Are We Being Played By The Patriarchy?

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"

I am not one for conspiracy theories.  I laugh at the flat earthers and shake my head in disbelief at the people who don't believe that we landed on the moon.  

But something has been rolling around in my head for some time now and it has been building up momentum.  So here is what I have been thinking.

In keeping with the quote above from The Usual Suspects, I am starting to think that the greatest trick the patriarchy have or will ever pull, is convincing people that men can become women.  Because it suits their agenda perfectly. 

I believe that the patriarchy is neither left nor right wing.  It exists at a higher level than politics.  The patriarchy is ingrained in the way that people think and what they believe.  It is a state of mind and is a set of beliefs that is not easily changed.  For some, that way of living is what they are brought up with and know.  They still live in it and some women, sadly, embrace it.  For others, that way of living is something that we fight against still.

No matter where you live in the world the patriarchy is there.  Sometimes out in plain sight, sometimes lurking in the shadows.  This can be when they are most dangerous.

So what is it that they want?  Ultimately, they want control of women.  Specifically taking control back.  They cannot (yet) take the vote away from us.  They cannot (yet) take us out of the workplace.  Society cannot function without two incomes in a household and they therefore pick their battles wisely.  Mothers for example are both encouraged to work but are also derided for leaving their child.

So what battles can they win?  What control can they take away from us?  The first answer is that it has already started.  You just haven't noticed.  If you have, chances are that you are gender critical.

Transgender women are a gift, perhaps the largest gift that the patriarchal system has received in a very long time.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels

Think about it.  I cannot think of another time in history where a minority has had such a quick rise to acceptance and normality.  Not just normality, for the first time, a taking over of one group's rights and taking them as their own.



Gender dysphoria is a real thing.  There have always been transgender people.  But what is happening today is not just about transgender people and their rights.  This is also about power.  Over the past few years this has no longer just been about acceptance of transgender people in society.  It is becoming a takeover.  Supported, I believe, massively, by the patriarchy.



In 2018 the UK government estimated that trans people made up between 0.35 and 1% of the population (source).  For those who say my source is biased, here is the Government link, page 82.  Stonewall's estimate is 1%.  So let's go for ease with 1%.  Around 600,000 people.



Of those 600,000 people, according again to Stonewall figures, less than 5000 people have the Gender Recognition certificate.  Less than 1%.  Three quarters of those people are transgender women.



According to statistics, only around 11% of trans women go on to have gender reassignment surgery and 12% of trans men.



So let's use those figures and compare.  Of the 600,000 people who identify as trans, using the top end figure, less than 1% go for the certificate.  11-12% of trans people have gender reassignment surgery.  So basically around 530,000 people of the trans group who neither apply for the GRC or go for surgery.



So please can someone explain to me why the Government, all of the political parties, the NHS, the left etc etc are going with the party line that trans women are women and visa versa?  Why are we being told that someone needs to do NOTHING MORE than identify as a woman in order to be one?



How did we get to a place where a bearded man in a skirt who claims he is a lesbian and is on zero medication, can be called a real actual woman?  How did we get to a place where lesbians are being called immoral bigots for not wanting to have sex with men with penises who decide they think like a woman and therefore "are women".  How did we get to a place where (some) men are advocating for this?  Who are threatening, doxing and harassing women who disagree (I'm looking at you woke bearded bros).



One of the answers for me is the patriarchy.  Trans people are benefiting from the aims and wants of the patriarchy.  They are the perfect vehicle to deny and take away the rights of women.

Just look at what women are losing.  Our changing rooms, our bathrooms, our refuges, our hospital wards, our prisons.  We are no longer being called women.  We are "non men", chestfeeders, front holes.  The consequences, vast and far reaching.



Because it is no longer real transexual people who can access these areas and places.  It is anyone who "identifies".  Woman are becoming less safe every day.



Trans rights activists did not achieve this on their own.  They did it, I believe, with the support of the patriarchal system that wants to roll back the rights of women and put us back in the home, in the kitchen, where they think we belong.



Prove me wrong.

