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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Does anyone else feel disheartened?

482 replies

ItsCoolForCats · 01/05/2025 17:32

I was so elated at the ruling and the implications for women's sex-based protections.

And I am happy that certain media outlets have realised (begrudgingly in some cases) that refusing to air the concerns of women over the last decade has lead to a very one-sided debate. It's great to see orgs such as Sex Matters being quoted so extensively now.

However, I'm really disheartened by the sheer scale of the push back and by the fact that so many women don't support the ruling. I mean, why would anyone think that women don't deserve fair and safe sporting opportunities, for example? Why is it always women that are expected to forgo their rights?

The Supreme Court ruling should be definitive, but it doesn't feel like the end. There is the judge bringing the case to the ECHR (I know some legal experts have dismissed any chances of success), but I think activists are going to pile a lot of pressure on the government to make concessions and look at amending the law. The disquiet about the ruling amongst so many Labour MPs about the ruling is concerning me.

Is anyone else feeling a bit dejected?

OP posts:
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24
MistyGreenAndBlue · 04/05/2025 00:43

MadBadDaddy · 03/05/2025 11:28

And here you are objectifying and sexualising my entire life and stripping all humanity from it, like any man.

Is this "protecting women's safety dignity and privacy" or is it just abusive?

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The DARVO is strong with this one

Enough4me · 04/05/2025 08:26

PriOn1 · 04/05/2025 00:31

It’s quite likely the psychiatrist is also beset by his own untreated dysphoria.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that, because affirmation and hormones and crude surgery are the only treatment allowed, that recent newer treatments have not been tried.

That’s part of the problem when patients become doctors and start to push the agenda politically instead of with evidence based medicine.

When a lobbyist patient like Whittle, not even a medic, was president of a so-called expert medical group like WPATH, it should have been ringing all sorts of alarm bells.

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Thanks I didn't know that. I assumed that when the poster (called mad something) saw a senior psychiatrist that they were receiving support from an appropriate healthcare provider (in order to recover from dysphoria and to accept the body they were born with).
As the poster hasn't replied, I think maybe you are right, the psychiatrist hasn't helped with recovery and may even have made the situation worse.
It would be good to know if poster felt they were receiving help, or just being validated.

SweetcornFritter · 04/05/2025 08:57

MadBadDaddy · 03/05/2025 18:26

If I mention Pinata sticks and you think "genitals" then that's very much a "you" problem, and I would advise either talking to someone about it, or never talking about it.

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I thought it was a good point well made, and I didn’t think “genitals”, I thought that women have a shorter arm span and therefore don’t have as great a physical reach as men.

CompleteGinasaur · 04/05/2025 09:29

MadBadDaddy · 03/05/2025 20:10

Russell Brand is a rapey-wapey creepy-crawly and he supports the SC ruling and the sports bans

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Are you three??

teawamutu · 04/05/2025 09:36

CompleteGinasaur · 04/05/2025 09:29

Are you three??

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This is your brain on genderwoo, kids.

Just say No.

ArabellaScott · 04/05/2025 09:54

SweetcornFritter · 04/05/2025 08:57

I thought it was a good point well made, and I didn’t think “genitals”, I thought that women have a shorter arm span and therefore don’t have as great a physical reach as men.

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Well, I thought it was dickswinging. If it looks like a dick and swings like a dick...

SerafinasGoose · 05/05/2025 18:10

NameinVane · 02/05/2025 01:16

Yes yes yes. Exactly how I feel, I grew up in the era perfectly described in your first paragraph, I’m by inclination v left wing, brought up by parents who were hippies in the 60s and 70s, mum was a dungaree wearing short haired no make up feminist with a CND badge, went on many a protest march as a child, was raised to understand that racism was bad and should be challenged, gay rights were important and should be fought for, girls are equal to boys and they can wear what they want, have whatever job they want etc etc. I took the rights that the women who had gone before me had won for granted and felt that - to use a 1997 reference- things could only get better.

The trans thing passed me by a bit apart from a general feeling that as a minority they should be protected, until about 2020 when I started to think hang on given all the TWAW stuff I’m seeing what does being trans actually mean? I read JKR’s essay and thought well that makes complete sense and I fully expected that the vast majority of the leftie people I followed on Twitter and the comedians I liked and the papers I read would obviously agree. And then they didn’t. I just didn’t get it and then not only did they not all agree there was this huge backlash where the journalists and comedians, musicians and actors I followed made statements denouncing her (not even engaging with what she had said but just saying she was wrong). Then Kathleen Stock then Alison Bailey, then Lia Thomas, then Isla Bryson and I just kept thinking oh come on it’s so so obvious that this movement harms women but no one I knew or followed or read seemed to care. I tried so hard to see the other side because I kept thinking I must be missing something.

Over the last few years I’ve realised how naive I was and how easy it has been to roll back the rights that us gen x girls thought were ours to keep but then if you take a step back you realise that has always been the case throughout history- women make progress and then it’s rolled back again.

It is utterly depressing to see this latest iteration of putting women back in their subservient place being celebrated by those who call themselves left wing liberal feminists and cast anyone who objects as disgusting right wing bigots.

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Also Gen X. These two posts both resonated so strongly with me. As to your first paragraph, @NameinVane, my upbringing mirrored yours: I was the daughter of an SDP candidate for ward councillor (always beaten by Labour, though!) whose hero was Shirley Williams and was likewise raised to be against racism, section 28 and the opposition to gay rights, and much of what Thatcherism stood for.

The reality of just how precarious women's rights have always been, and continue to be, has come as a shock although it probably shouldn't have. The gains made by first- and second-wave feminists was incredibly recent comparatively speaking, and the ease and speed at which these have been smashed at the hands of angry male supremacists is thoroughly depressing.

There are similarities with suffragism here - in the sense of the anti-suffragist women who wanted not only to deny themselves the right to a vote, but also to prevent any other woman from having or exercising that democratic voice. It wasn't sufficient to revoke a right, or privilege, on their own behalf. No - nothing would suffice but that every other member of that sex demographic also had to be denied those rights, against their own will and inclination. As women looking back from the 90s and 00s, it was difficult to imagine how any intelligent woman could possibly adopt such a stance.

A very similar thing is happening nowadays with women's dignity and safety, along with the most unforgiveable noise of all - that those of us who have been victims of sexual assault and are fearful of male presence don't matter; that we should stop being 'bigots' and reframe our trauma in order that the Mighty Penis be privileged at any cost.

There are names I know on some of those academic letters in opposition to the appeal court judgement. It's upsetting: some of these are people whom I've respected, albeit less so now. They are people who have thereby disregarded my/others' trauma, brushed aside our legitimiate concerns as 'bigotry', and dismissed women as though we are secondary humans who don't matter other than in a passive role as support vessels to men.

In some ways I thank them for signing. It means at least I know who has cheerfully thrown women under the bus. And I shan't forget.

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