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Original poster

We need to examine why so many women (including some prominent feminists) pushed the trans movement

156 replies

AliasGrace47 · 20/05/2025 17:53

I've seen quite a few posts on here placing the responsibility for gender ideology catching on on a combo of misogynistic & influential autogynephiles, and gay & straight men who backed them up.

I definitely think the core of the TRA movement is misogynistic men. But we also need to try & work out why several feminists promoted this stuff. After all, Butler's Gender Trouble is the Bible of this.

It's notable that supporting gender ideology and supporting paedophilia seem to correlate. Gayle Rubin is a notable influence, as is the now Patrick Califia. Both wrote in the 80s that child-adult 'sexual contact' could be OK.

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FrippEnos · 11/06/2025 14:24

LeftieRightsHoarder · 10/06/2025 22:10

If the trans lobby had … campaigned for the breaking down of stereotypes, so that men and women could wear what they liked, go into a greater range of what were stereotypical jobs for males and females etc….

That’s exactly what Women’s Liberation was doing from the late 1960s onward! And very successfully, riding a wave of social openness to change that was seen to be for the better.

The trans movement has done the opposite, reviving and reinforcing the worn-out old stereotypes (as sex fetishism) and undermining women’s rights. It’s a male supremacist movement.

Recognising now what they must have always intended, I can’t see how things could have gone differently.

Edited
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Yes, that was my point.

But

Recognising now what they must have always intended, I can’t see how things could have gone differently.

Trans people now are not what trans people were.

The older trans-sexuals (and some younger ones) did just go about their everyday lives, (I don't know whether they were/are happy) They understood what they are and coped with it. (Blare white, Marcus dip, Buck Angel)

Then at some point it changed from sexual to gender, Self ID, TWAW etc.

The trans identity has been co-opted and changed even more than the attempt to change women has.

LeftieRightsHoarder · 10/06/2025 23:14

Thanks everyone for this fascinating, thought-provoking thread.

LeftieRightsHoarder · 10/06/2025 22:10

FrippEnos · 10/06/2025 07:06

I have been thinking about this and wonder if people thought that the trans movement was going to go in a completely different direction.

If the trans lobby had stayed more within its lane of men are men but there are more feminine men and women are women but there are more masculine women.

And then had campaigned for the breaking down of stereotypes, so that men and women could wear what they liked, go into a greater range of what were stereotypical jobs for males and females etc.

Instead of TWAW etc. it could have been a meeting of allies and so much more could have been achieved.

If the trans lobby had … campaigned for the breaking down of stereotypes, so that men and women could wear what they liked, go into a greater range of what were stereotypical jobs for males and females etc….

That’s exactly what Women’s Liberation was doing from the late 1960s onward! And very successfully, riding a wave of social openness to change that was seen to be for the better.

The trans movement has done the opposite, reviving and reinforcing the worn-out old stereotypes (as sex fetishism) and undermining women’s rights. It’s a male supremacist movement.

Recognising now what they must have always intended, I can’t see how things could have gone differently.

Holeinamole · 10/06/2025 17:26

It seems like an unbelievable grift that prioritises able-bodied males over everyone else.

Keeptoiletssafe · 10/06/2025 13:34

What frustrates me most is their joint article is used as shorthand for ‘inclusivity’ when it only benefits safety if you are a healthy male.

Keeptoiletssafe · 10/06/2025 13:17

Holeinamole · 10/06/2025 11:52

Yup, last reference in the document, Susan Stryker’s opinion piece. Unbelievable. Thanks.

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The Sanders and Stryker piece is the origin of evidence for enclosing design in that uk consultation document for people with long term health conditions.
Stryker on toilets design:
https://aaa.org.hk/en/like-a-fever/like-a-fever/on-stalling-and-turning-a-wayward-genealogy-for-a-binary-abolitionist-public-toilet-project/type/essays
Sanders on toilets design:
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/profiles-and-interviews/interview-with-joel-sanders

They have a toilet design business called Stalled! They lecture around the world and are influential and quoted as evidence for inclusive designs for schools and public buildings.

LittleBitofBread · 10/06/2025 12:30

FrippEnos · 10/06/2025 07:06

I have been thinking about this and wonder if people thought that the trans movement was going to go in a completely different direction.

If the trans lobby had stayed more within its lane of men are men but there are more feminine men and women are women but there are more masculine women.

And then had campaigned for the breaking down of stereotypes, so that men and women could wear what they liked, go into a greater range of what were stereotypical jobs for males and females etc.

Instead of TWAW etc. it could have been a meeting of allies and so much more could have been achieved.

