Do you talk about being GC in real life?

[Waiting4baby2]

I feel like Im going mad. I am a left leaning person, only ever read bbc and the guardian news. Generally a ‘live and let live’ sort of person who cares about equality.
I was completely in the dark about policy changes which have taken/ are taking place to put gender ID above sex/ the silencing of women and frankly the child abuse that has been taking place through affirmative care.
Now I’ve started properly looking into it I’m completely in shock at how this has been allowed to happen to women’s rights. Im also gobsmacked at the way the guardian and bbc have been so biased in the matter and failing to air any gender critical views.
I feel like now I’m aware of what’s going on I want my friends and family, particularly female members to know. However, it’s such a layered story to get across and when I have gently mentioned anything I basically get ‘well it’s none of my business, it doesn’t affect me how people want to live’ or ‘I don’t know much about it’ but are clearly disapproving. Just a question is it worth bringing some ideas to light for them or will they get there themselves? I’m feeling quite powerless but know how important this is so in a way feel duty bound to air the alternative view. What can I do?!

Same. I’ve zero fucks left to give.

Yeah, do look at the context. Earache believes in fairytales. This is a thread for people who don't. It's utterly pointless posting here, unless you simply want to interrupt or derail the discussion.

There are echoes of it with their constant ‘you aren’t an expert in LGBT issues’ that they do.

But you freely admitted that yourself @Helleofabore, they're only quoting what you said.

Did they go and get their friends to come and back them up? 🙄

But you freely admitted that yourself they're only quoting what you said.

What of it? Are you an expert in feminism, Inthehall? Should 'you' be posting on a feminist board?

It is also an irrelevant point, because most of the posts that I and others end up making these days in relation to hearaches posts don't even require any knowledge about particular topics. They are posts pointing out the bollocks logic that is being used and the dishonesty in the posts they are making.

Oh... and pointing out the hypocrisy and the hate they seem to have for heterosexual people that they have now been deleted for on numerous threads.

Thank you for bringing it up though.

There's also a more recent study which discusses the suicide question for teens, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2046221.

I quote from it

"A recent study of three major youth clinics concluded that suicidality of trans-identifying teens is only somewhat elevated compared to that of youth referred for mental health issues unrelated to gender identity struggles (de Graaf et al., 2020). Another study found that transgender-identifying teens have relatively similar rates of suicidality compared to teens who are gay, lesbian and bisexual (Toomey, Syvertsen, & Shramko, 2018). Depression, eating disorders, autism spectrum conditions, and other mental health conditions commonly found in transgender-identifying youth (Kaltiala-Heino, Bergman, Työläjärvi, & Frisen, 2018; Kozlowska, McClure, et al., 2021; Morandini, Kelly, de Graaf, Carmichael, & Dar-Nimrod, 2021) are all known to independently contribute to the probability of suicide (Biggs, 2022; Simon & VonKorff, 1998; Smith, Zuromski, & Dodd, 2018)."

I’m careful about it but I’ve got more open as I know work colleagues who agree with me. Ironically I’m more comfortable talking to male colleagues than female ones - less socialisation to be kind! I’m pretty careful overall though as I work in NHS England and my work in part relates to some of the things that have changed over the past year so I’m very conscious about approaching things with an open mind.

"Ironically I’m more comfortable talking to male colleagues than female ones".

Not really, women are generally more pro-trans rights than men.

You just lie and lie and say any old shit, don't you? Who do you think is taking you seriously here, Earache?

Nope, women simply tend to be more afraid as they receive a lot more criticism and hatred for daring to speak out against a men’s rights movement

I tend to agree, actually. Among regular people who aren't caught up personally, I find women much more likely to be gung ho, and also more likely to try and take it to another level if you don't toe the line. I'm more careful overall taking a stab at talking about it with women.

I agree that trans rights activism has more support among women than men. Two reasons: women are socialised from birth to #bekind, look after people's feelings and put others first, especially those they perceive as marginalised. Men tend to know exactly what male people are like where women are concerned and are thinking of their mum, wife, daughter when they answer these polls.

"most of the posts that I and others end up making these days in relation to hearaches posts don't even require any knowledge about particular topics."

You post without any knowledge of the subject at hand!? I must say this is very apparent.

I am very, very careful who I speak to. I do have a group of women friends, mainly older feminists and they are all gender critical.
When I was working I would never have posted or talked about my GC views out of fear of professional reprisals. Even now I avoid posting anything on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook because of the potential for personal attacks.

@Hearach15 Do you always quote out of context? The rest of the post read ‘they are posts pointing out the bollocks logic that is being used and the dishonesty in the posts they are making.’

How peculiar? Anyone reading the other threads you are on at the moment will be quite impressed by your lack of self awareness here.

Although, the way you have been getting deleted this week, maybe they will have trouble seeing your posts.

Posters notice that too. Maybe you haven't.

Anyway, back to the substance of this particular post.

Is this just like the other post on the Barclays thread where you have just posted the year a paper was published that has fuck all to do with the actual year the data set was created (that was, you know, mentioned in the first paragraph of the study you posted)?

Is this just a repeat of your post appealing to authority about a study that you have repeatedly been posting that was from a Yale author, who you have insisted was from Harvard?

And you are posting here: 'You post without any knowledge of the subject at hand!? I must say this is very apparent.'

