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 never believed in gender identity but I believed that people could be "born in the wrong body" in that there was a mismatch between the brain and the rest of the body, and that's what caused gender dysphoria. Female brains in male bodies, male brains in female bodies.

It was only when someone kindly pointed out that the modern trans movement wasn't about gender dysphoria any more, now it was all about gender identity, and a person could be trans without having gender dysphoria at all, that I took a closer look.

For a while I believed there were "true trans" who were the gender dysphorics. But after reading so many posts on FWR taking this idea apart, as well as the Gender Critical forum on Reddit and then Ovarit, I stopped believing that too.

Glad this thread's back! It's interesting. I'll catch up when I'm not supposed to be asleep.

I never for a minute thought TWAW and refused to 'use pronouns'. This caused a couple of arguments among my very many fem-styled male friends during the 1980s-90s (well, flouncing tantrums actually) but we made up again straight after.

Maybe I was just good at explaining my commitment to reality, but I think it's more that 'gender identity' hadn't yet got its claws into the public psyche. Their identities were personal to them, not everyone else's responsibility.

I used not to be bothered about the few MCW in the Ladies. They never ponced around play-acting femininity or took up extra space. If another woman had found their presence upsetting, though, I'd have asked them to leave. My friends, who were performative, used the Gents as far as I'm aware. At some clubs they had their own room. If in doubt, they'd go with a friend - just like women, only to the other loo!

I will add that some, regrettably, did get bashed up sometimes. This was due to homophobia - not 'transphobia' as there was no such thing. The aggressors felt their masculinity was being threatened, or some such nonsense.

I do feel sorry for the loss of privileges to old-school 'tru trans'. Even glammed-up show-offs like my friends are likely to find the world a little more hostile for a while. Their advocates are to blame for that, though. We gave an inch here and there to be kind: they took all the miles and demanded still more. Lesson learned. Don't give an inch.

I never believed it. The first transgender person I ever came across was a total creep who was overly sexual and just downright weird so from the get go that was what I associated "trans" with. After he mentioned trans in passing (he was not "out" until much later) it wasn't something I came across again for many years until Caitlin Jenner won woman of the year and I started to read FWR and thought "what the ever loving fuck is going on".

I never believed in TWAW, largely because I grew up seeing the glam rockers and disco of the 70s, images of Studio 54 gender-bending glamorous NYC people inc Bowie, Rocky Horror, the New Romantics of the early 80s and then Kurt Cobain, Brad Pitt and (even) David Beckham sometimes wearing skirts.

They were unabashedly men. Creatively playful men, changing up their looks with fashion, hair and makeup as entertainers have for centuries.

What happened? Children and teenagers marinading themselves in unsupervised internet Wild West spaces; not discussing or analysing anything with parents (partly because a significant factor in this phenomenon is about threatening rejection of them unless they’re unquestionably accepting of anything).

I remain convinced that this has been driven in large part by paedophiles and other types of predator (including US pharmaceutical giants, insane surgeons touting for business - “Yeet the teats!” - and corporates who immediately spotted customer demand for all sorts of paraphernalia. The sinister Be Kind girls’ t shirts everywhere, the bloody trans zebra crossings.

ive been bewildered and horrified by the absence of meaningful pushback at Govt level here; as a society we cannot have large numbers of young people making themselves sterile and suffering from lifelong surgical injuries and even disabilities that will limit their futures profoundly. Far more important than piddling about with possible cigarette-buying laws I feel.

And still no news of arrests let alone charges for the wannabe-terrorists advertising their torture and murder fantasies on cardboard signs or social media. It seems they are too cowardly to pull at the threads of the cult.

