Will we die out?

[MsRosley]

Saw someone tweeting last night that any rally in support of women's rights is a 'sea of grey' and that opposition to trans rights would die out with the older generation. Given that all the terfs I know are older women, is he right? I'm trying to marshall the counter arguments in my head.

Sadly in ten years or so I think we’ll be seeing the horrible affects of cross-sex hormones and gender surgeries have had. I think cancers and long term complications will increase significantly. If you look at the East German women who were dosed with testosterone for the Olympics, it’s not a good long term prognosis.

Also the kids who have gone through medical transition will be at the age where their peers are getting married/ having long term relationships and having children and the reality of what they’ve given up will hit -if it hasn’t already. I’m not saying everyone should have or should want to have children, but it’s different when the choice is taken away from you. Or was taken away by a choice you made when you were much younger.

I know young women are terfs too. They may just have to be a bit more careful about being seen.

Sounds like the tweeter imagines that maturity, aging and death won’t apply them. O to be young again, believing I was immortal and would never grow old!

For as long as there are children born female, there will be female people experiencing the cumulative knocks of sexism and misogyny and one day those women will go ‘pop’ and become feminists, just like the rest of us.

I'd like to see a breakdown in support for TRAs by whether the person has children or not rather than age. I think women become actual feminists when they have kids so I think they are going to be puzzled why GC support will not decline.

Book group sounds great!

Yes there’s a massive spike when women become mothers, but I think for a lot of women the catalyst is something else, for example, pornography, the male gaze and peer pressure to be sexually abused as par for the course… there are loads of things that tip women over the edge.

Not so sure about this.

I spent years on the hard left (no one who knows me would ever believe it now), but

Not sure what happened to my comment above. Hey ho.

I thought the liberal feminists were the way forward in my early twenties. I thought the radical feminists employed old and unusable tactics to dismantle the patriarchy. I read genderquake from cover to cover and thought it was an interesting way to apply postmodern theory and that Butler was being playful and knowingly contentious in suggesting sex was a discursive event. And then I had kids and grew up. We're good. You can fall a surprisingly long way down the rabbit hole and still be redeemed when the real world draws you out of your own naval.

Gender Trouble, even😁

*Nordix · 15/12/2022 10:51

We cannot be as vocal for fear of ostracism from peer group and at work etc. But I know plenty of women (and men) who share my views. Quietly But doesn’t want to be called transphobic.

52 year old man here. I tend to keep my counsel, as I was absolutely monstered about it 5 years ago. My SiL was leaning over me, screaming and flecking saliva into my face, calling me a homophobe and a murderer. This was at a social event at her house and I made the mistake of saying,

"But they're not actual women, are they?"

Goodness, I've had disagreements with friends, some of them quite heated, but never that bad. Do you still speak?

TBH i wonder how much of this whole Trans thing is a Global North phenomenon. Women and girls in Afghanistan can't identify out of their oppression and I'm not hearing that massive cohorts of Taliban supporters (or other men) in Afghanistan are identifying into it (although i suppose any genuine trans woman in Afghanistan has a higher chance of being accepted as a refugee in another country than a woman)

Same in places with sex-selective abortions, and the parts of China where despite there not being many women around for the precious sons to marry, a daughter is still seen as a curse rather than a blessing (am assuming this might change in our lifetime). And then there are countries like Iran where to be a gay man is to be either executed (or jailed for a bloody long time) or have the gay transed away - over execution or a lifetime in a hellhole it may seem an attractive proposition. I've never read about what happens to them after that though. People with really tough or oppressed lives (not "literal genocide" but really precarious existences) don't tend to worry about what gender they are as in so many cases it is only their sex that matters, when push comes to shove.

He says he’s kind and respectful to trans people in his wider circle but he doesn’t believe it at all.

Well, yes. I am (I hope) kind and respectful to everyone i encounter. I will use the name they give me, and if they insist on pronouns, also use those (or match them to the name). But i find it difficult to accept "people who are pregnant" especially so if they are a trans man rather than non-binary. Because being pregnant isn't living as a man. etc etc.

