A year ago a close family member broke ties with me for being a terf. No fall outs previously.

[BluebellBlueballs]

I'm a little sad, exactly one year ago my brother found out I was gender critical and cut me off completely until I 'renounce my views '
He's not transgender or gay but seems to have accepted a woke moral superiority and called me a nazi and bigot for not including males in my definition of women.

I offered to agree to disagree and have a relationship but not talk about this one issue but he wouldn't accept that. Even for my dad's sake who is in his 80s and wants us to make peace.

I won't 'renounce my views ' at his command so despite my offer to agree to not discuss this one issue, we are now estranged.

What do I do? I have no ill intent towards transgender people but I believe in biological sex based definitions of humans and you cannot change sex. I had 2 very difficult pregnancies a man would never have to experience. I have lost my brother to the woke stasi and don't see a way forward.

I have to accept my brother is no longer in my life don't I?

It is. However that doesn't mean that men who have it are literally women, and it is not a reason to remove any distinction between trans-identifying men and women. The equality act is wrong (or being interpreted wrongly) in this matter.

Women deal with challenges that trans women do not (and vice versa). Removing our right and ability to define ourselves, to speak openly about our reality and to organise politically for what women need is bad for women's ability to lead empowered lives.

Gender is a social construct that limits both men and women's lives, more so women. Men expressing "women's" gender norms as men would indeed be helping to defuse and undermine gender constructs. Men expressing "women's" gender norms and claiming that means they are women is exactly the opposite - it is reifying them.

Men claiming their voices and opinions about womanhood and what it is to be a woman, about who can be in women's spaces or women's sports and about what women must accept from men, have more weight and authority than women's own are not supporting women, they are simply men enacting their patriarchal power over us like they have been for thousands of years.

It's very painful, OP. But anyone who would cut you out of their life over a difference of opinion is not someone you can trust or count on.

Opinions can change and people can have all sorts of disagreements. But among good people, there's a bond of love and humour and acceptance which means it's possible to shrug off differences of opinions, agree to disagree, or even have knock down, drag out arguments, safe in the knowledge that you'll laugh about it later.

Your brother may come around in time, but if not, that's his loss.

@Grumpybutfunny Gender is a social construct that younger generations are finally tearing apart which is the biggest gift to feminism.

I'm not even going to offer an argument. I'm just going to laugh at how totally and utterly you have misunderstood the issues around gender ideology vs the gender critical viewpoint.
😂😂😂

Anonymously send him an "Adult Human Male" t shirt.

You triggered a memory there - an elderly stockbroker telling me Mrs Thatcher's election was a great thing for feminism and proof that women had achieved total equality. Bless him. He really seemed to believe it.

Gender is a social construct that younger generations are finally tearing apart which is the biggest gift to feminism.
Bit confused. How are they tearing it apart by insisting that the social construct of gender is actually innate via gender identity?
I don't really understand how it's tearing it apart to try have gender codified into law, and on passports and birth certificates?
How is it tearing gender apart to insist that women are cisgender and call us bigoted when we say we are not?
That all looks like heavily enforcing gender to me, and that's no gift to feminism.

Gender is a social construct that younger generations are finally tearing apart which is the biggest gift to feminism.

@Grumpybutfunny But they’re not tearing it apart - the very opposite! They’re venerating it, treasuring it, and arguing that gender is an essential part of the self and the soul!

The student-age young people I teach genuinely believe that your “gender” - ie preferences for gendered clothing, etc. - is inborn. The very last thing they want to do is tear it apart. They are horrified by the idea that gender is a social construct and not something you feel in your inner being.

Also LOL @ the idea that the youth are ‘finally’ tearing gender stereotypes apart. Unless I was dreaming, there was a hell of a lot of that going on in the 70s and 80s. We’ve gone backwards since then.

OP I have friends who are anti vaxx, voted Brexit and family who are anti abortion/ Christian fundamentalist. I talk to them all and would never think of cutting them off.

Maybe point out to your brother that people are allowed to disagree, even strongly with each other? Also that being GC isn't the bigoted controversial view that he might think. Can you use sport as an example?

Cutting you off until you relent is emotional blackmail and highly immature. I'm sorry he's put you in this situation. Just keep the door open for him.

But to get back to OP, I'm in a similar position. My relationship with my sister has changed because of this. Even if she turned around tomorrow and said she agreed with me on everything, I'm not sure our relationship would ever be the same.
And that's because it's not about disagreement. It's about someone putting hate in your heart that isn't there, because they'd rather paint you as a terrible person than face questions they can't answer.
It's hard to see someone in the same light after that.

My sister's a Momentum supporter, still worships Corbyn and will barely talk to me because I'm a hateful terf. She's also ASD: everything is black or white, right or wrong. After feeling hurt initially that she wouldn't listen to me, her lesbian sister, because she as a straight married woman had to be right, it has been a pleasant few years because we barely see or talk to each other.

@beastlyslumber Pretty much. I'd explained to them how the word now doesn't mean what it initially did and the intentional debasing of the word. I describe myself as such because I am aware of the social and societal injustices meted out on minoritsed communities. So you'd get a news story and he'd say "Whole world's gone woke with this madness" or some variation of and I'd explain how and why it's not 'woke' but he insisted I'd been 'brainwashed' by the ideology of wokeness - said wokeness being concerned about the e.g. the healthcare outcomes of Black women. We went round in circles till I just said 'ok' and left it there. It's caused strained relationships in the family but what can you do. Even with friends who use the word like how the OP does - I'd happily just archive their WhatsApp messages and let everyone be happy in their lives.

This is so sad. I’d be really hurt

I think the op is right but this ideology breaking down family relationships is really a big thing

They are horrified by the idea that gender is a social construct and not something you feel in your inner being.

