How it started...how it's going...where it'll go...

[RealityFan]

This isn't a thread about the deep origins of TRA. For one, I'm only aware of the basics, it's been going on for decades. I can't add much to what we already know about transvestism and the three letter acronym that gets you deleted on MN.

No, this is my take as someone who got hooked on the subject a decade ago, peaked in the last few years, having had some CBT to clarify my thoughts and provide perspective, and how I feel it's "evolving".

Additionally, I'm a male, no matter how empathetic I am to the damage done to the female sex class, as a male, I can only observe and comment. My chain is yanked more from a free speech, neo religion/philosophical POV. Better to be honest about where we're all coming from in this, so we can offer our best efforts to combat.

What I'm seeing in 2023, and why I consider this a watershed year in the flip back to reality, is the froth and churn in the phenomenon.

So, before the pandemic, in 2018/19, there were flashpoints like KJK and her first Adult Human Female rollouts that were nullified by TRA Adrian Harrop. There were the clinicians banned from pediatric mental health conferences for promoting Watchful Waiting. There was JKR, and Glinner, being actively bullied online.

However, these still felt like isolated cases, I hadn't been on social media long, and despite being exasperated, felt that this was the extent of the phenomenon, no momentum built in any dramatic meaningful way.

Yes, # NoDebate was in full swing, but no way would the Left at large really dig down on this. The Left still believed in free speech, yes?

So, I was infuriated, but not overly worried, despite stories escalating (I was particularly peaked by Jessica Yaniv and a non trans cancel culture story, Oberlin College).

Then, lockdown happened, we all bunkered down, we all lived online. Then George Floyd happened, BLM exploded, and I believe from that point the Left elites ramped up all social justice activism, primarily the Anti Racism mantras, and allied to those, trans activism in all its guises and radical tactics.

And then for me, the movement took it's fateful dark turn, with the Lia Thomas story last year. Not only was Lia to be absolutely addressed as a woman, by teammates, rest of fraternity, but also media, society at large. To the point a few years ago where we went from "men believe they can be women, ID as their gender" a few years back to "men can become women, and you will accept it".

Now, No Debate went from a cloudy concept to a full on dark thundercloud, the mantra TWAW to be meant literally, and to be literally enforced.

And thence to Emily Bridges, Austin Killips.

There were cases I read in 2019 of men in women's prisons, suddenly 2023...Isla Bryson, and had the UK been Canada, Mumsnet would be shut down for discussing it.

We went from more and more ructions at demonstrations in 2019 to ramped up violence of masked men at rallys in 2023 literally breaking the skulls of old women.
And the new phenomenon, whataboutery on VAWG from the Left.

We went from male breastfeeding in 2019 as a fetish on TransReddit to a union activist doing it on Twitter in 2023, supported by the wider Left activist movement.

We went from men shouting a lot in 2019, to lethal criminals being lauded for saying that TERFs should have their faces punched to huge cheers at an official Pride event.

Last example, in 2019 the only place you found a Jessica Yaniv type was on TikTok or Trans/Reddit, today in August 2023 we have an out and out male fetishist being locked in the school room with students who to a boy and girl will be thinking "get me the fuck out of here!"

Now, a year ago, I was in a deep funk. I had just read the story of Emily Bridges running the noses of women cyclists at the Thundercrit road race meet, and felt the war was lost. Totally. I was so upset that day, I looked like someone who's beloved dog had been run ocer. That a story so toxic and so preposterous, was allowed to stand, no MSM picked up on it, and the female who was robbed of Gold went onto Twitter to support Bridges. It couldn't get any worse.

I actually think that was the low point. Because everything since has been an object lesson in focussed resistance from the GC side getting results, provoking overacting in the TRAs, and tactical defeats and the air leaking from their movement.

The victories in court for Forstater, Bailey, Bindel, Cherry...hopefully soon Ali, the three OU cases.

The humiliation of SNP over Bryson. And resultant change in Labour Party policy.

The shitshow that is $billions share prices nosedives for Bud Light, Target, likely Costa.

The opinion polls that show the high point of acceptance for the Stonewall position being 2019, polls recently all moving fast in GC direction.

