If someone tells you who they are...

[IfSomeoneTellsYouWhoTheyAre]

You have to believe them, right? That's what the TRAs always seem to claim anyway. So when a man tells us he's actually a woman we have to tell "her" how stunning and brave she is, and how "she" is a much better woman than we will ever be. OK, a little bit of hyperbole there, but you get my drift. So why is it, that when we tell a TRA that we don't have a gender identity, and aren't CIS, do they tell us that we are wrong about ourselves. Why don't they believe that we know who we are just as much as their TW friends do?

I've just come back from what was meant to be a lovely, long overdue, few days away with my oldest friends. We've all known each other for 20-30+ years but haven't managed to all be together due to families, work etc for more than the odd meal.

Somehow the subject came onto trans-rights and so on. Turns out, I'm the only one who doesn't believe that TWAW, or that sex matters in some circumstances. I've been told that I am CIS, even when I tried to explain that I don't have a gender. Apparently the fact that I describe myself as a woman means I'm assigning a gender to myself. I was also told that sex is more complicated than we learn at school, and told that I am "technically intersex" because I have PCOS. According to the person who told me that intersex means I'm not actually male or female. How can I be cis then? (I'm aware that intersex is an outdated term, and that everyone IS male or female. There is no inbetween)

One friend, who is educated to a very high level, insists there is a lot of evidence out there that proves this, and also proves that trans kids commit suicide if not affirmed. When I asked for some links, I was told to google it. Oh, but if I found so called evidence that proved the opposite it was fake.

Also the Cass review was poorly done and transphobic. The ban on puberty blockers is transphobic. And one woman has allowed her 4 year old to socially transition. FFS.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I'm just sad.

PS have name changed as potentially outing, but have been around since the mouldies days.

TL:DR I've just lost my oldest and closest friends because I refuse to accept that I am a cis-intersex-person, or that humans can change sex.

It’s so disappointing to find out just how many intelligent women have fallen for the oh so carefully and strategically curated trans discourse but realise that pretty much only MN has enabled women to push back against these harmful and retrograde stereotypes.

Otherwise the whole bloody internet is awash with bekind / most marginalised / vulnerable / oppressed group ever (only TW, never TM). Naice people automatically align with bekind. I’d probably have been in the camp ish but for it coming too close to home.

One friend surprised me with TWAW and two colleagues that I really like. So I just do not discuss it with them. There’s actually precious little reporting in MSM so all the news reported here about transgressions including assaults, awards, refuges, the frantic parents with vulnerable children going down a horrific route of drugs and surgery, and all the employment tribunals and lawsuits just hardly gets a mention. The empirical papers on the negative impacts never discussed and how countries starting earlier down the gender path turning back. All of that never in the main public conversation. So many women never hear the full extent of the impact of gender ideology. Until and unless they do, they’re very likely to remain bekind.

@OP it may be best for your blood pressure to ignore Howsitgoing

👍

Thanks everyone (other than @Howseitgoin ) I knew the lovely women of MN would make me feel better.

Incidently, I know the original phrase is "if someone shows you who you are..." but my TRA 'friends' told me that TWAW because "if some tells you who you are..."

'It's all their fault'…..

Yes, I’ve heard that nonsensical rendition of the phrase too, it’s not a sensible rule for women to believe everything men tell them.

Yes - how can someone who was supposed to be a friend be both so mind bogglingly ignorant and oblivious of your feelings? PCOS is not at all uncommon and the one thing every person with if has in common is that she’s a woman. Me too, I’m furious on your behalf.

Yes, you're right it is.

“‘No’ is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.”

Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear

Sorry to hear this has happened to you. I know how you feel. I was made to feel like a complete fascist by my new neighbour when we ended up talking about this issue and she said she'd never heard something so extreme (my view being that biological sex is real, that there are two sexes and it's not possible to change sex- hardly extreme views) and that I was infected by social media! Since then things have been frosty. I think she told everyone at my kids school too as there are a certain blue-haired sector who always throw dirty looks my way.

It's been really helpful for me to read the feminist section of mumsnet and not feel like I'm on my own. But more light is being shed on the subject now in the media and I do think things will change sooner rather than later.

I think a tipping point has been reached. The momentum is unstoppable - there’s no putting that genie back in and all these people, were they to contemplate it for long, would soon feel really quite foolish for having believed something so utterly absurd. However, I suspect the ones who aren’t personally invested will drop it like a ton of bricks and wipe from their memory that they were chanting silly mantras when it was fashionable to do so. Women in situations where they have fallen out with people need to think about whether any broken bonds can be repaired or whether we’ve irreparably lost all respect for these easily led former friends and acquaintances.

It's just bullying on a mass scale.

Yeah met. A woman is more than biology . But never male. No male can become a woman. However mush he wishes. There are millions of ways of being a woman, but being male is not one of them. Ps. Did you mean to sound so patronising?

If someone tells you anything at all, ponder the information using the sense you were born with.

If someone tells that you are not allowed to use the sense you were born with then use that sense to ponder why they are doing that.

FFS. How dare they be so fucking insensitive while self righteously claiming to be on they're on the side of kindness!

Before we even get to the facile bullshit they're asserting.

How did we get to this point? Educated and intelligent people thinking we can change sex.

I'm really sorry, OP. It's very hard to lose respect for people one cares about.

This.

Sorry OP but your friends are ignorant, disrespectful idiots.

How can a woman with PCOS be neither male or female? The "O" stands for OVARIES.

Come on, now, MissScarlet. The male ovary is an important part of our Brave New World.

I too lost my best friend of 35 years over this bullying bullshit. I've cried & raged about it but now I've no choice but to be done with her. You can't argue with someone denying science, biology, common sense. It's a cult.

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of seemingly intelligent adult people have never developed critical thinking skills. They go through life believing whatever they are told, never challenging themselves to ask uncomfortable questions, never thinking about logical consequences, or questioning the honesty or motives of the people whose ideas they are regurgitating. In an age when “information” is available at the touch of a button they swallow it down because swallowing someone’s pre digested lies wrapped up in pretty language is easier than thinking.

The whole TWAW debacle is one obvious thing, but also people genuinely believing that voting for Brexit would immediately stop immigration, plus people falling for online relationship scams etc etc. There’s an awful lot of it about.

A lot of people quote the last sentence of this paper, originally published in Nature:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

'..if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask.'

Ironically, a careful reading of the paper reveals that sex is indeed binary (in that each physical manifestation is linked to either the male or female pathway and not to some mysterious third sex), and that this advice is only relevant for someone with a (rare) DSD deciding on medical treatment.

That bloody article.

I really feel for you in what you're currently going through. Many of us have lost longtime friends this way, and it hurts, but if we had not stayed true to ourselves, it would have hurt more in the long run. Take heart in your strength!

If you know full well that someone has ever been pregnant, or that they have a specifically female condition such as PCOS then you don’t bloody well need to ask though, do you?

Even if these people show themselves to be uncritical followers of genderwoo, and insulting to you by calling you cis and/or intersex, they are still the people who you thought you could get along with very well.
Of course you should square your shoulders/stiffen your upper lip/pull your socks up [not necessarily at the same time!] and move on past them because they are now a negative force in your life.
But you've lost friends, you've lost people who you thought you could trust, and loss, for any reason, is always hard.
Knowing you're right - which you are - only goes some of the way to make up for that loss.