Reasons you once believed in gender identity

[Mermoose]

Edit: damnit I should have included "Never believed TWAW" in the poll. Sorry. There doesn't seem a way of editing the poll.

I read Victoria Smith's brilliant Substack "More Heat, More Light", which is about the impossible restrictions put on GC women's expression, but also about her journey from agreeing outwardly that TWAW, to consciously recognising that she didn't believe this. Fear and guilt stopped her from realising this earlier.

When I thought I believed TWAW it was also because I was afraid to think about it. I'd internalised the propaganda that there was something cruel and prurient in asking questions. "Why are you obsessed with other people's genitals" was quite effective for a while. (Of course sex is politically salient precisely because sex affects our entire bodies).

Some people never believed TWAW, I know. But for those of us who once did - or who believed we believed it, if that fits better - was it fear and guilt stopping you from really thinking about it, or was it that you did think about it and had what seemed like well-thought-out arguments? And if you had arguments that seemed sound at one time, what were they?

For people who still believe TWAW I think there are a lot of other threads where you can put forward arguments for this, so I'd like this thread just to be about people who did believe TWAW and have since changed their minds.

I wrote a whole screed, but...

1. Youthful innocence and accepting what I was told... but then...
2. Meeting a TW. And another. And another. And another. None of whom seemed like women to me. The one who had spent many years in a weird religious sect, then became a card carrying person with autism, then "a woman" - I mean yeah, if that's not someone clutching on whatever to fill the void inside...
3. Lived bio experience of me (PMS, contraception, ovulation pain, being weaker, slower, smaller than men no matter how I trained and what I ate, menopause) and friends and family (endo, breast cancer, ovarian cysts, pregnancy, birth, nursing, mastitis, miscarriage and stillbirth)
4. Social experience ditto. Who raises the kids? Who cares for the sick and elderly? Yeah.
5. Sporting experience. "Amateur level doesn't matter". Well, when a good-for-age time gets you hundreds off the entry fee and they take the fastest N "women" in an age category, then a man in those N runners means a woman is hundreds out of pocket so yes, it fucking well does matter.
6. Local crime stories. Remember the case where a woman was arrested for murdering a stranger and killing a cat and ... ? Yeah that sounds wrong. No, it wasn't a woman. The grieving family were all too real though.
7. MN pointing out more of the same.

Am I a sniveling coward circumspect in my views? I don't lie or misrepresent my opinions, but people by and large are remarkably self involved and tend not to ask. I don't seek out rows, they don't normally do any good. But I do make a point if I have direct experience I can offer.

In my old age, I try to listen more. But also, I make the decisions I want to. I even voted for the Tory PCC candidate because he'd made his position on sex vs gender clear, I agreed with it, and he seemed otherwise competent and sensible.

Not really. They're lovely people who genuinely believe that TERFs/transphobes are in the same category as racists and homophobes. I can't criticise them, because if one of my friends started saying that gay people shouldn't be able to marry, or that refugees deserved to drown in the sea, I'd be giving them serious side-eye and unfriending on FB/IRL. Maybe that makes me controlling, I don't know! 😅

Unfortunately, TRAs have convinced a good chunk of people that people who think that biology is relevant, and single sex spaces/sporting categories should be based on it, are pretty much Nazis that want trans people to be eradicated. It's a bit of a weird cognitive dissonance - they'll believe the worst of women who don't want penises in their changing rooms, but can't believe that any male claiming to be a woman might not be 100% on the level, especially when they're swinging their meat and two veg around.

There's also the small matter that most of my friends I've met through work, and in an industry where word travels fast and everyone knows everyone...

I never believed twaw but I also never had an issue with trans women until I read a Reddit post by a young woman talking about how much she wanted to be inclusive to a trans woman in her yoga class but that ‘her’ erections were upsetting. This young woman, a victim of sexual assault, was tying herself up in knots about her reaction to a fully aroused male in a place that had felt safe. I was absolutely horrified and everything I’ve seen or read since has deepened my conviction that women need single sex spaces, sports and protections.

