Why do people believe TWAW?

[hurdigurdi]

I’ve been making a list (because I like lists) but also have been trying my hardest to see the other side of the argument, as I think that’s the best way to see if an argument stands up. I have to admit it’s extremely hard to do because after you have peaked, it is very difficult to imagine being unpeaked.

Anyhow, here is my list of reasons people MAY believe TWAW (or indeed TMAM) and feel free to correct or add to it:

Why do people think TWAW?
“Be kind” and “live and let live” mentality
Group think & lack of critical thinking
Brainwashing
Fear of being cancelled/shamed/confronted/assaulted/losing job or career
Lack of knowledge of basic biology, sexual reproduction and DSDs
Ignorance of the physical differences between men and women (height, strength, lung capacity, heart size, arm span, foot and hand size, pelvis shape and function, sex organs, gait, Adam’s apple etc)
Have never met a detrans person or heard their story
Have never seen the harm gender ‘affirming’ surgery has done (botched neovagina, phalloplasty, mastectomy)
Does not know the risks and effects of taking opposite sex hormones on the body long term
Have never been assaulted by a male or a TIM
Have never competed against a male or a TIM in sports
Have never been in prison with a TIM
Internalised homophobia
Feelings of inadequacy as a man
Autism
Over consumption of porn
Inability to admit being wrong
Have facilitated the transing of a child (and therefore almost impossible to admit any harm has been caused)
Trauma or loss (especially of a mother or intimate partner)

The way the post was written I thought it was someone famous 😅. God, I'm getting old...

He THINKS he's going to be famous.... as an influencer. But that's another story!

I so agree with your comments. I saw a young man yesterday - very clearly a man so no question of his biological sex. He was very slim and was wearing jeans and a shirt but women's versions/style. Franky, he looked great and 20, 30, 40 years ago he would just have been a funky young man experimenting. But yesterday I found myself not sure whether, if I was talking to him, he would expect to be called a woman.

It's so ridiculous.

Precisely.

And they parrot the thought terminating cliche TWAW as a mantra without processing how absurd it is. If “trans women” were women Trump could declare himself to be one tomorrow.

I think a lot of people have great difficulty admitting they were wrong in their initial acceptance at face value of the trans narrative “born in the wrong body”, “tiny minority” “completely harmless” “national treasure e.g. Jan Morris, Eddie Izzard” which has been pushed at us by the media relentlessly over many years. Lots of people have “sunk costs” to contend with having initially fallen for the false narrative. I know a retired female GP who prides herself on her scientific rationality, agrees biological males shouldn’t be in sports, spaces etc., that male sexual predators will take advantage of self ID etc. but still insists on the “tiny minority born in the wrong body argument”. I suspect she may have supported someone to transition in the past. Perhaps an extreme example but we are not very good at admitting we’re wrong and being made to look stupid or having been manipulated.

@MattCauthon
He sounds absolutely insufferable.

Because the current Labour Government is not 'left wing' ie does not analyse the problems in this country from a class perspective.

This article from the Morning Star by a Trade Unionist women does.

