What have you learned from the trans takeover

[Thatgirl1981]

what have you learned about
Your own political beliefs

has this issue made you think about others differently.

has this made you take a different look at other issues.

for me I now would say I have friends that are feminists 🤭
and I also started going to church and I never thought that would happen in my view we need religion a lot of the activists say they are secular but they are clearly in a cult religion

oh and I speak to my son about the importance of free speech more more than I ever thought I would need to

We need not to be afraid to say NO to outrageous demands for fear of upsetting someone or causing offence.

@PriOn1 I’ve learned that Germaine Greer’s statement that “women fail to understand how much men hate them” is much more accurate than I wanted it to be.

Yes, +1 to this,

what have you learned about
Your own political beliefs

I've learned that I can no longer vote for any party currently on the ballot sheet. I spoiled my last vote and may do so again.

Surprisingly, that having a Minister for Women and Equalities is probably a bad idea.

Rather than embedding work on genuine inclusion into other departments, such as Housing, Transport and Employment, it created a career path for ambitious politicians in 'pushing the boundaries' outside the real world.

When I read in Harriet Harman's autobiography that in her post she literally invited pressure groups to pitch her their most extreme demands, it explained a lot. And I'm a fan of hers, or was. No pressure group should be dictating policy to ministers. Ever. There shouldn't be a department that separates something called Equality from reality.

It's only a small positive amid the absolute tide of pseudoscientific protoreligious gender bilge we've faced in the last few years, but I've learned to value the writing of female writers from outside my own political comfort zone. I'm talking about the likes of Mary Harrington, Ella Whelan and Louise Perry.

And generally I've learned to read analysis from a lot more women than I would have otherwise.

I find myself listening to more views, for example not thinking every conservative or brexiteer is the devil incarnate.

Basically I think I've grown up a bit from being a lazy lefty as pp puts it.

I hear pp on being a "lazy lefty". I knew I couldn't go along with TWAW because it's clear to me that they aren't and it's also clear to me that pretending they are raises huge safeguarding problems for women and girls. I also can't go along with #nodebate because nothing is lazier than that. If your views can't stand being reflected on and having to push back against arguments you don't like, they're not solidly based and not worth holding. I have a dear friend who says she doesn't need to debate anything because she tests everything against her inner sense of her moral values. Honestly I don't see how that makes her different from the followers of any given religion, who presumably also hold views that align with their moral values.

I used to think I was liberal and open minded, but now I recognise how closed I was to hearing ideas I disagreed with.

I am now genuinely open to having my mind changed, and feel freer as a result. I will never again dismiss a person’s opinion until I have listened directly to what they say.

I also used to be proud of belonging to the psychotherapy profession, but I have learned that most of my profession have no interest in looking at the issues or even considering a wider perspective. I find it hard to understand how so many intelligent people can fall for this shit. So I’m pretty disillusioned really, and I think I was too naive before.

I feel more solid and confident in my own opinions and am less likely to be influenced by others. I have no fucks left to give.

I learned that men really do not like women mobilising and they will go to great lengths to stop women talking.

George Orwell was prescient, do it to Julia is very now, isn't it.

That nothing ever changes.

The Trans bullshit is the same old men wanting to control, silence, and abuse women and children bullshit - only difference is that this time it is wearing a dress.

That there are plenty of women who will help them abuse children and other women. I mean I knew it was a thing, I just hadn't realised they would do it so openly, I guess I thought most women were smarter than that.

I love this story. Brave women of Mumsnet FWR.
Did they reinstate those who had already been banned?

I've really come to believe that there is a huge proportion of the population that isn't capable of really complex thinking.

One of the things that has amazed me, with this, but also other recent political events like Brexit, or Trump, has been how quickly people seem to be able to flip from thinking one thing to another, and it seems like they don't remember what they thought before.

I've also been shocked to see the glee many people seem to take in authoritarian moralism, and maybe even more, how very comforting many seem to find it. The pandemic really brought that home to me, but GI also has been an example. This is something I knew smome people were prone to, but I really had no udea how many.

I also became a much more skeptical reader of new sources, and have realized that there are whole sets of topics that are treated with the same disregard for real journalism that trans issues are.

That I didn’t leave the Left, it left me.

That some people who would pride themselves on being kind, progressive and inclusive are nothing of the sort.

That I have waaaaay fewer fucks to give than I thought.

Thanks. Interesting.

I was having a few arguments itrw about stereotyping. It was a bit earlier - in the days of let toys be toys, that I started wondering where this was going.