Removing The Labels That Bind You

I took a long time to find my voice.  To become the having a thousand thoughts and opinions a day kind of person.  

Joining Twitter and starting to write my old blog were both an avenue and arena that I had never experienced before and were in part the catalyst for releasing my voice.  As a result, many thoughts and opinions began to form.  It took a bloody long while to get there, but one thing to know about me is that I can and never will be pushed.  I come to things in my own time.

When I finally found my voice, "the left" seemed to be a natural home for me.  I happily joined the camp of lefties and refused to listen to anyone with the slightest inclination of right leaning thought.  Feminism was another world where I felt at home.  Pro women, pro choice, an easy decision.

But what comes with finding your voice and having a thirst to learn more, is that you begin to question the worlds that you have chosen.  The boxes you have placed yourself in and the boxes that people have put you in.

If you had spoken to me in September last year, I would have described myself as a uber leftie.  An intersectional feminist.  Accepting of all.  The kool aid had been drunk and I was on the party message.

But then.   I began to question the rhetoric.  Ask questions.  Object.  Seeds of doubt about what I thought I believed were planted.



I wonder if Rachel McKinnon realises the amount of people that turned away from intersectionality as a result of them (yes I am being careful) winning that bike race.  The photograph of them standing on the top of the podium.  Clearly male bodied.  Clearly advantaged over the two women who came second and third.  That was the start.



From there, I was like Alice falling round the rabbit hole.  My fall was akin to falling off a cliff and while I grabbed at points of information along the way, by the time I found my feet again, I was a different person; again.



I became irritated by the left who seemed to be becoming more self righteous and controlling by the day.  As I have said in a previous blog post, the presumption of the public and the persona surrounding them has always been that the left are always on the moral side, the side of the people, the right side of history.  The right was always wrong.  So why did I become to feel so stifled?  So controlled?  Wasn't it the right that wanted to control us?



Feminism also began to irritate me.  Specifically the holier than thou way that some went about it.  I cared about women's safety, women's rights, not what a fucking sandwich was called or whether a man opened a door for me was a sign of the patriarchy.



I reached a point where I was no longer a leftie, I was a centrist.  I wasn't sure whether I was still a feminist.  I was gender critical.  That I was certain of.



So from last October when I first started to question everything to know, I was in a state of flux.  I became politically homeless as more and more parties swallowed and spouted out the line that trans women were women.  They are not.  They will never be.



I joined the club of being blocked by Owen Jones (we need a badge of pride I think at this point).



Whilst listening to and learning from many gender critical women, I was also told however that certain people within the movement were not to be listened to.  That they were extremists that would ally themselves to anyone.  But I wanted to listen and make up my own mind.



I was tired of the labels I had both chosen and had been given.  My voice was not being censored, but I was conscious that some of the things I thought were again, would not be acceptable.



I wanted so much to go to the Woman's Place meeting in London.  To see Sharron Davies who I think is fantastic and unafraid in what she says and thinks.  Unfortunately timing issues were not on my side.



But then I saw Make More Noise were holding an event in Manchester.  Talking about the elephant in the room of feminism.  What we did not talk about/enough.  Posie Parker was one of the speakers.  One of the people I had been told not to listen to.  But I wanted to make up my own damn mind.



I really enjoyed her speech.  I also loved the talk by Sarah Phillimore which I understood more from my line of work.



But I was scared to admit that I had attended a talk with Posie involved.  Then I got angry.  I am tired of limiting myself and my experiences.  Who I listen to.  What information I should take from people.



So today, I am removing my labels.  I am politically homeless. Not left, not right, not centrist.  I will viewpoints from all and discard what I don't agree with.  But only after I have listened.  Supporting women, their sex based rights and the rights to their own bodies will always be the line I will stand on.  But I'm taking off the word feminist too.



I am label free other than my biologically fact based description of being an adult human female.



I think I will end my (very long, sorry) blog post with a few things that I believe and all, are a hill I would stand up for and die on.

• Every person is entitled to the same human rights.  No person or group need or deserve more than that.  We don't (yet) live in the equivalent  of Animal Farm.


