all 33 comments

[–]BEB 32 insightful - 4 fun32 insightful - 3 fun33 insightful - 4 fun -  (4 children)

One reason is that the UK has national health care, whereas in the US we don't and the pharmaceutical lobby (not fondly referred to as Big Pharma) spends the most amount of any lobby on lobbying US politicians.

As a result, what Big Pharma wants, Big Pharma gets. And Big Pharma wants your kids, to turn into very profitable lifetime medical experiments under the guise of transitioning.

Also, in the US, there are only two parties. The Democrats, to which most liberal women belong, are all in on the transgender agenda, partially because of the $ from the Medical Industrial Complex (which includes Big Pharma) and partially because transgender activists very deliberately cemented themselves to gay rights back in the 1990s.

So the Democrats have been convinced that gay rights, which are now phenomenally popular among liberals - almost a religion at this point, are the same as trans activist demands.

And also because our media, except for conservative media, has been bought. Some of the mainstream media is owned by corporations with a direct financial interest in transitioning. Lefty media is receiving funds from organizations and foundations whose priority is trans activist demands.

Not only has our media been bought, but while we were sleeping, the trans lobby started pumping money into women and gay organizations like the National Organization for Women, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign and other liberal organizations like the ACLU and the NAACP (for Blacks).

The net result is, outside of conservatives ,mostly on the very Far Right, most Americans have no idea that the transgender agenda is being implemented from the local to the federal level until they themselves are impacted.

There is a media blackout, Democratic politicians frame trans agenda-friendly legislation as pro-LGBT, and the women's organization that should be pushing back have sold out.

So feminists in the US are shouting into the wind at women who can't hear because the gatekeepers have been bought by the transgender lobby. The only people who will help US feminists are conservatives, conservative politicians and conservative media.

And the US is a huge country, with an incredibly diverse population and physical distances that make it challenging for women to meet.

That's why when some of these UK feminists (just a few - most UK feminists are SUPERSTARS) take it upon themselves to criticize US feminists I wish they would stop. They have no idea what women in the US are up against and they are not helping American women with their carping.

[–]Huyhuy[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Oh thanks for such a detailed answer. That’s very depressing though. I suppose then American feminists just have to wait until trans activism goes more extreme and pervasive until most or even all American women are directly impacted by some of the trans activists agenda? That’ll take a while but....if Biden wins it should go faster.

[–]BEB 21 insightful - 3 fun21 insightful - 2 fun22 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

The pushback IMO has to come from LGB and it has to come from men. Because women in the US are not heard and women's issues are not prioritized - we still don't have an Equal Rights Amendment even though it was first introduced about a 1/4 of the way into the last century!

The Democrats use women and throw us out. The Republicans claim to care about family, but don't enact legislation to support women and children, so we are lost.

Conservatives are fighting the good fight, but it's going to take prominent liberal men, or maybe a liberal woman with the status of JK Rowling, speaking out, to give cover to the rest of us (well, the few who know what's going on) to speak out too.

[–]sisterinsomnia 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The trans activists know that the pushback would come from men. That's why we don't read about 'ejaculators' or about 'prostate-havers'. The male biological sex is left alone. There are no groups calling themselves mxn, to be inclusive.

[–]BEB 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Gay men are starting to be approached by TiFs on dating apps and they are not happy about it. Some of them kind of deserve it for deserting lesbians after lesbians were some of the only people who would help gay men during the AIDs crisis.

[–]BEB 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I just want to add (as if I haven't already said way too much ;-) that in the US there's a good chance we lose our health insurance, and our family's health insurance, if we lose our jobs, so that's another reason why US women aren't speaking out as much.

That and that only a few hundred thousand American women know that women's rights, etc., are under attack, and most of those are conservative.

[–]Huyhuy[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh, good point. Lose your job, lose your life.

[–]CastleHoward 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm an American immigrant to the UK so I know a lot of people from both countries. From what I see women in the US have forgotten life before fear. UK are not going to participate in this nonsense. They tried to be nice and it didn't work. My family and friends back home are horrified by my statements of truth. They haven't seen a woman like me in years. I randomly email updates on my slightly successful campaign to get men out of women's sports. And then I call them and ask "What did you think of that?" I want one of them to say it to my face but they won't. Apparently, it's complicated. Very very complicated.