ACCORDING to government statistics trade union membership grew in 2023 by 89,000 but 83,000 women left the same year.
This is on top of 129,000 women (mainly private sector) leaving the unions in 2022. The exodus of women in a period when trade unions are growing must be openly discussed, if trade unions are to be at the forefront of building power and influence and advancing the interests of the working class.
Women are 52 per cent of the population, so this exodus of women from the trade unions, the largest democratic organisations of the working class, leaves a question mark over whether women believe unions are relevant to them.
Are trade unions effectively tackling the systemic misogyny within our structures, in the workplace and in wider society? Government figures would suggest that unions are failing women. We need to fix this as a matter of urgency.
Throughout history women have played key roles in the most militant trade union struggles. From the Dublin Jacobs biscuit factory walkout, led by Rosie Hackett in 1911, to the strikes against Ford in Dagenham that changed legislation on equal pay. Women have been organising in trade unions since their formation.
The Tories try to position themselves as the champions of women’s rights but their brutal cuts and privatisation agenda has itself represented the biggest attack on women in our day-to-day lives.
In this period of reaction, women’s sex-based rights are under the most ferocious attack, alongside cuts to jobs, terms, conditions and public services. It is women who suffer most under a political agenda that advances cuts and privatisation and that puts profits before people.
Women occupy the lowest-paid job roles in the economy and tend to work part-time to care for children so as a result they are more reliant on an ever-shrinking welfare state. Zero-hours contracts, wage theft and extremely low pay is the lived experience of too many working-class women. Many are forced to work extra hours to make ends meet or end up with zero pay in order to meet the crippling costs of child care. Affordable social housing is no longer an option either, so mothers in particular end up trapped, disadvantaged and unable to escape a cycle of poverty or economic dependence on unsuitable men.
Rape convictions are at an all-time low and life-saving domestic abuse services are being shut or privatised out of existence as women and girls face rising levels of violence. The hollowing out of public-sector provision is further undermining the fundamental rights of women to assert our boundaries, to speak up, to demand safety from sexual and physical violence and to protect our children.
The political and economic attacks on women and the deliberate silencing of women goes hand in hand with attacks on the right to protest and the new raft of anti-trade union legislation that has been introduced. They want women and men to be utterly demoralised and disempowered, to stay in our place, shut up, and to give up organising ourselves in unions to fight against cuts and privatisation. After all, it can only be of benefit to the capitalist class if half the working class leave the trade unions in droves, are driven out or mistrust unions to the point that they don’t even want to get involved in the first place.
The global attack on women’s rights is being framed as “culture wars” by those who are unable to recognise that the deep divisions being sown between working-class men and women undermines class struggle.
It has always been understood across the trade unions and the left that equality for women is inextricably linked to class struggle but that level of understanding is being broken down by gibberish produced by the likes of Judith Butler and other modern-day sophists. The shallow analysis of identity politics is not sufficient to enable the working class to identify the true source of our oppression, arm us with the knowledge or the methods to mount an effective and united political and industrial struggle.
The fight for equality must be real and meaningful and the demands of women clearly defined within the political and industrial equality agenda.
Sexual harassment and rape are women’s issues. Domestic violence predominantly affects women and has an impact that lasts through generations. Hard work, grinding poverty and insecure contracts are the lot of too many women, who are increasingly the main breadwinners for the family.
The sex industry readily opens its doors to impoverished women who then end up being further exploited. That prostitution is now reframed as “liberating” and as “a legitimate form of work” tells us everything we need to know about the levels of misogyny that is deeply embedded in our movement.
Women need decent publicly owned and provided services, a welfare state that provides a genuine safety net and well-paid, unionised jobs, We also need to see progress in the laws around rape, flexible working and other issues that predominantly affect women. Women with children require unions to make more effort to lower the barriers to enable them to be fully involved.
These are the very basics of a core understanding of women and the particular issues we face and women’s demands must be put at the very core of the class struggle so that we can all succeed together.
Helen O’Connor is a GMB organiser writing in a personal capacity.

There's a teenage boy at my DD's school who is very feminine, has a feminine haircut, androgynous name, wears feminine clothes and make-up, and is very clear that he's a boy – despite according to my DD being constantly asked if he's trans, or assumed to be. Of course some may think it's an AGP situation but I think it's more that he's gay and effeminate, has female friends and just likes feminine things. He's very "decently" dressed i.e. it's not about heels, fishnets and miniskirts or trying to emulate a sexualised stereotype - he'll wear boots, jeans and a pretty top for example.

It's refreshing and I hope he can continue to withstand the "you must be a girl" pressure. And it does remind me of being a teenager in the 80s. No one would have thought anything of it at all.

Yep…it really is…massive

I've thought of another reason for the OP's list: mental health reaction.

On encountering a very obvious man in a dress who stridently insists he's literally and actually a woman, most people are going to assume he's mentally vulnerable. A lot of people are instinctively nervous around those who exhibit symptoms of mental health issues, especially if it suggests reality denial and unpredictable behaviour. So a common reaction will be to smile, nod and avoid thinking about it too much. Thinking hard is uncomfortable.

Quite a thread. The cliché Bingo sheet presumably includes GENITALS, whether checked, inspected, obsessed over, flapping or inappropriately looked at.

My reactions:

You can only 'live as a woman' if you have a female body. If you have a male body you are living as a man whatever you do. Do what you want. In your own spaces.

A man can have his penis chopped off but he cannot acquire a vagina. A vagina is part of the female reproductive system and cannot form separately from that. A man may acquire a permanently unhealed wound, a pretty dangerous thing to do.

And those poor pregnant transmen. A while back on some thread, possibly about shared rooms on school trips I queried how the school would handle pregnancy as was asked rather indignantly 'how could that happen?' I pointed out how very fertile young female bodies are and easy it is for them to get pregnant even without full penetration. Do the young get even that basic a level of sex education any more?

I've recently come across a new one - which is "I've got too much going on in my life and I can't cope with anything else", which is not denial but fairly close. Relevant for a lot of women with family and older parents and job and all the rest...

In 2021 Professor Zoë Playdon had a book called The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes published. I haven't read it but I read several reviews and responses to it at the time, and I ended up googling Professor Playdon, who appears to be what is often called an old school transsexual. I found that years ago in the early days of the internet Professor P. had opined that being trans is a disorder of sexual development, but instead of showing up in the form of an unusual physical development it manifests as a deep-seated belief from early childhood that the trans person has somehow got the wrong body parts, and if we could but get to the bottom of it this must have a genetic or hormonal cause. (I paraphrase from memory, but I think that's the gist of it.)

So there's another reason some people believe TWAW. It seems preposterous to me and has no solid research evidence backing it up, but scientific knowledge and understanding is abysmal.

