Anyone else just sad at how it has gotten to this?

[Roseglen84]

This type of thread has probably been done to death, but I'm just really down today and wondering if anyone can relate.

In the last few days there have been two horrific murders of men in Ireland (where I am) and the police believe they were homophobic attacks. A man has been arrested and it's been headline news here. Yesterday they were talking about it on radio and some people from the LGBT community were asked about it, and they were obviously very upset. However they kept referring to the trans issue, one man repeatedly stated that he had 'seen this type of thing coming because of what is happening in the UK with trans people'. He mentioned it several times, as though they were somehow related.

I just couldn't believe it - how can he think that was a result of the debate that is happening in the UK. Women wanting to keep single sex spaces is not why these men were killed. It just made me angry at first that he was somehow correlating the two things. Women wanting to keep our spaces is not the same as homophobic murders!

Then I just felt so sad - sad that this young man seemed to genuinely believe that women like me and others on MN really want to do him harm. That somehow we hate him and see him as an enemy or something, I got the sense he seriously thought that his community was under attack from all sides and we were part of that. I just can't understand how we got to this point where young people believe that. And they do!

I went for dinner with one of my oldest friends last night, who is a gay man, and I didn't mention any of it. I'm so afraid he will think that I hate him or have turned into some homophobic loon because I support single sex spaces for women. I can't even be honest with him because I don't want to lose the friendship.

I dunno, this probably doesn't make much sense but I've just carried it around since yesterday. How did we become the enemy for wanting to keep men out of single sex spaces?

No, it infuriates me. Women wanting reality to matter has NOTHING to do with males murdering other males because they don’t like that they’re gay. Even if it did, we would still have the right to retain our grip on reality. But it doesn’t, and anyone pretending to think it does is a fool.

Yes is it depressing when it hits you that yes, women really are blamed for everything. If it wasn't us, it would have been another group of women blamed for this.

I agree with you completely OP and was thinking through similar things recently.

Does it seriously not occur to TRAs that campaigning against male violence is what they need to do. That's the answer.

It's completely ridiculous. Men are not horrifically murdering other men because women want fairness in sport or to undress in the privacy of single sex spaces.

They blame women because we always somehow get the blame for the actions of men. Partly I suspect because it's easier than acknowledging or tackling the actual issue which is violent men and in this particular case religious extremism I assume.

Also if they open up conversations about dangerous men then they're halfway to admitting why women have an issue about our spaces. Can't be having that so let's just say it's all the fault of women wanting to preserve what is ours.

The lesbian woman and several of the gay men I know are desperate to untangle their community and it’s aims and campaigns from the T.

It seems impossible to mention woman’s rights or homophobia without someone bringing trans people into it and trying to make them the focus.

It’s just sexism. JK Rowling had lunch, 10,000 miles away a butterfly beat its wings, someone was murdered and it’s her fault.

Women talking in civil and legal ways about their political rights are not responsible for the actions of psychopaths.

That young man could have read up for himself what we are actually saying rather than what 'his side' is lying to him about what we are saying.
That young man is displaying blatant misogyny by blaming women for the murders committed by man.

Blaming a group in society for violent crimes they don't commit is actually a real life example of hate-based prejudice.

We say men, as a population, (however they identify) are a risk to women because the evidence is very clear this is the case.
Clearly women are not responsible for crimes committed by men and that is why what young man was saying is a genuinely 'hate based' opinion.

It makes me sad that people are so tribal and so uninterested in critical thought, reasoning or justice, that they can actually say the things that young man did. But that young man is responsible for that himself. He doesn't need to be so uncritically tribal in his opinions.

There is no class, there are no standards, anything at all is game for appropriation and being made use of. Other people's tragedies are useful fodder to further personal agendas.

Keep calling the behaviour out and naming it; the general public and press are slowly starting to wise up.

How is a man murdering two gay men the fault of women?

Even when trans women are murdered they are murdered by other men. No one can dare blame women when thjs is all down to MALE on MALE violence.

Sorry.. this is not for women to solve. Men need to get their act together and stop killing one another.

Women are allowed to have single sex spaces and us speaking out and fighting for our rights is in no way the cause of men murdering gay men or trans identifying men. That’s not our fault.

I think the problem is that there genuinely is a lot of hate and I'd say even eliminationist thinking in this debate. See this article which is posted on another thread loreleihatpin.substack.com/p/autogynephilia?s=r

It's become impossible for many people to consciously acknowledge the dynamic described in that link, thanks to a longrunning propaganda campaign. But unconsciously everyone knows this level of hatred, aggression and dehumanisation is present, and knows it is the force driving this "debate."

So it's projected onto women because men's psychological issues are always projected onto women, especially where male violence and its root causes cannot be openly and freely discussed. Hence all the rhetoric about litteral violence, murder, Nazism, etc.

The worst thing, this will have to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

In American prisons, vulnerable women are being raped, assaulted and impregnated, and the men keep coming. It will take dead women (note the plural) to make this stop.

