Why is Mumsnet so GC?

[ireallycantthinkofaname]

Maybe an odd question but I've never come across another space, online or otherwise, where being GC is the norm. IRL I only ever discuss GC views openly with one family member, whose stance on it is similar to my own, though, so I'm not saying it's unwelcome.... Just curious how/why it's come about. Any thoughts or theories?

*The reactionary nature of the 'Gender Critical' movement alongside the behaviour and associations of its shadier supporters eventually proved too divisive, however, and it is currently in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own differences."

I mean that's just wishful thinking isn't it?

I've never been in this "gender critical" movement but I've managed to do a shed load of work heading off some bonkers identity ideas in real life!

This hope that there's some sort of modern day Napoleonic army disintegrating in the bad weather is a very masculine trope isn't it?

All that online war gaming addles the mind.

And reactionary! That just makes me laugh. Its not complicated. I just think this whole idea that men can be women is a non starter... because it is.

I've never been in this "gender critical" movement but I've managed to do a shed load of work heading off some bonkers identity ideas in real life!

I guess it's different ideas of what the gender critical movement is. I see it as a very loose coalition, I think a pp described it as an "anti-insanity coalition".

But your IRL practical stuff is very much needed.

Thanks Eresh and 🍷 for you too.

I recall years ago on here refuting the idea that this is a "movement" or a "cause". It's too simplistic.

I find all perspectives of interest and understanding the motivation behind people's statements is integral to that. The tendency to labeling is a fascinating human thing that seems to generate millions of words but I find useful nuggets emerge from the conflicting positions that in the end advances understanding for everyone if we can use it.

I don't really feel negative about the fights because better understanding emerges from all the bashing about of words.

The reactionary nature of the 'Gender Critical' movement alongside the behaviour and associations of its shadier supporters eventually proved too divisive, however, and it is currently in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own differences.

This reads like a paragraph from the opening chapter of a really piss poor dystopian novel published via a vanity press.

I had a CompuServe email address in the mid 90s which was already passe by the time I got it, and getting a data inclusive phone line account was possible then if you knew where to go.

The world wide web software only became public in 1993 and finding anything was still blooming difficult.

The reactionary nature of the 'Gender Critical' identity movement alongside the behaviour and associations of its shadier supporters eventually proved too divisive, however, and it is currently in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own difference.

Fixed it.

It's generally sightly more educated women than if you collected a group of women off the street, so less susceptible to being people pleasers for men.

Indeed. I think Parklife! is the only possible response

In fact, I asked copilot to compose me the opening chapter of a dystopian novel containing that text. This is the result.

What’s interesting is how well copilot has captured butterfly’s style.

The final paragraph is the best bit though.

That graph can't be right.

Butterfly says everyone was on the internet in 1995. Cos what Butterfly says is more reliable.

Thank you, that's hilarious!

Hardly any businesses used email in the early 90s, Lotus notes was the first I used called CC mail at the time because of course cc'ing was a replication of memoranda and letters.

Really you had to work in IT or have IT friends to know what to do and that really doesn't surprise anyone about the origins of online immersion in identity, does it?

Or be a uni student or be the parent of a uni student wanting to email their kids.
I know that my uni certainly had it for a couple of years before I went.

Either way the defining common factor was affluence and priviledge. And that in itself is interesting.

Oh, using text from butterfly and asking AI to produce text based on it is so much fun.

I thoroughly recommend it.

'The reactionary nature of the 'Gender Critical' movement alongside the behaviour and associations of its shadier supporters eventually proved too divisive, however, and it is currently in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own differences."

This is hilarious.

No. the 'movement' isn't in the process of collapsing at all. The people who are working and campaigning to prioritise sex above gender when sex matters are still working towards that goal. The groups have always been different. We have been repeating this endlessly on these threads every fucking time someone who lacks critical thinking ability repeats the thought terminating 'guilt by alignment' fallacy that feminists were ever 'aligned' with nazis.

So. Someone who makes this ridiculous claim lacks insight and most likely lacks that critical thinking ability as well.

What has also happened is that the discussion about autogynephilia has become rather more exposed. And with that the prevalence of AGP, the attempts for some to discredit it as a paraphilia, and the concept of consent has been very robustly and loudly discussed.

Also, the topic of pronouns has been endless. And with that endless discussion, so many more people have had to evaluate their stance on pronouns and have had to listen to why others do and don't. And guess what. Those people declaring that they use preferred pronouns only ever seem to have the reason 'because it is kind' to defend against the many negative impacts to people individually and collectively to women and children.

No. There is no 'collapse'. There is discussion. Robust discussion.

Schisms have happened before and have not had a negative overall impact. This is the history of feminism. I doubt there will be an overall negative impact now. Instead, there will be more groups formed and more submissions to MPs and governments to campaign for the overall prioritisation of sex over gender. There will be more groups demanding that there is clarity in law and in policy. This will spur action from the newly formed groups so that more people are involved.

