What does the future hold?

[magentafox]

I hope that:

1. trans ideology has had its day and the social contagion leading to girls becoming sterile and having their breasts cut off will soon end.

2 that men will take their cross dressing back behind closed doors. And ideally the sexism which drives this behaviour will eventually be eradicated.

3 I hope that we will refocus our efforts to help people, including those who are gay, to be accepted by everyone, everywhere, and no longer feel they need to manipulate themselves to fit stereotypes.

4 and I hope parenting stops being about giving children responsibility and parents take back the role of decision making until children have developed enough self efficacy to go out into the world as useful members of society who live independent, fulfilling lives.

But I fear that, despite the awesome fight back from women, that men will always win out to some degree, and that the next generations' already embedded mental health issues will deliver a scary future. Where people no longer have normal sex lives or understand the reasons why the sexes are different and their different needs. Where sexism has taken hold and men and women hate and fear each other.

What do you all think?

Yes, the conditions in which this flourished remain

My husband is reading Fix the System, not the Women by Laura Bates and he's horrified at the evidence she presents about the sexism inherent in our society. He asked me why I focus my campaigning on transgender ideology and I tried to explain that this was a further wave of systemic misogyny. That we very nearly had self id in the UK and without women fighting back the definition of woman as adult human female would have been erased. And if you can't define woman, you can't fight for women's rights. I don't think enough people realise any of this. I don't know what the answer is because I think, if anything, the advent of accessible extreme porn and influencers like Andrew Tate are making the situation worse, not better.

Cross dressing - ideally people could wear what they want when and where they want it. Clothes, like most things , should not be associated with a specific sex - that’s “genderism” - making something arbitrary associated only with one sex

things are always harder when it’s not a simple clear cut divide - sex does matter at a fundamental level - but basically it should be mattering less than it does - gender - assumptions rather than facts based on sex - shouldn’t really exist

too many people can’t cope with complexity and want everything dumbed down so it will be very easy for go from “you can’t change sex” to “gender is real and fundamentally correct “

Was your DH horrified because he felt she was presenting duff/ exaggerated evidence, or because he recognised it and hadn't realised before? If it's a book which makes men wake up to sexism, maybe all men should read it as most of the ones I know think sexism doesn't exist - or at least was eradicated with women's suffrage and equal pay!

I listened to Radio 4's 'Analysis: Who Decides if I'm a Woman?' this morning (Julie Brindle is on it but wasn't featured enough in my view and overall it seemed skewed towards trans ideology).

The presenter ended by saying (paraphrasing) won't it be great in the future when we can all just accept that sex and gender are a personal choice because the battle of the sexes will be over, and we can negotiate relationships with each other and the state on our own individual terms.

And yes, doesn't that just sound lovely! Except that it completely ignores that women have different needs from men! And who in the name of God wants to negotiate individually with the state?! So if I get sent to prison, I have to negotiate as an individual on whether I have to share a cell with a rapist?! Radio 4! Not North Korea. Radio 4! In the 21st century. I feel like I'm in a dystopian sci fi movie sometimes.

And yes, re porn and Andrew Tate and the huge number of others like him, I genuinely do fear for the long term impact of their influence.

Sounds interesting, I'll give it a listen, thanks.

The presenter - or the contributor whose views they were summarising - sounds like a naive libertarian who doesn't think material conditions and bodies have any weight or impact on how we exist in the world.

It reminds me of the legions of Redditors I (fruitlessly) argue with - young men with no appreciation of the history of women's material oppression or what it's like to grow up female. To them, femaleness is a flimsy costume you can shrug off, or adopt.

I disagree. People should not be able to wear what they want, wherever they want. What we wear speaks to our willingness to participate in wider society in a way which recognises we share the planet with others, as well as being a means to express ourselves.

Call me a prude if you like but I do not think it is appropriate for anyone to wear fetish gear to work.

The boundaries between professional life and private life are far too blurred - see Sarah Morrison in Belfast being hounded out of her job for saying something outside work that her employer simply disagreed with, while men are coming to work in bondage gear because we've all been told they must be allowed to bring their whole, authentic self to the office. No!

Gender stereotypes exist because there are differences between the sexes. The feminists who tried to deny that were wrong and did us all a disservice. Manly men and girly girls exist not because they've been forced to be that way but because they just are. But practical women also exist and are no less women. And men who are not macho exist too - I refuse to call them effeminate. Just because they aren't macho does not make them women. The way they act bears almost no resemblance to women of any kind. And just because they don't fit a male stereotype does not mean they must be women or like women. They're just men with a different personality.

