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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Does anyone else feel that the tone has changed on this board?

999 replies

ViceLikeBlip · 08/11/2021 21:58

This board has been incredibly important to me, especially when I felt like I was losing my mind because no one else seemed to see a problem with self ID, and everyone else seemed to believe TWAW (or, I now realise, everyone else was too scared to suggest they might not believe TWAW).

You guys helped me rationalise my thoughts, and realise I wasn't some awful transphobe, and I've been really grateful to be part of this community. And I really felt like I belonged: we were pro women's rights, not anti trans rights, and we didn't believe that all transwomen are dangerous perverts but rather we recognised that dangerous perverts do exist, and they will readily take advtange of any loophole that gives them access to women.

More than anything, you guys have been an absolute mine of information - facts, stats, latest developments, and you've pointed me in the direction of news articles and twitter rows that I never would have seen otherwise. I'm genuinely grateful for this.

But recently the mood seems to have shifted significantly. There seems to be a lot of open animosity and ridicule towards all things trans. The recent outcry about M&S letting some people put their pronouns on their name badges felt uncomfortably close to clamouring to have M&S "cancelled".

I guess I used to feel like this was a safe space where I was with like minded people, but now I don't think everyone on here can hand-on-heart maintain that they're not anti-trans anymore, and it makes me very upset to see this shift happening (and happening quickly).

OP posts:
RedDogsBeg · 10/11/2021 17:06

@julieca

How many times have I had to say that I don't believe you can change sex? You think anyone disagreeing with you is automatically "on the other side".
To be honest I've read all your posts julieca and all I can glean from them is that you intensely dislike Posie Parker and think we should too and send her to purgatory and never say her name again, you abhor Conservatives and Christians and if they are both that's even worse and we too should abhor them and cut them adrift. You insist we must all adhere to your particular criteria of purity.
QueenSue · 10/11/2021 17:08

Have you been a lesbian for a long time?
Hmm
At the risk of being a misandrist, I think the existence of heterosexual women suggests sexuality is innate.
Grin

Shedmistress · 10/11/2021 17:08

Posie Parker
Posie Parker
Posie Parker

It works! She's here. She really is a bad bad woman indeed.

She's got stripy socks on and everything.

BloodinGutters · 10/11/2021 17:10

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Absolutely.

As a survivor of csa I’d dearly love not to be straight. (Although I’m not saying I’d love to be bi or a lesbian either, just it’s a fucker to be attracted to men having been raped by them)

Considering the stats on the % of male perpetrators and the stats on those of us women who are victims and the stats on the % of women who are straight, we can either conclude sexuality is innate or female survivors of sexual violence were in fact all asking for it.

I don’t think we need to ask which is correct.

BloodinGutters · 10/11/2021 17:12

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

You're not discussing it now, never mind "any further".

You are being pulled up on the indefensible nonsense that you posted and are now flouncing. It's the traditional response, I guess.

It’s a long drawn out flounce.
PurgatoryOfPotholes · 10/11/2021 17:14

RedDogsBeg

To be honest I've read all your postsjuliecaand all I can glean from them is that you intensely dislike Posie Parker and think we should too and send her to purgatory and never say her name again

I haven't got much in for dinner tonight, so can we put the dinner date off until next week? Grin

AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken · 10/11/2021 17:14

@julieca

No it is not homophobic. I have linked to all the facts I stated. Yes I am surprised a politically aware lesbian in her forties knew none of that. Unless you think it is homophobic because you believe in a born that way view of sexuality. I don't.
It is homophobic. I’m straight and have never been asked “how long have you been straight?”

It would be a ridiculous thing to ask. The fact you think it’s reasonable to ask a lesbian how long she has been a lesbian shows that you might think of lesbianism as a fad or a choice.

vivariumvivariumsvivaria · 10/11/2021 17:19

I agree, BloodInGutters.

I'm fortunate enough to not have had your experiences but I have been disappointed by every man I have met.

Keep shagging the feckers though, don't I?

Maybe there is hope for us now that lesbians have penises, though...?

AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken · 10/11/2021 17:22

Maybe there is hope for us now that lesbians have penises, though...?

Yep and even more male entitlement

BloodinGutters · 10/11/2021 17:26

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I agree, BloodInGutters.

I'm fortunate enough to not have had your experiences but I have been disappointed by every man I have met.

Keep shagging the feckers though, don't I?

Maybe there is hope for us now that lesbians have penises, though...?

Or we could just be shagging lesbians who use strap ons. That’s the same thing according to the woman who spawned LOJ.
Shedmistress · 10/11/2021 17:28

Anyway... Back to the topic of tone.

Surely the tone of a board is the sum of its parts so if the tone police want the tone to change the simplest answer is to be the change? Not to tell off people that are contributing?

bordermidgebite · 10/11/2021 17:29

Unless the tone they want is squabbling & prissy

InTheResistance · 10/11/2021 17:33

I think OP has a very good point here and it's one of the things that I find most worrying about trans activism - the backlash they are going to provoke against trans people. I think it's a small but loud community that have given some unthinking people an easy way to virtue signal, they don't speak for every trans person. I totally get being angry but you have to make sure it's with the right people.

