How to lose friends and alienate people? Be openly GC

[ProfessorFlitwick]

I have recently "come out" as GC to my friends, and I am sad by some of their responses. It turns out that for some of them, me thinking a woman is a biological female is an insurmountable hurdle to our friendship. I'm sad to see women who I know are intelligent just repeating the gender ideology dogma without being open to applying any critical thought to it.

Atheists and theists can respectfully debate the existence of God, and still be friends. They understand they are debating the wider concept of God, and not attacking each other personally or denying the other person's right to hold their view. GI supporters seem incapable of comprehending this way of debating something, any form of discussion is seen as a direct "attack" on the "existence of trans people" and must be immediately shut down. When I think of the types of people in history who try to silence or intimidate people who disagree with them, it doesn't bring up a great bunch of people.

Does anyone else want to vent about their experiences of navigating (or losing) friendships with GI supporters?

You know the old saying ‘never discuss religion, politics, sex and money’? Add gender ideology to that.

Until this craziness has passed - which it will, eventually - I think most people will keep schtum to avoid falling out with their captured friends.

I don't think we are the ones who are delusional.
If your not prepared to demonstrate which posts you consider transphobic how are we supposed to see where your coming from?

The biggest irritation a lot of us have with the Trans movement is the lack of engagement in discussion and their inability to see anyone's point of view but their own.

This deadlock is only going to be resolved when both sides are willing to have a dialogue and actually listen and understand each others points of view.
As it stands only one side seems willing to engage in any discussion. And it's not the trans movement.

So if you would like to enlighten us as to which posts you find objectionable that would surely be beneficial to both sides! 🤷🏻‍♀️

"Atheists and theists can respectfully debate the existence of God, and still be friends. They understand they are debating the wider concept of God, and not attacking each other personally or denying the other person's right to hold their view. GI supporters seem incapable of comprehending this way of debating something, any form of discussion is seen as a direct "attack" on the "existence of trans people" and must be immediately shut down".

In many regards, gender ideology, wokeness more generally if you will, is much worse than religion nowadays. It is much closer to the religion of the Church in years gone by where witch, blasphemy, and heretic were common things.

I haven't lost any friends but I avoid the subject. The only people in the TWAW bracket that I know are also of the "be kind" variety and think they are better, more open minded and inclusive people for thinking this way. They know I don't and when they bring it up I say nothing or well you can't change sex so while they can dress etc etc as they like it doesn't change their basic biology. People don't seem to be as militant about it but could be an age thing too. To be honest I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who couldn't cope with the fact that I have a different opinion. I mean I accept they think differently,

The worst ones are some of the men I know and their ridiculous comments and lack of understanding around women's rights issues.
I have made it a blanket rule to never discuss women's rights with men ever again face to face. I will carry on campaigning and forums such as this where I feel safe.

@Ohyoudodoyou
One of my very long term male friends told me I should accept TW in my spaces, then asked why I just had a problem with TW and not TM.
I really though he was a good guy, I was really wrong.

A lot of acquaintances and people I have a lot of time for are now changing their profiles to progress flags and promoting protests against 'terf and neo-Nazi' Posie Parker.

Depending on their occupations, is it plausible that they're literally obliged to do that as part of their performance review as allies? (You are instructed to do things and awarded points for it that go towards Stonewall's WEI and such.)

As for the rest, there's a lot of useful material on this board about

• the consequences of being "prematurely anti-[X]" (context of WWII and those who'd served in Spain being "prematurely anti-fascist")
• preference falsification
• Havel's greengrocer.

And Universities.
My Dd studying a science subject is all TWAW.
WTF?

Not being silly, but did he understand what each of those are? Considering the August MBM poll showed that this is far less understood than we expect.

I've found that when I speak to other women I trust, they may have a little knowledge but when I've explained it to them in my inimitable way, there's no going back! I had one friend and she said to me that she had enough to worry about and didn't care about the issue. I said, you will...
Some months later she came back to me and said - you were right, I can't believe what I'm seeing (Barbie Kardashian)
I've had these conversations with several good women and they then speak to several other good women but you do need to know your audience.
With men, as strawberries said earlier, they fall into two camps in my circle, those that minimise it and find it almost humorous and those that are so determined to signal their wonderful bestowing of liberal views upon us all that they are firmly in the all TWAW and anyone disputing this is a bigot. This latter groups includes men I fucking know have made jokes in the past about transsexuals and transvestites as they were called back a decade ago or so. Short memories maaaaate.

Thing is, TRAs cry transphobia when people say humans can't change sex and male bodied people shouldn't be in women's spaces. I've never heard an example of transphobia which us actually clear real transphobia and I think you would advance the conversations if you were willing to highlight actual examples.

what do you mean by 'undergoes a sex change'? most TW don't change anything surgically or hormonal. They retain just normal male bodies. They socially transition (whatever that means - it seems an outdated sexist reference to me). Are you saying that only people who have had their genitals removed and take cross sex hormones deserve to be 'treated as the gender they are'? so if people are on waiting lists r csnt tolerate the treatments, they just have to suck up being 'treated as the gender they arent'? did you k ow the evidence is that Dr's can't tell who will detransition and who won't?

