Is anyone else starting to doubt their own sanity?

[TheNightingalesStarling]

For days now, every time I go online its "bigots, transphobes, there is no safeguarding issue, bullies, preying on lost vulnerable etc".

Even people i thought were intelligent.

I'm starting to doubt my sanity. Even though people would look at you if you were mad if you said something like "why do schools need separate changing rooms for PE" or "Of course id let my 15yo have a sleepover in a tent with one boy".

I'm seeing articles about how peoples brains are different. Suggesting that all women think the same way.

I'm wondering if these people would say the same if it was their teen daughter upset... or would they be saying "there's nothing to upset about".

Since this post started, I've been thinking more about what it is that really unnerves me about so many people just going along with 'believing' and for me it's really the lack of erring on the side of caution and not learning from the past.

I've grown up around phrases like 'wolf in sheep's clothing ' and everyone knows what it means. Phrases like that became commonplace for a reason.

The not only mass acceptance of a clear lie, but the forcing of others to agree with it, to push down and suppress their own understandable and rational concerns, is what causes me to feel that insanity has taken over. And it's terrifying.

"Women's and girls' groups, as for single sex spaces, were set up for reasons. Back before the great 3rd wave of feminism, which arguably eroded as many rights as it establshed, it was clear. Girls and women often benefit from the company of other girls and women, without boys or men. Many reasons for this. We think its so obvious it doesn't need explained, but they may all need to be spelled out again"

This reminds me of that study about girls and boys in the playground, where they were trying to work out what girls needed to get them to use it more. They found that when the boys came along, the girls tended to sit on the sidelines and just watch/leave so they were trying to combat that.

https://www.makespaceforgirls.co.uk/parkwatch

I too have felt upset and astonished this week at the outpourings on Facebook - which show that so many people have no understanding of the Supreme Court judgement, the Equality Act, what sex a trans girl or boy is, and yet are prepared to throw vile accusations at “terfs” and GC people.

I suspect Girl Guides announcement coming first with the misleading framing that it’s all about being mean and nasty to poor little transgirls has also led to the same sense of outraged protectiveness towards poor old fragile transwomen.

Whilst I have empathy for prepubescent children not being able to continue in a group that they have been encouraged to join, I am so frustrated by the willingness of women to throw over safeguarding and common sense with regard to protecting their children’s boundaries as well as their own.

Historically, Guides started because they weren't allowed to join Scouts. (Like Cubs... its was the younger brothers plus sisters wanting to do what the big boys were doing). But it flourished Worldwide because its just for girls.

If they were to capitulate andsay its for everyone... could they even remain a member of WAGGGS? And go to all the worldwide events, partnerships etc. It would be extremely sad if all that fine history is lost... because some don't understand that the purpose of it is to be for Girls and centering women.

Same here. On LinkedIn this week have seen a couple of posts about how awful and bigoted it is that GG and WI have ‘banned trans women’ and ‘trans girls’ and a few people I know through work have commented saying how terrible and sad it is. I can’t comment on LI as I work in an incredibly woke organisation and have just been promoted though I’m itching to. These are all intelligent, sane people posting.

I don’t ever doubt my sanity, though. These people have been brainwashed.

I feel the same.

It's brain washing 100%. People are so desperate to appear woke and so scared of being cancelled that they latch onto these things without even using their brain to wonder if its even accurate or truthful.

They are sheep and frankly, I am glad not to be one of them

I have a female relative who was completely captured by trans ideology and remains so, to my utter disbelief. This very intelligent woman in her sixties has supposedly been a feminist since her teens, did a masters in Women's Studies, her whole career has been centred around equality including much work for organisations working in countries where women do not have equality with men, insists, despite the SC ruling, that TWAW.

I do not know what has happened to her that she continues to think like this. I do think a large part of it is that she was somehow captured quite early on and thought she was being very progressive and radical( she likes to think she is a "cool" person), was vociferous about it, so now finds it extremely difficult to retract all her previous statements. I haven't yet been able to discuss the WI and GG statements with her, but imagine she will think that it is tragic that they can no longer allow trans women into the organisation.

