Peggie case: controversial opinion

[SecretNameforMN]

I realise I will probably be lambasted for this and be forced to change my username, but I am going to say it anyway because I genuinely believe it.

I've been a feminist for over 50 years; my entire adult life, in fact.

I am posting because I want to discover whether any other woman, even just ONE, agrees with me.

I have followed the Peggie case very closely and am struck my the fact that it is WOMEN who have taken sides with Upton and against Peggie, who coddled him and suspended her and are now beclowning themselves during their court testimony, as well as exposing their anti-female bias. AFAIK everyone who has given testimony against her is, sadly, female. It horrifies me of course to see women in power siding with men against other women.

I have come to suspect that this debacle would not be happening if all the people in power (those who enabled Upton to use the nurse's changing rooms and those who suspended and who have publicly turned against Sandie Peggie) had been male instead of female.

I suspect if all these positions had been held by males they would not have been driven by the social conditioning to "be kind" to a man who, having had no surgery and not even bothering to get a GRC was in effect just a cross-dresser. I suspect they would have worried about the optics of being men punishing a woman for not wanting to undress in front of someone they knew to be a heterosexual, genitally intact male. I suspect they would have checked the legal position more thoroughly, and, lastly, I don't think a married man with a senior position in the NHS would stand up in court and say he didn't know if he was male or female.

Please don't respond if you are just going to pile on an avalanche of vitriol onto me. I am not looking for that: I am just wanting to find out if there are any other women on here who suspect there may be even a modicum of possiblity that my suspicions may have good cause.

I don’t agree. You only have to look at the sheer volume of men who support it. Our own Prime Minister for one.

This situation is happening in multiple NHS hospitals unfortunately. No man has cared enough to sort it out.

I think you may well be right, there is a certain type of "progressive " professional woman, who both tries to out man the men and who will espouse the most extreme "new" thinking.
Men would have, in general, been much more careful about intervening in any dispute about women's cr.

I don't think you can confidently assert that all men would have seen sense on the issue, but it is interesting to speculate.

I work in a male dominated STEM department at a university, and although I know many male academic colleagues who are definitely GC, they are still mindful of putting their heads above the parapet after what happened to Prof Stock.

I’m disappointed in the women who have fallen into gender ideology but there are many men who have fallen too.

A lot of women work in the NHS, I don't think you can read too much into the sex of the witnesses.

Women have been socialised to "be kind", but quite a lot of men also don't see why other men shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want, including identifying as a woman and using female changing facilities .

Not many - if any - of the women backing the doctor actually have to take their clothes off in the small changing room next to him.

I suspect they would have worried about the optics of being men punishing a woman for not wanting to undress in front of someone they knew to be a heterosexual, genitally intact male.

I think you are probably right about this.

If all women were against it and most men were for it, it would be much easier to say, "Look, this is misogyny in action."

But the fact that so many "progressive" women support it muddies the waters.

Some men have fallen for it. Some know it's nuts and could fix things and won't because they don't want to expose themselves to the vitriol that they know gets slung at anyone with the guts to stand up (Doc Stock, Maya Forstatter etc).

Some women have fallen for it, some of it to 'Beee Kiiind' - most of which, IMHO, is due to female socialisation. I dropped DD off at uni a while ago, and all these keen young things from the year above were rushing around helping the newbies. The pronoun badges were exclusively worn by the young women, mostly by the ones who were overtly feminine.

The blokes didn't bother.

Says a lot,

Women who support gender identity ideology to the detriment of their own sex are sometimes called 'Handmaidens', and those are the women that I think you are referring to. They can be very effective at targeting 'heretics', as the Peggie ET is demonstrating.

Unfortunately, men can fall for gender identity ideology just as much as women can. I think that whether they call themselves 'progressive left' is more of an indicator of being in support of this than sex is.

Maybe, men such as Tim Roca, MP, are 'Male Handmaidens'?

It’s called suicidal empathy and more women have it than men.

Hmm, given the Owen Joneses and Jolyon Maughams of this world, I think many men are also gung ho about riding roughshod over women's needs. For different reasons maybe but men do it too.

And no need for the preventative warnings about "vitriol". You post an interesting question and people will want to discuss it. Generally if you post politely people will respond politely even if it's to explain why you're wrong. If a majority disagree it's not vitriol it's the majority disagreeing. On a discussion board you can't really say "people who agree with me only". Do that on your own Facebook or something if you can be arsed to curate it.

