Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time?

[JaneorEleven]

Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time? If I was SO wrong on those that are GC, what else have I been wrong on?

All my life I’ve been solidly left leaning, and pretty much agreed with most points on the left. I’ve described myself as an old fashioned socialist, love the idea of the NHS, a safety net for lower income people and unemployed, social and economic equality, disability rights, rights for women all tied up with feminism including being pro-choice, LGB and the TQ etc rights, you name it, I supported it.

I had previously been very sympathetic to Trans issues, and had a friend who transitioned, and I supported this person as best I could. But after some time of researching and I guess educating myself for lack of a better expression, I did a complete uturn on this, and found myself agreeing with many wise GC women. It was a bell I couldn’t unring. And Mumsnet played a large part in this.

I’m British now living in the US, and find myself busy Terfing USA. I’ve listened to NPR for years, nodding along, but now almost daily, they have a segment that infuriates me with regards to Trans issues. Could be anything from “trans kids” not getting their meds, to prisons, to bathrooms, schools, and they support it all. Female reporters who I held in high esteem, interviewing and fawning over transwomen, platforming them and letting them hold court without challenging them.

These past few weeks, I’ve started to question myself. How could I have been so wrong on this? I thought GC peeps, or Terfs, were full of hate and lacked patience and understanding.

Which leads me to ask, on what else have I been so badly wrong? Anyone else think like this? Now I don’t think I’m a closet right winger, but is it possible I’ve allowed the left to lead me up the garden path on other issues too?

Oh yes, I think about this too. Its definitely made me examine my own thought processes and beliefs more closely, but I think its a good thing, even if it's hard.
I look back and I see a lot of naivete on my part, even if it was well-intentioned.
It's all very "goodies vs baddies' which is pretty ridiculous because people and issues can be complex, especially when it comes to sex and gender.
But after a lot of soul searching, I've realised that my underlying values haven't changed at all.
As we keep hearing over and over, "I didn't leave the left, it left me".
I'm still as left wing as I ever was, but it's what I believed it was to be left wing, not necessarily what it's become.
I've also always believed it's important to stand up when you see injustice, and that includes when it's coming from your own 'side', and thats what's being tested here and one of the reasons it's so hard.
To quote JKR in HP, “There are all kinds of courage," said Dumbledore, smiling. "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
I'm sure I must be wrong about other things. I'm not so arrogant to believe I'm the only person in the world who is always right about everything, but so far, this is the only issue I've done a complete u-turn on.
That's because it's based on overwhelming evidence that there's a serious problem. That's the reason I changed my mind and so many other women.
Ultimately, it's a lot more healthy, recognising we can sometimes get things very wrong and being a little more cautious about what we take at face value.

Nothing else except that I don't trust universities to be the bastions of rigour I once thought they were.

I suppose now pay attention to different news outlets / papers but that only proves this is the only issue I that the left have fucked up on.

I never had strong feelings about trans simply because I understood it to be v much around stereotypes and social issues; that's what had to change not the individual. I suppose I was wrong about that as it appears to be linked to fetish etc via agp.

My change of heart hasn't caused me to question everything, but I suppose I've started to try more to understand why people think what they do. In the UK we've had a tough time with Brexit divisions over the past few years and there are some similarities I think - a binary decision about a complex issue that people took an ideological stance on because it was too big for most of us to comprehend.

I know 2 trans women and they are both perfectly nice people who have clearly gone through the mill. My instinct is to "protect" those individuals and support them if I can, and even though it's a mental juggle to not use their old names or pronouns I mostly manage. I never thought TWAW, and they never spoke in those terms either.

But there's a world of difference between caring for an individual and establishing rules for all. Women have fought hard for sex based rights, and for those to be eroded before we've really had chance to get the benefit another avenue (trans rights) are being used to knock us back down. That, combined with the appealing state mental health care is in and all the difficulties kids face growing up means there's a huge risk of trans being sold as a panacea to kids (esp. girls) finding it hard to grow up.

In summary, it's healthy to question things. Down with no debate!

For me it was the news black out in left leaning press on attacks in Cologne. Then Rotherham. Then the trans debate. I woke (ha) up to the fact that “the left” were not automatically on the side of the angels and would merrily throw women under the bus to prioritise other minority groups.