In America and increasingly here, children and young people are having their bodies brutalised by unscrupulous doctors. It will take many law suits to see these grifters off.

We will need to support many more legal cases, to ensure womens rights are properly enshrined in law, before employers get the message.

There are many more casualties to come.

It hasnt 'come to this'. Men have always blamed women for the dreadful things they do.

Maybe you're shocked when young men are behaving with the same misogyny older men do?

This is one of the reasons why TRAs want you to mix up LGB issues with TQ+ issues even though they are completely separate.

There is no upside to grouping them together for LGB people.
It is only of benefit to TQ+ people.

Thanks, I understand what you're all getting at. I suppose sad is probably the wrong way to feel - I do feel anger also, but just frustration as well that it is being dragged into everything, and presented as us being the unreasonable ones. The mindfuck is ridiculous!

I was listening and it just was like a kick in the stomach - this was NOT the same as women fighting for our spaces, why the hell would he bring it up!!

Anyway, thanks for making me feel a bit more sane.

@ZuttZeVootEeeVo

It hasnt 'come to this'. Men have always blamed women for the dreadful things they do.

Maybe you're shocked when young men are behaving with the same misogyny older men do?

Maybe this is true, the guy did sound young. And he just seemed like he was fed a line a line and just parroted it, i dunno.

And of course, it is actually about male violence, which we are also trying to prevent. But it's not looked upon like that. So frustrating!

That's an extremely interesting article posted by @Absurdle - thanks for posting. At the end there's a link to the entire book to download for free - which I have just done.

First rule of misogyny, innit:

1. Women are responsible for what men do.

Can you contact the radio station and make the point to them that you have made here? It may not do anything but it can’t hurt to at least point it out and ask that someone put that straight. I appreciate that the views of listeners calling in are not those of the station itself but If they are letting that rhetoric go unchallenged then they are in a way condoning the blaming of women for the actions of violent men.

That article with the book extracts is so disturbing. How can we get this information out more? If people really understood what is behind this they would not be campaigning for it.

Roy I have texted in before to the station when Helen Joyce was interviewed months ago and when other related stories came up, however my texts were never read.

The thing is, the whole segment was about homophobia and how it is abhorrent etc. (which I agree with), so it feels a bit shit to contradict anything that he said, as he is presented as a victim. How do you question someone in that situation without coming off as an asshole? Even though I know that what he said is bullshit.

Also, the Irish media is far into TWAW that any dissent is just taken as bigotry. JK was casually called a transphobe on that station a few months ago and none of the presenters batted an eyelid.

I dunno it's just frustrating.

It has got to this because discussion has been under the radar for so long, and oridinary people have not allowed their voices to be heard in discussion, debate, support and dissent. The silencing tactic is what has got us here. The only way through it is for more and more women to stand up and speak up. The GC viewpoint is not hateful, it is simply live in your body, the way you want, and get on with your life, the way you want. Own your sex, then live however you want. This is the message, it needs getting out there and it needs getting out there fast and to as many young people as possible. More adults need to start adulting.

How can we get this information out more? If people really understood what is behind this they would not be campaigning for it.

I keep thinking about this. People tend to project all the hatred onto the woman speaking up about it. The extreme, abusive misogyny is enabled by widespread background-radiation misogyny.

By the way the thread about that article is currently running here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4530444-article-on-agp-by-lorelei , I didn't mean to derail this thread by posting it, but it seems relevant because the dynamic the OP describes is pure projection.

Its probable that the killer was also a gay man. How the fuck can a gay man killing orher gay men be the fault of women.

For me, it’s linked by group psychology. I expect that LGB people will be dragged in to it, we already are. It’s precisely why many LGBs don’t want to be linked to QTs anymore, alongside the fact that many of us are GC.

There is a distinct minority making the majority very uncomfortable, promoting acceptance of things - like males in female spaces - that we’re not going to accept long term . So full-on backlash is coming… slowly, but it is coming. As another poster mentioned, I believe it’s going to get much worse before it gets better, and it’ll be women getting the brunt.

Then the full backlash - when the floodgates open, there will be a spike in homophobic hate crimes. Because the kind of male given to going out and murdering another person isn’t typically educated or intelligent enough to distinguish which type of ‘queer’ their victim is.

@terryleather

First rule of misogyny, innit:

1. Women are responsible for what men do.

Agreed, it's an everyday occurrence of The Rules of Misogyny.

One frabjulous day, men will be accountable for their own behaviour or consider the radical notion that they occasionally are responsible for the behavioral choices of their own sex class.

When women have lunch in London, horrible murders happen in Ireland. That's how it goes. Like the chaos theory, women not staying silent causes chaos. And the hatred of transgender people is now identical to certain women not shutting up as they should.

The real hatred of transgender people, the kind which causes them to be physically assaulted or harassed in the streets is of very little interest to some trans activists, except when they argue that those events were actually caused by some women somewhere not being silent as women are supposed to be.

I know that these awful murders were of gay men, not of transgender people, but the contagious effects of women speaking are now spreading and slowly causing more and more people to be killed. smh