Tell me you don't know what a cult is...

[Seethlaw]

... without telling me you don't know what a cult is.

I grew up in a cult-ish church. It had some very unpleasant aspects to it indeed. The very concept of the GC movement as a cult utterly baffles me, and irritates me quite a bit, I must admit.

Where is our Leader? Some say JKR is that, even though she obviously didn't create the movement, since she joined it after it already existed. Okay, but then where is the cult of personality? Where is the hanging onto her every word? Where is the compulsory study of her life? Where is the regular and compulsory show of support of her as our leader?

What are the specific beliefs that random people outside the movement don't believe? "Men can't become women and vice versa" is not such a belief, since loads of people who would never call themselves GC also believe it. So what are our specific beliefs?

What is the rite of entry into the movement? How does one know that they themselves or someone else is a member of the movement?

Where are the big gatherings where the leaders speak The Word? Where are the regular gatherings where the members reinforce each other's beliefs?

What are the demands made of the members? Where are the compulsory meetings? Where are the financial requirements? Where are the specific behaviours we have to adhere to?

Where are the punishments for leaving the group? How do you even know you've left at all? And where are the stories of abuse and control told by the former members?

I could go on forever.

Accusing GC people of belonging to a cult is just as ridiculous and offensive as claiming, for example, that there's a trans genocide going on. It's deliberately appropriating the real suffering of other people to make a completely false and unsupportable point because there's no actual valid point to make. It's utterly reprehensible and shameful.

2010!? Wow, that was some dedicated trolling!

... 👻... 👹...

I sort of understand why MN just wiped that poster's posts completely, I do wish they had been left to stand as an example of TRA tactics in action and the petty, immature level trolling we get from certain TRAs.

I've never seen/hear/read about GC/sex realists doing this sort of thing.

Apparently there was trolling happening elsewhere on the board and lots of 2010 zombie threads were deliberately bumped, that poster had also gone by the time I saw this so not sure if it was the same name.

The ones I saw were same name.

Typical that I choose last night to take a mild sleeping sedative.

Well, I didn't choose. The previous night my indoorish cat who had hurt a paw came meeping to me, it had been over 40°c that day, I was covered in sweat, he wanted some cuddles and is also moulting like crazy and I had to peel him off and take shower to get the fur off me, then he spent the night meeping, moving from bed to bed, wanting cuddles and nibbles and more attention so I got practically zero sleep and I really, really needed to get some last night.

Strutting around like Prince yesterday he was, of course.

Anyway...back in the room.

So some TW accept that they are biological males, but think that their 'woman gender' is more important, so they should have access to the female toilets?

I can appreciate the attempt to be nuanced, but when it comes right down to it a choice needs to be made: in the absence of a third space, which toilet should a TW use?
('Toilet' being shorthand in this discussion for all single-sex places and spaces).

If you believe that sex is real and immutable (I note you didn't say binary, though it is binary), TW have to use the male toilets. Some TW may take this position and be happy to do so, which is great. I would agree with this position: men can wear whatever they like, as long as they use the correct toilet .

I am not familiar with the names you posted. I prefer to think things through logically from first principles, so don't use real-person examples.

@RedToothBrush

The "men pretending to be women" phrase has really hit a nerve. In some contexts it's used with intent to demean. But it's also a phrase which is neutral and accurate.

Surely a truly neutral phrase would be "men claiming to be women". Also, that simple fact is all we can ever know from the outside.

That would be perhaps better yes.

I was responding in the simplest of terms to someone else, as i chose kindly refrain from nitpicking with me, because you cannot argue with the ghost.

The trouble with saying TW are TW as an intermediate position or attempt at neutrality or nuance, is that it is a meaningless tautology.
Saying 'bears are bears' doesn't tell anyone what bears actually are.

So you then have to define what a TW is, and you are back to square one. You have to pick a side, it is not possible to find an intermediate position.
The only alternative is to take no position and refuse to engage.

For info.

Debbie Hayton is the guy who got a rewrite of all schools guidance on toilets and changing rooms to allow himself access to female facilities and to allow boys access to girls facilities.

He is an Autogynephile, AGP for short.

He has never apologised or tried to get the rules rechanged back.

He got these rules changed in his union, hence why every union that is paid for mainly by women, now actively refuses to support any woman who is at risk of dismissal by caling men 'men'. Or complaining about one in their changing rooms.

He is no friend of women, or girls, no matter how many 'feminists' he tried to befriend.

He saw that the tides were starting to turn so got on a massive campaign to position himself as the Friendly AGP who knows he is a man.

He is and has been one of the worst devious people this whole disgusting ideology has facilitated.

You have to pick a side, it is not possible to find an intermediate position.
The only alternative is to take no position and refuse to engage.

Indeed. i asked @KinderOfKinder, who keeps berating us for holding an "extremist" position, to tell me what their "moderate" position was like, and they didn't answer.

Any adult who tries to conceal their sex is not good for society. It doesnt matter if they understand that they arent literally the opposite sex, by not being clear about their sex, they are creating safeguarding problems.

Its not about following rules about clothes, named or even behaviours. Lots of people don't.

Its the idea that they become something else. Anyone one who announces that the are trans and not the man or women they are anymore is a problem. Same with they/them pronouns.

Hayton has been discussed already. But white says hes a TW, thereby distancing himself from being a man.

