Welcome New Members Peak Trans Reprise V: Tell your story here

I came here because I have no idea where to talk about this stuff. It is sad that in our society today, we can't simply disagree about things, even important things, without being treated as pariahs.

Fo me, I don't think it was a sudden thing. Once upon a time, I had a trans colleague and I thought my other (male) colleagues were assholes for giving our trans colleage a hard time. I still do. Even if I now think that I could at least be decent to a trans colleague, because it likely doesn't affect me at all. But of course there are larger issues at play. It just took me a long time to realize what they are. I'm now not sure there is any such thing as gender dysphoria. My colleague and others like him likely have a variety of issues and have somehow latched onto gender dysphoria as the cause. I also think it's appalling to treat children with "gender-affirming" care. I cannot believe liberals/progressives have fallen so deeply for this dangerous snake oil. Kids' lives are being ruined by this. Doctors and psychologists really need to take a step back. Do some actual science for once.

I used to follow a lot of science blogs and, at some point within the last 10 years or so, they stopped being skeptical about the whole trans phenomenon (bloggers like PZ Myers, who knows full well what male and female mean when it comes to spiders but for humans, not so much). As a lifelong skeptic of everything woo-related (and now including gender-woo), I was appalled. I mean, why can't we as skeptics question the idea that a man can "become" a woman or vice versa, based on how they feel inside. (And why can't we question the whole "born in the wrong body" thing? I feel like I was born in the wrong body. Too short, too fat, too unathletic. It's so unfair).

I started following threads on Twitter or wherever else where women were absolutely blasted for being "TERFs" and realizing that what these women had said or done was absolutely reasonable. So I concluded I must be one, too. But what really started to infuriate me is when the powers that be decided we could no longer use the word "woman". Incandescent rage. And even worse is the completely ignorant bullshit that "all sorts of people can menstruate, not just women." I beg your fucking pardon? THOSE ARE WOMEN, WHATEVER THEY CALL THEMSELVES. And this is the crux. People can dress however they want to, even change their names (but they should not get upset if people forget), but to expect other people to go along with your delusion? Not a damn chance in hell.

And then there is (are?) sports. Women's sports are still not taken seriously (at least not by a lot of men). It wasn't that long ago when women were discouraged from running because their uterus would fall out or something. Now, they are expect to cede places to men just because some men are under some kind of delusion that they are women. I'm sure it's just pure coincidence that these men were not winners in their chosen sport until they became "women". Hmmm.

I see this movement hurting women most of all. I do feel a bit icky even holding opinions that might cause people to think I identify as a conservative or Republican (they might be accidently right sometimes but it's more like a blind pig finding an acorn). Even my partner, who is a good guy, has been taken in by some gender-woo. But I'm working on him.

I'm not Meghan of course.

I was a STEM obsessed student K-12 69-83. Tomboy. Jock. Hung out with the boys. Did boy things. Disliked girls and all the whispers and drama and dolls and hair. Excelled at martial arts and cycling and fighting. My main sport was figure skating, but I was always manly in my figure skating skills. So I never ranked high in competition, cuz I just didn't skate like a girl. I don't truly remember peaking... I mean, I always knew there were only two sexes. And the word "gender", as a biologist, always annoyed me. It's a puritanical euphemism for people who can't bring themselves to use the word SEX openly. I used to be a sex pos. That's changed. I guess I became cognisant of the big times lies about sex in 1993 via the Québécois film Le Sexe des Étoiles. A man divorces his wife and returns years later to re-acquaint with their daughter, but he's had the "sex change", he knocks on his wife's door, and his wife answers: "you didn't become a woman, you became nothing". That's a strong line.

I was also utterly annoyed at the Crying Game (1992). What the hell sort of idiot man could fall for such lies. That just blew my mind.

