Leaving Kindland

[IcakethereforeIam]

I read this article in the Critic and enjoyed it. Perhaps it doesn't deserve its own thread but....well here we are.

https://thecritic.co.uk/leaving-kindland-entering-reality/

If anyone else might want to write why they left Kindland, if they never visited or, even, why they're still there, I think it'll be interesting. I think some insight into why people have taken different paths could be useful. Or a bloodbath. If you don't want to, I will apologise in advance, if you feel that is necessary, and kindly suggest just scroll on by and get on with your day😊.

As for me. I have a clear memory of talking to my oldest, then quite young, about transpeople. All the reasons why someone might go down that path. I probably didn't have all the current buzzwords but we probably covered dsds, born in the wrong body, etc. I don't recall who instigated the conversation (why the fuck was I talking about such stuff to a primary aged child!!?) but i do remember feeling quite smug about how 'kind' I was being. I had no idea, how could I, of what lay in store.

My next memory is of a similar conversation perhaps a year or so later. This time I remember voicing concern about bad people taking advantage. How to stop that while still being kind to 'genuine' tp.

The next memory is crashing into MN. How I got here, I can't remember but I'm glad I found FWR.

I wish I could go back and get ahead of it, educate my kids before they were indoctrinated by kindness. And I'm lucky, so far, neither have adopted a trans identity requiring drugs, hormones or surgery.

Have a understood this correctly? Are you equating trans teens with paedophiles and bestiality?

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

Oh my goodness, yes, this! I was a feminist in the seventies (think Germaine Greer, Rosie Boycott, Jill Tweedie) and then I just ... took my eye off the ball. I guess I must have thought it was all going to be plain sailing for the women from now on 🙄.

Imagine my horror to suddenly wake up in this dystopian future!

I recently read Hags - Smith describes very well how young women think of her generation as 'doing feminism wrong' (and of my generation as totally unfeminist). The underlying message is that the fight against the patriarchy is never-ending because it's always reinventing itself. This, and things like porn culture, are just the latest manifestations for us in the UK.

ETA beautiful post btw

It has also sent me on a wonderful discovery of feminism. I don't think, before all this, I had ever encountered so many powerful women. Incredibly valuable on a personal level. Its really been a kind of awakening.

Yes. I call it late onset feminism. Sometimes, people just don't have a context for all the sexism, or the words to frame it. The trans issue has brought it into sharp relief.

I genuinely think it has created a whole new wave of feminists.

Yes. I call it late onset feminism. Sometimes, people just don't have a context for all the sexism, or the words to frame it. The trans issue has brought it into sharp relief.

Yes, exactly. Perfectly put.

I may be confusing you with a different person, no matter.
But I remember on a different forum a wee while back being told by you, or someone else, in no uncertain terms that becoming more concerned with FWR because I had an infant daughter wasn't at all impressive and I shouldn't have needed that to switch on.
I took my lumps there, it was slightly harsh but fully fair.
Sometimes you need telt, and if you're lucky, you get telt.

@BiggerBoat1 No, you haven’t read it correctly. No , I am not associating trans teens with paedophilia and bestiality.

I read this, at about the time it was published. https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

It crystallised all sorts of grumbling concerns and doubts I had had in my mind. I’d been deeply inculcated into “be kind” due to an acquaintance transitioning some years before. I vividly recall at the time we all found out about the proposed transition, a mutual friend (a man) saying to me “they’ll still be a man, you know. Just a man without a penis.” He also said “why not be a gay man/a transvestite and not have surgery.” I was shocked at the time and rather snootily talked about ladybrains but once someone has broken the spell you never quite go back, and it nagged away over the years. Then I read the article and it was like a light being switched on. After that I started reading everything I could.

(Name)gender: ‘A gender that is best described by one’s name, good for those who aren’t sure what they identify as yet but definitely know that they aren’t cis … it can be used as a catch-all term or a specific identifier, eg, johngender, janegender, (your name here)gender, etc

Welp, there you have it. I thought I was agender (subfaction : gender can get in the bin) but maybe I am just Bezgender. A spicy individual, indeed, definitely not a boring normo middle aged heterosexual person, no siree!

I was early to the party but as a woman starting work in the '90's in a very male dominated industry they news that an officer in an elite army unit approx 15/20 years ago transitioned (sas, marines can't remember) and was going to be recorded as the first female member of that unit when the path an actual female would have to take to overcome those barriers was so much harder and therefore would never be recognised made me a terf before the word existed

And did lead to an argument about sports with the be kind bunch even then!

But here has been a good place to think about the wider safeguards both protecting women in their safe spaces, and young children from making irreversible decisions before they can adequately assess the implications