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.

@Mermoose started this thread, and it's a great read.

I(F) did an MSC as an adult student, which required a 1 month work placement. I worked for a UNIX company in N. London, writing user documentation. Maybe 25 years ago?

When I started I was taken round by a harassed-looking guy and introduced to shedloads of techie people, mostly men, whose names I couldn't possibly remember. At some point in the tour he took me into a side room and explained that the next person was a little different and was (a bloke in a dress) and it was important that I didn't overreact to this. This appeared to mean using the wrong pronouns, looking visibly surprised/confused, etc. Presumably experience had taught him that previous work-experience students couldn't see past the 'it's a bloke in a dress'.

I was as polite as I knew how to be. And now I have an MSc!

A small percentage of unfortunate people do not have their gender and sex neatly lining up. There can be genetic, physical or mental/emotional causes.

If you are not a specialist in this area and not personally involved with someone who has this issue, the best thing you can do is sit down and shut up rather than believing you should have a say in other people's lives. You not believing it's real is highly uneducated and foolish and your personal investment in it highly suspect.

It's really about having someone to pick on and feel superior to, isn't it. And transpeople are just the right scapegoats, one of the most vulnerable groups among us, an easy target. Trans people also have astronomically high suicide rates, because of people who just can't resist the chance to smugly kick someone when they're down.

Just mind your own business and let other people handle theirs. Everyone sees what you're doing.

Ah yes that most vulnerable of groups who have
checks notes -
. successfully convinced every government body
. The BBC, channel 4 & the majority of print media
. the BMA
. unions
. university
. The police
that men’s lady feelings are more important than women’s biological reality
and bullied & harrassed anyone who disagreed, pursuing them vindictively at work and at home trying to get them sacked or ostracised

if that what’s they achieved as the most vulnerable group ever, I hate to see what they would have done with a bit of power

Just mind your own business and let other people handle theirs

i think you should take your own advice

I had always strongly felt that kids should be who they felt they were rather than conform to gender norms - dress how they wanted to dress, play with toys that they liked rather than being put in a gender box.

About six years ago I watched a programme about "trans kids" and just thought that supporting trans kids was the "nice" thing to do, and it was all framed as something magical, so I felt like I just didn't understand it. But it seemed to be about supporting vulnerable young people who felt like they didn't want to be squeezed into a gendered box.

But, I soon realised the huge elephant in the room, and that the trans rhetoric was actually the thing that was telling kids that if they liked certain toys/clothes then this wasn't because all clothes/toys can be played with by boys and girls, but because they were actually the opposite sex!! Madness. I was the first of my friendship group to see it, but gradually nearly everyone has had their eyes opened up to how abusive and cult like it is.

Great prompt to go back over one's timeline, thanks!

My main exposure to ideas about gender was being involved/on the fringes of feminist/ queer/performance art events where diverse gender expression seemed exciting and creative.

Actual 24/7 trans people seemed weird and sad though. I remember being introduced to a cross-dressing colleague in the 90s wearing his leather boots and badly fitting blouse, and it was incredibly awkward. I think they were introduced as, this is Frank, he's transitioning to be a woman, so make sure you call him Veronica...

Read bits and pieces of Gender Trouble in the 90s, and was interested in the general mashup of gender identity. I was frustrated with the constraints of femininity, so a flexible understanding of gender appeared to be advantageous.

Attended an event with Annie Sprinkle where she showed a film featuring her transmale lover - first time I'd seen a constructed penis. It wasn't for me but I found Annie compelling and impressive, and they seemed to have a nice relationship.

Read and watched Tales of The City, with lovely Mrs Madrigal as house mother. It just seemed bad taste to refer to her past life as a man - if you even clocked that.

Felt a certain protectiveness towards trans women. One stopped me in the street to ask directions to a well-known gender clinic in my city (I worked for the NHS) and I felt oddly flattered they'd chosen to approach me, that I'd appeared safe to them. They seemed vulnerable and I was worried for them. This was in the period where you had to live as a woman for X years before you could get hormones/surgery, which seemed like a trial by fire.

Fast forward to the mid 2010s, and it started feeling problematic. Male friends on the music scene would turn up in bad drag with a new female name, and the assumption was that nobody should laugh or question it and that they were effectively the same as me now (albeit none of the men would "date" them). I felt huge social pressure especially from male friends to accept them without question, that it would be small-minded not to, which irritated me. I was never rude, but the conflation of transwomen with women made me feel as if I was at the bottom of some hierarchy. They had male advantage, but were weaponising femininity too.

However I was sort of sitting on the fence, until the houndings began, of women who didn't toe the line. Seeing women, including quite well-known figures in my local arts and music scene, isolated, othered and monstered as terfs was intimidating, depressing and obnoxious. And it's still going on.

