KJK

[Notaflippinclue]

Why the fuck has MUMSNET cancelled her

Some geezer's midlife crisis ain't no 'alpha'

Don't sully Paul Simon!

I am very glad that there are people here who hold this line firmly. But listening to someone is not the same as pandering to them.

In my own situation, were I to tell my 14 year old daughter what is suggested above, she would cut me off. Instead, I am slowly and carefully exploring what gender identity means to her and the difference between sex (boliology) and gender (belief) - from her perspective as an adolescent, autistic girl who hates her body, is distressed by the changes to it and is constantly bombarded by messaging in the public discourse outside of my control that she might be "in the wrong body".

We take the conversation very slowly because she often sees me as a transphobe, when we touch on various aspects of the subject. It is important to me that I seek to understand this whole topic from as many different angles as possible. That's why I'm here on this board.

Whilst the flying monkey information was incredibly interesting and insightful (I've never seen it before), I find it interesting in relation to my own natural "inner chimp" leaning, which is is to not to be sociotropic at all. As I have grown older I've learned the value in seeking opinions other than my own (I used to be very single minded until probably my 40s), but this is never to people please.

I don't believe in gender identity. She is aware of this and some of my reasoning for this. She doesn't really want to any talk about gender identity - she gets angry when this comes up or we get near to it - so this is a slow conversation and we mostly focus on her distress about the changes that she is experiencing in puberty. She is far more open with me than I would ever have imagined. We are currently caught in a waiting pattern between the counseling and psychiatry layers within CAMHS and in tandem, I am trying to find private psychiatric support which does not involve the gender identity bias. So far, no joy on that. Thankfully she shares what she comes across with me - she's very concerned about women's sports and has also told me that she thinks a trans parent that she has seen on YouTube is abusive for "forcing their child to transition". I'll never tell her what she needs to think. Instead, I will continue to listen to her and provide guidance in critical thinking.

I am doing this whilst I continue to inform myself about gender identity through as many different routes as I can. Including... to bring it back to the thread... what KJK brings to the table.

Excellent song about a midlife crisis. With an appropriate name. But the the connection is tangential. Just an excuse to have a listen. Paul Simon remains unsullied 😊

I still don't get it.

Despite acknowledging that the women here know more about this than you, especially those who have been married to these men for decades and have even set up a collective to support one another, you say:

But the alternative to debate is no debate. In the spirit of preferring the latter, I chose to take Alpha's engagement at face value.

And then still reiterate

And finally, I HUGELY value the collective wisdom and experience of the women on this board (and that of KJK) and have said so many times.

It really feels as though you know, logically that everyone is right, and so you will agree about women spaces, etc, but there is still a core part that can't quite believe the motive of these men.

Even though Alpha was so overt and blatant. All the 'submissiveness, and women are fluffy and helpless and obviously I don't want to say it, but if pushed, absolutely I'm gonna do what I want, when I want, whatever you say.'

Anything that looks less like debate, is difficult to imagine.

Can I ask you, do you genuinely think that alpha was here to learn, and that any part of him left thinking that maybe he's wrong.

Or did his final act of intruding on the transwidows threads help you to see him in a different light?

His final act.

After all the debate, compromise, moderation, and concessions were heard.

Scrolled back up as I had missed this one. I too have been dipping in and out.

This all makes a lot of sense.

I use the word debate simply to refer to conversations with different viewpoints. The counter to the No Debate crowd.

Crossing over in the a transwidows support thread is shocking. Given Alpha obviously shared about the fact that Alpha has/had a wife (I saw comments on this in another thread), it's not too disimilar from a rapist entering a conversation in a support group in a rape crisis centre and offering their viewpoint. It's equally shocking that anyone would defend someone's right to be there. Being on self-labelled middle ground (or similar) threads or a thread about a debate is very different.

Can I ask you, do you genuinely think that alpha was here to learn, and that any part of him left thinking that maybe he's wrong.

I have no idea. I was reminded very much of a confused detransitioner on the Netflix documentary Regretters. He was a heterosexual man who transitioned to try and love himself better but ultimately couldn't stop seeing women as a cloak to wear. Whilst I hope for his sake (and Alpha's too) that he wanted psychological help to process his thoughts around why he felt like a woman and what any of that really means, I'm not at all emotionally invested in the outcome. Unless I know the person directly, all of my sympathies lie with those who are impacted. I do know some transwomen from work and even then, any sympathy I might feel would be limited to the direct effect on their mental health if they thought/realised that they had made a mistake and had made irreversible decisions about their bodies. I have zero sympathy when it comes to crossing boundaries or compelling belief.

Or did his final act of intruding on the transwidows threads help you to see him in a different light?

More of the same light really, but I guess yes because I'm pretty shocked that anyone who isn't a transwidow would join the conversation - unless it was completely to listen and ask to understand. Never to share their own thoughts. Particularly so if they had (presumably) put someone in this situation.

