The "Left" won't learn

[ZeldaFighter]

DH has always voted Labour (or Plaid Cymru) if the Labour seat was safe. Good man, scientist, never racist, etc etc

Said something to me about Dr Beth Upton and I started to comment to be met with "I don't know why you're always going on about all this, no one cares!"

I pointed out how Trump is now President and his most successful ad was the "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you". I pointed out how many left-wing feminists and women had abandoned the Democrats on this issue - nope, nada. Just the economy and Trump love. Nothing to see or change here.

I despair....

"I don't know why you're always going on about all this, no one cares!"

translation: I don't know why you're always going on about all this, I don't care.

Why did he bring up the fragrant doctor in the first place if no one cares?

Im sorry OP, I don’t know how I’d cope if my DH thought the systemic removal of women’s rights to the point where we don’t even have a word four ourselves was something mo one cared about

what he means is, he doesn’t care about it because let’s face it, he’s not losing anything is he

Gender stuff is really really dumb.

Thinking that women don't exist/and or they are biologically identical to men was long term going to collapse because it relies on silencing everyone who thinks differently. A section of liberals/left/libertarians love it, but it was always a tough sell on mass scale.

It has given the populist right an easy win. If those guys think women don't exist well everything else they think is probably also dumb.

Obviously some people are NEVER going to admit they were wrong but we are well on the way back to the average person dismissing it all as nonsense and being able to say so. Parties that refuse to see this are in trouble long term. Because being the Upton backing party is going to lead to disaster.

Yea, I don't understand what he brought it up for if no one is interested

There are a lot of people, including IMO some her are quite educated by today's standards, who really don't seem to have much imagination or ability to understand political or social issues.

Basically, if they don't see the effects in front of their eyes they don't understand that there is a problem.

I expect he's being so defensive to try to avoid the cognitive dissonance that arises when trying to rationalise the standard progressive positions on this.

And in the end the thing about women is a parallel to how the left is thinking about economics now. A heck of a lot of people are stuck in a kind of middle class bubble about Trump. They get fairly biased reporting and never challenge the assumption he is doing things to be nasty in a random way, and obviously the LP and Democrats and parties like that are good, so only baddies would disagree.

That the left now seem to be the defenders of globalism, including the loss of domestic industry, and the worker exploitation it engenders, is insane, and when any attempt to push back at that is labeled far-right racism is just completely wild.

But - the fact is globalism with it's access to cheap goods and easy travel is great for the middle classes. So they don't see the problem - and so it must not exist, right?

He knows I'm interested so he will raise it with me if he's seen something outrageous, like "biologically female" Dr Upton. When he sees me take a deep breath and start climbing onto my soapbox, he retreats 😂😂 I don't actually blame him, there's so much insidious bullshit around this issue, I find it hard to stop shouting

Wow. 'no-one cares' is a really unpleasant thing to say given that you care. My husband is also a Labour voter but he would never dream of being so dismissive of my views. He has been concerned I am going down a Twitter conspiracy theory rabbit hole and does think the 'trans' issue didn't affect the American election result. I think the cross party joy over Trump's executive orders on sex and gender might be finally getting through to some people on the left but the Guardian has just run a story about how terrible losing access to 'gender affirming care' is for young people and that's what your husband is reading.

I'd back off and let it all percolate op. In the final analysis, the Terfs are right. They will be shown to be right and your husband, like many others, will conveniently forget he ever thought that this wasn't an issue.

It's like he wants to hear your opinions but then can't overcome the cognitive dissonance as eatfigs said.

ETA: It's hard for people to realise that the party and the beliefs that they've always supported might not actually be the right ones after all, especially if 'progressive'

Well, you probably don't need to rant at him given he knows your views. My husband and I have an agreement. I rant at him for 20 minutes about genderism and he rants at me about all the idiots in a community project he's involved with. Then we move on.

Interesting that he's a scientist though @ZeldaFighter

I think it was Rob Henderson who coined the term luxury beliefs, but it's something that, once you notice it, it's everywhere. Like with drug legalisation, it looks like a no brainer if you're a BBC producer who likes a bit of sniff at the weekend, but very different if you live on a sink estate.

