Feeling very proud of Terf Island and the strong women within it... internationally, are we the most successful in combatting TRAs? I know the bar is very low - but is anyone doing better?

[loveyouradvice]

I am so aware how captured some countries - like Canada and Germany - are and how the state of play in Oz and NZ and Ireland and a handful of others is far more parlous than here (Which ones?).... but are we managing to be more successful than other countries in countering the TRAs???

And if so why? Beyond a British feistiness and the power of meeting and discussing issues via Mumsnet...

Feeling gently hopeful that in the same way that the Cass report is now being used internationally, that the pure logic and reason of our Supreme Court's reasoning may also be used elsewhere...

Clearly I am excluding Trump America......

An admiring wave👋 from across the Irish Sea, well done to all you strong courageous tenacious inhabitants of Terf Island

Women were able to talk to each other, collate and share information, and there were a large number of those who didn't just collate and talk but did stuff. As a result, it was not a done deal in the UK by the time women caught on and began to share the other side of the story and get it to the notice of the general public and the establishment.

The British personality yes I think had something to do with it, we're a populace descended all the way back to prehistory times of those tough enough to handle the British weather and conditions, and authority isn't mindlessly respected. But Mumsnet is the how. It's been bloody hard for HQ a lot of the time, but they did it, and Justine has got Mumsnet a mention in the history books that will last long past her, just from Wednesday's events alone. Good for her and good for every woman here involved. 🍷

I think the Forstater case was the turning point as it confirmed the legitimacy of GC beliefs, and it sent a clear message to the media, courts and medical professionals that it is perfectly lawful to believe that sex matters and to discuss it openly.

This also helped the Cass review to be written in a clear and matter-of-fact way, and I think the Cass review really helped with highlighting some of the discrepancies between the stats and narrative we had all been fed about gender identity versus the reality and lack of reliable research and evidence.

I certainly don’t think this all could have happened if we didn’t have an independent judiciary and such a well-developed legal system, but obviously, OP, lots of the other countries you mention have similar systems so I think the Forstater case law and the nature of the NHS that led to the Cass review were probably the differentiating factors.

I think we can’t overstate how important it’s been that the GC pushback here has been across political parties and affiliations, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations and gender presentations, etc. It’s been a genuine grassroots pushback against the WHOLE attempt to sneak sex erasure in through the back door. This has meant that every time we’re run into the facile “you’re all Nazis/homophobes/funded by the Christian right” we’ve been able to laugh at the obvious attempts at manipulation and keep going.

The US is ground zero for Gender Ideology and though it’s actually a belief system that draws on conservative AND liberal thinking (real men are manly and real women are womanly/you can be whoever you want to be), they are currently trapped in such a poisonous state of political polarisation they’ve struggled to manage ANY sort of bipartisan campaigning. That’s had a knock-on effect in places like Canada, where not being American is baked into the national identity.

It’s a big reason why I have no patience for late-joining populists trying to take sole credit for GC campaigning in the U.K., or trying to pin all Gender Ideology on Starmer when anyone who’s been here from the start knows it’s was a problem for ALL parties and ALL institutions before British women started organising and pushing back. WE have done this, not partisan bullshitters who want to co-opt our work for themselves. And that’s why we’ve won!

We've done well for who we are, but tbh I think having a strong catholic church has been far better protection against the rainbow madness. If you go to places like Italy or Hungary—or even France—that whole culture just doesn't seem to have any traction at all. Or where it does, it seems to exist as one part of a far greater whole. It's like that institutional arrangement stops people's self-conception from spiralling off into ultra-individualism, which imo has been at the root of it all – a kind of extremist outgrowth from protestantism, if you like.

In the UK we've long been used to raising a collective eyebrow against true believers of the various kinds – that's the tradition I see mumsnet as having carried on on this issue; it's not as strong as a church, but at least here it was enough.

For that reason it'd be Ireland that worries me in Europe now. The upper parts of that culture seem to have got so high on their own supply of shaking off the church that they have no immune system whatsoever against anything, so long as it claims to be progressive.

Giorgia Meloni's government in Italy appear to be gender critical. I don't know how that's playing out in specific policies.
www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/italys-family-minister-explains-decision-not-to-sign-eu-lgbt-declaration/

Yeah, I think the UK is the leading light on this issue.

Both Mumsnet and JK Rowling have had a huge impact, as well as the whole wonderful group of "celebrity TERFs" who have written books and fought legal battles and basically refused to wheesht.

I would like to offer my thanks to ScotGov. The case would never have happened without them.

I think that it's a combo of both this and pp comment about American politics.

It's notable that the worst effected countries are the English speaking ones or for whome English is a very very common second language. Scandinavia, Germany etc and mostly nations who would consider themselves 'liberal'.

The connection to social media and contagion has been made before, I think this is true on a macro scale too. So much of online, English-speaking discourse is centered on American polarisation, consciously or unconsciously this became normalised. America is still culturally quite conservatives and so the gender stereotypes held firm, while other liberal rights never got traction. The left=good, right = bad comes from this I think, where politics is more like sports. Winning and losing. Belief in your 'team' is nothing short or essential or it's betrayal and exile for you.

Not only is your team is the 'best' but also infallable.

Culturally we are suspicious of dishonest bullshit. Not sure for how much longer...

People were told "the difference between men and women is actually feelings and nothing to do with bodies" and lots of us thought that that was either untrue or hugely sexist. (And if it's true, why does anyone want to change their body to look like the opposite sex? )

Plus of course we had a strong women's rights movement historically.

The changing of trans from meaning "wanting to be seen as the opposite sex" to metaphysical gender stuff that changes reality came from the USA. I watched it unfold.