But it only really became a battle sometime around 2008. I'd been having a grand time in the atheist community, then moved away from Florida and kept with the atheist community online. Then Gamergate and the atheist world went from being diverse to being woke, Gnu-atheists, to Humanism, to Atheism+, ... atheism was ruined, I was a Madelyn Murray O'Hare type atheist, old school, brash. I tried creating women only atheist discussion groups, and feminst only atheist groups, so we could discuss a few issues away from the guys, but that was prohibited... 2008. I fought back. And then I was banned from nearly all the atheist forums. So fk'em! Been in RF circles since 2008. I don't suffer the "true trans" narrative, drives me nuts, so I guess I'm a true transphobe!

I spent years smooshing my brain into agreeing with the ideology. Trying to convince myself that TWAW etc.

At the end of last year I went to a conference where we had to have our pronouns on our badges. And one of the scientists there was a “woman”. The “she/her” on her badge was probably the only thing that gave it away though.

She made no effort to look, sound, or act like a woman. She had a question at the end of every single talk, and it was almost always an insult. She was outspoken in a way I’ve never seen any other woman be.

I’ve found out since that she hasn’t transitioned medically or surgically. Only socially. But she used the women’s bathrooms, (fuck anyone who is uncomfortable right?!?)

I started wondering why I had to treat this man with long hair as if she had all of the same qualities, hardships and issues as me, if she is making literally no effort to even appear to look or act like a woman. In fact, she acted exactly like I would expect an entitled arsehole of a man to act. But I wasn’t allowed to say any of that, because then I’d be a transphobe.

Then I found out that “she” could apply for female only stem jobs and count towards women’s equity in stem.

That’s when I stopped trying to smoosh my brain into the ideology and realised that we are handing out our rights (that we still have yet to fully win) on a platter for the taking.

I'm a new member who missed out on r/gendercritical before it was removed. I peaked over a number of years, without knowing that there were other women who shared my feelings.

My first exposures to anything trans related were just an old movie here and there or your classic 20/20 TIM special. I didn't give it much thought beyond 'dress how you want, it's not hurting anyone' and 'ok, I'll be nice and call you a woman if you like.' I didn't want to be 'mean' to those I perceived to be disadvantaged HSTS men. I recall one critical thought; being irritated by Chastity Bono's explanation of her transition. That she didn't act like other women and got on better with men, but these 'other women' seemed like caricatures of gossiping hens. I thought she was just sexist.

I didn't think about it for many years. When I heard of Jazz Jennings, I started to get confused. It seemed to me that the only criteria for identifying transness was lack of adherence to gender roles, especially in young children. I thought, they're certain this little boy is a girl because he likes pink and glitter? I struggled with making sense of it. But once again, I didn't pursue it because I didn't want to be 'mean.'

I think I started really exploring my cognitive dissonance after an episode of Queer Eye. The episode was for a TIF who was undergoing top surgery. She had worked hard to save for the surgery and her family had disowned her. And during the scene of the operation, she was crying and wanting her mother. And I was so angry to watch, I hated it so much. I hated that her mother abandoned her to this pain, and I hated that the triumph of the episode was getting a male-marked driver's license and wearing a suit/tux at a party.

I couldn't stop ranting, this human wanted to be 'treated like a man' (and we all know what that means, but no one says it out loud! you mean treated with respect and dignity, not sexualized, not belittled, not abused by this trash world! and being 'treated like a woman' is nothing more than the horrible porn sick fantasies that OTHER MEN devise for us!) so she spent so much hard earned money, went through physical and mental pain during recovery, all so that everyone around her is a little less perturbed by her being GNC! And mind you, this woman would never pass as a male, so it's merely to prove some kind of point. And I hated that the queer eye guys were lauding and praising her for this, when they all KNOW she will never be like them. How cruel and unbelievable.

After that point I was basically done with trans and gender ideology. And I actually think most people in the world are all aware it's an insane delusion. But men don't care because it only means more power for their kind, and women are so desperate for male approval that they'll validate any garbage that crosses their path.

