How did people start to believe in this trans stuff?

[IsThereAnEchoInHere]

I’m talking about the ’allys’, the one’s who believe in all this?
How did it make sense to them that women have penis’ now, that transwomen can compete with women, that men who were so oppressive yesterday can today be the most oppressed transwomen?

How did they get to that point?
How did it make sense to them?

To be complitely honest, I tried/ am trying to ’be nice’ and understand, but the more I read (from trans people, allys) the less it makes sense.
I wanted to understand, but my brain won’t let me.

👏👏👏

@Jewel1968 " It feels to me that in the past there was more acceptance of dressing different to expectations. Seems more rigid now."

I'm just listening to an audiobook of Janina Ramirez's book "Femina" where she talks about Viking graves, and about how images and graves that were hitherto thought to belong to individuals of one sex have been shown to belong to individuals of the other. She describes this as evidence of gender fluidity in those days, but to me it seems more like a lack of stereotyping.

Science isn’t the determinator though, evolution is. Science is the discipline we use to try to understand the world.
Female and male evolved to increase variation in species. There are only sperm and eggs. No ‘in between’ or third sex cell. Yes there are people with differences in sexual development (so called intersex) but these people’s conditions are not related to transgenderism. They have one of several identifiable conditions. That’s the other incredibly weak gotcha that people use - what about intersex people? What about them? Ask that question back!
There is no evidence at present that there is any chromosomal/ genetic reason for someone believing they are transgender.

ancientballerina “There is no evidence at present that there is any chromosomal/ genetic reason for someone believing they are transgender.”

yes I know - my point was that claiming there is scientific/chromosomal evidence that sex isn’t binary undermines their argument for self ID. Their argument is self-defeating because if they are saying “chromosomes show more than just two categories” then it follows that they think chromosomes indicate your sex and therefore that a man can’t be/ become a woman.

But yes, even though there is a variety of chromosal arrangements, there are still only two sexes because sex evolved to be a binary function.

yes I know - my point was that claiming there is scientific/chromosomal evidence that sex isn’t binary undermines their argument for self ID. Their argument is self-defeating because if they are saying “chromosomes show more than just two categories” then it follows that they think chromosomes indicate your sex and therefore that a man can’t be/ become a woman.

Yet another one of the glaring logical contradictions that some people can't seem to see. It's both about physical sex and definitely not about physical sex because that's transphobic.

I'm just listening to an audiobook of Janina Ramirez's book "Femina" where she talks about Viking graves, and about how images and graves that were hitherto thought to belong to individuals of one sex have been shown to belong to individuals of the other. She describes this as evidence of gender fluidity in those days, but to me it seems more like a lack of stereotyping.

She has fully swallowed the kool aid.

She describes this as evidence of gender fluidity in those days

The stupid thing is there has always been "gender fluidity" in the meaning of adherence or not to gender roles, but that has nothing to do with "transness"/somehow not belonging to your own sex. They find a male Viking who performed a supposedly female role, or a Shang dynasty woman who became an army general, and suddenly it's seen as evidence of what gender ideology is pushing, some bizarre idea that people can opt out of being male or female. But it's not. Gender roles have always been attached to the sexes and used as a form of social control, and/or signalling but some people have always defied them, or not fitted into them and been shoved into another category, or been given a special pass for whatever reason. Plus gender roles and expectations of the sexes change over time and in different societies so even then you have to be extremely careful about retrospectively deciding somebody was or wasn't gender-conforming.

I find it so odd when people retrospectively trans dead historical figures. I thought they claimed you are what you say you are, so why do they get to override what a historical figure said about themselves? E.g. Joan of Arc said she was a woman. So they should respect that surely?

how images and graves that were hitherto thought to belong to individuals of one sex have been shown to belong to individuals of the other. She describes this as evidence of gender fluidity

This is like one of those comedy archaeology sketches where people come up with the most anachronistic misinterpretation of artefacts.

I humbly suggest it could also be simply evidence of archaeologists having had an incorrect idea about things being sex-specific.

Or am I not thinking cleverly enough?

There's something Douglas Adamsy about this - their minds must be too-highly trained or something.

She has fully swallowed the kool aid.

Someone gave me that book as a gift recently and I was really looking forward to getting stuck into it, but reading previous posts is making my shoulders sag.

@Tricyrtis2022 - to be fair to her that's the first time in the book so far that kind of statement has been made. It's a very interesting book.

Yes I take your point but I suppose I feel that it shouldn’t even get to the point that you(one) have/had to make that argument but one probably does (sigh)

@Britinme glad to hear it. I've read the first few pages and it does look interesting.

At 16, in 1979 in London, I used to see a person sat curled up in a corner of the bus every day, almost apologising for their existence. I got to know them. They had lost all of their family once they were brave enough to tel them that they had always known they were born in the wrong body. They'd had an awful life since then; bullied, attacked, no work, no friends. But they'd stayed true to what they knew about themselves.
So that was how I believe that transgender people are genuine. Since then I have known transgender people (mtf, ftm) and also follow Stephanie Hirst, who shared her journey at the time. I have been an ally for 44 years.
It's because of people, not propaganda.

