Reasons you once believed in gender identity

I remember the mother of a school friend of mine DMing me on Facebook, saying it appeared I was very anti-trans and was that right? I was astonished. This was a woman who campaigned a LOT for women's spaces in the 70s and 80s - she was even Woman's Officer (or the equivalent) for the local council for quite a while.

I just said, I'm not, I'm pro-women, I don't believe males can be females and left it there. But I was genuinely shocked.

I remember having a conversation with a (male) friend of mine at work. A new person had recently started in my area, two grades above me, who was a trans woman. They had the same name as me.

I remember saying that I felt really sorry for her, it must be totally awful to feel like you're in the wrong body. I also remember at around this time there was a documentary with a woman with twin boys, one of whom had decided he was a girl. As a parent of similar age twin boys, I found it devastating.

So I started from a place of full acceptance, maybe some pity and basically being happy to accept their version of things.

Ironically, it was this male friend, who was younger than me, straight, no kids (so no skin the game so to speak rather than doesn't care!) who basically asked me why I thought that a man could ever feel the same as me, a woman who'd had children and had all the associated medical bits and pieces.

That's where I started, I went through a lot of "live and let live" type feelings - it was ultimately 2018 when Kellie-Jay Keen put up the Adult Human Female sign in Liverpool that I really started to consider maybe, just maybe, it wasn't all completely innocent and just "people wanting to exist".

It was finding out that male crimes were being recorded under female categories that fully TERFed me. I remember someone posted something here, and me basically posting a "hang on, what the actual FUCK?!" sort of post.

Now I am angry. I am ten years older, so now I'm in my 40s so less likely to want to appease anyway, but while I am horrified at the actual realities, I have very little patience for grown adults that believe that TWAW and that it's just about "wanting to pee".

Phew, that was cathartic!

I thought they were harmless so indulged their fantasy.
I thought no-one would go to "all that effort" just to get into women's spaces.
I thought they "just wanted to pee"
I was being kind.

I've worked mainly in the public sector so have encountered a fair few MtF and FtM over the years and I felt a bit sorry for them and how it must be horrible to be "born in the wrong body". If I thought about Trans people at all I probably thought of the high profile ones like Chas Bono, C Jenner or the historian A Neusbachner (Sp) who seem to make an effort to pass.

Then I started to see more like F Maloney and F Wallace, horrible parodies of women with pantomime dame hair and make up, mini-skirts and fishnets and thought "Hmmm, most actual women don't go around like that".

I can't say one thing peaked me, but like many, I gradually came to realise that the emperor was naked and it wasn't a pretty sight.

Edited to add, having read @FunMustard 's post below mine, I realise that

It was finding out that male crimes were being recorded under female categories that fully TERFed me.

This, It was before Adam Graham and his pink leggings but I think I may have read something about TW in women's prisons and thought "WTF".

I might be going off on a tangent now but I used to post the odd thing on FB. One day a swedish acquaintance of mine got into a spat with me. I was surprised because she was always posting about the patriarchy and sexism in the Arab world and so on.
She started off by patronisingly saying she was disappointed and when did I become a closed minded bigot? She then went on to post endless links to 'scientific studies' that proved science has evolved and transwomen are women..probably the same nonsense that gets posted on here (I didn't read it but I may still have it).
She finished off by quoting Simone de Beauvoir 'one is not born, but rather made a woman' as proof that TWAW and have always been. It's also weird that it's the same women who proudly call themselves feminists, that are spouting the usual TRA lines.

I never literally believed in it, but I've definitely been on a journey.

It's strange to me that, now I'm older, people often assume I'm some sort of provincial social conservative. Maybe I just have the wrong accent. But when I was young, I was the one who friends at school would come out to, because they knew I really didn't care one way or the other - if I valued them it was because of their personalities and not who they fancied.

And then for quite a while I was very left wing and heavily integrated into the activist scene where it was very very important to embrace minorities. So I knew a few gay transvestites who were clear they were men, and then later a few homosexual transsexuals. I didn't see them as literally women, but I assumed (maybe I was right at the time) that we all tacitly agreed on it as a polite pretence. And they were nice and seemed vulnerable, and I wanted society to treat them better.

I think my rough view was that I didn't really understand transsexualism, but it was easy to understand someone being uncomfortable with their sexed body particularly during adolescence, and wishing they were the opposite sex (I'm glad gender identity and transitioning was never presented as an option when I was in my teens), and for some mysterious reason, there was a very small number of people for whom the discomfort was so intense and persistent that they would subject themselves to radical surgeries so they could feel comfortable in their own skin.

So no, I didn't literally believe in it, but I wanted to be kind.

And then, I suppose it was the Vancouver Rape Relief story that was the first red flag for me, but I filed that away, and Michfest, and eventually I couldn't just keep filing the stories away any more.

