3 questions for GC women

[ChirpyFinch]

As the title says, three questions for the women in this chat.

1. Do you think the majority of people are gender critical, and why/why not?

2. Globally, the right wing is more vocally gender critical than the left. They are also far more likely to be regressive on a range of women’s issues like abortion and anti-gay. Why do you think they agree with GCs on this one issue but disagree on so much else (if you think they do?)

3. How many trans people do you estimate there are globally?

Great question!

@ElleWoods15 can you answer?

It's absolutely absolutely disassociating and removal of responsibility from yourself and pinning blame onto others for internal problems.

This has turned into such a fantastic thread. What a shame so many eloquent and intelligent women are having to spend their time arguing against such lysenkoist nonsense.

This beliefs and feelings thing is weird. I believe in God. I have a sense, a feeling, that God exists. The way I live my life is shaped by that.

There is nothing I or anyone else could do (despite much theological effort) to prove God 'exists' because it is a concept, and idea, an emotion, not a 'thing'.

Many highly intelligent, moral, educated, responsible, creative, sensitive and sensible people do not believe in God, have no sense of God or feelings about it.

Nobody thinks that my strand of religious belief has to be demonstrated by hairstyle or fashion or surgery or life-alerting medication. Thank - er - God.

Which is partly why I am disturbed by the current theory that belief in gender does require such demonstration.

Absolutely.

It makes being the female sex the negative of ‘feeling male’. The alternative for all who don’t feel they fit their own categorisation, based on what they believe is society’s categorisation, their own interpretation that is, of ‘male’. So the negative of male is female in that way.

Since when was being female the fucking absence of ‘feeling male’?

See also the Green party's women's officer being a 'non-man' and vice versa.

You see this in the reaction from the male trans 'allies' also. People who aren't trans themselves, but public supporters of those who are.

I've often seen comments along the lines that Dylan Mulvany or Jordan clearly aren't men (in ways that other men recognise).

And so the conclusion is that of course they are women. Without ever considering what a woman is or considering how women feel about this categorisation.

That is an unbelievable tragedy and shocking lack of accountability that medical so-called professionals would both prescribe T and undertake a mastectomy for a clearly troubled young girl with an in-patient history. Of all the possible patients she ought to have been protected from this insane ideology and given extensive counselling.

What do these doctors and surgeons think they’re doing to a young, troubled, and vulnerable young woman as they’re prescribing or operating? My guess is that they’re not thinking, they are trained to act within narrow parameters and although intelligent, they don’t think outside those parameters.

and those men never stop and think.

We see it all the time here on MN too. How many times do we see the phrase, ‘but they are not men’? And they certainly cannot use men’s spaces (usually because it is deemed unsafe).

Again, to some people that means the only alternative is that they are female. It really defies logic.

I love this description.

I do not feel male (because I am female, for the avoidance of doubt). Therefore I must be female, regardless of whether I actually feel female.

However. Do I feel female? I am female, so I more than likely do. But what does female feel like? What does male feel like? How would I know that if I don't feel female that I do feel male?

I haven’t a clue what “being female” feels like.

I suppose, over the years, I’ve had some very complex feelings about my body and personality. I’m very feminine in presentation (mostly), I’m small and regularly described as petite, dainty etc. but mainly I feel awkward and bulky and very self conscious around women who seem to embody (what I suppose I must have internalised as) femininity.

I think this would surprise a lot of people, and I don’t doubt I probably have that effect on some other women.

Is this just a collection of ideas that have all jumbled up in my brain, mainly dictated by the world around me, which may even have moulded itself in ways I don’t even understand due to brain plasticity? Was it growing up in the 70s and 80s and being bombarded with images of what a “proper” woman was and what a girl/woman was allowed to do/be?

All that mess led me to feminism. It’s a long road, untangling ideas about your body, ideas about where you fit into society. And it probably is easier to change your clothes, change your body even if you’re able, than to change society, but I don’t think that makes it the correct course of action. Or useful beyond your own little world.

I will never understand how it has got this far. I dare say people were trying to be kind to someone who was clearly troubled and didn't want to say " Well we'll call youJane/ Danielle/Cathy but you understand that we don't actually think you are a woman, don't you.Look where it's got us.

