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.

Well, I'll have a go, from the perspective of someone who really wanted to believe in gender ideology because everyone around me seemed to and it seemed to be understood as a condition of being a good person. I do 'understand' the ideology, even though I no longer support it and I suppose you could say I was never a true believer.

Even though I sense this is just going to be another thread talking about how stupid everyone who fell for it is.

It has a sort of internal logic, once you accept the first premise.

The premise is that everyone has a gendered soul. It all flows from that idea.

It is an observable fact that some people hate their sexed bodies and wish they were the opposite sex. And it is undeniable that most people accept their sex. So they tell you that you have a gendered soul that aligns with your sex, that's why you don't notice it, and that some people have a soul that should be in a body of the opposite sex and that this is very painful for them. They don't call it a soul or you would notice right away that this is nonsense, but it's presented as an idea that you can't know anything about unless you do have the kind of soul that doesn't align with your sex.

If you accept the gendered souls, it's a short jump to the idea that the words 'woman' and 'man' refer to your gendered soul, not your body. It then follows that your body is irrelevant and that biological sex 'does not define who you are' (which superficially sounds like a feminist idea). Young women raised on liberal feminism which sought to downplay the differences between male and female bodies may not immediately recognise this as nonsense.

You might have some niggles and you might have varying degrees of success in suppressing these niggles, but if your social circle is such that denying this ideology will lead to ostracisation (and I think some of the older women on this forum are very scathing and dismissive of this because it's not true for their own social circles) you might just keep quiet and try to make it make sense.

I think there is a 'Trans High Command' group pumping a lot of money into this and paying off people.

It has a sort of internal logic, once you accept the first premise.
The premise is that everyone has a gendered soul.

But this premise falls at the first hurdle. How would a soul "have a gender"? What is the difference between a man-soul and a woman-soul?

@VitaminX
Thank you for explaining from that pov.
And since it sounds like you had a lot of people who understood all this, can I ask something?

Why is this ’soul’ only about gender?
Why is being transracial not okey?
What is the difference?

I mean there are a lot of things a person could feel like they don’t belong in their bodies.
Be it race, age, look-wise, disability…. List is actually endless.
Why only gender?

To be clear, I’m not interrogating you, although it does look like I am, it just came off as that you have inside knowledge.

Yeah look I'm not saying I subscribe to this idea. Back when I did try to, I also wouldn't have phrased it in this way. I can't argue with you as though I do believe it, because I don't. I am just trying to explain because the OP asked how people were persuaded.

Lots of people around the world believe in souls. Perhaps even the majority of the world's population. It's clearly a seductive idea.

I do not believe in souls. Never have believed in souls described as souls. But it took me a while to realise that this ideology was essentially all built on an idea that was indistinguishable from the idea of a soul.

If you believe in souls that’s probably an easy way for a disconnected and vulnerable young person to come to terms with being so unhappy in their own skin.
In the past adults knew this was a typical teen phase, worse for some than others, and the teens eventually grew out of it.

Every straight person who had been slow in supporting gay and lesbian rights felt the need to get ahead of something stonewall said was just the same. Everyone knows a very feminine bloke or a very masculine woman- maybe seen them get bullied as kids at school. So creating a stereotype that it was all about being kind to the bullied classmate, worked (and still works). Until you start interrogating it. And until you learn what autogynophilia means.

What I'm saying is that however we try to make sense of it we are doomed to failure. There's always a hole at the middle of any argument or premise and that is that "gender" (in the sense that a person, or even a person's soul, can "have a gender") is never ever defined.

To be fair the op didn't belittle allies and is just asking for people who are allies to explain as they have tried to be kind and understand, but have some questions. Perhaps you could outline the experiences which have made you a trans supporter? Who knows, you might convert some people to the cause? More flies with honey than with vinegar and all that.

The older I get the more I am convinced that many people will do and say almost anything to gain entry to, or not to be evicted from, a desirable social group. If this means turning a blind eye to unpleasant and inconvenient truths/acts, so be it. Critical thinking is a lot less important than their group membership.

