How did we get here?

[StormyPotatoes]

I like to hope with the Supreme Court ruling and public opinion changing rapidly we are finally moving into a new period where women’s rights and concerns matter, and biology prevails. But I don’t really understand how we got here to begin with and I really hope some knowledgeable posters can provide some background on this.

I am mid-to-late 30s. Femboi-emo kids were cute when I was a teen. I had a very huge crush on Brian Molko. Most of my male friends (and my now husband) wore eyeliner. Nobody in my year came out as gay whilst at school as the taboo still existed, but interestingly 3 girls in my mixed sex class of 30 came out as lesbians away from school (yes, they are all actual women - not men).

My exposure whilst a teenage to transsexuals was Hayley Cropper, the sympathetic and kind transwoman-played by an actual woman in Coronation Street; and Nadia, the winner of season 5 big brother, who I had forgotten all about in all honesty and was only reminded about due to current BB. It’s now occurred to me that the gender recognition act passed in the same year Nadia won BB.

At that time trans was unusual - I remember cross dressing being a thing and named, as we know, as transvestism. And I also remember, back then, so many of the historic and well documented serial killers had proclivities in cross dressing, which seems to now be downplayed.

So what happened between then and now? Why did very, very few men manage to influence the change in the Equality Act? Where did this sharp increase of trans people suddenly come from (we know it can’t be the GRA because most didn’t apply for it)?

And I think more importantly - why did both governments and media suddenly become so afraid to call a man a man? And worse, seek to punish a woman who dares to call a man a man. The GRA is one thing, but so many of the men who have been actively labelled as women by both politicians and journalists don’t hold a GRA. Where is the political and journalistic integrity they are supposed to uphold?

What happened? Not so much the boom in trans people but why they became a law of their own?

Talking of big brother, this came up on my timeline a while ago. It was reported by the BBC (no surprise). Can you imagine any other group accusing people of some sort of phobia because they don’t want to date them? It all seems so manipulative.

Is it discriminatory to refuse to date a trans woman? www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42652947

Notably, the idea that there was no serious difference between men and women, apart from genital configuration, was wholly accepted. Physical, mental, emotional, whatever.

All of these idea, when they become part of the background assumptions people hold, and when they aren't ever interrogated, imo tend to leave people with a sense that sex, as in biological sex, has no real significance. So all that is left of it is the social performance.

These two statements seem to contradict each other and I don't see how they can be used to promote transgenderism.

The first one says there's no difference between the sexes except for genitals, the second that the genitals (and other biological differences) have no significance, and only the nonphysical differences are important. What are these nonphysical differences when the first statement says that they don't exist?

The first statement can hardly be used to promote the idea of being "born in the wrong body" or a man having a ladybrain, if the only difference between men and women is their genitals and their brains and emotions are the same. So a person with a penis transitions to a person with a vagina for what reason exactly? A different sexual experience?

The second one says that the biological body doesn't matter, so you can be a person who acts/dresses etc in a certain way regardless of what sort of genitals you have. So what would be the point of transition?

Thanks for posting that link. I saw it on here before, but couldn't find it when I wanted to post it on another thread.

This is a bit old now but a good and easy-to-read summary of how we got to where we sort-of are

janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/

https://adulthumanfemale.info

This is always worth watching again too.

OP, serious question but I don't understand what fem boi emo means. Have googled and non the wiser. You are male though..yeah?

Lots of great info here.

It is helpful to always keep in mind the rule "follow the money".
But it is a very tangled web.

The failure of 2nd wave feminism in the 70s (suggesting things like wages for housework) was partly due to the way capitalism enticed women into the workplace (economic growth needing an expanding workforce), and thus 3rd wave feminism developed in the 80s and 90s, promoting very different ideas to the 2nd wave: that equality for women meant having careers, that women were just like men, the only difference was genitals, etc.
Women have been conned: 2nd wave feminism was not asking for the right to work 40 hours on top of all the housework and childcare, just to feed those extra wages back into the system in the form of mortgage or rent payments.

Thus the idea that "sex is just genitals and is absolutely not important at all" became a tenet of one branch of feminism.
This opened the door to a massive societal backlash, because the public always knew/believed that it was hogwash - the sexes are different, plus also feminists were portrayed as bra-burning nutters by the capitalist media, and so toy shops and children's clothing turned pink and blue (sex-neutral toys and clothing were a significant reality in the 70s and early 80s). Plus of course you sell twice as much if girls clothes and toys cannot be handed down to boys, and vice versa.

This new dominance of pink and blue left a new generation of children trapped in a stronger-than-ever straightjacket of social expectations of gender.
If being a boy means blue clothes and toy cars, and you as a boy never liked that, and the only other option you see in society all around you is pink clothes and make-up, well, you are going to jump on 'trans', because you have been told biological sex is irrelevant and you don't even know such a thing as gender-nonconformity is a possibility (apart from a few old-fashioned pop-stars).

This explains the way gender came to dominate over sex in importance.

