Does anyone else resent the gender/ TERF wars?

[TERFCat]

I met up with an old friend last night. The first two hours were magical! Everything was going great until the "what is a woman?" question popped up... Then, it all turned sour, and I don't think she and I will be catching up again for a long time.

Basically, whilst I think women's rights are paramount and should be defended whenever necessary, I'm really starting to resent the impact this had on my real life.

I have lost friends over this, and I've likely been stopped from making more too!

Does anyone else feel this way?

You wouldn't call people telling you not to use racist terms when talking about black people censuring or trying to shut down conversation so why do you call it that when people ask you not to use insulting terms when referring to trans people?

If you can literally make the exact same point without being offensive, why wouldn't you? The women here seem to revel in being nasty and saying "I will not be kind!" as if being nasty to people is something to be proud of and a feminist badge of honour. I have never sent hat behaviour anywhere else it's really strange and off-putting to outsiders. I have seen horror people not care that they are being horrible, but I have never seen horrible revel in their horribleness as if it makes them noble and better than everyone else.

There is no comparison between using racist terms and using blunt language around male people who claim to have a gender identity that makes them in anyway female and making demands that society affirm their identity and allow them to have access to female single sex provisions. If people use language that falls outside the Talk Guidelines, report them. I assume you have been reporting posts, please continue to do so.

Telling female people what language they can and cannot use to describe this situation is indeed censuring.

You are also not using a correct comparator. The comparator should be the censuring of black people who are describing people who are in no way black but who claim that they are black and that society treats them in any way like they are the black people that they say they are. You, personally, have brought race into this and I am reluctantly correcting your assertion. But I find your comparison racist in itself. You have leveraged the oppression of black people to support male people who state that they are women.

Just because you, personally, find the language use uncomfortable and you think it is hateful doesn't mean that it is. You can describe it as 'nasty'. Multiple posters on this thread have described your posts as being similarly nasty and unkind.

Plus, I would expect many of us find any male person who expects to be treated as a female person 'unkind' to put it mildly. I would call any male person who expects to be treated as a female person to be acting misogynistically. Because they have tried to forcibly redefine the words that female people need to describe themselves. What other group of people have done this in society?

But maybe you could answer the questions about how people who take hormones and have surgeries are 'in between' the sexes. Because that all seems to be very flawed logic, but I would like to see just how that all fits together in your way of thinking.

Implicit in racism the suggestion that human beings belong to different races, and that one of the races is superior, other(s) inferior, and that some people can be denied their rights because of their race.

Racism is wrong.

Human beings do belong to two different sexes. Sexists think that some people can be denied their rights because of their sex.

Sexism is wrong.

You know what is abusive?

Coming on to a specifically designated women’s area of a women’s forum, where women are talking about their traumatic experiences, including loss of friends, loss of family members and other difficult situations, and saying “Well my male friends have it much worse” and implying the traumatized women are somehow at fault.

Abusers then respond to the anger they have created in a woman, who reacted with pain and frustration, by haranguing her over and over and pretending to be a victim.

Fine demonstration of DARVO, with a special touch of gaslighting thrown in for good measure.

I hear you. Looking back, I must admit to questioning this post.

"I resent that people are still banging on about the TERF ears and won't just let trans people live in peace."

"I have two tran friends, both lovely people who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace but face abuse on an almost daily basis and the fact that people can't just leave them alone and let them live their lives in a way that makes them happy when they aren't harming anyone pisses me off. I resent the fact that most people here would relish in calling them men lapping as women, men in dresses, male bad actors and all sorts of other insults because it is cruel."

There has been an admission that the poster does not even know if these male people are using female single sex provision, yet is then framing their friends as being completely innocent without further investigation as to who is 'abusing' them and why.

I understand that people are protective of their friends. However, there may well be a whole lot more to the situation than is being told.

And the censuring of language and description started straight away, along with the accusation of cruelty to any person who has not complied with this poster's personal expectation of language to be used.

No one has the right to demand that women comply to a male person's philosophical belief about themselves nor use the language that those male people and their friends which to restrict society to use.

There are two women - friends of friends - who I overlap with a bit, who have adult sons who identify as trans. My friends go along with this nonsense, out of pity for the women. I bite my lip in front of the two mothers but the whole thing makes me feel nauseated.

My own adult kids are all #bekind. ‘Live and let live’. Can’t see that there’s any sort of an issue. We’ve had heated debates about it as a family.

Yes. I do resent it.

No. Voicing an opinion which is literally answering the question in the OP, then fighting back when someone harassed me for days because they didn't like what I said and accused me of lying about being a SA victim is not abusive.

Are you seriously implying that I should accept being called a liar, a misogynist and a whole host of other things as well as having how fucking dare you shouted at me over and over because calling this behaviour out as unacceptable is abusive? Please.

I didn’t name you. Did you recognise yourself in my description?

Have a nice day!

It's clearly me you're talking about because no one else here is defending trans women.

You clearly haven't been here long because I don't recognise your username, the transphobic slurs you say you have never seen here are used here very often, and Mumsnet is not a safe space, it's an open online forum, especially FWR where posters take pride in "not being kind" and blatantly saying the cold hard truth regardless of who they offend or upset as if it's a virtue. If the mere expression of an opposing view is top much for someone to handle, they shouldn't be here.

Good day indeed!

FWR is a very kind space. But being kind is not the same as giving someone their own way in an argument when you think their argument is unsound. There have been lots of reasons given for why your arguments are unsound. If you have hung out in FWR for any time at all you will know that the posters here are not coming by their views in a knee jerk way.

You appear to be a very selective reader from how you latch into comments. I know I have read comments on previous threads by @PriOn1 not sure about you.

blatantly saying the cold hard truth

Unfortunately we are in this horrendous mess because, way back when, people were not told the blatant truth.

