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)

Just watching a Law and Order SVU from 2009. In that, they say that something happens in utero, and they develop with the brain of one gender and the body of the other. There are studies that prove this.

There aren't though.

This idea is based off one, very poorly conceived study - that didn't even indicate what it's said to indicate.

Thete is absolutely no diagnostic criteria for a 'male' or 'female' brain

"Just watching a Law and Order SVU from 2009. In that, they say that something happens in utero, and they develop with the brain of one gender and the body of the other. There are studies that prove this."

I saw this episode. There are no 'wrong bodies' and this statement is false.

Personally I’d look further than an old episode of Law and Order SVU for my science.

No shit 😲

‘Just watching a Law and Order SVU from 2009. In that, they say that something happens in utero, and they develop with the brain of one gender and the body of the other. There are studies that prove this.’

Is this satire? If it isn’t, I’m not sure a fictional tv programme is a reliable source of information. Could you provide a link to these studies?

Gender identity is a social construct, sex is binary and immutable. I’m sure the person you mention says many things, but if they were born a man, they’re still a man, no matter what they’ve done to themselves. I understand it perfectly, people can’t change sex.

"I met my first trans woman in 1979 in London on a bus. Her life was a living hell. But it was her life, authentically."

That that person's life was 'hell' is absolutely irrelevant to whether that person was a female person, or a 'woman', or not. This is that emotionally manipulative type of statement that we see so often.

"But as to the main premise, at the start of my post? I don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to get."

Because it is just not true.

My dad insists there's an old episode of Columbo with a faked alibi plot point involving the killer photocopying his face and using the image to fool a security camera.

The 'born in the wrong body' myth has been very pervasive however - despite it making no rational sense whatsoever.

It points to the Cartesian and ultimately religious origins of all this. The belief that we somehow have an existence outside our bodily one.

I think this seems needed here:

There is no in utero hormone wash, or any other changes that create a 'wrong body'.

And no male person can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman.

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is fucking misogynistic!

Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.

Even when they have extreme body modifications, it is to be their own concept of what a female looks like to them. It is not what a female is.

How can it be?

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is - their concept of being female.

They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life). It really doesn't matter though. Their motivation is irrelevant to the outcome. And I consider the outcome can only be described as misogyny.

Which is that they will always be just a male who believes they are something they are objectively not.

How can the material reality be any different? This is why someone's gender is only based on someone's philosophical belief. And philosophical beliefs are fine for people to hold, but not one person in the UK has to comply with another's philosophical belief.

The logic cannot be any different than that I am afraid.

I’ve had conversations on xitter with people who genuinely think that if you take enough cross-sex hormones it changes your body on a cellular level until you become the opposite sex.

There are sadly many people - seemingly some who work in sporting governing bodies - who think women are just men with less testosterone.

It's certainly true that a lot can go wrong in utero because of a faulty hormone response (though I think you'll find that particular study was a bit shonky).

For instance a little boy may end up with undescended testes and a micropenis. But oftentimes the deficit is remedied during puberty.

So if you're concerned about an improperly primed brain, at least wait until well after puberty to even think about doing anything about it.

Do you say that about every person who disagrees with you on anything?

Yes, exactly.

You are putting words into my mouth. A pathetic response that people use when they have nowhere to go.

Honestly, I think that very few people truly believe that TWAW. I think most people want to show respect to others and are happy for the most part to go along with it to be polite. There's also a social pressure to conform and people don't want to get into fights over something they might not care enough about.

Please note- I have answered OPs question. Why I believe it. They asked. I answered.

I will not be coming back anymore to read a pile on.

So keep your nasty attacks to yourselves, as I won’t read them.

You get your science from old fictional TV shows,it's not like you're adding much to a conversation.

Facts are not there to be disagreed with, you are confusing fact with opinion. You are perfect entitled to an opinion about absolutely anything but your opinion doesn’t override facts.
That the earth is spherical is a fact, yet some people are of the opinion that it’s flat, they are wrong.
People can’t change sex, it’s binary and immutable, that is a fact, your opinion clearly differs from this, but it doesn’t turn your opinion into a fact.

Because it’s absolutely not true.

there are no studies that brains are “gendered” and trans people develop the opposite sex brain in utero.

there are some scans of transwomens brains that show them to be more developed in traditionally “female” areas. But nobody can say whether this occurred in utero, or the brain developed these “female” characteristics because living as a woman and practicing female behaviour has then developed those areas.

there are no scans nor evidence that show brains are gendered. We’d need a mass scanning of neonatal brains, and that hasn’t been done because it’s not ethical to anaesthetise newborns and put them in an mri just to see. Scanning adults brains may show differences, but they’ve lived their lives “learning” how to be male or female due to societal pressures.

if my brain lights up the “caring” area and not the “spatial awareness” area, that could just be me, or it could be because I was given dolls and soft toys as a child and not meccano and hot wheels.

gender is learned.

Not one poster has 'attacked' you. This is just emotional hyperbole.

You answered, great. We now understand that you believe misinformation but you also have a prejudice that means that you won't listen to a group of people telling you that the information that you believe is factually, scientifically incorrect. Obviously, you have every freedom to believe what you like, but the reality is that you really are believing false pseudoscience.

I used to watch Star Trek. Fortunately I am bright enough to realise it is based on fiction rather than science so I still take the bus rather than trying to beam myself to Tesco.

For some it's politically expedient to say it. And/or it is part of their tribe's set-menu of beliefs.

They never actually believe it though. Imagine the legions of heartbroken progressive men who just can't understand why they are failing to conceive a child with their 'is woman' partner, if they truly did.

this is one of the first memes I collected from back in the day.

Everytime I hear about a "girl brain" & "born in the wrong body" I think of it and it makes me smile.

I'm pissed off on a daily basis that I cannot teleport myself around.
Life is soooooo unfair

<sulks in teenage>

It’s interesting that a lot of progressive gay men in the public eye, like Tom Daly, seem to know EXACTLY what a woman is when they want one to carry a baby for them.