The future of gender ideology

[PeachyDaisy]

Is anyone else feeling really pessimistic about the future of women’s sex-based rights?

I know the UK has been doing better than many other countries in pushing back against gender ideology (although there is still a long way to go), but it feels like much of the rest of the Western world has already been captured by it, both culturally and legally.

Looking 50 years into the future, I honestly worry that most Western countries will have moved to self-ID, with only a few exceptions remaining. Hopefully the UK is able to stand firm, but I’m not even confident of that especially if all of the western world has fallen.

I know the gender ideology movement is never going to disappear. It will continue to control universities, many industries, and parts of society. There will also always be a significant number of people who either support, or simply don’t see a problem with, males accessing women’s spaces if they identify as women.

I wonder if others feel the same — that this is a temporary cultural moment that will eventually shift, or whether these changes are likely to become permanent.

I discovered Mumsnet only after I saw Sharon Davis on YouTube saying that there were 90+ males playing in the Football association and only Mumsnet were covering it.
Things looked really bad at that time but I've seen a lot of progress since so feel quite positive that whilst there's still a way to go Trans has peaked in the UK and things are moving back to reality:

• the Supreme Court judgement and the guidance which takes effect in a couple of days;
• ever more sports banning males from women's categories (including the FA and the olympics, etc);
• so many companies pulling funding from PRIDE that parades are folding or having to charge entry;
• the success of the Darlington Nurses, Jennifer Melle & Sandi Peggie;
• etc.

At 68 I've repeatedly seen how the new generation find older generations boring, old fashioned and 'icky' and I believe that it won't be long before today's Trans youngsters become the older 'icky' generation to be rejected.

A lot of self-soothing going on in this thread. Being dishonest about this to lift your spirits doesn't help. We have the polls, we see the numbers going up. We're not stopping or slowing down the rate of transition as the great Helen Joyce said we need to. There are more openly trans identified people than ever before. It doesn't matter if we win a court case here and there if we cannot reduce the numbers of people who "transition". Transgender ideology is still strong, and growing - especially among the younger generation and let's face it - the Gender Critical movement is mostly older. I go to the LGBA conference every year and every year the audience gets greyer and greyer. I fear for the future... When we're all in the nursing homes or our graves and this new generation (everyone under 25 now) comes into their prime transgender ideology will be the law of just about every land unless we actually do something.

It seems to me that all these legal cases and the crowdfunders for them function only to enrich a small group of upper class Gender Criticals. They do not stop the spread of transgender ideology. Getting on the bad side of Amnesty was a silly move also. We could have ignored the report now we've Streisand effected it. There are some organisations held in such esteem that to attack them makes you look evil even if you're in the right. We're losing so much support over it. Rowling especially. I was speaking to a lady in the Supermarket the other day and she said she agrees with Rowling about women's sports but she thinks she has gone mad over "this trans thing" and "gone too far". We look like extremists. And Posie Parker and her silly racist stunts and being seen with Tommy Robinson all the time doesn't help either.

We need new strategies is what I'm trying to say. Pretending the problem is going away when it very clearly is getting worse is not helping. It's self delusion. Might as well call yourself "trans" if you're going to deny such an obvious reality as that.

"JOYCE: The earth is still round and you are making a terrible show of yourself."

Please tell me that this is a direct quote. Nothing better than a spectacularly Irish put-down.

So much odd forced teaming.

That’s nice dear. Post those supportive polls, then, why don’t you?

Lol. Is this the new thing? I was wondering if the OP was a TRA in disguise as a terf. But this one seems to have lost the back half of their costume altogether.

Edited to consider the benefit of the doubt, in case I'm being too cynical

Too cynical about the OP, not that poster. I don't think there's enough cynicism in the world for that post!

I'm not sure I share all the optimism on this thread (tending to lean, as I do, towards those who suggest this is part of a wider post-Enlightenment, post-truth malaise).

However, I will say that there are in my experience a not insignificant number of younger people who think this is all tedious nonsense. Don't forget that as well as having the theory shoved down their throats at school, they have spent a significant amount of time amongst their peers who have adopted these identities and that is informing their conclusions.

They are also generally more concerned with fitting in and less inclined to risk being significantly out off step with their peers than they are likely to become in later life. In some cases this means thinking differently but deliberately keeping quiet, but in others it also means not even allowing themselves to follow a live of thought that may lead them to the 'wrong' conclusions. I think the 'terf' development pathway is likely to continue.

