Daughter in early 20s lonely due to GC views

[Currentquandry]

My daughter is in her early twenties. She is GC and is struggling because so few of her peers have similar opinions. She is very lonely because of this. Are there any online groups she could join to give her a sense of community? She is also ND. Thank you in advance for your advice…

Yes. You are right.

It doesn’t have to be trauma related at all. It is a massive consent issue.

When someone has such low boundaries around consent, I suspect that they cannot see the issue at all. Which is why we continue to have posters popping up who have no understanding about consent or safeguarding principles.

I should also add re social contagion....

It's the autism groups that are particularly impacted here. Mostly it's autistic females, who are effectively (and most likely unintentionally, in the majority of cases) teaching each other to interpret their discomfort at their changing body and emotions as signs that they are trapped in the wrong body and are actually men. Sensory issues with breast development and periods, perhaps also the feeling of long hair, perhaps delayed sexual and emotional maturity (so not really understanding why male peers appear to have suddenly become boob-obsessed).... All of this can lead to lots of self-identification as boys/men, sometimes via being non-binary first, as if it were the magic answer that now makes sense of everything. Autistic males can also disproportionately (compared to neurotypical children) experience sensory issues (beard and genital growth) and emotional confusion about the changes that happen in adolescence.

Scratch the surface, and it becomes clear that it's a dangerous social contagion that schools are encouraging, largely by talking about the importance of 'kindness' when it comes to preferred pronouns - they are signposting confused, often distressed, children towards the idea that the root cause of their discomfort is that they are in the wrong body and that social transition (which will then likely lead to medical transition) is the answer. Just the very act of asking someone their preferred pronouns is a way of signposting them to the idea that it's possible to be in the wrong body. This question will have a disproportionate impact on autistic teenagers, whose cognitive processing of what it means to "be" male or female is likely to be behind that of their peers.

This is absolutely the case.

We see it in the attempt to mischaracterise the polling data with the only partially correct statement that the majority of the UK population support people identifying how they want to. They conveniently ignore the contextualised data that often appear further in the polling questions .

How often have we seen posters make declarations about them choosing to be ‘kind’ and ‘tolerant’ yet when they are asked to expand on their thoughts, there is no true kindness or tolerance there. It is only performative.

Like the number of people the OP’s daughter will encounter amongst people she considered friends, there are people who believe they are the kind and tolerant ones. Yet that is only superficial performance.

Because when you get below that performance, how many times do we see those people wanting the same outcomes as the people they have considered hateful and extreme or that what they want as a solution is obvious in how fucking unkind and intolerant it is to female people?

Well generally the exhortations to be kind flow in one direction only.

It's not kind to threaten to fuck women with a splitered rolling pin, and its not kind to mock women for trauma response, and its not kind to keep telling women they are 'extreme' for talking about women's rights, organising for women's rights, or taking part in protest about women's rights.

Imo.

Or it could be that the men violate the women’s boundaries to an unacceptable level? Of course it could never be the poor innocent men’s fault, it’s all those nasty women holding boundaries, the nasty bigots.

We are "entrenched" because we've thought about this a lot more than you have.

We have covered all the angles. We have considered every argument you have made many times before. Some of us have made them ourselves on the way and had the same holes picked in them.

All of us have genuinely looked for what we are missing that makes trans women genuinely, objectively more like women than other men such that all the reasons we sometimes separate men from women no longer apply to them.

Honestly, every woman on this thread would love there to be some point we missed that makes all the objections melt away so we could all go about our business in other things, comfortably back in the Leftish Progressive fold.

But it just isn't there.

So no, you don't get to a discussion as "tedious" simply because you are realising there are counterarguments to every naive "solution" you come up with to make some men somehow more like women than other men.

Thst feeling, that frustration that you just can't find the words to get through to us what you know, you just know, is right? That is the start of realising that maybe, actually, you aren't right. That maybe the obvious conclusion, the one you are too sophisticated and openminded to fall for, that trans women simply are just men, maybe that is actually the truth after all.

Hopefully however you will go away and start thinking more deeply about this. Most of us start where you are, assuming there must be some better answers because surely no one, no one, would be making these on the face of it outlandish demands that some men are really women and need to be treated as women if there wasn't a genuine real basis for trans women being more like women than other men.