It was watching Magdalen Berns that really opened my eyes up to it all, and showed me how I'd been pulled in to it. I was/am a left leaning, 'social warrior' type (I cringe now), so very much like many of the women who are TRAs. I'm very much pro gay rights, which is another reason I think I was initially sucked in as being pro trans rights was framed as being the same. But my pro-lesbian rights stance is a large part of why I'm now against this harmful ideology.

@bonnieweelass This sounds v v much like my work, in fact I think it is my work. I find the head of equality creepy, at an all staff event recently he was trying to get everyone who asked a question to state their pronouns. Happily, no one did. Their annual equality and inclusion week is coming up soon and I'm expected (in my new team) to take part and I'm a bit wary. I know he's clocked that I don't have pronouns in my email unlike the rest of my new team but I'm not doing it. I'm glad the supreme court judgement was so clear and I think I will speak up, gently, if I can to question certain things. It's madness.

Edited as I meant to tag the poster in

Really interesting thread.

I suppose I hadn't really thought about it. I suppose I'd thought 'why not be kind?'. Then when I was up in the middle of the night, breastfeeding a newborn, at the beginning of COVID, crying because of the pain of mastitis, I discovered FWR.

And realised what was happening here in Scotland. The institutional capture. The women locked in prisons with violent male sex offenders, on the say so of a lobby group.

I lurked for a year before I started posting, trying to get a handle on everything in case I made a fool of myself.

And then I watched the Forensic Medical Examiner Services Bill being debated on Holyrood TV and realised that women's rights were being sacrificed on the altar for men's feelings.

I don't think I ever believed it and was shocked when my work started pushing it and I remember laughing about it with an older colleague who was no nonsense about lots of things. He just said how ridiculous it was and we moved the conversation on.

Now I'm in a new team at the same work and they are all "be kinders" and I feel a sort of fear for not being part of the group but at the same time it's lowered my opinion of people that prior to moving into the team I really thought were educated and well read. That desire to be so open minded and progressive their brains have fallen out.

It's a more interesting job now but I do miss my old team as there were a good few of us who were definitely GC and just laughed at the nonsense the equalities team would post up on the intranet. I remember one about pansexual awareness. I mean, how is that even relevant to our jobs????

And a large percentage of transwomen don’t have genuine dysphoria - they are fetishists who feel entitled to make women feel uncomfortable because dressing as women arouses them. Most of them have penises.

And you’re saying it’s not my business not to want some man with a dick, stripping off in the gym changing room next to my 5 year old daughter and me? Hell to the no!

The idea that there is such a thing as a 'sense of gender' is a very recent invention. Barely two decades old. There used to be expectations around the presentation and behavior of people related to their sex. Everyone has a sex, either male or female, even if they have DSD.

The rules tended to be stricter for the more wealthy - poor people slogged away regardless. From the nineteenth century, women increasingly demanded the removal of restrictions on their rights to control their money, to leave an abusive relationship, to work, to vote. Hardworking middle class women in the two world wars needed to wear different, practical styles of clothing, and once that changed, they didn't go back. Not because they wanted to change 'gender'.

A small percentage of unfortunate people suffer distress from mental/emotional causes. That has always been the case, and they need therapy.

I thought I understood it briefly. It was after the Guardian had featured that doctor who had amputated two people who were convinced they should have been amputees. His reasoning was that it was the only way of relieving their mental distress. About 2002. Then a few years later Channel 4 had a series following a group of trans people and they expressed similar happiness following surgery. I thought, oh I get it, it’s like the amputees. But the men especially were just performing a type of femininity that is alien to me, so I never really thought they were any kind of woman. And despite thinking I understood their motivations I still found it insulting.

Fast forward a few years and I discovered that the doctor was banned shortly after those two amputations for unethical practice. It was then completely clear that trans surgery suffered from the same ethical problems but for some reason people’s brains had fallen out.

That was roughly at the I am Spartacus thread time.

The only trans people I have ever met other than dh's sibling who is still in the closet (surprising cos I live in London and am millennial) are at my synagogue when I was converting. There seems to be a small correlation though most converts aren't trans, recent article said rise in conversions to Judaism was due to popularity in genetic testing. I suppose people who want to change religion may also want to change everything else.

I was asked to refer to the trans person as they which made no sense to me though I apologised and tried to comply..there was also a really strange man who said he was converting as a woman. He said he wasn't wearing a skirt that day as it takes lots of time to do himself up as a woman. I did remember thinking that I don't mind if converting as a woman meant not having to go through adult circumcision! I think it's not compulsory in liberal judaism anyway but I suspect it is strongly encouraged.

