Another friendship bites the dust

[SapphosRock]

Apparently it has come to some friends' attention that I have radical views and they want nothing more to do with me. I'm now blocked.

This the second time this has happened with people I was close to.

Trying not to mind, but I do mind. We had lots of fun things planned and I'm mourning the loss of the friendships.

What have other people done in this situation?

Everyone else is brainwashed, except you?

And again to mention, many of us on here are parents dealing with the falsehoods spread by people insisting that people be kind and allow others to believe that people can change sex in anyway, shape or form. And that if a girl likes football and Star Wars they must be a boy!

So, there is that as well.

Most for fear of reprisals.

I think that comes into it more than we’d think. They’ve seen the treatment meted out to those who are openly gender critical (particularly in less recent times) and decided that they don’t want that to happen to them.

'GCs'

There are only two sexes.

A woman is an adult female.

Female survivors of male violence should be able to access female only support.

Those kind of radical things.

Thank you for this, I am glad things got better and you have found a support group.

GCs

Yeah… imagine if we called people ‘transes’ … imagine how dehumanising that would be.

There is yet another reason people probably don’t want 1-2-1 discussions with some people. They start from a position of dehumanising others without even starting that 1-2-1 discussion.

Plus ca change

I admire you for letting people know your views in this climate we are living. I had to block a couple of friends who became unbearable woke. Worst of all they are the type of people that needs to be looked as cool. I know very soon they will jump into another trend which I find in your forties really immature. I have real life problems and children so I was glad to block them. I hope you find like minded people very soon.

I'm sorry to hear you're estranged from friends.

I do believe that it's not necessary to make a huge deal out of my views; I'm also afraid. I know three sets of parents whose children are transitioning in some form, in each case to some level of parental and child distress. I'm not going to suggest that I know more about how to live with this issue than they do. I have my own views about what's going on but I know no more about those families than any other family I'm not in. I know a psychologist with specialist knowledge in this area who is much, much more GC than me. I know two adults who have transitioned and I also know their families and have seen the destructive fallout of their decisions. I think in those cases I have to believe that not transitioning would have been destructive in a different way.

I would say - this seems simple, and it's the simple stuff that tends to pull us into the fight. I know that men aren't women and that sex is innate and present at conception. I still find it incredible that anyone attempts to deny this and the immediate obvious consequences. But the rest is complex. The explosion of this issue now, at this time, shows some kind of cultural change or reaction going on that we won't completely understand for some time. It is easy to hurt people at the moment. I don't believe in #bekind but I do believe in listening and thinking many times before speaking.

I hope you can find a way back to your friendships.

If those ‘friends’ want to prioritize defending men’s interests above their own and your right to have an opinion then you haven’t lost anything except the fake friendship of a few handmaidens.

If you feel passionately about something, it's difficult not to be passionate about it, but if you know your views are considered radical and don't fit in with the general view of the people around you, you could maybe think about keeping your passion to be expressed in a safe place with likeminded people. I have people I love very much who I just don't discuss certain things with, and I firmly believe that's okay. My relationship with them is worth it.

Five years ago a lot of my friends thought I was crazy, going on about this being a risk for women, and causing lifelong harm for young girls. Now the majority agree with me. The tide is turning, but slowly.

I did lose some friends and I was very sad about several of them, but ultimately they decided to cut me off for not believing a man can ever be a woman.

It's always the Be Kind lot that do the blocking/shutting down. You don't find the rad fem/GC lot going on friendship culls in the same way

GCs, what do you think is different about your opinion that friends and family drop you for?

Or, to look at it another way, what is it about TRAs and their supporters which makes them ostracise, hound, cancel and unfriend people who have perfectly commonplace, mainstream, legally defensible and scientifically factual views?

How would you know? Who do you think you are?

Sorry about your pal, Sappho. That sucks.

Any thread on this board discussing these things will quickly attract lots of visitors gleefully telling women how awful we are.

