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?

I think this is all you can do. Readdress balance in your own environment

To be fair it’s not an oppression Olympics. One friend lost is a friend too many as it is deeply sad to lose an old friend.

Also if you have to use the term "right wing" you have lost the argument. There is nothing right wing about believing in biology. About recognising the challenges girls and women face are different from the challenges of boys and men. Also the challenges of those who identify as transwomen are completely different from those of transmen. In many aspects of life sex does not matter (thank goodness) but sometimes it does. We need to be able to talk about some without the ridiculous use of the term right wing

I'm amused at the link between 'posh and academic' and trans. Although some of the transmen I know do sort of fit into that, the most visible transwomen locally (as distinct from the ones in the media) are smelly drug-and-alcohol-addled social-welfare dependents, in some cases in and out of court for petty crimes - and in one case not-so-petty - threatening women who wouldn't let him take stuff he wanted from the shops they worked in.

I haven't been to see Mrs Doubtfire the mystical sadly. TBH, I'm surprised that such a "transphobic" show is allowed in this day and age!

I'm very sorry to hear that @unlimiteddilutingjuice. You are not alone! And you're not in a minority. I've been kicked from a few FB groups and unfriended by a couple of people online. One of which I regret. But I've never met any twaw folk in real life. Unlike my DCs . They endured an attempted cancellation a few years ago , orchestrated by two now ex friends. It was the 'euphoria ' period of the madness around 2019 iirc. But it had some positive outcomes. We all dumped Twitter , Reddit and uninstalled or disabled FB. I've been forced to examine my politics more carefully- critical thinking I suppose. And of course my reading list has certainly expanded.
I doubt there will be any reckoning though - certainly not in what's left of my lifetime. Some future historian of mad millennarian cults will have to sort it out!

Lol yes I misread your OP, "the first two hours were magical" I read as "the first two hours at the musical" thinking the thread was about Mrs Doubtfire.

I've been lucky that most of my friends feel as I do but I'm retired and my age group are far more likely to believe in sex than gender. It's one if the reasons the TRA dislike older women, plus of course we're too old to be of any sexual interest to them so serve no purpose.
I do resent that women in general keep being pushed to one side, for every new law to protect them there's a TRA/MRA jumping up and down whining it's unfair.

The short answer is yes, I resent it massively. It seems such a no-brainer that men can't be women and such a waste of everyone's time having to argue about it. However, I do think that a) I have been forced to clarify my thinking and knowledge having jogged through life not having to think about women's rights too much and b) it has completely freed me from believing that the left wing is good and the right wing is bad. It is annoying to have to judge each situation on its merits but it is probably better that I do so. I'm really sorry for the people who have lost friends and family on this issue.

Yes, I resent it.

I resent that it means I, who have always been able to be open with my friends and they with me, am having to tread on eggshells and be fearful of expressing myself in a way I never imagined was possible. And that I've realised that I have to be wary of certain friends who I previously trusted innately.

The damage this bullshit has done to so many women (including people I know well, literally none of them even "centre right" let alone "far right") with some friends, especially my fellow lefties, utterly oblivious and/or joining in the abuse and spouting irrational misinformation, has been disheartening, upsetting and stressful, to put it mildly. I now have to be VERY careful what I say and to whom. I used to live in Eastern Europe just post the fall of the Berlin wall; it reminds of those 'before' times, what people I knew there told me about the fear they used to live under, how careful you had to be. Not being able to speak my mind openly for fear of being accused of having beliefs that I do not hold and being the recipient of the persecution I have seen women I know well undergo, sometimes across whole professions, is deeply, deeply scary. Anyone who STILL handwaves this away as a mere "culture war started by conservatives" is an unprincipled, easily-led, ill-informed idiot, frankly

What it has revealed about SOME people, human nature and the capacity for gullibility, lazy tribalism and what actions many are happy to tolerate or even cheer on if it's by "the right side" has been both frightening and illuminating to watch. An utterly toxic ideology. On the other hand, it has revealed some truly good eggs, those who really WOULD have "been in the Resistance" back in the day, and wouldn't have been blindly pandering to whichever murdering bastards were in charge.

The other thing I resent is how much time and energy having to deal with it has wasted for women's rights as a whole. It's utterly exhausting having to waste valuable time battling your supposed "own side" who seem incapable of understanding that if you don't know what a woman actually is, no amount of "be kinding" or slogan-brandishing or shouting abuse at other women on behalf of the men who are appropriating us is going to prevent all the other misogynistic abuses against women escalating, nor of the legal rights we fought for for decades being dismantled and a lot of the fight having to start all over again.

I resent that we have to deal with the misogynistic unthink of trans activism when there is more important work to be done.

Being forced to deal with male tantrums and narcissistic fantasies at the expense of real world issues.

I really, really resent it.

This is how I also feel. I was a lifelong Guardianista but identity politics/genderism etc repelled be so much that I stopped seeing the left as a force for good.

On a day to day basis it doesn't affect me at all. I work in an arty, typically leftie field but I'm self employed and obviously never talk about culture wars/ politics with my clients because it's not appropriate or relevant.

I'm not aware of anyone I know who genuinely believes a man can become a woman or vice versa. Even my teenage/young adult children don't.