I think there's a general failure on 'the left' - maybe it comes with the moral superiority - of people who don't have the imagination to put themselves in someone else's shoes. I meet an amazing number of lefty men who can't understand why women would be more concerned about personal safety than men are. These are often men who take pride in not being sexist.

On the economic thing, you can go back and watch Trump interviews from the 1980s and he's banging on about bad trade deals and the decline of the industrial heartland. He was a key Ross Perot ally in the 1990s. So they can't say they weren't warned.

It's always simultaneously so important that they are allowed to care about it and so irrelevant that you're not.

How did you try to persuade him and bring him round?

Everyone starts out ignorant, unable to understand the depths of other peoples points of view

I love the response that Coleman Hughes gives here to the question, from 38:40:

Will the new YouGov poll help Zelda?

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

The data

https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/YouGov^-Transgenderstudy^2024.pdf

A majority of Labour voters are quite close to alignment with Tory voters on these issues as a general statement. We have been saying all along that this is not a left - right wing issue. This is an issue of interest across the political spectrum.

This is a chart that might help.

I mean, he might not care about it all which is a harder issue to tackle.

For me it's like being concerned with fundamentalist religious people making policy, and given the rightful concern about the attack on abortion rights in the US he should be concerned.

Gender ideology is, for some adherents*, a fundamentalist belief system and everything they think and do is influenced by it.

Everyone should be concerned about influence on policy and rights by people who are hyperfocussed on a very narrow viewpoint that benefits a very small number of people but potentially affects 50% of the population.

*Of course it's a spectrum, but the fundamentalist in this instance have been positioning themselves in politics, education and the public sector in order to lobby and affect change out of all proportion to their numbers. They are enabled to do this by the more numerous "be kinders".

OP, is your DH a Guardian reader?

Email him Sonia Sodha's piece on the Graun's website.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/no-woman-should-be-forced-to-change-her-clothes-in-front-of-a-trans-colleague

I think he does actually get it. But he's in the thrall of another thought process we've seen here before:

😮It's all so stupid that it can't really be happening - no one in their right mind would allow men to play rugby against women or put a rapist who says he's now "a woman" in a women's prison / you're in a right-wing rabbit hole / etc etc
🤔 and if it is happening, "they" will put a stop to it
😮 and when proven that it is happening, well it's all so stupid that it can't really be allowed to continue happening...
🤔"they" will definitely now put a stop to it!

Round and round we go. I've worked in the public sector, I know how it works. Write policy, get policy approved, policy now applies to entire organisation. Didn't understand the implications or disagree - tough luck! You can always leave.

I don't think he gets how easy it is to change an organisation's focus if you're determined enough and have "right" on your side. All these organisations wanted to do the right thing by transgender people and utterly failed to consider the impact on women...and now its harder to roll back.

dp (a fellow biologist) can rant about this topic more than I do at this point

Maybe send him this
https://thecritic.co.uk/lefty-mens-failures-have-radicalised-women/

He sounds better than mine: "you've been radicalised", "you get all your information from the internet", "i don't care!"

Overall, left men aka pretend feminists have been (still are) a HUGE disappointment.

Oh, I also get: "but the ones with DSDs matter too.... "

Mine is similar. Also, like me, an atheist, socially left-of-centre, works in the biological sciences. Gets uncomfortable and defensive and deflects like mad if I ever bring up the topic. I literally call it "that thing you don't want me to talk about."

Doesn't actually think that sex is a spectrum or humans can change sex, when pressed agrees that female sports/changing rooms must remain single-sex, so perhaps I have to be grateful but still comes up with the "but-but-but what about people who are weally weally saaaaaddddd or have all the surgical modifications?"

DH was similar but had his eye opened many years ago by work - situation cause by a complaint higher up without speaking to trans person or people dealing with them who initally were all happy- rummbled on for nearly 12 months erroded all good will and everyone ended up very unhappy.

Nothing I said made as much impact as him having to actual deal with an total unreasonable situation - eye opened to many more problems so no longer dismissed.