Are we a cult?

[CyclingSam]

I keep reading that sex realists, of which I am one, are a cult. Perhaps a genderist could be so kind as to explain what a cult is, and why we qualify. Sometimes one of us calls them a cult too. Who has a better case, hmmm?

You didn't read my post then? I said I changed my mind on some things, but not on others.

I also mentioned that I post on forums related to other issues - where I similarly had to learn the lingo (eg. if someone told me that Alpaca had a lot of VM I would know what that meant) and both argue my preferences (eg. I don't like to use soap to wash my fleece as I prefer to spin 'in the grease' - more lingo for you there), and open my mind to other ideas (combing over carding for example - and some more lingo)

I believe I said I had my arse handed to me a couple of times, and that I, in turn have robustly argued my opinions - at no point did I say I changed my mind to avoid hostility - in fact, I would quote Bronte here: "There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me."

That's odd I've seen it many times where multiple repeat the same question at one poster in a short frame of time and eat up a thread.

You've mistaken "brigading" and "pile-ons". Pile-ons don't have to be coordinated and in fact usually aren't: several people see the post and all reply similarly at around the same time without any coordination at all. You sometimes see acknowledgement of this in the form of "crossposted with X".

You mean a question they NEVER answer. Funny that.

Asking the same question in a short time can be many things.

Even if someone is asked the same question over and over, it is a publicly accessible board and people don’t have to consider what other’s have already asked before asking for themselves.

Sometimes, people also ask the same thing but with different context. Sometimes they are posting without reading further.
Sometimes they are asking because they were all typing at the same time.

It doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a heavily controlled board as far as people asking the same thing. It sounds like you have an issue with it, but that is your take on what is happening. Posters cannot expect to curate the reactions to their posts on a general thread to suit their needs if the posts are within the guidelines.

Expecting posters to count how many times a question has been asked before it was answered is not a reasonable expectation when it is not in the guidelines. That sounds like someone’s preferred communication etiquette and there is no pinned etiquette instruction.

I whole heartedly agree. When you have a qualified medic like Dr Upton insisting that they are a biological woman , the rubbish spotted by the likes of Isla Bumba and a history of past pressure by TRA’s for people to be able to change their legal “sex “ and be recorded as their chosen “sex” for health purposes rather than logical aspect of recording a gender identity as well as one’s sex, that’s the place we end up at. The trans man who was raped ( along with the woman who was raped in hospital by a TW that staff denied existed) are both victims of a terrible ideology that has led to health professionals betraying their duty of care to patients and harming children as well as adults . I sincerely hope for the child of @TransParentlyAnnoyed that they are never put in a position where healthcare staff fail to safeguard them . A cult insists on its members believing in the unbelievable and gradually erodes their boundaries so that more and more transgressions can occur. When you see pictures of someone like Sarah Jane Baker at a girl guides rally ,stood alongside children ,then you realise how completely wrong we have got it. I wish we could rewind the last 15 yrs and start again.

Yeah, I mean when someone posts ‘there are lots of men who have been pregnant do your research!’ As they did on a thread today, I think similar questions tend to spring to the minds of many of the readers. It’s not coordinated.

I’m not the poster you are asking the questions of but I like that posters’ explanation of “trans pragmatism” . For me it would indeed be an acknowledgment that some people do feel they have a gender identity that is separate and different to their sex and there is a need to de-stigmatise that...but equally that gender questioning children should be treated and supported as gender questioning children not as anything more . If more children and families were given the professional support and help required when these questions arise, and there was no societal pressure to affirm or “Dutch protocols” to push children into gender specific roles then I strongly suspect we would see far far fewer individuals reaching adulthood with “trans “identities. For those that do , as a society I think we are capable of reaching a point of understanding that individuals are free to live in their chosen identity up and until a point where that identity impacts on the rights and dignity of others. Those individuals would know from early on what their societal rights are rather than ,as they are currently told, that they have the “right” to access opposite sex facilities and be treated by everyone as the opposite sex. Hence the red line is , indeed, single sex facilities, targeted sex based recruitment eg. certain jobs,Unison women’s rep/ Green Party leadership , single sex categories in sports and awards etc. So we remove discrimination or de-stigmatisation against being “trans” whilst upholding the rights of those with other protected characteristics. I don’t have the study to hand but I have seen a paper showing that the point of “peak trans” has been reached in American college students and is dropping back, so the more that we re-instate common sense policies and approaches, the fewer children will be influenced in that direction.

