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.

The Public Universal Friend, often cited as a nonbinary person in 18th century America, was a very explicitly Christian person. They were supposed to have died and come back to life, and they started a new sect of Quakers. Tbh they sound more like Mary Baker Eddy who founded Christian Science - very much of their time.

It is pretty easy to see that being trans is a religious phenomenon, translated for a secular age that believes only in medicine and individualism. In fact you could say it's a form of spiritual connection for young people, and I would have some sympathy with that if it weren't so much at the expense of women- like most religions.

I mean as a straight white Christian, I know enough to be able to recognise that history has been rewritten by straight white Christians for the most part...so strange that you'd think trans people are doing the rewrite as if it's fiction...

You can’t change your biological sex though. Or do you think you can?

It's a really interesting question. Historically, I think it was kind of bad timing. There's something of an arms race between cosmetic surgery and artificial hormones, and the liberalising of society to not impose stereotyped roles by sex and reduce homophobia.

Medicine got there too soon. Once liberal-identifying society has cut off men's dicks and girl children's breasts and blocked children from ever experiencing puberty, all in the name of them identifying more with the stereotyped roles of the opposite sex... there is a massive incentive for them not to be wrong about it all and for the stereotyped roles to be the real thing not the sex they destroyed.

In terms of what people believe today, the problem to my mind is blind acceptance that TWAW. Once you adopt that as an axiom that the rest follows. There are big problems with that axiom, it's self-contradictory. That's why we get so much aggression if we ask questions about the actual meaning of terms. There are no answers. There is no logically consistent position. If there was people would be willing to engage with logic rather than alternating between aggression and attempts at emotional blackmail.

As an undergraduate I used to discuss religion with religious people. It made no sense to me. I couldn't find any logically sensible way for it to be true. The best argument I ever came up against was from a classmate who just said 'The starting point is faith.' It didn't have to make sense for her, she just believed. I'm seeing exactly the same blind adherence to TWAW.

I think gendered souls arises out of trying to rationalise TWAW, it doesn't precede it.

Deny what?

I think people aren't completely addressing the OP's point, which is to do with the weird psychology of it all. Throughout the 70s, right up to the early to mid 2000s, you had this idea of the male-to-female transsexual, people like Jan Morris and April Ashley. They were men who felt themselves to be women, and they had surgery, and everyone basically tolerated them and felt a bit sorry for them. Then quite suddenly, it seems, we had this explosion of men claiming to "identify" as women, not wanting surgery or hormones, but demanding access to women's spaces and women's sports in a quite aggressive fashion.

And simultaneously, there was a phenomenon never seen before, of young women, mostly teenage girls deciding they were really boys and wanting to cut their breasts off and take testosterone.

And once that was underway, you had yet another new phenomenon, that of the "non-binary" identity, which suddenly became adopted by lots of young men and women.

What is really really bizarre is the number of people who just accepted this as if it was completely normal, as if things had indeed always been that way. There only seemed to be a handful of us curious enough to say: what's going on here? What's happening? This doesn't seem quite right. And we all got called bigots and Nazis. It's the most weird thing. I keep thinking; doesn't anyone else remember that it didn't use to be like this?

I hate to say it, but DH is an ally. We have had a couple of rather heated debates about it, and now we avoid the subject. Some of his points and comments to me:

• So do you really think transwomen are men? (me - yes....)
• I might almost think you were gender critical (me - well, yes I am! him - comments about aligning myself with right-wing bigots...)
• Do you think that genitals should determine your life? (me - no, of course not, that's why I'm a feminist duh)
• Blah blah assigned at birth (me - nothing is "assigned at birth", language is important. Him - everyone says that, I didn't know that it controversial. Which shows he's only really been hearing one side)
• You've been reading too much mumsnet (me - I can think for myself thank you very much, and I was on the side of women before the internet was even thought of)
• Sport is a complicated area (me - no, it really isn't, men have a big advantage and don't belong in women's sport)
• Maybe sport is different (me - well, I'm not a woman for some things and on some days, I'm a woman all the time. Ergo, transwomen are not women)
• Blah blah female brains, male brains, scientific evidence (not sure what he was on about here)
• GRR, women's clothes for 3 months + a gas bill or whatever (me - sdoes that make you a woman? Really? And what about me, am I wearing women's clothes? as I sat in jumper and jeans)

There were numerous comments from me about things that he didn't know anything about, such as removal of women-only rape counselling, which shows he's not been hearing both sides.

The really weird thing is that he's very intelligent and scientifically-minded. And the second really weird thing actually, is that our first "debate" on this ended with him storming out of the room and slamming the door. We don't disagree on much of importance and rarely argue

@ mnhq I seem to have been deleted for mentioning the word castration, however I was replying to a previous post which mentioned enforced and elective castrations which took place in the past, not conflating today's surgical procedures, which can include orchiectomy, with castration.

Trans people have always been around and will always continue to be around.

Am I right in assuming you mean trans to mean "someone who wishes to be the opposite sex"? Because it's moved on from that - I think the confusion as to what it even means is part and parcel of it - the recent insistence that everyone has a gender identity, that both is and isn't to do with a biological sex.

Nobody can change their chromosomes, but you can change your outward appearance, it's happened always, there's documented cases from 200 years ago (obviously no micro surgery but living as the opposite gender).

What has caused the recent explosion I have no idea and it's concerning. We should be kind and understanding though, and perhaps if we didn't encourage young kids to be pigeonholed from young they wouldn't "think" they were the opposite gender just because they are interested in things that are opposite gendered!

