Non Binary Niece Syndrome

[UtopiaPlanitia]

I think this article provides a very interesting insight into some of the social and class-based reasons why a lot of women refuse to join the fight to protect women's rights from genderism.

https://peaked.substack.com/p/non-binary-niece-syndrome

Róisín also wrote one of my favourite articles relating to the class-based, institutional lack of understanding and support for the gender critical movement:

https://4w.pub/you-meet-more-perverts-when-poor/

What a wonderful piece of writing - I admire the underlying values which are matched by the brilliance of the words.

It looks like we are going to get "one of those otherwise normal, reasonable, intelligent people have succumbed to the “trans women are women” as our new President - the full-on TWAW, pro-self ID woman candidate is miles ahead in the opinion polls.

They are very perceptive articles

Good article, though I had to google chungus, and contrary to the article, it was the discovery that a young member of my extended family had gone down that road that shifted my right away from bekind tolerance.

But I'm prepared to believe many people are nicer than I am.

Both brilliant articles.

One of the comments on the first article says something similar. The comment says something like “our daughter (previously very girly) tried to tell us that she has always felt like a boy, tried to rewrite her history as if we hadn’t been there and lived it too” - this was how the mother knew the whole thing was nonsense. That was my experience too - nothing that my son was describing bore any resemblance to the reality of the life we had lived with him for the previous 15 years.

That’s a very good article and it fits with some of the people I know who are pro gender ideology.

I had to google it too. Also troon and pooner. Educational.

I read one of her articles a while back which was just as good so now working through them.

Great articles - thank you. I also needed to check a couple of words in an urban slang dictionary.

I like RM's writing and that piece is extremely good.

She was on a podcast recently about attending an IGLYO conference in Barcelona which was an interesting and terrifying insight into genderism's hold on the EU.

I honestly want to cry after reading that. It's all so terrifyingly true.

A wordsmith. Brilliant.

Scarily true. I’m totally Team Terf and bore the socks off friends by talking Terf but getting together with an old friend from uni (much loved but at the opposite end of the country for decades so we never see each other) to find her DC is re identifying themselves and I just didn’t go there. They’re lovely but…

I have six nieces raised in three families, one by marriage.

Three of the six (one in each family) are either non-binary or trans. 15, 16 and 20 years old. 😩😭😥

I'm glad you enjoyed it Marie, I've not been a fan of how Higgins has politicised the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann and I don't see Connolly (if elected) doing anything to reverse that trend. If anything, I think she'll increase the politicisation of the office, behaviour which has not been helped by the nature of FF and FG (and now SF) involvement in the candidate selection/campaining. Given how the population responded to the most recent referendum, I am not surprised at the (unusual for Ireland) strength of feeling behind the spoil the vote campaign.

Thanks everyone on the thread for letting me know what you found most interesting in the article. I agree that Róisín has a remarkably clear analysis of genderism and its effects on women and girls, I also agree that she has a great way with words (even if I too had to look some of the slang ones up online 😁).

I find this topic so interesting….

I believe, scientifically, it is possible for a female/male brain to be born into the wrong gendered body. However, I also believe that statistically the chances of this occurring worldwide is probably something like 100K across our entire planet. (And a lot of that may be in countries where they can never act their “brain” gender for fear of cultural exile!)

I’m curious why/when it got so extreme? I know some of the bi-sexual community would say “I just love people, not a specific gender”? Could this not have been akin to that ….? I’m not a Barbie and/or I’m not a Ken.

I don’t like girly things, I prefer a short nickname and more masculine clothing, but I’m not a lesbian. (There are plenty of Lioness team players who are sporty, not into makeup or girlie clothes and have a boyfriend) Or, I’m a man has the confidence to wear skirts because I like them and paint my nails. (Think Harry Styles) Can it not just be accepted, like we did back in the 00s, that gender stereotypes are archaic and people can wear/do what they like?

…..Why did it have to progress to a widespread pandemic of gender identity issues that cause teenagers to make life changing medical decisions?

