This is why so many women voted Trump

[BabyLlamaZen]

I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s worth the horrors of the Trump administration (and what other women’s rights will be abolished). However, I can also empathise. Books like this are everywhere in baby sections of bookshops in USA. My american friend is naturally more conservative than myself although hated Trump and didn’t vote for him previously (she abstained and then she went Biden although she says she seriously regrets) and this time she voted Trump. She said this stuff is now everywhere and it’s constant. She also showed me a baby’s ABC book which included B for bisexual (and literally then described it as people who are sexually attracted to either gender). For babies.

Names and pronouns interest me a lot - my son is demanding that I use his new "feminine" name (I find that very difficult indeed but am prepared to use it in some circumstances) and she/her when talking about him. I refuse to change my pronouns that I use to refer to him, for various reasons.

Firstly, they are my pronouns, not his (or "hers"). They are my words with which I try to communicate my thoughts. I strongly object to controlled speech, especially when it comes with a threat, the threat of estrangement if I refuse to have my language coerced.

Secondly, the cognitive dissonance of calling my son "she" is enormous and very painful. It is unthinkable for me to deny that I have a son. I have loved my son since the moment of his birth. He is not my daughter. And trying to communicate while constantly policing my pronouns ends up with me being incoherent. and distressed.

Thirdly, I don't think it's in his best interests to feed his muddled thinking about sex and gender. He can wear a dress if he wants - he's adult and able to make such decisions. But he seems to be mixed up about the implications of liking stereotypically "feminine" things. Feeling more in line with "feminine" values does not make him any less of a man; finding some of the societal expectations placed on men uncomfortable does not make him a woman. And he is naive about the impact of cross sex hormones; he appears to think that feminising his body will make him more comfortable with his gentle nature, and also that any doctor prescribing oestrogen will be completely clear about any side effects. If he uses cross-sex hormones and that doesn't sort out his confusion over his "gender", what's next? Breast implants? Castration and penile inversion to produce a non-functioning mockery of a vagina, with complete loss of fertility and normal sexual function? Lifelong self-inflicted medical problems.

Fourthly, I am not prepared to deliberately and repeatedly lie in order to make other people, especially my son, comfortable.

When it comes down to it, the language we use matters. It reinforces or questions the assumptions of people who hear it. I believe my duty to my son is to be honest with him, in as gentle a way as I can. Activists tell him that I am being hateful and unloving. I can only hope that at some point he remembers that his family, while imperfect, have always loved him and done our best for him. In the meantime, we are estranged and saddened, because society has told us we must accept nonsense as reality and be kind at the expense of truth.

Kara Dansky has said in the Mr Menno video that in one of those ballots, New York State, a measure was tacked on about recognising gender identity. So now recognition of GI is part of the constitution of that state. It was not publicised and women could have voted for the access to abortion without knowing what else they were voting for.
Women have to "pay" for pro choice laws by giving up their right to be a discrete category separate from men.

I think you are very in denial, @potatocakesinprogress . And show somewhat wishful thinking. There were many lesbian women on twitter who said they were voting Trump just for this issue. A lesbian couple posted pics of themselves voting for Trump. In fact, if you search twitter, literally dozens of lesbians come up who voted for Trump based on this. Several gay men too. Many other individual Democrat feminists on twitter and on Facebook said they were voting for Trump over the womens sporting issue.

There is a reason Trump invested so much in ads directly addressing this. He saw it was a hook issue that could get some of the left wing women and the undecideds.

@Christinapple

The essence of homosexuality is same sex attraction.

The essence of transexual ness is the sex does not exist at all.

It is inherently homophobic.

It denies, in the most extreme terms, sex based attraction.

I agree with @potatocakesinprogress and I think this U.K. focus on the trans issue in the US election is wishful thinking of itself.

7% of the US population identify as LGBT and of that 14% are lesbian - ie tiny proportion of the population.

Trump invested in ads across the board. And far more was spent on other aspects of his campaign.