I'm also not sure I agree that "getting on the bad side of Amnesty" and Streisand effecting their (hastily withdrawn) report is likely to go against us. The particularly interesting question that I think is difficult to answer is why single sex provisions are considered by them to be of vital important to the rights of women and girls in developing countries but hatred and anti-rights in the West. It's a very straightforward logical inconsistency and currently looks like rascist paternalism.

There are at least two layers to this.
There's a faddy fashion layer, where it will probably lose ground fairly rapidly. There will be a new youth rebellion fashion sooner or later, and definitely by the time the TWAW generation are the boring old mums and dads. All the cultural organisations who now are busy putting on exhibitions about "queering" their collections, or awarding the women's prize to the obligatory transwoman, or having drag queens with everything, will be looking for a new angle, and the more they've gone overboard with it, the sooner they and the public will tire of it.

The institutional capture will probably take longer to work through, because the young ideologues will become middle-aged upper-echelon decision-makers. If they manage to make changes in the law, they could do a lot of damage. But if they do, they'll have a younger generation treading on their tails, who see them as the reactionaries on the wrong side of history.

It may be a long haul. The witch trials went on for over 200 years. But perhaps now, with modern communications, ideas and societies change more quickly.

One thing is pretty certain: misogyny is always with us, and when transactivism is no longer an effective weapon, it will look for another way.

It's a sign of desperation, it seems to me. They're running out of things to say, so it takes three of them to say it all at once, to try to have any effect. And it isn't working, because all women have to do is ➡LAW.

Reality check.

We have the polls, we see the numbers going up.
YouGov have had a consistent decline in total adherence to trans obedience over a number of year. This is significant.

We're not stopping or slowing down the rate of transition as the great Helen Joyce said we need to.
Would you like to quote and source here please? I have seen no figures for the last couple of years about the numbers of people transitioning and we don't even collect data on detransitioners to be able to get an accurate figure. There is no data available on the ages of those transitioning and when we talk about transitioning how many have a GRC and how many don't.

This information is all important.

If we are seeing a decline in numbers in schools (who again I don't believe are being counted) then it is inevitable that we will see shrinking numbers. If there is less incentive to get a GRC because it effectively is just a bit of paper that adds no additional benefits then there's a lot to unpack there too. If we are going down self ID by the back door again there's a whole load of issues which will eventually come back to bite on the arse.

Even more than this I saw a video doing the rounds a couple of weeks ago on twitter and the comment was "is anyone going to name the elephant in the room?". The poster was referring to the number wearing masks but that's not what I noticed and it took me a minute to work out that was the intent of the post.

What I saw was the sheer number of people (who aren't that old) in the parade in wheelchairs and with walking sticks!
https://x.com/i/status/2081280475855823006

This tells a huge tale and one that isn't ignorable for ever even by those who want to. If your health is poorer at this age you can bet your life expectancy is going to be significantly lower than the general population and you are not going to be hide the elephant in the room from insurers. The insurers will know what's going on even if the health service continue to stick their fingers in their ears and try and ignore the issue. If insurers spot it, you can bet they will tighten up on every risk factor surrounding trans issues - from healthcare insurance in the US (BIG one that) and in other parts of Europe (less of an issue than the US but still significant because they will start refusing claims for 'preexisting conditions'), travel insurance and health care professionals and groups in terms of what they will cover for insurance.

Especially when it starts to be obvious that we need to have sex on health records for safeguarding reasons (for trans people themselves and staff protection before we even get onto third party issues) and there is an option for gender because yes it will quickly become clear that rates of certain issues are through the roof for transwomen/transmen at certain ages.

I don't think that video is a huge outlier. There's been a lot of comment about this before but the visualisation of it is pretty stark.

There are massive implications from the above in terms of 'increasing numbers'.

Scandals always come out in the wash. At the first hint of massive NHS payments what do you think a bunch of people who have been grifting and encouraging others to grift are going to do?! Suddenly a whole new market in capitalising on getting the best financial claim is going to kick in. If that happens that could get really bloody interesting! That particular implosion will not be pretty. But I can honestly see it happening.

