Please hold my hand. My daughter has drunk the koolaid, and I’m more upset & angry than I think I have ever been. (SC ruling)

[MarvellousMonsters]

This will be long, so I apologise in advance. I find myself in a grey area between radfems and woke-maidens. I don’t hate trans people, I don’t hate anyone, although as a woman in my 50s I’ve had enough male fuckwittery in my life to have a very low opinion of men in general. I do believe that there are some people with such intense dysphoria that counselling and support are not enough and surgical transition is their best solution, but I don’t believe anyone can change sex, or is born in the wrong body.

That said, I detest gender stereotypes and the confusion of sex & gender, I’m the generation of women that fought really hard on a day to day level to reject these stupid made up rules about what girls can and can’t do/wear/think, and seeing the ‘men in a dress’ become accepted as that meaning they are women is a huge step backwards, and it makes me furious.

I honestly don’t care who wears what, if a man wants to wear dresses and make up, that’s fine. I’ve spent the last 15-20 years in t-shirts and jeans, no make up etc, so I don’t see why men can’t wear skirts if they want to. As Eddie Izzard used to say, they aren’t women’s clothes, they are my clothes. (So disappointed that Eddie has now claimed to be Suzie)

I am not a dress.

I genuinely don’t care about sharing spaces like toilets, it’s possible to create safe unisex toilets, the focus on this is a distraction and needs to stop. But when men claim to identify as women and skew crime statistics, that bothers me. Men who claim to identify as women and try to insist that lesbians should date them, that’s controlling and gross. Hospital wards and bays are segregated for a reason, and demanding we use she/her pronouns doesn’t mean a man should be put in a bed in a women’s bay. Same with any communal changing area, be it the gym or a shop fitting room. Women don’t have a penis, it’s really that simple.

This morning the SC ruling was mentioned briefly and my adult daughter is furious with it. She claims it’s a step backwards, that it will cause hate crimes and violence towards trans people, that anyone who supports it is a hateful bigot and wishes harm on a vulnerable minority. I tried to calmly explain to her that no laws have been changed, only clarified, and that trans people haven’t lost any rights, nor will any MtF prisoners be immediately transferred to male prisons to be raped and murdered by the other prisoners. Women aren’t going to be randomly strip-searched by male police officers who will claim they thought it was a man, etc. She just refuses to believe that women’s safe spaces need to be just for actual biological women, because she believes trans women don’t pose a threat, and even when I explained that most trans identifying MtF don’t have surgery etc and are still fully functioning males, and showed her examples of MtF assaulting women, she won’t accept that the actions of these men mean that we should be able to hold safe spaces based on biology. I tried to explain that I understand that trans people are vulnerable to hate crimes etc, and that we need to take steps to keep them safe, but not at the expense of women. We’ve had a long and very heated argument where she has accused me of being a bigot and a bunch of other incredibly hurtful things, mostly by refusing to accept that there is a toxic sub-set of (mostly MtF) TRAs that are actually autogynephiles/INCELs with misogyny at their core, and that these people threaten actual physical harm to anyone (like JKR) who dares to question their claims of womanhood.

Help me. Help me find a way to reach her. She’s an intelligent educated young woman who has been raised with feminist values, I have modelled non-stereotypical behaviours and given her complete freedom to choose her direction in life, with no expectations or limitations based on her sex. I’m genuinely appalled to hear this garbage coming from her.

I'm sorry but I don't see the connection.

Gay people were deemed to be mentally ill and that was wrong.

People who believe they are controlled by alien energy beams are deemed to be mentally ill and that is true.

Society being wrong about gay people doesn't mean it can't be right about trans people any more than being right about the alien people means it can't be wrong about trans people.

But what I think you are missing is that being gay or straight or bi is something that a person can be unilaterally. It's defined simply for oneself. You don't need to make any assumptions about how anyone else feels or loves, you juat need to know how you feel and love.

Contrast with trans people. Their claim is that they think and feel like the opposite sex so somehow they really are the opposite sex in a mental/spiritual way that is more important and authorative than physical body. But this claim depends on the trans person's assumptions about how other people feel and think. They don't know, they can't know, that what they feel really is the same as the opposite sex, it's all just their own projection.

