Anyone else worried Trump’s advocacy of gender-critical views taints and discredits them?

[PotteringPondering]

I’m gender-critical, and was pleased when Trump issued his early Executive Orders on Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, and Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.

But now… everything else. The sickening bullying of Zelensky and support for Putin, the threats to invade allies, the insults, lies, laziness, lawbreaking, cruelty and incompetence.

I’m concerned the fact Trump is an advocate of gender-critical views taints and discredits them in the eyes of thinking people. The verdict of history may be harsh because of the Trump connection.

I’m a resident of Terf Island, and still passionately hold GC views. But the support of Trump and Vance is starting to feel less like a blessing, more like a kiss of death.

That’s a lazy response. Both sides weren’t great, right?

There was much in play there. Misogyny. Ingrained racism. That’s just for starters. I don’t believe gender issues were even high on the list of voter priorities, were they? Even though there was Republican meme targeting they/them, I don’t think it made the impact with the type of voters they hoped it would.

I don't think they're intelligent. If they were they wouldn't believe men are women.

Trump is not “gender-critical.” He’s sexist.

They don't believe it. No one does.

It doesn’t matter that most voters see trans issues as low priority. That cuts both ways as they don’t understand why politicians are behaving so absurdly over them. The they/them ads did in fact play well in swing states, so they did a reasonable job.

Trump is so bad that the Democrats should have wiped the floor with him any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Their stance on trans issues among other things just shows how hopelessly out of touch they are.

Trump won because he's a strategist who identified the Democrats' weak spots and milked them for all they were worth. This was one of them.

I agree @MissScarletInTheBallroom

The problem is in your comprehension of what is being said. If you subscribe to any belief system, political party or ideology 100% with no room for debate, you have a problem. And we have a problem for exactly that reason with trans ideology.

Donald Trump is a revolting, misogynistic, narcissistic man, to whom I am unequivocally opposed, and I believe that most women on this thread who are thought to be ‘GC’ think the same. He doesn’t care about women or our rights, but if he happens to accidentally contribute to bring about the downfall of this regressive, insidious, harmful ideology then I for one will welcome it, but it certainly won’t make me think he is any less loathsome.

By the way, we are not ‘normal women’, we’re just women, and in no way have anything in common with men who ‘identify’ as women. People can’t change sex, it is binary and immutable.

Voters may not be interested in trans issues but they are interested in fairness, women's rights etc. It depends how you frame the question.

And it is becoming a culture war between those who see themselves as part of an educated elite - concentrated in education and academia, tech, media and government - and everyone else. The Republicans just widened their base.

7% of voters voted for / against Brexit on the basis of actual EU related issues. That's on both sides of the debate.

The official Vote Leave actively and openly have admitted that their campaign strategy was to tap into wider voter dissatisfaction - that includes everything from bins and pot holes to immigration policy.

The Brexit vote was known to be a watershed in terms of have international politics has played out. And it was nearly ten years ago now.

Yet so many people have not caught up with how the political landscape has changed and why voters vote the way they do.

Then COVID happened and compounded it.

Voters in the UK certainly are more likely to vote AGAINST someone than in a most positive way FOR someone. This caught the Labour party by surprise at the last election. They thought they'd have a resounding victory with everyone wanting them in power, and whilst they've managed to get a shed load of seats this election, their margin of victory is wafer thing. The reception has been luke warm at best. And incumbent governments tend to lose ground at subsequent elections.

This is due to a feeling of general mismanagement at local and national level - something again reflected in the US. And the response to that is to have an attitude of 'things are terrible so I might as well vote for radical change because it can't possibly get worse than this', rather than people voting FOR whatever changes are proposed. Most people don't even look too deeply at policy.

The trans issue therefore stands out particularly badly, and is somewhat unique, because you don't have to have an in-depth understanding of policy. It's easy to know you are being trained at work or seeing in sport or on TV that you are being told to ignore what you can see with your eyes and support an untruth. It gets under the skin and annoys people in a way that hospitals, or housing or jobs don't.

And yes it's a trust issue at it's core too because it feeds into this sense of mismanagement and corruption at the heart of established politics.

Until other parties can get to grips with this issue they are screwed and they don't seem, even after nearly ten years, to be fully grasping the nature of the problem...

What @LadyBracknellsHandbaggsaid, exactly.

I think voters are also fundamentally interested in themselves and the people they care about.