Imagine trusting anything on X when everyone knows half of it is engineered internally by Musk and the other half is exploited by fake Russian bots. There haven't been real Democrats on X for over a year now.

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic

I am so sorry to hear your story.

Your heart must carry a world of pain and hurt.

Your son has been stolen.

There haven't been real Democrats on X for over a year now.

There are plenty of left leaning politicians and commentators globally on Twitter/X. They keep saying they are going to leave, but somehow never do.

Seriously that is an absolute load of rubbish. These are real people, that have been on twitter for many years and have large followers and images and videos of themselves. You're really deeply in denial if you think these women 'don't exist'.

'None so blind as those who will not see' is such a truism.

Thanks. I keep telling my story, because the stories of people affected by trans ideology are selectively hidden. Pro trans ideology stories are considered kind, empathetic, right-on, progressive. The collateral damage is considered transphobic to mention. This is not healthy. Parents and other family members are in a particularly difficult place, because if we speak publicly, our trans loved ones will (understandably) feel very hurt, and the rifts in our families will typically get even wider and deeper. But our children (spouses, siblings, parents) embroiled in trans ideology therefore tend only to hear one point of view, the (self)righteous "progressive" one that only approved marginalised minorities matter.

I'm personally very grateful to Mumsnet for providing a place where we are permitted to speak, anonymously if we wish, with relatively little censorship and with mostly sensible moderation which largely avoids the sort of Twitter/X cesspit of accusation and counter-accusation. Being able to hear and express views which question the "approved" viewpoint and explore nuanced perspectives is a lifeline.

It's very interesting to see just which views are expressed in self righteous and contemptuous language.

Please don't forget in the States, women's sport often equals women's education because of sports scholarships.

A telling remark by
@GretchenCarlson
on CNN about US election:

‘You saw a lot of signs across the nation saying Save Girls’ Sports. I think the whole transgender issue was undersold as to how that resonated with Trump followers and the Trump base. That was a huge thing.’

I've certainly read enough stuff coming out of the US to think the gender madness is an issue for some people there. Trump clearly thought it enough of an issue to make it part of his campaign, and he obviously has sound populist instincts. I also have friends in the US who think it's an issue.

Gerard Baker, a right-wing British-born commentator who lives in the US, says in today's Times:

"How did the Democrats manage to alienate so many of their traditional supporters? The primary explanation is their increasing focus on cultural issues that emphasise identity over economics. But this is compounded by a party establishment attitude that voters’ failure to sign up to the Democrats’ cultural priorities is reprehensible, reflective of a moral deformity among the working classes. So voters who worry about uncontrolled illegal immigration or transgendered boys competing against their daughters in high school sports are simply bigots."

I don't think it's the biggest issue. But I definitely think it's an issue.

Yes, quite. I think people on here who are downplaying the affect of this trans issue on here forget this. There was Lia Thomas now there is fury over the San Jose college volleyball team that has a transwoman on it, that has been spiking balls really hard, and even the team captain has filed a complaint against him.

People on here ignore how much affect the trans issue has, at their peril. We can only lead you to water, we can't make you drink. But sooner or later, you need to listen, pay attention, and stop lying to yourselves.

This in The Times was also illuminating:

Hispanics are the second fastest-growing ethnicity in the US, making up 65 million people and one in five of the population. They have overtaken African Americans as the biggest minority group. For some in the US, ties to the country their families emigrated from decades ago have faded. “I personally do not have a connection to Mexico,” said Teresa Martinez, 56, a Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives.

“We’re Hispanic. Our family originated from Mexico. But we don’t have a connection to the country itself, we don’t have that loyalty.”

Martinez is a third-generation immigrant, whose grandfather moved to the county, but said her “loyalty” is still to America. “Democrats seem to think that because people who are coming across from Mexico make us feel like we owe them something, like we should be more compassionate because they’re brown like me.

“Well yeah, they’re brown like me. And I’m Martinez and they might be Martinez from Mexico. But I don’t have that connection to that country.”