We've had years of being vilified, threatened, abused, dismissed, sneered at and arrested ... we're bigots, prudes, pearl clutchers, old biddies who need a shag (Sally Hines), bitter, hysterical, in a moral panic, we're outcasts, out of step, we're old and dying, we're out of touch - is there anything more that could be thrown at us? Oh, we're 'weaponising our abuse', we're mad, daft, shrieking, hateful, etc.

And at this point, does it look like anything other than a desperate attempt to deflect attention from what is actually going on?

Doesn’t sound radical to me. I’m surprised you would want to be friend with people that don’t support female victims.

JunebuginDecember

Gender critical means we are critical of gender. Gender is the system of restrictive, oppressive and regressive sex stereotypes that harms both the sexes. But it specifically works to keep women subservient to men. It is the mechanism of the patriarchy. Feminism is built upon objection to the concept of gender.

Feminists say humans should be free to do, be love, express however they want. Feminists also recognise that women have been oppressed by males for centuries because of our sex. Gender is the means of that oppression.

Non conformity is great. Most of us are at it, especially when we dare say "no" to power and to men. Remember non conformity isn't just the superficial stuff.

Non conforming males claiming that (usually superficial) non conformity makes them actually female does nothing to smash gender stereotypes. It does the opposite. Leading young girls who don't want to be bound by gender stereotypes to believe they must be non binary or a boy.

That's a nice list there, here's another

Predator, groomer, paedophile, AGP, drag queen, freak, female impersonator, mentally ill, clown, danger to women and children, womanface...all of these things said by GCs to trans ppl every day.

Not to mention the lovely things you have to say about trans allies - handmaidens, penis worshippers, gender/sex traitors...

Any explanation to why bullying, misogyny, bigotry and general nastiness and cruelty is okay when it's coming from you and yours?

Don't you people never shut up about trans people and allies being 'snowflakes' and yet here you are throwing toys out of the pram for being called GC 😂

And twist.

Strange that you twisted it to suit whatever it is you thought you achieved with this post.

The term is not ‘The GCs’ or ‘You GCs’ which was the intention of that poster. It is how it was used that is dehumanising. And everyone can see it.

If we dehumanised trans people by calling them the ‘transes’, we probably rightly be deleted.

But crack on with your spot on rhetoric and relevant discussion points about ‘who is better at womaning’, which is clearly pretty misogynistic, on this thread.

Predator, groomer, paedophile, AGP, drag queen, freak, female impersonator, mentally ill, clown, danger to women and children, womanface

Again. A hilarious atrempt to sneak valid terms that are not dehumanising , in with terms that are usually deleted on this thread u less relevant.

Your posts lack coherency.

Some people just are simply not confident enough with there own convictions, to be around those that challange them. And some people don't understand that you CAN have opposing opinions and still love each other.

It's so precious to be able to be friends with people that keep us on our toes and question our own beliefs, and if others don't want to be questioned and challanged to see things from different perspectives then that's just arrogance, and not somebody that I personally would want to be around. It's sad when that's someone you loved, but we have to move on.

I'm sorry OP, It's happened to me a few times but ultimately I've had to learn that those people had no place around me anyway, if they can't respect I have a different way of looking at things. On the other hand my remaining friends all love me for me, and we respect each others differing opinions.

PS. Lots of very well respected scientists, academics and public commentators agree with you..

Ignore them. I'm past caring about those who care so little for women's rights and child safeguarding. As the Mermaids threads clearly demonstrate, there's a huge problem with certain adults "queering childhood" and it's interesting that engineer and bug are gleefully all over this thread but crickets on the safeguarding children threads

Tells you all you need to know.

Sorry? Are you fake? Lacks coherence and logic, and is fake?

Good to know.

@Helleofabore okay I'll bite, in what way was pp 'dehuminizing' with their use of 'GC'. Funny how you didn't see fit to explain that part...

Cos squirrels innit?