Lost friends because I am not a believer

[WhatIsGenderQueerAnyway]

Regular poster but NC.

Please tell me how refusing to go along with the delusion that a person can change sex and that everyone has a gender has affected your relationships and friendships.

It’s proving to be a bumpy road for me as I peaked several years ago and since then have lost a few friends. It’s been an eye opener actually.

He knows he will never be a cis man. He is a trans man. He presents very much like a man. You would not guess he is trans but he doesn't hide it.
We discuss my feelings on prisons and jails and I don't have all the answers. Neither does he. I think that makes it easier.
He validates my feelings and I have huge compassion for all trans people. It doesn't mean I will hand over my rights as a woman.

I think there are many problematic issues as does he but ultimately we both want people to feel safe. As I said, I don't have the answers. I know a very tall butch lesian who gets looks in the woman's bathroom and dated a gorgeous man who people thought was trans. He wasn't he was just pretty. I think there are a lot of gray areas.

As for my partner I jokingly say the perfect man was born a woman. My partner is a dream man and I am insanely lucky. 💗

I could be mistaken but my understanding of being GC is not saying a woman is a man. Being GC is recognising that a woman is always a woman even if she presents as a man.

It's fair enough. People's bodies matter to me. I like maleness and femaleness but as separate things. Doesn't mean I look for some hideous 6 pack/barbie caricatures, but there are things about the male body that mean a lot to me, likewise the female body. I have a thing for jawlines, lips, arms, wrists, shoulders, the particular alignment of bones of the torso.

'Resisters' are groups of women who meet all over the country to organise and and share resource. Initially they were founded in order to publicise and counter-act the proposals for the GRA. I'm not sure if you are in a major city, but there are groups all over?

Right. And no amount of surgery will make my partner a biokogical male. That's fine with both of us. But he looks like a man, I refer to him as a man. We can both recognize he is a biological woman and respect his feelings of being a transman. Like I said he knows he is trans. This isn't a secret.

I’m in a city, yes. Thanks for the advice.

Pansexual: attraction to a wide range of saucepans, whether or not they have a handle.

It's less and less rebellious and less and less interesting. And thereby lies salvation.

This.
Only sad about some mutilated bodies left behind. What a broken cause it was.

But unfortunately you cannot protect single-sex spaces without excluding males. That is fundamental.

In the past it wasn’t seen as exclusionary because society accepted that, as men commit most violent offences and almost all sexual assaults, women needed some male-free places. But as men are now demanding to be let in, we have to get their exclusion enforced.

You should take your own advice.

Actively being exclusionary, discriminatory and hostile to women and lesbians who do not participate in gender ideology is not a good look indeed.

Thanks, I do take my own advice.

I've had to self-silence like a coward now, which is wrong because the more GC people keep quiet, the more it looks, overall, as though people agree with the ideology. But the thing is, on a personal level the price is not worth paying. I am already socially isolated by being an elderly, disabled female, I cannot afford to be shunned or ejected, hated and avoided by a whole bunch of local people who are potentially or currently well-disposed towards me.

What I have found is that when I have made even the mildest comment on local social media (think local FB groups, and other local online forums) I've been the victim of a pile-on and then called all those nasty names (you know them). I was in tears when I was roasted, vilified, name-called, ejected and banned for life from a local FB neighbouhood political discussion forum, for making ONE post. Yes, just one short post. Someone started a thread asking, "what issues are important to you in the upcoming local council elections?" My solitary reply was that I wanted them to pledge to retain single sex safe spaces. I then went offline for a few hours and when I returned I had been roasted alive. The first reply was "OMG we've got a terf in our midst" and it then went downhill from there. I was left crying and shaking and I was on edge for days worried that a brick might come through one of my windows.

As a result of that one sentence not only did I get permanently silenced in the group but four individual female acquaintances went from liking me to hating me. One of them is a well known local lesbian artist. Another was someone who had posted a fun photo of me on her FB page, a pic she snapped of me in the sunshine whilst I was out in my wheelchair wearing summery carnival outfit, with some nice, kind flattering words beneath. She edited her words to say "Beware of this TERF." I was horrified.

I also lost a business contact because of this. A Labour Party officer who I did some business with saw my FB wall taking the piss out of one of the more ludicrous things a cult member had said. She messaged to say she would have no more business dealings with me as I was an ignorant hateful bigot.

I should add that, when I first got peaked about 4 yrs ago and started talking to those close to me, they all already held the GC position. However, I did lose a lodger because I came put as a "terf."

She was very young, just out of Uni and landed her first ever job. It was far from home so she came to lodge at my house. Whilst having a get-to-know each other chat I told her she was allowed to have a boyfriend to stay over occasionally, she told me she was a gold-star lesbian (one that has never been with a man). Fair enough.

However a couple of weeks later another lodger happened to mention something about trans people and he was a bit derogatory, mocking them, and the new lady got cross with him, saying she had been in a relationship with a pre op TW tutor for a year whilst at Uni living in halls.