If this has taught me anything it is the value of old people with long memories.

what have you learned about
Your own political beliefs

That I am strongly anti-authoritarian
That I am still broadly left wing but “old school” and reality-based
That I think that focusing on truth and “what actually happens on the ground” is far more important than siding with your tribe come what may
Strongly pro freedom of belief and other human rights/democratic freedoms
Pro discussion and debate on uncomfortable areas
That I would rather have a pluralistic society that included people I virulently disagree with than I would a wholly left wing society that was compelled to be that way
That I am seriously alarmed about the extremely poor standards (behaviour, intelligence, integrity, joined up thinking) in evidence in political/public life across the board, especially re regulatory capture and capture by lobbyists and batshit ideologies
That many on the left don’t question themselves and their own moral superiority (which was a hard one to learn) and how dangerous it is

has this issue made you think about others differently.

Like others, I’ve been genuinely shocked how many "intelligent" people have fallen for it but imagine they’re being ‘kind’ and have lost respect for many on the so-called ‘left’and in so-called "academia" where the standards really have dropped considerably
How many "nice" people who think they're being "progressive" would have been exactly those who dobbed their neighbours into the Stasi/Gestapo or joined in with the frenzy of Mao's Red Guards, and that's frightening.
How many women put men above other women at all times (and the internalised misogyny)
The unadulterated hatred a lot of men (esp lefty men) have of women
How complacent most people are about the gaining of their own rights and lacking in knowledge of their own history and current legal rights
How many people don’t understand basic safeguarding

This has made me look at the WHOLE political and social landscape differently. Mind-blowing. I think it’s in the ‘low’ phase of a particularly grim cycle, but I genuinely fear for what is going to happen before it rights itself (I think it will eventually but then I’m an optimist. And it’ll take a long time to right this.)

Very interesting observations. Separating equality from realty .Yes!

I remember the arguments about having a Black section in Labour and a young black guy telling me he found the idea regressive and patronising. I later met his parents who were in the old Communist Party.

That explained it - it was all about Class to them. Not much for time for identity politics.

What I've learnt is how contingent or provisional all our rights are. If women's rights can be so casually disposed of because of some tiny pressure group we are all in trouble. 51% of the people ffs!

It's made me question everything else that I've been told.

That a man can get his cock out in a women's changing room and it's the people that complain who are in the wrong. So called feminists will cheer him on and call the objectors perverts.

This for me too. Also, not to feel guilty about thinking that some boundaries are necessary for everyone.

yes, turns out news outlets lie. even the 'good' ones. even the BBC

What a youth movement with no interest in creating art looks like (beyond filthy anime fan art I suppose. But I’m thinking primarily of music)

Good god, yes. I hadn’t thought of that. There’s no music. That’s bizarre. Like the Taliban.

Why would there be art when you have a repressive attitude to free speech and free expression

if your a writer you can’t write a book with out a sensitivity reader

if your a musician you can’t write what you really want the so you simply stick to shake that ass

if your a film maker you now are unable to win any wards unless your film is representative of every minority
maybe you want to make a film about a17th century poet from Poland 🤷🏿‍♂️
opihmimer is supposed to be the best film in a decade it will be unable to win an Oscar because they now have race quotas

and god forbid you try and do any sort of comedy bar
how about those awful conservatives 🤷🏿‍♂️

the more repressive speech is the less art you get

we have known what it’s like when the right go to far we’re starting to find out what the world looks like when the left go to far

It has caused me to question all of my previous political positions and reflexes. I have always associated myself with being a political radical, and of the Left. Now I still see myself as a radical, but the landscape has shifted. The Left is no longer a truly radical place. It is reliant on fixed ideological positions, fantasy utopias, and also a lot of self righteous moral superiority.

For those that consider themselves to be kind and good people, the shadow is very dark. The hatred, intolerance, name calling, the "smash it up" anger has really opened my eyes. I have become more detached from the maelstrom, becoming more of an observer of social patterns and movements; taking. a longer range view of society and social forces.

i have also become very focused on goals. The goal is to push back, hold to account, question and critique, and to force public debate. People are still very much unaware of the true scale and inetnt of trans activism and also have no awareness of its rootedness in post modernistic theories such as Queer Theory. It is going to take time. I've always estimated about 20 years for it to really start to unravel. It has embedded itself in our institutions and so will take time and commitment to eradicate and root out.

Very interesting comments here. I agree with almost all, and some have opened my eyes to aspects I hadn’t noticed before.

To answer OP:
Political beliefs: I’m still a socialist, feminist, environmentalist — no change in my lifelong beliefs.

Others: the people who are currently called leftwing are not leftwing. Identity politics, especially genderism, is as solipsistic and antisocial as it’s possible to be! The Green Party in particular is a bad joke.
Very sadly, I now now longer respect the Guardian or BBC, which were old friends that I’ve always admired and learnt from. They have broken the cardinal law of news reporting, which is that it should be accurate — not slanted by personal bias. Same as in court: news reporters should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

That there are self centred woman hating men out there, as there has been since human beings started crawling the earth… this generations flavour has emerged in this form.