Finally signed up after years of lurking. I wanted to thank @nauticant for maintaining this marathon string of threads and @ickky for bringing over the TTs in real time, and all those at TT for doing what you do. And, of course, SANDIE!
I have stayed up until 5 am every night for the last week and a half and I've managed to read every post on all 20 (now 21!) threads (I'm across the pond and it's really hard to close the laptop and go to bed when the threads start heating up around 2 am my time!). I just wanted to say I am so grateful for every one of you who post here. You help me feel sane in this swirling vortex of deranged gaslighting we seem to be living in.
To me, one of the most insane pieces in all this is how we are told that "if you see someone's sex you are a bigot" (as a PP put it very succinctly many threads ago). Being able to tell, almost immediately, who we can and cannot reproduce with is one of our most fundamental instinctual abilities, honed by millions of years of evolution and vital to the survival of our species. Declaring that this is bigoted is like saying being thirsty is bigoted. Or squinting at a bright light. We cannot turn this ability off, any more than we could turn off our ability to recognize the difference between hot and cold.
Pretty much all sexually reproducing animals on the planet have evolved ways to tell who they can and can't mate with, from chemical signals in dung beetles to songs in blue whales. Imagine if someone decided, all of a sudden, that female dung beetles were evil bigots for recognizing the chemical signatures of males. It would be nonsensical.
This movement will fail because it is demanding we somehow delete an involuntary instinct. Correctly sexing people is not a cultural behavior or a learned prejudice. It is an ingrained evolutionary response to visual, auditory, and olfactory inputs.
And, of course, this response is stronger in women than men because we have had two evolutionary pressures acting on us. In addition to “can I mate with it?” we have “can it rape and kill me?” Just like NC was saying in the beginning of her cross examination of DU, women are always instinctively recognizing whether the people around us are male or female to assess the level of threat. Asking people, and especially women, to stop noticing sex is like asking us to stop noticing the effects of gravity. It’s physically impossible. You can't make an evolutionarily necessary trait shared by most sexually reproducing species on Earth a crime.
This means the best anyone can ever do, including the true believers, is engage in the immersive role play and try really hard to suppress our natural reactions to our completely involuntary sexing of those around us (like using correct sex pronouns or feeling uncomfortable in the changing room when a male walks in). It's completely bonkers and not sustainable.
Anyway, sorry for rambling. I know I'm preaching to the choir here! I mainly just wanted to chime in and say hello and thank you to all you amazing Mumsnetters! I'm sorry it took me so long to register! Now I really must get to bed as it's 3 am and I need an early night. :)