[–]BEB 20 insightful - 1 fun20 insightful - 0 fun21 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

For the last ten or so years, US airwaves and entertainment have been saturated with pro-Trans propaganda. From chat shows like THE VIEW and GOOD MORNING AMERICA to movies like Trans America and TV shows like TRANSPARENT - we are relentlessly pushed to normalize TiMs. So even those Americans who are uneasy or baffled by gender ideology feel as if they are the freaks and everyone else gets it, so they're too embarressed (sp?) to speak out.

Trans activists take trans kids into schools - they have yearly "I AM JAZZ" readings to kindergartners to 5th graders, also churches and politicians' offices. They have sympathetic TiMs go into corporations and speak under the whole diversity push.

Trans, Inc, has been running a massively well-funded propaganda campaign in the US for years now. So again, those who are uneasy are probably afraid or embaressed to speak out.

Also, Americans have guns and trans activists make very violent threats directed towards women who do speak out. I think that's another factor.

[–]CastleHoward 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I left America in 2006. It's crazy watching this from the outside. I didn't know all of that. No wonder everyone is so horrified by my truth telling. They are shocked when I say Transwomen aren't actually women. My sister is having an epic internal battle because she knows she's supposed to cut me off but she still wants to know me.

[–]BEB 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wow- that is crazy that your sister might cut you off. That is so sad. I hope you work it out. I think that as it becomes known that these aren't mostly harmless, castrated, gay men we're talking about, women's eyes will open. So I have hope that your sister will see the light. Maybe drop it for now and let her come to her own conclusions as she learns the truth?

Most women I know (granted they're older) are slightly baffled by TWAW, but aren't committed to it at all and are completely open to reason. When I explain it to them, they get it. I hope that you and your sister can maintain your relationship until she wakes up!

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Many factors have been involved. Or that's how it seems to me as a close observer of what's happened in the UK.

But one thing you've got to keep in mind is how much smaller in population and land mass, and how much more centralized, the UK is compared to the USA.

The UK consists only of four countries - England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - compared to the US with 50 states and several more territories. There are eleven different individual states in the US that are bigger than the entire UK; Texas alone is three times larger than the whole UK.

Moreover, in the USA many of the issues that transgenderism raises are decided by the governments of each state or by the individual municipalities within the states, as well as by local school boards and districts. Whereas in the UK, many of these matters are decided by the governments of the four nations, or by the UK government for all.

Below I'll highlight some of the factors I think that has caused the UK in recent years to develop a much more vocal and successful push back against gender ideology and the current trans craze than we have in the USA so far. I don't have time to explain them all, so at the end I just give some headings. Don't have time to proofread this either ATM, so caveats about typos and mangled wording.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Factor One: The UK's 2004 Gender Recognition Act and The Campaign to Change to It

The UK has a law passed in 2004 called the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) that allowed people to change their "legal sex" by apply for and obtaining a new document called a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

The GRC is a very flawed, sexist and male-supremacist document. For example, it says that anyone who obtains a GRC has the "legal sex" of the opposite sex "for all purposes" - yet it created loopholes saying that religious institutions that allow only males to be clergy can still bar women who become TIFs from the clergy; that male-only orgs like the Masons could still bar women who become TIFs from membership. And most tellingly, it said that women who become "transmen" cannot get either the inherited titles or fortunes that in British law and tradition have always gone to the first-born male of a family under the longstanding practice of primogeniture.

Over the years, women began to take notice of the blatant sex discrimination against females in the GRA.

At the same time over the years, trans activists got peeved that a certificate was required to change legal sex in the UK. They wanted people to be able to change their legal sex simply by making a declaration. They wanted no government "gatekeeping." So they mounted a huge campaign for "self ID" of sex.

The campaigning of activists was so successful that in October 2017 then-PM Theresa May announced that her Tory government was going to recommend changing the GRA to make obtaining a GRC cheaper, easier and faster - basically making self ID of one's sex the law of the land. The Tories thought this was a slam-dunk, and they'd be able to get it through without anyone paying much notice.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/18/theresa-may-plans-to-let-people-change-gender-without-medical-checks

But in the UK, before the government or Parliament can make changes to a law, the public gets to put its two cents in. In 2018, the government launched a formal "public consultation" on their proposed changes to the GRA.

