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

These are interesting points.

The other that occurs to me from what you say here: the left is heavily into enforcing that you MUST pay lip service to named minorities.

However this is devoid of actual care or interest, and those minorities are only permitted to say and voice their experience of being that minority in pre approved ways (by those in power) and may not discuss aspects of their oppression save for the pre approved ones. In essence: they must be useful to the political agenda of the powerful, and are only of interest in so much as they serve this purpose. Those who get out of their box are heavily repressed.

Women.
Lesbians and gay men.
BAME minorities
People of different faiths and culture
Even trans people had better stay on message: we've seen how dissenters and detransitioners are treated.

This is also a culture that hates age and experience and represses and excludes it wherever possible. Interesting to consider why.

In essence: this is a movement that heavily identifies as being nice so sees no need to bother doing anything more, or real. It's performative words and image, not actions and real beliefs. And when you point this out, they stare blankly through the evidence and deny that it's there.

I wonder if it's something to do with the fact that the major giveaway that someone is a biological male (after puberty) is their deep voice.

Even if plastic surgery, makeup and filters can make someone look female, their male voice will usually be the thing that betrays them.

Since in music it's considered bad form to use autotune and voice-changers, they can't apply the same tricks to singing that they do to visual media.

And it would be too confronting and obvious to have lots of male voices on the radio singing about being women, as it would peak everyone instantly. Like when you hear a male being interviewed on the radio about being a woman and it's much harder to suspend one's disbelief. It's much harder to read a male voice in isolation as "transwoman" as the voice alone reads as male. It's only the accompaniment of the clothing and cosmetic props that indicate to others that the person sees themselves as trans, so without it, they're just a man complaining that the ladies' toilets is off-limits to him.

In fact, I wonder how much the fact that middle aged people are more likely to listen to radio interviews which sometimes feature trans people (where you have to listen really carefully to try to understand what they think they are versus what you're hearing as otherwise the conversation makes zero sense) might have something to do with why older people tend to peak more quickly than younger people. The latter tend to get all their news and entertainment from carefully curated (and often filtered) online sources which are more visual and less reliant on the audio, so it's far easier to suspend one's disbelief there and simply believe what people are typing about themselves. When someone on social media writes that they're a woman, people will automatically conjure up an idea of a woman in their heads. So they read it in a woman's voice even though their real voice is much deeper and obviously male.

It's catfishing 101 - don't agree to phone calls as it will give you away if you're not who you say you are.

I agree that it demonstrates Greers point about women not knowing how much men hate us. Also, how much the middle class despise the poor.

But its also taught me how inept people are in their jobs. Individuals push themselves into positions that they are staggeringly unsuitable for and it turns institutions into shells that, at best aren't doing anything and at worst are actively working against their remit. That includes politics, too.

Theres no such thing as left and right wing politics when it comes to gender ideology.

It's made me read right-wing newspaper articles. I no longer trust what left-wing newspapers say on either women's rights or trans issues.

I think the destruction of trust has been one of the very worst things, like having the rug totally pulled out from under you.

On the other hand, it's done my critical thinking skills no end of good. And made me realise what my values actually are, also that I'm not a person who's prepared to throw them off.

Agree @Thatgirl1981

Ideologies do not create art. Ideologies create content.

(it’s a super cut from a recent Canadian awards ceremony.)

And it’s hard for me to admit because I think representation is important, and one of the reasons I taught myself UK English and even lived in the UK for a while is that when I was growing up British films far more than American ones showed working class people, mixed race people, and other people I could relate to in a way American cinema (or the rubbish local output) never did. But all that stuff came from a place of authenticity.

That women (adult human females) don't matter.

That many/most centre and left politicians have no concerns for the poor and vulnerable. They operate in a middle class political bubble.

The same is true of the Tories of course but I expect that. The lack of concern by the 'left' for the effect of gender bollocks on the poor and vulnerable especially in prisons, is startling.

I don’t trust any of them. They all have their own agenda. It’s necessary to read all over the political spectrum to get an accurate picture - and to read between the lines.

Free speech is critically important. Without it, democracies will die.

Some people are fucking cunning and will go to all sorts of lengths to get their way.

More people than I realised are legit unhinged.