Interesting point, OP, and I too have been struck by the fact that all the NHS managers involved in throwing Sandie Peggie under the bus have been women. Of course, most NHS staff ARE women, so that's part of the explanation. If they had been men, who knows?

There are obviously men like Owen Jones, Billy Bragg and Jolyon Maugham who are very vociferous in their support of gender ideology. But there are a larger group, I think, who are fairly indifferent. On the whole, it does seem to be women who have adopted the gender madness most enthusiastically.

I don't know what to make of it.

Men have to do a lot of work as they mature to suppress their worst sides, so the very idea of a man with special qualities who should be able to do those ‘worst side’ things cannot be welcome. But then modern work culture has disabled the rough-and-ready ways in which men would traditionally knock one another into line.

The result is that men don’t really have a way to deal with this. Left to themselves the answer would probably be obvious—the good doctor would be made to ‘man up’—but instead they almost have to stand aside, HR deals with it, and the parade in the Peggie case is how that ends up.

I’d love to know how this would play out in a heavily-male workplace, but I can’t recall having seen any such stories? I suppose the factors in play would be very different there.

Women are notorious people-pleasers. Part of our socialisation is to be kind, don't rock the boat, be part of the tribe. Indulging the fantasies of a trans-identifying man is a bingo card for a lot of women: you get to pander to the wants and demands of a man, and you get to signal your kind and progressive credentials to other women. You also get to bully and hector those women who won't get with the programme (disguised as more being kind) and you get to display your compliance to your bosses in a 'pick-me I'm so very inclusive" way. I've come across loads of women in the workplace who are very similar to some of the ones taking the witness stand in the Fife NHS case. That's not to say there aren't any men toeing the very same line, of course there are, but I think there's something irresistible about gender identity ideology to many middle-class, careerist women.

I have developed a disdain for the 'progressive professional woman'

They are very left wing moralisers about a lot of topics that do not impact them directly and use the issues to make themselves appear 'kind' - which of course they can afford to do because as above, these issues have no direct impact on them personally

Trans
Climate Change
Palestine
Ukraine
BLM

Girls are groomed from childhood to be kind and quiet and good.

When adults are too busy trying to straighten out the behaviour of attention-seeking boys at the expense of silently suffering girls, society teaches girls to place male needs before their own. It takes effort to break out of the matrix, so I give them some grace.

But yes, they are very stupid.

There may be something in what you say, but as far as I’m aware most of the pushback, in this case support for Sandie Peggie is also from women. All too many men act as though it’s not their responsibility to be interested in women’s rights.

To a point yes I think you could be right.

it’s also Scotland

in education however there are enough men really pushing the ideology through too. Also young men and of course some gay men.

I know a gay father who’s in the nhs (to an adopted child) and he’s very vocal about trans stuff on Sm. He’s not in management though, iirc not even an hcp. I think he’s admin etc

I think too many men just look the other way whilst the women cheer it on.

The women who agree are pandering to MEN - that is the issue. Yes the "be kind" women are a nightmare but the men at the top literally do not give a shit about women - that is why we are here.

I think straight men are more likely to see the danger in this and not fall for this nonsense.

Gay men on the other hand IME tend to draw false parallels with how gay men were treated ~50 years ago and push for transwomen to be treated as women.

I dunno, I think it might have been handwaved away with an attitude of "you ladies sort it out among yourselves"

Toilets, changing rooms, period stuff (aaagh).... I imagine lots of blokes think they're all women's problems to sort

Just musing based on previous experience!

That’s a very interesting concept.

Suicidal Empathy: The Danger of Compassion Without Limits —on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385740873_Suicidal_Empathy_The_Danger_of_Compassion_Without_Limits?

And an upcoming book by Gad Saad.

In my experience, women are prone to groupthink for the sake of social acceptance. I see it as a tendency that occurs in certain contexts, e.g. school friendship groups, workplaces, etc., and it's not true of all women. Like many here at MN, I'm a miserable old contrarian trout.

The men in my life are less eager to conform, so are less prone to this. On the other hand, men often don't understand why gender issues are such a big deal for women.

I often see women here saying "why should it be women's responsibility to solve mens problems" I honestly don't think feminists can expect men to be on their side and interested in women's rights with that attitude.

Either it's everyone for all of us or eachother sex for themselves m it can't be everyone for women but only men for men.