TBF, the very first time you hear someone say, out loud, bluntly and without apology ‘Transwomen are men’ it IS a bit shocking and it can take a while to properly calibrate it.
Which is testament to the successes of the transactivists over the last two decades.
The wheels are coming off the transbus now, of course.
I remember feeling shocked at the bluntness of women stating material reality when I first rocked up here, which was during my ‘OK, there is something really fucking weird happening with the trans movement but surely we can still find a compromise that works for for everyone?’ phase.
Once the the straight talking women of Mumsnet FWR had helped me to understand (and indeed, I saw for myself) that the current wave of trans rights activists will not accept compromises such as additional third spaces for sleeping/dressing/toileting etc and that when they say TWAW they mean it literally, not metaphorically or wistfully, and they intended to impose that falsehood onto us via policy, bureaucracy and eventually law…
… I stopped being such a pollyanna and worked on my own straight-talking skills!
It’s been interesting watching public profile men on a similar journey (women tend not to speak publicly until they are already very solid on the issue, for fairly obvious reasons), not just KK and FF of Triggerpod but also Douglas Murray, Brendan O’Neill et al.