You don't need to believe in God to be a raging puritan ready to tell everybody else what they MUST do and what they MUST NOT do. And a lot of people like certainty and fitting in, so will trot along behind mouthing all the mantras. Seriously, it has been a revelation as regards things like the witch trials of the mid-C17th.

Societies need structure, and individualism appears to be leading to an implosion of any sort of common standards of behaviour / consideration / basic humanity towards others.

Just how deep and widespread misogyny is in our culture. It has been a horrible awakening to see how many men (LRM, for example) really relish and seize a chance to put the boot in, and how many others are quieter about it but still thrilled to put us back in the box labelled 'support human'.

I have become very cynical about some public intellectuals (not helped by discovering a few utter charlatans in my own field of arcane knowledge, who get paid to spout crap). It has probably pushed me slightly to the right, as the left looks COMPLETELY batshit about this (rather than just patchily batshit).

I'm sure there is more.

This, ever since I saw the demonising of Hillary by Sanders fans when she held exactly the same beliefs (and he supported the war in Iraq with weapons votes, and wrote a rape-apologist essay for which he has never apologised). And now this new iteration.

That western democracy (which I had thought was reasonably robust) is actually quite vulnerable.

That kindness to those who are different (which I approve of) can so easily tip into fetishising victimhood, (which so many young people seem to want s part of)

That people will say any old cr@p to avoid being criticised in front of others, however damaging it is to other people. That those in senior positions will close their eyes rather than do the right thing (BBC, Guardian and Keir Starmer in particular take the bow of shame).

That men and younger women despise older women and see them as lesser beings. That older women actually are strong and together are stronger still.

That some men are deeply alarming.

Sadly , the rise of gender ideology, has made me realise how some truly awful ideas , such as eugenics gained credence amongst intellectuals.

That some people are willing to allow children to be harmed in order go shelid themselves from the charge of bigot

I am literally amazed how many even when confronted with the scenes at pride with men twerking and grinding with children present will still say this is not happening

even when the cat recording came out many of the left Lbc I am looking at you were saying it wasn’t true

1...I never ever thought I'd see an active anti-free speech movement in my lifetime, especially after buying the New Atheists t-shirts in the 90s. The chilling of Enlightenment norms is quite something to behold.

2...after most of my lifetime of being a typical male, being pretty dismissive of women's concerns, having this absolutely challenged by the trans movement, and realising not only was I wrong, but this movement is an existential threat to girls and women everywhere. And how I've done a screeching 180 handbrake turn in my attitudes.

3...reading some of the best discourses in favour of a worldview (Helen Joyce, Kath Stock, Eliza Mondegreen, Jo Bartosh, Victoria Smith, Mary Harrington, Janice Turner etc), and having my tiny mind blown by such gems as "trans isn't a trans rights movement, it's a mens rights movement", and "the New Atheists were just another bunch of alpha males" and "the cleverest, most intelligent, and seemingly most caring, people at the top of their trades are disproportionately the most stupid, the most close minded and the most dismissive of real and present danger and harms to the most vulnerable"

4...realising how cognitively dissonant it is to feel cast out of your typical tribe (I'm a BSc level senior therapist running two clinics with staff, and should be rubbing elbows with those cultural elites who believe in this crap, now extricating myself, realising I'm like an anti vaxxer to these people with my GC views, ostensibly lonely amongst the greater therapy and educated medical professions, and the TRA obsessed profession's full stop, yet realising how liberating it actually is to wave at them from across the bridge, realising the terrible group psychosis decision and badge of honour they've taken for themselves.

5...finally understanding concepts like herd mentality, purity spirals, realising I'd been prone to them, pulled myself out of all, and seeing these in close up detail re this phenomenon.

6...sadly concluding that after four decades of active voting, taking a big interest in politics, that my side cannot prioritise a principled position (no action on the EHCR advice, Sunak chickening out on declaring he has no belief a trans conversion ban should be law, lukewarm attitude to trans/changing gender in schools, allowing Stonewallification of our institutions) and Labour lock step with every other Western nation hellbent on bringing in Self ID, trans conversion bans, anti free speech laws to chill all dissent on trans, medicalising of youth...that I have noone to vote for.

