Contrapoints did a video called Gender Critical; in the process of making the video he put out a request on Twitter asking for ex-GC thinkers to speak to him about why they had been GC. He summarises the responses he received (hundreds, allegedly) thusly: "A lot of the responses came from women with traumatic experiences with men, who at one point found comfort in a rigid view of gender where women and men are a completely separate species, where women are safe and men are dangerous."

I watched this video before I peaked properly, and thought it fit with the stereotype that "TERFs" are traumatised women who hate men. I also watched it again later while I was peaking more, and found it didn't fit with my own experiences. I'm not traumatised, I don't have a rigid view of gender at all, and I certainly do not hate men.

I'm not saying of course that Contrapoints made up these ex-GC thinkers. I think he most likely was contacted by ex-GC thinkers, or people who thought they were ex-GC thinkers, because I'm not sure how a "rigid view of gender" actually fits with gender critical thinking at all. Either the people Contrapoints talked to did not understand GC thinking, or Contrapoints did not understand what they were saying.

I will say that while I was in my long, long process of peaking I looked into the old GC subreddit a few times, and was always put off by posts that seemed unnecessarily cruel or mocking. I'm not particularly interested in mocking someone for the sake of it. I'm GC because the trans ideology has demonstrably gone too far: into women's spaces, into women's language; and is furthermore being used against children who are being groomed. It's gone too far because we are not even allowed to speak of the violations when we feel our spaces are being colonised. They have crossed the line where the rights they are demanding involves removing women's rights. That is why I finally peaked.

Contrapoints', in his video, comes to the conclusion that GC thinking is born from innate disgust triggered by trans people's appearances. I don't see how this is the case. I spent over ten years within the ideology as it grew -- I did not suddenly stop supporting the ideology because I looked at a trans person and decided they were ugly. In fact in the past I've found many trans people attractive -- they're people, and as with all people they can be beautiful or ugly or anything in between. I stopped supporting the ideology because the things they are doing in the name of progress is highly damaging and they either do not realise or are willfully ignorant. So I don't think it's possible for me to "unpeak" because I'm not suddenly going to start thinking that women should be called "birthing parents" instead of "mothers", or that children should be put on puberty blockers en masse, or that biological males should be able to self-ID into DV shelters for women.

PS: On the topic of pronouns, because I've referred to Contrapoints as "he/him" and this is quite frankly the first time in my life I've "misgendered" someone -- for a long, long time I have been a subscriber to the idea that you should use preferred pronouns because it is "kind". This is still true, but giving too much ground was how we got here in the first place. Last night, while thinking on this topic, I read an interesting article which won't be new to some of you: Pronouns are Rohypnol by Barra Kerr. I do believe now that it is helpful in GC discussion at the very least to use pronouns that describe the biological sex of the person being referred to. (And as for misgendering being "literal violence", I think it is far less harmful than telling a woman that she needs to suck some girldick until she learns to like it.)