Hadley Freeman? Former fashion and film journalist at the Guardian and author of a superb book about her Jewish family in WW2? That Hadley Freeman? What on earth has she done to upset you other than know that men can never be women, however much they wish they were?

Aside from trans stuff, what "terrible things" has JKR done? (Genuinely curious as I don't know of any.)

Neither do I, but I love the Tunnocks caramel wafers.

I believe that suffix "phobic" to those who hold different views is wrong - people disagree that does not mean they are phobic or terrible people it means they have different views. People are entitled to different views - we live in a free country and trying to vilify others for their views in my view shows intolerance.

Privacy and dignity for ALL is needed and posts on FWR often does not perceive this or care about it. @Diverze

Honestly, I think what you have posted is pretty much all of it a majority view on MN. With the proviso that it's not feminists' job to campaign for separate spaces for men who want to dissociate from other men. It is frequently pointed out that if Stonewall had campaigned for additional single user spaces instead of campaigning to destroy single sex spaces, they'd have had our support and likely be in a far far better position now.

If not wanting third/fourth spaces is at all indicative of being a cult, it's TRAs who stand accused of cultishness. Feminists were suggesting it from my first encounters with the argument, it was TRAs who weren't interested.

I also think you're wrong about FWR not recognising the overlap with autism in children. It's discussed a lot. I don't think autism is a large part of why middle aged men transition, but with children it is, Cass recognised it, and feminists are particularly concerned about children being sent down the medical transition path when really what's going on is they're autistic, or would otherwise develop into gay adults.

You're joking. Ignoring the 'aggressive' bit - since only 'trans' advocates have threatened and inflicted violence on their opponents, 'terfs' haven't - the multi-pronged UK campaign for continued sex-based rights was very much initiated, pursued and won by Mumsnetters.

That's why 'trans' Reddit dislikes us so much. You need to catch up.

Anyway, feel like this thread has gone rather more 'everything I dislike about FWR' than discussing the features of cults and how well it fits.

Features of a cult:

Single charismatic leader: nope, and I'll absolve trans activism of that too. Both sides have many different orgs and individuals working with slightly different focus.

Isolating members from society: nope, full of fully functioning adults with families, friends and careers. Note TRAs do do this with younger members to some extent, by telling them that anyone who doesn't share their beliefs must hate them and want them to die. And in TRA forums, GC posts are banned: this is a predominantly GC forum where TRA posts are allowed and engaged with with considerable politeness albeit disagreement. We /always/ try to engage with TRAs who come to this forum, we actively want to test the logic of our arguments and theirs. I've also frequently seen this happening at protests and the like, feminists will try to have a conversation, TRAs shout over them or block with masks and banners and won't engage.

Controlling and manipulating members: nope, unless to buy tunnocks

Us vs Them mentality: The debate has become very polarised on both sides. I feel that the push comes from TRA side not ours though. When what we're up against is give us absolutely everything we demand or you're phobes and bigots, it becomes us vs them inevitably. The 'them' isn't trans identifying people though, it's trans rights activists: trans children in particular many of us have in our close circles and care for their long term outcomes is something that motivates the feminist take.

Leader exploiting the followers for gain: what leaders?

Leader exploiting the followers for gain: what leaders?

In other cults, the leaders are known to the cult not necessarily to the wider world.

In every group of TRAs they have mainly older men, leading from the rear egging others on. The Leaders are basically those who sign up to WPATH, disguised as 'Experts' in their 'Field'. The funding behind all this has to be kept quiet due to laws that would get them in jail once people actually wake up and start taking action against the people who sterilised them.

