I first found out about mumsnet when I was sixteen. I'd come to terms with being a lesbian by then and like most young lesbians growing up in homophobic environments, I was desperate for community. I spent a lot of time on social media, especially reddit and I was extremely keen to be a good ally to the most oppressed group in my community or so I believed.
From what I'd read on reddit, mumsnet was a den of transphobes and bigots and nazis so rightfully I made a post and left a few scolding comments. It's so ridiculous when I think about it, but I had to use my "cis privilege" for good.
I was rightfully educated by posters on FWR but I wasn't ready I suppose. I spent months browsing the board, growing angrier and gultier as I found myself agreeing with some of the posters. On one occasion, I felt so guilty, I went onto a dating app I was much too young for and matched with a trans identified male person as some sort of penance. I didn't meet up with them though, thankfully.
At the time, my closest friends were two other lesbians both identifying as trans. I couldn't reconcile the image of my funny, shy friends with the news articles posted here so I decided not to believe. I used to lurk on here, trying my hardest to come up with arguments and reasonings against the facts I saw, eventually just giving up because "I won't understand due to my lack of lived experience". I ended up blocking mumsnet from my browser and spent a year identifying as non binary due to what I called "chest dysphoria" but was really me suffering from an ed.
I got into uni for medicine and I think then the walls started to crumble a little. I remember a friend at the time wanted to start testosterone and she seemed to believe it would make her taller and stronger and correct her "wrong puberty" but from my lectures and teachings, I knew that wasn't true. I tried to explain and of course I was met with calls to educate myself. At the time, I remember thinking to myself that if I, as a first year medic was starting to lose faith in the whole changing sex idea, how do actual doctors who've been in education for decades, maintain their belief?
I dismissed my doubts though and joined my uni's lgbt soc that was lgb in name alone. I complained once that there were never any socials for lesbian or gay men, but again I was told to recognise my privilege. At this point, I had genuinely begun to believe I had become transphobic from all my hate reading mumsnet. Very ridiculous, I know. Nevertheless, I had to fix this by interacting with actual trans people like I had been told.
I joined discord groups, read subreddits, watched movies and tv and stopped avoiding uni socials for QTPOC+ in the hopes that I would be a better ally or something. But the more I spent time with them, the more I knew that all those posts I'd read years ago were more true than I was willing to admit. It seemed that everywhere I went was more and more dismissive of the fact that misogyny was real and lesbians were homosexual women. I felt like I was going insane and I had no one to speak to.
Then I saw a tiktok video positing that JKR and many women with unsavory beliefs had lied about their abuse and the repeated harassment of Amber Heard took off. In real life I had people I considered friends saying disgusting things to me under the guise of "queer rights". It seemed the only women with sense left were the so called bigots and nazis and transphobes. It took me a year to stop believing, but I did eventually and thinking back to how deeply I'd fallen in as a child makes me so sad. But I am thankful that I found this website, thankful for the women who are brave enough to speak up and thankful that I just couldn't stay away.