The absolute negative reaction to the likes of Mika Minio cos play breastfeeding, enforced language in NHS, public's increasing fears on RSE in schools and the messages on gender to kids.

And the collapse of # No Debate...no more blackballing Helen Joyce, Kath Stock, Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian, JKR etc. What worked in 2019, is unacceptable in 2023.

My conclusion? This is an (un)civil war, has been raging maybe since the late 60s as the mantra to an intersectionally analysed world transpired, embedded thru decades of elite Left drift in policy making, in academia and the law, knowing that Joe and Joely Public would never go for it, so our minds made up for us on our behalf. That was the landscape pre Covid, certainly up to 2023.

But as the hot lava of trans policy in particular hits the cold ice of reality, only one result, billows of steam, and that's what we're seeing in 2023.

Whether it's my CBT having been successful, I don't know, but Ive done a mental 180 to my dark days from 12-15 months ago, I truly feel as these various waves of TRA spike into public consciousness, the blow back is now so severe, that the TRA side tries harder and harder, their defeat more and more inevitable, even if it'll take a few more years.

From Isla Bryson to Dylan Mulvaney to Emily Bridges to Austin Killips to Mika Minio to Sarah Jane Baker to the Z Cup Canadian teacher, this is the "best" trans has to offer.

My conclusion...it sure started weird, it became beyond weird this year, the future will be a whole lot less weird.

I am glad that your mental health is better than it was.

A long and an interesting summary, but I think it reflects a fairly narrow point of view. For example, when you describe it as being a fairly isolated problem in 2018 and 19, the women on this board and other places already knew how significant and serious this was and we’re working really hard to raise awareness and fight back. The Spartacus threads for example long pre date that.

Just be careful that you’re not coming across as a man coming to explain feminism and women’s right activism to women have been very much more heavily involved in it for a long time.

I can't really get that right, can I?
I am a male.
I came across this in 2013, but peaked in 2017-19.
My thoughts could be misconstrued as mansplaining.
My thoughts may be only be of relevance to myself.
All of that is true.

I have seen you on a lot of threads and am always glad to see any poster - regardless of sex - talking common sense and helping the debate, so that’s all good. And it’s great for you to reflect on your perspective too and am sure there’s lots there for people to value.

But it is incomplete and that’s ok.

"incomplete" ?

@RealityFan I don't have a lot to contribute just now but wanted to say that I've been finding your posts very interesting for some while and enjoy reading them.

For what it's worth I pretty much agree with what you've said. There is push back and I think we'll see this project connecting firmly with the hard buffers of reality. However hard one wishes for something, the Universe is not obliged to change reality.

@RealityFan I appreciate your post. You may be a male and empathetic to women's rights at a small and inevitable distance due to that. Thanks for acknowledging it. I don't hear you "mansplaining" at all. However, you will have a been a child/young person at some point who would have had every expectation that the adults and society around you did their best in telling the truth as they understood it. To this extent the fight is yours as much as anyone's. The miseducation of the young is the worst of this in my opinion.

I think we all have a personal peaking story, with our own personal twists, turns and protagonists. What I can relate to is the mental health aspect (and I believe there have been a couple of threads on this, too). This has been the great political/intellectual crisis of my adult life to date. I’ll never look at the world in quite the same way again. But like the OP, I am quietly hopeful.

I don’t care that you’re a man, btw. We all have our contributions to make and the way in which most men instantly ‘get it’ when it comes to questions of male sexual deviancy is … refreshing. But every day I spend on this board I am deeply impressed by the eloquence, wit, tenacity and knowledge of female MN denizens, qualities that I suspect are often overlooked.

All I aimed today in my little way was to suggest that what appears to be wall to wall negative news can also be looked at somewhat differently.

I guess I'd call it the death rattle, or the unpredictable lashing out when a beast is cornered.

Additionally, how lacking in depth the phenomenon is if the rogues gallery I mentioned in my opening post is the best of the best that can be presented to us.

The churn and froth ahead of the calm. I think Dennis Noel Kavanagh takes this view as well.

Many of us have boarded this train at different stations and that is perfectly fine, given that we are all going to the same destination.

