When did trans activism really become a big thing?

I'm fascinated by the speed the attitude of the government changed. They went from not wanted to falsify birth certificates, to saying it would be only a extremely small number, to not enough people are getting falsified birth certificates, in a relatively short time.

They know at every point they are going against public attitudes.

Im never sure if Ruth Hunt convinced Teresa May to introduce self id, or political pressure convinced Hunt to promote the T to soften public attitude ahead of plannef self id.

I wonder if the people who introduced the idelogy into schools and convinced children playing around with gender that they needed medicalisation are feeling any guilt now?

Yes, she did not "pass" as a woman for a few years, i imagine that was at the root of the prejudice and the fact that people had known her by her previous name and felt uncomfortable. People who have only ever known her since transition have shown far more kindness and acceptance.
i wouldnt dream of asking her about her hormone medication, if she takes any, so i cant comment on the second part of that response

Also, if they are taking female sex hormones at a level which would significantly alter their appearance, it would be nothing like the levels of a woman in her late fifties up until her late 70s. So either 1. probably wouldn’t ‘pass’ or 2. is hormonally unlike a woman of their age.

The meeting which resulted in the Yogyakarta Principles happened in 2006 and had an almost immediate effect on Australian civil cases and legislation, which is when I first noticed the clash of rights issues (and whose rights were taking precedence). These principles certainly didn't come out of nowhere but I've never looked at the history of the groups involved in the meeting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogyakarta_Principles
https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/section-4-human-rights-and-discrimination-basis-sexual-orientation-or-gender-identity
Kimberly Nixon first filed her human rights case against Vancouver Rape Relief centre in 1995. So the motivation to target the most vulnerable women has been there a long while, I guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Nixon_Rape_Relief_case
I was enrolled in an honours program in the humanities around the turn of the century, at a sandstone institution. Looking back now I can see that the ideas were all there, though it didn't make sense to me at the time. I think in the 90s the academy had already arrived at what might now be called gender identity politics. I remember reading some article, or maybe more of a letter in a special journal edition, by a female U.S. academic who said something about how "we are all trans now." I really wish I had the temperament of an archivist because it would be good to have it at my fingertips.

And this lie by TRA's ignores the actual presence and contribution of a woman of colour who was a lesbian (Stormé DeLaverie) and replaces her with a man (and yes, there are videos of him, describing himself as a gay man) who wasn't even there when the riots began.

This bears repeating. I am sick of the TRA lie that the Stonewall riots were started by a transwoman. Marsha P. Johnson (a drag artist) arrived much later the riots/police raid started, and has said this himself. He never claimed that he "instigated" the Stonewall riots.

Here's Fred Sargeant interviewed about his memories of the riots.

s

And this lie by TRA's ignores the actual presence and contribution of a woman of colour who was a lesbian (Stormé DeLaverie) and replaces her with a man (and yes, there are videos of him, describing himself as a gay man) who wasn't even there when the riots began.

It's just sheer misogyny.

Out of interest, when your colleague faced extreme prejudice, was that because your colleague wasn't passing as a man? What happened between when they first came out and faced prejudice and their life now where nobody seems to know they are trans identified?

If they pass so well presenting as a woman that nobody knows they are trans, how would they have faced extreme prejudice in the first place?

If this is a real person, my guess is people are too polite to break the charade and instead of thinking "this is because my friends are being kind to me", your former colleague is mistakenly thinking "I have now 'become a woman' enough that nobody realises.". Quite a big difference.

Yeah this is straight out the TRA handbook and definitely not just a random observation from a friend of a trans-identified male

Are you sure you’re not actually that woman?

If you tell a lie often enough…..

despite the name of their charity coming from a riot primarily instigated by trans people of colour.

Thats not true. See Fred Sargeant on this. He was actually there.

So she deceives her friends with her body? @Littlepinkstarsbyradish

i think proper lobbying began in 2014 when stonewall accepted that they had not represented trans people well, and hadn't been standing in solidarity despite the name of their charity coming from a riot primarily instigated by trans people of colour.
I worked with a fantastic woman who transitioned in her late 50s, and that was in 2004. She faced insane prejudice with dignity and grace and was not involved in activism at that time, mainly for fear of repercussions. She is more vocal now, but still very reticent to speak out publicly as many of her friends and neighbours only know her as a woman and she doesnt want to "out" herself

Here it is. Just to be clear I don’t agree with her on quite a lot of things and she definitely seems to buy into the true trans thing, but it was interesting to read about it through the eyes of someone who identifies in that way.

It’s so interesting you say this because on an AMA of a female who identifies as a transman she explained in detail how she experienced the narrative suddenly changing rapidly when she was young and on tumblr. That must have been around 2009-2012 I’d have thought based on her being an older teen or young adult. She was very scathing about it all. I’ll find the exact post and link to it because I found it pretty fascinating to see from the eyes of someone who was and still is trans-identified but even that didn’t make her right on enough to escape their wrath. The amount of misogyny in those people is really apparent from how they love to push trans-identifying females under the bus. I never made the connection to them all moving over to Twitter but that makes a lot of sense now you say it.

Before the 2000s I only knew of two transsexuals personally, one who transitioned in the 90s, one around 1980. The younger fellow was clearly a gay man with some serious personal problem, the elder one also a gay man, but by the time I knew him elderly, celibate, and pretty much living as a woman without others being aware of his transition. Neither were in any way political.