Shedmistress · 10/11/2021 17:38

Resistance, can you give examples of this backlash on here that the OP has a point about? I mean has anyone suggested this backlash and if so, in what context?

foxgoosefinch · 10/11/2021 17:40

@julieca

No it is not homophobic. I have linked to all the facts I stated. Yes I am surprised a politically aware lesbian in her forties knew none of that. Unless you think it is homophobic because you believe in a born that way view of sexuality. I don't.
OK Julie: I'm not offended (it takes a LOT to offend me!); but as in previous discussions, you've clearly read some stuff, and lumped it all together and think that means you're informed, when actually you have a little knowledge about something rather than a lot.

You're eliding all sorts of things that don't go together. I'll break some of these down for you.

It is about how services are provided.

So you have lumped together in your post a lot of different ideas and "services". Some of these are valid criticisms; some are misinformed and not accurate at all. One key thing to remember is that social care services are not health care services. Some are private organisations; some are provided by local government (increasingly few); some are healthcare services. In this country healthcare and social care services are separately funded and separately provided. Someone working in the NHS has nothing to do with care homes. Care homes are mostly private providers, as are nursing homes. They are not part of the NHS. So if an "LGBT coordinator" works in NHS healthcare services (or contractors for the NHS), they have nothing to do with care home staffing or training. So providing "LGBT healthcare" to transpeople has nothing to do with whether minimum wage care home staff are homophobic.

For example, providing clear information about whether lesbians need smears and why. Some lesbians think they don't as this was at one time the official stance.

This is about GP training and advice, and the central smear test campaign is actually outsourced to a private company now, who send the reminders. (Would a LGBT coordinator at Cerco or whatever target special letters to lesbians?)

GPs should be giving the most up to date advice to everyone as they can - same for smear tests as for high blood pressure. Lots of healthcare depends on your demographic. This isn't anything new.

Its changing with younger people, but older lesbians are far less likely to be in touch with their families. So do befriending schemes and other schemes aimed at older people meet the needs of this group?

Befriending schemes? Hmm For this group? I mean, would these be befriending schemes for "cis" or "trans" lesbians? ... I jest, but...

Lots of lesbian and gay people report going back into the closet in care homes because of open anti-lesbian and gay comments. How should this be tackled in a systematic way?

Care homes are a mess. They have been privatised and rely on low paid untrained staff, privately employed. If you can find a way of enforcing the Equality Act within them go ahead. "LGBT healthcare coordinators" would have nothing to do with this.

Plenty of psychiatrists were trained at a time when being a lesbian was seen as a sign of immature development - Freudian. Lesbians still report issues with psychiatrists and mental health wards. How could this be better tackled?

This is very erroneous. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, not psychoanalyst. Freud was a psychoanalyst working in the late 19th and early 20thc., and Freudian psychoanalysis has never had anything to do with medical psychiatry, and has never been part of medical training. In any case, he did not believe that being a lesbian was a sign of immature development - it was a very complex theory which in fact was much kinder to gay people than the medical orthodoxy that replaced it.

Substance misuse is higher, are substance misuse programmes meeting the needs of this group? A lot of substance misuse programmes are mixed-sex and do not meet the needs of women well and probably lesbians even less. Maybe there is a need for more single-sex programmes?

Substance misuse programmes are run partly through healthcare services and partly through charitable and private provision commissioned by the NHS. In any case, they are very strictly controlled, and they are medically focused. The prevalence of substance misuse in a particular demographic is not necessarily related to the group of that demographic. And substance misuse programmes are an entirely different thing.

Heath needs are not met well by just treating everyone as the same.

Needs are not met either by lumping lots of different things all together, and pretending the needs are the same.

Healthcare provision is nothing like training of care home staff. This isn't to say that there aren't changes that need to be made. But an "LGBT coordinator" wouldn't have anything to do with quite a lot of the things you're mentioned.

FlyingOink · 10/11/2021 17:45

@InTheResistance

I think OP has a very good point here and it's one of the things that I find most worrying about trans activism - the backlash they are going to provoke against trans people. I think it's a small but loud community that have given some unthinking people an easy way to virtue signal, they don't speak for every trans person. I totally get being angry but you have to make sure it's with the right people.
Meh. What does the backlash look like? Physical violence? That's men, usually homophobic, enforcing gender rules on masculinity. They aren't egged on by reading feminist thought, and women are not responsible for what violent men do to other men.

Is it the small but loud community that got laws changed in their favour with no public debate? No, it was the "reasonable, professional" activists. For all the violence that hentai catgirls who film themselves masturbating in women's toilets talk about, those individuals haven't changed the law, trained the judiciary and the police and the schools and the state broadcaster. It was the "reasonable, professional" types who did that.

