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.

I've been saying for years that once a government starts supporting what is plainly a lie they lose all credibility. The voters aren't completely stupid. Supporting an obvious lie and then expecting the population to go along with it, and refusing to fess up when challenged, is what tyrants and despots do. We all know politicians have to lie sometimes, but lying on this blatant and obvious scale was something that only the Putins and Saddam Husseins of this world did until gender ideology came along and made fools of Trudeau and Biden and the Labour Party, among others.

Now I hear this argument coming from all angles. People have woken up and wised up and want to force politicians back to reality and the only means of doing so was to choose the other nutter, as an American friend who lives over here, puts it.

Exactly. You know you have a problem when Trump's position comes across as more sane than yours.

Yes, exactly.

Also, the lie isnt just that that man is now a woman, its the lie that it has no impact on anyone else. And in a time of increased awareness of equality, its women who are the ones who are having to budge up and shut up.

That’s the most blatant gaslighting of all.

Such a horrible mistake by the left to promote TWAW, it was a gift to the right. Awful.

I think it also plays into all the Achilles heels of the left, the areas where they are often seen as weak by voters.

Utopianism, a lack of pragmatism/being overly ideological, elitism, authoritarianism, among other things.

The tendency to smug self-righteous elitism is not new, it's been a good while that this is one of the flaws of leftist parties. But gender ideology really shows it up to be as bad as it could possibly be.

ALl political parties do better when their tendency to various flaws are kept under control and not too obvious to the public, but in this case it just makes them look worse in every way.

Exactly. You know you have a problem when Trump's position comes across as more sane than yours.

I think my US friend would prefer to say 'equally insane'. Biden and the Democrat leads were earnestly insane re GI, Trump and Vance and Musk are insane in a more clearcut and venal way.

My point was in reference to this particular issue.

Oh 🤩 you are such intelligent, interesting women (mostly - I’m assuming!) with such fantastic observations about this. I wish I knew more people in real life who said things like this. Do people still have conversations like this IRL?

It sounds like your so ideologically hostile to trans women that you're happy to side with a scamming, lying, war mongering abuser, rather than been accepting of your fellow human beings.

Looks like someone hasn't read the thread.

I am not 'accepting' of someone saying they can change sex, because that's impossible. How they present is entirely up to them however.

I'm no fan of Trump, but the extraordinary thing is not that he's a sex realist. It's that the Democrats aren't.

Is that what it sounds like to you? You haven't been paying attention then, have you? The only people we're 'siding with' are women.

Siding with Trump is an anti women movement period. Go tell the Yemeni women getting bombed that at least they are safe from men in women's sports.

I’m hostile to men that pretend to be something they can never be but demand that women (the biological kind as there can of course, be no other kind) budge over so they can steal our privileges and rights.
They’re weak, failed men that have rejected their masculine identity and tried to smother the voices of real, biological women.

Who do you think is 'siding with Trump'?

We are not siding with Trump 🤣
Trump is siding with us!

If any president that bombs people is anti-woman, that is pretty much all of them.

Any president who signs off the massacre of women is anti woman.

Unfortunately I see Trump and his cronies as very much a gift to the TRAs. Just at the time that the tide (on the centre-left at least) seemed to be turning a little more rational and critical of trans ideology, the far right have become the emphatic leaders of active opposition to trans policies.

Makes it so much easier for the TRAs to claim to be the hapless victims of fascism, and to smear the gender-critical feminists as friends of the far right.

The dominoes seemed to be falling but now they're carefully being re-erected, and it will be harder for the gender-critical movement to resist a revitalised pro-trans left, once Trump etc. are gone.

“The dominoes seemed to be falling but now they're carefully being re-erected, and it will be harder for the gender-critical movement to resist a revitalised pro-trans left, once Trump etc. are gone.”

What dominoes are being re-erected though?

There is a couple of points here that need highlighting. Firstly that most of the changes that Trump is making merely catches up with changes made already by the UK. And even some of the changes already made by Scandinavian countries.

Secondly, there is evidence backing these changes whereas the changes that allowed the harm to occur to women and children in the first place was ideologically led. The changes back are backed by evidence that will not change or disappear. The harms in sports, prisons, rape crisis, and other single sex spaces, and in the medical treatments are now documented with evidence. They are not theoretical or philosophically led.

