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?

Unless the men in question were protesting against a women’s gathering to stop the women speaking, in which case they were being abusive, this is where the claims made became entirely unbelievable for me. Gender critical women are broadly reasonable and don’t, in general, harass men going about their normal business.

I imagine there might be negative comments made, but the claim it was radical feminists carrying out that harassment on random individuals is nonsensical.

I do wonder. Of course, there are abusive people in all groups, but it seems less credible to think a feminist would be randomly abusing a male person. Context is key in this situation, I reckon.

But you wrote…

….they don't have the hormonal profile or standard physical characteristics of a male anymore.
Yes I know they still have male genetics and chromosomes and whatever else you all like to talk about here, but a male with no penis, breasts and a fuck tonne of estrogen in their body is categorically not as male as the day they were born….

I’m confused, surely the rapist wouldn’t have assumed it was a person with a penis if they don’t have the standard physical characteristics of male anymore ?

Maybe it’s because the trans person is your friend, you overlook the likelihood that they are still recognisable as the man he is… just a thought.

There is now a lot of context and a lot of claims suddenly being made in an attempt to keep the upper hand. I no longer believe a word of it.

Others are free, of course, to draw their own conclusions.

I think Glitter's entire presence on this thread has been an exercise in cognitive dissonance playing out in real time. As she realises that what her lovely transwomen friends want is in direct contrast to women's rights, safety and dignity. Except of course she will not clarify that with her friends, because I guess that's too risky/painful.

The whole response has been an attempt to at least maintain her world view - that she is a lovely person doing the right thing, while we FWR types are awful bigots. At the same time as slowly finding herself agreeing with the vast majority of FWR beliefs.

A lot of dishonestly and emotional manipulation are required to square that circle. As I said earlier, I've seen plenty of these techniques@ manifest before (particularly around tone and language).

But trying to make GC women somehow culpable when males rape other males is quite the low. I admit I'm shocked that Glitter went there.

they don't have the hormonal profile or standard physical characteristics of a male anymore.

And this really is where the logic falls apart.

Because that 'hormonal profile' is temporary, but more importantly, it is irrelevant. What is the relevance of a male person's artificially manipulated hormone profile? There are genuine medical reasons for male people to have higher oestrogen profiles for instance, that doesn't make those male people 'not male'. Just like a woman who is gravely ill and may have very high levels of testosterone for a female is not 'not female'.

A male with artificially manipulated hormone levels is only ever a male with artificially manipulated hormone levels.

And surgery. A male person who has had their penis and testicles surgically removed for any reason, is not a 'non-male'.

The only thing that defines a male person is that their body was formed around the production of small gametes, whether they did, do or will produce those. Regardless of whether they had testes and they were removed.

Every cell in that male person's body is coded as male.

People are free to believe whatever they want. But if you, a general you, wish to believe in misinformation that is your choice. No one else has to believe it or support your belief.

So we're overlooking the slurs, name-calling and accusations of lying about being a SA survivor. Cool.

Did you report these issues? Did they get deleted? If they did, then job done. If they didn't then maybe it is your interpretation that doesn't match others interpretations or intentions.

You are here demonising women for not using the language that you want to be used. That is censuring whether it fits your description or not.

Does anyone else resent the gender/ TERF wars?

Mostly I resent the way women are blamed for the "wars" and I resent the assumption that women are just being horrible to perfectly innocent and reasonable men who simply want to live their lives in a way that makes them happy. I resent the assertion that the men who claim womanhood "aren't harming anyone".

I also resent that women have to explain over and over and over that when a man is in a woman's space, the space becomes mixed sex. Doesn't matter what combination of surgeries/ no surgeries hormones/ no hormones titties/ no titties dresses/ no dress. Doesn't matter, still a man.

That’s the thing isn’t it?

Nobody ever bothered to ask if it was okay.

Men were pushed upon us, in tiny numbers to start with, and nobody said anything because it was just a few and it was a politeness.

Then the number grew, cross dressers and transvestites started to push the boundaries and areas like rape crisis and DV shelters were being targetted along with any and all groups set up exclusively for women. And when we woke up to it and started to object, it became apparent that trans activists had quietly moved into positions of influence, completely undermining everything women had.

It’s been achieved along the lines of a hostile business takeover, which is unsurprising really as it’s been driven by greedy US businessmen, to whom such tactics are very familiar. But now we have a huge problem as governments, police forces, universities, institutions and even groups like the UN and the WHO are fighting against women’s rights

Then, because of the above mentioned polite toleration of a few men, when we suddenly realized how deeply everything had been embedded, largely under the radar, we were accused of being unreasonable because we were taking away their “established rights”.

But is just us who are being unreasonable in saying no and are rude if we vent our anger at how badly we have been shafted. 🙄