Much to the government's surprise, women took notice and began looking into the proposed changes, as well as at the original GRA, and found lots of ways in which both the original bill and the proposed revisions threatened girls and women's rights - and myriad ways that both the GRA and its reforms conflicted with the sex-based provisions and protections enshrined in the UK's Equality Act of 2010.

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Factor Two: Mumsnet

The UK has one of the few female-dominated social media platforms in the world, Mumsnet. And it has a very popular board devoted to Feminism and Women's Rights (FWR) where intelligent feminism of the second-wave sort is robustly debated and very much alive.

The feminism of FWR is not Jameela Jamil and Ash Sakar "liberal feminism" that promotes prostitution and other forms of "sex work" as "empowering" or says that that feminism must include and center TIMs the way "woke" faux feminism does.

What's more, the women who make up the bulk of Mumsnet users are not kids like the ones who dominate on Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok... Mumsnet has many middle-aged and older members with lots of life experience under their belts. Many are mothers who signed up years ago for support with issues like pregnancy and child care, and ended up staying for the feminism.

Many of the FWR users are also highly intelligent women who really know their stuff in a wide variety of fields, from medicine to teaching to philosophy to law to psychology to cults to coercive control to prison policies... and so on. Many have been politically active for years.

But women didn't just start discussing the GRA on Mumsnet. They also started gathering IRL to discuss the changes to the GRA, and the GRA itself. Within a month after Theresa May made her announcement in 2017, women were holding meetings such as "We need to talk about the GRA" held in York in November 2017.

The women who spoke out on this issue were erudite and reasonable:

https://youtu.be/y2IUmC61nR0

At the same time, women concerned about the transing of children were getting organized too. Transgender Trend was founded, and Lily Maynard began writing a very influential blog.

On YouTube, Magdelene Berns' excellent, very trenchant and funny, videos on the topic that she started making in 2016 began garnering attention. Here's one she did on Alex Drummond, a bearded man who says he's "expanding the band with of what it means to be a woman" and is an advisor to Stonewall who goes in to schools to tell children that he's a lesbian:

https://youtu.be/y2IUmC61nR0

More on the RL organizing below.

Factor Three: Safeguarding

I can't go into this in depth here, but over the years - and especially in the wake of a lot of child sex abuse scandals like the cases of Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter, as well as the "grooming gang" scandals in numerous UK cities - the UK has developed a sophisticated philosophical system and practical framework meant to protect children and vulnerable adults from predation and abuse. Women in fields like social work, education, law, criminal justice, psychology etc as well as women who are carers for children and the vulnerable are the leaders in safeguarding - and most women, especially those involved in the care of the young, disabled and elderly, are quite big on safeguarding.

Factor Four: The Antics and Demands of Transactivists"

Meanwhile, over the years, many TRAs - especially males ones - in the UK have become very prominent, been appointed to influential positions and gotten lots of attention in the press, and from political parties as well.

But the more the demands and behaviors of prominent UK trans activists came to light, the more women and some men could see there were some huge problems with what these men were saying and doing.

I suggest you do a search of the following "transwomen" whose activities have gotten tons of attention in the UK, none of which has helped women feel more comfortable about allowing such men into female-only spaces and being forced to respect and refer to them as women:

Lily Madigan, Jess Bradley, Amy Challenor, Jane Fae, Munroe Bergdorf, Karen White, Cathy Brennan, Tiffany Scott, Stephanie Hayden.. There are many more.

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Factor Five: UK Women Got Organized Offline and Started Campaigning in Real Life

During the consultation period on the proposed changes to the GRA, women began forming organizations to bring attention to the issues around the GRA and transgenderism and women's and girls' rights more generally.

Women's Place UK, Fair Play for Women, Standing for Women are just three of the new groups that began to spring up. These groups did enormous amounts of research and gathering of evidence in a very short time. And eventually, they got a tiny toehold in the spotlight and their message began to get out.

But funny thing was, whenever UK women tried to meet IRL to discuss the issues, trans activists time and again got their venues cancelled. When women did manage to find venues, activists showed up time and again to scream, shout and harass them in order to try to get the women to shut up.

All this harassment worked against the activists, coz it made them look like aggressive male bullies.

One pivotal moment occurred in Hyde Park in 2017 when a group of women met to go to an undisclosed location to discuss the GRA and women's rights. Male transactivists assaulted one of these women, 60 year-old Maria MacLachlan. The assault was caught on videotape.