7...millenia of societal change etc, and in 2023, so many are still prone to tribal patterns and magical thinking. In many ways, nothing has changed. Just the stakes are higher.

Along with other realisations, I now relaise how misogynistic a lot of gay men are, and gay culture is. That has been a big disappointment

I've also realised that each new generation doesn't seem to learn from the previous ones; or they certainly don't absorb the knowledge. They are compelled to repeat the same cycles, albeit in slighty different 'settings'.

Younger people seem to think that 'gender identity' is really radical and rejecting of gender stereotypes. They seem to think that older women want to keep people in outdated and restrictive 'grooves' according to whether they are male or female.

I also see how this has arisen from the kind of feminism which suggests that all differences between the sexes are socially constructed. I don't think they are. That doesn't mean, though, that all wo/men necessarily have a certain kind of preference or tendency - though the general patterns are definitely there.

So, in effect, this has made me question a lot of basic feminist tenets and orthodoxies too. I think there is something of a zeitgeist feel about this questioning - hence we see quite a few former radical feminists now re-assessing the whole project in the light of contemporary society. I'm thinking Mary Harrington, amongst others.

Younger people seem to think that 'gender identity' is really radical and rejecting of gender stereotypes. They seem to think that older women want to keep people in outdated and restrictive 'grooves' according to whether they are male or female.

This being information fed to them by activists who have an open agenda of separating them from trust in or connections to those with the life experience and intelligence to point out the issues with the batshittery they are being sold.

One of the most personally revolting parts of this to me is the experience of talking with zealots who state their claimed belief or take on facts. And you can explain, and explain, and evidence, and explain that no, 2+2 really does not equal 5. And you get a blank eyed stare and a repetition of the same batshit.

Anything that involves clinging to a fabricated reality over objectivity with this degree of denial and inability to think is not something that a society can tolerate ever escaping out of individual private free time.

Also, COVID rotted people's brains.
I went to the "Douglas Murray interviews Lionel Schriver" live event near Parliament with 1999 other people, literally just 12 months before the pandemic struck.

It seems like a century ago...the chat flitted from "trans, what's the deal?" to cultural appropriation, to affirmative action etc. The launch to Murray's "Madness Of Crowds" book.

It was the age before shutdown corroded our brains, before the explosion of George Floyd and BLM and Defund The Police, and of course before trans activism absolutely exploded.

I'm convinced that during COVID, so many young people went into their shells to only socialise and get info and opinions online on social media, and so many adult men felt this was their chance to break taboos all over the shop, weaponising overt and uncensored misogyny.

And the politics of the left went identarian toxic as the hate of the cisheteronormative patriarchy ramped up, racial and gender politics red in tooth and claw.

This then amongst many things created a giant divide amongst those feminists like Sarkar who saw trans rights as encompassing women's rights, and the rest of women who saw this new open aggressive trans misogyny, and the taking advantage of youth, as zero sum game.

COVID was the clincher. That Murray/Shriver talk, just four years ago, was a different world.

That the majority of people are both stupid and cowardly.

That the majority of "journalism" is totally untrustworthy, biased and peddling utter lies.

That our great institutions, like the NHS, BBC, Parliament, Police, Armed Forces, universities etc are WEAK and have allowed, nay ENCOURAGED, parasites to invade them and set about on their mission to destroy 51% of the population.

That the majority of men hate women in a quiet, under the surface way, the kind that goes unnoticed, but given the right circumstances, these same men uncloak themselves, proudly proclaiming their hatred. To rounds of applause, often from young women.

That I have nobody to vote for.

That my own government saw fit to allow rapists to claim womanhood.

That my own government, ran by a woman, hates women so breathtakingly much that I amount to nothing.

That I am hated, for the crime of being born female. I grew up with the page 3 misogyny of the 70s and 80s, and this is the first time in my life that I know I am hated for being female.

That those that hate me include doctors, police officers, teachers, judges, lawyers, parliamentarians.

And I hate them right back.

That truth really is stranger than fiction!

I’ve always enjoyed science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction etc. I’ve read about all kinds of alternative worlds, alternative histories, life on different planets or in different dimensions, beings of multiple sexes or none at all, societies built on every premise a writer’s imagination could come up with. I’ve certainly read stories in which the inhabitants of a world could change sex.