But there isn't. There really isn't. It's all just sexism (for the "genuine" ones who do believe it of themselves) and power and fetish for the others.

Because female people exist. And just changing what the word "woman" means doesn't move a man any closer to the reality being female. And once you stop looking at the trans women and what they need and why they need, and look instead at the women and what they need and why they need it, the difference between the two and the unfairness if making women-only provisions, rights and even language over to male bodied people based on a "feeling" of womanhood are obvious.

No we know it has nothing to do with the fact that they are male because they do the same to women who they find challenging. It's because they don't realise that inclusion isn't "minorities turning up and maintaining the status quo that originally excluded them".

“Well generally the exhortations to be kind flow in one direction only.”

They do. But those making those one way demands cannot acknowledge that they do.

Some of those who demand kindness extended to that sub group of male people are just dishonest. But I am also not sure sure they can recognise their dishonesty because it has become hidden by mantra like terms of progressive and such. As I said upthread it is almost like they apply a levelling up filter so they cannot see the dishonesty and disproportion in their statements about kindness, tolerance.

Maybe those women who are being excluded should self reflect and look at the way they interact with people. Isn’t that the advice you were giving to OPs daughter? Maybe it’s not the excluders, it’s the excluded?

Well, this thread was illuminating.

With regards to the OP - you don't have to say anything at all to feel isolated for having sex realist views.

If everyone around you starts believing that men can become women just because they say so and you silently don't agree because it's not true that's more than enough to feel isolated.

If you add in all our major institutions, NHS, schools, police, media, the government saying that TWAW and that you're a hateful bigot if you don't agree (because it's not true) it's very isolating indeed.

Self reflection has told us that it is our skin colour that determines our inclusion as it is such a common occurrence unless we make our own spaces and restrict the presence of white people and advocates of racial hierarchy.

so all these women are just racist bigots?

The women who only promote inclusion when it doesn't challenge them? Yes, yes they are.

Not all genderists believe that men can ‘become’ women. Many believe that trans-identifying people are vulnerable and might have felt deeply ‘female’ all their lives (or male if female). Genderists know that this doesn’t make them literally a member of the opposite sex but believe that we should all exercise tolerance and kindness because these people either feel themselves to be the opposite sex, or want to act that way.

What this position ignores is the huge swathes of men, often middle-aged, for whom identifying as female is a fetish, a sexual kink. This is something that’s obviously grown massively since the advent of the internet and the easy availability of porn.

The other group that’s often ignored is the huge number of young women wanting to identify out of their sex, fleeing female-ness. This often happens during and after puberty. Their exposure to online porn, and the way women and viewed in porn, will no doubt have had some role in this. (We know that most children have been exposed to some online violent porn on someone’s phone by age 11.)

So those who believe in gender don’t necessarily literally believe that people can change sex, but they embrace a ‘be kind’ approach. Wholly ignoring the fetish aspect of much male trans.

How do you define challenging them though? By putting your needs before theirs? By Centering you? What does you challenging them look like?

For the benefit of those posters so excitedly promoting mixed sex undressing / showering etc for women and girls, here's some interesting research into the connections between sexual exposure and contact sexual offending from the College of Policing.
One of the depressing findings is the lack of data. Of course, the police have mangled all data about sex offending in recent years by pretending that numerous male sex offenders / paedophiles are women. Hopefully that's now coming to an end as society collectively recognises the harm this has done.

So despite the lead from the police that indecent exposure (flashing) is a gateway crime (not sure whether voyeurism is the same) we desperately need these crimes to be taken seriously and not decriminalised following the demands of men wanting access to undressing girls and women.

https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2024-08/Evidence-review-sexual-exposure-contact-sexual-offending.pdf

Yes, its hard to keep it simple without lots of explication. The long hand would be 'genderists think we should act as if men who say they are women are women'.

You may well be right about it being too complicated for me to understand, and thank you for trying to explain it further.

Something that I think you and I agree about is that spaces designated for women are for all women.

Where we part company is in the definition of the word 'woman': you include some men in that definition, I don't.

