"Why I stopped being a good girl" by Hadley Freeman

[spacehardware]

It's a long read but Hadley deconstructs the issues, and all the "this is like homophobia/racism/you're a right wing schill" nonsense (honestly the TRAs must share Cliffs Notes) brilliantly.

unherd.com/2022/02/why-i-stopped-being-a-good-girl/

Oh good, I was going to post a link to that, but you got there first. Very pleased indeed to see this from Hadley Freeman. I don't know how she can bear to be at The Guardian surrounded by people who pay lip service to gender ideology but don't really believe it. The Guardian used to pride itself on its journalistic standards and independence. What happened?

Thank you @spacehardware. Interesting that HF really did stop her column because of this issue.

On another forum full of men telling women they are bigots where I lurk, I see there is already a thread of woke bros lining up to tell the women talking about it that they are the same as 1950s segregationists

Le sigh

Timely after all the comments over her Attwood interview last week.

I agreed with every word. Well done Hadley.

Thanks for posting. Hadley’s columns were the best thing about the Guardian. I’ve been trying to get onto the website to read this but it keeps crashing. Assuming they’ve had a lot of traffic!

Wow. Yet another excellent piece from Hadley. Sh really nails it soesn't she.
I hope that the anguished poster who had 2 threads promptly deleted reads it and gets some reassurance.

"I hope that the anguished poster who had 2 threads promptly deleted reads it and gets some reassurance"

What's this? MN deleted threads or someone asked for their own threads to be pulled?

Thank you Hadley.

Especially the part about anorexia and teenaged girls.

Excellent piece as usual

Well said Hadley.

Excellent article.

It's excellent.

Also very pleased to see this. I hope the tide is turning since more people are willing now to openly defend JKR etc as having said perfectly reasonable things.

spacehardware
I've no idea why but MNHQ deleted their despairing threads about the state of society in relation to ideology. Won't say any more as don't want to derail this thread about the very good piece under discussion.

Brilliant article. I’m so tired of being scared of losing my job at a otherwise great place because of its ties to Stonewall and my difference in opinion.

I wonder if the Guardian is anything like one of the local Pride committees, where everyone is totally pro-trans and free with accusations of transphobia in public but behind the scenes (I'm told by someone who's been behind the scenes) things are very, very different. It gives me hope that gay men, in particular, are ready to revolt.

I watched a documentary series on the rise of the Nazis over this wet and windy weekend. What struck home was that few people in the governing group of Germany liked Hitler and his ambitions and ideas, but they all tried to use him and his Nazi stormtroopers as a way of furthering their own ambitions. It went horribly wrong of course. The parallels in our own situation are obvious, particularly all the politicians jumping aboard the transgender bandwagon in order to further their own ends without imagining that they'd end up arguing that men could grow cervixes if they took enough hormones.

I love Hadley's writing. I stopped buying the Saturday Guardian when they scrapped Weekend and her column - great to see this piece from her, and the Attwood interview was such a good read.

Well done Hadley. The book on anorexia sounds interesting.

That was a great read, so clear

Women are raised to fear male strength, and with very good reason. And now we’re called bigots for doing so.

Yep

It was a nice summary of her experience with this issue and I think would speak to a lot of people who have tended to accept the progressive narrative.

I felt it took a lot for granted in terms of the concept of "trans" - it didn't really spend any time thinking about what or why we suddenly have such an explosion of people who are using that label and what it represents. Which is fine, it was already on the long side and it would have made the article less focused.

But I do sometimes feel that when discussing this with other women who have concerns like HF, that is where they get stuck. They can't get as far as interrogating the concept itself, the idea that this is an innate category of person, some kind of developmental disorder that needs to be reconed with from that perspective.

@DeckardK

I love Hadley's writing. I stopped buying the Saturday Guardian when they scrapped Weekend and her column - great to see this piece from her, and the Attwood interview was such a good read.

I found it frustrating that the post-interview conversation she had with Margaret Atwood was mostly 'off the record' and all that was printed was a sort of live-and-let-live banality. I wonder how much was driven by Freeman's integrity and respect for Atwood and how much was not her choice. I would really have liked to read more of that conversation.

What an excellent article. Brava, Hadley! And a nice little trip down memory lane to Dulwich swimming baths via her column.

One thing I've noticed with the parallel with anorexia (being a fellow sufferer) is that the eating disorder services have completely capitulated to the ideology. Every time I fill something out for them these days I am asked if my gender differs from the one assigned at birth. That they can see the causes of anorexia but not the causes of ROGD blows my mind.

Thanks for the link. She sounds like she's at the end of her tether with the Guardian. I think it's time she got out - it can't be doing her any good and she's such a talented interviewer, I'm sure somewhere else would snap her up pretty quickly.

Well I’ve gone and outed myself on FB as one of those nasty bigoted GC types (apparently) so this is going on there. Someone said to me that anything that impacts on trans people but doesn’t consider their needs is transphobic. If that’s true, then anything that impacts on women but doesn’t consider their needs is misogynistic. But no one seems to give a shit about that so 🤷🏽‍♀️
More power to you, Hadley.

Excellent article, Hadley, thank you.

And well done, samsalmon. Every time someone stands up it helps about half a dozen others do the same.