Have you ever thought how ‘wrong body’ works?

There is no ‘wrong body’ only ‘your body’. Are people who are born in bodies with missing limbs, missing body parts in the wrong body? Are they told they are in the ‘wrong body’?

And the reality is, that not one person changes sex. That doesn’t mean that they should experience discrimination. Just as it also doesn’t mean that if they are male that they should have access to female single sex spaces and services where sex matters, female opportunities set up to progress all female to address the still present discrimination, and female sports categories.

It also doesn’t mean that the current cohort of young transitioners has much in common with that person you met on the bus. And these young transitioners, who are mostly female, need to have a great deal more clarity before undergoing protocols that seem to be based around male transition.

So that was how I believe that transgender people are genuine.

Genuine what? You still can't change your sex.

I think that story may show that they can be "genuine" in the sense that they are really personally convinced by it. And it's an important part of their identity.

But that's relatively uncontroversial. I think most people don't deny that gender dysphoria is a real condition.

I don't give a damn how people present themselves or conduct their personal relationships. But they can't change sex and they don't belong in single-sex spaces reserved for someone of the opposite sex.

But that's relatively uncontroversial. I think most people don't deny that gender dysphoria is a real condition.

I think for a tiny number of people it is, just like some people genuinely believe they are made of glass. I believe the numbers who have gender dysphoria are massively overexaggerated. I also don't believe it's possible to be born in the wrong body, and I reject everything that flows from that ideology. People can identify however they like, but other people shouldn't be expected to play along.

They had lost all of their family once they were brave enough to tel them that they had always known they were born in the wrong body.

And it could be that tells a story of someone brought up in a family with very rigid gender roles, where boys were only allowed to be masculine and girls were only allowed to be feminine. If that person found themself not fitting that and being drawn to the opposite sex’s gender expression or just had a personality that fitted that, and were made to believe that that was totally unacceptable, then you can see how they came round to feeling “born in the wrong body” or that they “should” have been the opposite sex.

But if they had been truly allowed to be who they were, and been accepted as a feminine male or masculine female, then perhaps they wouldn’t have felt so wrong in themselves. They might have ended up like the millions of happy gender-non-conforming people who are not trans, but who are often gay.

One deep problem with gender ideology is that it promulgates rigid gender roles. It makes out that everyone except trans people fits into an imagined “binary” where men are masculine and women are feminine, but that’s just not true.

And while some people do genuinely have what is called “gender dysphoria” and feel happier trying to “live as” the opposite sex, it isn’t an ideal solution because you cannot ever become the opposite sex, and medical treatments and surgery to that end tend to cause lifelong harms, pain, dissatisfaction or sometimes misery and severe illness. On top of that, I think it’s reasonable that actual members of a sex, especially if female and/or gay, don’t want to have to pretend someone is the same sex as them when they are not, and that’s hard to take. It doesn’t add up to the best solution.

🙂

I met one and decided I liked the person and it was irrelevant what they are, am or want to be.
Simple.

There is now the narrative coming through from young trans people that this is about ‘choice’.

Such as Madison here.

I do believe there are people with gender dysphoria. We also know from those with gender dysphoria that learning to deal with their dysphoria and not living as that other gender is a valid option. Even for those with crippling dysphoria.

We also know this from the growing number of detransitioners, many of whom still have dysphoria.

It was a deliberate strategy to expand the umbrella of people who now fit the term ‘trans’. I think many with gender dysphoria are now questioning whether that move was really beneficial to them.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/22/i-dont-feel-like-i-was-born-into-the-wrong-body-theres-not-a-right-or-wrong-way-to-be-trans

Stonewall.

Once you had complete equality for gay people such as the same age of consent with straight people and finally equal marriage stonewall looked around for another group to represent.

I don't believe anyone is born in the wrong body, though some people (I was listening to people with Cystic fibrosis on the radio this morning; I've known several people with Parkinson's disease) have bodies they'd like to change.

I'm sure the person described above was born into a family who excluded them because they were same-sex attracted, or simply didn't want to conform to expectations, and that, because children need acceptance from their families to survive, they persuaded themselves that something about them was 'wrong'. But it wasn't their body, it was their family, and, by the sound of it, eventually their mind.

It would be more accurate and therefore kinder to describe people as having the wrong brains rather than the wrong bodies. I think TRA have moved away from 'wrong body' language but genderism remains a cruel, exploitative and deceptive belief system.

I look at my child's class in school - one child has Down's Syndrome, another has a physical disability. How does a teacher introduce the idea that some people are born in the wrong body and exclude any children but not have it apply to children who are struggling with their body for reasons other than the sex they were born? Are other children now supposed to just be collateral damage to that idea?