So I've always been a little gender non-conforming, respect the struggles people go through, and used to think referring to someone by their preferred pronouns was a no-brainer if it made them happy. I work in STEM and have seen at least a dozen people transition; never thought worse of them for it. I can still empathize with their pain.

The first exposure I had to transgenderism was when I was in college. I'm a bisexual woman and was only looking to date women at the time. When I learned about trans people, I changed my dating pool to be more inclusive, and said I was looking to date women and trans men. It didn't even take a week before someone shamed me for being discriminatory. I very reluctantly told people I would be open to dating trans women. On top of that, I also shied away from dating trans men because I admitted to myself that I saw them as the sex they were born as, which I felt was unfair to them.

That's when I should have peaked. Instead, I continued to buy into the TRA claims for ten years, and, because I have so much experience dealing with hardship, emotionally supported multiple people who struggled with gender dysphoria. I should say at this point that most of the trans or nonbinary people I knew were women. And I did go through a phase like that in college in response to sexual abuse: I bound my breasts, cut my hair short and dressed in more masculine clothes because I didn't want men to find me attractive, so I got where they were coming from. That being said, I don't approve of threatening violence against people who don't share your beliefs and I recognize that labeling ideas as TERF-y is ad hominem, so I was never in the crowd of people telling lesbians to choke on girl dick, thank heavens.

Halfway into those ten years, I met a very awkward man from my graduate program. It seemed like this person needed a friend; I have a high tolerance for awkward because I used to have trouble socializing myself (see 'abuse,' above) and do have many of those stereotypically nerdy hobbies (not everyone had patience for that. Mathematicians are generally less dorky than people think). At some point I suspected this person was developing feelings for me. I'm not attracted to this person at all, so at some point I let it slip that while I was in an open relationship, I was only interested in dating women.

His eyes lit up.

From then on, he made a beeline for me at every department event. Outside of work and research, his conversations with me were restricted to anime, video games, and lesbian relationships. I never liked anime because the infantilizing portrayal of women rubbed me the wrong way, so I asked him at one point to not say the words "cute anime girls" in my presence. And to stop making every conversation about lesbians, because what the hell, dude. (It's worth noting that if I mentioned a straight or gay male couple, this person would flat-out not respond and steer the conversation to be about lesbians again.)

About two years ago, he took me aside and asked me, "Do you think I would look cute as a girl?"

So you can guess what happened next: I supported him unconditionally, listened to everything he had to say about his transition, even when it rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't want to admit it. Skipping ahead, they started pushing more and more boundaries, including grabbing their breasts and genitals in front of me and asking repeatedly about my porn habits. I took this person aside and asked them to please not talk about anything sexual in front of me, that it was making me uncomfortable. He was very upset about this, and not for my sake. Not because one of his closest work friends felt alienated and tense around him.

Then my spouse made a comment that would set me down the GC path: "I'm skeptical when one of these introverted tech guys decides they're a woman. I always wonder what their understanding of femininity is based on."

I'm quite into epistemology, so this spoke to me. How can someone who wasn't born as a woman know what being a woman feels like? It's impossible. It struck me that when people choose to transition, their impression of femininity cannot possibly come from experience (even if you buy into TWAW, they spent their whole life before that living as a man). It has to come from some external source. And for this person, that source was very obviously anime, video games, and lesbian porn. That's when I learned about autogynephilia. And then the floodgates opened.

This all happened months before JKR spoke up. By that time, I was a hardened radfem, lurking on GC and LGBdroptheT every day. Lurkers, it's not that I have no compassion for GNC people. I was GNC myself. My best friend had top surgery. Heck, I have TIM colleagues who I still think are perfectly lovely people and never gave me crap about anime lesbians. It's not that I haven't heard the TRA arguments. I spent ten years buying into the TRA arguments. It's that a negative experience pushed me to examine my own beliefs, and once the they-aren't-hurting-anyone veil was lifted, it became strikingly obvious how contradictory the transgender movement is. It's not that I'm a stupid idiot woman who doesn't understand Logic™ and Reason™; I'm a professional logic-and-reason user to the point where I have a fancy gender-neutral title for it and gladly put the search for truth above my own ego, which is why I'm here. I'm not filled with hate, I'm filled with pain. The only time I've felt discriminated against or targeted as a same-sex-attracted woman was in the context of transgender people ordering me to prioritize their self-identification over my own sexual preferences. (But I also get that I'm bisexual, not a lesbian, and will not invade lesbian spaces. Not going to whine about it either.)

I didn't act until the gun was pointed at me, and I'm sorry.