We need to examine why so many women (including some prominent feminists) pushed the trans movement

[AliasGrace47]

I've seen quite a few posts on here placing the responsibility for gender ideology catching on on a combo of misogynistic & influential autogynephiles, and gay & straight men who backed them up.

I definitely think the core of the TRA movement is misogynistic men. But we also need to try & work out why several feminists promoted this stuff. After all, Butler's Gender Trouble is the Bible of this.

It's notable that supporting gender ideology and supporting paedophilia seem to correlate. Gayle Rubin is a notable influence, as is the now Patrick Califia. Both wrote in the 80s that child-adult 'sexual contact' could be OK.

Root cause of this kind of behaviour definitely needs identifying and girls and women to learn what it is and why it’s dangerous.

I suspect though, it’s the endless indoctrination from birth that comes from every angle which states that nice, lovable, loving, kind, compassionate, decent female humans are supposed to make everyone else’s lives nicer, prettier and easier. And anything other than that is the act of a nasty, cruel awful woman.

The concept that everyone else comes before you is only applied to men when evacuating a sinking ship.

Clearly I did not fully absorb the #bekind koolaid. I’m probably weaponising the suffering of a Titanic passenger too. 😁

Oh, great to get so many responses! Snowed under w work right now but will try & put some replies. I've been reading a lot on this recently from various angles and will put some stuff I think may be at root.

Women need to learn to stop just accepting bullshit and say, "this is plainly bullshit, we aren't obliged to be nice and pretend its not bullshit. And even if we are nice, it still remains bullshit."

And isn't that terrifying? That it's the 'educated' that are taken in by lies?

Great thread. Thank you. I am generally full of words, but this topic make my blood boil. So many of you say it better and I have gone through doing a lot of 'likes'.

I always go back to what Helen Joyce says about the chilling effect of having a trans parent in a workplace or social circle. There's a couple who I know slightly, who are well thought of by a bunch of my friends, who transed their primary age daughter.

Needless to say, I did not find this cute or heartwarming.

I've tried to tactfully not mention it to mutuals, but whenever trans issues come up, my tact hasn't stopped me being reproached with "you can't say that, it would upset Jane and Fred".

Men I know do this a bit too, especially left wing men who like to pat themselves on the back for being feminist allies (while privileging the penis people), but my god, female socialisation really does a number on women. It's maybe why I so much admire women who don't give a fuck about "be kind".

I feel just like this about a girl at school who has been enthusiastically supported with a male name/pronouns. It's a girls' school: why has no one said to her "why are you still here?" ?

Tbh can't help but be glad that they're in a female environment even if it doesn't fit their professed beliefs. Obviously we all think they have every right to be in a women's team.

I have not read the whole thread so apologies if this has been put forward.

I have encountered many women of my generation (80s child) who simply do not want to be called a feminist. I’ve heard the phrase “I’m not some hairy legged feminist but…” So I think it’s natural from that viewpoint to centre men.

if you don’t understand what feminism is about then, if brought up with fairly regressive sex stereotypes, you will naturally support what is essentially a men’s rights movement.

So, thinking on a bit about female socialisation and how it leads us to think about femininity = kind, nurturing, inclusive, all the things.

Transsexualism comes into public consciousness (mostly but not exclusively) with individual HSTS. 20, 30, 40 years ago the homosexual transsexual basically is "trans identity" and so is at least adjacent to the gay scene if not a subset of it.

So I'm thinking of the affinity women often have for gay men, and it seems to me that's often an identification with the feminine man who's being excluded by the masculine men.

(Possibly a tangent - with the straight women I know who are massively into gay male culture, it's always the camp side of gay male culture. I've never known a woman who was massively into, say, Tom of Finland.)

So I think that historic sympathy naturally transfers over to the gay man who wants to present in a female persona.

It really doesn't work for AGPs, so I think the increasing prominence of AGPs means a huge amount of cognitive dissonance, plus that bit of female socialisation that leads a certain type of woman to look at a fucked up man and say "I can fix him."

Men aren't like that. There are many wonderfully supportive and empathetic men out there, but I defy you to find a man who encounters a woman whose life is a mess and says "I can fix her." He will run very fast in the opposite direction, and I can't blame him.

This is precisely my mother. Feminist, left wing - but cannot understand that today’s TiM is not the TiM of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It’s not gay men identifying overtly with feminine stereotypes, it’s straight men wanting to BE the feminine stereotypes.

I think it’s a mix of misogynistic tropes all existing at the same time and cumulatively saturating the culture (along with all the very deliberate work TRAs did to produce training through Stonewall for organisations, politicians etc).

So if you grew up in the 70/80s, you were comfortable with David Bowie and Adam Ant and Boy George and Annie Lennox and Suzi Quattro, so probably rejected traditional gender roles and dress etc. Combined with 80s feminism that women could do men’s jobs (and men were sometimes being nurses, single dads etc), it was right on to think gender was « fluid. » A pp said that of course you never thought you could actually change sex, but be bending roles was accepted.

Then medical advances come along and more people have surgery. This is where Hayley Cropper comes in. You start thinking, maybe they do end up a woman, I don’t know what the surgery does… you can have IVF and heart transplants, so…. ?