This ^ and this is still where we stand. The vast majority of ‘allies’ that I know (which I personally don’t think are allies in the true sense of the word) espouse TWAW mantra to be kind. Because they are kind people and because they have been told/indoctrinated to equate the trans issue with the LGB issues.

It’s been a spectacularly successful strategy thanks to sharp legal minds eg Dentons that exhorted trans activists to ‘Tie your campaign to more popular reform.’ As explained in this Spectator article. It’s really something Dentons and Reuters can be proud of given how the TW language has entered the lexicon so quickly and become entrenched in seemingly the blink of an eye.

So whilst frustrating, I’m trying hard not to be irritable or angry or annoyed with those in my life who chant TWAW including my DC and most of my colleagues because doing so wouldn’t change hearts or minds. We’ve seen evidence of of how the eminently justified anger provides the convenient rationale to say ‘I’m done’ and leave the conversation.

The green party explicitly verbalise this with the phrase 'non-men' and then pirade about as if this isn't grossly sexist and homophobic.

Non men being anyone who isn't male enough to be included in the male category. I mean...

Yes, this is a really useful way of thinking about what's going on. Thank you, @RedToothBrush I'm in contact currently with five local families whose children (male and female) have socially transitioned at school/ college and are contemplating hormones and surgery — all though one is currently detransitioning which offers hope. All the young people are ND and anxious.

I'm also in contact with a woman who says her husband, in his late 30s and with an ASD diagnosis, has had his testicles removed and is saying he will seek to have his penis removed too, if he doesn't feel 'better' once his testosterone levels plummet. He doesn't seem able to articulate what 'better' is. He seems to experience quite extreme dissonance between his personal experience of being male and what he thinks a man should be. He really does, genuinely, seem to believe that removing his male genitalia will make him a woman. He's a director of a tech firm and yet another example of how very clever, accomplished people can rationalise their way into this madness.

Your explanation @RedToothBrush of how people with ASD can tend to think in very black and white terms, and how this may cause anxiety and dissonance, makes sense of what I know about the husband.

I'm also in contact with a woman who says her husband, in his late 30s and with an ASD diagnosis, has had his testicles removed and is saying he will seek to have his penis removed too, if he doesn't feel 'better' once his testosterone levels plummet. He doesn't seem able to articulate what 'better' is. He seems to experience quite extreme dissonance between his personal experience of being male and what he thinks a man should be. He really does, genuinely, seem to believe that removing his male genitalia will make him a woman. He's a director of a tech firm and yet another example of how very clever, accomplished people can rationalise their way into this madness.

Does she know about Trans Widows Voices?

There was a thread up for about 30mins yesterday late afternoon where the OP said she'd been deleted for posting a cake recipe. Obviously I can't verify the truth or link to the thread......

Yes, Red, thank you for that very clear post about anxiety and ASD.

I would also add that for many males, sexual responses are mixed up in this, too.

This used to be very well acknowledged, but activists have worked hard to change the textbooks (the DSM and the ISC) and obscure and/or remove the definitions of relevant paraphilias.

What is striking is how differently 'dysphoria' presents and manifests in males and in females. Ironically, gender dysphoria has very sex specific aspects.

As I said, deleted - not banned.

Thank fuck for that.

No, I saw that post. The OP said she'd been banned for cake recipes, and expected to be banned again once her new poster name was noticed. She said banned.

Sorry. Meant to say, she said she'd been banned. When the thread disappeared, the blue box said that it was deleted due to the OP being a previously banned poster.

OK, I didn't see that thread.

It's just telling naughty women off. It's humiliating. Why can't we speak?

Rollcall time, then.

@LiterallyOnFire and @RufustheFactualReindeer are still tangible, so I assume that means not banned. And I'm still here (obviously). Who else posted about cake?

The wall gets ever higher. 'Paraphilia' itself was a word popularised by John Money (yes, him again) to replace a previously used, less respectful word that I won't even write here. Go google and consider whether what we have let happen in terms of limiting our vocabulary was mainly about kindness and tolerance, or about removing protections from the vulnerable.