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)

I would add social media bubbles to the list. I bet most of us here go to many sources and types of sources for info, from across the whole political spectrum.

My intelligent TWAW DC with a Biology degree from a Russell Group uni goes to Reddit

I always find it fascinating that men can stand there with a straight face and swear TWAW.

yet when it comes to finding a surrogate they aren’t going to TW to buy their children from, are they?

funny that.

OP you can add - many people think debate/disagreement/facts = nasty attacks
"nasty attacks are bad"
therefore facts are bad and should be disregarded

True.

Those people won't be considered 'progressive' though, they'll be old-fashioned and will hopefully all die soon or something.

I base this on actual conversations that I have had, and it's just such a 'God history is on our side' way of thinking that it is quite something to behold.

MattCauthon, for ease of access there is this
https://transcrimeuk.com

"Trans Crime UK collates media reports of crimes committed by transgender individuals in the UK. We emphasize ‘individuals’ here, because we don’t think all males who identify as transgender are criminals in the same way as we don’t consider all men are criminals, despite the disparity in criminal convictions between men and women. For example, 98% of offenders convicted of rape in the UK are male.
The same disparity by sex exists in the cases we’ve collected here; the overwhelming majority of offences have been committed by biological males. We absolutely recognise that the majority of trans people live law-abiding lives and the individual crime reports documented on this site no more represent all trans people than Fred West or Harvey Weinstein represent all men. But crime is highly gendered, particularly sexual and violent offending, and some scientific studies indicate that a male pattern of criminality is retained among those males who transition to live as trans women."

I think some men are insisting TWAW because they enjoy how much it upsets women. We're back to Germaine Greer when she said that women don't understand how much men hate us.

It's also a way of dismissing the female body as unimportant and irrelevant when the opposite is true. Men have been angry that women own the baby factories and they don't since they realised what that means, and this is just the latest way of putting us in our place.

I've never understood how we got to 'female brain'. Or 'wrong body' as so widely accepted.

I have no idea if I think like any other female. I only know my own thoughts and feelings, I have no idea whether they align to for example to @RobinEllacotStrike - other than that our usernames suggest we like the same books!

My body is what I got. I'd like to be taller and have a smaller nose. I'd like to identify as better at running. But I can't. And it sits deeply uncomfortably for me with those with severe disabilities They can't bloody identify out of.

Just like, when the legal processes were being worked through they made sure it didnt affect men's rights within entailed estates and ensured it didn't affect males being called up for the draft.

The knew exactly what a man was when it suited them

I know of 2 TIW recently who have become pregnant, and who believed that now they are men they couldn't get pregnant. Wether they thought the testosterone they were taking acted as a contraceptive or wether they literally thought "I'm a man now, men can't get pregnant so I can't get pregnant" I don't know, certainly one indicated they believe the latter. And seemingly no one involved in the whole process of affirming the lie they had become men had thought to spell out the fact that they could still conceive. Which suggests to me that the health care professionals affirming the lie don't believe that their patients really believe it. Otherwise they wouldn't assume it doesn't need spelling out that you still have female biology and if you have unprotected sex you can get pregnant.
The dissonance and compartmentalised thinking are staggering.

Obviously, despite their insistence they were men to the extent their reproductive biology was now male, these women were still having PIV sex. which baffles me. And yes, there were a number of co mirbidities and traumatic experiences in the background.

Back in the 90s a theoretical physicist published a book entitled The Physics of Star Trek which attempted to relate current scientific understanding to the ideas in the show. I think it was well reviewed at the time.

I think the "actually, sex is really complicated" is a clever approach by the TRAs. Nobody wants to look like a simple-minded thinker who hasn't moved past the Ladybird level.

It's also been shown that fake news spreads faster than the truth and that people are more inclined to believe it. I think there's an element of that at play. The idea that sex is complicated has taken hold because it's not true.

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-false-news-spreads-faster-truth

It's also worth noting that half the population has below average intelligence, below average comprehension skills, and despite the best efforts of biology teachers everywhere, a very poor understand of the human body.

It was an appeal to science / psychology that 'wrong body' came about.

Then they searched for ways to retrofit it. Hence the 'hormonal washes' and 'we all started out as female for the first 6 (or 8) weeks of life'. That we all started out female is also misinformation because we don't. Our bodies are programmed to be male or female from the moment of conception as long as there is no obstruction in development (and hormone washes are not it). As embryos, humans are undifferentiated for the first weeks until the genetic development starts. It simply means that the embryo is focused on other development rather than sex specific development.

But activists who have no scientific foundation for their theories will try any angle to see what works to convince others. And for a while, those 'wrong body' arguments convinced some people. Until others started to point out the basic logic flaws.

I think most people think it doesn't directly them, especially men. So what if a bloke puts on a dress and uses the women's toilets? They wouldn't do it but can't think of a reason why women should mind

@Helleofabore

the question we should be asking is how sex selective IVF is possible if we're all female for the first 8 weeks 😶

I've never met anyone who actually believes that trans women are women.
I've come to the conclusion that people who want to be seen as allies to trans people engage in performances like announcing their pronouns at the start of a meeting as a way to build up merit. They're taking out insurance. Because they know it's a only matter of time before they slip up and misgender. Which wouldn't happen if the professed belief went all the way down.

Which wouldn't happen if the professed belief went all the way down.

A very astute observation

yes. indeed.

It really is a belief structure that is turtles all the way down.

It is a faith based belief.

If trans women are considered women, then it follows that all men would also be classified as women, since to be a trans woman, one must be male. We could eliminate the word "man/male" from our vocabulary and dictionaries and replace it with "trans women." seen as a lot of transwomen don't like those words used for them, so all male's can step aside and be kind and move to being classed as a transwomen. I'm not even sure if that all makes sense, ugh, brain fog.

I'd go a third way. I reckon most people don't think about it that much. Truly. There aren't that many trans people out there so it doesn't impact most of us in our day to day lives.

If a trans person said to me they want me to use female pronouns, I will, because I don't want to be rude. Do I think that means they know what it is to have periods, or have gone through female puberty? No. Sure. But then I don't know what it feels like to be a trans person, we're all different.

The argument is always, but what does it mean. And again, I feel there should be space for common sense in these things. Biological men with histories of sex offences in women's prisons? No. Obviously not. Biological men who clearly identify as and live as female being able to access women's toilets? I don't see a problem. The cubicles lock anyway, what do I care if I have to wash hands next to someone who hasn't experienced periods. The whole debate always descends into this trying to simplify things into neat buckets, either trans women are women or they aren't and if they are they get all these things and if they aren't they don't. Why not just trans women are trans women and there's some nuance and space for specificity and common sense within that category.

Very much agree with this. Even traditional MRA types who have no truck with gender identity ideology nonsense see it as hilarious because they can see how damaging it is for women and think we’ve brought it on ourselves by wanting equality.

They are in a neat bucket for me though. They’re just men like all other men.

Well, no, it doesn't really make sense. Trans women are men who believe to some extent that they were born in the wrong body and should have been assigned female at birth. So that's very clearly not all men. It's a tiny minority of men.

You can have your own views. You may think of that group some are just lying to get access to women's spaces. Or that people who think this way should get therapy rather than operations. But the playing around with definitions and bleeding them out to such preposterous conclusions is so exhausting and eclipses what is quite a serious point.

Only those whose disagreement is based in fashionable, counterfactual nonsense for which they are unable to make a logical argument.

And crime dramas, at that. At least use an old, fictional medical or science show as your 'evidence'.

As Grey's Anatomy said: "Seriously!?'