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 existence of gender identity is an unfalsifiable proposition

But it's an established concept in child development. A two year-old knows its sex and can accurately sex other people, without looking at or knowing anything about genitals. Until the age of six or seven it doesn't realise that it's a life-long attribute. Maybe this process can go wrong.

A man can't know what it's like to be a woman

Maybe he's not claiming that. He just feels that he belongs in their category. He has same-sex impulses (friendship/rivalry) not opposite-sex impulses (fear/curiosity) towards them, and wants them to treat him likewise.

Transwomen are sexist because they associate superficial cultural sex-norms (clothes, make-up) with being female

Or, they adopt those norms to persuade us to treat them as women: no additional significance.

Trying really hard here, but I fear my would-be steel man is made of straw....

Those babies were relinquished for adoption and have messy life stories to come to terms with when older too. The fall out is massive.
I wonder if when older these children will have any grounds to seek compensation. I think there will be risks from the exposure to testosterone too but obviously research is poor.

One potential reason you're struggling to do the "Steel Man" is that many of your reasonings contain the words "lack" or "never". A more effective way is to use affirmative statements.

E.g. TWAW because men say so.

Hth.

Me too

I find myself imagining Sir Keir Starmer having a conversation about Arsenal with RMW at a drinks party in Islington.

Does KS believe that he is discussing football with a woman?

Does RMW believe that KS believes that he is discussing football with a woman?

It is the most educated who believe it (present company excluded!). The ideology is taken as read in university circles. Tech, academia, education, government and media are completely captured.

Meanwhile people working in minimum wage industries are not buying it. My daughter works in a nursery and scoffs at it, as do her 3 cousins who left school at 16. The 4 cousins who went to uni are totally captured.

So partly I think it is tribal, and a way for people who think they are clever to separate from those they consider unacceptable- those who didn't go to uni, older people, conservative people.

Only "clever" people would understand the essence of trans ideology. When we ask how it is fair to put male rapists into prisons with women or men into women's sport they roll their eyes in disgust because we are so stupid not to get it.

They can't actually explain- they don't get it either but they can't possibly admit it, or they would be lumped in with people they consider beneath them ie us. Mums, nursery workers, grandmothers.....they think we let the side down in our day, that we didn't try hard enough.

They remind me of the Masters of the Universe from Tom Wolf's Bonfire of the Vanities - the Wall St brokers who looked down on everyone else. Now instead of money and power it's adherence to a set of beliefs which mark out the elite from everyone else.

Look at all the celebs with their trans kids. Cynthia Nixon apparently doesn't even know any kids who aren't. It's the ticket to belonging in these circles.

@Arran2024 yes, the Luxury Beliefs...I think it still largely works one way though. A woman facing the risk of FGM or arranged marriage can't identify out of it, whereas I have heard instances where a gay man would be at risk but by 'becoming' a heterosexual woman they are more culturally acceptable.

Which goes back to the fact that everyone knows what a woman is when they want to.

I've said this before, but it's a point worth repeating. If there's one group of people who are at risk in men's toilets, it's teenage boys. Boys who use public toilets run a non-trivial risk of being accosted by some greasy pervert who hangs around in toilets precisely for the purpose of encountering boys with their cocks out.

I personally know a man who, well into adulthood, avoids public toilets because of an experience there in his teens.

The answer to this is not to allow teenage boys to use the women's toilets. Nor is it to give my friend a special pass on the basis of his trauma response, because you've only got my word for it that he's lovely and harmless. A woman encountering a random male-bodied person in a female space has no way of knowing that.

The answer is safer men's toilets. Which is not women's problem to sort out.

And of course, other types of vulnerable men are not asking to use women's facilities. We know why.

When we ask how it is fair to put male rapists into prisons with women or men into women's sport they roll their eyes in disgust because we are so stupid not to get it.

And also because (let's face it) incarcerated women in particular are an extremely low status group in society and there is no social status to be gained in standing up for them. The group you are talking about simply don't care about their fate.

Sport is more complicated.

I think some people who say TWAW really mean that some TW are woman-like enough for them to treat them as a woman/ think they should be treated as a woman in some/ most circumstances.

A friend who says TWAW and refers to a TW she knows as a woman / female still agrees that for competitive sports there is a valid exception and also says that if her male partner had dated a TW she wouldn't consider him completly straight so doesn't 100% believe TWAW even though she says it!

I was talking to two friends about this the other day, they were talking about the ‘wash’ of hormones and although they weren’t inclined to believe what i was saying they did absolutely come round when i said about the sex selection IVF

Did you ask her what these men are if not men?

This is great. I’m saving that.

She got annoyed and said she didn't want to talk about it so i was shut down. She said she believes men can become women...

I’m shocked that someone can believe that TWAW because they’ve heard there is a study about gendered brains, but they have never seen the study, read it or queried it.

That’s the problem with being used to trusting your information sources blindly.

Why do we believe what we believe? Most of the things we believe without really knowing why, unless we dig a little deeper.

I used to think the BBC, for example, was a trustworthy organisation and I didn’t bother much shopping around for second opinions.
I preferred being in that bubble, I won’t lie. But once you are out of it you can’t go back in.

I’m shocked that someone can believe that TWAW because they’ve heard there is a study about gendered brains, but they have never seen the study, read it or queried it.

They're exactly the people who laugh at Trump backing up some outrageous claim with "I haven't looked into it but many people say so", and they can't see they're doing the same thing.

I don't expect the average punter to have degree level biology, I certainly don't, but I'm shocked at how many people don't know very basic things. It's like we're back to the days when girls thought you couldn't get pregnant if you did it standing up.

They convince themselves that the word “woman” simply means a personality type or costume.

Well if it is stated as the case on an old episode of a tv show then that’s settled 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

I think some women find gender non-conforming women challenging. It forces them to examine why they themselves spend so much effort on their appearance and wear uncomfortable shoes etc. Easier perhaps if those gender non-conforming women identify as non-binary or as men. And then you have to accept that gender non-conforming men can identify as women.

I think people haven’t thought it through. They’ll watch a report about a sympathetic person who will say they always felt they were in the wrong body and that they wanted to play with dolls but they were bullied and told off for it etc And now they’re so much happier. And the person will likely be passable.
They don’t think about how feminine boys are treated and maybe that was the issue. Nor do they think what it means to make the category of woman a choice. Where is the line? You now get standard looking men doing creepy sex crimes classed as women. I think it’s starting to get through to some but not everyone follows the news and these issues.

I think an important factor for many is that people and organizations they see as experts have told them that it's true. Magazines like National Geographic did a huge amount of damage spreading the idea that "sex is a spectrum." And then the medical community - people believe that countries across the west would not offer treatmentsthatweren'r well-evidenced.

Look at all the celebs with their trans kids. Cynthia Nixon apparently doesn't even know any kids who aren't.

Even if she genuinely believes every child she knows is 'truly' trans (whatever that means), you'd think that would in itself give her pause. What has gone wrong to make every child a different gender from their body?

And if all girls are boys and all boys are girls, doesn't that mean we've simply made a category error? The 'male identity' that all girls share is in fact a female identity, because all girls have it and no boys do. And vice versa.

Yes people take a lot on blind trust.

I remember someone on here refusing to engage with the problems emerging with Mermaids because they were sponsored by Tesco.

We give celebrities way too much credit for their intellect. Most of them are thick as mince. 🤷‍♀️