None of the above. Back in the Coronation Street Hayley/Roy story and that film where he reveals he's a man after posing as a female when they first go to have sex I had sympathy with the main characters, yet even as a youngster felt really bad for the men being deceived. I would have treated Hayley as female if I'd been in the sewing factory but would never have thought he was a she. But that character presented in a more feminine way, she was kind, helpful,took on other pov, non violent. Unfortunately recent events have shown tw very differently, no respect for women at all

The Hayley character was written specifically in order to try and win public perception over for trans people. Which is why they intentionally cast a woman to play Hayley rather than a man. It was a deliberate attempt to convey a gentle unassuming “she’s just like other women” message. And it was so convincing that hardly any viewers batted an eye at the story line where she assisted a 14 year old girl being fitted for her new bra. Because by then we all thought “aaah wee Hayley”. Not, “goodness that’s an adult man underwear shopping with a teenage girl”. It was underhand, and orchestrated almost solely by a trans person…

Well, when Penis news published this as an article, you have to question just how many people really did believe the mantra. Mind you, I think I would hesitate to answer a question from them too.

https://archive.is/Aud8S

“We asked Labour’s 59 LGBTQ+ MPs if they think trans women are women – just four replied saying yes”

Stumbling across the trans-widows threads on here was an initial eye-opener as to how selfish trans behaviour could be. That was a starting point for me to think about it more.

But also the whole teen trans trend made me think back to my own teenage experience. I hated puberty and my changing body, hated periods, was flabbergasted by Judy Blume trying to celebrate it all (!). I used to daydream/fantasise all sorts of 'escape' things, which very definitely included storylines of 'I should be a boy' or 'I wish I was a boy'. Of course I can easily see now that was nothing more than a superficial desire and just a wish to not have to face the tough-shit change of growing up. Surprise surprise I turned out to be a perfectly average heterosexual adult woman, no drama. But there but for the grace of God went I - if I had been open about similar feelings as a teen these days maybe I'd have been getting my puberty blockers or worse?! Thinking about that made me feel very very strongly about how dangerous the whole teen trans thing is.

Worked for a few.

Thought it was just a human quirk and a rather harmless one until Bruce Jenner said, "The hardest thing about being a woman is deciding what to wear each day" when interviewed as "Time Woman of the Year".

I was so offended by not only the nomination, but the sheet diminishment of women. I have refused to accept TWAW since.

I tried to read why TWAW sincerely back in 2019. I parked my feeling until I started realising they were taking women's sporting accolades.

It was just so odd it kept coming out like it was a thoughtless mantra…ie he couldn’t finish a sentence about it without saying she was a fucking TERF. He never used that language about anyone else. It made it so difficult to talk to him about it. It was so strange and he “confessed” to me that he doesn’t believe in horoscopes and you can see that he was really worried who would hear him. The icing on the cake was when he bought the Harry Potter game! I was prepared for next time why he doesn’t say the same about Ricky Gervais.

We haven’t seen each other since the announcement ( lots of public holidays in NZ) but I have found myself preparing for it just in case it comes up. I swing between being really understanding to wanting to shut him down.

That was me, too.

I never believed in it I sensed bullshit from day one. I could not believe it actually escalated to the point medical scientific language was changed and men could apparently have babies and chest feed.
I thought the world had gone mad.

I never believed it. But 25 years ago I bent over backwards pretending I did as I worked with a transwoman who I felt sorry for, and wanted to show I wasn't like the nasty people who shouted insults in the street. I took a pride in presenting myself as inclusive and open minded and nice. I think I vaguely accepted being 'born in the wrong body' as a thing, but was always aware that the body was male and they were a man who we pretending was a woman to be kind.

I thought TWAW meant that women transitioning and taking testosterone were still women, so should continue to use the Ladies'. 🤦‍♀️

I knew about GRA and paperwork etc, and remember watching something about it at the time - but it wasn't until I started to read threads here that I realised that people actually thought that changed paperwork actually changed their sex or gender or identity or whatever they named it. It was like they had invented a whole new imaginary universe that we had to join in 😬

I did have a lot of sympathy back in the day, but it eventually evaporated.

I have been a feminist for over 50 years. I never believed TWAW.

I spent most of my working life in computing. I refused society’s demands of femininity, I was happy being female, but learnt to be assertive when that wasn’t expected of women.

When in the early 2000s a man I’d known for over a decade came out to me as transgender, I was initially sympathetic. It was a complete surprise. He was a confident man, strong in his opinions, politics like mine whose hobby was fishing and who had split up with a woman I knew and he’d had a child with. We’d have occasional lunches over which he’d agonise about being trans. He always presented in public as a man. However, a different personality started to emerge. Someone who thought everyone was against them, who was dissatisfied with his therapist, his employers, his neighbours, his brother, everyone. Whether he became more narcissistic or just let it out more, I don’t know.

I never thought of him as a woman. I thought of him as a man who somehow believed he was a woman.

I became increasingly dubious about what that meant when he’d refer to “you know, those times you just want to dress up and put on a bit of slap”. No I didn’t, and having known me for such a long time, he might have noticed that he’d never seen me wearing anything but jeans and never wearing makeup.

