Please can someone explain like I’m 5

[Justdontgetit000]

I’ve name changed for this.

I feel very weird about the trans issues lately, something feels “off” but I can’t put it into words. I’m pretty left wing, very pro-choice, I consider myself a feminist.

I “hang around” online with others who have similar beliefs to me mostly, they are the ones I find myself agreeing with and wanting to defend. So I feel like I know where I am with most topics. Then on a forum I lurk on, someone got banned for saying they don’t want to be referred to as body parts. The person who started the thread (who is also a mod) said that when discussing Roe v Wade we can’t just say “women” we also need to say AFAB or “womb/uterus owners”. If we don’t our posts will be removed. I don’t post on there anyway so doesn’t affect me, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

I can’t articulate why, I feel like I’m in a place mentally where I SHOULD be fine with this because of all my other beliefs. Does that make sense? Yet I felt angry reading this. I don’t want to be offending people simply for using the word “women”. Then I feel guilty and like I’m transphobic?

I want to say I have no issues with any trans people, in that I’d have nothing but love and support for a friend for example who was trans, and would never ever be rude to or abusive towards trans people. Yet I get the feeling my mixed emotions towards all this would get me called a TERF. I know what that stands for but don’t really understand the term, I know a little of JK Rowling and her situation and I read that she got some awful messages after her controversial tweets, and that scares me. So I’d only talk about this anonymously.

Can anyone help me figure out, in a very basic way, what is happening in my mind and perhaps point me in a direction where I can learn more? I’ve tried to look for threads like FAQs about this issue but can’t find any.

Thanks for reading!

Sorry for my typos and mistakes once again!
after that huge and over the top revamp, they couldn’t have just added an edit button?

I feel like I just had another lightbulb moment. I came across this video tonight:

Its only 2 minutes long, and even if you don’t want to watch it, this is the question I’m left with which I’d love to hear opinions on from anyone!

Are big companies that are run by patriarchal men, using the trans movement and using trans women to further their agenda and make rape culture even more prevalent in society? I hope I’ve worded that properly.

And another one, which is related to how trans activists are demanding that everyone else bends to their viewpoints and are demanding access to women’s spaces.

What if furries announced that they were in fact the animal they dress up as and identify as? A wolf furry for example likes to wear his wolf costume and really feels like a wolf. He then decides biological wolves are to be known as cis-wolves, and we can’t talk about them unless we also address either wolves or furry-wolves. And he says that because he feels like and identifies as a wolf, he actually is one.

Over time, he feels that he’s entitled to veterinary medical treatment - he is after all a REAL wolf. So he starts demanding appointments at the local vets instead of the GP, and it doesn’t matter if the “cis-wolves” are frightened or intimidated by him, because we must be inclusive. Eventually, he paves the way for other furries to be brave enough to claim their identity as real cats, real badgers, real foxes, real hedgehogs, and they all demand and expect vet appointments too, until the real animals are like a second class of species inside the clinic.

Ok maybe this is a really bad comparison, but it’s just an analogy I came up with while I was thinking about all this. I know it doesn’t fit perfectly but maybe there’s a few parallels?

It would certainly make it easier to conserve endangered species. You could even bring some back from extinction, trans dodos are dodos

Yes!! Haha! Why have I got an image of trans dodos in my head now, all going on rallies and marches?! 😂

Dinosaurs too, could have an attempt at making Jurassic Park…

"Clever girl..?"

😅 When I started this thread, I did not expect that a few days later we’d be posting about the iconic “Clever Girl” scene in relation to this topic!

What a time to be alive!

These threads can go off in all sorts of directions (I'd hate to have to do a flow chart for one of them). I've not really kept up with your thread, there are far better posters than me who can explain all this.

Dinosaurs and GC, go back to some labour MP, who referred to GC feminists as 'rights hoarding dinosaurs', I forget who it was. Obviously, women at the time took the ball and ran with it. Dinosaurs started popping up all over twitter. There are YouTube videos of dinosaur clad people protesting and stickering. But because women aren't allowed to have anything just to ourselves, tras started putting dinosaurs on their twitter handles as well. I've not seen a tra dressed as a dinosaur yet.

I rarely contribute much of value but I think this site and Glinner saved my sanity. There's a lot of humour here, some sadness and the odd bit of nastiness but MN seems to keep things fairly civil. It can be very ribald. MN FWR is the only social media thingy I bother with, so I don't know if it's typical of the genre.

I hope I see you around on the boards. Or just lurk, that's good too. You started a really good thread and I will have a proper read of it. If you now consider yourself GC, welcome and don't lose heart.

BTW, thanks, 'ribald' is word I so rarely get to use.

It was David Lammy.

This is one of the contemporaneous threads, so anyone who wasn't there for the Lammy Moment can catch up.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4360373-Rights-hoarding-dinosaurs-according-to-David-Lammy

My favorite is when they compare GC women to QAnon supporters and accuse us of "being radicalized by right-wing internet forums." It's hilarious because THEY'RE the ones who've been radicalized. THEY'RE the ones who have adopted radical beliefs, like that humans can change sex, and that some women have penises, and that there's no such thing as "female biology," and that women's instinctive fear of strange men is irrational and bigoted, a flaw to be corrected rather than a survival mechanism that all little girls start learning the day they grow breasts and the men start leering.