And, I think this is very important, for a long time I'd never met any AGPs. Once I had, I couldn't unsee them. And, once we had the trans umbrella, it was probably obvious that they would take over the whole scene.

@Shortshriftandlethal there was this absolutely classic clip I saw on twitter the other day where some transwoman was wearily explaining about all the things JKR COULD have done with her money and how sad it was that she didn't use her money that way.

It was so funny. I kept waiting for the interviewer to say - "do you feel that other rich famous people who put money into causses they believe in shold only do so if you agree with those causes" but of course, it was not asked.

You know what, despite my previous answer, I think there was a bit of that too. I think my belief was actually more like "TWAW, but obviously not the same as real women, but we must all call them women and be kind, because they are a kind of woman".

The fundamental point - and I think this must go for so many of us - is that our natural inclination was kindness and accommodation, and thought was put aside. Once thought started - and debate, including in our own minds - the ideology has no chance at all.

JK Rowling really has become a figure of hate.....it is terrible to see. People just keep bringing it back to her in every discussion.

Yep, I can imagine a lot of people have similar stories, especially on the left.

None of the above.

For me, quite simple. I am a left wing progressive person, and the progressive left started saying TWAW, be kind, and I went along with it unthinkingly.

I did not think about it because it did not occur to me that it neeed thinking about, after all "do same sex attracted people deserve rights?" didn't need much thought so why should the next cause?

This thread is not about peaking, but I will say, briefly, that when I did start thinking (as a result of a certain Magdalen Berns) the whole ideology fell apart like a very cheap suit in a VERY short space of time.

I hadn't really thought about it. I just felt like it was a very few people who were really struggling. The moment I paid attention was the moment I knew there was a problem.

I watched the Danish Girl on a long haul flight.
I hated the way he treatted his beautiful wife but ultimately it left me feeling very sorry for him. Which I guess is how I felt about trans women for a long time, informed by that film and the pathetic character he portrayed.

That's a good point re not wanting to be ostrasiced from a group.
I'm a loner myself and I've never enjoyed or wanted to be part of a social groups. I've always thought people didn't like me much anyway. This has probably made it easier for me to hold unpopular views because I've never worried about being excluded

On reflection about why I never believed it, can I also just say that I have been incredibly privileged throughout my life have encountered so many wonderful women who planted seeds of down-to-earth feminism, self-respect, undoing the insidious notion that we should cater to men as a priority and a bone-deep sense that it was absurd to suggest that being female should hold me back from being or doing anything.

It wasn't one single powerhouse preacher, (though certain things stick out) it was a drip-drip-drip of influences over a lifetime (including women on these boards), and many of them will have had absolutely no idea of the lasting effect they had.

Barracker's 'Pronouns are Rohypnol', for example, was seismic for me and clarified my thoughts on that.

What we say, on here and elsewhere, really matters.

Another thought about this - I think my ‘right on- be kind’ stage started to draw to a close after having children. I think with parenthood there becomes a time when you move from putting others (actual strangers and their movements) first and start to put your children - and then by extension own needs - ahead of others.

Having children also changed how I view women and myself. It’s been a really tricky thing to unpick but I think we become conditioned to how women exist only in relation to the men around them. After having children I’ve stopped caring whether I’m sexually appealing to men in general and started caring about what I actually want or need for myself.

When we see women as our own class and as individuals in our own right we begin to advocate for our needs first.

Like the first PP, I think it was realizing that I was encountering men without appropriate sexual boundaries that demolished my compliance. That might be the case for a lot of people, given the opinion swing on this issue. There was a guy in a fb group I’m in on a completely different topic who posted things I’d clocked as odd, and it all got odder until eventually he posted a misogynistic sex cartoon (not choking, something else) and was banned. The deletion and ban happened very quickly but anyone who saw it and the admins must have had food for thought.

Oh hail the mighty phallus........didn't you know a woman is just a man who's had his removed.

Yes, the power of wanting to be 'liked' and to belong to a group cannot be overstated.

I'm like you, something of a loner and happy with my own company.....I don't seek out or have lots of friends either...just few in number, and meaningful. I can get enough of my 'socialisation' needs met by talking to people in the street/neighbourhood etc 😂

I’m not sure I ever believed in gender identity per se, but I did (and do) believe in gender dysphoria as a condition, and felt (and still do) that sometimes treatment for dysphoria requires surgery (after proper therapy and after the age of 25). I always advocated - and still do - for kindness and freedom for such people. They should be entitled to live their lives in peace and free from cruelty and oppression.

However, there was a huge turning point in how I approached this issue when TRAs started declaring that dysphoria is not a condition and they actually WERE women because of their feelings. It is a total dismissal of science and ignores the impacts of growing up a girl within a patriarchal society. Trans women - fine. Actual women - absolutely not.