I’ve never asked her. I was so shocked when she casually mentioned that someone she knew was now a TW, I genuinely didn’t know what to say. In the same visit, we went to a pub dripping in progress flags which made me feel so deeply uncomfortable but we were with other people so I didn’t say anything. She also said with a straight face about someone else she knows who uses they/them pronouns and identifies as queer.

I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in my whole life, it felt like I was in a pressure cooker. It was a short visit, she’d just been through a really difficult experience - a hysterectomy of all things, and I didn’t want confrontation and upset.

I’m a slow reactor to things but I just felt a deep sense of WTF, you are my intelligent lovely friend, what’s happened to you, I don’t know who you are anymore.

The girl I used to know had a wicked sense of humour and would have been making jokes about this insanity.

Who mentioned genitals?

Oh, it was you.

I agree with this, and it’s another to add to my list - society WAS wrong about treating gay people badly and not giving them equal rights for so long, so when the T was forced on to the LGB, if you don’t know much about the T, then you’d be more likely to accept it without question.

Yes. School indoctrination, definitely, especially if you don’t have parents reasonably informed on the subject either to counteract the jibberish.

I think some people think well we're all saying it to be nice but we all know its not true its just a nice lie to be kind like how you wouldn't tell a small child that santa doesn't exist. When Upton was giving testimony about being a "biological female" someone in one of the threads linked to a reddit post in a sub for UK drs and they were horrified that someone trans was claiming to be a biological female and basically were saying I know we say TWAW but we all know its not true, how can one of our own think its true?
They didn;t seem to realise that as doctors repeating something like that makes some people believe its true even if most people think they are just being kind repeating it.

I think some people do geuinely believe it, to go back to Santa if your parents instead of confirming he doesn't exist when you asked them instead claimed that he does and anyone saying the opposite hates you and wants you to die, you wouldn't be shocked if some people kept believing despite logic.

I also think theres a factor of some people deciding as it costs them nothing then everyone should just go along with it. I will never have to search anyone and hopefully will never be in prison, it would cost me nothing to say TWAW they should be allowed in the female estate. I don't play competitive sports anymore, amn't a member of a gym and I haven't been swimming in years, it would cost me nothing to say that sports shouldn't be based on biology.
Look at how often people give away other peoples time but are precious of their own. If I said to my friend "oh DH WFH, he can take in packages for you", I get the thanks of my friend but DH is the one doing the work. If I say TWAW I get the same fuzzy feeling of being a "good person" but none of the responsibility for men being in womens spaces.

Such a brilliant point about Santa. Being taught to go along with a lie starts very very young, and even when we realise it’s a lie, we keep the lie going to protect ourselves or others. Interesting.

@justspeculation posted this on the AI Judith Butler thread, and I think it's another piece of the puzzle:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Pomo academics believe that saying things like "Izzard is a woman today" are disruptive and creative acts.
Conversely, me repeating the fact that "98% of crimes of sexual violence are committed by male people" serves to reify that fact.
It's fluffybunny land, of course.

Insane it's had so much influence on the ground. Because changing the language we use about him, as everyone here knows, doesn't alter a man's propensity to sexual violence at all (or to dismiss women's discomfort, assuming a male-centric perspective, prioritizing male desire above female &c. &c. &c.).

I find the whole “disrupting” and of course “queering” concepts so essentially pointless at heart. I get that disrupting can be used to mean “lets stop doing the same old same old and try a new approach” for example in business, but in academia these things are purely about getting brownie points for dismantling something linguistically or performatively attacking anything deemed to be an existing structure, accepted understanding or in any way conservative or colonial or power-holding. Ultimately power structures are not challenged or changed at all - it’s just about showing that you can pirouette and wank about in this very entrenched way of using the right kind of obfuscating writing.

I don’t see anyone in these circles or disciplines “disrupting” the obfuscation and clever-clever style that means no one else can hope to decode what they are on about and actually interrogate what the point is. Wouldn’t want that would we. It’s a meal ticket basically, encouraged and replicated within academia by rewarding and promoting those who do it.

I totally agree with you @WhatterySquash. It would not be so infuriating if these people who are performatively attacking things and using linguistic wankery were actually open to debate and discussion, to admitting they might be wrong sometimes, to actually having to argue logically and make their points clear. But they aren't. Anyone who stands up to this ideology is regarded as old-fashioned, reactionary, out of touch, embarrassingly prejudiced, not open to the new. It takes a very strong minded academic to oppose this shit surrounding them. Therefore few people challenge it. How "disrupting" is that, ultimately?

This sums it up perfectly. I bet most of us know people like this. I have an acquaintance who is all about the TWAW but also firmly believes they shouldn't be in women's sports. Make it make sense.

I see Butler as basically the academic equivalent of an online troll.

Turns out putting Karen White in a women's prison failed to disrupt hegemonic discourses of masculinity.
Likewise the age old narrative of rich people not giving a shit about poor women.