I don’t fit in anymore

[Slowwormwiggle]

Everyday I feel I have less in common with my female peers. I am in my mid 40s I have always worked in the charity sector. I care about social justice and volunteer in my community. I am no saint but a sense of duty was drummed into me at an early age due to a religious upbringing. I am no longer religious but believe in being a good neighbour and trying to help others.

I have many wonderful and kind friends. I would say we all consider ourselves feminists and care a lot about women’s rights. However I am finding their version of feminism so hard to understand. They are obsessed with supporting issues like young people identifying as non binary or trans. I have two young daughters and am horrified by the social contagion that could influence my daughters to think there was something wrong with their bodies.

At the same time they are outraged by any violence against women (rightly so) but they see no safeguarding risks with the compromises girls are expected to take to accommodate trans girls. I don’t understanding why they can’t see the link? Why is suddenly ok for a girl to see a penis in the changing room?

I have also worked for a long time with women from traditional religious backgrounds. I know they feel more and more pushed out by the way these issues are developing. The irony is my friends would be horrified if these women faced racism however they don’t see how the issues around trans women make life even harder for these women. These women will just shrink from public life even more if they are under pressure to compromise their beliefs.

I am starting to think that a lot of the activist issues are really just luxury views held my women that are not affected by them. My friends are women with secure work and homes . There is very little they have to fight for.

We are all left leaning but there is so much they see as important that I don’t. I want to stop domestic violence and poverty, not obsess about trans rights.

I am a total coward. When we talk about this stuff I say nothing or just try and change the subject. It make me feel lonely and wonder if I am the misguided bigot?? They would definitely think I am awful for questioning any of these issues.

I only mention the transwomen winning women's sports thing - because no sane person could think that's a good idea. However I find that women with no interest in sport spout nonsense about it or believe it's fine - very angering. Just selfish.

The friends that I value most aren't all in complete agreement with me on all issues. But they are all able to discuss them ratonally without anger or accusations or falling outs. I think that's quite telling, really.

I also think that people are changing their mind on this issue and IME, when they hear about things that are happening, they want to talk about it. There are also a lot of young people who I think will come through the other side of this as they get more mature and we hear more about detransitioners and court cases, as well as those who desist or detransition themselves. It’s important that we do, if possible, let people know we’re here and can find each other.

My DD (late primary school) has a female friend who now identifies as a boy. I have had brief discussions about it with the friend’s mum. I could tell from what she said that she was hedging very carefully to try to say she wasn’t 100% on board with it / didn’t believe the ideology and wanted to essentially let it blow over, but didn’t want to say so outright in case I jumped down her throat. I was able to make similar noises and reassure her I wasn’t about to go overboard in affirming her child. Now she knows I’m here if she needs support with school etc.

Likewise I think it’s good for kids who have quite understandably been swept along in this, to know there are adults in their life who aren’t enthusiastic about it so they won’t be alone and ostracised if they have doubts. Even if they want to deplore their terrible GC parents, they might need us IYSwIM.

@NonnyMouse1337

That's because they don't actually care about women from minority ethnic groups or minority religious beliefs or disabled women etc. They care about 'identities' that align with their ideological beliefs, and not fully formed human beings. It's all about performance of piety. The ideological belief says you have to make a song and dance about how horrified and upset you are about injustice. But the moment an injustice has the potential to disrupt the ideological belief, then the ideology should always be prioritised over the injustice.

I don't think I have met any kind of 'social justice warrior' that came across as genuinely ethical. It's all superficial mantra chanting and acting outraged on someone else's behalf to fit in with everyone else and avoid being a social pariah.

This is one of the best summaries I have ever seen, @NonnyMouse1337 about why I despite social justice ideologues.

OP, I went through exactly the same cycle of emotions when I realised I was completely out of step with my progressive artsy tribe. It is very lonely, and very destabilising. Hanging out here and on Twitter using anonymous accounts helped me understand and come to terms with what I was experiencing.

@supporteveryone

I think it's because most feminists (aside from mnetter feminists and a few people on twitter 🙄) believe there is room to support women, trans people, non binary people, disabled people, black people and anyone else in need of support. Most feminists do not think that supporting trans women takes away from women but rather it unites us together. If you recall in the 70's black women were ostracised from supporting womens rights for fear they would damage the fight. We now look on that behaviour in disgust. I predict in 30/40 years time we will do the same to women who do not support trans women for fear it will take away from them. It's good that your daughters look beyond what's taught in their family and will hopefully be more inclusive for it.

Black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, women, and many more groups of people are treated as second class people in society with white middle class men as always at the top of the hierarchy. Imagine if we all stood together how strong we would be. But instead you prefer to be an insular group that fights other disadvantaged groups. You think you are standing up for yourselves but actually your just feeding into the hands of the men who have the power. Like puppets on a string.