I think a tiny tiny minority believe in it, others love to stoke a culture war for whatever benefit and some support genderism only because they benefit financially or some other way.

Tbh OP, the people I most resent in all this are the other women who facilitate it because they really should know better.

Yes, I do resent it, very much. Having to argue for everything we had previously won is a colossal waste of time when we could be doing more useful things. How can we help women recover from violent male abuse, for example, when they're being stuck in refuges with men? How can girls compete successfully in sports if they're being pitted against boys? It's beyond ridiculous.

And I resent the woman an old friend married, who appears to truly believe that men can become women and has managed to persuade him of this too. How she can think this way when she herself was abused in childhood is beyond me. They were friends but now I simply cannot be bothered with them and their bullshit. I don't care how long I've known someone, if they start spouting stuff that harms women and girls, then we're done.

Editing to add that thank fuck I'm self-employed and hardly have to talk to anyone.

Of course it's easy peasy. Just a case of telling Eddie Izzard. Reasonable chap...

What did you say?

I resent this movement. One of my children has fallen under its spell and despite our supporting them to the best of our ability suddenly cut us off last year.

No idea where they live or what they do.

I’ve apologised for failing to meet their needs.

My other children have also lost touch with their sibling. My father doesn’t see one of his grandchildren, their cousins and all those who loved the serious little child no longer here from them.

Yes, I resent this enormously.

Damn right I resent it. This utter bollocks (for that is what it is, the belief that gender feelings should trump sex) has caused a rift in our family that I'm not sure will ever heal. I have lost friends and been ostracised from social groups I had been a member of for decades. The fact that many of these 'friends' message me privately to say they agree with me is no solace, frankly.

However, I would still do it all again. It's more important to me to be true to myself than live a fake life just to keep the peace with people who are completely unwilling to entertain the thought that they, actually, might be 'the baddies'.

On the positive side, I have met, worked with, and become friends with the most amazing women (and a few men), people I would never have met in my previous life. I have found that my DH truly has my back, even when members of his own family turned against me. I sleep well most nights knowing that when the world properly wakes up to this vile ideology, that if my granddaughters ask me what I did, I will be able to hold my head high and say I did my best not to fail them.

I hate it. I would rather have been doing so many other things, but I fought. And I will carry on fighting.

In my experience it's the men and women who transition and their "allies" who are likely to cut people out of their lives. Many have been persuaded that disagreement equals hatred, and that anyone who thinks differently from them is a bigot who deserves to be ostracised. It's blasphemy not to go along with gender identity ideology.

💐You have my sympathy and (sadly) understanding. We're still just about in touch with our DS but hanging on by a thread, and our old comfortable supportive relationship seems to be gone completely. All because we won't be coerced into lying.

The whole nonsense pisses me off hugely, because it's harmful, regressive nonsense, but it hasn't had any major effect on my life tbh. Although I feel strongly about it, I have discussed it with very few people in real life. I work in a girls' school which is tolerant of the few (and increasingly fewer in the last couple of years) girls who identify as boys, but doesn't transition them or change their names or pronouns without the say-so of their parents. I have no doubt some of my colleagues would be horrified by my terfy views.

Thank you. Very well written, powerful account.

Out of all the controversial opinions I hold where I go against the grain, this is the one I resent the most by far.

Friends have abruptly cut me off under suspicion of not being trans-affirming enough, despite this never having caused so much as a disagreement between us. I've had to give up hobbies I loved because I was constantly expected to pledge allegiance to something I didn't believe and had no option of just avoiding it because it was everywhere. I've abandoned my dream of wanting to get into a certain creative industry, having seen how that industry treats people with my views. Someone senior to me was complaining about JK Rowling during a work social, and I had to keep my head down because she was connected to my TWAW friends and I didn't want her ruining both my work and social life.

I'm a very anxious person in real life and also quite politically reserved - I hate confrontation in general and I don't like talking about my opinions on big matters. I'm also a little afraid of people who I know would genuinely hate me if they knew me better - mostly social fear, but sometimes also physical fear. I'm just not someone who can match that energy. I can get annoyed and frustrated, but I've never experienced that level of boiling rage and hatred towards another person.

I think I also resent the realisation that I don't have a great deal of social courage - if I could just believe in the bloody gender woo I'd have a much more harmonious life - but on the plus side, I at least have the intellectual integrity to not kid myself that I believe in it...

But of course! Little silly wimmin with our little silly ladybrains...

I'm massively angry about the movement.

Personally, it hasn't affected me negatively - I am openly GC at work and haven't lost friends over it. In fact, I've made friends through my Terfing.

But I'm angry that we need to Terf. I'm angry that women have lost work for speaking out; angry about men in women's sports/prisons/shelters/changing rooms etc

I'm angry that unhappy children and young people have been groomed into a cult and encouraged to do irreversible harm to their bodies.

I'm angry that fighting a battle against a stupid, misogynistic, homophobic ideology, takes time away from other kinds of activism.

Yes I resent everything about this destructive ideology that is built upon nothing but lies.

I resent the fuckwit leaders, politicians and lawmakers who should have had the sense to just say NO to this 25 years ago.