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?

I grew up in the 70s and 80s wearing my male cousin's hand me down clothes, playing with lego technic, riding bikes and playing he-man. I went to an all girls school and was encouraged to study STEM and that I could do anything I wanted.

I looked on in bemusement when my nieces were young and all the clothes and toys were pink dolls. The kardashians seemed surreal and I fully expected that this phase would pass and there would be a return towards what I thought was inevitable progress and equality between the sexes.

I had 2 male children and understood the toll that pregnancy and childbirth takes on a female body. I understood the clash of priorities in the workplace and that I couldn't in fact achieve anything I wanted and that being a woman was relevant.

My male children went through puberty and I understood the impact that has on physical bodies and strength.

There are hundreds of situations where sex is irrelevant and equal treatment, opportunities and lack of segregation would be beneficial. But there are also many where sex does matter. And in those circumstances it is absolutely sex and not gender that is the important thing.

Gender is just personality, taste, stereotypes and can change over time and in different cultures.

Sex is physical and biological and fixed.

The left is also about the oppressed fighting the oppressor as a collective. By framing a subset of the oppressor class as the oppressed, this ideology has been able to cuckoo the left.
The Communist party have the measure of it though, as do many people with left wing views. The mainstream left wing parties have simply lost focus in my view. As social class has become blurry and nebulous new oppressed groups have become the 'proletariat', and they've made a serious error of judgement in including this one.

Not in relation to the point being made. They do cause trouble, no argument there, but I was specifically responding about the men barging into women’s spaces.

The left is also about the oppressed fighting the oppressor as a collective. By framing a subset of the oppressor class as the oppressed, this ideology has been able to cuckoo the left.

Extremely well put.

But I also take issue with the modern left's extremely unnuanced and black/white understanding of who is an oppressor and who is oppressed. The fact that they've ignored women in these matrixes have allowed this appalling ideology to screw women over spectacularly.

I think the reason that what is classified as 'the right wing media' pick up on this stuff more because when it comes down to it 'right wing' values tend to be more aligned with boundaries, borders, self discipline, tradition and convention. And trans ideology is all about 'openness', having no firm boundaries, self indulgence and radicalism for the sake of it.

The Americanisation of left wing politics now caues people to view all matters through a lens of oppression, victimisation and group identity and so champions perceived oppressed group identities over and above any other consideration.

Yes, it’s bizarre.

Total cognitive dissonnace when it comes to the position of the female sex.

There is nothing surprising or untoward about the right wing media calling out this nonsense.

The surprising thing is that the left wing media have decided to ignore it.

It has made me question the extent to which the left have ever, truly been on the side of women's rights in the first place.

For me, my only answer is that I'm not, they are. The question is pure and simple DARVO because the other side is the one trying to impose gender ideology. It's the same with shrieks of culture wars when they're not getting their own way, as if they're not the ones waging that war.

I agree this is a large part of where the left has gone wrong. It’s been a real feat of privileging emotion over fact to frame women as the oppressor and men as the oppressed, yet somehow they’ve managed to pull the wool over many people’s eyes.

It’s been asked how come there are so many committed handmaidens who genuinely believe TWAW.

My belief is that they are mostly young and naive and haven’t worked out that there are so many men out there with the sexual fetishes and AGP. They think that the way men talk to them and behave around them, is the way they think and feel. They haven’t worked out that the way some men talk to each other away from women that banter and locker room talk is indicative of their true feelings.

In a way women are very lucky to have so few of us compelled by extreme and perverted sexual fetishes -but it makes it harder for women to understand that other people don’t think like them.

As for men, I think we all have a bias for our own sex. As said, they mostly don’t have skin in the game. So to them, if a bloke wants to be a women, why cant we let other blokes have what they want. In the patriarchy men will always feel what they want, and what other men want, is more important than what women want.

Not all men of course, but far more than you would think.

For me, it’s the no debate, be kind aspect that cuts deepest. I grew up in a family where truths were not allowed to be spoken and the fear of suicide kept people in line.

The organisational and societal pandering to the extreme trans movement has many parallels. And after having therapy for my family situation, I saw right through it.

I’m not sure how much the left has been on the side of women, as a movement. Certainly, as we know, the unions didn’t acquit themselves well over the fight for equal pay, being often more keen to preserve higher wages for men than champion women’s rights. Then the mainstream Labour Party has enthusiastically privileged men’s rights above women’s, if the men say the magic words.