I think women are drowning in male thoughts, male philosophy, male ideals, male male male everything. They're being starved of their ability to THINK. WOMEN ARE REFUSING TO THINK! I know why. It's because reality is horrific and being a woman is a curse. I'm a radfem but I'm still a self-hating woman, I haven't escaped that hatred yet and I would never have chosen to be one if given the option. But that's what makes me laugh, that men can walk around in ridiculous clothes and wigs and shoes and makeup and simply choose whatever simpering giggling version of 'womanhood' gets their rocks off, while the rest of us are born women with NO CHOICE. That's why they can't explain how transgender is different from transracial. They don't want to admit that sex is an axis of oppression because they don't want female class consciousness.

Once I decided to actually think about gender ideology and transness for literally more than 2 minutes, it was like instant clarity.

1. No one can change biological sex anymore than you can change your natural hair color or the length of your fingers. Everyone knows this intrinsically, but evil doctors and big pharma are lying to you. They play pretend with you for $$$ and will stop the charade once the lawsuits start flying a decade from now.

2. Cis is an insult, it implies that at some point in my life I consented to my own female socialization. That I'm complicit in my own oppression. That if I'm not a TIF, my mind is 'aligned' with sexist stereotypes and that I accept and condone all the male tools of domination inflicted on women since birth. Otherwise, what's the excuse for not simply opting out? By this logic, if every single woman on the planet suddenly became a TIF or NB, sexism would instantly evaporate. And we all know it doesn't work that way.

3. The idea that transness or gender ideology doesn't hurt women, even if TIPs acknowledge reality and mind their own business, is completely false. It's affecting women every single day. Because I know why I'm a woman, I'm an adult human female. But wait, Dylan Mulvaney is also a woman, right? So if the word has any meaning, we must have something in common. I have to have something in common with every single TIM on the planet (like I already do with real women) otherwise their desperation to call themselves women is utterly meaningless. The word 'woman' only has value to TIMs because it includes us by default. They need to be in our category to validate their cosplays. So what is the mystery trait that makes us all women? If TWAW, what is this magical secret identity we ALL share with TIMs, that ISN'T regressive repackaged sexism? I'll wait. Until they can answer, they're not allowed to literally redefine MY EXISTENCE because of their male entitlement.

Hi, I’m new here. I was on the gender critical subreddit years ago before reddit banned it. I still peruse reddit and just yesterday saw a JK Rowling post on a sub that had a lot of gender critical type comments, all of which of course got deleted, with people getting banned and awards being taken away from posts that mods didn’t like. After seeing that, I decided to officially join here after lurking for a while. This may be kinda long so bear with me.

Anyway, I used to be a trans ally. At the time, I thought all trans people were like Jazz Jennings, this was about 4+ years ago. I didn’t know much about it, only the TWAW and other parroted stuff, didn’t know any trans people at the time, and I thought they all passed well, all had dysphoria, maybe some were gay boys/men. I noticed trans women/girls were more common and talked about than trans men/boys, but whatever. I didn’t notice other trans people being represented in the media because in my experience, on a surface level, they weren’t. I naively thought all trans people were on hormones or were like Jazz, had been since a child, or had top/bottom surgery. I thought they just were trapped in the wrong body, you know, all the stuff people say, and really trying to pass and doing a good job passing, so no problem right? I bought it. It never made sense to me tbh, like how or why your brain would feel like the other sex (or gender which I always thought were the same), but hey, I wasn’t dysphroic or trans so why would it, right?

Until we had a TIM at my college. I was in a small program in one building, so saw him a lot. He was a tall, large army vet, a bit older than most of the students, obviously a man, who wore ill fitting women’s clothes, large ballet flat style shoes, had nails painted, had sloppy looking longer hair, wore makeup, and carried a tote instead of a backpack. Dressed like a woman but that’s about it. Obviously no surgeries, no hormones. Still totally carried himself like a man. Sounded like a man. Could clock him immediately. And that’s when I started to question it, I was like wait a minute… what the hell is this (not calling a person “this”, I mean the whole concept)?