All of this ⬆️⬆️⬆️

I agree with this. One of my friends said 'sex is a spectrum ' on Facebook and I pointed out that sex is binary. And that people with DSDs (Intersex) are either male or female. I linked to some innocuous factual sites (the NHS has a good one about DSDs) and left it there.

The not only mass acceptance of a clear lie, but the forcing of others to agree with it, to push down and suppress their own understandable and rational concerns, is what causes me to feel that insanity has taken over. And it's terrifying.

"Those who can persuade you of absurdities can make you commit atrocities" Voltaire

it's exactly that @ScarlettSunset its that people will deny the reality of everything they have known, even the reality of their own eyes, to not only go along with this but to actively target those of us who remain firmly rooted in reality

apples are not oranges painted green
rabbits are not cats with fluffy tails attached
and men however they present are not women

sometimes that doesn't matter eg you can have as many TW as you like on the pub quiz team and sometimes it does eg TW still need prostate screening

and people 100% know this but they will deny and deny and deny some because they're scared, some because of the chilling effect of a trans relative or colleague and some because they really don't see women as actual humans with their own thoughts/feelings/needs that matter compared to how much men's thoughts/feelings/needs matter

Check out 'the intelligence trap'.

Intelligent people are often very good at arguing themselves into daft postions. People who live in cerebral, theoretical headspaces can also be a bit disconnected from the practical day to day realities of life. Good at creating vivid narratives, not so good at acknowledging blunt exigencies.

And yes, we will have sunk costs fallacy and self justification. There's also the tribalism factor, that can mean people with entrenched ideas dig in further when presented with evidence to the contrary.

Defensiveness, in a nutshell.

There is a whole group of Intersectional (third wave) feminists who believe that transwomen are women and that their 'oppression' is a form of women's oppression. The Fawcett Society is a case in point. I think it often comes from a position of privilege.

Absolutely! It's why language is so important and why using men instead of TW makes such a difference

"I think it's so awful trans women are banned from the women's institute"

compared to

"I think it's so awful men are banned from the women's institute"

Same!!! The telegraph have dumped a couple of articles on their FB feed about GG and WI and I clicked on the comments and was horrified to see there were far more posters disagreeing with the decision, claiming 'yes, but...' 😵‍💫 I had (naively) thought that now these organisations and companies are properly declaring that they are following the law, we might see some sanity but, no. Sadly not.

So I came back on here to get a reality check and to just feel some comfort that I'm not mad.

That is very interesting. She does come from a position of privilege - class, intelligence and financial. She is also a member of the Fawcett Society.

My MSN popup camke out this morning with 'how to identify transphobia and what to do about it' copied from something called Espresso. It has now been removed. It started with toilets and finished with banning from sport going by way of dead-naming and other minor infractions. I felt it needed a parody on gynophobia, ending with exclusion from their own sports - nowhere was there any mention of the impact of their suggestions on women. It was rather like the colonial argument that a land was not occupied to enable settlement, Women were not present in the toilets or the sport. There was no opportunity for comment and now its gone. But reading it was like reading something from a coupe of years back, certainly pre SC.

I've been commenting on Facebook a lot in the last week. The backlash against GG and the WI has been shocking. It's very like an abusive relationship, If 'trans girls' can't have Guides then we will destroy Guides altogether!
What I find saddest of all and frightening, is that many people just don't care about women and girls, they fall over themselves to be kind but cannot do the same for women.

Thank you for this post. It's really helped me to process it all - also, the "intelligence trap" comment.

I think another key factor (maybe to the opposite end of the "intelligence trap"?) is lack of education on sex-based rights. I still find it astonishing that every school-aged child is so well-versed in the evils of racist micro-aggressions, but hasn't got a clue about, for example, female injuries and deaths due to our sidelining in medical research, car manufacture and PPE. The disparity is striking. I think this may be reflected in a lot of the young professionals driving trans ideology, who are products of this system.

But I wonder if, as current school leavers have endured the high-water mark of this approach - rights reduced simplistic hierarchies of privilege and thou-shalt-not rules - some may be more likely to question it?

But how sad would it be, if more attention to sex-based rights in the future comes from negative cynicism about others' rights, rather than a positive interest in them...