Embarrassed about my previous black and white student politics type views. Sadly my very intelligent family are still where I was and I find it frustrating seeing them assume that the Guardian is a trusted news source labour the “goodies” and trans the most oppressed group ever.

It did make me reflect, I’m centerist (probably centre right if I’m being completely honest) so have sometimes not been on the “right” side so I’m used to having views that aren’t always popular or automatically peg me as a “terrible person”. So I’m more used to defending a position than attacking someone elses. I think it must be harder if you felt you were always aligned with a certain worldview and find you are no longer included or welcomed by that group. I think this has definitely exposed a lack of ability to debate properly in modern society and an inability to listen to views and refute with actual argument.

I really didn’t understand what the fuss was about though. What I thought I was looking at was a marginalised community who faced immense prejudice so the obvious conclusion was that they needed everyones support and inclusion. My idea or who that person was was a fully transitioned person trying to pass through life without bothering anyone or having anyone bothering them but knew that they were male but trying to make life more liveable for themselves as best they could. I am still live and let live on transition for older people who have a diagnosis and who have had therapy. It was the rape crisis centres which tipped me over the edge tbh and the big lie at the center of what a woman is and the consequences of that. The narcissism the lack of interest in safeguarding the need for using women as props for validation etc etc.

I thought mumsnet feminism section had gone mad for a bit, till I read and understood. The problem is when you reach moral outrage and just stop there instead of asking “why do you think that then” and actually listen to the answer. i mean properly listen, not listen with your mind on how you are going to refute what is being said to you.

I’m sure I will change my view on another topic at some point and I think thats a good thing. I’m not always right, my instincts can be wrong and think the experience has given me a bit more humility about what I think I understand.

Thank you @JaneorEleven and @TheGreatATuin . I know it’s not always easy for people to admit they’ve changed their minds. This is exactly the problem with #nodebate. If the arguments are never allowed to play in public, then how are people supposed to understand any issue properly? It is a travesty that universities in particular have allowed themselves to be led down this alley. They are supposed to teach critical thinking skills, why are they so afraid to apply them?

It is unsettling, because it's been framed as a left v right issue. It does make me see my own politics differently, though not very differently. I've come to understand much more clearly the difference between being a Liberal Democrat and a social democrat - I'd put myself in the latter group.

That's important to me because I vote tactically so I do vote Lib Dem in my constituency to avoid a Tory MP. But liberalism's worship of the individual without enough consideration of the context leads to really odd conclusions, like completely ignoring the influence of a cultural environment on human beings. Anyone who denies the influence of social contagion on children 'questioning gender' is just not credible. Why not make a positive case for the culture changing and that's why it's happening? Because it's really not possible to make a positive case for such a rise in children and adults in such distress. In my own case I think the distress is real and the gender issue is the cultural lens the distress is seen through. But liberalism says the cultural influence is minimal compared to the solid reality of the individual viewpoint.

I’m sure there may be some more minor things, but I genuinely think transactivism is a very unusual phenomenon in its depth and scope and the sheer level to which it has captured influential institutions and undermined sanity. I believe we are living through a mass psychosis event that has been magnified by technological advances and has also been intensified by a change in the practice of medicine in the influential US, where medicine is no longer focussed clearly on making people better, but instead on monetising illness, which gives an incentive to manufacture conditions that don’t really exist and grossly exaggerate the need for treatment in some that do.

It has been said before that transactivism has employed techniques more commonly used by predatory companies that are planning hostile takeovers. That shouldn’t be surprising as some of those driving it are super-rich men from the US, who want to establish their fetish as publically acceptable. For those of us who initially supported this, and suddenly noticed the quite astonishing reach and wondered how it had happened so fast, it didn’t. There have been years of behind the scenes manoeuvering, manipulation of politicians and political parties and a good degree of quietly inserting supporters in key positions. If it feels overwhelming, that’s because it is and deliberately so. There is some evidence of the techniques used and the fact that this is no accident, in the Denton’s document and if you read some of the statements and interviews given by older campaigners such as C. Burns, who are openly proud of how much they achieved under the radar.

