How did we get here?

I put a "love" react up to this, but actually I don't think a react emoji is any where near enough love. Pithy, perfect and pretty much magnificent.

Keeping it as one word is an important act of resistance.

I resist by refusing to use that word at all.

I say "men who claim to be women", or "men who claim womanhood", but always start with MEN. Then all is clear.

I have a brother who claims to be a woman. He is not.

It's important to use transwoman as a single word for exactly the same reason as why TRAs want to force autocorrects to split it into 2 words. A transwoman is a whole noun that means a male person who holds a particular set of beliefs. TRAs want you to use two words because they want the noun to be just woman, with Trans being an adjective that describes what kind of woman. This requires implicit acceptance of the concept that a man can be a woman. Keeping it as one word is an important act of resistance.

Everything everyone above has said (Stonewall, GRA, Dentons, queer theory etc) but also the look-at-me mentalness of social media and the sudden need to have a super-special identity while also being part of a ‘tribe’ with its own set of codes and symbols.

Circa 2008, I remember being sat in online safety seminars (I used to work in this area) and we were all being preached to about the wonders of Web 2.0, where you could now ‘upload your own content!’ instead of just looking at Encarta and searching on Ask Jeeves, or whatever it was we used to do online. Cue the fun early days of social media for the normies, where we would throw sheep on Facebook and get excited about YouTube.

Meanwhile, another part of Web 2.0 was bubbling away largely unnoticed by normies - Tumblr; LiveJournal - where pornified fanfic and microidentities blossomed like needy little flowers. Combine this with unfettered access to the worst of humanity, and you’ve got a sh*tty cauldron just ready to boil over.

Whenever anyone says ‘but social media is good actually; look at what it can do!’ I think no, it’s absolutely f*ked up at least two generations of children and made grown adults who should know better into absolute twts. And some of them now also genuinely believe they’re the opposite sex.

This does not answer OP's question but does explain a lot

Queer theory I think was already well established at universities before it became a thing in the greater public. I happened to meet with a friend the other day who did Women's Studies in the late 90s - all the ideas that support queer theory were already well established then. And in her department, and I think increasingly in many university departments at that time, these ideas were not up for discussion.

Notably, the idea that there was no serious difference between men and women, apart from genital configuration, was wholly accepted. Physical, mental, emotional, whatever. She felt this had been the case for at least 10 years before she was in the department. So from the late 80s at least.

But I also think there was a wider context that has to be looked at. Certainly by the 90s you have this idea about women becoming widespread. You also have the gay rights movement coming into its own, and there were a few truisms there:

You are what you say you are.
Sexuality and other identities are innate from birth and can't be questioned.
If you differ from the "correct" views on things like women's issues, or gay rights, it must be because you are a bigot. These things were "not debatable."
It is no important differernce between a homosexual and heterosexual relationship.
Marriage and other socially supported structures exist for the benefit of individuals, not society.

All of these idea, when they become part of the background assumptions people hold, and when they aren't ever interrogated, imo tend to leave people with a sense that sex, as in biological sex, has no real significance. So all that is left of it is the social performance.

I think the full analysis is yet to be done, but it would need to be international in scope. If anything, the UK is an outlier in holding back the tide among relatively liberal nations.

This may be the conspiracy theorist in me but I honestly think it is a combination of nihilists and possibly foreign agents who just invented and then egged the whole thing on from the dark depths of the internet. They targeted places where autogynephiliacs congregated and coerced them into taking to the streets, laughing the whole time. Look at the damage this ideology has done to our societies and trusted institutions. Even though the tide is turning frankly, mission accomplished. The re-election of Trump is proof.

The last fifteen years I would watch things happen and think this will make people realise how this is bad for women and children.
The penny finally dropped that people do know - they just don't care.

Also this one - it has the link to the Denton's document too.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5412552-roisin-michaux-the-first-rule-of-queer-club

Have you seen this thread @StormyPotatoes
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1816266309555884491.html

'When I was a rookie in 2007, there was a clear understanding that crossdressing men in women’s spaces were often there for sexual reasons, and that if we were called to deal with one, he was to be trespassed from the premises if the owner/manager requested it (meaning criminal charges would be filed if he returned), and any women who were in the bathroom with him would be questioned to make sure they hadn’t been harassed or assaulted. After that, assuming no one had been assaulted and wanted to press charges, he would be released with a verbal warning to stay out of women’s bathrooms.'

(Continues in the link above).

It's quite fascinating reading articles from around back when the GRA was introduced. The different terminology used, the topics that were still acceptable to discuss in left-leaning publications.

Here's a few from the Guardian.

This one talks about detransitioners and regretters: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/31/health.socialcare

Julie Bindel got cancelled for this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7

Tehran as the "sex-change capital of the world": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/27/gayrights.iran

If Queer Therory means nothing to you, you could watch this video.

Never forget Dentons and forced teaming.

Others will be able to write about it in more detail, but briefly the Gender Recognition Act was either as some claimed just a kind gesture to what were thought to be a few men, or a trojan horse.

It bacame a trojan horse when Stonewall realising they really didn't have that much to campaign about added the T to the LGB as a money maker.

The inexplicable part of it is why so many individuals and institutions fell for the Stonewall training, and then the TWAW narrative.

Behind all of this was the infiltration into universities of Queer Politics that then became accepted as a plausible analysis of life.

This goes back to the late 70s early 80s with the immediate victims being Women's Studies Courses that became Gender Studies Courses.

So all those who accepted Stonewall's Law had been softened up, converted to the queer perspective on life.

And anyway, women's liberation was old fashioned and boring old women were the only ones who cared about it. Nothing like as edgey and rainbow colours, sparkle, and being allowed to have obscene displays in public in the name of being kind.

Basically the TRAs suceeded because their attitude towards women is only a modern version of the much older but still persisting MRAs.