VAWG - how does the cognitive dissonance not smack them in the face?

I found it was possible to hold those two ideas in my head until I started to think about how to make them work in practice. There wasn't a way to make them both work.

As in so many logical contradictions that look consistent on the surface, it is the misuse or loss of quantifiers (all, some, sometimes, always, may, does) and comparators (equally, similarly, the same) that does it. All you have to do is leave a few of these words out or smear them together.

when a man identifies as a woman that means they are taking on women's oppression so are equally oppressed

When "a man identifies as a woman" that may mean he is sometimes "taking on women's oppression". But not all of it, and not all the time. If he is oppressed himself he's not "equally oppressed" because he is also still capable of continuing to oppress women through the masculine qualities (such as physical size and strength and psychological habits and tendencies) that he retains.

(if not more so because of nasty women not accepting them)

He may also be oppressed in ways that women aren't due his to being gender non-conforming.Much of that oppression will come from men, and it's mostly not the same oppression that women get. That doesn't mean he is being more oppressed than women. Just differently.

Yes, not 'tru trans'.

But whenever we ask how we're supposed to tell the difference ... crickets.

Trans identifying men have to be the victims. Even when they manifestly aren't. Their position totally depends on this.

Manipulation of language is very important to maintaining this double think. I try to call out that 'transwomen are men' every single time it comes up. It's much harder to gloss over the danger they pose when we unambiguously say who they are.

I'd add to point 2. that tw who hurt women aren't really trans, they're 'at it'.

The Ketman point is a good one. I think the thought process goes like this ...

1.Men do terrible things to women.

2.But men who identify as trans aren't actually men so don't count (despite all evidence to the contrary). Also they are 'mostest oppressed' compared to women, therefore are top trumps. Incidents where TIM hurt women are really rare and should therefore be ignored and not talked about.

3.The fact that self id allows ALL men into women's spaces is mostly glossed over as something that wouldn't happen, despite point 1 above. When the evidence is in their face, then they justify putting in women in danger because it wouldn't be fair to TIM, and as they are the most oppressed, they take priority.

The conclusion here is that these people don't care about women nearly as much as they care about presenting the 'right' opinions to their peers.

But I agree, the cognitive dissonance must be tough to deal with. Which is why increasingly they just want to silence/suppress the bits of the conversation that show their hypocrisy for what it is.

I suspect she genuinely thinks that transwomen are women and that includes taking on the behavioural aspects of women, i.e. that we commit less violent crime than men.

So she thinks transwomen aren't a danger to women. Or rather, they pose the same threat to women as "other" women do, rather than posing the same threat to women as men do.

If you don't think too hard about it you can hold in your head the two ideas that male violence is a problem but that when a man identifies as a woman that means they are taking on women's oppression so are equally oppressed (if not more so because of nasty women not accepting them) It's a really odd mental state to be in but as others have said, humans are very good at explaining away anything that doesn't fit our current world view.

The answer is a concept called 'ketman'.

'The subjects produced by totalitarianism were not mindless drones, but skillful dissemblers, as capable of self-justification and moral hair-splitting as the best-trained Jesuit. The name Miłosz gave to this new talent was ‘Ketman’.'

https://aeon.co/ideas/ketman-and-doublethink-what-it-costs-to-comply-with-tyranny

Because it’s not real transwomen who commit violence against women and girls, it’s men who pretend to be women who do the bad stuff. Real transwomen ‘just want to pee.’
Not sure how they get round the fact that you can’t tell which is which until a woman or girl is hurt but they’re just collateral damage when ‘being kind’ is the most important thing.

She probably doesn't connect the two things. After all, none of the recent murders were committed by transwomen, nor did they happen in women's spaces, and they'd have happened regardless of the way our society regards transwomen. Just good old fashioned VAWG, and it was ever thus.

Given the offences are sub judice, I'm curious as to her confidence in linking the listed cases with wolf whistling. We don't know what the motivations were. All the cases could be quite different.

It's because they don't really care about women. They're lying.

It all makes sense then