I'm pretty shocked that anyone who isn't a transwidow would join the conversation - unless it was completely to listen and ask to understand. Never to share their own thoughts. Particularly so if they had (presumably) put someone in this situation.

You see I'm not shocked at all. Annoyed yes, but not shocked. It's a predictable escalation when somebody like Alpha has been encouraged by all the other engagement on the board.

It's kind of tragic and pathetic how men like Alpha Golf Papa don't realise how predictable and unoriginal they are.

What is worse is when women mistake the enjoyment of arousing boundary violations as a desire for debate even when repeatedly warned.

Here is another reason why pronouns usage is so harmful, I mean, excluding the scolding admonishment opportunity it gave misogynistic male posters that is.

https://twitter.com/Lea_Christina4/status/1721758084803019058

"BREAKING:
I now face a 2-year ban by the CPU for speaking publicly about the unfairness of biological males being allowed to taunt female competitors & loot their winnings.

Apparently, I have failed in my gender-role duties as “supporting actress” in the horror show that is my #sport right now.

Naturally, the CPU deemed MY written (private) complaint of the male bullying to be “frivolous and vexatious.”

In her interview with Piers Morgan, she stated that her sporting federation in Canada had a policy stating that it was preferable to use preferred pronouns. She seems to have been banned for calling a male a 'biological male' and complaining that they should not be in the sport.

https://twitter.com/Lea_Christina4/status/1708937443976618069 (here is the interview from October 2023)

I don't believe that you can pick and choose who you use pronouns with unless under pressure of being forced to under sanction. Being banned for referring to a male athlete as a male athlete and complaining about them being in the female category is sinister.

Bonfire, gently and with sympathy, you were hoovered. Successfully. And used.

And you still cannot see that your reasonable engagement and being nice was what facilitated an abuser to a) have a lovely time using women, many of whom had seen through him but was still getting lots of nice bait from you to keep on chatting and building up/honing practice as pp said

and b) to then go and start using a group of women who have been through enough and had to endure an abuser turning up in the expectation of being able to play his games on them, and finding someone who'd feed him along while he got out of it what he wanted.

You enabled him to abuse other women. You prevented other women being successful in holding boundaries because you wanted to be nice and reasonable and in essence his behaviours worked really well on you .

We've all been there. We've all been through it. We've all thought our eyes were opened and then had them opened all over again, no one blames you for being sucked in.

Its a bit like idea of the good men staying out of womens changing rooms, so the bad men stand out.

Men dont need to negotiate the definition of women here, even if they are sweethearts. If they arent happy with the direction of TRA they can sort it out in a million other places.

This isnt the place to negotiate what a woman is.

I have never listened to the lyrics before. For some reason it's making me quite emotional.

Edit: Oh. I have PMT. That figures.

As you were!

A man claiming the identity of a woman is an affront to women. How dare he?

He can have no fucking idea what it's like to 'live as a woman'. No man can know what it is to be a woman. The very idea is absurd.

In the act of declaring himself a woman he declares himself a boundary abuser, a mocker of women, a fantasist.

I have some sympathy for any younger men who were fed the myth that they could change sex or fix their problems through 'gender affirmative' treatment.

But a married man who declares he's a woman?

Nope.

And let's face it, there was no attempt to 'negotiate'.

For what? Why? To what end?

Are women hoping that one by one they can convince any activist that comes here that women matter too, and solutions can't be that women just shut up and hand over their words, rights and access?

It's always meeting male need. Whether in terms of curiosity, or an attempt at paternal good will (look up Hayton's threads: careful listening, at the end they patted women on the head and said 'ok, heard you out, nothing I think is important, so I'll do what suits me and you'll just have to cope or be excluded, soz') or because it's exciting and fun to post on Twitter about 'ooh look at me poking women who think they can have equality' and 'look what SHE said, the sinner, she's damned for heresy!' or because they are posting one handed and having a really lovely time personally with their own boat being floated.

Is there really a belief that an extremist group can be reasoned out of their faith any more than women with trauma can just be told to re frame it, or that women of minority faiths will just abandon their faith (and home, and family, and culture, and social circle) rather than distress a male who wants her to take her clothes off for him?

Or is this about the behaviour of many abused women without personality disorders, clinging onto the belief that if they just explain enough and well enough and long enough the other person will go OH and stop being abusive and be totally reasonable and lovely to live with?

