Do you talk about this stuff in your "real" life?

[DungareesAndTrombones]

Just pondering after having a disagreement with a distant friend on social media about the boxing debacle, where she and lots of her mates disagree with my view that the most important thing should be protecting women...

Do you talk about this stuff in your real life? I do to close friends but I would never share anything on my own social media, and I've said a couple of things at work but pretty sure I would get the sack if I said my actual views. I've got a younger team member who hates JKR with a passion and I spend time biting my tongue when she speaks about her.

Why does it feel so worrying for me being GC to speak out but other people who think TWAW are free to plaster it everywhere?

Yes, I do - becaue 'real life' is all there is.

I also post about in the one other forum I post on......regardless of attempts at cancellation and censure.

The under cover woman haters and dismissers are all showing their faces now......and there are plenty of them. Often they are Left identified or traditional Socialists. Certainly in my circles...because that is the 'circle' I happen to be around most of the time.

To my DH and a couple of close friends I rant away happily - although even my DH is a bit too much “be kind” sometimes - but as soon as something pops up in sport/prisons etc he does come back in line because he does engage his brain when it matters.

At work I am very very careful and keep to facts where possible. I work in a field that does need to be looking at DE&I issues with clients so I do maintain a “neutral” stance on lots of inclusion issues even though I have LOTS of personal views.

I did push back once on an internal webinar run by a US colleague who kept talking about “cis women”. Told him I found the use of the word cis offensive as I wasn’t a sub category of my own sex class. Got quite a few off line thank yous from other female colleagues. Never put my pronouns on signatures etc and I hope the other women in my DEI area who also don’t have pronouns in their signatures/Teams name may also be GC (or just don’t know how to change the default signatures 🤣)

Once made the mistake of having a slightly drunken argument with a gay colleague about drag queens. Managed to hold myself back before we fell out as we are good work friends.

I am hesitant because I move in circles in which people just parrot all the catechisms. But I have had some breakthroughs too. There are far more people out there who don't believe men magically turn into women, but we don't live in a landscape where it can be spoken about in a normal way. No other issue in my world is as verboten as this one.

Yes I do, including at work, have peaked my boss and most colleagues.

I think family members are sick of me talking about it tbh.

Yes, with family, friends and work

Yes but Dh thinks I've been radicalised by the far right! It makes me so sad. Obviously I'm just sex on legs for him (or lack of these days 😆)

Yes I do. If it comes up in conversation, including if a friend or acquaintance makes a negative comment about sex-realist women. I’ve only ever had one person not start to modify or change their position as a result of these conversations.

A little bit with dp, in the most neutral way I can manage. He's civil service so i want him to understand A lot with my sister. And a bit with my fathers in law.

Otherwise basically never unless the person brings it up, in which case I will listen and if appropriate respond to whatever they say in the gentlest but most reality-adjacent way I can manage. But I'm careful; talking to a dear friend who's distressed because her partner is transitioning and asking for an open relationship, all I want to do is support her. Likewise if friends' children are transitioning - fundamentally it's not about me. It adds to my world view but right then, they don't need to hear me banging on.

I'm pretty vocal with family and friends but not at work because my workplace has drank the coolaid big time but there have been a couple of occasions at work where there's been eyerolls between colleagues, as a sort of silent solidarity at the bat shit craziness

At work it's verboten, though if a colleague brings it up, I'll go along with it.

My mum understands, but my daughter doesn't agree with me, very TWAW etc. My friends and I don't really talk about it.

My main outlet for chatting about this is on Twix.

Until fairly recently, only with DH. In fact he was the one to raise it with me when the absurdity of gay women being expected to sleep with biological men emerged. DD was very captured as a young teenager but has been able to discuss it more maturely since she left her single sex 'Stonewall Champion' school. It helped that all the transboys and NB persons in her year had long grown out of it by Y13.

I have one or two close friends who are absolutely on the same page, thank goodness. And several recent experiences where women I know less well have tentatively broached it with me in social or professional situations, and it's been a great moment of relief and recognition. It's probably telling that most of them work in health, education, academia or related fields, and all are over 40.