For me turning point was when I became pregnant and was confronted with my biology and medical misogyny. Refused tubal ligation until I had 3 children, dh got his vasectomy when I was 7 months pregnant with his first and only child

I remember that article - do you have a link? I have searched for it several times but haven’t found it. Has it been memory holed? He was a Scottish psychiatrist IIRC. There was also an article about it in the New Yorker which I am 99% sure has been deleted.

Back in the day there was some very interesting research indicating that there was an overlap between people with gender dysphoria and those with BIID (bodily integrity identity disorder, ie those who believe they should have fewer limbs than they have). It was way beyond the margin of error and was thought to be caused by disturbances in adjacent cortices of the brain. Of course you’d never get research funding on that now, because as you say it would raise interesting ethical questions about how we treat one and not the other (and also about whether GD is something that is a disorder and which can be treated in other ways than by affirmation).

Also, have a google about the current demands in the US of those who have BIID. They have already got there and their demands to be treated analogously to trans identified people are - interesting and disturbing.

1970s …first job. Didn’t even know about these men,but knew I felt creeped out by having to share a changing room with one.
1980s.. being told I had to call a man with a beard hitting on women a female, while watching him elbow his way to the bar with male privilege .
the whole post modernism crap
Seeing some of them accessing women’s and lesbian events and groups.
1990s when they asserted their right to be in Lesbian groups which then inexplicably folded.
never thought any of them were women
2000 s, when the dangers of children and young people being told they could change sex and social services colluded.
I am Sparticus was hugely influential, but only confirmed what I already knew to be true.

@Namechangedfortheterfasaurs sadly not, I have looked for it as well.

I also remember an article most likely in the Guardian or Observer about a Beaumont society event in which the journalist commented on how the women all appeared to be tolerating the situation rather than enjoying it at all. It was subtly damning.

I wish I had so few real life things to deal with other than the first world privilege that is males cosplaying as girls and demanding women and girls lose our safe female only sex-based spaces and rights, but you keep pandering to men and making rape survivors like me less safe while you campaign to tear down my single sex spaces, @BigHeadBertha . How proud you must be, striking a blow for men and male supremacy. Never mind the trauma you cause rape survivors and DV victims.

Males are not 'vulnerable'. Trans are the most powerful, most privileged and most protected sacred caste their own. And you pushing the suicide myth (it's been proven that actually in fact, they have no higher suicide rates than any other group) as a weapon to manipulate, control and gaslight vulnerable women and girls into giving up our rights is disgusting!

When these Mens Rights Activists and privileged males mind their business and STAY THE FUCK OUT OF FEMALE ONLY SPACES, then and only THEN will we 'mind our business'.

Take your misogynistic, hate-filled gaslighting mens rights agenda elsewhere.

I never thought that TWAW in the literal sense. However, for a long time I thought that homosexuality was the only cause of gender dysphoria, so I didn't realise the risk for women.

Around about 20 years ago I was a member of a Livejournal women’s group. I remember a very earnest post by a FTM who said they were “devastated” but they could no longer be a part of the group as they has now openly transitioned. The group had several very loud, vocal trans women in it, and I really started to notice how jarring they were, two in particular, a well known liberal councillor and a software engineer who has been on TV in recent years on programmes about model trains, were particularly strident, aggressive and when I stopped to think about it, just male. They were visibly fawned over by others in the group when they posted asking for clothes and makeup advice. (Stunning and brave!). I went on a meet up of the online group, and was dismayed that out of a gathering of about 12 people, three were very obviously men. It changed the whole dynamic of the group. I didn’t go back.
Then there was that revolting little Labour women’s officer - Lily something? And Jonathan Yaniv, “Aimee” Challenor, Karen White. It seemed to be never ending.

Have polls switched off so comments only for me. But I never believed TWAW.

I worked in an LGBTQ friendly city in the charitable sector supporting many charities with tech and did a lot of work for trans charities for quite a few years in the late 90s, early 2000s. I met quite a lot of trans folk. The transwomen were always clearly men to me. But I believed the rhetoric about suicide risk and some of the transwomen were lovely and genuine in their desire to be female (Others were clearly disturbed, but so were quite a lot of the LGBTQ community. They were disenfranchised, often rejected by family and old friends, and many had drug and alcohol habits. It was understandable that some had mental health issues and/or were lacking emotional stability.)

I was in my 30s and being into computing. Single sex spaces normally excluded me and female only tech spaces were overwhelmed by women who thought blogging was being techy. So I was not keen on most single sex social spaces and I searched out mixed environments. But it was also a time when, acceptance seemed to be kept to groups that had agreed to it. Not pushed out on the wider community.

