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 didn't have a fear of thinking about it - I thought about it a lot because I wanted to understand and to learn. But whenever I asked honest questions, I got shot down in flames so I gave up engaging with the subject for a while. I'm trying again now but there is definitely a lot of hostility if you question some ideas.

Great thread thanks OP.

Its fair to say I never believed, I was aware that it was being presented as if I should believe but didn’t give it much thought. However, I didn’t take an interest in the whole issue until I twigged the implications of the GRA and proposed self id. Then I spent months panicking and trying to find out more.

The Harold/Hayley Cropper storyline confused me partly because I could see it was a female actor and I couldn’t work out the mechanics of the surgery (I like to know how things work) but I didn’t give the general topic much thought.

I worked with a guy who identified as a woman and he was quite rude to me despite me always being pleasant which I found a bit odd.

I never thought TWAW I always knew transwomen exist, deserve respect and actually I admired them. Never thought we were supposed to think they were actually women in and way shape or form. In fact the first time I came across the mantra "TWAW" I was shocked. I thought "can't trans people be proud of who they actually are?"
I stopped admiring TW after they expected us to lie and wanted to steal the definition of the word women.
So I never "peaked" exactly. I just started off neutral then my opinion dropped very low!

I think things are improving now, finally, with the American sports decision and our recent high court judgement.

I know it's hard and frustrating, but keep going! I've always said that, if Sysiphus was given the option to convince an "ally" instead of rolling the boulder up the hill, he'll definitely keep rolling 😊
We had to start with the underlining of the importance of dialogue and debate without tears and stomping out. Many of times, at the beginning, I lost my cool and wished to shake her into waking up. I had to teach myself to stop, breathe, think, and start again. Now we can talk. It was especially hard because she spent way more time with her peers than at home. All my few hours work went down the drain in the following week.
I only want her to become aware of the massive lie that's going on. The ridiculousness of "day 326 of being a girl", the stereotyping of women, the cheek of "becoming a woman" before going to jail, the biological and medical truths and the harm that's done to children and so on. The insistence to indoctrinate children hurts and saddens me the most.
Wishing you patience and best of luck! ❤️

I didn’t ever believe it.

my first boyfriend was a transvestite. We were together for 5 years, I was 16 when we meet and he was 19. He kept it secret for 4 years, but the pressure got too much, he broke up with me then phoned me crying down the phone. So I drove over to his parents house, he let me in and spilled everything out. Showed me all his woman face gear. Naturally it was all lace and latex and stockings 🙄. Lots of things made sense then. The fact that he bought me so much sexy lingerie. His dad’s extensive porn collection that he discovered in his wardrobe aged 10.

we kind of limped on together for a while but it was all fucked up by then. He got more and more keen to start dressing up and going out with me 🙄. I eventually ended it, it was all too weird.

So yeah, an early warning I guess. I always knew that porn-addled cross-dressers are not women.

Thank you! She’s a university student. Communities like this are inclusive to a fault. Which, of course is usually good but not when it helps to erode women’s rights. I think she may be taking on board my explanations.

I spent some time last night also trying to explain this to my autistic dd, who is 16 and is vulnerable. I set it all out for her and she said ‘surely the best thing is for transwomen to have their own spaces’.

It occurs to me that many of the responses are along the lines of "I didn't really think about it, I just went along with the "progressive" left wing, "kind" ideology." It's all a big vague. And then we get the peaking stories.

I think the best answer to the question from my perspective is -

Because I had not considered that if TWAW then sexual orientation is bigotry, and I don't think I'm a bigot, and nor are lesbians.

Because I did not know that men who identify as trans are much more likely to be sex offenders compared to other men.

Because I had not considered that if men are women then women's rights don;t exist.

Gender ideology relies on magical thinking and ignorance.

