How did it all start?

[CervixSampler]

This is the question my lovely, totally baffled mum asked me today. I was talking to her about the poetry book containing poems from mumsnetters here (will shamelessly post a link) and why those poems have come about.

I can't remember how it all started. Were we boiling frogs? I came onto the boards around the time Posie Parker was putting up her billboard and have been a regular ever since. I can't remember any single event that triggered my awareness but this board and Posie were a huge eye opener.

When did women's rights become up for grabs? When did things get out of hand? I know things have always been problematic but when did it all explode?
Shameless book plug;

Under the Duvet of Darkness Volume Two Lurking Merkins: Poems written by angry women for angry women because WOMEN WON'T WHEESHT: 2 amzn.eu/d/3ucEKB7

Agreed.

I remember in the mid 2000s there would be the odd thread where a mnetter would find her husband in her clothes/wanting to dress "en femme" and even then there was a "be kind" chorus, usually pointing the poster to the Beaumont Society.

The difference was that the refrain at that time was "He doesn't think he's an actual woman". The script was that he was just "comfortable" in women's clothes. He found it "relaxing". Such non-threatening words. And always a rush to reassure that it didn't mean he was gay.

Now he's a Real Girl, you bigot. His clothes are life saving. And of course he's gay - he's an Actual Lesbian.

Still can't say the F word.

Its been top down manipulation.

Hayley cropper was used to show that transsexuals werent the same as the cross dressing men we all knew about.

The GRA was quietly introduced with very little media coverage. Which is odd given the amount of attention civil partnerships was given the same year.

The EqA was indroduced in the dying days of labour when everyone was more bothered about the next election. Nobody seemed to care what GR was.

Because the PC of GR in the EqA, nhs, the police and others had to start recoding gender. Instead they conflated sex and gender. When single sex wards became a government priority, this confusion was highlighted. Instead of telling the nhs to sort it, the government just decided to tell the public its single sex wards, when they mean single gender wards.

Then trans activists wanted attention, they wanted trans visibility, the were concerned that not nearly enough people were getting GRC. Oh, and cross dressers and transsexuals are the same now, and are all transgender.

When we complain, we are told that its the law and there have been no issues. If we all accept men with gender as women, why all the secrecy?

Note: the EqQ was never fit for purpose because when it was written, politicians knew that SSE were going to be impossible maintain apart from extreme cases.

They have been issusing men with female passports for years because they arent considered proof of sex. But they know passports are seen as strong id because they are government issued and checked against birth certificates.

If a man waves a passport and threatens to sue under the EqA, whats a small business supposed to do? Theres not a politician who is capable of walking us through the scenario and ensuring single sex provision.

In addition, they is a special dbs department which deals with anyone with the PC of GR. This allows anyone who claims GR to hide their sex when applying for employment. No GRC is needed.

If its cock up rather than conspiracy, its a hell of a lot of cock up working together.

"You can be anything you want to be."

Which of us hadn't said that to our children? Which of us don't want to nurture aspirations?

But combine that with the death of common sense and the social fomo of Be Kind...

I think posters might find this interesting. Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, oral submission to the Transgender Equality Inquiry, 2015.

committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/4892/pdf/

Q312 Mrs Drummond: Going on to sport now, the Equality Act 2010 allows for some transgender people to be excluded from single-sex sport, particularly close contact sport, but Jay Stewart of Gender Intelligence told us that there are people who just want to have a kickaround, just to play sport for fun and do, perhaps, sporting activity at university, and they are excluded. How can we stop this sort of unfairness happening?
Mr Vaizey: It is incumbent on the sporting authorities to call this practice out where they see it happening. As you said, there is an exception under the Equality Act, section 19, which allows single-sex sports to exclude, as it were, other sexes. As far as I am aware, that is based on a strength and stamina test, from what I have read up about it, but clearly there are many, many sports where both sexes can compete on level terms. I would expect bodies like Sport England, for which we are responsible, and some of the national governing bodies for sport, if it is brought to their attention, to point out that, certainly in terms of informal training, non‑competitive sporting activity, even though it might be taking place in terms of a competitive sport, there is no reason for people of different sexes not to be playing together. Where it comes across as a clear case of arbitrary exclusion, they can call them out.
If I draw a parallel with some of the work I have been doing in broadcasting—sorry to keep bringing it back to an area I am perhaps more familiar with—we had this with the Equality Act when we were talking to broadcasters about increasing diversity, where people said, “We are terrified of breaking the law”. We got the Equality and Human Rights Commission to put together a practical guide giving real-life examples of where you would not be breaking the Equality Act if you were going to promote diversity. Perhaps that might be something on which a body like Sport England and the Government Equalities Office, which can fund this kind of work, could consider giving a practical guide, particularly to university sports societies, to say, “You may think, perversely, that if you exclude different sexes from sport you are complying with the law. Actually, you are over‑interpreting what this section was designed to do.”
Q313 Mrs Drummond: As a Department, you would be encouraging the various sports authorities to change their views on that.
Mr Vaizey: I do not know about changing their views, because I am not overly familiar with their views. It strikes me that it may not be a change of view that is needed, but more of a practical application of what I hope would be their view: that different sexes can play together in an informal sporting setting.
Q314 Chair (Maria Miller): One of the particular problems that sporting organisations have is around the very practical issue of changing rooms. What guidance do the Government give at the moment to organisations that are challenged with that particular problem?
Mr Vaizey: I am not familiar with any specific guidance we give. I think this week sees the 20th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act, and that was an example of legislation that again wanted to force organisations that might be hiding in the “it is too difficult” category to make physical changes to their buildings in order to accommodate people with physical disabilities. At the same time, again in terms of the balance needed against measures that might be extremely costly, there is always room for manoeuvre.
If it is possible to provide appropriate changing facilities, particularly for team games where people of different sexes are playing together, it should be possible. There is plenty of lottery funding available either from organisations like Sport England or, indeed, from organisations like Big Lottery, which funds both culture and sports projects as well, to make those changes and, indeed, many charities and foundations. We, as MPs, know only too well potentially how many different organisations our communities can go to to fund some of these projects. I will certainly write to the Committee if I think that there are specific issues to do with changing room facilities that need to be looked at.

Key bit where Vaizey says

"Perhaps that might be something on which a body like Sport England and the Government Equalities Office, which can fund this kind of work, could consider giving a practical guide, particularly to university sports societies, to say, “You may think, perversely, that if you exclude different sexes from sport you are complying with the law. Actually, you are over‑interpreting what this section was designed to do.”

Just how dim are these people?

I don't think the cause is male fetisism. Or even groups like PIE. There have always been people like that.

The question is why did society just suck this up and accept it.

It is an inherently leftist thing. Not nice British unionism, or Scandi social democrats - left as in Leninist or Stalinist.

This kind of gender ideology is a sub-category of identity politics. Id pol is not an individualist ideology, it's one where your value and political power depends on your membership in certain groups. It's a kind of neo-marxism. It takes the structural features of classical marxism but replaces the category of the proletariat with various social identity groups. So the members of these categories are seen as virtuous, and will bring on the revolution, whereas those who take the place of the bourgeoisie and the capitalists (women, cis people, white or white adjacent people, etc) are always guilty, by virtue of this category membership.

The revolution requires the destruction of all our institutions, political institutions of course, but also the institutions of nature like the family, etc. (Mainstream left liberalism and feminism have been almost entirely complicit in this btw.) There is not innate morality or goodness, and the ends (that being the revolution) entirely justifies the means. (This is why in the racial version of id politics it is totally ok to discriminate on the basis of race, so long as it's against the oppressor groups. The principle isn't equality of non-discrimination or fairness at all. It's about the destruction of those who belong to the wrong class.)

Cancel culture in this scenario is basically a kind of gulag (which the neomarxists tell us weren't so bad anyway, just good places for re-education.)

Anyway - I think this is the context of understanding why gender ideology has taken off. These ideas have been accepted, pushed, and growing on the left for many years, the left has nurtured them, and so the belief systems of many of people are based around this way of thinking. It all seems completely logical to them.