Once that flipped, and I started to hear arguments about how transwomen deserved to be in women's sports, on all women shortlists, and how they were really female, I started to ask questions and get shut down. And then I started to see pro-trans arguments posted that used dodgy logic and science that didn't support the assertions. I was still quite immersed in the Be Kind/Most Vulnerable mind set and thought transwomen deserved our support. But it was researching those arguments in order to improve them and use them that made me realise what a crock of shit it was and to really see the misogyny at the heart of the transmovement. I'd changed my mind entirely about "Be Kind" by 2015ish.

When I was about 12, probably just on the cusp of puberty, I felt clearly less feminine and girly than everyone else I encountered at my single sex school. I didn't feel I fitted in. And, I sincerely wondered if, perhaps I had been misidentified and was actually male.

Puberty put paid to that in a couple of years and for several years after that, I gave it very little thought.

In 2016, when I had been a primary school governor for about 18 months, one of my fellow governors went on an LA training course and came back to report to us all that approx 10% - 15% of people were trans and that would include the school pupil population and this was something we needed to build into our thinking.

I was astounded and said 'But, that means 2 or 3 of us (there were about 20 people at the meeting) are trans. Surely that can't be right? And he said it was. And, when I asked to look at the slides from the course, that was what he had been told.

I was fairly new to safeguarding not having a background in education and I was worried about whether I had misunderstood and how to do my job and make sure the school kept children safe. And, I thought back to how confused I had been for a short period and was worried confused children would be medicalised unnecessarily. So, I started looking for more research /evidence.

And, amongst other things, I found FWR and started reading. I found Lang Cleg enormously helpful and, with my governor hat on, I had several quite robust arguments about spaces being separated on anatomy not thoughts in the next 5 years!

Since then, I've come across a couple of transboys in my teenagers friendship groups and several middle aged transwomen in my daily and work life There are 5 transwomen that I can think of that I have to interact regularly with (eg one drives the bus I take regularly to a hobby evening). 2 of them always make me feel uncomfortable - one of the two traps you in corners to stand too close and talk at you if he gets the chance and sometimes shares medical information I don't want to know. I am now careful never to walk near the edges of rooms when he is present.

My dd telling me I was a cis-woman. I did some research. It’s the whole pretence side of it that I find so hard. Being friends with religious people doesn’t require me to believe in God. I don’t have to not eat meat if I’m out at a restaurant with a vegan friend. I can (if I like) take a sensible interest in their beliefs. But I’m expected to just swallow that make and female is a some sort of sliding scale that you can pick and choose from whenever you like? And that gender is real? And to shut up and accept it with no argument.

‘cis woman’ made me angry for years and I never even knew why until I started listening to Magdalen Berns.

About a decade ago I genuinely thought that a very, very small number of people had gender dysphoria from childhood and should be allowed access to puberty blockers until they were adults and could make an adult decision on whether to physically transition. My DH occasionally reminds me of this now - he was always anti. I thought it only applied to a tiny number of people and they would undergo surgery, get a GRA and get on with their lives.

Then two things started to make me change my mind:-

1. the sudden appearance of unhappy girls in my DD2's friendship group who were announcing they were trans or non-binary. They were obviously deeply uncomfortable with their adolescent bodies (& in a lot of cases had ASD traits). And WTF was non-binary? I've had short hair for 30 years, have been called Sir a few times & work in IT but I was always a woman. (And most of the glamorous pop stars of my youth played with make up & big shirts but were still M or F.)
2. the increasing prevalence of weird TIM in the press. "Women" with beards or wearing fetish gear in public. Their demands they were actually women & their hatred if anyone who didn't go along with their version of reality.

It was Jess de Wahl's cancellation by the RA shop after 1 complaint about her GC beliefs - despite the shop only selling her flower embroideries and her having already published her views before they started selling her goods that peaked me. She came out all guns blazing on the Today programme and then two blokes came on to discuss it, dripping with male condescension & calling Justin Webb cis (& him telling them off for making assumptions about him.) I needed to talk to some other sane people so ended up on here (thank you Mumsnet) and buying a load of Jess' Big Swinging Ovaries badges, which I have been using as a conversation starter / gift ever since.

Then JKR & the wholesale dismissal of her views as bigoted despite most people having never read her statement. Then I went on Twitter (to report a dead deer carcass to the Highways Agency) and found a load of amazing, frequently very funny, sane campaigners who've kept me informed of first the madness and now the sanity (thank you FWS and the Supreme Court) when a lot of media wants to tell me how sad the TIM are, rather than ask the women about safety & fairness.