Women have seen first hand where being kind got us in terms of gender identity. We played along with individual's feelings and wants of having an opposite gender identity to theor biological reality. In the mistaken belief that it was the kindest way. We ended up with our own rights being taken away. I will no longer be made to feel unhinged/hysterical/unkind for speaking the truth.

We know that there is nothing 'kind' about encouraging any aspect of genderism. The cynical cruelty of the way it works through real human lives is obvious. So we reject it and reject the falsehood that gave rise to the 'bekind' hashtag.

Genderism is abuse, misogyny, homophobia, enforcement of stereotypes. It is not kindness.

I’ve been here since 2017 and have used PriOn1 for years.

I recognise abusive behaviour patterns as I experienced them years ago at the hands of an ex boyfriend, who knew exactly what to say to cause me pain. He would wind me up to the point where I was incredibly angry, then look on with wide eyed innocence as I reacted, telling anyone within hearing, “Look how awful she is. It was always her who was abusive. I’ve done nothing. Look how reasonable I’m being compared to her.”

Fat Tony, aka Pig in a Wig chooses his victims using the same tactic. He makes a broad, inflammatory comment against gender critical (for want of a better term) women, sees who reacts, then begins to torment them.

It was very successful all those years ago as a tactic and narcissists love it as they crave attention and also showing people up in front of others, while delighting in that power trip as others vindicate them. It’s exactly why grey rock is an essential tactic, as soon as you recognise you’re being played.

Oh dear. Prion has been on FWR for a very long time.

Edited. Cross posted.

Brava!

Especially this:

We were all fine with trans people for decades until they started infiltrating womens spaces. Then, it was game on. They bullied, abused, hounded, harassed and attacked and threatened until they completely broke down society's social contract that protected women and girls.

Yes Pri0n. The pattern you mention is very clear.

We were all fine with trans people for decades until they started infiltrating womens spaces. Then, it was game on. They bullied, abused, hounded, harassed and attacked and threatened until they completely broke down society's social contract that protected women and girls.

✍️👏

Oy! (Jumps up and down, waves arms.)

I defended transwomen. I argued that there is a colourable case for making concessions to men who have had hormonal and surgical treatment (albeit one that falls down for practical reasons).

And someone (narrowed eyes, hard Paddington stare) got my post deleted.

So I'm still waiting for your answer. If I encounter a man in the women's changing room, how can I possibly know what treatment he's had?

You make so much of one poster one here who answered you rather robustly. But long before that, you marched onto this threat, all guns blazing, to tell us how what awful people we are and how lovely your trans friends are.

Our crime? Defending women's spaces (which you much later decided we had the right to do).

Telling the 'cold hard truth' - so not lying then?

So that's the awful abuse you've been banging on about? 🙄

In the meantime, it transpires that you don't know if your 'lovely', 'harmless' friends are using women's spaces or not. You've never even thought to ask them.

But we're the abusive ones, right?

Ive also highlighted the horrific abuse that GC women have faced from people in the trans community for the terrible, awful crimes of telling the truth and defending our spaces. My question here is why have you never called out these actions? Why have you not factored in the horrendous abuse the GC side face? When you're telling us how awful we are?

So to conclude that it is our 'abuse' that is the issue here seems to say a lot about you - your values, your priorities. I expect that contradicts the self image you have about yourself, but we could all benefit from more truth telling, including you.

Oh absolutely people can make the case for surgical and hormonally modified male people. People can make cases for anything they want to in a free world. It doesn’t mean that they will succeed in achieving their aim though.

I noticed that we are no closer to getting any explanation about this ‘in between sexes’ works. But as far as I can work out it is a highly flawed position from the start. Simply cutting off body parts and artificially temporarily changing hormone levels doesn’t affect the very fundamental element that categorises sex. That position seems more like wishful thinking than an evidence based position.

But I am glad you gave it a crack to defend it theilltemperedqueenofspacetime. The position appears on this board often, and I haven’t seen a robust defence yet that didn’t rely on emotionally manipulative reasoning or gender identity theory that doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Was it a good attempt that got deleted?

How is it kind to allow someone to believe they are something they are objectively not? Haven’t we learned lessons from the past that this is not kind behaviour.

How is it kind is it to any female person to allow a male person to perpetuate misogyny, whether it is their intention to be misogynist or not?

How kind is it to believe that any person who has body parts removed or added is removed somehow from body categories that their body form still belongs in? And if that proposed category move doesn’t hold true for any other body change, why are we to be believe it is somehow true for this group of people

These are genuine questions. Because I would love to see the justification for all this ‘kindness’ that some people take pride in.

So much of this comes down to the fact that we have no functioning moral frameworks to guide behaviour.

All people can do these days is be 'nice' to whoever is in front of them. Facilitating their demands. Without thinking at all about the impact those demands have on other people. Or even on the individuals themselves.

When we get to the point where truth telling is deemed problematic, we know we've lost the plot entirely.

I don't believe in GI, or that people can change sex through medical treatment - but men who have had medical treatment differ from other men. So I suppose I'm defending the class of people who think they should be given concessions on that basis.

One. They might be less of a threat to women than other men are.

But, two, this is not a useful aid to regulating single-sex spaces, because we cannot tell by looking at them whether they have had the treatment.

I probably got deleted because, for completeness, I referenced that these men can be a threat for reasons unrelated to strength or the presence of a working penis. To do with their psychology and sexuality

We have so many people nowadays who are invested in the idea of themselves being a good person - and that, in itself is commendable of course.

But actually, societal understanding of what being a good person entails is now fatally flawed. What is being held up as 'good' is not leading to enhanced outcomes for society as a whole.