I still was pretty much an ally though at first because at first I felt wrong questioning it. It no longer felt right to me but I knew it was wrong in more liberal circles to question this. But my suspicions and feeling that this was weird or off didn’t go away the more I saw this person. I had some classes with him. Saw him once in the bathroom and literally took an involuntary step backwards while waiting in line for a stall when he came out of a stall because I was surprised to see a man in the women’s room.

I started googling and I don’t even remember the search terms but came across gender critical on reddit and that was it. Totally changed my view on it. And since then, 4 years ago, it’s only gotten worse and crazier in society. I now know 3 trans women/TIMs. But I am happy to be here where actual discussion is at least allowed and like minded people aren’t censored. There are more of us than a lot of the internet would have everyone think.

Hooray! I've joined! I'm so happy to be a part of the community!

Like many others, I peaked reading the GC subreddit, sometime back in May/June of 2019. I was in Tokyo, and I'd just gone to Tokyo Pride with some friends. Context: I'd been on Tumblr since, like, 2009, and I feel like I've observed many social phenomena emerge from that hellsite as a result. I read several trans bloggers and really tried to identify with something that, at that time (and still now) seem entirely contradictory to my core beliefs on feminism. I temporarily shut off a couple of my critical thinking resources and reblogged all those lovely posts about what trash heaps TERFs are, how TERFs are scum of the earth. etc. makes me gag now thinking about it. I just wanted validation and not to get yelled at, at the time.

At the same time, I wanted to understand who these TERFs were and why someone would purposefully exclude some people from the sisterhood (again, critical thinking skills had been turned off, or forcibly shut off by some of the vitriol I'd been reading). I realized that despite seeing eight thousand million posts about TERFs being the end of the world, that I'd never met any or read anything they'd written, or, frankly, ever even heard about them doing anything to warrant these people's undying hatred. So I searched. I'm a curious person. I read a few posts by self-identifying TERFs on tumblr, saw a few things, and slowly slowly began to realize that I'd been lied to, asked to shut up, and sit down.

From there I believe I found a post referencing the GC subreddit, so I hopped over to read some posts there. At that point, it was like someone took some very, very dark glasses off of me and I was forced to observe the blinding light of reality again: Everything about inclusion and being nice and friendly and accommodating to the Transes TM was just about making room for dick in feminism. Fuuuuuuuuuuck no!

Honestly, I haven't met many TIMs in real life. Those I have met have been from my best friend's drag shows (I love my best friend, he's a gay man who calls out other drag queens misogyny -- boy is there a lot -- but I can't begin to describe how much I despise drag on the whole). They were uh... delightful men who made hilarious jokes about women smelling a certain way. 🙄

Now, TIFs? I have tons of friends who are now either NB or trans men. In one case, my childhood good friend is a trans man. Honestly? He's fine. He quietly goes about his day and being trans is one small side of a complex and interesting life. We're not close anymore necessarily, but I still support whatever he's up to.

My NB acquaintances, however, I keep at arms length. I don't understand why being a woman is such a terrible thing, and I have never, even in my most tumblr-steeped days, understood what the everliving fuck "feeling nonbinary" is.

Sometimes I feel like a cat -- quiet, unassuming, loves naps, uhhh, enjoys birdwatching. Some days I'd just rather not talk to anyone, and other days I want a good head scratch, lol. You get where I'm going with this. Like many other things in the trans ideology, it's steeped in misogyny, bullshit, and pigeonholing people to agree with lies. I'm not here for it.

I'm reading, at the suggestion of this site, On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts About The New Definition of Woman. I highly recommend it. It's upsetting to see people spewing lies in society these days. I feel kind of responsible in some ways for this, as I was one of those TERF-means-doodoo-pants people in the past. Now I just hope the tide is turning.

