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?

Where are you seeing this?

I can't say it's my experience.

I also don't think anyone should be abused or disadvantaged. The problem is that some of the so-called 'trans rights' advocated for are in fact advantages, and/or disadvantage other groups.
I also think trans people exist in the sense that Christian people or Hindu people exist: in the sense that they believe in the things that you're required to believe in to be a Christian or a Hindu; but not in any other way i.e. I don't believe in a higher being and I don't believe anyone is born in the wrong body.
This is where me and my DP don't agree (I think; actually, I'm not sure if he believes in the wrong-body thing, or just that if someone says they're trans, you should absolutely accept that and call them by the things they want to be called by etc etc).

@Loopinlouie92 I could have written this. I’ve been following the Sandie Peggie ET on tribunal tweets daily and I see my husband roll his eyes a bit when I tell him the latest jaw dropping cock up by NHS Fife. He can’t see why I get so invested as he says it will all be sorted out once more people become aware of the issues. But I don’t see any GC reporting on mainstream media (such as the BBC) about it so how will the public get to know. Very frustrating.

Yeah, I agree I think.
Trans can be a state of mind and can be respected. I have trans men family and I call them by their new name and if I have to use pronouns it's their preferred one. But they know they're not men. They're transmen. A seperate thing. Not better or worse, but not the same as being the opposite sex.

I would not be with someone who didn't share the same views about this as me.

Thankfully, my DP got it straight away and has been banging the drum with (almost 😉) as much enthusiasm as me.

It's funny (not in a haha way) about this I think he struggles to understand what the fear of sexual assault is like for women that what terrifies men about prison is the fear of sexual assault.

It's also the only situation in which there's enough of it that they, personally, stand a real possibility of it happening to them.

So, it's not so much that they can't understand the fear of sexual assault. It's that thinking of women as people like them never occurs to them.

That’s a bit harsh. Maybe if it was a real situation it might lead to the end of our relationship. Certainly we’d have a lot to hash out and it might be incompatible at that point. But I’m not going to leave him over a hypothetical situation that he probably (I hope) hasn’t even thought through properly.

My DH went from saying that excluding transwomen from women's sport was "throwing people under a bus" to card-carrying GC in the course of a single conversation several years ago.

[Gaa. That's not supposed to be a strikethrough. It was set apart with hyphens.]

I think my DH has gone on up the hill a bit recently due to the Sandie Peggie tribunal. Up to now he’s been very much live and let live - agree you can’t change sex but it’s not really a big deal and why am I getting so ranty about it.

I think like others, he’s never really thought of the practicalities of what it’s like to be of the physically smaller and weaker sex, and went a bit quiet when I explained it wasn’t just about walking home in the dark on a quiet road but the constant situational awareness many of us adopt when in public. A running internal commentary on what seat to get on the bus, what level to use in a multi storey car park with a lift, not catching the eye of the shifty guy on the next table in the coffee shop, whether to beep at the arsehole driver who’s just cut me up etc. Which, as I’ve said previously in other threads, doesn’t mean that I’m afraid when I leave the house but that I always have to have my wits about me.

DH is a a bit like MrMrsTerryPratchett in that he’s slightly crusty and was brought up to be an old fashioned gentleman by a conservative mum. He leans left himself and does mean well. Like a lot of people he doesn’t respond well to being lectured at so I’m selective about what I rant about and let him draw his own conclusions. He’s now reading all the newspaper reports on NHS Fife himself and coming to me saying “did you know…?”.

Everyone GC in this house. Dh, dd (30 who is diagnosed autistic btw) and ds who is 26.

They do sometimes let me know I go on about it quite a lot. But I follow the news about the issue more than they do.

My partner (we have a civil partnership) was a lifelong Labour activist and he left the Labour party because it was at odds with his gender critical stance. He pours all his time into his trade union now. We both campaigned hard in the 80s and 90s for gay and lesbian rights and we had a deal not to get a civil partnership until it was legal for our friends who were gay and lesbian to get married. I include this detail because when T was added to LGB we couldn’t understand what the link was. Our friends became divided over the matter.