This is incredibly idealistic.

All sounds lovely written down but to be truly intersectional you need to recognise that a disabled woman has a right to be bathed by female only people.

And a female nurse bathing a disabled transwoman has the right to refuse.

And that's the issue we have.

Who gets the label of being part of feminism?

Because it dammed can't be males too.

On the religious thing, I was brought up catholic, I am now a very committed atheist. In the last few years I’ve made friends with a catholic archbishop. We have debates but respectfully & humorously.

Hang on, so the archbishop didn’t call you a hateful bigot? He/she didn’t accuse you of denying that Christians exist? Or of wanting to eliminate Christians? The archbishop didn’t ask you to pretend to be Christian in order to be kind? He/she didn’t report you to your employer and ask them to sack you?

Black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, women, and many more groups of people are treated as second class people in society with white middle class men as always at the top of the hierarchy.

Hmmm....a lot of trans people and a lot of their supporters are middle class white men.

@supporteveryone

I think it's because most feminists (aside from mnetter feminists and a few people on twitter 🙄) believe there is room to support women, trans people, non binary people, disabled people, black people and anyone else in need of support. Most feminists do not think that supporting trans women takes away from women but rather it unites us together. If you recall in the 70's black women were ostracised from supporting womens rights for fear they would damage the fight. We now look on that behaviour in disgust. I predict in 30/40 years time we will do the same to women who do not support trans women for fear it will take away from them. It's good that your daughters look beyond what's taught in their family and will hopefully be more inclusive for it.

Black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, women, and many more groups of people are treated as second class people in society with white middle class men as always at the top of the hierarchy. Imagine if we all stood together how strong we would be. But instead you prefer to be an insular group that fights other disadvantaged groups. You think you are standing up for yourselves but actually your just feeding into the hands of the men who have the power. Like puppets on a string.

Absolute bullshit about black women being ostracised from supporting women's rights for fear of damaging the cause. You just make shit up. When you spout this crap you should check everyone who remembers the era isn't dead to contradict you.

I think perhaps you are mixing the 1970's UK up with late 19th/early 20th century United States and Votes for Women. An easy mistake to make .

@supporteveryone

I think it's because most feminists (aside from mnetter feminists and a few people on twitter 🙄) believe there is room to support women, trans people, non binary people, disabled people, black people and anyone else in need of support. Most feminists do not think that supporting trans women takes away from women but rather it unites us together. If you recall in the 70's black women were ostracised from supporting womens rights for fear they would damage the fight. We now look on that behaviour in disgust. I predict in 30/40 years time we will do the same to women who do not support trans women for fear it will take away from them. It's good that your daughters look beyond what's taught in their family and will hopefully be more inclusive for it.

Black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, women, and many more groups of people are treated as second class people in society with white middle class men as always at the top of the hierarchy. Imagine if we all stood together how strong we would be. But instead you prefer to be an insular group that fights other disadvantaged groups. You think you are standing up for yourselves but actually your just feeding into the hands of the men who have the power. Like puppets on a string.

Yes that all sounds lovely.

IF this political belief actually did support female people and disabled female people and traumatised female people and female people of different cultures and beliefs etc. But it does not.

In this lovely place where we are all united - you are not looking at the women currently unable to access refuges or rape crisis services right here on MN. Mnetters dealing with this. The rape crisis service had a male specific service, an LGBT+ specific service and a mixed sex women's service, so three separate options for people born male to find the one that helped them the most. Female people had one option and one only: the mixed sex women's group. They were not allowed to have a female only service, even if it was in another building,because those of this political ideology could not tolerate it existing .

Let that sink in. They would prefer that raped women are unable to access a rape crisis service than be tolerant and flexible, or inclusive. How does that 'unite' anyone?

What are we going to do with the female people excluded? We can't just shut our eyes to them. We can't stuff our fingers in our ears shouting about how we're all united but try not to look at them over there left with no services at all, massive inequality and disenfranchised because they need more diversity and intersectionality than we agree with and they don't Think Like Us so are inferior and not entitled to equal access to services .

There is NOTHING moral about this, you're in cloud cuckoo land if you think there is. If you care about the marginalised groups you claim to then you cannot believe in this.

There is room for everyone, but the TQ+ lobby are going to have to be one hell of a lot more tolerant and able to cope with other people's needs being met too , and the sneering about 'silly MNetters' being the 'wrong kind of feminist' because of actually caring about the real issues of marginalised groups instead of repeating the virtue signal flags is going to have to stop.

I've found your thoughts really interesting OP. Especially about your earlier religious background meaning a "good deed" was a personal matter, not a public performance. This must be hard for younger people, who can't eat a burger without uploading a photo of it to an enthralled audience, to comprehend.

