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?

Your existence has never been contested @ButterflyHatched,

People know you exist. It’s your version of the truth and determination to control how other people think about and talk about you that is contested.

Catastrophic hyperbole about how your existence is at stake is just that: catastrophic hyperbole.

What does a man “living as a woman” look like?

What does a man “living as a woman” being asked to “pretend to be a man” look like?

What is going on here in these situations, conceptually?

Deffo not Alphawoman. AW happily admitted to being 6 foot plus and 17 stones and being nowhere near passing.

Stereotypes and nonsense is what it means.

I really resent this crap about ‘existence’ when what is actually at stake is whether the rest of us are allowed to form
our own opinion and act accordingly.

The big lie at the heart of transactivism is that trans people can - and should - determine what truth is for everyone else and control how everyone acts and things in line with their preferred version of reality.

BH has most definitely insisted that BH passes as a woman. In fact, I think the claim was typically hyperbolic and centres around some idea that BH is considered far more womanly than any biological woman. The phrase ‘model transition’ may have been bandied about in this context.

It's another contradiction then isn't it. BH simultaneously passes but has also not had much validation.

There is no consistency to an of BH’s story. Internal or external.

I guess that fit with BH’s epistemological stance in which ‘truth’ is determined entirely by BH’s feelings in that moment. so what is ‘true’ shifts and fluctuates radically, even within the same sentence.

The 'constellation' of data points thing reminds me of when I first started reading about this shit show. I remember one of the many Fae/Faye people then defining a woman as a 'shifting constellation'.

They was a bit of a pretentious knobber IIRC. Not that that narrows the field much.

Everything's so fluid these days.

Lol - I wasn't talking about you. I was referring to the previous excellent posts highlighting what women know - that there's not one feminist movement /leader/party / organisation and musing on why some people are so desperate to pretend that the growing social realisation of what's happening can be defined as a collapse. Here's @RedToothBrush's excellent post as a reminder:

"Someone spends too much time on twitter in a bubble.
There is no movement.
There is spontaneous grass roots understanding and growing awareness of the injustice and flawed logic that transwomen are the most oppressed and women need to be the ones to change to accommodate that.
The damn burst fucking ages ago on that.

Women are talking amongst themselves and men are starting to just get pissed off at it all. And the examples of injustice and problematic scenarios which are causing systematic safeguarding failures and freedom of speech failures just keep growing.

An idea is only as good as it works in practice. Gender replacing sex only creates harms to wider society. Someone with gender identity issues needs to deal with them themselves rather than expecting the whole world to play along. This might sound harsh, but that's the reality.

That means open categories and women only categories in sport. That means single sex provision anywhere there is a state of undress or discussion of intimate issues or bodily functions as an absolute minimum. That could mean provision of third spaces too though, but alongside single sex and not replacing them and not transforming existing womens facilities (this reducing provision) but not mens.

The fact you see arguing on twitter and come to the conclusion that there is a fracture in a movement that doesn't actually exist is utterly fascinating and reflective of a lot of the problem tbh." 👏👏

Nearly four decades worth of gender-enforcement behaviour and I still haven't given in.

There should be no gender-enforcement behaviour. We should all have the right to live free of 'gender norms'. That's what being 'gender critical' means!

It's sex which is real, immutable, dimorphic and - for a limited number of situations - important.

Exactly!!!!

There certainly hasn't been much validation going on.

Well, it certainly isn't in my job description to "validate" people's self image, not something I signed up for, sorry.

I remember one of the many Fae/Faye people then defining a woman as a 'shifting constellation'.

Shon "enjoy ur erasure" Faye.

Ah, yes. Also of the 'get tits early' advice.

It's like being forced to agree the Easter Bunny is indeed real because John in Accounts is adamant he saw the real Easter Bunny in spring 1986.

I did see he Easter Bunny at my infant school, back in the early 80s.

It was a girl bunny (or at least wearing a dress).

I do not know why as she/it did not come round the classes, as I had assumed it would do (I thought it would be a staff member in a costume). It was just there in the playground one playtime.

No one ever mentioned it. It’s the strangest memory I have.

Did anyone else see the six foot white rabbit or just you? (What was that film called? Was it Harvey?).

Did your parents leave psychedelic drugs lying around the house?

That's the board, which is a start, but there's no details at all about an actual clinical study. They need to set up any study so that it's ethical, and that's not going to be easy.

I agree that there should be no gender-enforcement behaviour and we should have the right to live free of gender norms.

I would say that forcing people to behave in a specific way solely due to the structure of their DNA is about as close as you can get to gender-enforcement behaviour.

Well, they did leave bottles of Scotch so…

What specific way do you think that is?

What specific way do you think we think that is?

How does forcing come into it? Is it like making you put the bins out or the bunny gets it?

This is classic wilfully obtuse Butterfly.

None of us want anyone to behave in a specific way because of the chromosomes or whatever. What we are saying is that the biology is what makes one male or female.

There really should be no need for a concept of ‘gender’. And absolutely no need to transition. Because boys can wear what they like, have their hair how they like, and have whatever interests they like and none of that makes them girls.

As soon as you start talking about transitioning etc, you are right in there reifying gender norms (even as you reject biology).

I agree. Certain medics have been wilfully experimenting on children and young people with untested drugs and brutal experimental surgery to the extent that without the trans protection, other medics would be in court for this. How you ethically study the sterilisation of children and young people or ethically study the impact of drugs and surgery that hinder natural pubertal development of young people is difficult to comprehend.

I was only really thinking about meeting formal ethical standards and processes. And wondering what that could look like for a medical procedure which has been done for a couple of decades and has some evidence of both harm and benefit, and doesn't have evidence of a much bigger benefit, especially not compared (say) to waiting until adulthood. For children it's going to be very difficult to set up a trial that meets ethical standards.