Shortly afterwards we were having a cuppa and a friendly chat and I gently broached the subject: I asked her to explain to this old dinosaur (me) how you can have a sexual relationship with a biological male for a year but still call yourself a gold star lesbian. She instantly became shirty with me, mumbled something about a lady penis being completely different from the usual horrible male ones, then abandoned her coffee and went to her room, wrote a letter giving me 2 weeks notice.

I'm so sorry you've lost friends over this. My experiences have fallen into a few camps:

1. Some of my oldest, dearest friends who I thought might be quite TWAW for various reasons (well-to-do, intellectual, artsy, in countries where its prevalent, nothing to personally gain from resisting) pleasantly surprised me by saying, "this is total bollocks, isn't it?" and feeling completely comfortable doing so on the basis they thought I would have seen through it too but also because even if I hadn't they know I genuinely believe in free speech and tolerance of divergence of opinion (even quite extreme and where I vehemently disagree). So that was nice.
2. Secret fellow GCs I've ended up hearing about in the grapevine - sometime through other friends complaining about their views, not realising I agree with them (because the topic hasn't come up between us yet) and me making contact with them like we're in the French Resistance to say "me too! You're not alone!"
3. Friends and family I've discussed it with who thought I was a bit nuts to care or to hold as strong a line as I do. I had one tipsy rant about the whole issue in detail and then left it, rarely mentioning anything to do with it again. Over the years that followed they've come to me repeatedly following each fresh outrage as they gradually peaked and as more of their friends whose opinions they respect also started openly saying, "this is bollocks". Again, they knew (from my rant and from knowing me generally) that I am 'safe' to share these opinions with.
4. Friends who are apathetic. We discuss it superficially sometimes but otherwise just don't discuss it, which is fine.
5. Friends who disagree with me. In some cases the difference of opinion becomes clear and we simply don't discuss it. With one or two I've had some robust debate and left it at agree to disagree. I hope some of what I've said sinks in over time similar to those at (3) but if it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm friends with them for different reasons that are unaffected by what I consider to be this blindspot. I note it with interest, and move on.
6. Colleagues with pronouns in the signature block - I wouldn't discuss the issue at work anyway unless strictly relevant to the job or any training but I consider active pronouns fair warning to completely swerve!

I'm fortunate to have a lots of little pockets of friendships completely unrelated to each other so its easy for me to say that I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone who couldn't at the very least agree to disagree and not discuss a topic on which we strongly disagree. But honestly, if people are going to cut you off over a difference of political opinion they were only ever fair weather friends at best; authoritarian bullies at worst.

I think it's important to speak up unashamedly where you can (not least because it empowers others to do the same, and to know they can speak to you too) but of course there are limits and everyone had a different limit as to friendships, social support and if course employment that they can afford to lose. Don't feel guilty about keeping quiet where you reach your limit.

Sending you support.

*competent swerve any hint of the topic

I always fall back on a simple phrase….

if a man wearing a dress doesn’t understand why women need to have single sex spaces, then he can’t possibly have an understanding of what it is to be a woman, so how can he genuinely believe he is one.

thus, if the man persists on his right requirement at the expense of many woman, it tells you enough about the man, predator or mysoginist, that they shouldn’t be around you.

when it’s a pro trans female teenager, they just need to learn about the sad realities of life.

when it’s an activist - I’d be the one blocking anyway.

My understanding of the TWAW view is not that a person changes sex but that sex is socially constructed/irrelevant and that one's innate sense of gender is what makes one a man or a woman. I place this belief with religious belief - something a person feels strongly but has no objective basis.

I consider it a million miles from what I've always understood transexualism to be - the manifestation of psychological distress with one's sexed body.

Being a childless bloke with few friends, my circle is quite TERFy and I haven't lost anyone over my views on the matter. No doubt if I had a wider social circle, I would.

Tabitha1960 - that is a horrible experience and I wonder how "be kind" can be squared with that level of personal cruelty. To me, it resembles a witch hunt.

Are we not told if our posts are deleted or reported?

Brilliant

Spot on again.

That's horrendous! What horrible, bullying behaviour.

she had been in a relationship with a pre op TW tutor for a year whilst at Uni living in halls.

How long ago was that? These days I’d be surprised if that wasn’t a sackable offence.

@mach2
Yes, agreed about how some GI believers see sex, linked to the false notion that sex characteristics occur randomly. But some do also seem to think that taking cross-sex hormones physiologically changes you - esp men who claim to be women who say they have menstrual cycles, for example.

@Tabitha1960 I’m shocked at the way you have been treated particularly by the person who openly derided you using your photograph. As for your former lodger and the lady penis, what can one say?

Thanks to everyone who’s offered their own experiences here. I’m loving the pansexual = lover of saucepans with different handles!

Great post @TimeForThunder - nodding along as this is my experience also.