Something I posted on the AIBU threads on this that I think is relevant here -

I'm so sick of the reporting which says

Inclusion = transgirls

Not

inclusion = lesbian girls who have a right to have their sexuality validated
inclusion = including ethnic and religious minority girls
inclusion = girls with learning disabilities who may use rigid pronouns
inclusion = including girls with PTSD
inclusion = independent thinkers and girls going against the Zeitgeist
inclusion = upholding Guiding's founding aims, to promote girls in a sexist world

I’m starting to view LinkedIn as a major issue in all this that I’d never previously realised.

I also didn’t realised how many teachers and educators are in there,

I’d never seen the point due to how it’s quite straightforward to climb the career ladder within teaching.

it’s all the senior school leaders or people moving into LA roles who are on LinkedIn - the people who make polices that schools follow…

Actually, yes. Good point. There's a LOT on LI that isnt on X or FB.

If we want to talk about 'lanyard class', its LI.

Those people have never questioned themselves. You have, we all have, and we still have logical, coherent reasoning for our positions. You're completely sane, their sanity, if anyone's, is in question.

Let’s remember GG put out a statement that any girl who started identifying as a boy could remain in the organisation, whilst at the same time allowing any boy who identified as a girl to join too. It seemed like a mish mash of guidance where both trans status mattered and didn’t matter at the same time. To those who are moaning and groaning on FB they need to get their own heads round this too - you can’t have it both ways.

Something else I wanted to add, re: the focus on "what's the issue, these are really young kids so there are no physical issues", that I also posted on the AIBU threads (Is it bad form to C & P your own posts a bit? dunno, but I wanted to add it bc I think it's so relevant to all this...)

Yep. The one I've not shared - and these were boys, not transgirls, but frankly what matters to me is that they were male (what's in someone's own head or what they're wearing makes no meaningful difference to me when it's their body that can hurt me)...

When I was somewhere between 7 and 10? (AKA Brownie age?), I had a number of close encounters with aggressive boys in my year group at my (tiny, really well-run) school.

One was always trying to intimidate the girls - he was absolutely, unambiguously quite a bit bigger and stronger than us, really male-ly stocky, with this brute animosity, and he clearly relished our wariness. I remember how unsafe we felt in his presence, and how we adapted our behaviour around him. (I took him on once in angry fear - pushed him a little - and was a heroine for weeks!)

And another boy once took my head between his hands, and intentionally smashed it as hard as he could back into a concrete wall.

Interestingly, I do remember a primary school girl trying to physically intimidate me in the changing room, too, but it was markedly all posturing, and I experienced it very differently. She was seriously tall for our age, yet there simply wasn't the same degree of physical dominance, or anticipation of latent aggression, or sense of my own vulnerability in the experience.

I do remember Brownies and Guides as feeling very, very different because of the absence of the boys from school. Not automatically better (and one of my best friends from a very young age was a boy, and there were a number I liked or admired from a distance!)... but sufficiently different for it to quite clearly be offering something special to girls. Something that people are now arguing they should lose.

After posting this, I actually googled differences in size and strength in the sexes at 9 or so, and pasted the AI summary (which includes the excellent "some quora users" as one referenced source, but I think there's agreement, isn't there, that these differences begin pre-puberty?...):

• Muscle Strength: Boys generally show about 8-10% greater strength in leg muscles and slightly larger differences in upper limbs compared to girls in the 5-10 age range.
• Athletic Performance: Research suggests boys at this age are faster in sprints and runs, complete more pushups, and have stronger grips, notes the Women's Sports Policy Working Group.
• Aerobic Capacity: Boys in early elementary years often have higher aerobic capacity, say

I was thinking about this again last evening. I could imagine some of the nay-sayers coming back at it with, "Yeah, but this isn't always the case, and what does 10% matter anyway?" (sports-style counter-arguments). And then I thought of the analogy that (just as in sports, they'd never say this in the context of doping)... if you imagine someone proudly telling you that they'd dropped 10% of their body weight, or increased their muscle mass by 10% in the gym, people would immediately recognise that as a huge achievement, a really striking, tangible difference. And yet in this context, it doesn't matter?

Again, the sheer arbitrariness of what is and isn't valued as significant gives the lie to any argument that sexism is now obsolete.

Random link above unrelated to post, bar being a helpful definition of muscle strength - dunno what happened there...