I got on very early, around 2010, when I first saw what recent university graduates in feminism were advocating, and when the erasure of women from language began on women's reproductive sites. It was pretty clear to me from the beginning that classical feminist thought, aimed at destroying as many gender stereotypes, sexist concepts of feminism, and oppressive gender roles was in direct opposition to the gender ideology view which prioritised the concept of 'gender' over sex in analysing women's status in this world.

But I initially thought this new school of thought would stay marginal and wouldn't have to be met face on. I was wrong about it. Later my worries increased by the beginning of what some call the new Age of Endarkenment where canceling people, distorting science, silencing debate and bringing struggle sessions and various cult-like concepts into progressive politics have become increasingly common.

Feminism now fights against two fronts, one from each side in politics, and this is helping the traditional misogynists in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, not just in the West where the erasure of women is still only linguistic.

I am so very tired. But hopeful about the new resistance and the end of the #nodebate with its forced mantras.

I enjoyed reading your hopeful post. 18 months ago I too felt very afraid. Unlike you I was very new to this subject so it was all a bit much to suddenly get it and then see just how bad things had gotten.

How things have changed since I think Isla Bryson within MSM. I certainly felt more hopeful after Maya's win.

I still think too many people don't understand the competing rights at play, freedom of speech, the extent of that banned three lettered acronym, solidarity for plain, boring old women...the list could go on.

I always like reading hopeful posts like this. And I'm glad you're feeling better about things, Op. Sometimes this stuff makes me feel quite ill, overwhelmed and hopeless, and utterly furious at the injustice of it all. Thinking about it, I haven't felt that way for while. Maybe change is afoot?

I dream that it'll go out of favour overnight, like lobotomies. But I fear it is all going to take a very long time to unpick and walk back, because it's become so embedded in all of our institutions. I do believe we move closer to success every day, though. Especially when the TRAs speak and people [gestures vaguely outside irl] start to realise what batshittery is going on.

I think you come at it the same way as my OH. The incredulousness of it all as it ramps up bit by bit but the bits get so much bigger each time and still, the left holds the line.

You do have to ask what it will take.

Men are allowed to have an opinion on all this! The more the merrier in my opinion.

Interesting timeline. It’s good to read others’ perspectives.

I began to realize just how embedded it was a good long time before Lia Thomas, so that seems late to me. What I will say was that it certainly began to come more into wider consciousness during that period and (for me) that was one of several shocked moments when I realized many things were still going in the wrong direction.

Periodically, I think the tide has changed, then something else comes along. The latest (for me) was realizing banks are closing people’s accounts for “wrongthink”. I find that equally terrifying in general, and much more so on a personal level.

I keep hoping there will be a reversal and the shocks will stop. At least they are sometimes making the news now and mainstream comedians at the top level have picked up on it.

I feel we’re going in the right direction, but it’s going to take a long time to reverse. And then there are those in power, who seem to have a higher chance than average of having a transitioned child. That is going to be a very difficult situation to unpick.

Anyway, thanks again RealityFan and anyone else who’s given their perspective. Always interesting to hear how others are doing.

Age Of Endarkenment...can I use that?
For me, I've needed to take different overviews to remain sane, and Helen Joyce's take on the new atheists being less philosophically questioning faiths and more simply anti authoritarian, and an alpha male club, has helped me reconcile why they haven't ripped into this anti humanist movement.
Her take on deeply buried sunken costs of the captured elites has also been hugely enlightening.
As has all the stuff I've read on herd mentality, and the relationship between the most extraordinary claims generating the biggest capitulations, and the worst purity spirals.

My take is that it is not so much Endarkenment, as Stupid Does As Stupid Is.

My thread was to share and encourage some major signs of positivity.

I genuinely feel that TRA is losing its grip, realises it's spell is waning. So, what does an animal do when it is under attack or cornered? It lashes out.

When # NoDebate was carefully curated, it really was seamless. All Oxygen was sucked out of the air.

When this changed, we all see it differently, but the effect is the same, crazier and crazier claims, more and more defensiveness, greater and greater performativeness.

And finally, evidence of kickback.

I truly feel 2023 is the pivot, the elastic limit reached, snapping back the other way.