I wonder if it would be true to say that the situation is as follows:

• a lot of people never have believed that TWAW
• some people wanted to play pretend because it seemed like the kind thing to do and there were no obvious downsides
• some people knew it didn't make sense but were afraid to think about it
• some felt they didn't have the ability to think about it because it was too complex

• for people who wanted to play pretend, the idea there were no downsides was perpetuated by the pervading bias that, eg, focuses on TW "banned" from women's sports, but barely mentions women & girls losing access to sport because it was mixed sex. (A particularly clear example of this bias was the Guardian decrying the fact TW may be searched by males, while ignoring that women have been searched by trans identifying males and have been forced to search TIMs.)

• for people who were motivated to believe, or who were afraid/felt unable to disbelieve, claims from authority (Amnesty, BMA etc) helped maintain their position. Censorship and fear of speaking up within organisations and fields allowed false consensus to persist.

I think that each person has the value of 1 human being.

Many people appear to think that (or looking at how they decide the worth of causes appear to function as though) a male person has a value of 1.5 human beings and that a female person has a value of 0.5 human beings.

This is why sad transwomen (who everyone knows are male despite pretending otherwise) are far more important than women (who everyone knows are female).

I have seen a lot in transactivism that is explained by this. As it has been said many times, it is a mens rights movement and sadly some women also put mens wants and demands before the needs of women and girls. This allows them to do that and to feel good about it (for being OTRSOH and so, so kind, for example).

I think that my BIL does not truly believe it. But he thinks that in order to protect these people, we have to pretend we do. I wonder how many people are like him?

@Mermoose I'd also add, for those of us who always thought of ourselves as left-wing, it was presented as the modern, up-to-date, progressive view. Certainly for me at the beginning, I had a bit of an arrogant attitude of "Keep up grandad, don't you know this is the thinking now?". Even though I was never personally attached to it. There was just a tribal "nodding along" and even humouring the concept. Like "even if it sounds a bit weird, who am I to look into other people's personal proclivities and make a fuss about them, how unseemly I would appear to my fellow lefties".

I actually think that, in a way, there's a link between prudishness and permissiveness. Like "oh, something unusual is going on that has something to do with sex... Look away, let them get on with it, nothing for me to see here, stop talking about people's private parts!".

I'd add that, for people who think of themselves as left-wing or progressive, there's a real fear of seeming prudish or judgmental. I stopped going to Pride years ago, because it was being taken over by the fetishists, and lots of people thought that was very weird of me. Apparently we should all be accepting of strange fetishes being paraded down the high street in broad daylight.

But a lot of people quietly opted out. Not just the lesbians, but the normie gay men who weren't into the fetish scene. Hardly anyone remembers that Pride used to be dominated by lesbians and gays in normal clothes or even work uniforms asserting that they were just like everyone else.

Where judgmentalism seems to creep back in is with young people influenced by intersectional politics who are obsessed with totting up privilege points so they can assess whether there's a minute power differential in a relationship. No wonder they aren't getting laid.

But yeah, lots of this is privilege theory and the progressive stack. It's the type of politics that says you can't have an opinion about an oppressed group unless you belong to that group - which is not in itself stupid, I don't know what it's like to be black etc, but it's often applied in a stupid way. Hence "I'm a cis woman, so I'm going to allow the trans folx to tell me their truth."

This might mean a 20yo woman deferring to a 50yo bloke on the grounds that his trans identity makes him vulnerable and her an oppressor, but it doesn't do to think too hard about these things.

I’ve had to rethink my whole view about everything, having seen the consequences of where this self identity nonsense has ended up. Which is a place where words have no meaning anymore and if your perception of someone doesn’t match theirs, you’re hateful and can be arrested. I’ve always considered myself to be on the left but the identity stuff is damaging to children and society at large.

I don’t, after all, know it all.

@Mermoose I think ones first experience with a transgender person probably has a big impact too. I can see how if the first you come across is someone you love, respect or just like then you would really want to subscribe to "be kind" for their sake. If your first encounter is with a creepy, oversexed fetishist then "be kind" isn't on the table!