@Beowulfa it’s definitely a mind fuck! The religion I was part of was harmful because you can’t take any credit or pride in what you achieve. Good deeds should be done in secret. If you get good grades you have to give credit to god for helping you. It’s not healthy and leads to low self esteem as you can’t be proud of yourself.

This background does make me sometimes wonder if I am too judgemental of my friends. I have dropped the religion but boasting and virtual signalling on social media still makes me so uncomfortable.

I don’t want people to be pious like I was but the constant performance of life must be awful and exhausting! It’s also so like a religion but without the aspect of forgiveness! At least in church we forgave people after publicly shaming them!

I read an interesting article a few months ago on the loss of a mechanism for forgiveness in society. Basically it said that after Freud, the idea was we would give up things like religious guilt and shame, and we'd all be free to live without those burdens and society would be better. In fact that hasn't happened at all, instead we find that we still have guilt and shame but there is no possibility of forgiveness or atonement.

I can't remember where I read it, maybe something like The Atlantic? but it was a really thought provoking article.

Slowwormwiggle, I now see it as a hardcore form of cultural imperialism.

It is utterly bizarre that, at a time when people are "de-colonising" everything, the same people seem to support the promotion and imposition of an inflexible cultural ideology that a) rewrites common understandings across cultures and communities, sending meaning into a flux only they can navigate, and b) seeks to dominate other cultures.

It's though post-colonialism and class analysis never bloody happened! And I say that, and I'm not even a bloody Marxist! I'd love to know what Said would have thought about all this.

Personally, and I know this is controversial, I think the motivation behind it is a kind of baked-in classism and racism -- it's about retaining privilege.

When you actually sit down and consider this stuff, and how you need to know how to decode the language of it all, it really reminds me of the civic, religious, legal and political use of Latin prior to the 19th century. And it has the same effect: to alienate "non-speakers" from the civic realm.

@Torunette

Slowwormwiggle, I now see it as a hardcore form of cultural imperialism.

It is utterly bizarre that, at a time when people are "de-colonising" everything, the same people seem to support the promotion and imposition of an inflexible cultural ideology that a) rewrites common understandings across cultures and communities, sending meaning into a flux only they can navigate, and b) seeks to dominate other cultures.

It's though post-colonialism and class analysis never bloody happened! And I say that, and I'm not even a bloody Marxist! I'd love to know what Said would have thought about all this.

Personally, and I know this is controversial, I think the motivation behind it is a kind of baked-in classism and racism -- it's about retaining privilege.

When you actually sit down and consider this stuff, and how you need to know how to decode the language of it all, it really reminds me of the civic, religious, legal and political use of Latin prior to the 19th century. And it has the same effect: to alienate "non-speakers" from the civic realm.

Excellent post, there's a whole doctorate in there.

I'd add in too: a society without religion makes up their own, and here it is. The links between this and Catholicism are stark. There are heretics who must be cast out for breaking the commandments and can never be forgiven, there is the original sin of being born 'cis' and always having to subordinate yourself through it to others, there are the priests, you must not seek to understand but show faith, and transubstantiation is involved. Not to mention souls that exist separately and get put in the wrong body. (By someone, who obviously makes this mistake but goes unnamed.) This lot would happily reopen the Magdalen Laundries for women posting here. They already believe that non believers should not be entitled to equal human or civil rights.

OP, I completely understand. I worked in the charity sector for years and made a very close female friendship group at a DV charity. They are all totally TWAW. I used to sit and bite my tongue while screaming internally as they complained about 'transphobes' at work.

I couldn't do it forever and it all came out when one of them decided to start identifying as 'genderqueer'. Since discovering my true views they've ejected me from the friendship group. Of course it's been painful, but it's also been truly liberating. I was beginning to find it impossible to hide my opinions on something so very important and fundamental.

As others have said, gender identity ideology is akin to a religious cult. You are not allowed to deviate from the programme, and if you do you will be punished. But the reward is freedom

You’re brave @countrypunk I don’t think I am there yet. I remember that feeling of freedom when I left religion so understand the joy.

I agree with the posts about identity politics being the new religion. However I do struggle when I hear people mourn the loss of religion in the UK. I hear this sentiment from lots of GC academics and podcasters. It makes me worried as a return to religion is not the answer. I think people mean the harmless middle of the road CoE Christianity. They have no idea about some of the craziness that’s out there! It’s not just America that has crazy culty churches, they exist here as well!

Although I don’t know what the answer is? I don’t know where this stuff is going? Maybe it will end when the activists get bored and find another cause?

I think the motivation behind it is a kind of baked-in classism and racism -- it's about retaining privilege.

