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?

My partner is a little older than me, not that political, and very wc in his background. So he thinks it is all crazy, but doesn't see a lot of the news about it.

Earlier on he just thought it was a variation of camp gay men, and so didn't really care. But as soon as he heard about stuff like young women getting mastectomies, or men in women's sports, he was agog.

My partner is a little older than me, not that political, and very wc in his background. So he thinks it is all crazy, but doesn't see a lot of the news about it.

Earlier on he just thought it was a variation of camp gay men, and so didn't really care. But as soon as he heard about stuff like young women getting mastectomies, or men in women's sports, he was agog.

Does your oh support self ID? Does he think any man should be able to identify into women's spaces, even if they are sex offenders? I would really struggle if my DH genuinely couldn't take on board any concerns that women have about this.

My DH, DD and BF are all very firmly on the “be kind…tiny, most oppressed minority, doesn’t impact on you anyway” side, it’s very frustrating. More frustrating still is that they all flatly refuse to discuss the issues with me - I suspect because they’re actually very intelligent people, and know it’s not a position they could sustain if forced to give it even a moment’s real thought. So there’s a lot of “la la la, we’re not listening, you’re a big old meanie” going on.

I would find that so difficult- would he really feel comfortable if you or your daughters were in a hospital bed next to a 6ft 13st person with a beard?
My DH disagree about lots of other things, but biological reality is so fundamental for me.

He genuinely seems to think that would be ok. It’s unfathomable to me.

He gets "agitated" because he knows you're right @donkey86

Mine (in theory) totally agrees with me and has expressed some quite forthright views about predatory behaviour in changing rooms and how awful it is that the TRAs have appropriated genuine humans rights discourse for their own ends.

However, he doesn't want to talk about it much and he thinks I'm overly invested.

I think men can have some complicated feelings about this, particularly left leaning ones. I think they can find it hard to accept/understand 'transwomen' as men, so it would suit them to shunt them off to another category and let women deal with the fallout.

I also think there is discomfort seeing women push back and say no to men so forthrightly.

There's also a degree of shock and incomprehension that medical authorities have let this go so far, that the academic sector have aided and abetted it, that institutions have become so captured. I think DH doesn't really want to face up to that, as he's an establishment type who aligns himself with all these figures. It's hard for him to take on board how badly they've failed.

Whatever random collection of characteristics he thinks a woman is - that's what he thinks you are. I couldn't be happy with that.

I’m in a very woke (right-on in old money) industry and always have been. People wonder why I married a vaguely ‘old fashioned’ sort of man from a male-dominated one. It’s because well-meaning, slightly crusty, strong and loving gentlemen can be trusted to believe in underlying values. They might be mildly sexist to start with, but having a strong mum, sister, wife and now daughter means his protective impulses and basic goodness apply. So he agrees. He had no opinion, because he mostly ignores the slings and arrows of social change. Now he’s firmly MN GC.

Give me that over a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ brocialist any day.

Sorry :(

My BIL once had a row with me about conviction rates for sex offending. He is firmly ‘innocent until proven’. I’m firmly ‘conviction rates are so low I don’t trust the system’. I asked “would you have let Micheal Jackson babysit your children?” He said, “yes”. Idiot. My SIL leaned over and said, “over my dead body”.

Some men are happy to throw their children into the fire. I think much less of them.

Not all right-wing men are misogynists

I'm not commenting specifically on your spouse, but in general this would really depend on the specific type of conservatism; there are men who claim that they are not misogynistic because they are not authoritarian conservatives or social/religious conservatives.

Different people have different views on whether supporting economic liberalism (i.e. fiscal conservatism) but not social/religious conservatism can inadvertently have a negative impact on women's rights in the long term. However, the pertinent question here might be whether the claim that promoting fiscal conservatism is not antithetical to promoting women's rights can truly stand if the aforementioned right-wing men still lend their support to fiscally conservative politicians who also espouse social/religious conservatism.

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.

Sorry, I'm not just furious at him, I am furious at you STAYING WITH HIM, @donkey86 . Your husband is saying it's fine for a male sexual predator to expose himself to his own daughters and if they complain, they are the ones in the wrong! Wtf are you doing? He is beneath scum! This is about safeguarding! He is not even fit to be around his own daughters if that is what he thinks. Shame on you for staying with him, I would be out of there like a shot and demanding only supervised visitation with him if I were you. How could you? How could you stay with a predator supporter? These men are terrible, but I condemn women who stay with them worse because they should know better.

It has been labelled a right wing v left wing issue in the press, but that’s absolutely not true (JKR has always leaned left, for example) and it muddies the waters and the debate.

My DP is as GC as I am. We’re both of the ‘wear a dress and pluck your eyebrows as much as you want, but stay out of women’s spaces, sports, and rights’ brigade.

I did ask him if he would ever date a trans woman and he said no, because under all the make up and surgery it would still look like, feel like, and smell like being with a man, and as he wasn’t gay it wasn’t something he’d be interested in.

