How Long Before We Look Back In Amazement

[TheShellBeach]

..................over the fact that we had to go through all the transwankery. That we had to fight and fight over such an issue. That some men were allowed to do this to us. That even a lot of women could not see the harm this was causing women and girls.

I mean, surely there will come a time when we can look back and say "I remember that - it was awful - thank goodness people saw through it eventually." How long will it be?

Thank you. You've answered this better than I did.

Ok. I get the snowball effect.
I just found it curious as I tend not to post on threads unless they strike a chord with a personal area of interest or concern, or provide useful info, or that I can share relevant info to, or to debate a point of conflict, or to reassure ech other in this oasis from the craziness. With that in mind, I couldn't make sense of why you were commenting despite such seeming disinterest in the topic.
I guess we all post for different reasons, and I couldn't work out where you were coming from on this.
I can see why people thought you might be being dismissive. It is an emotional and often personally affecting issue for most of us on here, and there's lots of scope for misunderstanding too.
Thanks for responding.
I'm still a bit befuddled tbh though!
Maybe you're just saying there's no future amazement for you to ponder!

Just putting here what FOJN wrote in the other thread ('will we die out?'), as it's relevant here too, and what I've now adopted as a personal mantra:

No amount of delusion can change reality, a lie at odds with reality cannot be sustained.

Exactly!!!

That was my point In response to posters criticising me for this particular issue not being a focus of mine

Tbc @thewayround , I wasn't criticising you for that (and I realise you might not be saying I was) I have complete appreciation for focussing on issues that are personally meaningful. Probably a poor choice of quoting section from you on my original response.

My confusion was about your engagement with the OP/thread that seemed a bit odd/read a bit as if possibly suggesting people might be blowing things out of proportion.

That response wasn’t to your post though 😐
it was to @DameMaud

Sorry @MarshaBradyo

Mumsnet deleted my post you replied to. All I was saying was look into the funders. In Ireland it is the same people who fund pharma. It's there in black and white.

Mumsnet why did you delete that post? No names were mentioned at all.

I didn't even mention the new God of pharma in the original one. If as I suspect you are taking funding and censoring on their behalf, shame on you.

I think we will pass through rather than go back. There's too many public statements made to undo them now.

So the concept of gender will probably stick and over time we will get used to categorising people by different types of self defined gender at least socially. The body modification will become less common as the roles become more everyday. "Woman" may never return to a single sex group.

At the same time, the impact of our sex (society's sexism and the different physical capabilities) will lead to an "evolution" whereby we again recognise and accept that people AFAB do have distinct needs, and political movements for and recognition of single sex rights will arise again. They may well be exactly the same people who currently demonise "terfs" , and those people will never realise they are fighting for the exact same thing they used to fight against because their mental framing of terfs was so far from the reality.

Optimistically, I hope this ultimately stabilises in a culture that is much more open in terms of people's presentation and personality while recognising single sex needs and rights.

Your vision makes me weirdly depressed and hopeful at the same time Flirts.
It's good to look at things in a panning out/an arc of history way.
I think things tend to be cyclical rather than positively progressive.
Fascinated to find out in a podcast interview with Helen Dale recently, how much more standing (some) women in the Roman empire had than the suffragettes- and how they fought (cleverly) for their democratic rights.
I also often think of the female 4th century Greek philosopher/mathematician Hypatia, battling for (and viciously destroyed by) the science over faith issue .
We are living through one of the many key moments for women in history, and it's weird to think we probably won't live to see the outcome.
We can be pretty sure it will all come round again though

Someone also posted on another thread today, pictures of women in 60s/70s Afghanistan - so recent yet so different!

I agree with you @FlirtsWithRhinos. There will be losses and gains but there will be a recognition again.

Eight women die every day in the UK from alcohol-specific deaths, the majority of them from alcoholic liver disease.

@thewayround I completely get your points.

To explain however the reason I am currently focused on this issue - even if it doesn’t affect me personally YET one jot - is because legislation is being passed, interpretations of the Equality Act is going into law, dictionary definitions are being changed, sports guidelines are being written. These are big fundamental things that will take an extraordinary effort to push back on once it starts to affect a lot of people

I feel the same way. Literally only hear about this apparent existential threat in the dark corners of Mumsnet.

Has not impacted my life or that of any woman I know in any way.

I've worked as a lawyer in DV for over a decade... there are many systemic issues that impact vulnerable women that need attention. I can't say this one has crossed my desk yet.

@Ivyonafence but as a lawyer - aren’t you worried about how laws are being set and equality acts are being interpreted in law NOW. When it crosses your desk it may be too late.

I see this as a complete rewrite of biological reality. It seems small now but will have an enormous impact. When I was studying biology back in the 1990s there was a big extreme right wing religious push to erase evolution from the biology textbooks. Now in 2020s there is an extreme left wing cult like push to erase biological sex from biology textbooks. Luckily in the 1990s science stayed in science and religious belief in religious studies. I can see the one overturning science in a way that will eventually affect us all.

I can see *this one overturning science in a way that will eventually affect us all (by all I mean women - if we are still allowed to use that word in the way I interpret woman as a biologist)

I am worried about many many legal issues facing women. This does not crack the top 50 of them.

Women are far far far more likely to be harmed by the cisgender man sleeping next to them every night than the transgender boogyperson in the next toilet stall.

@Ivyonafence ok I get what you are saying. But the thing that terrifies me about this whole issue is that we are redefining what a woman is. We are denying basic biology. It’s like us denying gravity or that the earth is round. And that is fine if we can then easily reverse that (there are 2 biological sexes - and one of them has historically been punched down upon for reasons that are intricately linked to their biology) down the line.

but when it his gets written into law…..it’s going to be bloody hard. No?

It’s a bit like idea vs execution. There are many executional things you are worried about - quite rightly - but this is a
change of a central idea that will have so many executional impacts down the line your desk will be inundated. Whereas if you nip this idea in the bud now it will prevent that happening. Gosh have I explained that ok?

I understand where you are coming from, but the law deals with nuance and competing rights all the time. This isn't anything new. The law is rarely black and white.

A definition applied in one setting isn't automatically applied in relation to all laws and rights.

Well apparently we live in a post truth society. I don't think this is going away any time soon. Its a side effect of the rampant individualism of the moment. It almost doesn't matter what happens in real life, the online zeitgeist is what gets traction.

This country has done well to legally challenge rewriting reality, it seems pervasive though. I'm so sick of BBC etc pushing this shit.

OP how do trans issues directly affect your life?

It's so wearily predictable the focus on 'toilet stalls' rather than rape crisis services, prisons, single sex hospital wards etc. It's always a focus on 'they just want to pee!!!!' which neatly avoids the somewhat less unambiguous situations in which women are trapped or from which they self exclude.

You've mentioned DV in a previous post. 80% of Scottish female prisoners have a previous head injury, mostly due to domestic violence and many are vulnerable in other ways too. The SPS deliberately chooses to host convicted male sex offenders in the female estate, with these women. I find it repugnant that this isn't a concern or worry for women.

And this is just one example in Scotland.

Also 'cisgender' is a nonsense.