Inclusivity mean including everybody who has the identifier of a specific group, regardless of anything else about them.

Inclusivity does not mean adding in people who do not have the critical identifier - if that was the case, in order to be 'inclusive', every group would have to include the entire human race in!
For the group 'women', the deciding factor is their biological sex, not their race or class or privileged status or any other aspect of their being.

For instance, the group 'disabled people' only includes people with disabilities.
Able-bodied people can't identify into the category 'disabled' because they'd like the convenience of using designated parking spaces, or because the accessible toilet is more comfortable for them.

Similarly, men can't identify themselves into the category 'women' by saying they are trans.

Lots of aspects of life are, as you say, complicated beyond my limited understanding, I completely accept that.

But when it comes to the small number of important things that are segregated according to sex, fortunately it's not complicated: it's all women but no men, 'women' defined by biological sex, not race class or privilege.
That's clear, inclusive and legal.

And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what trans-identifying men and their supporters believe about it, the why of it. Because women are a sex-based class and need sex-based protections, always have. Women are smaller, weaker, and bear children, and have been oppressed through time. All of these things mean that they need sex-based protections to be equal and free. It’s as simple as that.

”but it feels like you’re all very entrenched in your opinions so I won’t bother.”

This strikes me as projection of your own entrenchment on others.

I, like Flirts and others, would be very happy to see an alternative solution that has not be discussed and proposed before mentioned on a thread. Hence, many of us ask questions of others.

Please do answer the questions:

Why do you believe women and girls should have to ‘get over’ trauma so that a group of male people who make a conscious choice to reject male single sex provisions instead of campaigning to make them safer for them to use, and who refuse to use alternative mix sex provisions, can have their self imposed limits supported and and easier life?

Why should women and girls who don’t have your experience of not caring if you are naked in a space with male people, or not caring if you see a male person’s penis you don’t want to see, have to suffer harm because you, personally, don’t experience harm and choose to ignore those women and girl’s voices?

Because frankly, your recent answers don’t live up to your stated ideals in my opinion. I don’t think you have shown that your kindness and tolerance goes very far towards finding an equitable solution for all people.

For example, if you were to say how a space could better include non-white/Black people, particularly if it means them doing something differently.

Like if you were to say "when you do X, it makes us feel shitty and unwelcome", they become defensive and even aggressive. Say that you are ungrateful etc.

Another example is if a woman's space of some kind has an event aimed at the inclusion of non-white women and you suggest that the non-white people lead the organisation of said event meaning that some white people might have to step back. Many white people who are expected to step back from leading roles will withdraw all their support in resentment for not being centered. They want to be known for hosting a BAME event, not just quietly aiding in its facilitation.

Example: a woman who works in stage production was told she cannot have a leading role at a BAME woman's event highlighting DV run by a local women's charity group. She was originally going to provide some sound and lighting equipment for the event, but then said she can only do that if she is a named organiser and not just an attendee.

No i dont personally include men in my definition of women and this is an example of being so entrenched in your views, that you cannot actually process anything past the idea that trans women are in a women's space.

I am calling out the high likelihood of the women campaigning for trans women having equal access in women's spaces changing their minds once having more voices disrupts their status quo. This is a pattern for them when it comes to inclusion. They are inclusive until inclusion means they have to compromise.

I am sorry if you have experienced this. It must be very frustrating and disheartening.

I can say as GC SA survivor, I find this reaction on this board sometimes which is why I agree positions can be extreme / entrenched on both sides. There's some awful shit on the TRA side but I've also seen I and others ask, quite nicely, for other posters to be considerate of people with their posts by for example not typing out a detailed description of sexual assault or pornography unprompted and especially without a trigger warning, or declaring they feel uncomfortable with male GC posters not declaring their sex on threads where women are sharing SA history and there is usually an aggressive or defensive response very much akin to the "get over it" that TRAs throw at us. I once complained at someone completely unprompted replying to my post with a detailed description of a pedophilic assault and was told I could easily just scroll by, I shouldn't police other posters etc..its confusing because from these people's other posts they do claim to understand that we should listen to and respect the boundaries of women and especially sexual assault survivors but won't take a note on their own boundary crossing behaviour.