@SionnachRuadh "I stopped going to Pride years ago, because it was being taken over by the fetishists, and lots of people thought that was very weird of me. Apparently we should all be accepting of strange fetishes being paraded down the high street in broad daylight."
I think there's internalised homophobia behind some of it, too.
Maybe a lingering worry, "Perhaps I am just a perverted freak." So that motivates a gay person to create a community where all perversions are welcome, even those that depend on blurring consent.

I didn't hear the slogan for many years. I'm not sure of the date it was projected onto the Ministry of Justice as an art event (2015?) and by that time I'd already met transwomen and was in the throes of massive psychological struggles trying to manage how this version of femininity on men impacted me and all the women in my team. That was a long time ago.

I probably would have gone along with it previously because I'd never really thought about it. There was a speech at my wedding about the importance of everyone being able to get married as their true selves, and I approved of that - long before same sex marriage or even the GRA. My husband had been on cross sex hormones for a while but was very very definitely not a woman - had even ended up taking medical action to appear more masculine (that didn't make him more of a man either).

Makes me a little kinder to those who got sucked in to appearing with members of PIE and all that. You need to keep your wits about you and culture is very powerful.

I live in Bristol in a very “be kind” area. In our antenatal group as the babies grew up there was a lot of “the MOST important thing is to be kind” as we raised our little ones and sent them to school, even though it was a bit fey at the time, it didn’t seem unreasonable so I went along with it.
There were a couple of (assumed) nice, decent TW at work. A straightforward Yorkshire man at work made some unkind comment and my reaction was defensive of the TW. I claimed to not even know who he was talking about, so indistinguishable from the other women. But I doubted myself as the words came out of my mouth.
Some time later, I broached the topic with some friends (a midwife and an early years leader) and was basically told to wash my mouth out and go and educate myself.
I educated myself on MN. The tipping point was a phrase, I think on MN “there is sex, and there is personality”
But it took years to speak publicly, every time was terrifying and has led to some ostracism from the BK crew but I couldn’t give a shit. Imbeciles.
My two teenage daughters know there are some things that are more important than being kind.

I didn’t ever believe it mainly because the trans people I had met in clinical practice were all vulnerable with underlying mental health issues. I believed it was polite to live and let live and to use preferred pronouns (and did until reading Barracker’s pronouns are Rohypnol piece) but I never believed it was kind to lie to them.

This is really important. One thing that kept me in the "be kind" space for a long time was befriending a transwoman who was classic HSTS, had all the surgery... but more importantly, was a nice person with a great personality and a wide range of interests. We could have conversations about any number of things, which is a relief when you know a bunch of gay men who've made being gay their whole personality.

If you had asked me did I see this person as a woman... well, no, but it felt unkind to even think that.

But then you get to encounter the different types.

For me, reading trans memoirs has been interesting because the types come out very clearly even if the author doesn't intend it. This may seem a bit amateur psychologist but...

It seems clear to me from Christine Jorgensen's memoir that Jorgensen was a gay man with a massive amount of internalised homophobia who found he could only be comfortable in a female persona.

It seems clear to me from Jan Morris's memoir that Morris was a classic misogynistic AGP. I've never quite figured out the magnetic pull that Morris had for a certain kind of man - probably that upper class confidence, where I find Jorgensen much more likeable.

Elliot Page is contemporary and such a celebrity that I feel I have to tread more carefully... and I hope Page finds a happy place, but it seems to me that Page is carrying around lots of trauma and searching for coping mechanisms. I think it's revealing that Page (who is pushing 40) presents not in the persona of an adult man, but in the persona of a boy. To me, that's not just Page's tiny stature and lack of butchness, it's a search for comfort.

What boggles my mind is that my TRA friends could read these three books and conclude that the authors are the same thing.