Do you see? The issue has never been how trans people feel about themselves, it's that accepting those feelings as an external, objective truth redefines everyone else in ways that many of us do not recognise as truthful.

The problem is that the activists' and allies' are always making the focus the problems and needs of trans people and how they can never supported, so people don't think to consider how accepting genderist ideas of men and women changes the status andrights of everyone else as well often in ways that are as insulting and inauthentic to us as misgendering feels to trans people.

I meant that trans women are a small percentage of the population.

And I commented on this post because it felt very one sided and gave the impression that all biological women over a certain age feel the same.

I haven’t discussed this ruling with my friends, family or teenage children. It’s such a divisive topic.

I don’t expect nor need my children to agree with me as things change over time and that’s healthy.

You agree with OP’s daughter that MtF trans individuals raping women doesn’t mean that women should have a safe space based on biology? Or is it just other bits of her opinion you agree with, as an intelligent and educated woman?

You actually support people like this over the wishes and needs of women like me and my daughters? https://x.com/EssexPR/status/1913307490202374570

They never answer that sort of question. Why? Cos it exposes what they believe in for what it is. A Male rights movement.

But your premise was that this (the judgment, the underlying issue) only affects a tiny proportion. The following things affect women and Ito me/us are of legitimate interest and importance:

• lesbians being entitled to meet without male bodied people present
• Abused/raped women being entitled to a shelter without male bodied people present
• Religious minority women having certainty that they can enter a space without male bodied people present.
• women and girls being able to participate and excel in sport by competing against women and girls, not male bodied people.
• women and girls being able to go to loos/changing rooms without male bodied people present

there are others of course. If you think these things don’t affect women and girls you are not being honest with yourself.

I don’t need to discuss this with my family and I can accept the younger ones may have different views, but I don’t want to be scolded for discussing these very real concerns on a feminism board.

To quote Naomi Cunningham

How many peanuts stop a dish being nut free ?

That's so ridiculous - asked a few simple questions, he says the interviewer "trapped him" because he can't admit that he just doesn't give two hoots about what women think or feel as long as he gets what he wants! 😡

I want people to be able to live the life they want to lead, that includes dressing up as the opposite sex. I also don't mind if they or others think they are women. I also think trans people have a really shit time growing up and the mental turmoil they go through to get to this realisation must be incredibly difficult.

From a legal perspective though, I was irked by how data was collated e.g 'women' now being recorded as having testicular /prostate cancer which is ridiculous.
I was annoyed by sport after puberty how men identifying as women could join the female category
And how there should be spaces that are female only eg. Rape crises centres, hospital wards etc.

I think most people think like I do.

I’d wager quite a few “trans” people don’t have a shit time growing up unless it’s of their own making, because they are men using trans to get what they want, eg Isla Bryson.

Mutual respect and reciprocity is integral in ANY relationship. If you accept contempt from your daughter, then you did indeed fail in the way you brought her up.

I wrote out a long response to a bunch of you and my app crashed and it’s gone. But yes, thank you to most of you, we have left the subject for the time being. I’m too tired to rewrite it all now, maybe tomorrow.

That was since what happened in universities. It's rare now, unfortunately.

Honestly, some battles are just not worth fighting. You think what your views are now and what they were when you were 25. The world moves on, and so will our children x

Hmm my post above is totally incoherent. Sorry, thinking about too many things at once.

@usernamealreadytaken I have a family member who is a psychiatrist who did a stint on a gender reassignment ward. They said that a staggeringly high % of people had tried to commit suicide before they got to the gender reassignment surgery

No, the expression predates Jonestown by a decade. It came from an article by Tom Wolfe about Ken Kesey.

