What brought you here?

[CyclingSam]

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

I never believed that TWAW, but I was sympathetic to what I imagined was their plight. Then I read of Rachel McKinnon and went down a rabbit hole of related cases and was, in MN parlance, peaked.

My 11 year old daughter is a full on ally and I discuss it gently with her, without judgement (I hope!)

Graham Linehan. As an old Tedhead I was surprised and disappointed he was at loggerheads with trans rights activists. I'd no idea of the history so I asked a young gay friend and fellow Tedhead ' what's the story?'
Glinner is in the right but I'd never say so on Twitter- I'd be torn to shreds , he replied. He pointed me to Magdalen Berns and on the TRA side , Riley J Dennis. No contest!
Mindful of what my friend said I kept my powder dry. But...eventually I commented on an Irish forum and was booted. I didn't mind really. But I was also blocked from a chat group I really enjoyed. That same friend recommended MN. And someone here linked to The Mess with Glinner, Arty and Helen. Which is kind of where I came in.

I kept on seeing the Spartacus threads but time and time again couldn't be arsed to find out what those busy and extremely long threads were on about but one day curiosity got the better of me.

At first I struggled to believe was I was reading but once it became clear that the mad world revealed was actually real, and not some bizarre hoax, I was hooked.

It's been a long 8 years.

I'd thought a while ago "why is there suddenly so much talk about transgender people?" This was elsewhere, not here. But, serendipitously, I happened to start a thread in general chat saying that I always seem to look at the same boards on here, what else should I look at? And someone replied "come to the feminist board. People are very friendly there." So I did and found that they are.

So, after a few minutes looking here I was "ohhhhhhhhh!" with regards to my original transgender question!!

Here as in GC?

I had to ask April Ashley to leave my twenty first birthday party which April had gate crashed . April was flouncing around and behaving very irresponsibly and aggressively ( the party was on a boat, so fooling around with other guests was inadvisable ). At the time, April was thirty seven, and hanging out with nineteen year old students who were just coming out as gay. It was all a bit rum, to say the least.

I’ve always had my doubts since then, exacerbated by the behaviour of a friend who transitioned in his mid twenties, causing a lot of trouble and distress which I will not expand on.

Here as on this board? Not long but by God it’s good.

Same as nauticant.

long time user of MN from way back when I had pregnancy complications, then a preemie, then a high needs baby….utter goldmine of advice.

i kept seeing (and hiding in irritation) those bloody Spartacus threads. Until I finally sat down with a packet of biscuits to read one. My flabber was truly gasted and while I thought at first it was mean old terfs spreading awful awful lies. It wasn’t and it isnt.

I'm a latecomer. I was always gender critical but wasn't really paying attention to the capture of organisations and the impact of the gender recognition act. It was Isla Bryson that finally made me think what the hell's going on? I googled gender critical and ended up here. I've also joined Twitter which is an education.

I think this might be the earliest surviving Spartacus thread on here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/2716595-TransAgenda-BullShit-The-I-am-Spartacus-Thread

My husband. He caught wind of the whole TWAW bollocks before I was even aware it was a thing and was openly challenging it. He's a good ally in all this.

Same as Dean Elderberry and SinnerBoy. And as said, once seen, you can't unsee it. The hypocrisy and cynicism, the attempts to distort language, the hatred and fear of women, the (all too often successful) moves to get their damaging ideas into our primary schools, the capture of all but a few left-wing or liberal voices of analysis...

Fortunately, smart and perceptive voices of analysis are pretty plentiful on MN. 🙂

This is pretty much word for word my own experience, @nauticant. I'm not really an active contributor here, but I wend my own way in the circles I travel in, and a very large proportion of my friends think and feel similarly - as does my partner.

Very late to the party....

Lia Thomas, 2022.

So obvious. So fucking obviously unfair to women and girls. And if it could happen there, in plain sight, what else was happening???

Thanks to Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull for her unbelievably witty "I'm not a vet but I know what a dog is!" Thanks also to JK Rowling for showing me that kind feminists can still oppose this stuff.

