Why do you care so much about gender issues?

[GCScot]

Longtime lurker, first time poster.

I'm fully GC, mainly due to this board. So first of all, thank you for all the excellent thoughtful discussion!

DH and most of my family are also GC. But they don't care about it anywhere near as much as me. This got me wondering - why do some of us care so much about gender ideology?

My reasons are:

1. I'm a lifelong feminist. Gender ideology causes so many issues for women. But the attempted redefinition of the very word woman feels like an actual existential threat

1. I'm a lifelong lefty. Finding myself on 'the other side' to left-wing political parties, friends, and institutions I have trusted all my life (The Guardian, BBC, NHS, universities) has completely thrown me. Am I wrong? If I'm not wrong, how have they gone so spectacularly wrong?

1. I have a science background. The (wilful?) ignorance of the basic science of biological sex and the prioritisation of feelings over facts enrages me

1. I have personally had a double mastectomy and hormone therapy for breast cancer. These were extreme medical treatments to save my life and have long-term health repercussions - I am at high risk of heart disease and osteoporosis. The fact that physically healthy children and vulnerable young people are being encouraged to undergo these treatments makes me sad and angry

1. The 'No debate' aspect of this issue is totally against my values. I work for a fully captured institution (Scottish university) and being unable to freely speak about this issue means that it is frequently running through my mind

Do any of the above resonate with others? Do you have any additional reasons why you care so much about this issue?

Agreed. I feel like I have an insight into how certain episodes in history - such as the witch-hunt craze - took off. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's such a compelling issue: it feels like we're living through a phase that historians will look back at with wonder and try to analyse how the hell it all happened

Because I can remember when casual sex discrimination was the norm in workplaces and education. When men grabbing a free feel was "just a joke" and "banter".

My dsis remembers not being allowed a mortgage without a male guarantor. My dm remembers being required to resign from her career when she got married.

Women's rights have been hard won, and anything that jeopardises them in any way is a threat to my nieces' and future grand daughters' happiness.

Not something I am willing to tolerate.

That man had some cheek! It does amaze me that people who are loudly supporting gender ideology can see why blackface is wrong but seems completely blind to why anyone might have an issue with men in dresses claiming to be women

I've been in some very psychologically controlling environments (mostly connected to left wing politics) so I instinctively kick back at the gaslighting and intimidation.

I'd say that maybe ten years ago I didn't see it as a very important issue, I had trans friends and wanted society to do better by them, and I supposed I'd have aligned with the Helen Lewis position of "I'll say TWAW, though we know it's a polite fiction, but I don't think self-ID is a good idea and I'm against medicalising confused kids."

It became obvious those reasonable reservations couldn't be tolerated, and at the same time I was watching friends saying (and apparently believing) things that were just insane.

So I've become much more hardline, but I'd say I was pushed that way.

I agree with so many points other people have made.

For me, it's also the notion that there is some universal "gender identity" that all women share that is different from the imposed gender roles that society places on biological females. I strongly suspect that I have absolutely nothing in common in terms of my identity with most trans identifying men - who seems to try to be conventionally feminine.

Also, the point of single sex spaces is to keep women safe from men. Trans identifying men have exactly the same offending profile as other men. Possibly more likely to be sexual offenders. That's a more than adequate reason to say that they should never be in women's spaces.

I also worry that it's regressive, and that the entire ideology goes against the notion that you can do whatever you want regardless of your sex. It's built on stereotypes and limiting ideas that your role in life is constrained by your sex.

People have no end of crazy ideas, and say them out loud, but trans ideology! I was astonished anyone was taking it seriously as anything other than a mental health issue.

1. I've been sexually harrassed on four separate occasions by 'men-who-say-they-are-trans' in the ladies loos as a child, the first one at age 5. It's badly affected me for 50 years.
2. It's all utter nonsense and lies.
3. I don't agree to conforming to their shitty 'gender' stereotypes.
4. Women need safe single-sex spaces.
5. Children need to be left alone.

I agree with many, many points here, so I'll just add that I realised it was all so illogical, unscientific, offensive and dangerous.

I thought "someone in authority is going to step in soon and stop all this". But they didn't.

So women did it themselves.

Oh and 6. Men don't get to control everything.

Largely the injustice and women losing jobs, opportunities etc due to the wrong version of the law being perpetuated

The comparison with cultural appropriation is very interesting. When that happens, a fuss is made. I was concerned recently to read about the use of the term “gender incongruence” to move away from and dumb down more inflammatory conversations. Perhaps we need to start using gender appropriation, given it’s already accepted that appropriation is negative.

It's not just cultural appropriation, it's colonisation.

We cannot base our laws, policies, and societies on clear absurdity.

We just can't.

Because it is absurd, it requires coercion to uphold. So it fucks up freedom of speech and expression.

Because it disadvantages women, and girls.

Because it creates safeguarding loopholes.

Because it is wrong. It is false.

I don't honestly know anymore, OP, why I care so much, only that I know it's not TRUE.

So, pedantry, and a staunch commitment to truth, are my two main reasons. Although feminism and common sense are also involved.

And tbh also once one moves past the basic arguments, their absurdity, and gets into the violent, aggressive, and twisted antics of genderists, it does become more of a moral thing. And then once one sees some of the people who are pushing the genderist ideas, it becomes quite disturbing. Once you see the dynamics, the abusive nature of them becomes very very clear.