Btw, the overwhelming majority of victims didn't drink the squash. They were killed by gunshot wounds, most of them in the back as they ran for the jungle. Doesn't make for as good a story, though.

https://archive.org/details/electrickoolaida0000wolf/page/n7/mode/2up

Sorry, I think you're missing my point. “Trans” people like Isla Bryson only have a shit time growing up because it’s of their own making, because THEY ARE NOT REALLY TRANS. Any data relating to trans is pretty inconclusive because you cannot definitively confirm it only relates to people with extreme body dysmorphia or dysphoria, some may just be what we used to call transvestites (put on a costume, will never make changes to lifestyle or body modification) or just autogynophiliacs. Isla Bryson demanding space in a women’s prison despite raping a woman with “her” penis, men with penises and beards demanding access to women’s bathrooms, men with penises competing against women in sport; these are not “trans” women, they are misogynists and it makes my blood boil that we are being gaslighted in to “being kind” to them.

@Pipsquiggle I wonder whether they were properly treated and/or supported through all the other susceptibilities and comorbidities before surgery was considered? I still can’t imagine any situation where we would give somebody suffering from anorexia a course of ozempic to make them feel better.

from the study; “Transgender individuals are also at increased susceptibility for various suicide risk-enhancing factors, as a growing body of literature suggests that transgender individuals face a high burden of chronic health conditions [16,17], psychiatric illnesses and their comorbidities [18-20], substance use [21], trauma and victimization [20,22-24], and housing and employment discrimination [25].”

I feel your pain OP, I’ve had arguments like this with my adult DS, though we’ve agreed to try to avoid the subject so we can get on. It’s not just that he’s well-educated and been brought up having sexism and the harms of restrictive gender roles pointed out to him - it’s also that he is a very logical, analytical person who can usually sort fact and reason from incoherent nonsense on any topic.

But he grew up through the worst of gender ideology being pushed at school, and he has deeply absorbed the idea that “gender” as a self-perception matters more than sex, and that trans-iding people are without exception poor, sad, marginalised, persecuted lovely harmless souls. (Despite the clear evidence that self-ID is a loophole for predatory men) I have explained the harms to women and the logical inconsistency so many times but he will say I’m just “anti-trans”. It’s baffling that he can’t see through it. That if “woman” doesn’t mean biological woman then it has no meaning at all, it just means anyone.

And I do try to listen and get his POV too but it’s just if you feel like a woman then you are, or at least should be treated as one so you’re not sad. There’s no convincing reasoning. The same doesn’t apply to other biological categories because `’that’s different”.

His wokebro dad (my ex) is the same.

But my teen DD is having none of it, she just rants “it’s SO fucking sexist” for womanhood to be seen as anything other than biological. And she is not academic at all and not analytical like my DS, she’s very emotional and instinctive. I’m happy that I’m not at odds with both DC and that my DD appears to be a materialist feminist off her own bat - but still amazed that anyone with any critical thinking ability at all can toe this line, and really think that disagreeing with it is about being “anti-trans”.

What’s wrong with it is that people are assuming their children can’t have any thoughts of their own. And that you must be right and they only disagree with you because they’ve been conditioned by outside sources.

no thought for the fact that you could be wrong, or conditioned by your surrounding influences.

It gives off very “silly little girl doesn’t know what she means” vibes.

I do really feel for people who have very painfully been cut off from family members and friends over this, simply because many on the gender ideology side can’t agree to disagree. I’m lucky that my DS can. In my experience it has always been the gender-critical/feminist person who would be happy to keep debating and listening but the genderist who cuts them off for being a “bigot” or “anti-trans”. Having said that, it’s painful for both sides - if you really believe your parent of friend is a bigot akin to a racist or homophobe and end your relationship with them, that must be horribly painful too.

I do think there will eventually be reconciliations for some, but it will take time.

Rational people are surprised by irrational people. Children are very welcome to "thoughts of their own" that are evidence based and can therefore be defended in sensible conversation. Being abusive to your parent because you know your belief is irrational is never acceptable.

Of course, being abusive isn’t ok to anyone.

but believing that your children thinks differently to you because they’ve go to a ‘woke university’ or similar is naive and insulting.

Maybe for the best. Like others, I would agree to disagree, and point out that your relationship with her is more important than that argument. Then never mention it again.

She will come round.