And whilst minority rights are undoubtedly important, if you're a straight white person who may be quite underprivileged in many ways and you look at a party's manifesto and it's all about LGBTQ+ this and BIPOC that, it starts to look like a fairly long list of other people who are considered more important than you.

That's why "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" was so inspired.

He may well be protecting our rights inadvertently or by accident but the outcome is the same. I know exactly what he is and he is loathsome, but if anything good can come out of this for women in the US, and as a knock on effect for us in the UK, we are in no position to turn it down, because let’s face it, the Democrats are doing absolutely nothing to protect or enhance women’s rights are they? They’re cheerleaders for trans ideology.

The Tate brothers have dual UK/US citizenship so have every right to go there.

I think you may be in danger of allowing your understandable disgust of Trump to blind you to any possible benefits to women. Sometimes it’s the outcome that matters and not how you got there. We didn’t and can’t vote for Trump and I wouldn’t even if it were possible, but I wouldn’t vote for the Democrats either, I don’t vote for people who tell me I’m a bigot for believing in biological facts.

The Tate brothers have dual UK/US citizenship so have every right to go there.

And anyway, as of 3 days ago they are back in Romania.

That's why "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" was so inspired.

it was an absolutely brilliant bit of political rhetoric. It is up there with Thatcher's "you turn [u-turn] if you want to, this lady's not for turning" for sheer cut through.

But what about the content? Play the content, not the tone.

Not high on the list in general but It was argued that it was possibly an important issue for Swing voters. Don’t know if this was just a theory or backed by data.

https://archive.ph/t5yRY

I think it undermines our cause. MAGA types /Trump tend not just be GC but transphobic. This aligns is with hate rather than caring about women.
It also gives strength and credence to many around the other anti feminist view points he holds.

It’s never been in the power of gender critical feminists to control how we are flagrantly misrepresented by people who support this reality-challenged ideology.

So what is your solution then?

Are women’s groups supposed to wait until just the right leader is in power and then ask for consideration at that time!

Or, as throughout history, lobby groups work both with the political party and leadership in power and the opposition to attain their objectives?

This is the government in power for the next four years. Elected in a democratic election in a country that prides itself on its political freedom.

The people who want to denigrate those who campaign for women’s and girl’s rights including single sex spaces, and sports plus those groups campaigning for the protection of children against this medicalisation for gender are going to denigrate those people anyway. But to continue to blame those groups for doing what all other professional and non-professional campaign groups do seems completely back the front. Yet so many people seem to be doing just that.

Seriously, do environmental groups just give up when a certain party is in power, or do those groups operate professionally to enact the changes they want with the government in power at the time?

What about child protection groups? Those fighting poverty groups?

Do any of them get the treatment that women’s and girl’s rights campaigner are getting now? Or do they take the progress they have made and keep going to make damn sure the next leader in power doesn’t reverse that progress?

Or is it just our groups ?

And is that because our groups are campaigning for something some posters want but don’t like to admit that they are associated with campaigning for or even discussing?

So what is your solution then?

I was just about to say the same thing! Among these criticisms of what we shouldn't be doing when it comes to Trump, I've seen zero suggestions for what we should be doing.

Do we shove "our cause" in a drawer for now and wait until Trump is all over?

Or do we try to explain patiently and repeatedly for the next four years that no, we are not aligned with Trump, and no, thinking that some of the EOs are on the right track is not being a Trump supporter, and yes, we detest pretty much everything else he does, and no, we are not all suddenly right wing or fascists.

Shutting up is not an option.

Who on earth is suggesting that? I'm just acknowledging that there is an issue with being aligned with one of trumps most prominent policies. Doesn't mean we should stop anything. Just something to be aware of if trying to win hearts and minds. It is a barrier to our campaign so needs to be recognized as such and handled.
One way of doing this is to acknowledge that Trump holds his views but that doesn't mean that we agree with the majority of his other policies.

Well, I have asked this over several threads and I don’t seem to have got much of an answer. If any.

There is a small group of people who do like to position themselves as seeming to be willing to issue warnings without constructively offering any workable solution. There may be a number of motivations for this.

I have found it remarkable though that women’s campaign groups should not work with the current government in case the opposition to those groups maliciously uses false accusations of political alignment against them. Is it a lack of understanding how lobby groups work or just a determination that women have to operate differently for some reason?

So women’s groups should publicly denounce the President while thanking his government for the EOs?

Just in case someone determined to denigrate them with false accusations of political alignment will listen and go ‘oh, right I guess I should stop saying they are aligned with the far right then?’ Has this worked before?