Thing is though, a lot (most? all?) the people doing the rewriting are.... wait for it.... Straight White Western Males.

I'd be interested in some information about your trans histories. I've seen quite a bit of this, again almost always by people who are not of the cultures themselves. I've also seen a push back from first nation people, and most recently Maori women, at this colonisation, and misinterpretation, of their histories and cultural traditions by straight white western people.

Maybe you could afford the OP the courtesy of answering her questions.

How did it make sense to [you] 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 [you] get to that point?
How did it make sense to [you]?

living as the opposite gender
200 years ago that did mean social roles, stereotypes. Of course people wanted to opt out of enforced stereotypes, and some brave souls succeeded. Some societies even had systematic options for that to be permitted, more often to men (often gay men) than women it has to be said. I've seen it described as a kind of safety valve, and also that they are more common the stronger the socially imposed roles are in a particular society.

I think there's a place for understanding that someone's biological sex at birth was one thing and that they live and identify and have transitioned to a different gender and identity. I mean trans people aren't completely illogical, they know their own medical history. I don't think I personally need to have details on that medical history to be able to accept that someone does not identify as male female etc despite it being their original sex. For me it comes back to that grey area between mind and body and I think it's bigger and more intangible than that one specific question. I don't think that should be used to try and discredit a trans person's identity and lived experience.

We've been told that "woman" has nothing to do with "biological female". It's a feeling or set of non-physical characteristics (I guess behaviours, ways of thinking, actions).

Do you agree, ilovetea? That gender is completely separate from sex, that "woman" as a gender bears zero relation to anything physical to do with the body?

(If you could be honest enough to answer without changing the words of what I've asked, that would help me understand).

There are plenty of examples within UK and European history, there's no need to assume I'm talking solely about other cultures.

Ok so where does it lead them?

Can they access all female spaces regardless of differences in biology, do women get a say?

If an adult wants to identify as a child can they access that space, why not?

Funny how womens lived experience of being born female is fine to ignore but we must all bow to TW idea of what being female is even though that can only ever be a feeling in their head

a man can never know how it feels to be a woman they can only imagine how it might feel

Excellent. Give some please.

The best argument I ever came up against was from a classmate who just said 'The starting point is faith.' It didn't have to make sense for her, she just believed.

I like this idea. Perhaps some people are just prepared to have faith that TWAW in some completely unknowable way. Then it doesn't matter that no one can explain it.

Yes that would be my take on it. I believe that womanhood goes beyond just the physical. I understand that others disagree on that and I accept that's their stance but that's where I personally land.

By "do not identify as female" are you saying there is something more required to be female than simply to have a female body?

You think there are some personalities or behaviours or feelings that always, by definition, come with a female body - unless you are trans?

As I've said before, this is what my grandad thought. If you are a woman, you obviously think like this and have these skills and preferences and attitudes. I prefer to think that your sex says nothing about you as a person.

This is nonsense, and a good example of the made-up history of the trans movement and its supporters. The idea of “two spirit” is not actually as it gets portrayed like this (and trans advocates don’t ever seem to pause over the rather egregious neo-colonialist misunderstanding and twisting of other cultures that they do in order to make them fit a made-up “trans history”). Cross-dressing did exist in the past, but in much more historically specific ways than you suggest, and was never normally considered evidence that someone really “was” the opposite sex — the idea wasn’t really particularly thinkable before quite recently. Sure, both men and women were interested in gendered social expectations. Much of the questioning of these was done under religious principles; or by people who were same-sex attracted.

Most examples of the expression of wanting to take on opposite sex roles or dress were actually done by gay people rather than this being thought of as a genuine desire to “be” the opposite sex - in fact the very idea of the “soul born in the wrong body” was advanced only at the turn of the twentieth century by proponents of “inversion” — the idea that homosexuality resulted from a mismatch between a sexed soul imprisoned in an opposite-sexed body. This was pretty comprehensively rejected in the early and mid-twentieth century by gay and lesbian people, however, who saw it as demeaning, pseudoscientific and inaccurate. However, the trans movement has resurrected inversion theory as a genuine idea - when it was always patent nonsense.

The trouble with the “trans people have always existed” idea is that it requires co-opting the (already relatively scant) evidence in the historical record of what were almost certainly gay men and women and communities of same-sex attracted people (same in other cultures — for example in India). In contrast, “Transsexual” as a word and idea only really emerged in the early twentieth century in the west (and “transgender” even later).

Funnily enough, “transsexual” as a concept is roughly coextensive with the modern era of post-antibiotic surgery — and it’s rather obvious why: before elective surgery of any kind became a routine possibility (with the advent of modern surgical techniques and antibiotics) the idea that someone might try literally to change their body into that of the other sex would have caused astonishment. Before surgery, the person would have been just a woman in trousers — or a man in a dress.

And there were not many reasons why a man would genuinely desire to live as a woman before the twentieth century. That would have represented a very significant loss of nearly every freedom men enjoyed. It might have offered an erotic thrill in the imagination or in a bit of playacting or in a “Molly house” between male lovers, but not as genuinely living as a woman in every respect. Because it’s an idea that only genuinely attracts men after the gaining of historical freedoms by women. (And there are obvious reasons why it still isn’t an attractive idea in global societies where women are still routinely sexually oppressed in ways that we don’t even think about any more in the industrialised west.)

So if woman is nothing to do with the body, why the surgery or trying to change the body to look female? Are you saying this is a huge coincidence?