It seems like they pay lip service to women’s rights up to the point where a man wants something. Then it’s time for women to take one for the team and subordinate ourselves, as the service humans they think we are.

It's the lying and gaslighting that fuels my rage with this. AND the fact that my DD20 is still captured and tells me I'm not being inclusive whenever the subject comes up (which isn't often now sadly)... i pray (I'm not religious but YKWIM) for the day where the scales are lifted from her eyes and she sees it for what it really is.

I’ve raised my children to be critical thinkers but they are somehow captured by the gender woo, it’s a subject that they refuse to discuss with me, and they think I’m a rigid old dinosaur for not believing that TWAW, although they can’t quote what JKR said that was so heinous. It makes me so sad to see.

A good few years back, my ExH suddenly announced he was in fact, a woman. I was deeply offended by this. It's fair to say he was a crappy and abusive man, but that just made it seem to me that being an unsuccessful bloke was his idea of what a woman was! Which truly pissed me off.

I'm not a trans widow, we had already split by that time (because of him being a crappy and abusive man). He did eventually decide that 'being a woman's was too hard too, and just gave that up too, as I expect most men pretending to be women would if people stopped pandering to them.

I didn't find this board until a couple of years ago sadly. I wish I had though, as there have been times I thought I'd accidentally wandered into an alternative dimension somehow until then...

I think arguments and positions predicated upon the concept of 'equality' confuse most people, and certainly most Left leaning people. Do women want equality, which in effect, means being the same as men, or do they want 'special treatment', protections and 'privileges' based upon their status as an oppressed group?

I think the Left thinks women can only be liberated if they are freed from their reproductive function and their subsequent role in childcare...hence the big emphasis on abortion rights and on funded childcare. This sort of take on female liberation also leads to the confused idea being a woman is not/should not be a matter of biological determinism. Essential differences between the sexes are often denied.

I agree that self-determination isn't inherently either left-wing or right-wing. Is it not a variety of libertarianism? And the libertarian/authoritarian divide is a separate issue from left/right. Left and right are both capable of taking either libertarian or authoritarian forms.

Transgender ideology combines libertarian elements (You can be whoever you want to be!) with authoritarian elements (Everybody must agree that I am who I say I am)

Excellent question, and many reasons from me (I shall cite the most emotional ones only) :

1. I'm a mother. My second son is autistic and prefers "girl trousers" and girl friends. I don't want his healthy and perfect body to be mutilated. I abhorr child "transition"
2. I was assaulted as a teenage girl and again during my first pregnancy. I have the immemorial physical fear of men that men can never understand. I want women's spaces.
3. I'm a career girl. I've been belittled and talked over for being sweet with a soft and low voice. I've had a very hard time coming back from maternity leaves. I hate the idea that women have it harder in their careers because they choose to identify as women. I hate quotas, but I hate even more that men can still women quotas.
4. I hate lying, and institutionalized lying most of all. GI is f* 1984.

(Also, I love JKR for all the good she has done to humanity by being an immense author and wonderful philanthropist and I despise those who relentlessly attack her)

So many fantastic responses here that I shall go back and peruse at my leisure.

My own 3 reasons -
Because I am a medical doctor and believe in non-maleficence, evidence-based medicine and the use of taxpayer-funded health service for real medical need.
Because I have GenZ DC who have been surrounded by this damaging nonsense.
Because I think women should be able to do and compete at sports at any level without men cheating them out of their achievements.

Like others, this has been damaging to my self-image as a kind and inclusive leftie.

I mean there are other reasons for sure
But at the heart of the issue is the philosophical fact that no-one has any idea what it's like to be another person - does the colour I call green look the same as the one you call green?

It's kind of mind blowing if you think about it, that someone can declare that an entire class of people are essentially the same psychologically, and then claim to be the same as them despite never having experienced their life

Because, by definition, my sexual orientation must mean something, or in the alternative I am duty-bound to admit that the fact that 50% of the adults in the world are of a sex I am not interested in makes me a hateful transphobic PoS.

Because LGB and women's rights matter. Because child safeguarding matters. Because truth and reality and honesty matter.

It is hard to think of any issue as important.

It is worse than that.

If you actually hold your nose and go on reddit and ask, you will find that trans'women's' sense of womanhood is all about a sense of self, and involves NOTHING in the way of seeing themselves as inherently similar to actual women.