But I have never read, or seen on film, a story in which a political movement (on planet Earth, where mammals can’t change sex) has persuaded people to believe humans can change sex, and enforced this belief pretty much worldwide.

I wonder if it’s because that is very hard to believe?

I’ll happily suspend my disbelief in time travel, supernatural powers etc, for the sake of enjoying the story, as long as the characters behave believably. But believing a man has become a woman because he says do? No. I accept that people believe in their own delusions. But they don’t usually believe other people’s delusions of this kind.

What’s psychologically plausible is that most people pretend to believe because they are scared of losing their job, social status etc. But that doesn’t explain how the ideology took such powerful hold in the first place.

Trans activism had a stranglehold on reality long long before Covid.

I remember having many wtf moments at work at the takeover of women’s spaces, awards etc well before covid. Working in tech it first became a problem for me nearly 20 years previously. I noticed TW now outnumbered women in my speciality more than 10 years prior to covid. I left a job just before covid because a TW at work was showing way too much sexual interest in me and with them allowed to go into women's toilets there was nowhere I could go to get away.

MN FWR was having plenty of discussions and what we said was being controlled and censored long before covid.

Women were getting thrown off twitter for saying men couldn’t become women long before covid.

I remember complaining about males using women’s toilet in tech companies more than 30 years ago (a mere 5 years after I was still having to go to different buildings to find the few women’s toilets).

I've been thinking thru it, for a long time now. I've reconciled to the narcissists: the Suzzzeee Edeeees, Z Cup Canadian teachers, and Mika Minios, the dangerous ones: the Adam Brysons, this "punch a TERF in the face!" Sarah character and similar others.

I get what's happening with them as phenomena, pushing boundaries, visibility, the limits of acceptability and public acceptance/pushback.

I even "get" Mermaids, it's a pressure group pure and simple. And any number of similar bodies.

What's been hardest to reconcile, and I'm only just doing so with the help of Helen Joyce, Eliza Mondegreen, Jo Bartosh and Victoria Smith in particular, is the elites societal contagion. We can see how it's happened to teens, but I'd cut them a ton of slack.

Just how could those in their ivory towers, their grammar school/private school/European finishing school/Russell Group uni/Cambridge Oxford elite educations, their widespread reading and travelling, their awareness of history and women's struggles and hard-fought rights, their knowledge of child development especially brain chemistry, and 101 other relevant things...how could they deny knowledge, natural justice, common sense, child safety...to pitch themselves to this particular wagon?

I believe I've got a possible rational explanation, more mundane than I thought was the case when I was struggling in my WTF???!!! phase.

It shows both how brittle and non reflective the West has become, how toxic social media is for all minds, and how tribal and stupid people can become, especially those who claim they're non tribal and intelligent.

Having extricated myself from one long term herd and a more recent one, and the purity spirals associated, and seeing this "madness of elites crowds" as the worst one that's ever existed, the cognitive dissonance is jarring.

I'm an older woman, in my 70s, volunteering locally and acting as trustee for community assets and organisations. I've worked and had a family, looked after aging parents and ill husband. A former Guardian-reading feminist, trade union activist. I despair at the lack of sense shown by so many people who should know better, and how hard those affected by this must fight for justice.

I came on here to bump the cause of Ruth Sybil, 63 year old writer and editor, who had her precarious contract with Cornerstones terminated because of a Twitter post in which she stated what my generation learned in school: sex is determined at conception and is immutable..(Our lot knew James/Jan Morris's treatments didn't effect a magical transformation, but showed him/her respect. We were kind, if you like.)

Ruth wants to take her case to the Employment Tribunal. There is a thread on here, Gardening for ET - loss of work in Art for GC views, if you are interested.
To answer OP's question: I've learned women must keep on keeping on supporting those who need us - especially (vulnerable )women, girls and children.

Of course. I just mean COVID seems to have in short order removed a lot of remaining barriers and judgements. Coupled with a unique never to be repeated (I hope) bunker period where kids dove very deep, and certain males became supremely bold.

I don't think we can seperate this from the George Floyd moment, and attempts to deconstruct our past. I feel this tearing down moment has only emboldened the bad men in our midst, and teens sense of dissociation from society (they hate the past, they hate us for being part of that past).