ATM I suspect a lot of those who have transitioned in their late teens and early twenties perhaps will not stick with it long term. Life cycle stages and desistance from a cult is around an average of 7 years. This obviously covers people who give it up in shorter periods and some much longer periods. So that would reasonably the time frame I would expect to start to see changes across probably from a peak around 2024/5 in terms of transition. That would put the real beginning of the end as about 2031 which I think is still viable/realistic in terms of where we currently are. The next UK general election is 2029 so that also poses some interesting questions for Burnham whoever is our PM at that point and the opposition.

I am very curious at to what the next YouGov polling on this subject is going to say. It may or may not make for interesting reading.

There is no self soothing going on in these observations. These are forces based on the forces that affect us every day.

I honestly can not see pro trans rights issues staying as high up the political priority list for soooo many reasons. They have a toxicity that follows them around.

Throw in militant groups to the mix and threats of violence (or worse) and I can guarantee people who have said we have to be kind will wake up. Just like Climate Change Protesters who have an uncanny habit of managing to piss off everyone including people who are sympathetic to their cause through their actions.

I simply do not believe these mythical figures about what this poster says a) exist b) are meaningful c) necessarily reflect their point.

Why? Because you do get a good sense of political moods and swings and invisible unspoken important information on various issues if you have your eyes and ears open enough. You can see the signs well before data starts to reflect. And no this isn't anecdotal over evidence - this isn't conspiracy over reality or an echo chamber. This is just being properly aware of shifts in society which are observable and can see incoming a mile off if paying attention.

The conversion therapy bill is just so terrible, it's only has two paths ahead of it - dying quietly or going down in a spectacular shit storm with shit storm cannons going off and dumping shit in every direction of anyone who tries to force it through. Even if we get a Labour/Green coalition government in 2029.

Even in trans friendly countries the effect will pan out eventually cos there is no where to ultimately hide from it.

My overall thoughts, as someone who's started "where's it all going?" type threads in the past, is that sports and prisons may escape the worst of this, but spaces like toilets and changing rooms are going in one direction only.
Transition is absolutely a thing, and the long predicted avalanche of detransitioners medical damages cases hasn't happened/isn't happening.
The biggest risk for TERF Island is rejoining the EU.
Reading Róisín Michaux, Brussels is rolling out trans policy for member states, and the WHO is soon to further depathologize and destigmatize the whole phenomenon.
If the Democrats regain the WH after 2028, Burnham with maybe the help of Polanski wins the next GE and tacking to the EU speeds up, the legal social arrow of policy will be in one direction only.
One sign that we might regain sanity, if the likes of C4 commissioned a no holds barred docudrama exposing the teen transition psychotherapeutic/medical scandal, as they did with the Post Office, water industry, previous scandals like contaminated blood products etc.
But I don't see that ever happening, just as I don't see a proper national reconciliation over the rape grooming gangs poison.
I fear the 15 year.period this phenomenon dug its claws into polite society and elite rules making, coinciding with many years of weaponised cancel culture, allowed the infrastructure for trans ideology to be levered into societal structures with so little dissent, and means so much of what's happening now re skeptical resistance is rearguard action.

I admit. You are not alone. On either count.

This isn't about there optimism or pessimism. It's about certain forces working through which none of us here can influence because they happen to be firmly locked onto material reality.

The effects of taking testosterone as a woman in your 20s isn't something that any Gender Critical or TERF or whatever you want to call people who think it's a bad idea - is going to be able to influence or change.

There are inevitable long term medical, financial and political consequences.

The UK as a member of the EU did not blindly sign up to and agree everything that everyone else said. There are many areas that the UK led on and the rest followed because it made sense.

Even if we have to rejoin on certain conditions, I still see a way forward where TERF island could actually end up doing quite the opposite to the picture you paint with the UK providing the evidence and the leadership away from the batshittery. Because we are stubborn fuckers.

I don't despair over the idea at all.

The UK try to rejoin the EU.

The EU make it a condition of reentry that we all have to sign up to genderwang. Can you IMAGINE how it will be latched onto by Brexiteers to foil the move?

We rejoin the EU and we are told we have to force through various laws before re-entry including one relationing to Self ID. That'll make for an interesting parliamentary session.

We rejoin the EU and after the fact they tell us we have to adhere to these various laws imposed on us. Do you think British women are going to STFU? JKR has previously said she'd be willing to go to jail over this issue and I don't doubt her sincerity.