Want to give a heartfelt thank you to all who made this happen. At long last, the madness has been called out.

May I mention Man Friday? If you are still on here, I salute you!

I also think that having the ability to have Judicial Reviews helps also.

But in a way, I think that have the GRC, as flawed as it was and is, meant that perhaps it is easier than some countries where the anti-discrimination acts have been directly changed to include gender as well as sex. Making it an unworkable situation where something has to give.

I could be very wrong, but I feel these things contributed. But also just how strong feminism still was here and how organised it was.

I can't remember the discussion but someone in America said that having a National Health Service has helped the UK. Partly because its not for profit and partly because it could reverse course quickly after the Cass Review came out. (obviously the NHS has many other problems) I do think Sajid Javid was important in commissioning the Cass Review and Wes Streeting has been pretty good on implementing its findings although I'm sorry that the puberty blocker trial is apparently going ahead.

The NHS thing was Mary Harrington I believe. She’s great and another member of our long, proud tradition of feisty ladies, from ladettes to Boudicca, who can just say and do stuff and if it looks daft or gets up people's noses, so what. I wonder how much that's a key factor behind Terf Island? I'm not sure other countries have that tradition in quite the same way.

Great summing up. I'm so interested in this question.

Is it also that we're quite a small country? And that most people believe that you can't actually change your sex, hence that's what's been reflected by the SC?

And a large interest in fair play, so seeing things like men in women's sports was just beyond the pale.

I'd like to romantically think that we are the country of Bouddicea and 'battleaxes' (a term I think we can now take ownership of with pride) but there are strong women all over the globe.

I just love that this David and Goliath battle was won by ordinary, middle aged women who have made real sacrifices to get to this point - the kind of invisible women in society so we're told. This is real female strength.

Is it also that we're quite a small country?

This has definitely played its part. You can travel the length of the UK in a day which makes it much easier to connect with each other and organise.

Although you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the nonsense of the last decade, we're largely a pragmatic nation with a deeply ingrained sense of fairness (see that world famous love of queuing! 😂)

There's a lot of factors that make us Terf Island and it's probably difficult to precisely pinpoint all of them but I think most people who were born here or have lived here a long time will understand it on an instinctive level.

" It's like that institutional arrangement stops people's self-conception from spiralling off into ultra-individualism, which imo has been at the root of it all – a kind of extremist outgrowth from protestantism, if you like."
This is a really interesting point which i had not considered, so thanks for that.

I think having a mainstream, popular forum for women that was, crucially, woman owned, has been critical.

We were lucky, in a sense, that Justine wasn't already TWAW when the the debate went mainstream, I know quite a lot of women were, and more women than men. But if she'd been male, then even if she didn't believe TWAW, she probably wouldn't have considered it important to provide a place for women to discuss without censure.

Most places women questioning got shut down, hard. Pressure put on platform owners to ban gender critical speech, silence dissent and enforce No Debate. And because those media owners were almost all men, they didn't really care.

I would say the not for profit health service has been a huge part of it. The medicalisation of trans individuals makes big money in places like America so there is a motivation to go along with what you know to be nonsensical as a medical dr I’m such places.

But mainly our strong women. Jk rolling. All the women who fought discrimination cases and who wrote books in the face of discgusting hate and vitriol spewed at them. Special mention to glinner as perhaps the solitary male in this. Mumsnet deserves a mention as it gave us the only place we could discuss it for a long while.

As others have said we have always had strong women Boudicca and beyond. Elizabeth I never married so as not to be ruled by a man. All our queens have been strong amazing women. And while I believe UK women as a whole have had a huge part we mustn’t loos sight that this was Scottish women bringing this case. Scottish women are something to contend with when you look at Scottish history.

knowing even though it’s pennies we have UC benefits may have played a part. I’m self employed so haven’t been at risk of loosing my job but knowing I could loose work didn’t silence me as much as it could have because I knew UC would catch me.

And while I’m Christian and love my God I think it’s good we are not a very fundamentalist country as misogyny is rife in religion. Our mix of religions and beliefs has led us to being respectful and considerate of others views without hate (for the most part) which meant the insidious and harmful nature of gender ideology really stood out to those of us who have always considered and respected other’s beliefs without the requirements to subscribe to them we felt pushed with GI beliefs. And because we are practiced at considerately not subscribing to others beliefs while still not discriminating we were able to constructively resist GI without spiralling into the hate and bigotry we are accused of- which has been much more effective at peaking more and more women (and men) to the cause.

I think we had the holy trinity of-

Excellent financial support - notably a VIP Scottish Author/community-minded spirits who love gardening.

Communication: Mumsnet never fell. Women could galvanise/motivate each other and respond rapidly as issues emerged. Not every country has a dedicated forum that attracts a broad demographic of women. MN certainly helped me articulate my thoughts, more so than X/long articles etc.

Focus: it was a single issue: Men are not women. Nothing too complicated there!

But I also think that Trump had an impact. The democrats lost the recent elections in part because of their gender woo voodoo. Trump immediately banned trans ideology being implemented. One domino falls, the rest line up...

I should think Australia will fall by the end of the year.

I agree with lots of points already made, particularly the one about the Scottish Government. When Nicola Sturgeon fumbled over how to describe 'Isla Bryson' ...

Let’s not forget the photographer who took that photo of Isla Bryson in his leggings. A picture is worth 1000 words and all that…..

Absolutely - I nearly mentioned him/her on the 'giving thanks' thread.

British sense of humour. A lot of us just couldn't take all the drama, hyperbole and emoting seriously. We instinctively knew it was just ridiculous.