How did people start to believe in this trans stuff?

Denton’s document

as outlined in above article, you’re spot on @DizzyRascal

Interesting discussion ( not read all pages yet).
I have wondered a lot about this OP. I have noted that most of the people I know who buy into it all ( or have- some seem to be starting to question...) are public sector workers and it's just pushed all the time by our establishment. So, civil service, police, teaching, NHS etc.
Thinking about why the trans nonsense has been so comprehensively woven into the culture of all the establishments and I have come to the conclusion that there has been a massive, behind the scenes effort by high-up people, people in positions of great influence, to make it happen.
Money and political power are usually the reasons the men at the top push any kind of agenda. In 17th century men began to realise that medicine and childbirth could be properly monetised ( these were areas traditionally run by women). Subsequently, witch mania ensued (lots of "witches" were midwives) and men could take over. Many early computer programmers were women. Money to be made? Oh no! Women are no good with computers- back in the kitchen with them. See also early film directors.
I don't think trans mania is an accident, and if women get chucked under the bus, and child safeguarding is destroyed, well that's an added bonus for those orchestrating it.
Going back to the believers, they also tend to be the sort of people who innately trust in these establishments, whereas my innate distrust of authority has spared me.

You can't deny male advantage in sports, so the only possible defence I can see is, "inclusivity matters more than fairness".

But women's sports exist for the very purpose to be exclusive of male biology, so it's strange to start demanding its inclusion.

I have come in conflict with people who have permitted and actively encouraged the participation of self-IDing transwomen in a women's competitive team contact sport, to the extent I've now been banned from that league. What I would desperately love to ask them, is whether either they don't believe male advantage exists (they're not even asking for testosterone suppression) or they don't think it matters. The whole thing is baffling.

😁

Says the poster who can't comprehend that the phrase least dangerous doesn't mean not dangerous at all.

Ha - just googled the reference. Yeah, my point definitley still stands! 😂

Oh did I miss a joke/reference/the point? Please do explain it to me. I don't mind being corrected and I don't want to miss a good observation and/or inadvertently misreprent you.

(My point about love vs worship is still a good one which stands in general, though, even if that's not actually what you were referring to in your post).

Whooooooosh.....

Do you think self worship and self love are the same thing?

I think self worship blocks people from genuine self love.

Genuine love, whether for yourself or someone else, requires seeing the person clearly, accepting who they are, flaws and all.

Worship isn't the same thing at all. Worship is unbalanced, it's someone on a pedestal and someone below.

Putting oneself on a pedestal for worship - well I'm not even sure how that works, but not in any healthy way. I think one would have to create an ideal/fantasy version of oneself that is worthy of worship. But that's not true self-acceptance, because it's not the person as they actually are. So there probably ends up being a schism / unconscious tension between the ideal version of oneself one worships and the underlying knowledge of who one really is.

If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?!
Can I get an amen
❤😁

It is the worship of self.

What Gaspode said, in spades.

Gosh, yes. This is a very interesting thread and what I'm about to say it trivial, but your post made me remember a phone call years ago from a young woman who wanted to apply for the postgrad course for which I was the administrator. From our short chat it was clear she didn't have the right qualifications and/or experience so there really was no point in wasting everybody's time by applying, but when I said this, as tactfully as possible, she responded by saying 'Pleeeaase! Pleeeeaase!' over and over again. It was bizarre, the sort of thing an annoying little kid says in the hope of wearing down a frazzled adult. She seemed really nonplussed when it didn't work on me. We got lots of enquiries and applications from people who seemed to think passion and a 'journey' would carry equal weight with years of relevant work and volunteering experience plus really strong academic qualifications in a relevant subject.

I'm all in favour of building up self-esteem and confidence, but there are limits. It's not kind or sensible to make a child think they can do anything. Really important to work on resilience so they can cope with the inevitable knocks and failures.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn

Amazing post - both pertinent and fascinating.

I'd seen the flaws in the "plenty of cultures recognise trans people" from the "yeah but not as actually the opposite sex" perspective, but hadn't connected it with the need to stabilise the inherently unstable structures of a society based on rigid sex roles.

Thank you for that insight.

Absolutely this.

