. You might want to consider why they have done that.

But for now, just remember that the genderist movement created an idea that Woman is a state of mind, an identity. It is only this definition that allows the possibility of gatekeeping and misgendering. If you just see woman as a type of body that says nothing fundamental about the identity of the person who is it, the whole issue goes away and we can get back to accepting people as people. The whole thing you rail against is a false flag set up by the people who claim to be on your side.

As I said before, to people who separate sex and gender properly, Womanhood is just a fact about someone's body. Under that definition, male people cannot be women it's true, but since Womanhood is just a fact of the body, that is not a rejection of anyone's identity, it's just a recognition of an aspect of their body that may at times be significant. It's no more "arbitrary" or "gatekeeping" than saying short people cannot be tall is.

The fact remains is that trans people have always been with us, for as long as there has been recorded human history (the Priesthood of the Sumarian Goddess Inanna, for example, were non-binary and trans, and they lived and worked over 8,000 years ago)

Oh sweetheart. The fact that we know they were "trans", which is just our modern word for people who seem to cross what we think of as gendered social roles, is proof that these people's gender identities (again applying a modern understanding which is unlikely to reflect how they themselves saw themselves) were NOT considered interchangeable with femnale people but as a different group that shared some gendered social roles with female people while being understood as male. And that is fine! That is exactly the sort of place we should be heading towards. A place where we understand and accept that the social aspects traditionally coded by sex can be open to everyone, alongside acceptance that for female people especially, the capbilities of our bodies and the hangover of millenia of sexism mean that sometimes we need our sex to be recognised and supported, and that that is ok.

It's not an act of hate, and it's not a rejection of trans people. The only thing that makes it look that way is the trans movement's own insistence, through the appopriation of the words Man and Woman and thereby all pre-existing associations both gender AND sex, that sex is somehow both related and unrelated to gender. All you need to do is realise that they do not have to be related at all, and all this angst simply evaporates.

OhHolyJesus · 20/10/2021 12:38

You have not failed your Daughter OP.

The biological reality of a pregnancy scare with a male bodied sexual partner will have drawn a line in the sand, to a degree, in her own head. Some of what goes on in her day to day life with this partner will be a performance. Stay close to her in case she needs a way out one day.

As much as some may wish it not to be true, biology is centred in reality and it's not one we can ignore all the time.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 20/10/2021 13:06

modern word for people who seem to cross what we think of as gendered social role

This ongoing baptism of the dead into an anachronistic gender ideology is also an interesting example of what is currently described as rainbow flag imperialism by NGOs.

Transing the dead: Blog post that explores the idea of transing the dead as an extension of baptism of the dead:
williamaferguson.substack.com/p/trans-out-your-dead

That's a particular horrible example and the author correctly identifies that one enthusiastic baptiser of the dead describes Turing as "one of the first Gay men to go on estrogen" Shock

Turing was given DES as a form of chemical castration - and that was presented as an option to imprisonment.

Alan was prosecuted under the Labouchere Amendment of 1855, a law that made homosexuality (“gross indecency”) a crime. In an arranged plea deal, Alan accepted chemical castration by way of Diethylstilbestrol (DES) in lieu of prison and upon conviction he was stripped of all security clearances and forbidden entry into the United States.

The ignorance and indifference to the reality of history is breathtaking.

Yeye Luisah Teish on Rainbow flag imperialism gave a fascinating overview of Yoruba traditions and how culture and traditions are ignored/suppressed by NGOs. She also shared her experience of being a black woman in the US.

Yeye: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGrTV3OgBA

Mybalconyiscracking · 20/10/2021 13:15

How many of these people do you actually know OP? Are they actually directed affecting your life?
If things are upsetting you on SM, maybe stay away from SM?

Artichokeleaves · 20/10/2021 13:22

@Mybalconyiscracking

How many of these people do you actually know OP? Are they actually directed affecting your life? If things are upsetting you on SM, maybe stay away from SM?
It's directly affecting every woman's life, yes. And their children's lives. Hmm

And again, the myth that no one with concerns has trans friends, trans family, or is LGBT+ themselves.

Read around FWR a bit. It'll be eye opening for you.

QueenSue · 20/10/2021 13:26

AScottishMum Coming to a women's rights board and implying that women are a privileged group? Really?

LobsterNapkin · 20/10/2021 13:27

This is indeed a weird time.

I feel like I'm looking at the destruction of liberal democracy. It's not just gender ideology, it's the whole package. Camille Paglia says this is all a sign that we are at the end of a decadent civilization and I'm tending to think she's correct.