Then of course there was Stonewall: left stranded with tons of money but no purpose when same-sex marriage was introduced. They could have turned their attention to the very many countries and cultures in the world where homosexuality is still illegal and gay people are persecuted. But no, instead, they added the 'T' to LGB and found a new cause to fight.

There is another factor, which is hard to explain, and might go some way to explaining Stonewalls choice.
This post is turning into an essay so I will put it in a new post.

Placemarking to see if this helps me see replies I can't currently see. Apologies.

The contradiction arises because the first statement is false, even if it is widely taken to be true.
If you see sex as just a matter of genitals, and say that genitals are not important, you leave out all the other ways that the sexes differ. In particular, the ways that male and female hormones affect the brain and behaviour.

The differences are mistakenly seen as some innate mysterious 'gender', interpreted as 'non-physical' , when in fact they are a mix of hormonal or behavioural differences and societal expectations.

'Gender' is divorced from sex entirely by the ideology of GI, and sex dismissed as irrelevant.
'Gender' is dismissed entirely by some GC feminists as 'just stereotypes'.

IMHO it is a mistake to ignore behavioural differences rooted in biology, and to incorrectly ascribe all differences between the sexes to the upbringing of girls and boys in a gendered society.

Part 2 of "follow the money".

So why did Stonewall jump on trans as a cause, instead of looking globally at gay persecution in other parts of the world?
It may be partly because the wealthy gay men who funded Stonewall were too immersed in Western consumer culture and were just not interested in gay persecution in poorer countries - but I think that explanation does them a disservice; they could have been interested if Stonewall had led the way.

Instead, it pays to look at what happened to wider left-wing thought after the 70s.
It was widely perceived that Marxist socialism in particular, and left-wing economics in general, had failed abysmally. In the Thatcher/Reagan era, neoliberal economics dominated, and any notion of wealth re-distribution was deeply unfashionable. 'Trickle-down' was the watchword.
Basically, the left gave up on economic progress, so turned instead to social progress. (Because belief in the imperative of "progress" is a given).

Social progress meant obsessing over minorities, ethnicities, multi-culturalism, race, religion, anti-colonialism, gay rights, etc. (with perhaps a passing nod to disability discrimination). In short, identity politics.
This has the added bonus for left-wing politicians, particularly in the USA, that they and their families could become very rich without it being a contradiction of their political values. Thus the left-wing elite were very happy to abandon the idea of wealth-redistribution and now won't touch it with a bargepole.

So the left is now all about identity politics as a means to social progress. And 'trans' is the newest most fashionable identity. Being a trans ally is essential to being seen as one of the progressive 'Good People' of society.

In this climate, it was not surprising that the people inside Stonewall found that supporting 'trans' was more popular than supporting gay people in poor countries, the latter option being too reminiscent of 1970s international socialism, and too much against the new idea of anti-colonialism.

Thankfully, the tide is turning as society belatedly remembers that women are also an oppressed group (though not a minority).

If you see sex as just a matter of genitals, and say that genitals are not important, you leave out all the other ways that the sexes differ. In particular, the ways that male and female hormones affect the brain and behaviour.

There aren't any behaviours that are unique to either men or women though, apart from bodily functions or purely physical things (like releasing eggs).

There may be trends as a group, but to ascribe a behaviour to a person solely based on their sex is wrong.
They may be more likely to display this behaviour than someone of the other sex, but it's not a one-to-one correlation with sex.

That's what the genderists believe - if you're male and are 'like' xyz then that proves you are really a woman because men don't do xyz.

Emo is a sort of mopey goth-lite from the late 90s early 2000s. They skipped the white foundation and wore black and tartan instead of black and purple, and were like the first people ever to like really like feel things, you know?

Femboi - teenage boy in eyeliner claiming to be in touch with his feminine side (because of the eyeliner, and possibly not liking football).

('Emo' is short for 'emotional'.)

I didn't say there were behaviours that are unique to either men or women.
I said that biological sex is more than just genitals. You have to consider the way hormones affect behaviour. So those who dismiss sex as being completely irrelevant to social behaviour are missing something important.

Of course there is no absolute one-to-one match between e.g. the propensity to violence and the person's sex, but there are undoubtedly very strong statistical trends. It is well documented.

The extent to which notions of "gender" arise out of differences in behaviour between the sexes, and differences in socialisation of girls and boys, mothers and fathers, is an open question.

To clarify;
It may be an interesting open question, but "gender" is no basis for public policy or action, except in so far as the statistical correlations are useful. Once example could be to police investigating a crime (they may be almost certainly sure they are looking for a male suspect rather than female).
Laws and policies have to be based on sex, not the concept of "gender".

People have done a very good job in answering the rest of it so I’ll only add that the mechanism that made your average Joe pay at least lip service to the idea is that most people just don’t know much about the subject.