It is long past the time that this most vulnerable, marginalised, oppressed lie is shown for the falsehood it is.

Yes and people do openly challenge, question and clearly disprove it now. But it's going to take time for a lot of people to get it. You still see politicians and celebs spouting this line, almost word for word from all of them, because they have been told it by charities and lobby groups and they think they're doing good by repeating it - they don't stop to think whether it's true. Maybe that's because there has been this (not unreasonable) move in recent times to include people with particular conditions or in particular groups in policy-making, and hear from them, and that's been done in good faith. When gay people or disabled people or ND people and so on are invited to give their POV on policy, you'd expect them to be honest and genuine - why wouldn't they?

So the same thing happened with the gender movement - but it's a very complex issue with some very dodgy agendas affiliated, and involving social contagion in young people who don't actually always know what's best for them, and irreversible harms, based on a fundamental illogical impossibility and lack of clear definition. It's very different, but it's being treated as if it's the same and no one must ever doubt what they say.

And believing they were being a helpful ally to the most oppressed and marginalised group in the world because they were told that - and why would that poor oppressed group lie?

It is long past the time that this most vulnerable, marginalised, oppressed lie is shown for the falsehood it is.

Later of course I realised the obvious - how can someone know what it means to be a sex that they are not?

I remember thinking about this when the whole thing took off about 8 years ago. There were bbc news articles about trans children going to school as the opposite sex (it was one about a male child that I remember most clearly), and about older men coming out as trans and their family having to adjust (while focusing on the stunning bravery of the male of course). One of the tropes was always that the person didn’t just want to be the opposite sex, they actually WERE a woman/girl and this was at the heart of why it must be accepted and celebrated. It was being pushed as an actual truth that a trans person simply is the opposite sex from what they are in some mystical yet absolute way, because that’s how they feel.

I realised that I had always accepted that narrative on some level. As a tall, gender non-conforming tomboy esp when younger, I had sometimes had moments of “what if I’m meant to be/“am” a man?” - I didn’t want that because I didn’t like the idea of trying to present as a convincing man, but somehow that concept was in there and I accepted the idea of essentially being “born in the wrong body” - without thinking of it in those terms.

The trans movement and discussions on here made me really think about it and when I did that I realised no one can “feel like” or inherently “be” the sex they are not, because sex is physical and no man can understand my experience of my female body. I also felt annoyed by how being trans actually appeared to involve embracing a bunch of stereotypes associated with the opposite sex - stereotypes I rejected anyway.

but I’m a critical thinker and I’ve never been a herd follower. I can totally see how someone could have started out accepting the narrative as I did, then squashing down any doubts for fear of being bigoted, especially when it was presented as being just like being gay. And believing they were being a helpful ally to the most oppressed and marginalised group in the world because they were told that - and why would that poor oppressed group lie? Then it becomes a thing of holding onto your place on the moral high ground by proclaiming your allyship and denouncing people who disagree, who’ve you’ve been told are hateful bigots - and they must be, because why else would they not support the most oppressed and marginalised group in the world … and so on. I can see how it happened.

Interesting question OP. I think another factor is the growing emphasis over the last decade or so on the (wrong!) idea that anyone can be whatever they want to be, if they just try hard enough and believe in themselves more. The type of thing you see on tv reality shows where someone reckons they deserve to be the next Beyoncé because they’re ‘passionate’ and it ‘means so much to them’. Despite the fact they’re an average singer with zero charisma.

And so this idea what if you really really want something you can get it, and are entitled to it (regardless of factors such as lack of talent or, you know, basic biology) has become part of our culture. And so if a man really really wants to be a woman and is ‘passionate’ about it…

Yes.

As I said upthread. It was a great moment when the Samoan PM reminded everyone that Samoan faʻafafine were male and were always male.

Exactly! It's a nonsense argument - in cultures that have additional 'genders' they're people who are pushed out of their own sex class, not into the other.

It is a very interesting cultural phenomenon, but in no way relevant to the TWAW argument (or at least not in support of it).

And a closer look at the details undermines the argument further. 'Additional genders' tend to occur in very sexist societies - as a solution to pracctical or social problems caused by the rigid sex divide, they usually apply only to 1 sex, and they have very different effects on the status of people in that category depending on their sex. Men in third gender categories are usually lower status than 'proper men'; women in third gender categories are on the whole permitted more social and legal freedoms than other women but arent necessarily of higher status - and are still always lower than men.

