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

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.

Christ on a bike! Why do people always assume that others feel threatened by things they don't agree with for some reason? Even if their reasons aren't very well thought out, I'm not convinced that's a terribly common scenario.

To assume that ideas about third genders in the ancient world or other cultures are somehow the same as modern gender ideology is just completely anachronistic. It's also simply untrue to say that every culture has had such people. It's very much a culturally mediated idea, and there are patterns associated with it, typically rather fixed gender roles.

As for people not being able to function without their accustomed "privilege" it may be more a matter of people finding the race essentialism or id politics of the moment pretty racist.

@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?

Many of us know trans people. And we also know WOMEN AND GIRLS. Don't you? Because you don't seem to give two shits about THEM!

Vaclav Havel, 1978 has some prescient observations about mantras and the unthinking adoption of an ideology and the true cost of the absolution that it confers.

In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.

hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23

@AScottishMum what a stupid post. And the most stupid thing about it is you actually seem to think women have privilege compared to men. The 'trans movement' is filled to the brim with straight, white, middle aged and middle class men. They have more privilege in the fingernails than all women put together. Not least because they get pea brained fools to feel sorry for them and believe them oppressed.

^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.^

@LobsterNapkin I often find myself muttering "we're all fiddling while Rome burns" or rather we being fed to listen to the fiddling rather than getting on with putting out the fire.

Op

1. trust your gut

2. follow the path of logical reasoning

3. decide your boundaries/what matters to you and draw them firmly (it’s kids safeguarding for me)

4. don’t fall into the trap of needing to justify your reasons or needing to persuade others you are right (this is really common for those of us trauma survivors, and it just opens up lots of ways of the gas lighters to continue to do what they do)

5. do not fall into the trap of female socialisation - we do not have to be kind, we do not have to have all the answers, we do not need to prioritise fixing everything for other groups. Rights are not like pie, they conflict all the fucking time-it’s why we have human rights courts- we are allowed to prioritise our rights. Take comfort that doing so prioritises the rights of all females.

6. learn not to care what others think of you. If the world was going to end tomorrow would you be honest about what you think? Then why not now. If they think badly of you do you really want to know people who have such poor critical thinking skills?

I never felt like I fitted in the world. I always saw danger everywhere and didn’t understand why other woman didn’t realise they were living the same reality. It’s been a mix of horrifying and comforting to see other women wake up. And to continue waking up myself (I always thought the legal implications of making the category of woman an opt in one was terrifying, but other aspects I didn’t always find as important. But it keeps hitting home more and more. This isn’t just about women’s rights, lesbian rights, children’s safeguarding, this is basic democratic freedoms removed by stealth).

This isn’t about fitting in or not fitting in with the world. This isn’t hypothetical. This is the world we live in and we need to face up to how this impacts our reality. Not doing so doesn’t protect us from that reality, but it does leave future generations at risk.

Prioritise yourself. Always. And don’t apologise for it. Children, including adult ones, learn behaviour by us modelling behaviour. Start treating yourself how you would want your daughter to treat herself. And she’ll get there in the end herself also.

@LobsterNapkin

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.

I said something similar ish a few days ago on the thread about bbc Nolan investigates podcast in chat.

Sitting back and allowing democratic freedoms to be eroded will end what we know to be civilisation. This isn’t a gender ideology issue, this is an everyone issue. Because if we can’t speak up freely, if we can’t push for critical thinking of transparency from organisations funded by public money, then democracy is over.

DraintheBlood - your elegant summary is in line with a Sarah Vine piece she's just published.

I've been screamed at in public, told I should never have been allowed to have children. I've had blazing rows with friends and relatives over nonsense they've read on the internet, seen the look of distrust in colleagues' eyes.

Always, always, this twisting and warping of a person's identity, and with it the crushing of those around them.

At first, it doesn't feel so bad. It's shocking and stressful and upsetting — but you bounce back. You pick yourself up, dust yourself down and carry on.