• Lesbians do not have penises.  


• Biological men do not belong in women's spaces.


• No one under the age of at least 18 should be on hormone altering medication or undergo gender altering surgery.  It is child abuse.


• The state should not be telling parents what sex their child is.


• If you think that you are circumgender trans, you need psychological help, not affirmation.


• If you believe that putting on a dress, having a beard and calling yourself a lesbian is right, again, you need psychological help, not affirmation.


• If you believe that a woman saying no is not allowed because it may hurt your chosen identity feelings, you can frankly, fuck off.

Think I had better stop here.  For now.  More posts to follow.  Thank you, if you got this far, for reading.

How Social Media Killed Innocence

I have heard it said, and in most parts it is true, that adults forget what it is like to be young.  That society moves on, technology evolves and teenagers grow more worldly by the hour. It isn't the same as in "your generation".



But while the generations before us have worried about bullying, underage sex, teenage pregnancies, getting drunk in the park and "falling in with the wrong crowd", the obstacles that teenagers face today can be far more dangerous.



I would not want to be a teenager today, particularly a teenage girl, if you paid me.

Image from Pexels

Let's focus for the subject matter of this conversation on 15/16 year old girls.

When I was this age, I was the chubby girl in high school, known for having large breasts.  That was my label.  Cones, the boys called me.  My best friend was naturally very slender and she had her own nickname, which isn't mine to share.

There was bullying, as goes on in every school in one form or another.  In my case, there was also sexual harassment, passed off by teachers as "boys will be boys, they have hormones" and "buy a bigger shirt Kitty".  But that is another story.  

Bullying when I was 15 was limited to school grounds and waiting outside at the bus stop.  It was not being invited to parties and being excluded from conversations.    You were made to be an outsider.  But, the bullying stopped when you entered your home. When you were not in the presence of your bullies, you had some respite.



Mobile phones for the mass market did not come along until around 5/6 years after I left school (this makes me sound 190 years old I realise).   Social media only really started to become popular when Facebook appeared and started to gain significant followers.



I for one am wholly grateful that my teenage years was pre social media.  Because I do not think I would have survived it.  I truly don't.  Because if you are bullied or fall out of favour, it never stops and there is no escape.



There is a clear parallel between the rise and popularity of social media and the rise of teenage depression and suicide.



It is more than just a coincidence that rates of depression in teenagers aged 14-17 has increased by more than 60% according to an American study. 

Unsplash image

These days I am addicted to Twitter, checking the site and messages many times a day, having continued and ever increasing conversations with many people.  There are internet trolls of course and people who can target you on your views, but the block button is your friend and you can remove yourself from conversations which give you stress or cause anxiety.



I regularly have anxiety and the fact that I can sign out, have a break and come back refreshed is something that I do regularly, though not as much as I should.



You do not get to do that as a teenager.  You lead as much of your life online as you do offline.  Probably more.



Telling a teenager to remove themselves from social media when they are being bullied or excluded is ridiculous.  It would take a very, very strong person not to want to know what their fellow pupils are saying about them and talking about them behind their back.



If you removed yourself from the multiple social media sites, many of which I probably haven't even heard of would only cause more bullying.  More worrying about what people are saying about you; and planning.



That is before you even consider what porn has done to teenagers.  With porn accessible with merely a click on the internet, the expectations of boys on teenager girls (not all boys, yes I know) are horrendous.



When I was that age, your first experiences of sex was generally two people who didn't really know what they were doing, but generally having a damn good time experimenting.  The thrill of an hour kissing session.  That look the first time your boyfriend felt/saw your breasts.  The first time of sex.



Now, teenage boys have had years to watch internet porn and their expectations of porn star women are projected on to their female peers.  Hairless vaginas, porn style blow jobs, anal sex.  The presumption that this is the norm.



The expectations on teenage girls to do and perform these acts is massive and peer pressure ways heavily.



While the internet and social media has given us many things, it has also taken away more.  A respite from bullying.  Safe spaces. Normal experimentation and most importantly, innocence.