And here the Spousal Exit Clause is discussed. You may recognise trans rights activists James Morton and Peter Dunne from the Scottish GRA Reform bill, and other things. Ashley Reed is some random student who started a petition about self ID.

committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/4778/html/

Q166 Angela Crawley: I completely appreciate your point about the legalities, but does the system in England and Wales not create issues in terms of people’s experience navigating that system? It is obviously a tad more complicated, to say the least.
Ashley Reed: I do not know the exact laws that have been discussed so far, but under the same‑sex marriage Act the fact that the spousal veto has been solidified I find completely unnecessary. As marriage has become something where gender does not seem to matter, I feel like there should be no interim gender certificate. There should be no requirement for the spouse to consent. If the spouse has a problem then it should be after the fact that it should be annulled or they should divorce.
Karen Harvey: We are talking about people here and talking about relationships and the impact on the person who is going through transition, and it is sometimes used as a weapon. It is sometimes cruelty from the partner who is not consenting to this. Okay, it may be temporary, but it is probably at a time when the person is in the worst place in their life and it is an extra burden on them to be asking their spouse, especially when the relationship has broken down, for their permission for what really is their right, and that is to be recognised in their true gender.
Q167 Chair: When it comes to marriage, though, it has to be an agreement on both sides that there is a marriage taken place; otherwise there are other aspects of law that come into play, so would you not appreciate that you need to have two willing partners to, in turn, stay in a marriage?
Karen Harvey: It works when it is consensual. If it is a marriage that is going to continue and there is support from the partner, it is not really an issue. The big issue is when the spouse does not agree to it. It is not fair to put that person through that extra hoop. There is no issue if there are two partners who are in total agreement that they will go along with what is required. It is the fact that a spouse can block the progress and block the process of getting true recognition.
Q168 Chair: This is perhaps going back to Peter, but if an individual is going through that sort of fundamental change, does their married partner not have a right to know that that is happening?
James Morton: Under the Scottish version, they still have the right to be notified. The person cannot get their gender recognition without the spouse being notified that that is happening, so they then can initiate divorce proceedings should they not wish to remain in the marriage in those circumstances. It is about allowing those things to proceed in tandem rather than requiring the gender recognition to be delayed until after the divorce.
Peter Dunne: There could be a notification requirement and there could be grounds for, if needs be, annulment after the fact. It is just about preserving the relationship between the individual and the state, and saying, “This is a process about my relationship with the state. It does not involve third parties.” It may seem like a matter of semantics to say it will be after the certificate or before the certificate, but it is hugely symbolic in terms of one’s autonomy over one’s identity.

Link to all the Oral evidence transcripts with such luminaries as Helen Belcher and Jess Bradley giving evidence

committees.parliament.uk/work/6033/transgender-equality-inquiry/publications/oral-evidence/

Government page for all papers, evidence etc to do with the Inquiry

committees.parliament.uk/work/6033/transgender-equality-inquiry/publications/

It started with John Money and his 'success' in persuading David Reimer's parents to raise him as a girl and reporting this as a good outcome.

By the time David was aware that his case had been reported as a success when it had been a miserable failure for him, the case study was so well known and other medics could see the potential for experientation, and it was too embedded to be unembedded.

Drugs [which are the same ones that were used to castrate paedophiles and gay men in the historical past], were already being used to delay puberty in kids who were having early onset puberty.

A clinic put two and two together and trialled this on teens with 'gender dysphoria'. And when they assessed the teens after this treatment, they switched the questions to the ones that would have been asked for the opposite sex, and clapped themselves on the back for doing such a great job. They failed to really study the actual physical effects on these people, or on the older people who had 'sex reassignment surgery' and called these practices, 'The Dutch Protocol'. This has been followed throughout the world as the best way to treat what they are now calling 'Gender Incongruence'.

Meanwhile the lobby groups piggybacked on Gay Rights, and a group of Gay Rights Campaigners met in Yogyatarka, to discuss 'where next' in gay rights, and a few TRA campaigners arrived and hijacked the meeting to shoehorn in Trans Rights. And a set of principles were born.

Elsewhere one of the biggest men in Trans Rights, who is a multimillionaire funded the world's biggest legal company to create a document on 'how to embed unpopular causes into policy' which is called the Denton's Document. They looked at 'best practice' in countries where getting 'trans rights' into law had been successful, without a care obviously for any fallout of that law [aka issues with the rights of women and kids]. I cannot say what this man's motivations are, I'd get a ban.

Whilst the lobby groups were busy getting visibility of trans people, as shown by Hayley Cropper etc, and the likes of Stonewall ran out of things to lobby for [as gay rights were now in law] they needed a new funding stream and this was their new thing, and those who were getting voted into committees etc, they began rewriting the rules and policies, piggybacking on 'Diversity, Inclusion and Equity'. Partnered up of course here with other social rights movements in a typical 'forced teaming'.