But with each blow, each attack, your resilience diminishes.

Whatever self-confidence you had to begin with gradually gets eroded, until you almost start to believe the things people are saying about you.

You start to wonder whether they might not be right when they call you 'scum', that perhaps you really are a bad person; that you deserve to be humiliated and shamed and ruined.

It gets so bad that you find yourself apologising for your very existence. You stand in the shower in the morning, fearing the next disaster — feeling numb and pointless…

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10109203/SARAH-VINE-used-think-politics-big-adventure.html

I read AScottishMum’s message and it sounds to me like classic gaslighting. You’ve got everything wrong, it’s your fault for being privileged, you need to accept my way of seeing things. Anyone who’s been in an abusive relationship or lived through the Soviet or Maoist eras or has read 1984 will see straight through it.

I would still really like you to come back and discuss, AScottishMum. From one Scottish mum to another. We need to be able to talk about these issues. They're affecting our children.

@DraintheBlood

Op

1. trust your gut

2. follow the path of logical reasoning

3. decide your boundaries/what matters to you and draw them firmly (it’s kids safeguarding for me)

4. don’t fall into the trap of needing to justify your reasons or needing to persuade others you are right (this is really common for those of us trauma survivors, and it just opens up lots of ways of the gas lighters to continue to do what they do)

5. do not fall into the trap of female socialisation - we do not have to be kind, we do not have to have all the answers, we do not need to prioritise fixing everything for other groups. Rights are not like pie, they conflict all the fucking time-it’s why we have human rights courts- we are allowed to prioritise our rights. Take comfort that doing so prioritises the rights of all females.

6. learn not to care what others think of you. If the world was going to end tomorrow would you be honest about what you think? Then why not now. If they think badly of you do you really want to know people who have such poor critical thinking skills?

I never felt like I fitted in the world. I always saw danger everywhere and didn’t understand why other woman didn’t realise they were living the same reality. It’s been a mix of horrifying and comforting to see other women wake up. And to continue waking up myself (I always thought the legal implications of making the category of woman an opt in one was terrifying, but other aspects I didn’t always find as important. But it keeps hitting home more and more. This isn’t just about women’s rights, lesbian rights, children’s safeguarding, this is basic democratic freedoms removed by stealth).

This isn’t about fitting in or not fitting in with the world. This isn’t hypothetical. This is the world we live in and we need to face up to how this impacts our reality. Not doing so doesn’t protect us from that reality, but it does leave future generations at risk.

Prioritise yourself. Always. And don’t apologise for it. Children, including adult ones, learn behaviour by us modelling behaviour. Start treating yourself how you would want your daughter to treat herself. And she’ll get there in the end herself also.

Fab post.

@LobsterNapkin

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.

Yes.

It IS gas lighting.
I think I always knew it was - this using pronouns so anyone older, not used to mixing with trans people, is likely to get it wrong so you are immediately on the back foot, made to feel bad, selfish.
I've listened to Stephen Nolan's podcasts on Stonewall. I think it was David Bell, formerly of the Tavistock Trust who makes this point.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p09yjmph
They are on the BBC sounds website. I think episode 6 covers the Scottish Gov removing the word Mother. I believe Stephen Nolan is going to save the world with these programmes.

[quote LastSummerHere]@AScottishMum what a stupid post. And the most stupid thing about it is you actually seem to think women have privilege compared to men. The 'trans movement' is filled to the brim with straight, white, middle aged and middle class men. They have more privilege in the fingernails than all women put together. Not least because they get pea brained fools to feel sorry for them and believe them oppressed.
[/quote]
Brava ! to your post LastSummer.

Ascottishmummy

'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.'

My depression and suicidal feelings are not due to hating trans people. I am, despite your assumptions, not a hateful person. I am also, in your terms, queer, although I have never felt the need to label my sexuality publicly.

I don't fear trans people. I don't other them.