There were many lesbian women on twitter who said they were voting Trump just for this issue. A lesbian couple posted pics of themselves voting for Trump. In fact, if you search twitter, literally dozens of lesbians come up who voted for Trump based on this. Several gay men too. Many other individual Democrat feminists on twitter and on Facebook said they were voting for Trump over the womens sporting issue.

Yes I've seen this a LOT too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3e8z53qyd5o

At least one thing was taken for granted before voting day - women across the US were going to turn out for Kamala Harris.

Just as months of relentless polling showed Harris in a virtual tie with Donald Trump, many of those same surveys told the story of a yawning gender gap.

It was a strategy Harris’s team was betting on, hoping that an over-performance among women could make up for losses elsewhere.

It didn’t happen.

AND

Abortion did matter to women, it just didn’t matter enough, said Evan Ross Smith, a pollster and campaign consultant.

“Voters - particularly the women - who feel strongest about abortion are already voting for Democrats,” he said. But Democrats were unable to raise the importance of abortion for women who didn’t yet see it as a pressing issue.

“The abortion argument did not penetrate at all with non-college educated women, did not move them an inch. And they lost ground with Latinos,” Mr Smith said.

If a significant number of latinos are anti-abortion catholics and abortion was on the ticket for a lot of states, then that would have encouraged them to turn out AGAINST Harris rather than for her. This would mean her strategy to focus on abortion rights possibly actually backfired on her.

Strategically Harris's campaign was fatally flawed in a lot of ways.

And 51% of the population is female, and it affects all of them if you lose the ability to define what a woman is or what female means, in a way that doesn't exclude male people. Add in men that have daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and realise and care about their rights, and you have a lot of people who are affected by something that is being brought in to appease this tiny proportion of the population.

If I can't define woman, I can't define women's rights. And if I can't define women's rights I can't define discrimination against women, in law or in court. Just one example. You could say "oh that just means sex-based rights" - well, activists have come for that one too and claim that transpeople have actually changed sex as well as gender.

I think the more I look at the data the more I think this will pretty much kill identity politics off.

Anyone who continues to use it as the basis of political strategy is doomed to fail.

People have had enough of it. I do wonder how long it will take for others to fully work this out.

I just mentioned on another thread that Democrat strategist Phillip Reine has come out and said that the Democrats have been taken hostage by the far Left; that most Democrats have common sense and they want to stop illegal migration and that they don't want males competing in girl's sports.

I know. I can’t remember what the other letters were. Q was definitely queer. It was nuts.

This ⬆️⬆️⬆️

As a (UK) leftie, I really wish my "own people" weren't condescending and gaslighting at a national level, but sadly they are. In both the US and the UK.

I'm hoping that Labour and the Lib Dems wake up in the UK and realise that plenty of us "lefties" have had enough of this. Plenty of us also have a fear that our autistic children will be drawn in to a medical scandal while the nation is gaslit into thinking that funding and advocating for irreversible damage to their bodies is the kind thing to do.

I have no idea if I'd have voted for Trump if I lived in the US. I think he's revolting and unstable/unpredictable. I also don't believe a convicted felon should be running a country.

However, I know with absolute certainty that I wouldn't have voted for Kamala Harris. There is no way that I could trust anyone to run the country if they are telling me that it's democratic for me to be forced into accepting that a) men who identify as women should be allowed in to women's sports and spaces and b) gender questioning children and young people should have irreversible medical interventions.

Instead, I would set aside my loathing of Trump and have a look at his policies and record. If I felt I could accept all the things I didn't like about him and his policies (probably everything except his stance of gender identity belief TBH), I would vote for him. If I couldn't stomach that, I would either spoil my ballot in protest - if that's actually possible when voting in the US - or not vote. I'm glad I'm not faced with this choice and that the UK nonsense doesn't come packaged with abortion rights, gun control and huge helpings of religiously-motivated homophobia and sexism as part of the whole deal.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4980491-philippe-reines-ex-clinton-adviser-democrats-hostage-far-left-2024/