That is extremely regressive and worrying.

Re the brother. It's a sign of the extreme intolerance that's becoming pervasive. Everyone has a right to an opinion, even if someone else strongly disagrees. I can understand someone not wanting to be friends with a person they fundamentally disagree with. But family ties should be stronger than that.

I think your brother has taken on the virtue of "captain save the day/trans people", in order to be an effective saviour there needs to be a baddie, for him to reverberate against.

You ve been identified as the prop to hold up his false vision of himself as a saviour, this allows him to be the big captain save the day in front of his girlfriend and the weeples. If he is broke and cheap then this virtue pedestal is a handy one for his ego boost.

How does he gel with the rest of the family?

That's sad, I think this topic has a habit of bringing the worst out of people and leading to personal attacks/judgement.

I'm not GC, my brother and dad are. I don't discuss with my brother because he just shouts and gets wound up, but we have a close relationship aside from that. I discuss often with my father and find those discussions much more profound.

I hope you can work it out!

Also, if anyone is debating on which side is the 'c' word we're not allowed to mention. Who is cutting ties with close family over their incorrect beliefs? It's not the gender critical side.

Dh struggles with his sibling as his sibling is quite racist. Sibling knows our views I’ve called them out on their remarks every time however they always continue defending their position and I don’t feel I can carry it on to a full blown row as always at PILs. But if we didn’t see sibling at Pils I’m not sure he’d bother. Like pp said it’s hard to see someone in the same light. I wouldn’t be friends with a racist

Bide your time OP, bide your time. The tide is turning. He won’t ever offer you an apology, or say to your face that he was wrong. But he will know he was wrong, and you will know it too. And next time the woke girlfriend goes for a smear test and finds a transwoman wielding the speculum maybe she will think on a bit too.

It’s sad that you’re going through this, OP. I believe this will be partly performative on his part. He’s not speaking to you because of your GC beliefs, but I’ll bet everyone in his circle KNOWS he’s not speaking to you, particularly the girlfriend! ‘Oh my sister’s a t3rf, I’m not speaking to her anymore until she renounces her bigoted views’ etc.

He’s a virtue signaller, scoring points with his social crowd and trying to impress his girlfriend. I’d sit tight and give it time, he’s still relatively young and I believe there will be a reckoning soon regarding women’s sports and single-sex spaces.

I bet your brother is acting a bit like TRAs boycotting the Hogwart’s Legacy game because of JKR. They don’t just quietly boycott it - they have to be SEEN to be boycotting it! Hence all their Twitter posts about how they’re actively not buying the game even though they used to love Harry Potter.

So, your brother has to be seen to be taking action against his GC sister - otherwise, what’s the point?

Does your brother know about Isla Bryson? Has he seen the picture of said rapist sporting those pink leggings? I’m sure that story peaked quite a few people who were previously of the BeKind philosophy. Good luck OP - hang in there! 💐

I was at a social gathering, guys in my hobby, in 2018, the high (low?) point of Brexit fevered "debate".

I announced I voted Remain but understood why 52% voted Leave, and that there were many reasons, racism/xenophobia only part of the vote.

Our "polite" host stopped me in my tracks, and announced that it was racism, pure and simple, and that Leave voters were to a man and woman, ALL racists. And there was no debate.

And that if I even attempted to justify it, I was a racist. Water is wet, gravity pulls us to the Earth, Brexit and Brexit voters are racist.

I felt my sap rising, but I was a guest in his house, and despite no others thinking I was racist, it was 100% a Remain group, and I just sucked it up. To say he was overbearing is an understatement.

What I should have done was put my coffee down, announced I didn't agree and wouldn't be insulted to my face, wish him a long and happy life, and left. I'd have at least maintained some self respect. But no, I say there like a shy teen turned down by a girl at the disco (1980 my friend, I remember you well, lol).

Now, I've never had to see this jerk again, but I do occasionally think had he been my brother or a close friend or work colleague, and our contact would have been much closer, how would this have been reconciled?

Woke means gender ideology, critical race theory, censorship etc. It was woke people who started using the word this way, describing themselves as woke to mean authoritarian ideologues who would cancel anyone who disagreed. Then when people started mocking them, they claimed they never called themselves woke in the first place!

I mean, I can sympathise with the frustration that a word's meaning has evolved away from its original coinage, but I wouldn't fall out with anyone over it, especially given that it now does convey pretty much what your friend suggests. You can discuss the history of the word and how it was co-opted by authoritarians, but I don't think you'll win it back. So seems a bit of a petty thing to cut someone out for.

I don't think you have to see every conversation as an argument to be won. You could have simply said, well that's your opinion, but I don't see it that way. Then if you continue to see each other, you can try again. If he continues to be an overbearing bully on the subject, you can say, let's change the subject because I know you're not able to respect anyone else's opinions on this.

The other thing you can do is ask questions. Peter Boghossion's book on how to have impossible conversations is good on how to do this. Approaching it as, help me understand your opinion here - are you saying that there couldn't be any reason for voting Brexit other than racism? How do you understand why some black people and people of colour voted Leave? Has anyone ever presented you with an argument you find somewhat convincing? What would it take to make you question your opinion on this?

Of course, that won't work if someone is ranting in your face. In those circumstances I would listen quietly and when there's a lull, say, interesting view. I completely disagree but thanks for sharing. And then change the subject/leave.

I had to read this three times on the assumption that PP wasn't really saying what I think she's saying

I think this is so sad for the OP - we all I suspect differ in our opinions to family member in a number of ways but to break contact when there is an option of not discussing the issue of disagreement suggests an almost cult like status of this ideology. I think with a brother - an mature adult it is so much more difficult than a child and one hopes they mellow and become more tolerant of other people's views in the future.