I feel like we already had this, really, and there wasn't all that much fighting to do for e.g. little boys being able to wear dresses without parents thinking or being told that they're actually girls, or women being able to have short hair and wear lumberjack shirts and still be considered, and consider themselves, women.

PermanentTemporary · 10/06/2025 07:18

I still hope that might happen @FrippEnos.

I have hope that it is, in fact. Eddie Izzard is trying to map out a path. And most trans people i meet don't really get in a tizz about insisting they are the opposite sex, though they might if i got very insistent about it i suppose. It's not for me to say it as I was never bullied with the word, but that to me is what the reclaiming of the word 'queer' is about. A more general word leaving out definitions but covering 'living differently'. I'm happy the law and statistics are clear but how people live is another thing.

FrippEnos · 10/06/2025 07:06

I have been thinking about this and wonder if people thought that the trans movement was going to go in a completely different direction.

If the trans lobby had stayed more within its lane of men are men but there are more feminine men and women are women but there are more masculine women.

And then had campaigned for the breaking down of stereotypes, so that men and women could wear what they liked, go into a greater range of what were stereotypical jobs for males and females etc.

Instead of TWAW etc. it could have been a meeting of allies and so much more could have been achieved.

Holeinamole · 09/06/2025 23:15

Are the documents that you mention publicly accessible? (ARUP, Document T)

Keeptoiletssafe · 09/06/2025 19:23

@LeftieRightsHoarder @Holeinamole That document was the origin of me being a campaigner for safe toilets.

I found even more disturbing articles and opinions after that.

So then I started looking at schools, who are the canaries in the coalmine for ‘gender neutral’ toilets. I sometimes can’t get my head round what I read. It’s so far from safeguarding.

SerafinasGoose · 09/06/2025 18:58

Shortshriftandlethal · 21/05/2025 08:58

Personally think the roots of female support for trans ideology lies in the rejection of 'biology as destiny'. That women are not totally conditioned by their sex. That women can merge into the male model and it is only social convention which prevents them from doing so. Women are equal to ( which has tended meaning the 'same as') men. Male violence is just down to patriarchal oppression and will disappear once patriarchy does. Our job is therefore to challenge patriarchy.

This has morphed into 'Being a woman has got nothing to do with biology'. 'woman' Is nothing but a social role; a set of 'performances of gender' which anyone can express or display.

That's it exactly. And reading this nicely succinct explanation does give a sense of exactly how they were captured. The idea that biology need no longer determine our destiny was understandably appealing to second-wave feminists writing in the 1980s, when gender stereotypes were being challenged and owning a vagina didn't automatically mean staying chained to the kitchen sink. Those who came afterwards can imagine just how exciting and liberating this realisation was to that generation.

Gender ideology took this to the nth degree and twisted the meaning of essentialism as it twists and lies about most things (most recently the SC judgement). Its bedrock is the very gendered essentialism feminists have been fighting against for decades, and which even they pretend is the opposing position to the one they are coming from (they are either confused, or deliberately attempting to confuse others). Feminists were seduced by the idea of liberation from gendered constraints and were seduced into believing GI was simply fighting for equality and justice, and to cast off conservative social shackles just as they were.

By the time some of them started to realise this, the parasite had already invaded the host and eaten it (along with its critical thinking skills) from the inside out.

Holeinamole · 09/06/2025 18:35

Keeptoiletssafe · 21/05/2025 16:35

Interesting you mention Susan Stryker.

Susan Stryker was instrumental in the lack of toilet safety in design for public toilets in the U.K. Probably didn’t even know it either.

ARUP did a report, commissioned by the government, for toilet design for people with long term health conditions, which fed into Document T. What they should have thought about was the fact these people may need assistance if they have collapsed. But they never looked at door gaps as a design feature. They never looked at many long term health conditions either - no mention of diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions, asthma, endometriosis etc. ARUP did discuss gender a lot including non binary crotch heights measurements for urinals. They decided enclosed private cubicles were the best design for people with long term health conditions and the evidence for that was an article by Susan Stryker and Joel Sanders. These two said that transactivists preferred enclosed toilets in New York nightclubs. It was an opinion article. They have an American company called Stalledonline and talk about their ‘inclusive’ toilet design being akin to a civil rights movement. Yet their designs have been going years and as of April 2024, when I last looked at a talk Sanders gave to Harvard, he hasn’t done assessments on them. They don’t factor in safety for women either in their private mixed sex cubicles other than people will look out for women (!).

ARUP got a Stonewall award the year after this report. The people with long term health conditions in the UK got a less safe toilet design.