I never paid that much attention to it tbh. I had a lesbian friend who was in an LGBT group who stated Off complaining that TW were taking it over and after a few months was “OMG TW are women!! And have it so much harder” I sort of nodded along because after all she was in the community & I wasn’t and I accepted her view as the correct one

but it never made any sense to me and then I realised that although I believed TWAW was a polite fiction we were parroting to be kind, we were meant to actually believe TW were literally women which is obviously nuts. Once I realised that, I found FWR and the rest is history!

I'm not sure I ever believed TWAW. However, the political manoeuvres to position this in law passed me by until late 2017, (was this the time of the Tories and Self-Id?) when I realised what untruths were being parroted and how organisations were 'getting ahead of the law', coupled with the chilling "No Debate" instruction. I was asleep at the wheel, essentially: that won't be happening again.

None of those reasons. Years of LGB groups with a few trans people, gay men who were drag queens at the local gay pub and who were - in those days, honestly - lovely and funny people, I was wholly accepting of it being just another wonderful variation and it all being based on the honest good will of the gay communities I'd come out in. Then a young trans identified person who'd received huge amounts of support from an LGB group pretty much blew it apart with their politics and I started to research wtaf 'micro aggressions' and other phrases in their rants actually meant, and discovered that their behaviour wasn't just them, it was the behaviour of a political group. I read a lot of articles by people with trans identities to try and understand, but with my eyes getting steadily wider, particularly while reading the ones that were devoid of any respect for women and expected lesbians to provide sex to men regardless of their own feelings as some kind of 'duty', and the 'cotton ceiling'. And realised there was no good will or sanity in this at all it was profoundly homophobic and misogynist, and behaviour I very much recognised through personal experience as classic to abusive men.

And then the attack on women's spaces and rights started in earnest.

I have found that the groups I’m in, for autistic women are also being taken over by trans women. If you dare say anything which goes against TWAW, you’ll be removed from the group. Which means that autistic women are being silenced in all these spaces, too. I’ve yet to find a group for autistic women which isn’t also GC. There is usually always something about accepting transwomen as women in the rules.

NC for this as outing when attached to previous posts.

A long time ago (before EqA) someone transitioned at work, full surgery, made a real effort to pass. Hard to emphasise how incredibly rare this felt at the time. I’d never met anyone transgender, non binary wasn’t a thing, SW was campaigning for same sex marriage. Anyway, it was a small workplace, all the loos were fully enclosed, so there weren’t any obvious “logistical” issues that might have brought it to a head, though even if there had been I suspect everyone would have been very “be kind” as the person was without hesitation admitted to the women’s networking etc. But it all felt like this was really unusual and the prevailing attitude was live and let live. I also don’t think the transperson actually felt they became female. They had been very unhappy in their sexed body and eventually decided it was the only thing that would give them some peace. They were mystified by people not being open about it or airbrushing childhood photos to appear to be female.

Looking back there were some dissenting voices - one male colleague said to me privately that this was a mental illness and he didn’t see why the person couldn’t just admit to being a cross dressing man. A female colleague said she felt uncomfortable at “letting them into the women’s tent.” And I was deeply but unexpressedly unhappy for a while when the TW had a period of copying everything I wore. It was only after reading about trans widows’ experiences many years later that I realised this was absolutely typical AGP behaviour. It felt at the time like having a stalker.

I started to wonder in about 2014 when the TW colleague mentioned a person they knew who had been given 2 security passes by their work, one for their female and one for their male identify. I expressed doubt about whether this was a “real” TP and my colleague got very offended and said they were and it was something the workplace “had” to do. I said nothing else but I just didn’t buy it, and started reading around the subject a bit and allowing myself to have doubts. Then I found Mumsnet and then the FWR board and by 2019 I was full on GC. By the way the colleague now militantly believes they are and always were female - so I think the hardening of attitudes has been on both sides as it were.

I don’t know of a single autism charity that hasn’t been infiltrated by TRA. They get on the board as trustees and everything becomes about trans first, autism second

It’s ridiculous and very annoying. Nobody should assume that all autistic people want to go along with this nonsense.