It's a classic example of projection (either that or they're deliberately using the tactic of "accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"). Either way, they are the ones who've been radicalized, not us.

My beliefs have not changed. Not one bit. I have never believed that humans can change sex, or that female biology doesn't exist, or that women's instinctive fear of men is irrational or bigoted. How could I have been radicalized into disbelieving these things, when I never believed them in the first place?

She can go almost anywhere else to get the TRA perspective. It's everywhere. "Trans women are women" is not just the dominant narrative, it is the ONLY narrative the left will permit right now. Mumsnet is one of the precious few places where GC women can speak openly against the TRA narrative, which is probably why she chose this forum to post her questions/concerns. She'd be banned from pretty much every other forum for voicing such "wrongthink."

YouSetTheTone - I've not considered that before, but you're right. Very sobering and yes, sad.

Wow thanks for this explanation, I actually didn’t know any of this about the dinosaur comment or the memes from it. I mentioned Jurassic Park a few posts ago as a throwaway comment but didn’t realise dinosaurs was an actual “thing” in this debate, so that’s really interesting!

You’re right this board seems brilliant, and I’m glad you’ve found it sanity saving, I know exactly what you mean.

Will definitely stick around! And I’ve never heard of the word ribald, so I’m glad you did use it as I’ve learned a new one! 😁

@Vagablond you make a really vital point here, in fact I think your post is so incredibly important in this topic. I went on Twitter a couple of days ago and saw a tweet from someone who said exactly what you’re talking about. It said something like:

”When are people going to realise that right ring fascists are using transphobia to convert left wing women?” And then others saying similar stuff that you mentioned, like that they are apparently converting women to believe trans women aren’t real women etc.

You’re so right that it’s the other way round!! We got somehow sucked into this mindset that biology can be changed and to think otherwise is transphobic, rebellious, narrow minded, ignorant, bigoted insert a hundred other derogatory adjectives

And now if we simply state the reality we always knew to be correct, it means we’ve been targeted by some sinister right wing movement who now wants to convert us to all their flat Earth type beliefs.

So Yes basically your post is incredibly well said! 👏

This is so correct, I chose mumsnet to talk about this because there isn’t really anywhere else. Any other platform results in being either shunned, deleted or banned and I knew from the few posts I’ve read on here that the GC women know what they’re talking about.

And I’ve also tried to make a conscious effort to learn more about trans people too, and gender dysphoria, plus autogynephilia. I’ve definitely tried to understand all different sides of this issue.

Side note: It seems from the research I’ve done, that a lot of trans women say with absolute certainty that autogynephilia does not exist. I’ve read some examples of men reaching out for help in dealing with a sexual desire to be a woman and mentioning that they might have this condition, and the responses I’ve seen are that it’s a load of crap, doesn’t exist, and that the man just needs to transition because he’s a woman inside.

It worries me that young men (actually any age men and boys) are seeking advice about their sexual fetish and being told point blank that the only way to move forward is to think of themselves as a woman and that there’s no other possible narrative.

This is a problem that eminates from the left in that it makes you feel guilty for others being offended. This is wrong. We should be causing offence. Productive dialogue about any sensitive issue will always cause offence to SOMEONE.

OP Trans by Helen Joyce is 99p today (13th) as an ebook on Amazon.

@Adelishious YES you are spot on with this. People on the left are generally more afraid of being labelled as any kind of “phobe” so if they express an opinion and someone comes back with “You’re sounding like a transphobe now”, it’s often enough to make us back down and feel extremely guilty.

You’re absolutely right that being offended in sometimes necessary. And actually isn’t that big of a deal if we don’t base our whole lives around expecting others not to offend us.

Really? Oh brilliant thank you so much for letting me know!! Going to buy now 😍

@IcakethereforeIam I’m being really dense and can only find the actual book version of it, do you maybe have a link to the ebook?

Exactly. Nobody should expect to go through life never being offended by anything, it's completely unrealistic.

Ideally people should not be trying to cause offence, however throwing accusations of transphobia and bigotry to women who simply assert reality and boundaries is such overreach - we've gotten to a point where disagreement is reframed as hatred, which is total nonsense.

It's not my or anyone else's job in life to validate a person's self image, particularly to my own detriment.

It's in prime day deals I'll try to post a link but I'm on my phone and it's shite

www.amazon.co.uk/Trans-When-Ideology-Meets-Reality-ebook/dp/B08XQZYT5R/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=L1UTIH8BH1JZ&keywords=trans&qid=1657718087&s=digital-text&sprefix=trans%2Caps%2C467&sr=1-3

And I'm out of char

Oh no!! It’s ok got it, thank you so much 😘

Are big companies that are run by patriarchal men, using the trans movement and using trans women to further their agenda and make rape culture even more prevalent in society? I hope I’ve worded that properly.

No they aren't, they just don't care that much. As the comedian said in the clip, they don't want to spend the resources, and anyway it doesn't win them brownie points with their customers. Because it's only boring old cunty women wanting to be safe.