Up until 2015 or thereabouts, I considered myself your average forward-thinking coastal liberal. I had family members who were openly gay well before it was socially acceptable. I lived in the Bay Area for many years. I had trans friends and coworkers.

The shift for me began when I moved to a grad student neighborhood in a university town with a far higher percentage of trans residents than even the Bay Area. This was... a different kind of trans community than I was accustomed to. First of all, and I'm sorry to sound petty about this, they were aesthetically offensive. It was sort of like they'd blindfolded themselves and went into a second hand store that only carried used exotic dancewear. I'm talking about a full beard, garish lipstick, gold spandex booty shorts, a fishnet tank top, and combat boots. On a local community Facebook group, I'd say about half the posts were either GoFundMe campaigns from trans kids who were too depressed about transphobia to pay rent, or cancellation campaigns against local businesses for the cardinal sin of misgendering them.

Then I noticed a proliferation of news stories of a genre that I've come to call "Everything is Harder for Trans People." Republicans dismantling access to reproductive medicine? Well, try being a trans man trying to get an abortion! Mass incarceration? So much worse for trans women! Climate change? The enbys will sweat to death in their shitty outfits in this hot weather!

Then a former coworker announced on Insta her preschool son was actually a girl, and shortly thereafter she and her husband announced they were BOTH non-binary. Now it's just posts railing against the kids' school for having them draw cards for Mother's Day. The former coworker who gave birth to a child was angry, you see, because as a nonbinary person she is not a mother. Another colleague, whom I knew as a cute, happy go lucky nerdy 20 something guy, turned into one of the most haughty, miserable women I've ever met.

The scales fell from my eyes and I realized that by and large, this phenomenon is about narcissism and desperate attention-seeking. I have compassion for people who don't feel comfortable in their bodies or who have internalized homophobia; I really do. I do not, however, feel reifying sex stereotypes with radical chemical alteration and surgeries is the answer. I do not think society needs to be reorganized around someone else's personality disorder.

I’ve always been wary of men due to my experiences and the experiences of women in my family. I went to college, I accepted all LGBTQ without question. I think I peaked when I saw Fallon Fox’s victim’s skull fracture. It was solidified when I realized that women’s prisons housed males, despite the risk and that this is our most vulnerable population when it comes to experiences of sexual assault.

I think it started back when I was 19, when I (a lesbian) went on a date with a TIM that I met off tinder. I knew they were trans from the beginning but I wanted to keep an open mind. I was also very inexperienced with dating. Our text conversations were great and the pictures on the dating app looked like a pretty woman so I thought "hey, we vibe so I'll go out with her and see how it goes"....

First of all, when he arrived at the date he looked like a man with a wig and makeup. Nothing like the pictures I saw on the profile. I should have just left right then and there. But me being young and naive, I figured I should be polite and at least give it a chance. He told me he was a former wrestler, and to be honest he had to body type of one (big, muscular, broad shoulders). The whole date was wildly sexual, to the point where I was super uncomfortable. He kept making comments about how I must be "checking out his ass" and constantly rubbing my thighs near my crotch etc. When I was driving to drop him off at the end of the date he kept rubbing the back of my ear saying "you like that? hmm you like that?" (🤮). Before he left the car he wanted to make out so we did. That was my first time making out with anyone (male or female) and I just remember it was the worst thing ever and I felt so disgusted. After the date, I blocked him and I swore to never ever date a "trans woman" again.

I'm now 27 and have dated several real women since then, and I've never had them behave like him. None of them were as sexually aggressive. That's why I know TIMs are not real women.

Up until university I never believed the TWAW/TMAM lies until I watched a program about sex dysphoria. After that, I did buy into the trans for a while.

What started to turn me back again was when they changed the definition of lesbians to "non-men loving non-men" and started with the non-binary and "you don't need dysphoria" bullshit.

But what actually convinced me was JKR and her essay. I complained about it on discord, came back to it two years later and wondered what I'd seen that was so reprehensible.