I didn't vote but when I was very young, in my teens (in the late 90s) I was just the usual "be kind" sort of woman and felt sorry for men who wanted to be women so badly they had surgeries and didn't have any concept of how the often deeply sexual and fetishistic nature of their drive to transition and what that revealed about their feelings about women.

I did see a lecture by Germaine Greer at university in the early 2000's where she spoke about how men who wished to transition to become women really could never become women and that deep at the core of their desire to do this was actually something very intrinsically male and nothing to do with women's experience. I remember coming away thinking she's completely right, you can't change sex and while I was still then sympathetic to the psychological suffering these men experienced realised I wouldn't ever see them as women or even quasi women and that honestly I never had.

After that I also began to be quite critical of transition and the surgeries required, he use of cross sex hormones as I do think this is ultimately medically harmful to both males and females who undergo this process and that some kind of integration and acceptance would be better and I've always been puzzled as to why it seems only in this case is such invasive, harmful and irreversible medical treatment considered wise. This isn't the case for other forms of delusional thinking so why is it for gender dysphoria? It actually made me lose a lot of respect for the field of psychiatry and I actually discovered that psychiatry in general is not held in high regard within medicine, most doctors tend to look down on psychiatrists and that many don't even consider it proper medicine at all. I'm not saying I think that but finding that out does make be think twice about that field and their legitimacy.

Much later I did read about autogynephilia and the "The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male" by Janice Raymond and about the acceptance of trans as an alternative to acceptance of being gay and more and more the whole ideology along with trans identified males demands that cut across and removed women's hard won rights made me see just how backwards and regressive trans ideology is.

I can see why some people who oppose trans ideology may do so out of sheer prejudice and fear and I can almost see how to some people that it might seem like an easy win and "doing the right thing" to support trans ideology but it also doesn't take a huge amount of effort to actually step back and see how regressive and harmful it actually is. It makes me quite despairing that such a lack of insight and critical thought is so prevalent in our society and institutions.

The ruling of the Supreme Court and the voices of the women who fought so bravely to gain that clarity does bring me a great deal of comfort. I hope everyone is encouraged to think more critically in future because of this.

I’ve never believed humans could change sex or be born in the wrong body. And I see having a ‘gender identity’ as a choice, as relevant as reading horoscopes or following a diet guru.

But I used to admire men who wore make-up and/or skirts, high heels etc, because I thought they were subverting sex stereotypes. And I felt sorry for the ones with mental-health problems that I thought were harmless to anyone else.

In reality though, transgenderism actually reinforces the worst old stereotypes, especially that of fragile pretty-pink girlies. They revel in pretending to be fwightened of horrid scary women. And they are far from harmless.

I was on a psychotherapy training course which literally hammered it into my brain. When I questioned - I was dealt with negatively. It took perseverance and a lot of courage to finally be heard and to be awarded a pay out and the activist (course lead) has since gone.

Not gonna lie - there were times though I questioned my reasoning, but objectivity and realism, kept my feet grounded despite the constant criticism.

It kind of passed me by, in the sense that I haven't (to my knowledge anyway) come across a TW in any place/situation where I needed to validate them. I often thought that was unusual given all the hype about rights and so on. There may have been TW in the toilets and I didn't notice, but I would have noticed elsewhere like changing rooms and hospital wards etc. both of which I have used.

So I largely ignored it and/or raised my eyes to heaven in derision at some of the bizarre stuff emanating from TRAs.

To me it was an Emperor's new clothes situation at all times, and I was always waiting for someone to call it out. Now those brave and tenacious women in Scotland have done us all the favour of calling out the Emperor. I am so in awe of them.

None of those, really. Well, perhaps 'I didn't think properly about it'. I used to be an academic and 'queer theory' and 'theories of gender' were ALL OVER my discipline (and still are). I didn't do queer theory as I felt I didn't have the credentials, but dipped my toe into exploring theories of gender. It felt new and exciting and all the cool kids were doing their research like this! Judith bloody Butler defeated me but I used to read Lacan and so on, and apply those theories to my material. It got you noticed at conferences ... I never really thought about it though - not as a Real World matter. I was happy to apply these theories to cultures from a long time ago, and frankly the theoretical approach I was using was as good as another when looking at material 1000's of years old. But I never really thought - this has applications in the here and now. (I was a terrible academic!)

