What does your partner think?

[Loopinlouie92]

I’m GC and my boyfriend is more on the fence about things. I think both of us are usually quite good at managing differences of opinion. But this means a lot to me and I’m finding it really hard not having his support. I feel that it is creating a gulf between us. Does your partner also have GC views or do they think differently about things?

Mine is fully supportive of my GC views. I would find it very difficult if he weren’t. I can’t see how someone can be on the fence about this, really. It comes down to the Staniland question. “Do you think male bodied people should be in a changing room with young girls?”

DH says it’s “a load of bollocks — it’s incomprehensible”. He’s absolutely baffled by the way it’s swept across the world, and particularly by the number of young women we’ve seen supporting it, when it’s mainly women who suffer.

Mine has cognitive dissonance and thinks men shouldn’t be in women’s toilets, but ok in sports and believes humans can be intersex. Oh and women shouldn’t be shamed for looking masculine… cos he doesn’t realise these are women are actually men (I’m no girly girl so it’s like I’m being mansplained at also and not listened too). So it has put a ravine in a once solid relationship. Very disappointing really

It's something we once agreed to disagree on but add his (step) daughter into the mix who is now a developing teen getting attention and he's now seeing my point of view. He does have a dsd so his "be kind" default setting is understandable in a way but it sure as hell doesn't extend to the thought of anyone male getting changed with his daughter.

My DH, like every sane thinking person, knows that human beings can’t change sex. He wouldn't want his female family members to have to change or share a vulnerable space with random men and feels as strongly as me about it.

Your bf sounds immature and hasn’t actually thought about it with a shred of empathy for girls and women. If he had, it would be a no brainer. Sports? Rape centres? Prisons? Hospital wards? Changing rooms? What doesn’t he get about girls and women being denied safety and dignity? He doesn’t care, that’s why. He has no skin in the game and like a lot of selfish men, couldn’t give a shit.

This is what we want protection from. Selfish men who don’t have any regard for the needs of girls and women.

My oh used to be baffled as to what I was going on about. He just didn't understand why I thought it was a big deal. He was under the misapprehension that transwomen were a tiny minority of effeminate, gay men who all had surgery and were just going about their lives in an unassuming manner.

When he realised what self ID meant, that we literally just had to accept that any man who declared himself a women should be afforded all the same rights as actual women, his mind was blown, especially when he saw how this was manifesting in real life with people like Karen White, Barbie Kardashian etc. I think I managed to peak him by showing that video of Melissa Poulton from the Greens blathering on about hate crimes.

And since then, he has become better informed about sport, puberty blockers etc. And he is pretty horrified by the illiberal and authoritarian tactics of the transtifa types.

Mine is GC but I don’t think he gets how dangerous it is for women, probably because I have never been personally directly affected. If he saw a man walking into the changing rooms after DD though I think he would have gone ballistic. So he cares but in a distant way, not the visceral reaction I have to it, but it’s my rights on the line and I think he struggles to understand what the fear of sexual assault is like for women, or the discomfort of the male gaze when you are vulnerable.

Thats made me quite sad actually, I don’t know if he just can’t imagine it or hasn’t tried. However he doesn’t have to be able to empathise to take the right moral and practical stance in the issue I guess which is more useful than feelings.

DH didn't really get why I was bothered about it. He has since met a man, who pretends to be a woman on a course he's doing. DH can now see how ridiculous it all is and why I don't want these men in public toilets with our DD.

I don't think he understands what it's like for women to be physically weaker than men and the fear that comes with that.

DH is totally team TERF and has been pushing back at work and in the sport he's involved with.

Mine agrees with me and is a critical and logical thinker who is very clear that being male or female isn't about what sort of personality or soul you have. He probably isn't fully aware of the scale of misogyny and physical threats women receive (in general, nothing to do with what someone feels like) but he's always open to listening.

I couldn't be with someone who could be persuaded to think black is white, who thought that being a woman has anything to do with femininity, or who couldn't see beyond his own experience.

My husband and I are on the same page.

Explain what an AGP is, to your partner, and he might get off the fence.
Once you’re down that particular rabbit hole, there’s no way out.