The man Friday protest.
Before that I'd only seen the odd snippet and honestly thought it was a made up conspiracy nonsense thing, I realised when following that, that it was real and was horrified.
I've got more horrified over the years and now go to as many Women's rights events as I can, finally got the courage to actually speak at LWS last month.

the Sarah Summers story was what changed my perspective, before that I hadn’t really recognised what was happening. At first I only heard the Survivors Network statement on it, then I read her story and was completely horrified, followed by Edinburgh Rape Crisis and “reframe your trauma”. Total lightbulb moment. Before that I’d definitely had some cognitive dissonance around sports etc, but had pushed those thoughts aside. I’m a survivor of CSA, so it really hit home.

Not sure quite what originally brought me to MN, long ago, i think getting advice on some household purchase.

Discovered these feminist boards quite recently and now feel much less alone.

I probably first thought about trans issues in the late 1990s. Mainly about how could you know that you were born in the wrong body. I couldn't understand how one would know that they had woman or man brain and feelings. Concluded that maybe you just had to be born in the wrong body to be able recognise the problem and didn't think much about it again.

I then started to hear about TERFs (around the time that Maria (?) was attacked in Hyde Park by TRAs) but didn't realise it had been a physical attack and assumed this was some kind of philosophical difference of opinion as it never occurred to me that anyone would actually think that transwomen were literally women so didn't look into it much further.
What really made me take notice were interviews and articles by parents of "trans kids" . They were citing the sex stereotypes that I had been railing against my whole life as the reason why their child was the opposite sex.
I then discovered Mumsnet by accident and stumbled access FWR and realised that I wasn't the only one going WTF about the children and also that the situation was a whole lot worse than I realised.

I can't remember for sure but think it was either Tara Hudson or Danielle Muscato.

Me too. I could not believe some teen porn addled young lad had been given the position of Women's rep. And then Yaniv appeared. Bloody hell. It became very clear how much men hate women. And it becomes more clear every day of the ongoing horror in France. From the Olympics, Paralympics and the wonderfully brave Gisele Pelicot.

The first time I realised there was something iffy going on was when my dad showed me a recording of Posey Parker arguing with a bloke on Sky News about the Adult Human Female poster in Liverpool. He’d been going on about the whole movement for ages as he’s concerned about what is happening to women. I’d say the vast majority of the people I know are GC but what I know is not reflected in the media. We were that busy mocking the trans activists that we missed the whole effect it has been having on our rights. Who knew it would be so easy to take women’s spaces away.

A colleague took our mutual employer to tribunal and had a crowd funding campaign. I found FWR threads when googling the case 😊

WomanOfSteel · Today 19:34

The rude, ignorant, arrogant and woefully uninformed Adrian Harrop?

Ah that would have been Dr Adrian Harrop

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y8nViKYmEhU

He ended up with a GMC suspension because of his online behaviour

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10268121/Troll-GP-humiliated-determined-suspended-offensive-tweets.html

I'd just been peaked by Laurel Hubbard, started falling out with people who'd had me pigeonholed (not without justification) as Be Kind, and was looking for a place where other women who weren't TWAW congregated and talked. Someone pointed me in the direction of Mumsnet for another reason (Chalet School fanfic, if you insist on knowing) and I blundered into FWR. What a fucking revelation! HERE you all were, in plain sight! I learned so much so quickly, and was peaked again and again and again.

Same. Shockingly this had all completely passed me by until then - despite regularly reading main stream media.

Discovering my ex in my underwear looking in a mirror and looking quite happy with himself.

Ive been on MN since January 2010 when I was pg with DS1.

I discovered the FWR board during the Olympcs where Laurel Hubbard was the big news. Then I read and read and read.

Previously I would have had a BeKind leaning. Without ever thinking it through too deeply.

I thank the educated, erudite, angry women on this board. And Glinner. And JKR. I took annual leave in order to follow the Allison Bailey case in real time and on MN.