Outside of academia: shamefully, I was very slow to question. I used to love all the gender-twisting subculture, it felt free and playful and I HONESTLY believed that the vast majority of men who dressed in stereotypical women's clothing were actually a subset of gay men. I loved (and still enjoy reading) gay fiction - read my way through Armistead Maupin several times, etc was very much a gay ally. And I honestly thought, from my reading, and tv in the 80/90/00's that transexuals were gentle, gay men. I'd met a few. They did indeed come across as gentle, gay men. In dresses. (I mean yes, I also watched Silence of the Lambs but Hannibal Lecter makes it VERY clear that Jaime Gumb isn't a transsexual, he just thinks he is, etc etc, and who wouldn't trust Hannibal Lecter?) I kept thinking of that heartbreakingly poignant character Peter Capaldi played in Cracker that time. I was also interested in what we then called 'intersex' and devoured the Jeffery Eugenides novel 'Middlesex' (which I still think is really good). I loved the fact that there were 'drag kings' who were lesbian women who dressed as men and had rather unconvincing beards. I really enjoyed the novel Tipping the Velvet - lots of male-acting and male-impersonating lesbian women in the 19th century world of that novel.

It dawned on me very gradually that things had changed and that men who didn't fit the classic psychological profile of a 'transexual' were making themselves felt. I knew damn well that men in frocks had been sharing the women's loos with me on occasion, but up until about 7/8 years ago, I wasn't bothered because I absolutely assumed them to be gay men. (I know, we all deserve privacy from ALL men in the loos, but this wasn't something that bothered me that much.) Learning that this was not the case blew my mind. I think the point at which I started to get angry was in fact over a historical lesbian - it was the story about Anne Lister and her blue plaque - it had been put up by a local LGBTQ++ group and didn't mention the fact that she was either a She or a lesbian, I think it used very gender-neutral language! I think it had been linked to from here. I already knew a bit about Anne Lister (this was pre-Gentleman Jack) and was incensed that such an important historical figure was being glossed over like that. At about the same time, a good friend remarked on how crazy MN Feminist boards had gone (in a good way) and that every third post was about gender critical perspectives...

In my early teens, a local male doctor transitioned (mid 1970s). A lot of his patients applied to change doctors despite him being an excellent physician. I thought this very sad, and although he was very tall (over 6ft) I was willing to go along with him wanting to be a woman, however, I had very little interaction with him but would always say hello if I saw him in town. I don’t know what happened to him he seemed to “melt away” before I started my family. He’s probably passed by now, he’d be in his late 80s.

When the cult of TWAW started I remembered our lovely doctor and thought trans men would be like him but they soon made me realise he was an exception rather than the rule!

Men can’t be women and women can’t be men.

I do wonder if autistic women go one of two ways.
Either kind and progressive to the nth degree. Like needing to fit a certain persona.
Or absolutely unable to join the pretence.

I believed in non-binary identities because I'd experienced feeling not quite a woman / not quite a man for many, many years - long before non-binary had been coined actually.

Then I got pregnant which gave me the information that women could actually have any personality at all and still be women, and that there is no percentage of womanhood or manhood - you just are. I also felt proud of my body and my womanhood for what it could do rather than how it looked in the mirror.

I guess I got my dose of reality.

I used to just about accept transwomen as a type of woman (but not as female) when I was younger. Now I’m older and better informed, I’ve realised that gender identity is a fallacy and that you can’t separate women from females. We shouldn’t be a sub-type of our own group (i.e. ciswomen instead of women) and a transwoman isn’t a description of woman in the same way that “tall woman” or “black woman” is (although I’ve heard this argument used by TRAs recently who claim that excluding transwomen from women’s toilets is like excluding black women or disabled women…!!! 😱)

As soon as transwomen started pushing to be seen as female as well as women, I could no longer go along with it.