Women seeking equity is going against the stream. Like all civilisation, it is counter to 'might is right', and an argument that has to be made over and over, probably forever. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, etc.

@ProfessorLadyDrKeenovayyeah - I heard someone say the other day "these bloody men never throw on a t-shirt and jeans and run off to do the grocery shopping! It's all dresses and lipstick". So true.

Depressing and you are probably right, but I hope not. More and more women are moving into leadership roles and the tide is turning (albeit it has been slowed by the trans ideology). Men no longer have as firm a grip on the world as they once did. I do wonder if that's why some do nothing to stop the trans stuff - anything that holds women back is a good thing for them.

What does the future hold?
A lot more legal fights, I think.

Granted yes whatever you want was always in my mind within the bounds of public decency and it’s sad when that needs to be explicitly said

On Gender stereotypes I disagree - I would call the sexual difference gender facts not stereotypes. Fact on average women are significantly shorter and weaker especially with regard to upper body strength. Fact women have periods. Fact men have lots more testosterone

stereotype - women look better in dresses, women care about appearance more, women make good carers and poor scientists. women like different things to men.
Girly girls - say make up and pink - exist but I suspect that there should be just as many “girly” boys - boys who like pink and wear make up ( or whatever arbitrary definition for girly you thinking of ) but at the moment boys are steered strongly away from any such preferences. So gender needs to be kicked to touch which isn’t at all saying w should ignore the truly innate differences between the sexes

@itsthetea it is interesting I'll give you that. I don't think we have enough research or evidence to be able to definitively categorise everything as innate or cultural/ social when it comes to differences between the sexes.

I'm not convinced some of the stuff we assume is a stereotype isn't actually innate because western capitalism will generally sell anything to bloody anyone and if more boys really did enjoy wearing pink or more women wanted potting sheds, someone would market them to us. And even if it is all stereotype, it's there and isn't going away - history has socialised women to wear dresses and men not to wear lipstick.

I am 100% opposed to the Genderbread nonsense. But I am a realist - men and women are different in more ways than we are similar.

And just while I'm on this, because I admit I am still working it all out for myself, Helen Webberley seems to say we should sweep away all the gender differences and we should all just be seen as 'people' and allowed to live our best lives without reverting to 'binary definitions' as she puts it. I just don't see how that is possible or even desirable when we know there is a huge disparity in things like crime across the two sexes. If everyone is just a person, then we only have one type of loo and changing room, one category for sports, no GIrl Guiding, or WI or girls' schools. And obviously all of those things were created for a reason. And trans people don't like unisex spaces.... and there we are back at separate facilities and services based on sex and as Helen Joyce rightly says all the time, a circular argument.

I agree. Normal sex lives are now decried as 'vanilla' sex and anything seems to go. There seems no idea that just because you want to do something/enjoy something that does not mean you should do it. Self-restraint has been thrown out of the window along with bringing up children to learn to be responsible, not have responsibility shoved at them from a young age. I foresee an awful dystopia, a huge backlash and then everything to be done again. I grieve for my DC and GDC.
Edited because I can't spell dystopia. Actually, there is no such thing as a dystopia which is not also a utopia, utopias being tyranies and dystopias together.

Clothes are not just about expressing ourselves and some clothes are for particular occasions and not others. Also, men should never dress as women, and certainly not as hyper-sexualised Barbie dolls, which seems to be the costume of choice for some (not all) TiMs.
So we can't wear just what we like.

Men are currently socialised not to wear lipstick. This has not always been the case in our culture and in many others. And since it is a current fashion it can change.

Girly girls - say make up and pink - exist but I suspect that there should be just as many “girly” boys - boys who like pink and wear make up ( or whatever arbitrary definition for girly you thinking of ) but at the moment boys are steered strongly away from any such preferences.

I reallly don't think that is true! I think "girly" boys would always be a pretty small minority (less than the other way round), but then, I do think than men are from Mars and women are from Venus, which many here might disagree with. Tbc, I'm certainly not in favour of enforcing gender stereotypes on children.

I really have to say this again as it really bugs me - I don't think it's right or helpful to say 'girly boys' or 'effeminate men'.

What we're saying by using those terms is that men who don't act like macho men must be women or woman-ish.

Gay men don't act like women! They don't act like macho men. They act like gay men.

People assume they must be women, because they think it's not possible for men not to be macho. This is wildly sexist!!