My DCs are fully on board with trans ideology though so we don't discuss any of it.

I have lost the article but Transgenderism Western style is now in India and spreading, and going against the beliefs of the long established third sex there (I can’t remember the name) who know they are not the opposite sex but have found their own roles in their society.

The catalyst can be abuse. Seeing that my earliest memories are my father trying to kill my mother and battering his mother, I was a raging feminist by the time I was seven.

I remember being at a party as a small child where I swore to earn enough money to have my own house, car and dog so I can kick out any man who'd dare raise a hand at me. I was then told to shut up by my uncle🙄

There is a never ending stream of potential for finding feminism/terfery.

Most of them involve a shit man being shit (father, sports coach, boyfriend, line manager et al) or a painful medical procedure to do with our female anatomy.

As long as there are two sexes, ie as long as the human species continues to exist, feminism will be necessary.

Hopefully we’ll get to the point where we just need to remember the victories and be vigilant about maintaining them, but as we’ve seen in recent years, that’s going to be an ongoing process.

I'm sorry but what?
Is this another thing to kick child free/child less women about? Not proper feminists.

Child free in my 20s and full terf, but like others have said very cautious about my views due to career. I do do some subtle bits of challenging here and there though.

Blimey, Germaine Greer would be surprised to hear she's not a real feminist then.

I'm sorry but this is complete bullshit! I've always been a feminist! I was brought up by a feminist. There's never been a time in my life when I haven't been one. It didn't change when I had kids.

Can I steal this pic? Want to use it for my PP on Twatter.

Not having babies (whether a deliberate decision to be childfree or decision taken from us by illness/disability/infertility or a non-decision, put off indefinitely) affects all our lives too.

You don’t need to be a mother to get stuck on the mummy track at work, just being female and under 45 is enough to get you sidelined.

Plus all the horrors of periods, contraception, abortion, menopause and constantly being asked when you are having a baby, and getting pitying looks no matter how confidently your ‘never’ answer comes out
Lesbians might get a bit of a pass on the contraception/abortion front but with contraception prescribed for problem periods, donor sperm pregnancies that have the same ectopic and miscarriage risks as all pregnancies, sexual assault & rape and a good dose of societal comphet making some lesbians into late bloomers, it’s only a little pass, definitely not a universal one, not much of a pass at all really.

Moving through the world with a female body is the one experience we all share, regardless of whether we do motherhood or not.

(BUT it IS true for me that motherhood radicalised me into feminism! Up until I was pregnant I was fortunate enough to not really experience much obvious sex inequality. I was young, fit, gobby and reasonably bright and managed to ‘Not Like The Other Girls’ my way through life fairly successfully.
I was a happy little bird flying around and enjoying the spring sunshine - announcing my pregnancy at work was like flying head first into a patio door and landing in a crumpled heap on the floor.
The Patio Door of Patriarchy cured me of my Not Like Other Girls Bullshit!

Of course!

Thanks!

Oh God no. I'm 28 and a massive TERF. Not just concerned about men in women's spaces and child safeguarding, but believing that there is no such thing as "gender" only sex and trans people are just deluded...! I just work and live in peak liberal TRA-land so just have to keep quiet about my views. Honestly if I was open about it I might well lose my career and most of my friends. It's starting to upset me more and more though, having to keep quiet, especially when I disagree so profoundly with what people around me say.

I might subtly start challenging some of the views. Thing is though I work in one of the decimated public sector industries where there are so many vulnerable people needing support and so few committed people doing that work. And I'm really passionate about my job. So I don't want to lose my career. Especially not over something like trans rights which I see as very petty and individualistic, and don't understand why so many of my generation are so passionate about it. (Well perhaps it's because most of them have never known hardship so instead have to invent an oppressed category to fit into)

It honestly is difficult though, sometimes I feel like I must be a bad person to feel like this, because of what I hear from people around me. And I feel like I'm becoming even more intolerant of trans people than I otherwise would be, just because I hate being sidelined to this extent.