But as in all civil wars, fighting still to be had, landscape still scarred, casualties mount. But we can see the nation can be rebuilt.

For me, I engaged with CBT because it was all affecting my mood, I was looking too much. Mumsnet has been an oasis of clear minds, but it's easy even here to get to know your navel too much, lol.
But expressing thoughts and fears is more positive than negative.
I've had to work hard not to catastrophise. What's been very positive for me is to think about people and the world outside the tight confines of my life, re-engage with a more humanist take on life, and take a stand. Know myself.

It would be too easy to just get angry, bitter and fearful. Wrangling the phenomenon, looking at the overview, trying to see what's happening on the other side, and then reading amazing takes like the Substack that purported that TRA is indeed MRA, that the left have abandoned the class struggle for the intersectional and identarian analysis, that the elites cannot change course (even the Americans pulled out of Vietnam), that the authentic self and kindness as a weapon are really accurate takes.

But also knowing, this line cannot be held. Because it's contrary to everything the Enlightenment is predicated on.

And as a humanist, I still think people will come good.

I'm just hoping some of my takes present some light and shade to those in a deep funk over this.

Some things are better for sure, positive signs. Even here in Canada, more people seem aware, though many are oblivious.

I am still worried about the bigger picture, which seems to me to be getting worse rather than better. Though again, I guess there are increasing signs of people rejecting it, but more and more institutional capture with EDI and such. I worry a lot about the universities, whether they will survive.

I read Chris Rufo (right hand man to Ron DeSantis) who postulates that this all started in the late 60s in US. The elites realised they could never get intersectionalism to pass the public "sniff test" ie voted in at the ballot box, so they had to embed it legally and via academia, so that all those in institutions in decades to come would have to be trained in these edicts. Medicine, journalism, ethics, social sciences, politics, housing, police, public services etc.

And of course the public would be swept along, because policies would be presented to them (us) as a fait a compli.

So much easier than individuals and especially politicians having to argue the merits, especially of radical trans policy.

Well, guess what? These policies are now hitting the cold air of reality ie reasonable public opinion. And they're still failing the "sniff test".

That's why pure public policy was never going to be enough. Simple declarations by hospitals wouldn't cut it. No, a level of bureaucracy has had to be created, DEI, purely for the purpose of railroading intersectional policy from declared intent and aim, to enforced application, but in the "iron fist in a velvet glove" legaleze that DEI insinuates on its workforce.

Don't like pronouns, won't wear the badge? DEI has the narrative guaranteed to change that? Won't change that? We'd rather let you go. Which doctor or teacher etc would quit rather than accept a badge and Stonewall training? Very few. And many will accept, many enthusiastically, as the herd moves in one direction.

So, as the visual part of the phenomenon froths over and evaporates when the public see it revealed (Lia Thomas, Isla Bryson, Dylan Mulvaney, Mika Minio, Sarah Jane Baker, Z Cups Kayla), and the law is tested to destruction (by Bailey, Forstater, Bindel, Cherry, the three OU litigants etc), and politicians do a bad impression of out of control spinning tops when asked What Is A Woman?, the deepcore work is done in academia and especially DEI.

A self sealed system of training our future law makers, policy heads, doctors, teachers and media, where there is a simple message on this constantly. That the public will be made to comply with the direction chosen for them.

I, too, am grateful & made more hopeful because the argument is being picked up in more & more mainstream places. Its being discussed openly is what should've happened years ago - & then maybe things would not have progressed so far & so badly. I hope we are on the way back. I'm not sure what the settling down of society will look like: a quick sweeping of it all under the carpet of denial? Some permanent changes?

The thing which has been on the cards for a while is now happening as part of what might be called the death throes of this phase of ideological revolution: the urgent pushing of pedophilia as an acceptable form of sexual activity. One might see it as an extinction burst; or I believe the US phrase is a 'hail Mary pass'.

I always reference https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/ article from late 2018 for the run up to all this nonsense.

I feel the future is brighter but only through the hard work and perseverance of (mostly) females fighting inch by inch to protect their rights in the courts. UK looking particularly bright. Not helped when Stonewall is casting its influence even over the judiciary.