When Maria M's assailant, a 26 year-old young man who studies martial arts and goes by the name Tara Flik Wolf, was prosecuted in court, the judge told Maria M she would have to refer to this young thug with the pronouns "she" and "her."

https://www.peaktrans.org/when-vicious-entitled-thugs-attack-i-fight-back/

Factor Six: The Role of the UK Press

Feminist journalists and writers for years had been covering trans-related issues from a feminist perspective: Germaine Greer, Sarah Ditun, Julie Bindel, Julie Burchill, Julian Vigo, Joani Walsh, and others.

Although most of the press in the UK was and still is gung-ho pro trans, over the years stories about what was going on in the UK that did not reflect began to be published in other major news outlets such as The Spectator, The Times (of London), and Spiked.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Factor Seven: The Trans Takeover of Stonewall & Other Lobbying Groups and Charities

Factor Eight: Mermaids & The Tavistock Clinic: Creating, Stunting & Sterilizing of "Trans Kids"

Factor Nine: Lawsuits Filed By UK Transactivists Against Those Who Don't Buy Into Trans Ideology - Including A Trans Person Being Sued by Someone Not Trans for "Misgendering"

Factor Ten: The UK Response to TIMs in Women's Sports

Factor Eleven: Parents Begin to Notice Efforts to "Queer The Classroom" & Indoctrinate Kids into Gender Ideology, Including Telling Them That If They Don't Conform to Strict, Regressive Sex Stereotypes They Were Probably "Born In The Wrong Body"

Factor Twelve: The Assault on Free Speech in the UK - The Capture of the Police by Gender Ideologists. UK Police in Some Areas Start Going After Citizens for "Misgendering" or Saying Things Online & IRL That Might "Cause Offence" to Someone Trans.

Kate Scottow is arrested in her home, taken to jail and put in a cell for saying some not nice things to a TIM with some legal training who has a habit of suing and harassing people who say things he doesn't like.

Harry Miller Gets Called Up by the police and lectured for wrongthink after he liked a poem on Twitter; he gets a police record for "non-crime hate. Meanwhile the Crown Prosecution Service tries & convicts an autistic young man who wondered aloud in earshot of a transitioning female community police officer whether she was a boy or a girl.

Factor Thirteen: Except for the Tories, All Political Parties - Labour, the LibDems, the Greens, The SNP - Turn Their Back on Women and Advocate Putting Male Rapists In Prison With Women If The Rapists Say They Have a Female Gender Identity

[–]Huyhuy[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wow thanks so much for the lengthy and detailed reply! I did not know most of that stuff.

But with regards to factor 3, I don’t understand why more women working in those fields in the US don’t have a bigger problem with this and why they are not speaking up more.

And with the last comment we have all those factors here too - people saying that “oh you don’t conform to stereotypical sexist gender roles, you must be trans” and the assault on free speech, males participating in women’s sports, trans activists that make themselves look pretty bad here, and assault of transwomen on women and people demanding women call their male assailants “she” and “her.” Still, all is quiet on the western front. Eerily so.

I wish we had a mumsnet. A few weeks of arguing with twelve year olds on twitter was enough for me.

I need to find some real life stuff to do about this. I live in the south though so stuff is very anti feminist here. (They also don’t tolerate trans ludicrousness as much I guess either; so less of a real life impact too.)

[–]MonstrousRegiment 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Fantastic summary, thank you! I've been watching too via Mumsnet and if I were going to boil it down even further (waaaaay over-simplifying), I'd probably say Big Factor One is political centralization and Big Factor Two is the way British women seem to value blunt opposition over playing nice (I could be dead wrong on this, so correct me if you think it's dumb, Brits).

[–]ArthnoldManacatsaman 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Firstly, I agree with everything /u/BEB has said but I'll offer an across-the-pond perspective. Just to clarify, all opinions are my own, I don't claim to speak for Britain as a whole, and I mean no disrespect to Americans.

The healthcare is a big one that I think needs expanding upon. In the UK (although this trend is increasingly changing for the worse) we don't have as transactional a view of healthcare as I'm led to believe exists in the US. US doctors are essentially service providers, like Amazon or Walmart. You go to the doctor because you want a prescription for prozac / to become a woman / another prescription for opiates, and hey, since you're paying for this out of your own pocket, you, the customer, should get what you want, right?