If the EU wanted to make this a hill to die on, I'm fairly sure Brits would be willing to help them with this mission.

It didn't work out well for Nicola. I'm not sure 'Nicole' would fair much better tbh.

Genuinely think about the practical real life process of all this rather than the ideology of this. Like Brexit and like the whole SC decision itself, you'd be up against a whole load of legal issues which would come out in the wash.

Let's say Brussels insisted on rejoining meaning adherence to some fancy-named protocol that we all knew was Self ID.
GC citizens who are anti-Self ID but pro-EU could confidently vote to rejoin, and then work to obstruct once a member again?
I'm not seeing it.
Róisín Michaux delves into the hyper progressivism of the EU, WHO, US Democrats, pretty much all NGOs/third sector/charities etc, leaves me with a huge amount to be despondent about.

Good luck with getting it through the British media and courts when the SC has said already that the rights of women and gay people and transpeople themselves rely on the observation of sex.

Not to mention other free speech related issues.

And the complexity of other laws such as health and safety.

Genuinely.

These laws would STILL need to be taken down one by one in courts.

The idea this would be a breeze is as laughable as thinking that Article 50 of exiting the EU was 'easy' and that you could just make the Good Friday Agreement go 'poof' and disappear.

Whatever you think of Hungary and its views on LGBTQ, Brussels was relentless in its pressure to make Budapest yield to it's protocols on social policy, including holding back funding and other cooperations.
I don't see the likes of Burnham or someone even more progressive as PM going back into the EU and then immediately resisting cooperation.
We're only going back in on the implicit vow well be "good", compliant members.
It's why as a Remain voter in 2016, I'll never vote Rejoin in future

The UK is not Hungary. Strangely enough.

And we'd have to get to that point without provoking another politicial crisis over Europe.

I'm making the simple point that world bodies are converging on the total depathologisation and destigmatizing of transsexualism, including a big push for the WHO to classify transgenderism as a sexual health category. The flip side to the legal/social changes via EU etc pushing for gender self ID to be the norm.
Being outside the EU gives us a certain independence that we could never have inside.
I'm not saying we will rejoin or not, or that we wouldn't resist Brussels-mandated self ID protocols if we did rejoin.
But rejoin is rife with major difficulties in the social/self ID sphere if we did.

Anyone who thinks rejoining would be an easy process is kidding themselves.

It will be a serious of steps over a number of years at best.

All of which will attract a shit load of internal issues and pressures before we get to anything like rejoining.

It's not something I'm losing sleep over, put it that way.

There will be a lot of unraveling of GI across the world before we get to that point.

I do hope you're right.

Eppur si muove!
The point is that transgenderism, gender ideology, or whatever, is like saying the sun revolves around the earth - that was the official doctrine for centuries, and Galileo suffered for saying the opposite.

Scientific observation showed that the sun does not revolve around the earth, and scientific observations shows that human sex is binary and immutable.

Some people will look very silly, or sinister, or both in a Monty Pythonesque kind of way, for having pushed so aggressively and so damagingly a set of ideas [OK TPA,I won't say 'an ideology'] that is based around a great big post-factual falsehood: that humans can change sex.

I'm confident the truth will out, but yes it will take time so I'm not holding my breath.

I havent read all the responses, but I think it is going to die a death in the next 10 years or less. Im already seeing it dwindle. My incredibly woke SIL hauled me over the coals 5 years ago for saying transwomen arent women. Now she agrees with that, but thinks we should still 'be kind', use pronouns, and wont agree its womanface. She used to think they could share our loos, now she thinks they should go in the disabled. I think she is a very typical liberal who wants to see the good, and wants to find a solution for the poor menz. But people are slowly but surely back tracking, one tiny bit by another. Most people were fully on board at first and now you can see the cracks. Which is awesome I think. Sophie Cunningham 5 years ago would have been cancelled, now she is heralded a hero and got her own shoe out and shes on t-shirts doing that pointy thing. The tide is turning for sure. I think in 10 years it will jsut go back to what it was - the odd rare transvestite youd see out and about, give a sideways look to and that was that. And all this crap will just feel like a fever dream.

The pushback from the normies is pretty stark to be honest. Even the Good Laugh Project's facebook post yesterday was 99% TERFy. Even if they don't have a clue what a TERF is.