It is interesting to see someone else's perspective on this, but I do think it's not the whole picture. If you look at the violence, for example, the first incident I became aware of was when a trans activist assaulted Maria Maclachlan in September 2017. When it came to court, the judge reprimanded Maria for referring to the assailant as "he".

Throughout 2018, Woman's Place UK meetings were subject to violent threats and attempts to cancel meetings by harassing venues. Some of the venues did in fact cancel the meetings. There was also a bomb threat against one of the venues. WPUK took to holding meetings in secret - when the trans activists found out the venues, they used some really nasty intimidation such as banging on windows and shouting abuse and letting off smokebombs. Most of this didn't reach the media, but it shows that the TRAs were already adopting the vicious tactics that are now being exposed more widely.

I think the really big game changer was JK Rowling's intervention in the Maya Forstater case, which brought the topic to much wider public attention. In the US, the Lia Thomas case achieved something similar.

I'm absolutely not saying that bad stuff didn't happen before 2022/23, ie before Covid. But something in the weaponised silos that we all went into for 12-18 months after C-19 struck, with the rocket fuel of George Floyd breakdown of civic society, seems to have turbo charged the TRA invective.

I'm not sure we saw the sharp end of Bryson and Sarah Jane Baker before. Not in such strong relief. Men in women's sport? Was really brought home by Lia Thomas.
Yes, there were cos players, but Dylan Mulvaney took the rubbing your noses in it to new depths. Non milk producing breastfeeders? Only in the shadows of Trans/Reddit, Mika Minio now out and proud on Twitter supported by the Labour movement.
Jessica Yaniv, prior to Covid only really known on the depths of social media moaning about those unwaxed balls, now Katya Z Cups is locked in a room with kids.

My point is that what was toxic, has now been cultivated and concentrated into greater and greater assaults on basic mores of civic discourse and decency.

And my bigger point is that it's a function of the philosophy, that as it loses grip as the public disown it when they see it, because it's never believed in arguing its case, being proud to be discussed, it's singularly unable to do anything to try and change the growing resistance other than by overreacting, doubling down, ramping up.

And this in and of itself demonstrates to me that it's in its death throes as any kind of philosophy, certainly not proud.

The danger remains embedded DEI and academia seemingly totally captured, and the elites who can only attract total humiliation if they come clean on this.

The phenomenon has flashed and is waning, but the structures for civic indoctrination remain strong.

How academia is brought back from the brink and DEI is dismantled, this I really don't know.

Yes to much of this, though it's also important to view this whole movement as piggybacking on the Lesbian/gay movement which partly explains why it took root so well (that and the ready funding):

Because the rights Lesbians and gays asked for in many ways did match the often-repeated argument that "rights are not a pie where you get a smaller slice if others get a slice, too", it was easy (if unthinking) to assume that the same would apply to trans rights. It takes time to understand (because it seems so impossibly dystopic) that the demands truly are for the whole world to redefine 'men' and 'women' (but really only 'women' so far) as mixed sex categories where entry is completely free (defined as inclusion) and not based on any requirements at all.

And it takes time to understand that trying to hold on to one's own embodied gender identity or meaning will, shockingly, now be interpreted as bigotry. In short, someone else wants to eat all the pie and I'm not allowed to complain, even when my female ancestors baked much of that pie with effort and sacrifices.

Recently the extreme demands of the most fervent activists have become much more obvious, and people not closely following the developments are becoming more informed. Sunlight.

(I didn't create the term The Age of Endarkenment, but read it somewhere, possibly in a different context. It seems to describe the current slide into tribal, religious, and quasi-religious world views in so many different fields, not just in gender politics pretty well.)

Like the analogy on pies. Or even more so...having it, eating it, the whole damn Victoria Sponge.

Re the male pie. Women can join, we wouldn't even notice. Sure we might as men be a bit embarrassed to see you in our toilets and changing rooms, but good luck on the rugby pitch, or in a scene from the Wolf Of Wall Street.

There's no status or safety risk to us, the risk is all on the female side, deigning yourself to be male and joining the male arena.

And of course men joining your spaces.

The pie is resolutely male, the "status status quo" is always biased to males.

But to be accused of bigotry as your pie is stolen by males, the irony is off the scale.