At the same time in the 2000s a lot of action and super hero movies came along, and a lot of female characters fight and take blows like men can. (I know, it’s the movies…). It’s totally unrealistic but a lot of girls grow up on this stuff. There’s a lot of emphasis on biology not being deterministic. That happens at the same time as porn and lad’s mags and girls are encouraged to be as sexually permissive as men. All empowerment, right?

Then you grow up a bit more, you get pregnant, you have a baby, you birth that baby and feed that baby and you think, holy shit, look what my female body can do! You bring up a small male or a small female human and you notice how different they are. And then peri comes along and meno comes along and you realise what a massive effect hormones have on every aspect of your physical and mental being. And you understand, finally, that human sex is binary, and biology IS fucking deterministic, and there’s NOTHING WRONG with that. What’s wrong is the patriarchy using women’s biology against them for power.

Trans defending women are stuck at the earlier stages. And either havent had enough life experience (good and bad) or haven’t thought it through.

I know the daughter of a friend who is really into Judith Butler and the trendy side of fluid gender politics. Yeah, whatever. All very liberating. But what about men’s physical advantages and unfortunately distributed proclivities for assault? What about women’s opportunities in sport? What about vulnerable children in care or in hospital? What about the obvious mental health crisis of isolated autistic girls or disturbed young gay men? This ain’t doing them any favours either. You keep your trendy gender fluidity. Grow up. Pick a side.

Gender ideology is a hyper-capitalist invention.
It makes a fortune for the financial (pharma/medical/psych) markets.

It's hard to put up a fight against institutional capture especially when your livelihood depends on supporting the institution. If you know you'll get sacked for daring to think differently, why would you bother thinking differently?

I think the vast majority of men, whatever their ages, find the trans agenda nonsensical too.

It's "education" in a bubble though. Not genuinely delving or debating, just going with what's fashionable, the current thing for leftists to support. Sometimes mindlessly.

I often feel that way too.

In my better moments I think it's basically accurate, but an over-statement. One thing I have realised more and more as I've aged is how many people are not big picture thinkers.

They may be reasonably normal intelligence, bright, well educated, and able to express themselves, but they aren't particularly inclined to question the basics of their worldview, and they don't apply the most complex/higher order kinds of thinking and questioning.

One of the things I've noticed about FWR is that there are a relatively large proportion of people who seem to be big picture thinkers. What really brought that home to me was reading the thread on assisted death here and the one in AIBU. The latter was almost entirely pro, with arguments like, it's my right, and we shouldn't let people suffer, and there are safeguards. The one on FWR was asking questions like, will the safeguards be able to stand up to legal challenge, will it be a cover for bad actors, how will this change people's ideas about the value of life, what kinds of unintended pressures or consequences could there be, how will it affect other kinds of legislation and parts of society.

I worry that this is actually quite a large group of people.

I have wondered a bit if I am on the sociopathic spectrum, (is there such a thing?) because this sort of guilt never bothers me at all. I find the whole idea completely alien.

I think you're right. The issue is that on FWR a lot of people are clearly well educated (not indoctrinated w woke) and gnc to some extent, so less worried about people pleasing. A lot of especially women are not engaged enough in this kind of thinking, engagement w short attention SM doesn't help. I think a major feminist goal should be promoting true strength of character and critical thinking to women.

You sound a bit like my mother : she's really kind but has always been pretty tough in enforcing boundaries. From when I was young she stressed the importance of not comprising safety through people pleasing. I think more of this kind of attitude would be healthy. Otherwise you end up w what Gad Saad aptly called 'suicidal empathy' (think someone used the phrase upthread?)

@TempestTost you are spot on about a lot of people (the majority?) not using systems thinking. It does my head in on a regular basis. Just join the dots!!!
(I don’t mean conspiracy type stuff, I mean complex issues like how we can revive the high street whilst people automatically use Amazon etc - not black and white, but lots to think about the reasons for that; or, back when I was working, how shocking it was to me that most couples counted the women’s salary only towards child care and priced themselves out of it, instead of jointly financing it and jointly taking a day out of full time work, for example - people just tend to do what they see their friends doing and don’t sit down and think about it from scratch).

Yes 👍

Because a lot of these so-called feminists aren't true feminists. Emma Watson, Caitlin Moran, Laurie Penny, Lauren Laverne, all adopt a shallow patina of 'feminism' in order to make ££££ and be 'cool'. But in reality they're very male oriented and wouldn't recognise an Andrea Dworkin thesis if it came up and tweaked their nose.

Also these women tend to be highly privileged, and to move in highly privileged circles. It suits them therefore to adopt some aspects of 'right on' views (feminism, socialism, etc) whilst all the while basing their material status on the exact opposite. They won't speak out for true feminism because they're scared of losing their standing invitation to the North London meeja dinner party circuit.

For the record, they disgust me, and always have, since long before the trans issue. We working class women and domestic abuse survivors have always seen these posh fake feminists for what they really are.

@GiveMeSpanakopita - word for word (almost!) that is what I was about to post.
👏

I agree with @GiveMeSpanakopita but as an ex-working class woman, I have seem WC feminists board the trans train because they are immersed in intersectionality and that their feminism is part of a general pick and mix of various oppressions so there is a belief putting women at the top would be wrong. "No-one is free until we are all free."

I think that's a dangerous way to think, there's an acceptable "correct view" and the intersectionality. It's like seeing gay or trans flags at a pro Palestine demo. You think....is there a failure of understanding here?