Please read Issendai's blog, particularly the famous article 'the missing missing reasons'. Many abusive people will insist - and believe themselves - that the other party is just being randomly weird and unreasonable and has never been willing to discuss or explain what the issue is. Even after repeated meetings and discussions and sometimes explanations in writing: they will still insist they haven't been told, it hasn't been discussed. It is never that an abuser hasn't been told, or hasn't understood. They just haven't yet been given a reason that they agree with. And they enjoy the arguing and the stage in which to enact their own dramas every time someone open up a floor and provides them with space, audience and attention. Because they are using the behaviours and your reactions to meet their own needs? They are never going to agree with you that they should stop. So your reasons (and feelings, and facts, and links and explanations) are just.... meaningless burble. Irrelevant.

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html

🤣

More of the same light really, but I guess yes because I'm pretty shocked that anyone who isn't a transwidow would join the conversation

Do you know who wasn't shocked? Tinsel. Because she knows that it's just another act of boundary violation. Alpha's very presence on that specific thread is. They're drawn to it, like a bloody moth to a flame.

I cannot tell you the number of transwomen who come one here to start their conversations with a professed wish to find a middle ground. Those who don't want to violate women's boundaries, just don't do it. They just don't show up.

Why do you think alpha singled me out? Because I post a lot and my boundaries are clearly hard. Faux flattery and claiming we would get on in real life, was the preferred method of trying to wheedle his way round them. Alpha enjoys the game, not realising how fucking tedious is to everyone else.

Oh. I had missed the post(s) about Alpha having / having had a wife. Now I regret my reference to 'wandering' into the trans widows thread - I don't see how there can possibly have been anything unknowing or random or reckless about it.

Transgressors will carry on transgressing, especially when they're emboldened by successfully placing themselves as victims in a victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle.

The role of the rescuer/benevolent flying monkey is well-described above.

We've all blundered into scenarios we don't understand but this is unlike IRL interactions where it might not be safe to warn the blunderer what is happening. Online, when people are repeatedly advised as to the reality of what is happening and the blunderers prefer to maintain their own perception of reality, that says a lot about where they are in their journey and their insight into collateral damage.

NB: blunderers here != the transgressors nor are they responsible for it (the transgressor is) but they are facilitators of the transgression and have some contribution to the harm that it produces.

I'm really not ignoring what I'm hearing. It all summarises up to what KJK told me: that I'm "part of the problem". I will again say that I don't believe I am and that there are different ways engage in all of this.

I would never want to put any women in a position where they were being abused, and I would never want to think that I had been used as a "weapon" to achieve this. However, I do refute the suggestion that the only answer is to stop this from happening is to keep transwomen out of discussions. At least I think that's what's being suggested. Obviously derails deserve to be ignored and/or shut down but it sounds like the same suggestion is being applied to any type of engagement from transwomen. How is that any better than the No Debate coming from the other side? Surely if there is debate then it's an acceptable risk (although not in support threads of course) that any transwoman who joins in may not have entirely altruistic goals? How each of us chooses to mitigate that risk is our own choice.

If the solution is that only women (no men/transwomen) are allowed on to this board because it's considered a women's space only, so be it. That's not something I would personally want though. There are plenty of people here who are concerned about the impact of gender identity belief, both including and beyond the rights of women and girls, who aren't women (just as there are plenty of women on this Mumsnet board who aren't mums).

There were plenty of women asking Alpha what Alpha meant by the asserted belief that Alpha was a woman. I didn't ever ask this - I did pass comment on the stereotypes but I didn't ask any questions relating to this feeling. I focused instead on what a solution might look like in a scenario where it was accepted that there was a difference in beliefs (Alpha believes Alpha is a woman, I do not - and stated this) and where it was not accepted that transwomen should be in women's spaces.

And without trying to get closer to doxxing myself, there is absolutely no way that I would have had an extended discussion with the head of EDI in a global organisation - about why the company policies (which have now been changed to match the Equality Act) and compelled gender identity belief in the mandatory and voluntary training - if I was taking a zero tolerance approach to preferred pronouns in my day to day role and engagements at work. I don't need to take this approach and I remain happy to use preferred pronouns in some circumstances. Most particularly in relation to my adult colleagues who hold a different belief from me. But equally, I stated in clear language in my discussion with the EDI head that I didn't want to see transwomen in the women's toilets because they didn't belong there solely on the basis of their belief in gender identity, when the EHRC guidance on single sex spaces made it clear that this shouldn't happen (I had already shared this guidance). I'm challenging the impact, not the belief.

Just ideally wondering as you are no longer Arabella but Arthur are you sure it isn't just indigestion and trapped wind? Surely you no longer suffer with womanly issues now?

Possible, Beetle. I'd actually forgotten about the gendershift, perhaps that is the source of the problem.

However, I do refute the suggestion that the only answer is to stop this from happening is to keep transwomen out of discussions. At least I think that's what's being suggested.

It wasn't a good faith discussion, as other pp have also said the poster came to Mumsnet for attention and as a power trip. Which is what that poster got. It's territory marking. Women here have seen this happen many times, validating wordy, tedious screeds of male narcissism is not really what the feminist board is for.