I just don't believe taking hormones and castrating oneself or removing breasts, making a replica of sex organs, makes someone actually the opposite sex.

It makes them something new, something perfectly excellent in its own way, a trans person. And yes, I am actually aware of sociology and history so do understand how they have always been a part of our world. Trans people gaining more understanding and being able to live as they choose is not my issue.

Forcing people to recite a mantra that they now ARE women the same as I am a woman, or they ARE male in the way my brother is male is literally untrue. Being forced to parrott a lie is an abusive thing I recognise from being in abusive relationships .

For example, a woman who has transitioned to an appearance of male (according to sex stereotype..ie. grow a beard, short hair, work out to gain muscles) and then get pregnant and try to force society to write fathered on the birth cert. is so ludicrous it's almost surreal. What a strange, gaslighting moment for that new baby.

My DD has to take contraceptive pill in her lesbian relation. Why, because her girlfriend ejaculates sperm into her.

She had to do this as she had a pregnancy scare. The hormones have made her quite unwell and she had to try a couple of brands. Interesting it was the bio female who has to take hormonal contraception for fear of getting pregnant (haven't bio females always had the worst deal in contraception terms as we are the ones who end up with a baby so we will accept taking a pill that makes our hormones up and down, emotions, acne etc )

Yet I'm not allowed to think that person who could get her pregnant is biologically male?

It's Orwellian in the purest sense of the term, as others have quoted.

@Vaginasaurus

OP, don’t worry. There are millions and millions of us around the world who don’t believe in this absolutely insane rubbish!

Ah but no theres only 3 of us with apparently 60k fake accounts everywhere and millions of bots. How all three of us manage this empire is never stated. But of course it must be true. Right.

Sarcasm above just in case anyone thought I was being real.

But why are we fretting over these people who wish to change sex. I mean it is so few people.
Many people are blind - probably many more than who are transgender but we just leave them to get on with it, no demands from them for special language changes or special treatment by the rest of society. Imagine I had one leg. I would definitely feel bad if someone went about how they dislike their big feet, stiff knees etc but I wouldn't expect or let alone demand laws to stop people being thoughtless and tactless and talking about it to me. It's a ridiculous state of affairs.

It’s madness OP

It’s mainly a big divide between how young people think (eg my teenagers) and “old people”

I guess the new generation were told since they were toddlers they could be anything and anyone they wanted to be

Whereas we, oldies, were told that children should be seen but not heard. That we had to respect rules and authority, and to be polite….

So we are rolling over, I know very few pet from my generation who genuinely believe that simply saying you are a woman actually physically and legally makes you a woman

I wonder if soon we’ll be seeing rave and culture as a choice too, though weirdly (as to me it’s inconsistent with the way gender theory is going) it’s the opposite and people get hounded down for “black fishing”

None of it makes sense

Race, not race

Autocorrect is such an arse

Teens want to be different from their oldies. I think this crazy thing will die out soon as the 'woke' become older they will be the parents the next gen want to rebel against. Maybe religion will make a come back. Who knows as crazes catch on so much more quickly thanks to internet.

@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.

The loss of what privilege exactly? When I was sexually assaulted multiple times in mixed sex changing rooms as a child, it didn't feel like privilege?

LGBT people exist, get over it.

Biologically female humans exist, get over it.

@MargaritaPie

LGBT people exist, get over it.

Actually according to stonewall the l & g no longer exist because they’ve rewritten same sex attraction as same gender. I’m not sure what that means for the b.

Transgender people exist, well of course they exist, but being trans doesn’t make anyone the opposite sex.

Why does people being trans have to mean they take away women and girls legal rights protections? Why can’t they just live as they like without taking away women’s right, women’s safe single sex spaces and children’s safeguards?

@MargaritaPie

LGBT people exist, get over it.

Simplistic mantras that are dropped into valid conversations in an attempt to prevent fair discussion of the impact of genderist demands on female people or the clash between LGB rights and T identities don't work any more, get over it.