The first time I heard the terms "cic" and "trans" together was I think in the early 2000nds, in an interview with Warren Beatty's transman child. So the whole concept of gender ideology as we know it now seemed to have been in place then.

I think it all ramped up after about 2015. I started seeing it in schools, etc. But also, more generally a lot more insertion of LGB issues into places like primary schools, it was actually quite overwhelming in some ways. Like sex in the larger sense suddenly became among the most important elements of identity, even for kids.

I knew of 2 transsexuals through different work places in the early 2000s and I remember that everyone else thought they were a bit odd and gave them a wide berth, probably the same people now who’d be waving flags and have pronouns in their email signatures, but those men weren’t afraid to turn up to work in women’s clothes and wigs, which I don’t think they would have done 10 years earlier, so it was starting around then I think.

There’s a fantastic presentation about where a lot of Transactivist tropes, including the idea of multiple genders (each with its own flag!) came from.

Maybe not a surprise but a lot of the tropes came from the Men’s Rights movement.

I first worked with a TW where they have previously presented as a somewhat macho bloke and the only changes were clothes, wig, make-up, what toilet they used and going from being able to handle the technical work to pretending that ‘now they were a woman they needed a man to fix their computer’ around about 2001/2002.

And we have Nicola sturgeon and her cabal in Scotland to thank for up here.

In addition to what others have said it became a big thing largely via the hey day of social media. Most of the initial growth was on Tumblr but early on it was still mostly niche to Tumblr which had a particular demographic and for a time worked as containment of sorts.

Then in 2018 Tumblr banned all adult content which caused a mass exodus of trans activists to other platforms, mostly Twitter. From there it spread to other demographics and Twitter became dominated by genderist politics, even amongst people who would never have given Tumblr the time of day. Pronouns in bio and all the other nonsense that people now associate with the pre Musk Twitter became big business and the latest way to virtue signal.

Alongside this social media cultural revolution years of lobbying was also paying off. Stonewall under Hunt added the T and forgot about the LGB and Mermaids had their moment in the sun. Something that at any other time in history would have been recognised for the horrendous, dangerous insanity it was but this was perfect storm conditions and we all know the results of that.

That's my memory of it, too. Started to mushroom post-early social media, 2010 +- 2. Takeover around 2015 or 2016 or so. There were women right the way along saying aspects of it could be a problem, but it was just background noise, meaningless.

The minute trans-identified XYs held forth it seemed like every organization in the world sat up and took notice.

If anyone wants proof that those men are seen as men and are not women, there it is.

In the U.K. it took a big step when equal
marriage was won & Stonewall added Trans. About 2014?

But the push didn’t start then - it just won a victory that brought it to more people’s attention.

Back in 2000 I started a relationship with someone who was teetering on the edge of declaring a trans identity, which he’d begun ideating about in the late 90s, trying to get onto lesbian discussion boards online.

i looked around & found the precursor to the transwidows support groups.

I'm an academic in the field of feminism/women's studies/women's history, and I noticed stuff really getting heated around 2015 or so. I'd always been ho-hum about transsexuals - I worked with one or two, and while they were not "masculine" in any kind of gendered stereotype or role, I have never thought they were women. I published something which mentioned the clash of rights vis a vis Judith Butler in 2016. It really ramped up in 2017, when lobbying for self-id increased in response to the Tory free-for-all. And when Twitter became a more mainstream medium.

But I can remember in about 1978, as a teenage feminist at university, chatting with friends - one of whom was a drag queen in his spare time. He was commenting on how naff and ugly women who didn't shave body hair were (he was immaculately depilated I gather). I remember thinking then, how dare a man who play acts at a parody of being female comment on what actual women do with their bodies ...

So blokes who play act as women & think they do it better have been around for ever.

In the UK it became a "big thing" ie in the public domain when Stonewall took the decision to no longer be what it was set up to be, ie promoting the rights as same sex attracted people.

Some cynics suggest this was just about expanding the source of funding and donations rather than anything altruistic!

But none of this would have happened if queer politics hadn't been allowed to inbed itself in universities back in the 80s when it poltical platform dovetailed with the male backlash (MRAs) against Women's Liberation.

ie the patriarchy from 2 different strands of politics combined in arguing the Women's Liberation had gone to far and was unfair on men.

In universities this meant that Women's Studes became Gender studies.

Which helped create 3rd Wave Feminism which seem to exist only to tell older women they were irrelevant, and Women's Liberation was reactionary.

Also of course what seems to have been an accidental (really?) growth in gay trans (ie queer influenced) networks starting working to ingrain themselves in institutions where they could influence policies on gender etc.. (See also the thread about the UN attempt to erase the word sex with gender.)

There is much more to this history, but I think that the media willing acceptance of the new Stonewall was because of this, and having it promoted in the popular media has done as much damage as the policies changes by institutions.

And it was only when the Tories proposed changing the GRA to make it easier to get a certificate that women who separately had been concerned started to publicly fight back. But in the intervening period lesbians had felt pushed out of social spaces that had previously been their home, and women working in women's services found younger newer employees and volunteers were arriving already "fully formed " trans allies because that is what they had grown up with.