Excellently put.

Do they all actually believe it though? I'm sure there are plenty who are too scared to say what they really think in case their "friends" turn on them. Some see an opportunity to have a level of power in their group, some are sheep, some are grifters, some are very vulnerable people. I could go on.

There was a children’s documentary (I think around 2011 or perhaps later?) which profiled a series of different children. One of those children was questioning their gender identity and being treated at the Tavistock. I think that documentary has been mentioned as being quite influential.

@BiggerBoat1
Or some people just have a different opinion or experience than you?

Shocking I know

This

Deep into the conspiracy theories there, watch your tin foil hat doesn't slip

We know you have a different opinion, the question is how you arrived at it.

It’s always amazed how it went from being an issue that no one was interested in to one that suddenly loads of people cared passionately about. Someone here once said it reminded them of this Mitchell and Webb sketch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmv-pPFQbJ8

Be kind!

Helen Joyce explains this well in her book Trans. As PP has said, mainstream culture was painfully slow to accept gay people and now people think they need to make amends by bending over backwards to do anything the trans lobby want.

I guess a very long time ago I was an ally; there was a speech at my first wedding about transsexuals (I said it was a long time ago, about ten years before the GRA passed into law) and how they should have the the right to marry like we were doing.

And that kind of brings home how we've been making policy leaps like seven-league boots. Of course we needed same sex marriage, but that only happened about ten years ago. It's the blink of an eye. The GRA was less than 20 years ago, the IOC decision on males in women's sport was 21 years ago.

The simple fact was that I didn't think very much about any of it. My first husband was a desister. He took female hormones for a short time. He was also certain that transsexuals were women. Also I was a bit afraid of him. I had no vocabulary, no theory, no ideas that even approached the gap between his view that men could be women, and his own change of path. He didn't want children, I did, and I remember feeling as if my body and feelings didn't really exist in the relationship. I wish now that I'd talked to him properly about it but as with so many other topics, I never did. I think I would have associated questioning any of this with 'old school' feminism, not lovely modern progressiveness. And it turns out I was right.

If it was a genuine "opinion" or belief they'd be able to back it up and clarify it.

Ok, you say trans women - male people - are literally women. What is it you mean when you say "women", as it isn't "female"?

They can never, ever answer - just move the words around without conveying anything meaningful.

Imo people accept - as I do - that there are transsexual people with a desire to be, or at least be seen as, the opposite sex. It's when the "living as a woman" (never defined - name a thing or group of things you can do that makes a person a woman?) is taken literally - that you do certain things and that's seen as feminine, and females are feminine aren't they because of course it's impossible to grasp being female and not feminine, or feminine and not female.

It's from this misogynistic view of women as "not-men" but lesser than and "other". And of course far more people than you'd hope buy into "man-brain" and "lady-brain" prejudices.

I too am interested to hear how on earth people have become so stupid as to genuinely believe that middle class white males are the most oppressed people on the planet . I mean how stupid do you have to be.

That's really interesting, @PermanentTemporary.

I think one of the masterstrokes of the activists was getting Stonewall and many similar groups across all the wealthy countries of the world to go from LGB to LGBT. Now of course it's LGBTQ+. All set out in that Denton's document mentioned above.

Good post. The gendered souls is a bit "well, deep down we all know all women are like this, and men are like this"... but then you have to caveat "except for the women that have man-souls, who are different" without ever quite clocking that if a female has "man-behaviour" then that is actually an example of "woman-behaviour" .

No, the stereotypes can't be wrong... It's the bodies that are wrong!

I kind of agree with this.

I have a family member who was at the forefront of the rights based movements and feminist movements in the 70s. But it is like she has since checked her brain into the cloakroom and she jumps on every bandwagon going. Including this one. recently declared her pronouns to be 'they / them'. Total complete swallowing of the propanganda without any critical thinking of any sort. At a family function this past week when she was asked if she would be happy with her granddaughter (aged 7) being explosed to an intact naked male in a chamging room declared that penises should not matter and it was actually all about the essence of a person.

Tattoo ink poisoning?