I am in my late 30s very much on the left politically. I was very much a trans allie, starting in the 90s when the average trans person was a gay man. I felt empathy for them as, being female, I could understand feeling frustration with the sex I was born and discomfort with my body. I assumed their feelings must be similar but greatly intensified. After all they wanted to go as far as to cut their genitalia off, right? However my mum brought me up to challenge gender norms. It always bothered me that, while feminism was saying that gender was socially constructed and that gender norms were a product of society, the trans concept of having an inate, internal sense of gender, undermined that. Women were kept out of public life because we were thought to be predisposed to being overly emotional, unable to be logical etc. Feminists fought to dispel the idea of a female brain, the idea that our sex dictated our capacity and temperament . Gender identity theory would seemingly lend truth to those notions?

I couldn't reconcile these different schools of thought. So I just pushed the problem to the back of my mind. Who was I to tell anyone they couldn't live a certain way, because it undermined my views of the world? At the time trans people were very much the underdogs and I was sympathetic. Being bisexual and in relationships with women I was very much supportive of gay rights and many trans people were gay(I don't mean straight men who say they are lesbians).When the bathroom issue was first discussed I was still thinking trans women were gay men who had actually altered their bodies to look like women. I thought they were all disphoric and that the majority wanted to have their dicks turned into vaginas. Thus the term pre op. I also thought they were a tiny %of the population. With this misinformation in mind I didn't really understand why people were so concerned. Who would get surgeries etc to use the ladies? I thought it was only conservatives that were concerned . Then I found out anyone could self ID as a woman. Anyone could pop on a dress and use the ladies and other womens spaces. This got me thinking.

Then one day I saw a video of Riley Dennis. It was the Infamous " your genital preferences are transphobic video" . I couldn't believe what he was saying, it was just so regressive, twisted and ridiculous. We don't have preferences, unless we are bi, we have an orientation. To deny orientation reminded me of the kind of language straight men used about gay people yet this was coming from within the LGBTQIA community. To imply that people's "preferences" are shaped by social conditioning is ludicrous , particularly in the context of gay women, as they are rejecting social conditioning . Societal norms preference heterosexuality, so it is unlikely a straight women is rejecting Riley due to social conditioning either. Horrifically, Riley then implies that it is only acceptable to reject dick if you have been sexualy assaulted (and even then it would only buys you a grace period). The video was disgustingly coercive and provides ammunition for predatory individuals to use to gaslight young Lesbians . It also feeds the delusions of Trans youth, setting them up for disappointment. The video left me f. ing enraged.

I was really shocked that the gender identity ideology had mutated into the type of thinking Riley was displaying and wanted to know if he was an aboration. How did the concept of being born in the wrong body morph into an ideology that essentially sort to position homosexuality or heterosexuality as bigitory?

Unfortunately I couldn't just write Riley off as an outlier and what I discovered was peaking to say the least. It seemed that rather than medically alter their bodies, young trans people wanted to simply attempt to redefine their bodies. Rather than use surgery to change their genitalia, they would rather use linguistics to change the biological sex of their genitalia. Dick magically became lady dick or, worse still "big clitty" (shudder). Transgender, as a term, no longer referred to disphoric individuals wanting to change the look of their primary and secondary sex charictaristics. Instead it was an umbrella term for everyone from transsexuals to gender fluid people, feminine men and cross dressers. The fact masculine women and feminine men fell under the umbrella really disturbed me, it suggested that anyone who did not conform to rigid gender norms was trans. This made me see the term cis in a new light as I realised it was implying that I identified with femininity and its associated stereotypes.

But that was just the start, next I discovered the horrific messages from TRAs to women on TERF is a slur. I saw the vicious messages sent to lesbians, because they weren't interested in penis, on drop the L. In one particularly disturbing msg a 14 year old said she had tried to get over her disgust of cock but couldn't, did it mean she was a TERF? The response was shockingly harsh, condemning her for being a bigot due to her orientation. This sent to a child. I read the stories of Trans widows, and saw the same themes of manipulation and narcissism, repeated over and over again. I saw the constant policing of women's language. I saw a woman, on an online female health board, beg for compassion for women in pain and a break from language policing. I saw the vicious and manipulative rejection of that request by a T. W. who had no business being in a female health sub.

I read about the experience of a rape survivor who attended group therapy, along with two transwomen. The women in that group realised that the Tw were imitating their body language and facial expressions, the pitch an pace of their speach. They watched as their pain was appropriated, and a caricature mirrored back. Watched as they were revictimised in the very place they sort solice. I saw the treatment of FGM survivors as they were gaslit. As they were told their vaginas were cut, not because they were female, but due to cultural practices unrelated to their biology. I saw the harrasment to make everything, even the terms for this, brutal and female specific suffering, 'inclusive'. What kind of mind reads the experience of an FGM survivor and harangues them to stop using the term female? Why deny that this was done because of the sex of the victim? God I'm angry.

The stories of the kids are the worst. The gender non conforming kids, being told they are actually the other gender, make me angry. The stories of the gay kids whose parents use transition as conversion therapy, make me enraged. In their minds it's better to have a straight presenting trans kid than a gay one. Young people with deep unresolved pain, who think transition will cure them, make me want to scream. All these kids, caught inside this monstrous machine, turning healthy people into patients for life. Generating massive profits for the already obscenely wealthy. Kids being sterelised, before they can understand what they are giving up, irepairably damaging their bodies in innumerable ways. Detransitioners expose the lie that gender identity is innate. Yet their voices are ignored.

Meanwhile women are faced with constant demands to sacrifice ourselves on the alter of gender identity. We must give up our dignity and privacy, our spaces and our rights. We must give up the very definition of who we are. We must redefine ourselves to fit man within the definition of woman. We must treat these people as women we are told. Yet we must also acommadate their trans ness, centre their needs and use inclusive language. We are not to keep anything for us alone. Yet they want everything we have and trans specific benefits on top of that. They are women when it suits them and trans when it suits them. This is by no means all trans people. However there is a vocal contingent that behave horrifically and peak me on a regular basis. I am sick of watching allegedly progressive men pontificate and argue with women about what the term woman means. I am disgusted that they thing they have the right to redefine us and give other men our spaces, scholarships, sport, all in the name of inclusion. I am sick of them using TA as an excuse to vent their pent up hatred for women. They call us bigot and TERF, chastice and lecture us to be kind to this marginalised group. Yet it is their sex that is causing the violence, but on this they are silent. Our words are the real violence according to them.

The more I dug into this the more horrified I became. Tracing the money and the network of LGBTQIA groups, that push the gender identity agenda, was particularly troubling. The intersection of moneyed white men, lobby groups, corporations and the medical industrial complex, backing trans gender ideology makes a farce of the claim that this is a marginalised group.

This is a regressive, anti woman, anti gay, anti safeguarding movement, that poses a variety of threats to children. It is the bleakest form of capitalism dressed up as a civil rights movement. This is the comodification and monetisation of our bodies and reduces us to for profit products. Body hatred is celebrated as a form of self actualisation. Nothing about this is liberating.