Artichokeleaves · 10/11/2021 17:45

@InTheResistance

I think OP has a very good point here and it's one of the things that I find most worrying about trans activism - the backlash they are going to provoke against trans people. I think it's a small but loud community that have given some unthinking people an easy way to virtue signal, they don't speak for every trans person. I totally get being angry but you have to make sure it's with the right people.
Thing is, that kind of comes out as 'women, before you do something angry like saying 'no' and expressed your opinions, make absolutely sure that you've thoroughly checked first that no one's going to be unjustifiably upset by you'.

Where's the reciprocal care towards women please?

Because otherwise it goes right on being an unfair burden solely dumped on anyone born female who dares to say 'no' and say 'you know what, I'm really quite cross now'

People are going to live if mummy gets cross and says no. Really. No matter what they might think. And they really are going to have to get a grip that mummy is a bloody human too and does not exist to take care of everyone else.

BloodinGutters · 10/11/2021 17:47

@InTheResistance

I think OP has a very good point here and it's one of the things that I find most worrying about trans activism - the backlash they are going to provoke against trans people. I think it's a small but loud community that have given some unthinking people an easy way to virtue signal, they don't speak for every trans person. I totally get being angry but you have to make sure it's with the right people.
It’s the ideology we are angry at.

Even without the violence of tra’s, the ideology in itself reinforces regressive stereotypes that harm women, the ideology removes women’s rights, the ideology adds yet another loophole for predatory males to harm women by identifying as trans and getting into single sex spaces, the ideology removes safeguards for children and sterilises gnc kids, the ideology is homophobic by its very definition.

It’s not about the individuals involved, even the ones telling us to die in a grease fire, it’s the ideology itself that is incompatible with women and girls rights.

BloodinGutters · 10/11/2021 17:48

@Shedmistress

Resistance, can you give examples of this backlash on here that the OP has a point about? I mean has anyone suggested this backlash and if so, in what context?
Yy.

Also, women are not responsible for impact on any other group of prioritising our rights and our boundaries.

Just NO.

FlyingOink · 10/11/2021 17:49

foxgoosefinch that was really interesting, I thought julieca's post you quoted from was good but I see that it was perhaps oversimplified.
Do you think there are any specific lesbian healthcare needs/requirements?

Ereshkigalangcleg · 10/11/2021 17:52

notYourMumsnet

Fucking brilliant, Arabella

@MumsnetHQ can you get this made up into mugs? Cos I'd buy a whole crockery set of that.

I agree, and yes please!

Stopthisnow · 10/11/2021 17:53

I think the meaning is though, 'if you don't validate and reflect back the person that I wish to be and feel I am internally, then then the real me can't exist'.

The thing is: this is a lot to be demanding of total strangers who don't themselves hold the same beliefs, or want to have to participate in them, or see it as their responsibility to provide this on request regardless of them as a person.

So the reply still is pretty much: you do you and that's fine. But I am not going to get involved, and my asking you to do the 'and let live' bit back to me in return is not an act of aggression or something I'm going to put up with you getting annoyed with me about.

I completely agree. Incidentally, a woman I know used to think no make would claim to be a woman unless they were harmless, and wouldn’t pose any risk to women in changing rooms, toilets etc. Then met a male on public transport, who was intent on engaging her in conversation, and told her they were a woman. Her response was ‘I think you need to see a therapist’ (she is herself a therapist). The point being even those who naively think it is harmless to play along, really think such males should be given mental health treatment instead of being affirmed, when they are confronted with the reality of the situation in their day to day lives. So I think this idea that genderist’s arguments shouldn’t be challenged, as most people accept TWAW, is misguided.

Stopthisnow · 10/11/2021 17:55

read some of Julie Bindel and Sheila Jeffries around this.

Some of us have, if you had actually read Sheila Jeffreys instead of just using parts of her analysis that suit you, you wouldn’t be arguing the things you have on here. I would say try reading Gender Hurts or Unpacking Queer Politics. Also this interview where Sheila Jeffreys & Linda Bellos Discuss Feminism Left vs Right politics:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=zwkXDUIQNbk

LobsterNapkin · 10/11/2021 17:56

@julieca

Kelli-Jay does not believe kids should be in nursery while women work. She is a traditional conservative and her views around transgender spring out of that mindset.
That has not always been a conservative opinion, in fact many traditional leftists would say the same thing.

Liberalism and corporate capitalism tend to want everyone earning a wage, so they can get their cut.

Shedmistress · 10/11/2021 17:56

@FlyingOink

foxgoosefinch that was really interesting, I thought julieca's post you quoted from was good but I see that it was perhaps oversimplified. Do you think there are any specific lesbian healthcare needs/requirements?
Last smear letter I got didn't mention lesbians, non binary females or trans men; just transwomen.

So I binned it. How can I trust people who are sending invitations to people who have no actual cervix, with mine?