Wrong. Since most healthcare here is free at the point of use you don't feel like a customer. Doctors aren't syringes for hire, they're highly trained professionals who are (ostensibly) there to get you healthy again, not line their own pockets, or anybody else's. However UK healthcare is becoming increasingly Americanised in recent years.

Secondly, and I'm just speaking from personal experience here, but almost the entire 'woke' thing is an American phenomenon that has spread outside the USA. Many (mostly older, mostly more conservative) British people have a healthy suspicion of 'American' customs and trends, especially ones like Trans Inc. which seem to run counter to common sense if given a few minutes of thought.

Black Friday, for instance, is another American import that doesn't really belong in the UK. The Friday after thanksgiving is only a thing if you actually have thanksgiving, otherwise, like Love Day, it is another cynical money-making gimmick. Though, this is true for Black Friday in the US as well.

Another thing to bear in mind is that Britain has had two female heads of government in the last ~30 years, and female heads of state on and off for centuries. While the monarch (now, at least) must remain politically neutral, it is worth remembering that, for large periods of history within living memory, the most powerful people in the country have been women. This isn't to say that all women are sensible in the face of gender nonsense, we know that's not true, but I think it's done something to the national consciousness that means certain women - like the prime minister - have to be listened to, whether you like them or not.

This isn't the case in the US. The US is and always has been a country run by men. When Hilary Clinton was in the presidential race in 2016 there was a certain amount of unironic asking of questions like 'Is America ready for a female president?' - the kind of headlines that would seem ~40 years out of date in the UK.

TL;DR though, I don't think it's necessarily UK women shouting louder than their American sisters, it's the UK public being less willing to put up with bullshit. Again, though, the 'American' predilection for ultra-progressive nonsense is spreading to the UK, especially among a younger generation.

[–]BEB 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I HATE the American influence on the rest of the world and am ashamed that Black Friday, that ode to crass consumerism, has been exported. And it does strike me as absurd since you don't have Thanksgiving. Which is, BTW, the BEST holiday one could ask for - no obligation to go to church, tons of food, family and friends - you should have imported Thanksgiving rather than Black Friday.

A lot of Americans, in the Red States especially, are not WOKE and deeply suspicious of it, which is one of the reasons we have Trump. And now the Intellectual Dark Web has sprung up, so a lot of liberals are pushing back on WOKE too. I think it's a load of nonsense, but I'm too old for Post-Modernism and Queer Theory.

Regarding women leaders, what people outside the US don't understand is that there is a very deep strain of sexism here, aided and abetted by both parties, but traditionally the domain of the Republicans. Which is why it's so ironic that it's the Democrats who are on track to erase women first.

A lot of people have company-subsidized health insurance in the US, but, in my own experience, even then you're paying through the teeth and usually have to pay a deductible before it kicks in. So, unless we bought a platinum plan through our company, and are therefore spending $$$ a month up front, we don't tend to go to the doctor on a whim, at least not anymore. And then an enormous amount of Americans are uninsured or under-insured, so don't go to the doctor unless it's an emergency, which is why they sometimes have to use the emergency room as primary care.

We have a craptastic healthcare system. And we are lied to about the effectiveness of "socialized" medicine in Europe. Why? Again, look at the lobbyists buying our politicians.

And again, Trump, even though he's a New York liberal masquerading as a conservative, was a reaction to WOKE. The Democrats have abandoned the working class in favor of WOKE so Trump and the GOP saw the opportunity and took it.

Most Democratic women are just too busy to do more than glance at the issues - they trust the party to have their back - so the Equality Act, if it's talked about at all, is couched in terms of LGBT rights, and Harris, Warren, H. Clinton, Feinstein, Pelosi, are all enthusiastically for it - so, being good little lifelong liberals, Democratic women assume it's good public policy.

I think if the Equality Act passes, it's going to still take a few years for a backlash, and again, it's going to have to be a very prominent and untouchable woman - like one of these young hip hop stars, or some very popular LGBT-ish male celebrity, speaking out, that will then give cover for young people to speak out, which will eventually cause a course correction.

But this is the US: if the Equality Act (or the Republican's Fairness For All ACT)is made into law, it's going to take a huge amount of money and effort to reverse it.

Which is why Americans need to speak out now.

[–]Huyhuy[S] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Well American health insurance now pays for much of transitioning medical costs from puberty blockers to surgeries - but they still don’t pay for breast implants following mastectomies for breast cancer patients. So even with our crappy health care system, trans activism has been more successful in getting trans people’s health costs paid for than feminism has ever been for women.