He also stopped buying the Guardian. We read the Morning Star now, because at least the Communist Party doesn’t buy into gender identity politics.

@milislovelybut yeah similar thing over here. I posted this because i’ve been following the SP tribunal and likewise my partner rolls his eyes and can’t understand why I’m so invested. He says that he worries for my safety if I were to express my views when out and about. He looked terrified the other day when I brought out a copy of ‘the women who wouldn’t wheesht’ 😂

If any of the men in your life say TWAW

ask if they would snog / shag Beth Upton
or Robin Moira White
or Isla Bryson
or Katie Dolatowski
or Lia Thomas
because if any TWAM then all TWAM

If straight men do not accept trans identified men in their dating pool, why not ?

My DH is gender critical. I couldn't be with him if he didn't support the rights of women and girls. I just mentioned the subject of this thread to him and he said "well it's all complete bollocks". He's not wrong.

My DH said no that he ‘wouldn’t shag random women regardless’ but he ‘would snog Hunter Schafer’ and you know what so would I! 😂

My dh went from bemused, to being peaked by sport, to deciding that the day he was asked to support a girl in wearing a binder, or put a trans-IDing boy in a girls' tent, was the day he resigned as a Scouting Leader.

DP is firmly GC. I couldn't be with someone who thought human beings could change sex. I would be questioning both their intelligence and their sanity if they spouted such rubbish.

DH probably wouldn't care if I didn't talk about it. We are of the South park era where transexuals and transvestites were funny so he's mentally still there. Neither of us have social media so I think that means he doesn't really see arguments on either side.

He didn't get all the fuss with toilets until I pointed out that our local pub had gender neutral loos which means we can never let our DD go to the toilet on her own.

Supportive up to a point and willing to spend money on gardening. Dont think he will speak out to male friends who are TWAW if I'm not there.

But it's not exactly hypothetical is it? He's telling you who he is. He's a typical misogynist who believes men's feelings are more important than the safety of even his own children let alone other women and children. He sounds frightening.

I don't think you and your children are safe with this man and I hope you decide to get away from him. He doesn't care about any of you. That's what he's telling you. Believe him.

My DP is gender critical and believes that people can’t just change sex.

He most certainly doesn’t want our girls to lose out to men taking their places in sports teams or them being injured as a result of playing against males.

One of our friends from a different culture said that if you have a boy you only have one cock to think about but if you have a girl you worry about all the cocks. They deliberately chose an all-girls school as they didn’t want any cocks around their daughters and that included changing rooms. Not all cultures will necessarily find it easy to accept TWAW

Mine is always instinctively suspicious of men’s motives and will automatically take the woman’s side so is naturally GC without knowing what GC is.

My DH hadn’t really given it a lot of thought but nodded along with me a few years ago ago when I was going through my “err hang on a minute” enlightenment.

Then a colleague of his became a TIM and at first he would mention that this person was featured in the newsletter and emails were sent round about it in a celebratory way and he thought that was generally a nice albeit unnecessary thing to do.

He then told me a few months later that the TIM colleague wore clothes that wouldn’t be acceptable for women at work to wear (very short dresses, very high heels) and there were mutterings from staff and that this person had announced that he was going to start using the female toilets. I asked DH if anyone had bothered to check with all the women he worked with if they were ok with this or if anyone had clocked the obvious discrepancy in having and enforcing a business dress code for everyone except the person who had just announced he now identified as a woman. DH- not without some self interest realising that if it became litigious it would be his problem- was then fairly quick to raise it with his (female) boss who in turn was pretty quick to say we need to handle this carefully but he can’t use the ladies and someone needs to have a word about dress code. As far as I know it was resolved. This was all about 5 years ago and being GC wasn’t really acceptable, especially in that kind of workplace, I do think it was easier for him to raise it as a middle aged male in a senior position.

A subject to be avoided for me, I am GC, he is not, and calm conversation seems impossible. I wish it were different.