Now that some *men* are commenting, it's all changing over on Twitter...

[Qbishy]

So Andrew Neil is tweeting about a detransitioner today, Richard Dawkins wrote that piece in the NS that has been shared and commented widely, and Wes Streeting has (kind of) apologised to Rosie Duffield.

It seems like now some men are getting in on the act, people are paying attention 🙄 I'm not criticising them, but honestly, WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN ALL THIS TIME???

Suzanne Moore is, understandably, furious now that Labour has (supposedly) changed its tune, having been terfed out (see what I did there) of the Guardian by Kath Viner. Helen Lewis equally fed up. As are many more women.

It's lovely that men are finally taking notice. But so incredibly frustrating that women's voices just don't count.

(One person on X posited that the tide turned when Elon Musk took it over and allowed wrongthink to be published... that could be the case, too.)

It was Matt Hancock, in 2020.

Apologies, I’ve now googled, and the Cass Review was commissioned in September 2020. So Matt Hancock would have been Health Secretary.

But by the time its Interim Report was published, in March 2022, it was Said Javid who was Health Secretary and decided the action to be taken in response.

It was Matt Hancock who ordered the Cass Review:

From The Times
Saturday 30 July 2022
by Kemi Badenoch

The Tavistock scandal shows the dangers of civil service groupthink

Even more credit should go to health secretaries such as Matt Hancock who in the midst of the pandemic commissioned the review by Dr Hilary Cass that <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/beZU2/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tavistock-child-gender-clinic-forced-to-close-over-safety-fears-2gfj325lt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">led to the closing of the Tavistock and also his successor, Sajid Javid, who provided support when I raised numerous concerns that the Department of Health refused to prioritise.

Even more credit should go to health secretaries such as Matt Hancock who in the midst of the pandemic commissioned the review by Dr Hilary Cass that led to the closing of the Tavistock and also his successor, Sajid Javid, who provided support when I raised numerous concerns that the Department of Health refused to prioritise.

LoobiJee · Today 21:29

Apologies, I’ve now googled, and the Cass Review was commissioned in September 2020. So Matt Hancock would have been Health Secretary.

But by the time its Interim Report was published, in March 2022, it was Said Javid who was Health Secretary and decided the action to be taken in response.

Thank you for looking it up too. Sorry, I posted from the previous page and had not seen this from you before I did so.

I think that Elon Musk taking over Twitter, getting rid of all the fake accounts, bots, TRA algorithms and AI scraping it for info has been a game changer.

Previously there were many tactics used to present a false impression of the number of people who are TRAs or TRA sympathetic, a false impression of the number of GC people - to give the impression of being niche, along with tactics to enclose people in a bubble, so most people would be oblivious to these issues even if they would be sympathetic , or if someone spoke out, tactics to make sure only a handful of people heard and no new audience could be reached.

With all that gone, people are now getting a truer picture of what people actually think.

TRA-ism was a big concoction of social media manipulation, false information, intimidation tactics, abuse of law and process, strategic litigation and so on. I think we are finally seeing clear unmuddied water for the first time in ages. It’s not just because blokes are finally weighing in.

ScrollinglLeaves

No worries. And same here actually - Dworkin had posted about it whilst I was still in the middle of googling!

I could have posted this on any one of about 6 threads. I feel that a small crack has appeared in the space-time continuum and reality is starting to leak in.

It does like feel as if there's been a big step forward here, but I still worry about the US. My perception from this side of the pond is that it's far more binary [ironically] than here. If you're a Democrat, you're expected to accept every single Democrat policy, and vice versa if you're a Republican. Pro trans policies seem to be identified as a Democrat thing, so a lot of Republican voters describe them as left-wing, when in fact they have sod all to do with conventional left/right politics. It's all so individualistic that I'd have thought it was the opposite of socialist.

Cheers. At least it means Hancock wasn't all bad lol. He's done children a service.

Possibly. But there hasn't been a ton of public figures really saying anything at all, frankly. And if you don't limit yourself to men on the left, I think it's pretty even.

I suspect many men on the left think, women are on both sides of this, and I am not going to put my oar in and be told to pull it out by woman and trans people, I have no standing as a cis man.

I don't see there suddenly being more men, there are suddenly more of both sexes.

In real life, I meet more women TRAs than men, by a solid margin.

It's going to take both female and male voices to take down the gender beast. I know a couple of men who will literally only hear male voices and kind of filter out female ones. I know it's shit but hey ho, that's the work in progress.

Very glad more prominent men are getting involved if they can amplify what so many women have been saying for years to ears that are attuned to male opinions.

It's been mostly women, feminists, lesbians, who have been fighting this, for years.

A few men, yes, particularly in the past couple of years, but the vast majority of the fightback has been women. This is a rather uncontroversial observation.

Still, if we're getting to the point where people are clamouring to claim they were on board all along, it's a good thing overall, I suppose.

I will not forget the very brave women who stood up to it all in the face of extraordinary risk.

Raising a glass to them tonight.

The thing is , until Twitter allowed free speech, the only place the issue of women’s rights, being threatened by trans activists, was regularly raised, was here on mumsnet. It’s taken a while and a critical mass for it to escape a woman’s website and also the Daily Mail, a women’s paper.

It’s not a coincidence that Terf island is also the home of mumsnet and KJK and J K Rowling.

Having a prime minister who allows free speech in his party has helped and the much maligned Matt Hancock has to be thanked for commissioning the Cass report

Still, if we're getting to the point where people are clamouring to claim they were on board all along, it's a good thing overall, I suppose
Yes. Galling, but ultimately positive.

I don't know about this. Obviously there are some (hugely) brave voices who have spoken out and discussed this. And MN etc.

But I listen to lots of well educated self-identified feminists on podcasts/in the workplace etc who absolutely should have been across this topic and instead have been a fully paid up part of the 'be kind' brigade.

And they're still doing it now. With Elon taking over Twitter and the new deluge of GC voices - these feminists are now switching over to the new platform because they say twitter has become too nasty, too unpleasant now. Framed in the type of self-congratulating 'I won't engage in/see this new hateful content discussion AND I'm protecting my own mental health from social media nastiness'.

These are women I otherwise hugely respect and enjoy their thoughts on a multitude of topics. Like other MNetters have said, you can be blind to this issue until you realise what's happening. So I would also agree - where have all the feminists been on this? Feminism is a broad church and we've missed swathes of people who normally stand up for women on this particular topic.

These women have probably got internalised misogyny. You see it here with the disdain the Daily Mail is treated, some posters find cognitively dissonance in that a paper aimed at women is doing so much good journalism on women’s rights. They are heartbroken that the Guardian is ignoring women’s rights.

They probably feel the same way about mumsnet, how can all those domesticated cows have credible thoughts on gender ideology and women’s rights. That’s for the academics to pontificate on.

Those would largely be libfems.

Genderism fits comfortably in libfem discourse.

The feminists who have been raising the issues and talking about them have largely been radical feminists - 'not the fun kind'.

Good point well made @ArabeIIaScott

That does not make it unreasonable for regular people to see this as an issue where women and feminists are not all on the same page.

Women and feminists are not all on the same page, no. Would be an odd assertion to say that they are?

Exactly this. They have to buy the whole deal. I’ve given up talking to American friends about trans issues for this reason.