I’m pretty sure my cousin would have been dragged into this…. She’s always been quiet, went to private school and lacks confidence due to being mid-size. She’s always gone by Sam, never Samantha. Her hair has (for 37 years) is 90% of the time been in a low ponytail and she prefers to (at most) wear mascara for big occasions. She played football with my cousins, brother, uncles and dad and always preferred to hang out with the men in the family than a women. (Shes representing us women by knowing the offside rule and being in the room!!) She’s also had a boyfriend since she was 16 and has just had a her second child with him. No one cares she’s not hugely girly and it’s what she wants to do. I think if she were 13 now and in the wrong friendship group or with the wrong teachers, she could have been convinced she was a boy or non-binary. She longed for her children in her 30s and perhaps wouldnt have had them had she gone down that route. It’s scary in all honesty?

I want everyone to be welcome and comfortable but teenagers shouldn’t be making permanent decision. Whether it’s a tattoo, an operation to change your body or medication to prevent it changing - it’s far too young.

@UtopiaPlanitia Róisín also wrote one of my favourite articles relating to the class-based, institutional lack of understanding and support for the gender critical movement:

Class-based? I thought mumsnet was primarily middle and upper class.

I don't like the politicisation of the presidency either. The ideal president of Ireland IMO should be some elderly scholar or judge who can convincingly present themselves as a non-partisan national treasure.

I struggle to think of anyone who fits the bill today, and I have a recurring nightmare that someday the Irish voters will make Bono president.

I had hoped that, with Michael D's election, we might be spared his poetry to some extent, but that hasn't happened, nor has he been shy about wading into politics. I expect more of the same from Connolly. The only question will be whether she lights a candle in her window for the Irish diaspora, so we can all contemplate the light shining from her Áras.

Could’ve been written about several of my friends.

On FWR that has not been my experience. Class-based analysis of material reality is alive and well here.

@UtopiaPlanitia On FWR that has not been my experience. Class-based analysis of material reality is alive and well here.

But you can't say that lack of support for the GC movement is class-based when the GC movement is mostly middle class and upper class people.

Unless you're saying that the criticism of the GC movement is coming from underneath, and the trans activists are all working class men and women rebelling against the wealthy GC people. Though I'm struggling to see how that would have any basis in reality.

Helen Joyce talks sometimes about the chilling effect of the trans parent. This is really good at explaining how it radiates out.

I remember, some years ago, going for a drink with a friend who I knew had a TRA stance but who I thought it was possible to argue the toss with. He said "You know [mutual friend's child] is trans now."

The child was, if memory serves, about ten. Her parents are lovely people, but bonkers activists who will have fed her gender ideology since toddlerhood. It's the old vegan cat syndrome - of course she adopted a trans identity.

Then when I spoke to the same friend months later, and raised some basic issues with the Blanchard typology, he said "You shouldn't say that, [mutuals with trans identified child] would be really upset if they heard you say that."

And that's how you get the spiral of silence.

I'm interested in how Roisin describes the path to terfism. I came to it from a different position, in having some old friends who fit into the gay transsexual category, and I still see them as good people who I wish would get a better deal from society. I was dragged into a terf position against my existing prejudices.

The answer to your questions is in the articles written by Róisín, especially in the second article.

Helen and Róisín are both correct in making explicit this social aspect of not wishing to offend allowing genderism a foothold.

When it comes to Terfism, I came to it via the path of having grown up in one of the heavily sexist rural parts of N Ireland and from having studied feminist political thought at Uni (back in the dim days of the past before the creation of 'Gender Studies'). I was already resisting sexist expectations of women, and my studies had helped me in understanding the concept of material reality and the arguments critiquing biological essentialism. When I encountered genderism, I recognised the sexism, and (largely bourgeois) postmodernist wish fulfilment thinking, inherent in the arguments. It literally made no sense to me as a concept, or collection of concepts, and I couldn't believe people were taking it seriously.

This was back before the Great Entrooning, and the normies hadn’t received any instructions on how to behave around a man in the grip of a hallucination that he is the sexy whore of his dreams.

Genius