No. no collapse. It might not be pleasant reading twitter at the moment. However, the major feminism groups are still just as strong.

Talk about not really understanding feminism history and the current situation.

.

The truth is something that shines through lies, misinformation and misrepresentation.

What do you see?

The collapse of that, or the collapse of the GC movement.

What's happening is a bunch of people are lacking in confidence to see this through, and care about perceptions of being tarred as 'unkind'.

Except this isn't and has never been about being nice to people. It's about the truth and material reality.

It's the facade that's collapsing.

Attempts to deflect from that may contain word salad.

It's another PR attempt.

It can be summed up in a simple phrase though:
"You can't polish a turd".

And something has been stinking for a while.

Either way the defining common factor was affluence and priviledge. And that in itself is interesting.

Yep. And if you didn't realise you were an early adopter you must really have been in a bubble.

Completely oblivious to the world around you and the people in it to a degree that's really unusual.

Quite incredible really.

I think that has become obvious too. Then. And now.

Sometimes the lack of awareness or at least lack of ability to see the complete stripped bare honesty of the situation without the front shines right through and is obviously very annoying that it is exposed.

Yes. I think that works red also.

I don’t see any feminist group declaring they have ‘left the fight’ because some external relationship has changed. Yet that claim that the GC movement is collapsing is absolutely laughable. Pure wishful thinking.

The glee expressed is typical from some posters. Obviously, that glee is being expressed elsewhere on the internet for it to be shown so confidently here.

And it is absolute bollocks!

Instead those with concerns, still have concerns backed by evidence. The evidence hasn’t changed one iota. The concerns each group focuses on are still there. And the need to get results is still there. The work continues.

That is the difference.

One group is driven by individualism, by ambiguity at the very core of their being (because gender identity is a belief and not material reality), by an exposed lack of evidence and a whole lot of theory of belief. Theory of belief built on shoring up the self described concepts of self. Not on seeking truth that is material, provable and reliably describable. This foundation is constantly shifting sand.

Another group is driven by collective needs, evidence gathering and the seeking of truth in speech, law and thought. This group has a foundation that is solid and durable. But it is actually many small groups and the only thing holding them together is material reality and a loose overall aim. Still solid and durable because the material reality doesn’t change. It abides no matter what descriptions are thrown at it.

No wonder someone who has a life completely built on fragile, self description thinks saying the ‘GC movement’ is collapsing is somehow valid. They never understood the history nor the nature of the groups involved or their own groups told them it was one homogenous group.

After all, isn’t that what all that ridiculous fuckwittery about Nazis, and ‘far right’ is about?

A group of people whose lives are built on their own desired descriptions being affirmed, then applying those falsely built descriptions on everyone else too? So, because some person who lack critical thinking ability said ‘they are aligned with Nazis, let’s call them all Nazis’ others absolutely believed it. Because if their own group says something, it must be believed and affirmed. That is their entire core premise. After all, just saying you feel like a woman means you are now a ‘woman’. If someone says ‘those people are x,’ then the same belief must also apply by logic. It is a community built on self generated description being completely accepted and confirmed.

When the truth is that for page after fucking page, thread after thread, we have patiently explained that this deliberate twisting of ‘gender critical’ as a label was completely false in the first place. When Hatched posts, there are so many gems of incongruence and inconsistency to be found. Quite a lot is alarming when you keep remembering this is a person who has proudly told us they are well respected and in a position giving advice to children and vulnerable young people. But so much gives us insight into the inconsistencies of the thinking of extreme trans rights activism.

This posturing claim ‘the GC movement is collapsing’ is fucking hilarious wishful thinking on the part of extreme activists. The reality is as red states. This was never about being ‘nice’ to others in the group or in loosely aligned groups. It was about truth and material reality.

The brutal truth is, some groups will refuse to work together but because of the material reality aspect, it doesn’t matter. The ‘movement’ has already reached this point and the public, the government, the health professionals all are aware and that awareness is growing. More evidence is being added daily and that will reach the point where it can no longer be denied. Despite wishes to the contrary.

Do you know what doesn’t seem to be growing ? A bank of evidence supporting gender identity. Strange that, eh?

*It can be summed up in a simple phrase though:
"You can't polish a turd". *

And something has been stinking for a while.

It's a turd that has been covered with luminous rainbow glitter and apparently many people saw it sparkling like a jewel in the shadows.

Now that light is shining on it we can see exactly what it is, and where the stench is coming from.

I very much doubt there will be a collapse. Quite the opposite. Naomi Cunningham has just won a discrimination case for a GC social worker (one of a string of recent legal wins and out-of-court settlements for discrimination against GC beliefs!) and has stood up in court to ask for exemplary damages against Social Work England and Westminster Council so that in future they will train their management to interpret the Equality Act correctly so that other GC staff wont have to take them to tribunal (a costly, painful and drawn out process for all concerned)

The judge might not agree but I could not have imagined anyone making that argument 3 years ago. Your mileage may vary (as we used to say on UseNet)
but this is not what collapse usually looks like.