And thirdly, the general public’s opinions on these issues has grown as the harms are exposed and could be said to be across all political parties. Each year the majority across the population is growing. So too is the understanding that this is not a tribal issue.

So much evidence has been gathered and so much public awareness has been driven over the past four years, I cannot see how the extreme transgender rights activists can prevail in the long term. The emotionally manipulative tactics they have used in the past have been exposed and their foundations shown to be false.

In addition, the very basic starting premise of who is and isn’t transgender based on a medical diagnosis has been shown to be weak diagnostically and easily manipulated. Plus there are the huge number of self published accounts of people choosing to be transgender based on nothing to do with gender dysphoria. And by the mantras coined by the group themselves, if someone says they are trans, they are. Showing that the inherent weakness and flaws in their very foundation of knowledge.

Can you tell us what those premises those dominoes are re-erected on this time that is robustly going to last the growing knowledge base? Or is it solely based on the false declarations of being the decisions being fascist in nature?

To be clearer, are those attempting to re-erect those dominoes only relying on tribalism now?

I possibly am being overly fatalistic (I hope so). You're right that much of what Trump is doing on this issue is bringing the US into line with the UK and Europe, but I doubt that many on the US left (or here in Australia, where I live) would be aware of that.

You're also right that the medical experts etc. critical of trans ideology and its influence, were winning the information war with genuine science and knowledge, and this had begun to sway the attitudes of at least some of my uncritically "woke" friends. But that seems to have changed with the re-election of Trump, with pro-trans memes and comments now increasing again amongst my left-wing associates and a general feeling that it's harder now to express gender-critical views without being accused of "siding" with an unprecedented resurgence of fascism, and the widespread feeling that this needs to be countered at all costs on every issue.

Let's not forget how long it took to make any dent in the left's reluctance to examine the real facts, and confront the contradictions and lack of rational substance inherent in trans ideology. It didn't require much of a "premise" (beyond "be kind" and "embrace diversity") for the trans movement to easily capture many on the left in the first place.

I hope I'm wrong and truth, reason and justice continue to kick those dominoes over, despite the distraction of the far-right nasties.

The issue in Australia is growing in awareness every month though. Just like the rest of the world.

In fact, the Westmead children’s hospital gender clinic team were some of the first to start raising alarms. Even though NSW treatment has now changed under Minns, the information is out there. And each year there is more.

I have estimated that Australia is a few years behind the UK in the growth of awareness. The ALP has not been open to discussion on this issue. I held great hopes for Albo but he didn’t really address the issues. He seems to have ignored them. However, soon the evidence will be even too much for the ALP to ignore. I believe the Liberal Party has been waiting out to see the final result of the Tickle v Giggle cases and what the sporting federations do.

I think a lot of the issue comes back to that change in the Anti-discrimination act made by Gillard and how that has been applied by the Human Rights Commission body. I have been told I am incorrect and that that change is not that important, but nothing I have seen has convinced me otherwise. The test case currently is Tickle v Giggle and unfortunately that may not be the strongest case for it. If it was a class action by female footballers against the organisation ultimately responsible for the rules governing the Sydney league that covers the Fruit Bats in Macquarie, I think it would be a more clear cut case easy win.

Either way, if any polling is done on the topic in the general Australian population, those polls follow the UK and those from the USA under the questions of males in female sports and single sex spaces.

You are correct in that many of the media pundits are fully supportive of the extreme trans rights. It might feel like those pundits are reflecting the popular opinion. But that was the case here in the UK and still is really. Look at the BBC. The ABC (to my own disappointment ) is just as ideological on this topic.

However, scratch the surface and get into discussion about the actual issues and the general public have a different opinion. And I mean discuss the actual issues not just the surface ‘support’. Discussion about sport, prisons, single sex spaces and children. Not just listening to the overall supportive statements that some people make.

So, yes. There is heaps of falsity using the negative alignment with the ‘far right’ falsehood out in the Australian media. I, too have seen it. I would suggest that quite a few of those media pundits will be professionally embarrassed in years to come. Particularly those who simply repeated unthinking mantras. And I would say that there is less knowledge on the topic amongst the general public as yet. But it is building. I see it building there just like here in the UK.

Biden pulled out of Afghanistan - I am not sure that the Democrats come out well on women's rights either.

Like Obama, then? Or Bill Clinton?