By seeking to redefine what a woman is, it damaged our ability to hold onto rights that were set up specifically because of the need to protect ourselves because of the oppression we face based on our sex, not our gender. We’re not raped because of our gender. We’re not paid less because of it. We’re not facing poorer medical care (including research) because of gender.
“Woman” is a descriptor of sex. We are not a subset of our own political class. We should be entitled to our language and to fight against our oppression. It made me realise that “gender” is not sex - it is a tool of sex based oppression.

I approached it from a socio-cultural point of view, as a young student at university. There have always been men that liked to hang out with women, and there have always been tom boys that liked to think of themselves as one of the lads. I didn't actually think about the practicalities of a person actually declaring that they had changed sex and now needed to be treated as the new sex no matter what. I was all for being progressive - after all we women had won our rights and we were equal right? I started work in the late 90s and early 00s and it was all 'girl power' and girls being just as leery as boys. Wasn't quite my thing, but I thought it was empowering. We were being told that our bodies were powerful and we should not be ashamed of them. I look back now and think, hmm that wasn't really to the advantage of the girls to go around flashing our cleavage and thighs though, was it???

I guess the sea change for me began with a conversation with a friend, an academic, who had been at some academic meeting/conference thingy about 20 years ago where she was being asked to give space to someone's beliefs over actual scientific facts. She was gob-smacked and relayed it to me later on in astonishment. I filed it away under 'curious, but nothing to do with me'. Five years later I had my first child and well, you start to look at the world with different eyes then. I noticed all the pink and blue stuff and thought - it wasn't like this in my childhood. Then my second child was a tom boy and I had nutters trying to tell me that this meant she was a boy. You what?!?!? I started reading and reading and reading and researching and listening and came to the conclusion that gender was a load of bollocks. I was here at the start of Spartacus and have been here through thick and thin ever since. I'm not particularly clever but I can tell the difference between men and women and it ain't the clothes you wear or how you behave!

This issue made me see what Germaine Greer meant when she said 'Women have no idea how much men hate them'.

That woman was right about everything.

This . The wider realisation about how much of society truly doesn’t seem to see women as full human beings .

Ah, actually, I can find my mail, and it wasn't as bad as I thought, phew! The form (in 2014) had included

Male/Female/Trans Male/Trans Female*
*delete as appropriate

and my (politer and more tactful than memory made me fear) response asserted "trans males are male" - which could, of course, be read either to mean TWAW or the opposite, and indeed, looking at it now, it's not clear to me what the recipient will have thought, so I could have been interpreted as GC. Here's hoping. But I'm right in thinking I can't contact the recipient now; I only had a role-based address. (Then or now, I wouldn't normally comment on such forms at all, but on this occasion I did so because in practice the form didn't allow you to delete, so it asked for information and then didn't allow you to provide it!)

Like others i thought TWAW was a polite pretense

I stopped believing that when self ID came in and people seemed to start believing, or at least pretended to, that TWAW and if you just said the magic word that you would be allowed access to absolutely everything

i make no apologies for believing that someone is as thick as shit for thinking that males should be in female sports and that women should try harder to win

i still believe that trans is on a spectrum with one end desperately uncomfortable in their sexed body and feeling better presenting as the opposite sex right through to taking the fucking piss, passing trauma, autism and sexism on the way

its women like me they needed on side and self id fucked that up for everyone, gave an inch and they took a mile…not falling for that again

I never believed it and as I've previously stated, I worked in the NHS and couldn't believe it when they put TIM's on female wards. Trans posters all over adolescent wards etc..Additionally, I never met any nice ones, only weird aggressive creeps that tried to force me to go along with their delusions.
I remember years ago when a group of lesbians were kicked out of Manchester Pride, and I started reading about the GRA and SelfID, but I couldn't find many GC voices online apart from a few women who seemed to be universally hated (bigots terfs etc).
I couldn't find any GC voices anywhere on Reddit or FB which led me to think that I was almost alone in my views (I must be one of those hateful old bigoted dinosaurs that are dying out then?) - I hadn't realised that the reason there were no GC voices on Reddit was because they were all banned. I saw JKR speaking out but I mostly saw hate towards her and very little agreement or support. I wasn't on Twitter then though so I only saw what was reported in MSM. I stopped interacting with many FB 'friends' because they were posting #BeKind TWAW, leave Sam Smith Alone type nonsense. I really wish the trans rallies would get more MSM media coverage so the public could see what the TRA are really like.
It's only this past year since I discovered FWR that I realised there were lots of us. How had I never come across Magdalen Bern?? If only I had.
Discovering FWR and finding out about cases such as Sandie Peggie and FWS and the WRN has been a revelation. It was a relief to no longer feel that there was something wrong with my views, that I was unkind and I just needed to be more accepting and 'move with the times'

ETA: of course I knew about transexuals and cross dressers years ago but none claimed to be actual women and forced pronouns weren't a thing. The only time I ever heard a man being referred to as SHE was by gay men sarcastically