I think its difficult for anyone to be trans and not create safeguarding problems. If a person acknowledges their sex, doesnt use false pronouns or id, what exactly is trans about them?

@Pingponghavoc I think its difficult for anyone to be trans and not create safeguarding problems. If a person acknowledges their sex, doesnt use false pronouns or id, what exactly is trans about them?

I think I agree with this. I don't want young girls to lose confidence in their ability to identify people's sex. @Seethlaw , do you think that there is a way to be trans without causing safeguarding issues?

Hmm, good question!

My instinctive reaction is that a trans person could use a new name, and that opposite-sex pronouns could be used for them, and it would be okay as long as everyone knew what sex they really are, and they used the right spaces for their sex.

But of course, the very use of that name and those pronouns, would mean that some people might not realise that the person is trans in the first place, which could easily lead to situations where someone takes a decision they would not have taken had they known the real sex of the trans person.

That's complicated! Off the top of my head, I can't think of a solution to accomodate both the need for safeguarding, and the trans person's desire to be treated as the opposite sex. Of course, this is exactly the kind of discussion that should have been had for 15 years at least, instead of trying to force the square trans peg into the round hole of society...

Mind you, a radical solution would be figuring out why the hell people are trans to begin with, and dealing with that problem in the first place! It would be better for society, and just as importantly, it would also be better for trans people, who wouldn't have to be split between what they are and what they want to be treated as. After all, if we're going to medicalise trans people, we might as well medicalise them for the right reason and with the right aims!

It literally says the opposite of your claim that I was saying all GC beliefs are X, like literally says the opposite and then you say you read it a bit both ways? Even though your claim was that it had various assertions that all GC beliefs are X. My post also didn't claim anywhere that GC views are cult like, it again said the opposite. Either you're not actually reading the words or reading in such bad faith you're reading points that weren't even there.

Brilliant analysis, long post well worth reading at 09.54 @RedToothBrush. Thank you.

Declaring my post "laughably bad" while admitting you hadn't even read the full context says more about your reaction than my post. You rushed to defend against a claim that wasn't in the text, arguing against single cult figurehead rather than digesting what was actually said. That kind of immediate, unread dismissal usually points to a grain of truth striking a nerve, cos I can't think why else you feel so confident to reply to a post you haven't read in full. High-control dynamics aren't an all-or-nothing checklist , they're an interconnected web of behaviors incl totalising mindsets, group enforced orthodoxy, in-group jargon, and the immediate rejection of nuance. I'm perfectly confident to have engaged in my reply if you'd actually done so, and yet I'm a bully because you wanna split hairs between didn't read and didn't read in full? Or to suggest that not reading a full post before forming a strong opinion against it is a lack of reading comprehension in practice. It's a lot of choosing to be offended rather than replying to any of my actual points.

These dynamics appear in plenty of other online spaces and algorithmic rabbit holes, including massively in trans spaces. It's a structural reality of digital echo chambers, not a unique attack on any core premise. Distorting the argument to brush it off isn't engaging in very good faith.

Enjoy your dinner!

Plenty of us who regularly use this forum care, because watching a space get dominated by unnuanced outrage can drive away reasonable people, destroy credibility and in a basic sense just make a lot of threads unreadable unless I wanna skip multiple pages of posters repeating the same question at a poster who has probably logged off to be in the real world for a few hours. The irony of your reply proves my exact point. The moment someone posts under a name change to offer a mild, constructive critique of bad internet behavior, the immediate reflex is to accuse them of being TRA-adjacent, a flat-earther, or an enemy in disguise. Declaring that only the opposition could possibly care about nuance or self-criticism is textbook HC behavior. Treating basic reflection as treason, is precisely how echo chambers isolate themselves.

@Dontmakemethinkofanotherbloodyusername

"Many many people don't believe it's possible to change sex and there is where GC beliefs are based on reality. However people who haven't gone down a time suck of internet forums, twitter etc aren't dogmatic that every trans person is AGP, that rapid onset gender dysphoria is catching, or that online extremists or TRAs represent every single person who holds different views on gender."

The implication of the "however.." here seemed to be that people who have gone into certain forums or twitter, i.e. a big chunk of GC people, do think these things and are dogmatic and cult like.

You had to replace my actual phrase a vocal subset in online spaces with your own "a big chunk of GC people" to reframe a point about internet echo chambers into something you could take offense to. The point stands as written, a vocal subset spending hours in algorithmic outrage loop can become far more dogmatic than the average person you meet off the internet. Pointing out that online forums can breed extreme, totalizing mindsets with certain trends is a basic observation of digital culture that applies across the entire political spectrum, not a smear of GC views.

Pointing out that online forums can breed extreme, totalizing mindsets with certain trends is a basic observation of digital culture that applies across the entire political spectrum, not a smear of GC views.

You are though are you not, specifically applying it to FWR users? Of which you are one, so applying it to yourself?

Thanks for confirming your motivation was as I suspected, the need to scold women for tone. Thanks for your concern about this space, which is as much mine as it is yours. Engage or don’t, but you don’t get to control how others do.

Also, people don’t write posts to make it easy for confused posters to read, they write them because they are engaging in discussion on a forum. It’s a talk board. Not a fucking seminar.

Yes, most forums do this, not just the feminist board of Mumsnet. So really what is your beef here?

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.