Also, before gay marriage was legal, a man who said he was a woman took the British Government through the European Court of Human Rights for the right to marry his long term partner. And the Gender Recognition Act was created. It allowed him to marry another man.

Also the likes of Susie Green who got puberty blockers for her son, because her husband didn't want a gay son, and took him to Thailand to have his [by that point tiny] penis removed and inverted for his 16th Birthday. She then went on to head up Mermaids and had huge influence over the GIDS Clinic at The Tavistock, including getting them to overturn doctors recommendations and pressure them to transition kids.

By then of course the huge behemoth of the medical industry had seen a market for lifeling customers, and this has been pushed at every level ever since. Including getting into schools to indoctrinate kids younger and younger. See also 'Debbie' Hayton who force teams everyone and their dog, who wrote the policies that erased your kids' rights to single sex toilets in schools, but who is now forced teaming themselves with groups that are trying to turn the clock back. How anyone cannot see this is beyond me.

This is not a bottom up movement, it is a men's sexual rights movement supported by the multi billion $ USA and worldwide medical industry and has infiltrated everywhere.

It ain't going away any time soon.

I forgot to mention the Diversity Indexes, which are responsible for the 'Woman of the Year' and all the other forcing people to accept men as women bullshit, as they get extra points for doing this.

Wonder why a maternity policy doesn't say the word 'woman' in it, not once? It's the company trying to get more boxes ticked for their Diversity Index.

@OldCrone
It's a movement based on individualism at the expense of the rest of society.

I strongly disagree sorry. It's pure intersectional group identity over individual identity. That's why they are unable to disown the bad apples and predators abusing the identity, because once you declare you are part of that group identity you cannot be considered by anyone to have bad behaviour no matter how bad your behaviour is.
I would accept an argument that you could consider it as a group identity of individuals who's individual identity trumps reality, but it is heavily enforced as a intersectional group identity sacred caste exempt from any scrutiny or account.
Anyone who does not agree is placed into the untermensch group.
But even if you make that argument the group identity severely overrules the individual identities within. Look at how they treat detransitioners, instantly chucked into the untermensch bucket, and every effort made to supress their voices being heard least that threatens the group identity. The group comes well ahead of the individual, and throwing the individual to the wolves doesn't warrant a second thought.

If you are correct that this is a far left ideology, why is it that the Communist Party is against gender self ID?

See this statement about GRA reform (you need to put the link into archive dot is to see it).

https://www.communistparty.org.uk/the-gender-recognition-bill-and-equality-law/

• The real innovation of this Bill is to legislate for the self-ID of someone’s legal sex, embedding self-declared ‘gender identity’ in law. But when pursued to the exclusion of such considerations as the sex-based rights of women, and the fragmentation of equality legislation across Britain, it undermines the drive to build unity within and between the working class and the oppressed and disadvantaged groups in our society.
• The Communist Party is the only political party with a coherent political analysis of sex and gender. Gender as an ideological construct should not be confused or conflated with the material reality of biological sex. Gender is the vehicle through which misogyny is enacted and normalised. Gender identity ideology is well- suited to the needs of the capitalist class, focusing as it does on individual as opposed to collective rights, enabling and supporting the super-exploitation of women.
• For these reasons, the Communist Party rejects gender self-ID as the basis for sex- based entitlements in law to women’s single-sex rights, spaces and facilities. The Party will continue to oppose any proposed legislation – whether at Scottish, Welsh or British level – that seeks to enact such a provision.
• We call for ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act to be defined as ‘biological sex’.

What you're describing is the c-word that we're not allowed to mention on here. Nothing to do with political groups.

@OldCrone
What you're describing is the c-word that we're not allowed to mention on here. Nothing to do with political groups.
You've lost me sorry. My post was about transgender ideology. I don't know what you're talking about.
The only banned things I know about are nekked bobble hat wearers, and men who find thinking about themselves as a woman sexually stimulating, bobble hat or not.

The c-word that we're not allowed to mention has one letter different from cunt. It's a particular type of group that people, particularly young or distressed people, sometimes get sucked into and find hard to leave.

You didn't seem to be describing transgender ideology as a political movement. It sounded from your description like an example of the c-word.

’Kaitlyn’ Jenner was the tipping point, without a doubt. But things had been going on under the radar for a very time before that - things which led to Jenner being feted as some sort of brave hero when Jenner burst on to the world stage with much fanfare and winning Woman of the Year shortly afterwards. This is why it all moved so incredibly quickly from that point. The scaffolding had been very firmly put in place beforehand.