So I guess you could ask whether there are any other political groups who have seen this phenomenon and are involved in the same process, but I suspect there are not, or at least not to anything like the same extent. I think this will culminate in a medical scandal bigger than that of lobotomy and might, if properly exposed rather than buried by the powers that be (who have an interest in doing so) come to be seen as the same kind of insanity that galvanised witch hunts round the world in the 14-1700 period. That unfolded much more slowly, but was probably a similar type of phenomenon. I guess you could say people believed other non-factual things at the same time, but none that were so destructive and thus remembered as similarly significant.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories in any form.

What I do think is that really determined people in politics can get a surprisingly long way with ideas that appear unworkable if they are willing to do a lot of grunt work. Sometimes that does force a change in an entire perspective (abolition of the death penalty springs to mind).

Im not sure this one is going to fly permanently in the same way. And yet. A big moment for me was discovering that there is a Stonewall transwoman on the user group set up by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I simply cannot imagine a more gratuitous insult to women than that. But nobody at the Royal College had the presence of mind to question this? I've no doubt the person in question is hardworking, collaborative, a terrific team member and 'just wants to get on with her life'. But she's there for a reason; to shift hearts, minds and policy. And it's working.

The other big lie of our time is that left leaning people are compassionate and idealistic, and people who vote conservative are either stupid or selfish bigots.

I'm shocked by the hate expressed towards Tory politicians and voters by people who should know better.

I'm a floating voter. Brought up in a conservative household to believe labour voters and politicians were shouty, ranting idiots who don't understand economics.
Met my first sensible labour voter in my first job so has to change my mindset sharpish.
Now surrounded by mainly left leaning folk.

The whole 'Tory scum' narrative is self defeating. We can't actually discuss politics and policies while finger pointing and screeching.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories in any form.

Are you suggesting that the techniques I outlined in my post are one? The extent of the spread of this ideology and the level of regulatory capture indicates that something very unusual is happening here.

Fascinating comments - thank you.
PriOn1 - that's chilling. I'd like to think the groups and individuals behind this will one day face the consequences for the carnage they've caused along, with all the culpable institutions who set aside safeguarding and women's rights in favour of the demands of this ideology.

There's nothing inherently left wing about gender ideology. It's very individualistic, and the links to big pharma are now obvious. It is well known that "pink for girls blue for boys" was pushed for marketing purposes, the idea of multiple genders has the potential to sell people even more. To believe in gender ID is to ignore the centuries of oppression to the class "women".

Brexit is a similar example. Although I'm firmly against it, I have to concede that those who voted leave were not all racist bigots. It was not a left /right split. However they were lied too. Currently, people are being lied to about gender identity being innate, false suicide stats, transwomen having genital surgery etc.

I am sceptical of everything now. I no longer believe in the inherent goodness of left wing people, despite my politics being probably further to the left than many in the Labour Party. I no longer think all Tories are scum, I recognise that I just deeply disagree with their economic policies.

I've also lost faith in bastions of Britishness which have been huge parts of my life for various reasons - the BBC, the NHS, and the state education system. I certainly don't want them privatised but I am let down beyond belief by their decision to champion unscientific dogma that is harmful to women and children.

I realise that the patriarchy runs even deeper than I ever suspected.

I really don't. I've always been left leaning - this is the only issue I side with 'the right' on, and it worries me! I continually doubt myself and especially feel I can't be open about the issue, because in everyone else's view it aligns me with racists, xenophobes, and people who throw doll parts at abortion clinics.

I do not believe Trans ideology is a left wing value even though many of the left wing us captured.

I think equal rights is a left wing value, but that si something that we no longer have when we say that anyone who says they are a woman are a woman and can use all single sex spaces.

So I don't see this a left or right wing issue.

In my opinion, a solution needs to be found that respects trans people (but need a better clarification of what is trans) but does not remove female singe sex spaces.

I agree with others in that its moved me out of the goodies v baddies kind of mentality I was in before. I recognise there will be areas of shared views and that doesn't mean I'm suddenly right wing just that in reality for many of us there is more we can agree on then not. It also made me see very clearly the entrenched misogyny in the left, which I almost find even more repellent than in more extreme right wing ideology because at least they wear theirs on their sleeve rather thank masking it behind their wokey beards!
I still find it oddly fascinating that as a strongly left leaning social work type I can be seen as some right wing bigot because I don't want men in women's prisons.

