I spent years and years of giving the benefit of the doubt to trans ideology that I never quite believed but just nodded along to be nice. And besides, who doesn’t want to be on the “right” side of history? But the biggest thing I could never quite believe was the whole “Trans Women are Women” thing. Whichever way I tried to justify it or reason it out, I could never TRULY believe TWAW— that we shared a similar enough experience for us both to be grouped under the “woman” umbrella. But, I concluded that including trans women in feminist circles, doing what I could to make them feel valid and accepted did more good than harm. It was kind of like calling a close family friend “Aunt So-and-So.” Yes, she wasn’t really a family member and I wouldn’t ask her about her 23 and Me results to learn about my family lineage, but everyone was on the same page so there’s no harm in calling her Aunt So-and-So.

Ironically, I finally got peaked by Contrapoints, whose channel is supposed to educate people about the trans experience. Her video “Gender Critical” first introduced me to GC theory which lead me to the Gender Critical subreddit (R.I.P.). I looked it up purely out of curiosity, but found that, actually, the GC stance made a LOT more sense than the theories I’d been nodding along with for the past 3-4 years. Rather than telling boys who like to wear dresses that they’re trans and need to get surgeries/ they’re trans and therefore should be able to access any female space they want, shouldn’t we be working on telling boys they CAN be boys and wear dresses and put the pressure on men NOT to harass said boys in male spaces?

And then contrapoints released her video called “Men,” in which contrapoints spends half an hour using the good ol “I have experience as a man AND as a woman, so I can definitively say who has it worse” while only reading ONE book as “research” (MRA-fodder “The Myth of Male Power”) and coddling men for having it “so hard nowadays” for suffering under a patriarchy they choose to prop up. Men are lonely because no one pays attention to them— should I, as a man, take the initiative to call my male friends to check up on them and build a strong relationship with them? No, it’s the feminists that are wrong. Of COURSE men are going to gravitate to misogynistic MRA groups! They have nowhere to turn to for help under toxic masculinity and the pressures of patriarchy... except for Men’s Liberation? Which is an incredibly positive community that contrapoints fails to mention once in her video.

No, it’s actually the men who are oppressed because men’s greatest weakness is their perceived power and women’s greatest power is their perceived weakness. Thanks Contra, I’ll remember that all the times I’m being told I’m overreacting when standing up for myself after being sexually harassed, when states continue to erode the rights over my own body, when I receive 80% of the salary my male colleagues get, while I’m married and doing all the housework, all the childcare, AND a full time job. But at least men will automatically just DO things for me that I never asked for in the first place, because it would be a shame for me to actually have to figure something out and build a skills I can use for a lifetime, right? AND I’ll get showered in male (false) praise and (duplicitous) affection... until I turn 40 and get treated as though I were invisible.

She can attest that, as a man, it stings when a woman walking alone at night and automatically assumes that you might be a predator. Ouch, poor men. Could it be that women LARGELY experience violence from men AND are then shamed for “putting themselves in that situation” when they experience violence? It doesn’t matter that women routinely have to make themselves small and cut themselves off from experiencing life at its fullest for fear of violence, harassment, and rape as pointed out from the Sylvia Plath passage that Contrapoints decided to put in her own video— but none of that freedom appeals to Contrapoints. And since it doesn’t matter to contrapoints, it shouldn’t matter to all other women.

Here was someone who made video after video explaining and rationalizing how she was a woman, and how everyone needed to believe her and validate her as a biological woman— how other biological women needed to fight for her rights in order to be “good intersectionalist feminists.” But then she puts out a 30 minute thirst trap (oh yeah, did I mention she wears lingerie for the majority of the video? Because this one is 4 da boisssss!) dismissing, belittling, and invalidating concerns women have had for years because those concerns don’t align with her view and experience of what “womanhood” is.

But that wasn’t what ultimately peaked me. People make mistakes, and hopefully they learn from those mistakes and grow. I wasn’t mad at Contrapoints, I was just.... disappointed.

What peaked me was the comments. More specifically, the responses to the comments that respectfully pointed out that contrapoints’s views on men and the safety concerns of women were most likely influenced by the fact that Contra was socialized as a man for about 80% or so of her life (as she’s very open about considering this ENTIRE VIDEO was drawing on HER OWN EXPERIENCES as a man). No, she wouldn’t mind getting so called “positively” cat called, because those comments AFFIRM her gender identity. That, as a former self proclaimed MRA shithead (her words), she might have some misogynistic attitudes and beliefs she still needs to work out. Plenty of biological women have internalized sexist beliefs, it should stand to reason that those beliefs likewise just don’t magically disappear for trans women.

But her supporters were having NONE of that. It’s transphobic to EVER point out that a trans woman USED to be a man (but then, what did they TRANSITION from them?) To critique and criticize ANY trans person’s views mean you’re trying to invalidate them and erase their identity, even if most TRA talking points are inherently contradictions of each other, kill yourself TERF!!!! (It’s okay for someone to be mistaken or misinformed about something. Pointing out that what you’re saying can be harmful to women who’ve been oppressed and brutalized for millennia isn’t an attack on you. Also, rude).

For years I had viewed TRA’s points in good faith and unquestioningly assumed the best when they shared their experiences and what it meant to be a woman to them. But whenever a biological woman spoke up with concerns or criticisms, she was met with hostility and the worse was assumed about her — she automatically hated trans women and wanted them dead, everything she said was just a dog whistle for hate. I watched as women lost their jobs over asserting that biological sex is real. I watched as the bar of entry for what constitutes “a woman” became lower and lower and the danger that comes with that as men can enter female spaces and redefine what womanhood means and what should be important to women. All the trust, validation, and support I’d been giving TRA’s for years wasn’t a two way street.