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I missed this earlier … Stryker being responsible for millions of cramped, unsafe retro-fitted unisex toilets, installed at great expense, often at cash-strapped public sector orgs, because of an opinion piece he wrote just blows my mind!

LeftieRightsHoarder · 09/06/2025 17:05

Keeptoiletssafe · 21/05/2025 16:35

Interesting you mention Susan Stryker.

Susan Stryker was instrumental in the lack of toilet safety in design for public toilets in the U.K. Probably didn’t even know it either.

ARUP did a report, commissioned by the government, for toilet design for people with long term health conditions, which fed into Document T. What they should have thought about was the fact these people may need assistance if they have collapsed. But they never looked at door gaps as a design feature. They never looked at many long term health conditions either - no mention of diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions, asthma, endometriosis etc. ARUP did discuss gender a lot including non binary crotch heights measurements for urinals. They decided enclosed private cubicles were the best design for people with long term health conditions and the evidence for that was an article by Susan Stryker and Joel Sanders. These two said that transactivists preferred enclosed toilets in New York nightclubs. It was an opinion article. They have an American company called Stalledonline and talk about their ‘inclusive’ toilet design being akin to a civil rights movement. Yet their designs have been going years and as of April 2024, when I last looked at a talk Sanders gave to Harvard, he hasn’t done assessments on them. They don’t factor in safety for women either in their private mixed sex cubicles other than people will look out for women (!).

ARUP got a Stonewall award the year after this report. The people with long term health conditions in the UK got a less safe toilet design.

Show quote history

So ARUP was paid to do a report on the meds of people with long-term health problems, and they use irrelevant guff about trans preferences. Lazy bastards. Mind, whoever in government accepted the inadequate report failed in their duty too.

Original poster
AliasGrace47 · 09/06/2025 13:15

TempestTost · 20/05/2025 22:57

I'm not sure my answer will be popular, but that's never stopped me before:

A lot of women seem to put more emphasis on emotional satisfaction even when it's irrational.

Women are rather inclined to exclusive tribalism and a kind of social status seeking through belonging to the right clique, as well as finger wagging and "good works."

Relatedly, women are typically the people in society that enforce norms through social pressure.

Not all women, obviously,

All of these behaviours have social utility but when misplaced become toxic femininity.

Agree w all this! The emotional satisfaction part : definitely this. You might think they'd get satisfaction from protecting women & see that as true good works. But it's all become v twisted.

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Original poster
AliasGrace47 · 09/06/2025 13:14

This - but what I'm getting at is that to some extent women kickstarted the whole queer theory movement that helped get this mess off the ground. The rise of queer theory seemed to coincide & fuel the trans movement, though I'm not entirely clear on the history. As I noted, Butler obvs but also Rubin, Califia were all prominent in queer theory.

I def agree that ordinary, non academia, women were used as - or chose to be used- as flying monkeys for the TRAs. As I put earlier, there are also cases where a lot of the mothers seem to be using their trans children as a type of Munchausen proxy.. Notably, autistic children , who ofc often overlap w trans children, sometimes seem to have a link w parents w a different kind of disorder : sometimes npd or antisocial.

And as mentioned, another male YouTuber has apparently done some videos on girls who egg their trans girl friends on. Overall though, I suspect most mums are not Cluster B but simply supporting bc they have no idea what else to do to make their child feel better..

In the second chapter of American Teenager, the family again seem v loving, but have been through a lot of trauma : the father has PTSD from war & the mother survived multiple operations after a murder attempt from her abusive stepfather. There's a brief mention that their trans son spent most of his childhood 'counselling the adults around him' bit otherwise no exploration of how this trauma could have impacted his dysphoria development.

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Original poster
AliasGrace47 · 27/05/2025 19:35

Nameychangington · 20/05/2025 22:10

Because female socialisation was quite successfully used against us.

Agree - I think we have to admit though that putting other interests first is a biological thing too : not that we have to automatically follow this instinct. Wisdom for anyone- but esp young women- means discerning when compassion is an appropriate response, and whether the response the person wants is a good idea for them or others.