Spot on for me too, FunnyTalks and Benjamin.

Yes I've changed my views on many things over the years and I presume I'll continue to until I die.
What's the alternative? Discover you are finally right about everything? How would you know?

I used to be very left wing, I believed it was the moral position as it tried to help people.

Over the past 5 years I've become more 'right wing' I guess because I now see the left engaging in elitist identity politics (Brexit, Rotherham, Trans, BLM etc) which is based around an oppressor/ oppressed narrative that I think is is too simplistic and results in dangerous divisive societies.

I've come to view feminism with The Patriarchy as the oppressor as the explanation for everything, as a phenomenon of this so I no longer call myself a feminist.

I've looked more into economics and have moved to realising capitalism has been the thing which has got the world out of poverty and that many of the left approaches look like kind redistribution in the short term but will keep more people trapped in poverty long term.

I've basically realised that what looks kind on the surface is not necessarily so.

I even try to continue to question myself about my position now on Trans as I feel uncomfortable at times with the certainess of my view. And wonder if in years to come I'll move on this.
But at the moment it seems so obviously a lie based around #BeKind that requires us all to lie and is harming children and women, I can't find where the flaw in my thinking is.
Doesn't mean there isn't one though.

I just wanted to say thank you to the contributors on this thread. This is why I left Twitter. Intelligent, thoughtful discussion. And I genuinely think the tide is now turning on this issue, largely due to the courage and resilience of women telling the emperor that he has no clothes.

I'm also very leftist and American.

I didn't used to care so much, but it's reached epic proportions. It's not just about them being included, like the annoying weird kid that keeps following you around and clambering for your attention and validation, it's now about taking away our rights.

It's about supremacy. I mean, we can't even call ourselves or be called women anymore. We're now walking wombs and vaginas. "Birthing people". "People with internal reproductive organs".

That's all we get to be. Men have found yet another way to erase us and reduce our rights. By putting on a dress and usurping our gender and sex. Then crying victim.

Enough is enough. I just want to be left alone.

And don't get me started on the "woke" community. For all how they like to rag on conservatives for being toxic and easily offended, the wokes do the exact same shit but for different things.

Someone came up with a pink pussy hat, so it's racist bc it's one color that's not everyone's color, and it's transphobic bc trans "women" don't have vaginas.

They're constantly offended at every damn thing, looking for things to get offended about, and attacking each other for never saying or doing things perfectly enough. A big contest to be the most performative woke person ever.

They spend more time infighting over the dumbest shit then they do fighting racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc.

Someone made a pussy hat and made it pink, and she's worse than Hitler bc of it.

(The (dated) hat issue is one of many such issues. Just one I went with my reply.)

There was a story a while back, I genuinely can't remember when, about asylum seekers pretending to be younger than they were so they could claim status as unaccompanied children. And there were people on the left insisting that these blokes - who were quite clearly in their 20s - just looked old because they had been through the horrors of war. It was blackly funny in a way. You can be sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers (as I am) while recognising that of course people lie for personal advantage. Being an asylum seeker doesn't make you a saint.

Oh, and for such a small population of transwomen, there's a hell of a lot of convicted pedos and other convicted sex and violent offenders in their ranks.

But the left fawns over them, and looks the other way.

I think the context of gay rights and shifts against racism was an important here. Lots of people, especially on the left, felt more should have been done more quickly, and didn’t want to be ‘on the wrong side of history’ again. I don’t think it’s a surprise in retrospect that trans has been force teamed with LGB. In fact, I seem to remember a lot of black transwomen being active as part of BLM, and some of the initial messaging of BLM was in line with queer theory. I wonder if there was some force teaming there too, it’s just not really had the traction that the rainbow unicorn has managed?

I hope that some of you who have possibly bought into the absolute demonisation of Israel as the world's only Jewish country, and accepted the Guardian narrative without question, might also apply something similar to that.

Wow. Best thread I have read for a while. There are others out there who are scratching the surface and thinking the exact same as I am.