I think Helen Joyce’s book ‘Trans’ gives the best, clearest explanation of it all.

Im not sure that its happened because of bonkers ideology seeping out of universities. I think that explain some of the acceptance among the university educated. But i dont think it explains how the laws were introduced before anyone was talking about it.

I think it stems from men being able to do what they like well before women had the rights we do now. Because women didnt have rights as such, it wasnt important when men identified as women. Generally it was women barred from certain work and spaces, not men. A man with a female passport couldnt take the non existing opportunities and spaces away from women.

As women gained more opportunities and spaces, female id grew in importance. I think gender was invented to justify why men had to have those female id and opportunities. And the state supported it by introducing GRA, otherwise it would have to row back on giving men female passports.

I think the general acceptance of genderism, and everyone pretending that feminism and lgb have always included the T, are a result of bonkers theories and the university educated being too scared to admit that they dont understand it - better go along with the crowd than ask questions and look stupid. But i think the actual laws in place in this country are more of a result of the lack of rights women had historically.

@OldCrone
I didn't know that word was banned thanks. Strange times indeed when the word cunt is used as an acceptable polite word to reference a word that dares not speak it's name.
I don't know that it is a political movment in the sense of Labour or Tory, but they are trying to bend and alter society, laws etc to suit them. That is political. The left seems to be in thrall to them more than the right, but I heard that some right wing incels transition into that ideology.
Despite my age I love video games, always have since they first appeared. One thing I do notice is that in a still very male dominated space, that the imbalance/lack of (openly) females in those spaces seems to have resulted in some males becoming females. I don't mean that in the sense of MtF transition, although there is undoubtedly some of that, but in a more statistical nature correcting the imbalance sort of way. Males taking on the role of females to fill the hole. There's all sorts of terms coming out of the eastern animae entertainment that they watch flying around in chat. It feels a lot less like people with gender dysphoria, and a lot more like a science experiment where there's waaay too many males in a tank of fish and some just become female to even out the imbalance. I think if those young male kids actually got a girlfriend they would be happy, and possibly play video games less. If there was a large injection of females into their spaces I think far fewer, possibly none, would undergo this process.

Most communist parties in the English speaking world aren't against it, they support it.

There are still classical Marxists out there, and some of them still believe in being careful about material reality. So they want to see some kind of concrete evidence of the class distinction being claimed.

So for example, consider BLM, which at the leadership level is neomarxist. There are classical marxists who have been very critical of BLM at the level of data - they point out that their claims about police violence don't actually add up, and they continue to maintain a fairly conventional class based emphasis in their analysis of racial demographics, politics, and the economy.

But the fact that there are some classical Marxists that don't accept neo-marxism doesn't mean that the latter isn't a fundamentally leftist ideology. Identity politics isn't about individuals, look what happens to members of groups who don't think the right things - they are pilloried as class traitors.

Were any of these left political organisations talking about trans rights before GRA came into force around Europe?

Was it embedded in the movements, or was it them reacting to the already passed laws?

@TempestTost
Most communist parties in the English speaking world aren't against it, they support it.

But the Communist Party in the UK don't support it. I think this is quite relevant since this is a UK site.

Do you have links to what communist parties in other countries have said?

Many of these organisations were not in the slightest bit interested in Trans Rights until they signed up to Stonewall and other Diversity Indexes.

It is where most of the HR and Marketing and Policy Change bullshit seems to be aimed at.

Lots of people have pinpointed key events/ideas, such as John Money's gender ID theory, or Queer theory in unis, or Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street, or the gender id bill pursued by Theresa May's government. The big question for me is: why has this issue become so huge in the past six or seven years?

One answer is that Stonewall, having achieved all its initial aims, switched from being a gay rights organisation to a trans rights organisation, because it was more lucrative. Now that is definitely a big part of the answer, but the difficulty is that Stonewall only has influence in the UK. Why did this issue suddenly become so prevalent throughout the Western world, including in the US, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of Europe?

I find that much harder to answer, but it seems to me that there has been a deliberate, concerted attempt by a group of people to push gender ideology and to get legislation passed under the radar, as happened in Ireland and Canada. In fact, the Denton's document sets out this strategy clearly. But who is behind the Denton's document? Who, exactly, is pushing this?