We only talked about it once, a few years ago now, and now we just avoid it. My DP was then and I think now is still firmly TWAW and 'be kind'.
We talked about Lia Thomas and he said he was a man of science (it's true, he is) and was insistent that the science showed that taking oestrogen removed the male advantage, and said that Thomas hadn't won much since he started taking oestrogen. I didn't know then that Thomas has said that he hasn't always performed full tilt since he started competing against women.
He disliked the 'man in a dress' mentality and thought that children should start on puberty blockers young enough so that they would pretty much pass as the opposite sex to avoid that.
I think I could drive a bus through both of these arguments now, but at the time I wasn't very well read. And I am hopeless at confrontation and arguments. Plus, I was shocked.
I do wonder if, now that more science has come out about the male advantage in sport even in men who take oestrogen, and about puberty blockers, he's changed his mind. But I'm just not willing to bring it up again. He recently said he'd read Paris Lees' book, and asked if I fancied watching the TV series; I said no and he left it at that. He said the book was quite a 'wild ride', and I think he thinks it's all quite exhilarating and positive/celebratory, or at least not sad, whereas I think Paris Lees sounds like someone who was very vulnerable and has been quite messed up.
I brought up the issue of all rape support centres in Brighton and Hove allowing TIMs into support groups/sessions, and asked what he would think of me if I was raped and I wanted an all-women group. He got flustered and said he didn't want to think about that; I said tough, women always need to think about the possibility of getting raped, and we certainly do in this context, so what would you think? He went all solemn and said he would support me to do whatever I thought was best for me. I suspect he thought that was him being magnanimous.
I've no idea what he thinks of the SC judgment and I don't feel inclined to ask.
It's pretty upsetting when I write it down; we generally talk fairly openly about even difficult things, but I just don't feel like going there with this.

I passionately believe that dp has a right to his own views. I’m about as extreme as you can get, I think, but in my own way - there’s are things I’ve seen on the on the GC side that I think are very wrong (look at all the online sneering at Dr Upton crying at work, for example - straightforward sexism imo) and there are things I agree with on the TRA side (but they wouldn’t care, because I won’t go anywhere near TWAW so they just assume I vote Reform, or something).

DP thinks he agrees with me but he doesn’t, not really. He does on the surface but I know if his daughter decided to transition he wouldn’t just accept her (so would I), he would be a campaigner before you could say knife. It’s ok. I just accept that on this, he hasn’t really thought about it very much, whereas I’ve been in this issue since 1995.

I think it becomes obvious that a lot of men don't really think about things from women's point of view very much.

TBF I think a lot of the stuff about Upton crying is more about the contrast between him and Sandie Peggy's behaviour. And the slight implausibility of an A&E doctor, who sees the most horrendous things and the worst of humanity regularly, being so thin-skinned in this regard.
End of derail!

When we met 5 years ago he'd never given any thought to it other than, live and let live they're not harming anyone.

Now he's firmly GC particularly as he has 2 daughters who he hadn't even considered may be exposed to a male in a women's public toilet.

He actively asked a TIM why he was coming out of the ladies toilets - I had just gone in and he was waiting for me. He did what I wouldn't dare to because the TIM was a lot bigger than me (he really didn't pass...) That's male privilege for you.

It's so important to me as a woman and mum of girls that any man in my life is on the same side as me about this.

We live near Wakefield prison where two time rapist Karen White was housed in the women's prison and went on to sexually assault more women so this has been on our radar for a very long time.

Dh is 6'3" and built like a rugby player. I have two sons, also 6ft who towered over me when they were 13. They get the physical difference between our bodies and their female peers. They know that 16 year old boys can beat olympian women in track and swimming and that is why we have female categories in sports.

Everyone in this family believes you cannot change your sex, we stand with JKR and all the other brave women who have endured hate campaigns. Their secondary school was Stonewalled but they still had separate toilets and they just kept their mouths shut but would come home and complain about how crazy it was. All 3 men in this house would never want to use a female toilet given the choice. They think any man choosing to use a female only toilet can only be up to no good. They are aware of subreddits about deliberately intimidating women, following them etc. They were introduced to Magdalen Berns via MN and quote her, "They chop your cock off." I loved that woman.

We are a live and let live, wear a dress, call yourself whatever you want but campaign for a 3rd space. You do not belong in women's' sports, prisons, changing rooms etc. I actually think it was Dh who was talking about this more than me many years ago and I then ventured onto this board to learn from the far more informed women here. I have made sure that my sons are aware of how different it is being female. I believe Taylor Tomlinson did a great joke about getting ready to go out as a woman, the hair and the make up, self defence lessons, mace.

DH is probably a little more GC than me, but still very much accepting of everyone. We both have trans friends and relatives, it’s not a big deal in our life.

I’ve seen a lot of sneering about Dr Upton crying. To me it is straightforwardly part of the sexist and homophobic landscape that may make men feel that if they have emotions that are inconvenient or if other people think they are ‘weak’, they must not be real men. Given the high completed suicide rates among doctors and among men, it’s certainly understandable that other doctors were keen to support Dr U in that state.

Of course there are other ways to frame this; the class/hierarchy angle is one of the most useful. But lots of comment I’ve seen is not that sophisticated, it’s pretty much just ‘he’s a weakling ho ho’. Quite telling.

You need to apologise to @donkey86 for this, SamiSnail. Particularly "shame on you for staying with him" and "I condemn women who stay with them worse".
What awful, cruel things to say.

You have absolutely no idea of her domestic situation. Women can't just leave their partners at the drop of a hat, especially if they've got kids. She shared her situation on here and all you've done is make her feel worse. I understand that you're furious at him but you shouldn't be targeting your anger at her.

Mine (I think) fully believes that you can't change sex and it's delusional to believe you can.

But they accept trans people exist and they shouldn't be abused or disadvantaged. They should acknowledge they aren't the actual opposite sex and never will be.

So same as me really.

I don't agree, overall (I can't speak to every single comment on all platforms, obvs). Much of it is firmly in the context of his job, the proportionality of his response considering what SP actually said to him and what actually happened, and the power and status imbalance between him and SP.