Ninon
Your experience seems similar to mine - those of us who have beloved transfolk in our lives have taken longer to realise what’s been going on - I didn’t want to engage with any of it - even reading something gender critical made me feel like I was betraying people I care about.
Then my autistic son came home from 6th form saying he’d been called a bigot and a transphobe - he didn’t get why and was quite distressed. I was surprised because he’s been bought up in a pretty counter-culture environment and has no problem accepting difference. We are not a judgemental family (his favourite baby photo is him in the arms of Lemmy Kilmister) his ‘oh my god’ parents are lesbians. One of my (3rd) husband’s best friends is a transwoman. I live 5 doors away from my previous husband and his partner and my daughter, his half sister, subsequently has 4 parents at every school event. All 4 of those parents are completely tattooed. My son’s friends try and get invited over just so they can see his weirdo family.
I figured he must’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere, so I asked him to tell me what he’d actually said, whilst mentally preparing to give him the ‘sex and gender are different, sex is material and how mammals make babies, gender is a bunch of social constructs that society uses to keep people stuck in little boxes. Some people have a condition known as gender dysphoria and they find the best way of treating it is to take some of the stuff out of the boxes that society has designated for the opposite sex - some take medications and have surgeries to appear more like the opposite sex (y’know, like your stepdad’s friend Ms X) and we accept those people with kindness and don’t make a big deal about it etc etc’
Anyway, it turned out that his understanding of sex and gender was just like mine, and it was precisely that that had caused him to be ostracised as a ‘transphobe’.
So off I went, down the rabbit hole of the internet, where I discovered up was now down and Transwomen ARE biologically female and ladydick was now an actual thing...
And I felt like the guiltiest of shits because MY transfriends aren’t like that at all. But here I was, peaktransing whether I wanted to or not. And then the very same day that cancer research called me a ‘cervix haver’ I got a letter from the geneticists department saying the woman’s cancer that killed my mother was caused by a gene fault and it was 50/50 as to wether as to if I have it, depending on which of my mum’s 2 X chromosomes I got...
And then I went on twitter and saw a ‘non binary AFAB’ person say they would rather ‘die of cancer than be misgendered’.
And that’s when I made contact with radfems.
Since then, I’ve learned that many transsexuals are also anti self ID and opposed to the current trans ideology and some are speaking out and getting just as much shit for it as us (banned 4 letter acronym that denotes we should die in a fire) so I no longer feel like a guilty shit.
Right now we need to ensure that women and children are properly safeguarded and prevent loopholes that allow sex offenders like JB to get into damaging positions.
Once that’s done I will happily help campaign for more unisex facilities, better training for health care workers dealing with trans patients and appropriate elder care for trans seniors - y’know, the kind of stuff that trans people are currently being let down on.
If that makes me (and my autistic kid) transphobes, so be it.