[–]BEB 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I know. It's crazy.

I had to jump through hoops with good insurance to get a test my doctor said was urgent (a woman's issue, of course) yet men who claim to have a disconnect between mind and body get to saunter in and get cosmetic surgery on demand.

[–]slushpilot 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

There are a lot of very good points here. I think another important one is around political sides & social pressure. With only 2 parties to choose from, the US is very obviously polarized and people feel like they have to show allegiance to their political tribe.

As a former American president once said, "you're either with us or against us"... Personally I'm very skeptical of that way of thinking—as if one's own side couldn't always benefit from some criticism!

So it seems having a nuanced view is not admissible. You wouldn't want to be "right wing" by disagreeing on one point of the platform.

[–]Huyhuy[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

And that’s exactly what happens - well, I’m called a transphobe and a “transmisogynist” (big LOL on that one) but then also assumed to be conservative and not liberal. Then on the other hand our conservatives here are certainly not on the side of women - even our right to an abortion is on the table for removal now (after decades of being whittled away little by little.)

[–]shveya 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The "transmisogynist" always makes me laugh too. It's always actual women they're accusing of misogyny against them, and it's always for something like casually disagreeing with one of their opinions. They often accuse us of "speaking over them" for the same petty reasons. As if they'll ever know what it is to be spoken over.

[–]BEB 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

While the Republicans have their own Equality Act (the Fairness For All Act) already in the US House, on the issue of women's sports, women's privacy and safety, free speech around this issue, and the transitioning of children, the Republicans for the most part are on our side, at least for now.

I don't know how much traction the Republican Fairness For All Act is going to get, but Republican women are very effective organizers - they make up most of the numbers in terms of push back against the Equality Act - so I think that if Republican women stand strong, their party leaders might back down on the Fairness For All Act. MIGHT.

The GOP hate women, and Big Pharma spends the most lobbying dollars of any lobby, so whether the Republicans continue to push back against Trans, Inc., is a very big MAYBE.

[–]FlickingMarvellous 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Lots of good answers here, I’d also add (from a UK perspective) that it’s a bandwidth issue. In the US, there are a lot of ongoing battles (maternal health care access, abortion/contraception access, parental leave) that are done deals in the UK, so women in the UK have far more bandwidth to spare for trans-related issues.

[–]BEB 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Very true.

But again, here in the US, Trans, Inc., has passed laws in almost complete media silence, except for conservative press, so most American women don't even know this attack on our rights is happening and won't until it's too late.

[–]PassionateIntensity 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Long established working-class politics imo. Feminists and labour unions are very organized in the UK, like the US isn't. I think most American women would agree with GC points if made aware, but most of them don't know what's going on and there's no grass roots bottom-up organizing. Just top-down billionaire charities setting policies (made by trans lobby groups, for money).

[–]BEB 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Another factor could be that Queer Theory started in the US, and was implemented in academia earlier here than anywhere else, so the young US women who would have been 2nd Wave feminists in my time are now Lib/Fun/Pick Me feminists and are so indoctrinated that they don't know what true feminism is.

[–]sisterinsomnia 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One small aspect of this is that in the UK the debate began earlier because of the proposal to go for self-declaration of gender with zero safeguards around it. In the US everything has happened in the shadows. It took me some time to realise how much has been changed when nobody was watching.

I hope that the US can catch up on that needed open debate, but right now people are being pilloried for saying anything at all.

[–]BEB 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The gender lobby has very deliberately kept their lobbying in the shadows - this was their plan. They know how unpopular their demands are so they get them passed, under the aegis of lgbTQ rights, before the public know they exist.

In the US, self-ID and gender identity conversion ban laws have been passed on the state level with just about no one knowing.

And, as I've said, no one in my real life has heard of the Equality Act, much less know its horrific implications for women and gay men.

[–]Carthimundia 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think it’s because U.K. feminism is very different from USA feminism. The U.K. has a deeply ingrained class system and so U.K. feminists are used to organising along class based lines. This means they are used to campaigning on behalf of distinct groups as opposed to just for individuals. I think USA feminism has become far more atomised and individualistic - it’s all about empowerment for individuals and what can feminism do for “you” as opposed to what can feminism do for women as a class.