Many many years ago I worked in HR as a junior clerical person. I once heard a conversation about a male employee who was threatening to come into work wearing a dress. He was told he would be sacked if he did. This was the 80s. At the same time roughly I was supporting interviewing and escorted clearly a man dressed in feminine clothing. After their interview I heard the panel laughing hysterically. This type of thing upset me and I thought it was wrong. I thought they were treated appallingly. I didn't think much more about it untill........... many many years later hearing G Greer on question time saying something like - what is a woman - and the penny dropped.

I think trans women and trans men are victims of a deeply stereotypical society that shoehorns people into categories. I know a couple of trans people and one detrans person and I have compassion for all of them. I think biology is relevant but I also think people should express themselves however they want.

@StealthIsTheWurst my sister did that when I pointed out a transvestite prostitute to her (we were not in the UK) even though it was blindingly obvious.

The whole "be kind" thing is very sneaky and disingenuous. Tell women that they must never point out the obvious and then when debate finally happens say "but, but I never get misgendered! Noone can tell" errr no, everyone is just being "kind", as you requested.

And I totally get that impulse. I watched a video of a walkthrough of the TRA protests after the ruling and there was one transwoman who seemed so lovely and really innocent to the consequences of what they were doing. I just felt sorry for them. To their face I would definitely have been kind.

I never believed it and thought that I was living in some kind of dystopian nightmare where people were all going along with something that was clearly not true.

It was actually quite terrifying. Stonewall's sinister 'acceptance without exception' and 'no debate' literally prevented any questioning voice. Anyone who dared was shot down, banned from social media platforms and 'cancelled'.

Even mumsnet would not allow women to discuss this in FWR and we were shunted off to a quiet corner - which we were actually pathetically grateful for. We had strict moderation and language was policed extremely carefully. Even so, mumsnet was doxxed for allowing that limited speech. They even sent a SWAT team to Justine's home.

I'm not kidding, it was an awful, oppressive time. Government were supporting these restrictions and there was media blackout on the subject. livelihoods were lost and families were torn apart. I'm absolutely shocked that it even happened, it seems so unreal now that we are allowed to discuss it rationally.

Such a good question. I don't think I believed in gender identity as such, but I did previously believe that this idea is harmless and that it was all about self expression. I didn't think about the medical side of things at all.

I did high level sport and never believed in it. The differences once a teenager are huge. Any contact sport would be extremely dangerous with a mixed team. Got injured playing a friendly with mixed teams. It really opened my eyes to the sheer power difference. You can be hugely skilled, but still very vulnerable against a male player.

I never believed in it from the start. When there were a very small number of people who'd had sex changes I didn't give the matter any thought. But when, I think, in 2015 it went mainstream via Caitlin Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair I just thought it was the latest bit of celeb fashion and I thought it was obviously nonsense. What a shame that a piece of self-aggrandisement has pulled so many along in its wake

Two main moments

first was about a decade ago when a female friend, had a period of very poor mental health and came out the other side trans and calling everyone who was still worried about her mental health a bigot. Left her husband and children and the majority of her friends to be affirmed by her new community. I tried my very best to believe that this person that I’d seen be a flirtatious, girly happy woman, who I’d seen marry, fall in love, be pregnant, give birth , be a mother ALL as a woman insisting that none if it was true and she’d always been a man . It made no sense, everyone could see how mentally ill she was but she was lost to us all in a flurry of bigot accusations. It was heartbreaking. Still is

second was seeing a friend being hounded out of her community, city, profession, livelihood… for believing the same as I did.

and also when Andy wightman was expelled from the Scottish greens

I misphrased something in my previous post. I should have said: "Caitlin Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair, with genitals tucked out of sight".

It represented a shift towards nothing more being required for one's status as male or female than self-identity. The fact that it came via a celebrity is significant: they expect everyone to pay attention to them even when it's something that ought to be of no consequence at all.

Thanks for all the responses to this. I've been thinking about it again, trying to understand how staff at NHS Fife could say and do the things they have.

In a way I'm glad that I had the experience of believing it (or thinking I believed it) because it gives me some understanding. But it just would never have survived collision with a woman's distress at having a man in a changing room.