Instead the GC movement is gathering strength. Caused mostly by overreach. If you do the Dentons thing and use undemocratic means to manipulate a democratic system on the quiet, then however virtuous your aims may be, when it all comes out on top you can expect a nasty backlash. The hope was that if we all pretend "everyone agrees trans women are women" and "everyone agrees transition is brave and beneficial" then after a while it would come to pass. Only... it didn't.

Unlike gay marriage, where the reality turns out to be pretty harmless and conventional and does not upend society or trouble anyone else, as soon as you get past the slogans to the meaning and the reality most people don't agree with it. "You mean - even if they have a penis?" and "Even if they are still bigger and stronger than the average woman?" And "You think it's OK to do WHAT to children?"

That's not a winning position.

Spot on Helleofabore.

I think we are now in another phase of this, where more 'be kind' emotional blackmail is being applied.

There is a dawning realisation that the public probably aren't on board with total self ID so there's an attempt to scale back on ambitions but to still push boundaries.

This is about testing where those boundaries are.

I find it interesting that the framing has always been anti-trans, never pro-woman and this has resulted in the narrative of women's campaigners tripping over themselves to prove they aren't anti-trans. They don't try and reframe as pro-woman partly I think because that's not attractive in socially liberal circles because sexism is still very dominating. Hence all the 'i have friends who are trans' and I don't wish them harm.

I don't want anyone to get hurt. But equally I think there's this blindness to the fact that ignoring material reality can not do anything but harm women and children. Delusions and the normalisation of lies and the inability to question and therefore hold to account never ends well. This has nothing to do with trans activism but the fact that falsehoods are always unsustainable in the long run.

There's two camps - one desperate to prove they are nice and now engaging in the narrative of that despite realising many of the issues. I suspect a fair amount is about image and self preservation still. And the other that realises it's got fuck all to do with that or being anti trans and it's just about reality and maintenance of safeguarding. There isn't malice to trans people within that - indeed it's possible to have considerable concerns about how the ideology harms the very people fully signed up to it.

Language creep is a huge issue on this and blurred lines mean blurred boundaries. And I do think that some of the 'i will use pronouns out of respect crowd' should be aware of this.

The question of how do you tell the difference between a 'genuine' case and a none genuine case remains. In safeguarding one of the key rules is not to give free passes to people you know well, have a good relationship with or have a good social standing. They have to follow the rules like everyone else - it's recognised that we can be blinded by someone being nice to us and demanding loyalty.

In the past I've used pronouns for my brother. That creep to neutral but I now make a point of using correct ones, as I've come to recognise they aren't about mutual respect but about power and control.

Language use is always about power and control when it's about descripters of people.

As others say, when is the point you flip from calling someone by their pronouns to using sex based ones if they are arrested for a sex offense? They are innocent until proven guilty, therefore in a court, the judge and those acting for the defence and prosecution should do accordingly. Right? But what about potential harms to the victim? There is no 'fair' answer in this scenario. There is a answer which reflects reality though.

More day to day, at what point is it ok to stop using pronouns if you recognise that someone is being massively sexist? It is massively offensive and frankly intimidating if a huge bearded bloke suddenly decides they can demand They/Them and they are being oppressed because they are non-binary. And then goes off the deep end of you get it wrong.

That's not mutual respect and it's stacked up with a pile of sexism to boot.

The deck is always stacked against women who decide to be nice about this, and then find there is a lack of mutual respect or there a more sinister element to it. To then change direction half way through is more difficult and actually puts you and/or others in a vulnerable position.

By having a position where you can just use sex based pronouns if you choose and hostility to that is unacceptable, you aren't creating this situation where someone can then challenge you or confront you for suddenly changing if you feel disrespected. You aren't caught in the trap of almost having to put up and shut up or make a full declaration of where the line was crossed for whatever reason.

As I say using false pronouns is about power and control - by adopting them you hand over power and control to the other party. Doing that with someone you know very little about or have just met seems rash and unwise. Think about it, it sets the relationship off to a dynamic where you have deferred to a complete stranger. Is that healthy? Is that something it is wise for women to do? It goes against all our instincts no matter how much we want to give the benefit of the doubt. Trust and respect are earned not given away freely in other situations.

And ultimately forced pronouns I do think are disrespectful to the other sex. You can't change your sex. That's the bottom line. You are trying to hide sexism or pretend it's all about image not biology. You can change your appearance and your name. But pronouns go one step further.

For me it's not about being respectful, it's about recognising reality and power dynamics. Nothing personal.

I don't see why any of this is remotely extreme. It's about recognising the sand the ideology is built upon.