Most people, when confronted with an ‘expert’ in a subject they don’t personally know much about, are happy to take that expertise as read unless there are some really obvious mistakes made. Most people also don’t like causing upset and offence, especially in a group that they’ve been reliably informed is very vulnerable. That, coupled with the very sharp stick we saw others being beaten with when they dissented, and the incentives were in place to make it much more costly to protest and much less costly to comply.

There’s an interesting case I’ve seen made that excessive empathy is in fact a very bad quality to have. Sympathy is valuable ability, but the over identifying with another’s feelings can be completely blinding, to the extent that groups have committed atrocities on the basis of “protecting” a particular group.

The ability to leverage empathy is the key to getting any political movement off the ground, and objectively the trans rights movement has had outstanding success in this department. I can’t think of a greater victory over reality than convincing a significant proportion of the population that the most basic intuition a person needs to know in order to perpetuate the species (the difference between a man and a woman) is in fact wrong.

Agreed. I remember earnestly trying to explain to someone in real life (pre Isla Bryson) about violent male sex offenders being placed in the female prison estate in Scotland, thinking 'surely this is so outrageous that they'll realise that this a huge issue - this must be the tipping point' and she just shrugged and said 'well, they (the women) shouldn't have committed a crime to be placed in prison then'.

I was utterly horrified. The utter lack of compassion for women. The handwaving away of something which seemed to be blazingly obvious in its wrongness.

And others simply denied that it could possibly be happening. That it was too outrageous to be true.

And then the situation with Isla Bryson became public knowledge and I thought 'now, now must be the point where people say hang on, what the hell is going on?!'

But we saw attempts to justify it.

Another one was the Forensic Medical Examiners Bill. Such a small thing, to allow female rape survivors the option to request a female examiner. But our elected representatives called those women bigots in our Parliament. I cried watching the debate because it was shockingly awful.

I've now got a certain cynicism for people who.say that it was the sports aspect which tipped the scale for them. The rape survivors, the female prisoners, the women in domestic abuse refuges could seemingly just be handwaved away.

Very topical in fact.

I said that biological sex is more than just genitals. You have to consider the way hormones affect behaviour

What behaviour do I exhibit as a woman because of my hormones?

I feel a bit embarrassed to admit this on these boards, but prior to someone explaining self-id to me, I actually found gender critical people a bit odd.

As I understood it, sex was what I was born as, and the inescapable baggage that went along with that e.g. childbirth. Gender was the role society forced on me, but also on DH, on everybody. It was the excuse used for not paying women as well as men, or making us wear skirts or high heels at work, or saying we couldn't like sport. And it was innately patriarchal.

Logically (to me) transexuals who struggled with their sex, were doing so because of the gender expectations forced upon them. So they were victims of the patriarchy too- maybe worse than me as these expectations had caused a dysphoria in them, a crisis of identity. So at the time you're talking about OP, Hayley Cropper etc. I was very sympathetic to them.

It was only from self-ID onwards and the demands that followed that made me think more about it. Maybe I wasn't alone in that? I certainly think the TRAs have squandered a hell of a lot of goodwill.

I've now got a certain cynicism for people who.say that it was the sports aspect which tipped the scale for them. The rape survivors, the female prisoners, the women in domestic abuse refuges could seemingly just be handwaved away.

I also found this hard to stomach.

But, being brutally honest, I realised that the female prisoners and domestic violence survivors are too 'low status' (awful as that phrase is) for most people to worry about. It is too easy to dismiss as not something that would affect them.

Women's sports are different. Sports are about winners. Plenty of people have daughters/friends/relatives in sport. It just hits home more.

I feel like GI has opened my eyes to so much about how humans operate. None of it positive

I wonder though whether it was sports that provided the evidence about fhe retenfion of power in male bodies. That power differentiation proof was not ‘unknown’ but we had do go to the effort of proving it.

that then worked with other aspects which was based on moral ground which some people deny or twist to suit themselves.

Tumblr.

I don't know about you. Science and statistics are done with large populations. You might be an outlier.

I was thinking more of the effects of testosterone on men, rather than female hormones on women, so I don't know about the research on female behaviour, although PMT and the menopause are obvious examples, as well as the hormones encouraging bonding immediately after birth.

I think the lanyard class is an important dimension too. If follow the money is the why, the capture of public and third sector organisations is the how. It led to whole organisations of flying monkeys.

These are people who mostly mean well. Who are basically caring, helpful and value driven. But also people whose self identity is wrapped up in being kind and caring. It was easy to weaponise “Be kind” as in instruction to follow the dogma without challenge because of how people saw themselves. Disagreeing would have meant being unkind. You only have to see the shit shown at Sandie and others who dared to disagree, to understand why most people kept their heads down.

This also took place against the background of austerity. Rainbow lanyards and glitter aren’t just more colourful than disability rights they are cheaper. A nice sounding (but meaningless) phrase in a policy document is easier to implement than accessible toilets, and who cares if women are affected because they don’t matter.

That’s a really good point about the money. I’ve never thought about how hospital boards would see it during austerity but it makes total sense.