I see Eric Joyce is criticising women for wanting single sex spaces. Why is that?

If you could bear with me for a bit, I'd have to take issue with the OP, I think. For me the question as it's originally phrased puts all the onus on the respondent to justify something that shouldn't need justification at all; I think most of the posters or even lurkers on here know exactly why gender is so important. I'd rather ask the inverse question - why don't some people, women particularly, care about gender? It seems to me to be absolutely central to way this whole cultural hijacking has unfolded, the way that gender ideologists have taken the central foundation of feminism, the awareness that gender is neither innate or natural but constructed, imposed and political, and turned it so far inside out that it has become the central plank of the most profoundly anti-feminist insanity. Transactivism is merely the most appalling symptom of this twisted but ferociously effective backlash, patriarchal thought taking our most profound foundation and turning it into a hideous distortion of itself, all the better to make the idea of feminism itself pathetic and ridiculous. It's a line I've used on here before, but there have been many ideologies which throw the baby out with the bathwater; only trans ideology, so far as I am aware, has thrown out the baby and attempted to present the stinking, putrid bathwater as the finest Pol Roger*.

(*Other vintages are available!)

PTSD from male sexual violence. I know a men's rights movement when I see one.

Kids who don't conform to rigid gender stereotypes - I'm furious that they're at risk of being groomed into hating their healthy bodies due to this.

But the thing that gets me on a daily basis is that it's all unscientific bollocks. People who say they believe it discredit all their other opinions by saying thus. I'm horrified by the public acceptance of authoritarianism and rejection of freedom of speech and a plain, common language. I'm devastated by what this pseudo religion is doing to the left. A hostile state / Reform couldn't have come up with a better plan.

As a woman, I find it extremely insulting that I am expected to accept men as women and to include them in my word, woman. Men, live as you want but where it matters, stay in your own lane.

All of your reasons plus the knowledge that I could have been caught up in this.

When I was at university most of my friends were blokes and I struggled to connect with other women. My nickname (and let's forget for a moment for offensive it is) was 'mental hermaphrodite' because people joked I was emotionally part man.

Silly student rubbish but if I'd been a student 20 years later I'd have people telling me I was non binary, encouraging life changing decisions etc. I was also very committed to being child free, would get angry when people even suggested I might change my mind.

Mum of 2 me now knows what could have been and how lucky I was to be born before all this nonsense.

Good point, I shall start talking about gender colonisation. That should get the opinionated youngsters at work thinking.

I was blithely oblivious and in the #bekind camp until 9 years ago when my autistic/aspie daughter started puberty and decided she wanted to be a boy. She was so angry that her puberty was so shit in comparison to a boy’s. I could see that it was a response to puberty, to feeling other, to possibly being bi/lesbian, to the impact of Weinstein’s arrest and Trump’s ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ tapes being in the media, fallout from #MeToo where every woman who had ever been whistled at by a builder claimed trauma. I could go on.

I also thought at that time that all trans women were people who had been through years/decades of therapy before having all the surgeries as a last ditch attempt of being able to cope with life. They needed compassion and acceptance and were no threat to me. I thought.

However I am a feminist and science realist (one of my degrees is in Psychology with a strong neuroscience component, plus I’d done a dissertation on autism and modules on child development). I knew my daughter was not ‘born in the wrong body’, that this was a phase arising from distress, that she needed support and counselling. But was flabbergasted to be told by doctors, therapists, school, friends that I was guilty of wrong think and an abusive parent for not readily embracing the brave emergence of my new son.

Then I fell down the wormhole, met Tavistock whistleblowers, read the science, discovered what AGP is and watched the horror show that is the tra movement evolve.

So I care more with each passing day.

I agree with the thrust of your argument. Knowing facts shouldn’t need justification.

I’m trying to think of other facts where there is a currently accepted broad institutional capture claiming lies are truth and I can’t think of one.

So maybe that’s one reason it’s so important to so many. If flat-earthers gained ascendancy and we were all expected to dance around it, there would be a lot of arguments about it, for sure. That wouldn’t also involve overriding/invading other people’s rights though, so there’s a double whammy.

I do worry about what other lies we are being fed though. This whole situation is horribly unsettling for a multitude of reasons.

Essentially, laziness. A litmus test.
If someone claims that twaw, or are 'special' i know that they are either stupid or cowards.
So I don't have to pay attention to them.
It makes life much easier.

Ah, universities 😢

What do you attribute their attachment to gender ideology to? I wonder whether there is an element of 'the paying customer (students paying tuition fees) is always right'

The tide may be turning though. Edinburgh University elected a GC Rector last year: thestudentnews.co.uk/2024/11/06/in-conversation-with-simon-fanshawe-rector-of-the-university-of-edinburgh/

As pp have said, it's the basic lie that biology is not immutable. Everything else flows from that.

🙌 Let it all out! 😂

I have been a feminist, though not a campaigner, all my adult life. I never felt disadvantaged in my working life, being confident to speak my mind in all scenarios at senior management level. I am now retired but my feminist views have hardened in recent years because I don't like being told what I can say, or even think, without the opportunity to have a reasoned discussion. I think it's the "no debate" issue that has swung it for me, along with an increasing awareness of the appalling treatment meted out to the few women (some of whom we know well from ET cases on these threads), who have tried to defend their right to privacy, security and dignity in what should be, single sex spaces. I can quite see why Naomi Cunningham says she is "fuelled by rage", because I am definitely going the same way.