Plus. That post is also not coming back. Isn't it remarkable that at least twice a poster who is banned, has been one of the only posts on the thread that agree with you and you have quoted them?

Do you always quote out of context? The rest of the post read ‘they are posts pointing out the bollocks logic that is being used and the dishonesty in the posts they are making.

yes iris, they do it all the time.

They select one phrase and post a reactive, snide and often totally irrelevant post about it. There is too many times, they haven't even read what they have posted and it has been very clearly wrong or just dishonest - deliberately or not.

However, the live demonstration continues and it actually encourages those who rarely post or have just been reading along to feel they can finally contribute.

It has had such a positive impact on compelling genuine posters to post.

I have an old friend who is a lesbian, and we share some mutual friends.

My lesbian friend has been a vocal feminist since the age of 17. She joined a shouty feminist band, broke gender conformity and had girlfriends and strong friendships with lefty people. She really found her tribe and was often posting interesting articles from feminist perspectives. She was intelligent, no nonsense and seemed to have her head screwed on...

Until about 18 months ago, when she changed her name to a man's name, said she was a boy, added pronouns to everything and set up a GoFundMe for "top surgery". Let's call her X.

I haven't been so close to her for a while, but we share a particular mutual friend, Y, who I love and respect, despite seeing each other very rarely. When we message - which isn't often - it's like no time has passed.

At first I expected Y to be quietly gender critical. I had noticed she hadn't interacted with the "announcement" post and had avoided pronouns. But a few weeks later I noticed she had added pronouns on her pages too. Perhaps in general "solidarity", as she is very much in lefty liberal circles herself? But I was surprised at how sunken I felt inside.

I haven't spoken to Y since, which isn't unusual, as we don't talk often. But there have been times where I have been tempted to ping her a message and ask how she is. But then I realise the topic of X will most definitely come up, and I'll have to commit to saying something. I really don't want to risk the friendship, so I leave it for another day.

The bbc and the guardian are not the left! 😫

Just popped in to write that I am neither "GC" nor a feminist. I am however a realist and discuss all aspects of society with my peers, my colleagues and my family. Just this evening I attended a safeguarding meeting where I raised the issue of girls binding as an example of self harm along with other safeguarding issues such as FGM, CSE etc etc ad infinitum. You do not need a label to discuss reality

Maybe @ToGanymedeAndTitan , you should pop in right here.

Didn't you post this on the last page:

We're trying to police who should or shouldn't be posting on here now?!
What happened to so called free speech 😕
Anyone can post, but only if they agree with me, otherwise down with this sort of thing?; 🙄😁

Now is your chance!

I don't talk about it all that much in real life but I am starting to get braver.

I have two best friends and one of them is quite TWAW and the other has mixed views but doesn't care all that much.

I had an argument with the TWAW one a couple of years ago when JK Rowling's last book came out because I criticised the people saying JK Rowling had written a transphobic book without having even read it and she was of the view that JK Rowling is transphobic but couldn't really articulate why. At the time I decided to leave it rather than risk falling out with her.

Then more recently I was out with both of them together and the other one, who is aware of my views, jokingly referred to me as a "transphobe". I'm sure she was doing it to provoke me into starting a discussion. So a discussion was had. Quite a heated one, from my point of view. But I am pretty sure I made both of them think about some things they hadn't considered before.

So when the one who started the discussion suggested that trans women should be allowed to compete in women's sport provided that their results aren't taken into account, I said, "OK, but what about swimming? Only so many lanes in the pool. Athletics? Only so many lanes on the track. The Olympics? Only a certain number of qualification spots. For every trans woman who is allowed to compete in a women's category, whether they win or not, a female athlete doesn't get to be there." She admitted she hadn't thought of that.

Then when we talked about changing rooms and toilets, the TWAW one said, "I think everyone should be allowed to get changed wherever they feel most safe and comfortable." So I said, "What about women who don't feel safe or comfortable sharing those spaces with male people? Where do they go? Do they not also have a right to feel safe and comfortable, or do only trans people have that right?" She didn't have an answer to that.

I also said more generally that I think gender ideology is misogynistic and anti-feminist, and I don't understand why do many women seem to think it is unproblematic. So then the TWAW got a little upset and said she hoped I didn't think she was misogynistic and anti-feminist, so I said no of course I don't, I think she's coming at this from the point of view that she wants to be kind, as are most people, but that there are many things about this movement/belief system which are extremely unkind to women and girls.

I was pretty scared about having that conversation but I got the feeling that my first friend wanted to force it out into the open. I don't think either of them will be joining the gender critical feminist movement any time soon, but I feel like we had a respectful discussion, I gave them both some food for thought, and we all managed to express our views without falling out over it.

I'm going to leave it well alone now with those particular friends and let it all percolate a bit.

I am very selective who I discuss it with. Never on social media but in real life yes. A few of my friends and I discuss it a fair bit (both male and female). We are all in our late 40s and early 50s. I think the most intense discussions have been with my father aged almost 80 who recently bought Trans by Helen Joyce read it then sent it on to me and rang me up to talk all about it. He is intensely gender critical and has always been a feminist.

He also closely followed the Maya Forstater case and we had many discussions about that. He was ill during alot of Allison Bailey's case and so received the edited highlihgts from me (including about the support dog).

I suspect there must be whole groups of GC people in meetings all afraid to come out as GC. When if they did they would find everyone else agrees with them.