Afghanistan - bacha posh. Women were (and now are again) no allowed to do anything. Couldn't work. Couldn't leave the house unaccompanied. So a widowed or deserted mother with only daughters would starve. Solution - allow one of the girl children to be a pretend man to support the family, accompany the women when they need to leave the house etc. A strictly temporary arrangement arising from circumstances rather than identity. It lasts only until puberty, at which point she reverts to being a woman and will be be married off to a real man who takes over the role of provider.

Albania - women couldn't inherit property. Families with no sons died out and socially disruptive squabbling over inheritance ensued. Solution - in a family withoit sons a daughter could become a pseudo man (subject to various restrictions and an outcastsl status) to keep things going for 1 more generation in the hope that a nephew or great nephew could take over eventually. Burrnesha can own property and gain some of the privileges of men; but they aren't equal to men and they have to renounce the 'privileges' of women. Can't marry, can't have children, can't really socialise with anyone apart from other burrnesha.

Hawaai - the religion has godesses, no women are allowed in temples, so Māhū are allowed to represent the godess. Them not being women is the whole point.

India's Hijra - gay and effeminate men reviled and pushed out of society, outcasts in a system where caste really means something. Scraping a living as beggars and prostitutes.

Samoan faʻafafine are probably one of the nearest examples to the current western understanding of trans. They are widely accepted by society, not of lower staus (can inherit titles and become chiefs). They are men who take a female role in a deeply sex-divided society. But nobody thinks they're Actual Women. And making them into a separate category rather than simply letting men-as-men do 'women's things' again proves it's not an acceptance of any sort of gender fluidity or sex equality. They may be accepted, but they are still othered

To answer your other questions to me, OP, I can only say that I never understood that. I did read some of the articles that people wrote trying to explain why you could be transgender but not transracial (with an open mind, really wanting to see what I was missing) and to be honest they pushed me further away from the ideology because they were absolute cobblers.

I gradually came to see that the confusing nature of it all was a feature not a bug. It's presented as unknowable, which in a way makes sense, how could I know what it means to be transgender if I'm not? (Later of course I realised the obvious - how can someone know what it means to be a sex that they are not?) To be a good believer, you have to listen to the priests and accept that they are privy to mystic knowledge that you cannot access. They understand it but you never will, all you can do is accept what you're told without question and "believe people when they tell you who they are".

The final straw for me was when I saw a man being counted as a woman in a discussion about representation of the sexes on a local political committee. Not even such a major thing but suddenly I just realised that a parliament that was 100% male could theoretically be counted as 50% women under this ideology. It all fell away very quickly after that, when I actually let myself think about it all honestly without censoring myself.

Imagine if these extreme trans activists had campaigned that gender nonconformity was normal and no transition was ever required. Imagine a campaign that men accept all male people, however they dress and however they present, and that all male people were welcome.

I would very much have preferred that! And personally, I think society as a whole would benefit from it. Whether it would be achievable is another matter. It's a bit like the argument than women shouldn't have to be on their guard when walking home alone - it's the men who should stop being predatory. Yes, they should, but is it ever going to happen?

The same needs to be asked about this motivation to claim cultural ‘third’ genders. Due to the fact many of these cultures were ‘othering’ homosexual males. Based on stereotypes. They understood this person was male but they ‘othered’ them for being gender non conforming and homosexual.

So, are those claiming those cultures as examples of past trans people saying that also applies to many trans people’s motivation still today? And therefore rather than focusing for the past decade on making society more accepting of these people by accepting them as the sex they are, activists have instead focused on supporting medical treatments and supporting transitioning those people.

And forcing laws and policies to prioritise gender over sex, when in fact sex matters to protect all female people.

The logic seems rather flawed. It seems inconsistent and when you start scrutinising it, it doesn’t stand up to that scrutiny.

Imagine if these extreme trans activists had campaigned that gender nonconformity was normal and no transition was ever required. Imagine a campaign that men accept all male people, however they dress and however they present, and that all male people were welcome.

But no that didn’t happen. I suspect many of us can work out why.