Look at how Susie Green was able to OVERRIDE doctors at GIDS. Look at how ANYONE was ostracised if they went against the DEI Gurus in large organisations. Look at how scared everyone is of having SINGLE SEX TOILETS. They are scared of being tarred and feathered in public.

Single charismatic leader: nope, and I'll absolve trans activism of that too. Both sides have many different orgs and individuals working with slightly different focus.

I'm not sure a cult has to have a single charismatic leader, a personality cult might but if you have a single overriding world view, that dictates behaviours, has a lot of coercive peer pressure to ensure total conformity, with punishment for those that don't, it can be a cult. So I'm not sure the TRA's can be absolved because they're the ones who are applying the peer pressure and dishing out the punishment.

Do cult's have Stormtroopers though, that's the question, because the Alphabetties sure do.

Thank you thirdfiddle, that's very clear.

I've been thinking about the accusation that we 'brigade' responses - the problem with that accusation [apart from the fact that this board is full of women who don't take kindly to being told what to do, and are probably 100% brigade-resistant] is that the vast majority of posters accept the settled scientific take on human sex, i.e. that it is binary and immutable.

So if somebody comes on here and argues that men can become women or vice versa, or that sex is a spectrum, or that 'intersex' people are proof that sex is not binary, the vast majority of responses are going to disagree profoundly and they'll all say that on the contrary, human sex is immutable and binary, and DSDs deviate from the binary, but do not contradict it.

So no brigading necessary, just the straightforward statement of verifiable facts.

If a flat earther stood up at a meeting of the Geographical Society and started scolding them for believing that the earth is an oblate spheroid, they'd get an awful lot of people all saying the same thing: 'But, it IS an oblate spheroid! That's an observable and observed scientific fact! It is definitely not flat!'.
Unbrigaded.

I've been thinking about the accusation that we 'brigade' responses - the problem with that accusation [apart from the fact that this board is full of women who don't take kindly to being told what to do, and are probably 100% brigade-resistant] is that the vast majority of posters accept the settled scientific take on human sex, i.e. that it is binary and immutable.

I agree, and think this is a bit of a MN thing generally. It's just a very big forum. When I first came here from a much smaller place, it often felt bullying because you wouldn't just get one poster disagreeing with you you'd get 10. It quickly becomes clear though it's not organised, it's 10 people having roughly the same idea and either typing in parallel, not seeing each other's posts, or feeling the others haven't quite put it the way they would. Venture into AIBU and it's not 10 it's 100.

Brigading strongly implies something organised by those with some kind of authority. Given the independent-minded, intelligent and sometimes downright obstreperous women who frequent this board, you'd have more chance of herding cats. 😉

In terms of 'brigading', people often post hot button topics IN ORDER to get responses to then screen shot and post in other places. They then disappear for hours/days and so anyone with an opinion will post, not knowing if the OP will ever return.

And when the royal 'we' pointed out to stop responding, 'we' were told to stop policing the board, and sometimes were accused of 'troll hunting'. 'We' couldn't even say 'that's nice dear' or post 'signs' to others to maybe stop 'brigading' or the ban hammer would come for us.

MN is a joy compared to almost every other politics forum I inhabit
Yes, I can imagine it's a bit bracing for TRAs on here to have a dozen seperate MNers crash on their heads.
But it's never malicious, bad faith or orchestrated.
Other forums? There are choreographed pile ons, character assassinations and attempts to censor and cancel all the time.
Even the "butter wouldn't melt in their mouths" TRAs who start off "woe is us" and then proceed to abuse all and sundry are given ample time to put their Size 14s in their mouths.
No cult behaviour as far as I can discern.

When you actual read what JKR said about trans people its not bad, its just the truth.

Oh yeah, I know that. Just wondered what were the "other" so-called "terrible things" that poster referred to.

People used to get deleted on this board for posting .