When you actually sit down and consider this stuff, and how you need to know how to decode the language of it all, it really reminds me of the civic, religious, legal and political use of Latin prior to the 19th century. And it has the same effect: to alienate "non-speakers" from the civic realm.

Certainly many of those who espouse the trans rights cause seem to be hugely privileged. In a climate where 'privilege' has become something to be ashamed of (how '1st world problems' is that?) some people have found a way to invent new kinds of oppression/co opt existing oppression.

We have white males who say that 'cis women' have privilege over them. (And feminists who support that - step up Alison Phipps).

@Slowwormwiggle

You’re brave *@countrypunk* I don’t think I am there yet. I remember that feeling of freedom when I left religion so understand the joy.

I agree with the posts about identity politics being the new religion. However I do struggle when I hear people mourn the loss of religion in the UK. I hear this sentiment from lots of GC academics and podcasters. It makes me worried as a return to religion is not the answer. I think people mean the harmless middle of the road CoE Christianity. They have no idea about some of the craziness that’s out there! It’s not just America that has crazy culty churches, they exist here as well!

Although I don’t know what the answer is? I don’t know where this stuff is going? Maybe it will end when the activists get bored and find another cause?

I think you are creating a false separation between religion and non-religion here. Everyone has a set of beliefs and assumptions that underly how they think the world works, which they use as the basis for reasoning, and which inform their moral judgement and values. They have to because without them, reason and even knowing becomes impossible, that's how reason works.

It's also true of secular westerners, but a lot of people have been brought up to thing that the secular western perspective is neutral and wholly based on reason. It means their belief system is not self conscious and aware of it's own assumptions and limits, and that makes it dangerous, prone to blind spots and fundamentalism.

If there is anything the 20th century should have taught us is that it's not religion per se that leads to destructive, aggressive, or controlling hierarchies, societies, or narratives, they can emerge quite well from non-religious worldviews as well.

It was completely off the cuff. One of my (former) friends was staying with me and she started complaining about how feminist writer Milli Hill had forced the Royal College of Midwives to backtrack on a blog post, where they'd used 'postpartum people' instead of mothers. And it snowballed from there, culminating in her attempting to trans Joan of Arc. I just couldn't be doing with that kind of extreme misogynistic bullshit. And it's impossible to have a constructive discussion because your starting points are completely opposed: identity supersedes biology vs biology is reality.

It's difficult to say where it will all end. I imagine with many, many lawsuits brought by young people who were hurriedly transitioned.

Another one saying that your post resonates with me too. I take hope from a previous poster who thinks that the madness can't continue!!

I have just decided what my test will be to be able to tell if the madness is diminishing.
I'm on a what's on/stuff for sale/to swap local whatsapp group. Before a friend of mine added me, I had never seen so much pronoun use and virtue signalling. (I am on facebook but all my friends seem very sensible!) I don't want to leave it as it's a really useful group but I have muted it as all the involuntary eyerolling was giving me eye ache
I'm hoping that there are enough of these groups for this not to be outing!
Anyway, when the pronoun use on there diminishes, is that when I know the folly is on its way out?

@SantaClawsServiette sure I know that. You don’t need religion to muck things up! I just find it hard when people romanticise religion. It’s just an odd thing I have noticed in gender critical conversations. They obviously never had to attend church twice every Sunday plus mid week!

[quote Slowwormwiggle]@SantaClawsServiette sure I know that. You don’t need religion to muck things up! I just find it hard when people romanticise religion. It’s just an odd thing I have noticed in gender critical conversations. They obviously never had to attend church twice every Sunday plus mid week![/quote]
I'm not sure they are romanticizing it. Serious practice of religion isn't the same as belonging to a cult, or at least it isn't necessarily. People like Chesterton or Arendt or Dorothy Day were all very serious about religion but hardly the victims of cults. Hard to imagine any of them getting caught up in genderism though.

it's difficult to perhaps feel how to fit in when for the most part there appears to be a collective and mass psychosis afoot. i have tried to understand the gender ideology but it makes very little sense to me.

I don’t like religion much, and I think it often does more harm than good, but I can usually respect it because religious people normally know that they have a faith or belief that might not be shared by everyone else. So they can allow for people who believe different things. I don’t argue with Christians about the lack of scientific evidence for what they believe, because they’re not demanding I believe it and it’s not being used to drive harmful policies.

Fundamentalist/extremist religious believers and cults will try to do that and punish non-believers, and that’s why they are generally seen as a bad thing in most societies. One problem with gender ideology at the moment is it’s like a religion (in that it’s belief-based not evidence-based) but being treated as scientific and political reality. It would be ok if people could just believe they were whatever “gender” they like without bothering others about it.

So in that sense religion is more welcome, at least if people accept that it’s a personal belief.