I feel the same but it's my sister who has this week posted something about the awfulness of tw being banned from women's wards. We've never actually discussed it, but I have had my suspicions that she is twaw and I'm so not and it has knocked me tbh!

I think it's the blurring of the lines that is partially to blame. GI see TW as what would have been called transsexuals or gay men. GC tend to be more focussed on the transvestites or straight men who call themselves lesbians and tend to be the aggressive ones. That's just my opinion though.

Agree with most posters, I'm openly outwardly GC and will cut contact with anyone who thinks a man can be a woman or vice versa.

Most of my friends are GC. I'm mid-fifties.
I tend to keep quiet as I'm like a straw in the wind on these issues. I find it very difficult to feel at home within one particular group.

I lost loads of pals because of it as well, OP as have alot of women here. But you know as a PP said ,they weren't that brilliant pals anyway. They were mostly folk I knew from playing music years ago and most of them are sheltered wannabe luvies and have no real connection with my life or the average working class women's life anyway. Same with so called political party "pals" I had ! They were only interested in me when I could leaflet.
There are lots of really smart and nice women in all the wee factions of the GC movement and I am sure you will come across some of them,even on social media

I lost a lovely friend to this. She’s a lesbian, pushing 60, and is Kind to the point of not allowing herself to think beyond TWAW and poor children tragically born in the wrong body. Almost like a physical block that she cannot get past.
Any critical thinking, any facts (such as humans cannot change sex, TW are statistically more likely to be sex offenders than other men, the fact that many prominent TW campaigning for trans rights are found to have dodgy pasts/presents/paedophile connections) send her into spasms because everything is transphobic.
It’s like she’s forgotten her younger days when she she couldn’t be openly lesbian in pubs and out and about without men telling her she needed a good shag etc.
She’s blocked me, but I don’t think I could maintain a friendship with someone who cannot think beyond a dogmatic ideology that’s so harmful to women and children.

On a positive note, I think younger teens are now over this. Ds (13) and his friends think the whole gender stuff is ridiculous. Local school kids were shocked at an unconfirmed case of a 15 yr old boy being sent home for not participating in his school’s pride month celebrations - many more children sat out the inevitable gender word searches and other pride shit in protest (of something that may not even have happened!).

That's not kind it is? She's pressurising for situations which will end with vulnerable people being abused more and denied support. She is extremely unkind.

But that’s the highly “bigoted” GC view.
Not everyone has the strength or curiosity to go against the accepted cult script.

Yes. He absolutely did.

I have seen some transphobic posts about individuals on here - Eddie Izzard for example. There are quite a few posters who will say they don't have any problem with men wearing dresses but will post vicious mockery of a transwoman wearing feminine-coded clothing. I know the argument- that EI is claiming to be a woman and therefore it's not the same thing. But I don't entirely agree and ill try and say why (thinking aloud a bit).

I've got a different view on this - that we don't acknowledge enough on here that clothing always has meaning, in every circumstance. Just saying 'of course men can wear dresses, good on you' doesn't really acknowledge it imo. I am sometimes uncomfortable at seeing a male person in what looks like a female costume, because of what that entails - in the same way as wearing a Native American war bonnet as a party costume is now completely not ok . I don't think cultural appropriation is the thing I'm not liking, and I'm not sure fetish is really the right word either. The male academic who appeared in a newspaper wearing a circular skirt, twinset and huge pearls with court shoes (mentioning no names) was treating femininity as if it is a culture, a single thing called womanhood that anyone can appropriate and perform. I get angry at the perception that there is a culture like that attached to women. But what am I doing when I wear dresses etc?

And on the other hand (again!) I genuinely want men to feel free to wear anything they like including makeup, colour and pattern, high fashion, lace, however it's coded. I suppose I'm looking at the different feeling I have seeing gay men playing with camp and femininity and performance, and seeing old clips of the Beaumont Society.

I don’t recall anyone having a problem with EI wearing clothes, particularly when he pointed out that they weren’t women’s clothes but his clothes.
His approach has changed since he is now free to show how he truly feels about women, and that’s where the issue lies.

There are various strands to clothing. It can be fantasy, or fetish, or provocation. There is also 'gender' and how we respond to it.

So a man choosing to wear clothes that are female coded is sometimes using them as a communication but that could mean several things, some of which may be harmless or fun or useful.

Sometimes challenging norms can be productive ('men can be flamboyant or sensitive or playful') sometimes neutral ('i genuinely dont notice the cultural resonances of what I'm wearing', and sometimes it can be a negative act ('Idressing as a stereotyped cipher of femininity is arousing partly because it makes women uncomfortable'.

I expect any one person can also have a mix of motives.