Anyway, one January he invited me to a trans Burns supper at the flat he shared with his new girlfriend. There were four guests: two TIM academics like him, a TIM bus driver and me. Though the TIMs dressed like women but badly, they behaved liked men. The academics stuck together and had an academic conversation, forgetting about the bus driver. The bus driver sat in a chair on his own not making any effort to engage with anyone. They all let the girlfriend serve up the food and drink.

Some years later, a woman I’d been on a pink pussy hat march with asked a bunch of us if we thought Trans women were women. I said no. She’s now putting up notices on FB about how to tell trans people they’re safe with you. I’m here.

I remember in about 2017 in my part of the world a lone feminist payed a poster company for some posters to be put around the city with quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the suffragettes I think - with ‘on the basis of sex’ . There was a newspaper story about how these were offensive somehow and that made me curious. The company was pressured to take them down and they did. I happened to get chatting to the owner of the company, very cool lefty bro type. I asked him about it and his attitude was so non-committal, as if he didn’t really care about the fact that he had effectively censored a woman exercising free speech who had payed him good money for a service. It was clear he couldn’t even be bothered formulating a good argument for taking them down, he just took the TRA’s word for it. I started googling the feminist and found her arguments very compelling, and then I felt really scared at how powerful the TRAs had become that they could force a company to censor this woman like this without any pushback, merely for stating that women’s rights were acquired on the basis of sex, not gender. I knew that if they cared about a few posters like this, then their intrusions on women and their demands of us were only going to escalate.

You could ask mumsnet to delete your thread and start a new one with a sensible poll.

I never believed TWAW.

There are lots of interesting comments here but I think your point about the fawn response is a great one.

It's much too interesting a thread to delete, but if it was possible, a separate poll-only one asking 'Did you ever believe TWAW?' and directing the discussion back here would be interesting.

Yes, although then there'd be two polls - it's a bit of a mess, I was kicking myself after I hit post. I wonder can the poll just be deleted and we leave the comments?

The poll‘s wording has also led to some of the most interesting observations though, OP! Don’t kick yourself. The comments are more important and really thought-provoking.

I’m a traditionally left leaning person and I think I was caught up in not judging other people. And not understanding that a lot of trans women have no interest in even transitioning.

At that time, I started reading threads on Mumsnet, one of which pointed towards a GC YouTuber called Penny something. And then I started listening to what Magdalen Berns had to say about it and I realised how everything she said made perfect sense. Since then, I never subscribed to the TWAW mentality.

I also realised how lesbians have basically been under attack by men claiming to be ‘women with a penis’.

I’m still trying to convince my daughter who is 21. I only have her best interests at heart and I’m a mum of 4 girls….

I never believed - it’s hard to imagine how I could have - but did once parrot the mantra in an unthinking attempt at conciliating some angry faithful. Like an earlier poster, I’m mildly haunted by the moment. I just hadn’t given it any thought - I trusted it was a kind gesture meaning little to me but potentially everything to them, whoever they were. But it felt uncomfortable as I said it, even then - almost humiliating, like giving up a part of myself. I knew it was a lie, and a lie that required a small verbal and emotional sacrifice of me. Because they’re not, are they. And if they are, then what am I?

Germaine Greer also helped me see that the trans movement is rooted in misogyny.

It was the Break It Down thread for me. I lost 2 days to it, and the research it prompted, and that was that. There‘s been a journey since then, though, which continues even now. I’ve become more confident in my views after a year or so of constant questioning and checking and worrying. And, reluctantly, rather more uncompromising. The BBC, NHS, government and TRAs have done that all by themselves. They’ve taught me just what we’re facing, and what’s potentially at stake.

I genuinely believed that it was possible to have a woman’s brain and be trapped in a man’s body, I used to imagine how I would feel if I woke up tomorrow in a man’s body and imagined that’s how trans people feel. Being a lesbian I also thought that I was doing the right thing by supporting other members of the LGBT community and just didn’t think about it too deeply.

I came on mumsnet a few years back to look into IVF and saw gender critical threads,

initially I was outraged and felt I had to defend trans rights, but during these debates posters pointed out the huge flaws in trans ideology that I never realised or questioned. I think the main one for me was I couldn’t actually answer the question of what is a woman? That deeply unsettled me and got me questioning everything.

My wife was part of an LGBT group at work around the same time and I listened to a teams meeting where they had people explain why they are non-binary and trans and that was really the straw that broke the camels back I suppose. I realised that gender ideology is built entirely around sexist gender stereotypes which I have always been completely against.