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Original poster
AliasGrace47 · 27/05/2025 12:37

Incidentally, I'm also reading an interesting book called American Teenager by Nico Lang. It profiles 6 trans teenagers across the US. A v pro trans book, w interesting insights into pro trans parents

. In the first chapter, it's not really clear what makes the teenager think they're a boy, apart from hating to wear velvet dresses and bows to church and wanting short hair. Yet it upsets them a huge amount, causing severe anxiety (notably he went to a v conservative Baptust church & South Dakota is a conservative area generally) Their parents seem v kind but unfortunately misguided. The mum quit her job and now runs a trans advocacy org full time... (Link to interview here-https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.yahoo.com/news/south-dakota-activist-runs-supportive-110119601.html&ved=2ahUKEwjrgcXOx8ONAxWsU0EAHU0zL_YQFnoECEYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0O_yhM0Uky_mY-q5FDKgzs)

It's been posted on here that fundamentalist Christian parents may be up for transing the gay away. Generally this isn't the case, bar a few examples. They may be v unhappy to have a gay child, but aren't usually going to prefer drastic surgeries to that, esp as the Bible emphasises not tampering w the body.. But I do suspect that some trans affirming parents may come from that kind of background, and that may feed into their thought processes.

Redirect Notice

https://www.google.com/url?opi=89978449&rct=j&sa=t&source=web&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fnews%2Fsouth-dakota-activist-runs-supportive-110119601.html&usg=AOvVaw0O_yhM0Uky_mY-q5FDKgzs%29&ved=2ahUKEwjrgcXOx8ONAxWsU0EAHU0zL_YQFnoECEYQAQ

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Original poster
AliasGrace47 · 26/05/2025 22:36

Hi, sorry, I do want to reply to these but been v busy- also found an interesting Substack post which I think has a good answer. On Parents With Inconvenient Truths About Gender Ideology, it's the post called Still A Feminist?

It points to trans kids as a form of Munchausen by proxy for Cluster B - type mothers, and also argues that female friends of trans girls can be v insistent that their friend is a she, sometimes more than the friend is themself.

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loveyouradvice · 24/05/2025 10:53

this is such an important question

Confusedformer · 22/05/2025 20:17

Goodness I have not seen Tara Hewitt mentioned for a while. I forgot about that person.

tara still has an interesting Facebook account. She says she’s a bisexual person, previously she said she was a lesbian I think? She’s been conservative, labour, gay, lesbian, bisexual, deaf, disabled. She’s also trans.

From her fb account, looks like she’s moved to Ireland and she feels safe there, unlike in the UK. She’s taken up golf and has a really nice cover for her golf clubs shaped like a fluffy unicorn. She has quite powerful swing by the look of it!

She posted a video on her fb about the challenges of feeling unsure whether you’re allowed to use the female toilets on a Greek registered ship sailing between the UK and Ireland. She posted this to highlight how difficult it is for transwomen right now. Ordinary women don’t have this problem on foreign registered ships travelling between the uk and Ireland.

WhatterySquash · 22/05/2025 19:14

What they don't question is when their very best friend and someone they have known for years to be ultra liberal says "this is bollocks and wrong".
They suddenly just abandon that friendship because they want to be in with the right crowd rather than stop and pause and think "hang on a second, why the hell would someone I know so well and know is a good person, suddenly turn into a monster that should be shunned? Maybe I should think about this a little more and trust my friend and value that relationship".

To be fair I do think this does happen, and has led to the peaking of a lot of people because they did listen, think about it and look into it. I have several friends who haven’t abandoned me in this way, they’ve either explored it more, or agreed to disagree respectfully. The only one who has cut me out of her life is my fully fledged TRA (and absolutely textbook abuse-surviving, ND and poor-MH-suffering NB-turned-TM) family member.

I also know a really lovely gay man who went all LGBTQ+ flag-waving and pontificating about Most Oppressed And Marginalised etc c. 2015, and has changed his mind after listening to women and also eventually realising that trans ideology is telling him he’s not allowed to be same-sex attracted.

I agree many do just drop and shun friends though - I think it’s the fear of being associated with the reviled bigot and possibly ending up understanding reality and having to join them. My friends who I’m able to discuss it with are not GC or TRA, they’re more “never really thought about it”.

WhatterySquash · 22/05/2025 18:58

Teenage girls desperately want to believe they can be/ do anything boys and men can do and be. And society should certainly provide opportunities and knock down barriers as much as possible. But it can’t change hard facts.

And there’s a weird failure among tras and faux-feminists to accept that women can actually have and do more of what has been traditionally taken by men, IF the differences are recognised and respected. Women and girls can be successful elite athletes if there are proper women’s categories, but not if males and females are grouped together or males are allowed to be “women”. Women and girls can have better access to workplaces, schools, trips, organised excursions if they have the necessary safe places to change, sleep etc.

Pretending there are no differences has destroyed women’s and girls’ sporting careers and opportunities in front of our eyes and has not done that to men and boys. The fact that people pretend not to see or understand that is damning.