I used to keep very quiet at work, but I broke cover earlier this year - too outing to give the details but it involved refusing to collect data on 'gender identity' for 2 year olds. It helps that I am at an age and stage where I can give up work if I need/want to. I used to think no-one in my team got the issues at all, despite working in a supposedly evidence-based profession requiring post-grad qualifications (and carrying significant safeguarding responsibilities). But they're mostly younger women with several decades of working life ahead of them, and it's probably easier to stick their pronouns on their signatures and avoid rocking the boat.

Yes I talk about it openly at work, spent Friday explaining DSDs. Although there's no doubt about my views I try to keep things factual so if someone complained about me to HR I could defend myself!

Never, and certainly never on social media. Only with my DH who is pretty much GC. I would be cancelled by most of my triends and certainly my workplace.

Yes i do talk about it. Im diplomatic though if necessary

Wish I had people i could talk about it to - DH won’t because of our teen (tho he agrees with me), friends have drifted because of our teen; friends and immediate family are in the be kind camp and the latter are stunned when I fell out with them over the olympic boxing thing (I really have had enough and am livid they cannot see the damage it does to girls - and one girl in particular); in laws simply don’t understand any of it… I long for a few friends to chat with about stuff generally and not have to censor myself over this stuff because its everywhere. I live in a town with an arts uni so tall skinny lads dressed in minidresses and bad makeup walk past me in groups all the time.

DD14 is fiercely GC and has even fallen out with friends at school over her refusal to conform to the current teenage opinions.

Yes I do, initially some friends listened to me with a raised eyebrow but over time they have peaked themselves. I will happily debate someone on social media and I don't have anything to lose.

I have recently started a course in counselling/psychotherapy and have considered what impact being open with my views might have for this course. I made a plan what to do if I was asked for my pronouns on the course (I will not concede to this ideology - with a therapy client I would handle it carefully, as an adult attending a course I stand by my sex realist belief WORIAD)

For the course I just got clear in my mind what response I would have if I was threatened in anyway - if they tried to make me comply or threatened to throw me off. I would just very calmly state that my belief is a WORIAD as per the Forstater case, and I will take legal action if they try to discriminate me for it. No fucking about.

💐

Yes. It's all stuff that was professional bread and butter for me and if the subject arises in discussion I'll willingly try to find out where someone's at with regard to knowledge and opinions and engage at the right level. I don't mind disclosing my position; I'm not ashamed of it. I remember coming here and discovering that there were lots of intelligent women who weren't taken in by gender ideology; if I can help other hesitant sceptics to realise that it's not just them, I'll have done something useful.

I've lost a few friends, and one of the things I hate about this ideology is the way that it divides people who otherwise have a lot of things in common. I assume that's a feature rather than a bug. But nobody's more important to me than my own integrity. Fortunately, DH, who also has a professional background that required a firm grasp of biology, is totally on board.

With a few friends, and with my dh, and my parents and step-parents. Some of my extended family.

Other friends and family I am low key about it, I will mention it in passing in a very factual way.

My daughters both are more be kind though I know they can see some of the issues and I don't hide my views. One of them went through a period of wanting to transition which she later came to have a lot more insight about. I suspect from some of her comments that she's actually seeing that the girls in her group who did (socially) transition have a lot of issues in their family lives that make them have a difficult relation to being female.

At work I am generally very careful and neutral. I bring things up very occasionally in a careful way, but I usually frame it around the fact that we are supposed to be a neutral organization. I am always on the look out for colleagues I think are GC and have occasionally found one. But it's a very captured sector and some of the people in my workplace are militant.

So true and how utterly depressing. 2 of the people I was disagreeing with on fb are potential colleagues/employees (children's mental health) so bet I've got myself blacklisted now 🙃

Oh I forgot to say there is one GC woman at work and she very very quietly mentioned this actual message board so at least I've got one person I can chat to!

My friends are more or less on board but DS is trans so got to keep my trap shut at home. Unless he's at University and then I'm free to say whatever I fancy. DS2 is gay and has the same feelings as me but again doesn't mention it to DS1. DS3 is absolutely black and white that TW are in fact not W and thinks the boxing is sickening.

Sorry to everyone who also feels censored at work and at home.

I understand why, but your comment makes me so sad.
Its a microcosm of every woman silencing herself ever, while the man doesnt even hesitate to spout of.

And he might have considered that you might very well feel differently, and quite rightly be offended at his cavalier attitude to an issue that has a huge impact on you and none on him.

And if the tables were turned, would likely be screaming from the rooftops about it.

Feel the fear and do it anyway?