My husband tells new people he works with. He’s a builder, so, he regularly meets new clients.
Invariably, there’s always some trans nonsense in the media, and if they bring it up - ooh - he lets rip!

It makes me laugh, cos, occasionally he’ll text me to fact check something before he tells anyone else.
I don’t need to embellish anything, the facts are stark enough as it is.

My husband is just as GC as me - you could describe him as a feminist. But we’re both scientists so biology rules.
My gay son who’s a lawyer thinks all the TQ stuff is nonsense.

He agrees with me and is blunter about it (and can get away with that!), but obviously it doesn’t affect him as much.

DH used to think TW were deluded idiots. Since the various criminal cases he now thinks they are deluded idiots who are ‘up to no good’. I think he is more horrified and upset by the TRA brigade in sports and medicine than by the actual practitioners, because the latter may have the excuse of ‘mental incapacity’ (his words) , but the supporters are either quislings , traitors or men who would rather like to do harm to women. ( Yes, it does sometimes get quite heated in our house , but only in vociferous agreements).

Just for interest, he was a member of the Conservative Party , though handed it back in disgust at the last administration. So not all right wing men are misogynists!

My husband and I have the same beliefs. We're gender atheists rather than gender critical because to be critical of something, you have to believe it exists in the first place.

Gender is just made up crap to reinforce misogyny.

I couldn't be with someone who wasn't on the same page about this issue.

My partner is firmly supportive of my GC beliefs as he shares them too.
He recently ditched one of his oldest friends as that friend has become a full on TRA, which my partner struggles to wrap his head around.

I don’t think he had really thought about it (because it didn’t affect him…) until 3 years ago when he watched our daughter being bowled at by a boy on the opposing girls’ cricket team. Let’s just say he had a rapid awakening!

Dh very much in the baffled about it camp.
Definitely against men in women's sports and women in men's toilets! Not sure he's thought about it more than that.

I notice it’s men with DDs who get it. One disadvantage of having only DSs

‘I don't think he understands what it's like for women to be physically weaker than men and the fear that comes with that.’

I don’t think any man can truly understand that. My DH was reading something last week and said to me ‘this is terrible, women who stay in hotel rooms by themselves feel the need to put a chair against the door, did you know that?’ I told him that not only do I know it, I’ve done it myself many times. He was genuinely shocked and to be fair to him, he’s more informed than a lot of men about this, largely due to me.

My DH is totally TWAW. We’ve had to agree not to talk about it. On the rare occasion someone else brings something up he gets very agitated if I express a GC opinion. It makes me quite sad.

We have two young daughters and I asked him how he would feel if, when they’re older, a teen boy declared he was a girl and wanted to share a changing room with them. He said that would be fine. I asked what if it made our girls uncomfortable and he said he hoped that they wouldn’t be so ‘bigoted’ but if they were then they should be the ones to go and change elsewhere. I don’t think it’s going to be possible change his mind. I’m trying to bring the girls up to see the GC point of view, but only when he’s not around to hear.

My dh is gc and as angry as me. He actually corrected the HR training last week when they got it wrong and they said it was "complicated". He said, "No it isn't" and went on to explain it. Now I've made him sound like a mansplainer, but it wasn't like that 😂.

My 12 year old DD has an idea of what my views are, mainly around fairness in sport etc. She knows that I believe people should be able to dress however they want, have consensual relationships with whoever they want, but in some scenarios, biological sex matters.

Other than that, I avoid getting into it with her. I have worried about indoctrination at secondary school but she is very eye-rolly about the whole thing. I overheard her and her friend making "I identity as" jokes yesterday. There are two girls in her year who identity as furries, and she thinks they are very odd and a bit ridiculous. It has given me hope that the younger generation will push back on this ideology more.

I thought my DP was seeing the logic in my arguments until recently when he'd had too many wines, he said he didn't agree, he had his own opinions and he just wanted everyone to be happy. So now I only mention the extreme cases where he can't ignore the truth. Disappointing but as long as he doesn't try telling me TWAW we'll be fine