What brought you here?

[CyclingSam]

I have Rachel McKinnon to thank, with a strong assist by Magdalen Berns.

I was booted off another site, where I'd been part of the community for more than 20 years. The topic could only be discussed on one thread, and eventually even that became intolerable for the owner. It was at least the third wave of expulsions of feminists (I feel slightly ashamed that I didn't leave earlier). Some of those women, who had brought their feminism here (but still stayed on that site for other subjects), advised this as an alternative meeting and discussion space.

It is very interesting how much more relaxed the rules here are than they were at the back-end of 2022 - this place was so much more free than where I'd come from, but still very hedged about.

Hags by Victoria Smith

Having issues with paid, non-familial surrogacy and being made to feel like a monster for worrying about women being treated like breeding dogs.

Aimee Challenor and his sex offender father. Then Rhys/Rachel McKinnon and Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv.

I'm fairly old - an old school feminist from 1980s. So when DS1 who is gay, started spouting about terfs with such open hatred, I thought hang on, I have heard all this from the mouths of entitled males before: shut your mouth, do as I say, comply or you are an aberration of nature, your protected space is abnormal unnecessary and I need to violate it (I remember men at uni storming a women's group once because they thought we were chanting hate spells against them. I kid you not. We were dancing.)

So I'd seen it all before and I didn't buy it for a moment just because the men wore dresses. I knew we weren't the problem. I had an extremely heated discussion with DS about not bullying and coercing women after which he showed some respect and understanding.

Glinner. I’d worked with and been friends with a lot of LGB ppl and worked with old school transexuals who never expected everyone to agree they were actual women

I’d always been very be kind/how does it hurt you to call them she but then the dial shifted and shifted and I realised I was being asked to believe these men had become actual women and that seemed utterly mad

i read Glinner and like him felt that utter baffled desperation and confusion as person after person I had hithero respected said with a straight face “TWAW” and meant that we all had to behave as if TW were literally women. In fact not only that we had to agree they were even more oppressed than actual women

glinner mentioned MN and the rest is history

I've been on MN for nearly 2 decades under various different usernames, but it was JK Rowling and the Body Shop during the pandemic. I'd started to be a bit perturbed in about 2018 by the peculiar things my then early teenage DD was being taught at her Stonewalled single-sex school, but that was the tipping point.

Munroe Bergdorf.

I have been on Mumsnet for years, on and off. I kept seeing threads about transwomen and due to female socialisation, I thought people were not being very kind. I started to read these threads and my 'education' was complete. 'Be kind' became 'WTF!'

I've been on MN since 2010, but only ventured into FWR in 2017 when a friend mentioned women's rights to me. When I read what was happening to children I fell to my knees retching and crying; it's so evil. I knew it was all a lie as I'd been sexually harrassed by 4 transwomen in the ladies loos as a child (on separate occasions) and I've seen what they are all about.

I found mumsnet when I was bored rigid feeding a hungry baby.

I found FWR when a convo came up in active about TW in female spaces. Naturally, as a be kind sort, I vehemently disagreed with that horrid poster.

I may have learned a thing or two since.

Lily madigan and the awful treatment of Anne Ruzylo by the Labour party

Lily madigan and the awful treatment of Anne Ruzylo by the Labour party

When I realised after talking to a captured relative that 'TWAW' was meant literally and that a woman or girl who was in hospital and needed single-sex intimate care would be a horrible Nazi bigot if they weren't deleriously happy with a TW nurse bathing them, wiping their bum or changing sanitory products.

In fact, requesting single-sex care is transphobic in their opinion.

Whatever happened to good old Lily, that fearless fighter for women's rights?

Disappeared under a cloud of allegations. However not before a number of Labour MPs fell all over Lily, including the current deputy PM who described madigan as a powerful role model.

India Willoughby accusing Jenni Murray of transphobia on Woman's Hour.

Helen Steel getting attacked by an angry mob at the London Anarchist Bookfair in 2017. Before that I was “be kind”.

I'm late to the party I'm ashamed to say. I remember my MIL about 5 years ago telling me about her BF working with a TW as a community care nurse and how the TW admitted to being aroused during their job and my MIL and her BF were horrified that they were being allowed to provide intimate care to elderly females. So the BF started being present to every situation to monitor and protect the patients and the TW did not like that and apparently dramatically quit nursing to go back to their home country. When MIL told me this story I was a bit shocked but didn't really think about it too deeply and reassured myself at the time it must have just been that one person who was a bit of a weirdo and perverted.

Then I continued on in my Guardian and BBC bubble until I saw an article in the Guardian by Hadley Freeman saying she was leaving the paper. I was gutted as I'd loved her film articles and her articles about women's rights as well. She had a similar humour to me, her and the late Sarah Hughes (sadly) were the two female journalists I really liked in the Guardian.

Anyway, there I was commenting underneath the article wishing Hadley luck when I saw another comment saying actually, here is a link to an article showing you the real reason she left and it was an Unherd article Hadley had written about no longer being a good girl. I read it and thought WTF??? Is this really happening? Then, not long after that the BBC had an online article about young lesbians being coerced and guilted into have sex with intact males saying they had a women identity. I was horrified.

I then started to question the narrative about "being kind" "most marginalised" that I'd seen and read. I also did not believe JKR was suddenly evil so I went and read her essay. The light shone so bright in my head after reading it. Everything fell into place. I was already a member of Mumsnet and I saw the FWR section, went on it, read a lot of posts by Datun and Arabella and thought, yep, they are right. So thank you also ladies! It was my matrix pill moment I think.

Gosh I've been here for donkeys years under different names. I remember when this was just one board.
Kinda became aware of threads about TW and then the sinister questionable side to it all, especially when Yaniv and Challenor were knocking about. When the scales fall from your eyes and you can see, really see the negative impacts on women and the misogyny and lesbophobia of the whole thing, well it can never be unseen.

Like DeanElderberry, I was on another board, or iteration of the same one from 2000. It became intolerable, the owner of the site threatened to close it down, as he said that we were vile transphobes. A number of posters suggested MN, which I'd lurked on after it had been linked on said other site - mostly AIBU.

The other site is still open, but I haven't been back since the first week I was here, it's a circle jerk of TRA rubbish, I'm led to believe.

The Kirsty Wark interview with Germaine Greer, it's fairly old now and I think I saw it a couple of years after it was made. I was a bit shocked at her response to being asked if her beliefs hurt the feelings of Transpeople "I don't care!" 😁
I really admired her total confidence in what she was saying and it piqued my interest.

Here as in a gc position as opposed to here MN, The factors that moved me away from my original naive simplistic 'be kind' and imagining this was in some way like LGB issues included seeing a young woman badly damaged by transing 'treatment', the very familiar entitled male attitudes being voiced by transwomen, the deeply offensive misogyny of womanface, and the massive massive lies about historical language, particularly about the use of the word gender.

As we all know, once you smell it, you can't unsmell it.

JKR's essay, four years ago. When the whole thing blew up, I went and read the essay, and then googled it. Google led me to FWR and I'm still sticking around.