Has anyone ever come back from peak trans?

submitted by materialrealityplz from self.GenderCritical

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[–]neveragain 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

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.)

[–]Terfenclaw 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I actually just finished watching this video in order to try to understand the other side better, and I'm disappointed by it. It was a very shallow, superficial overview of GC thinking. The main issue I take with trans activism is the effect of TW in women's single sex spaces like sports, shelters, locker rooms, and prisons, and there was basically no mention of this. The "cotton ceiling" was mentioned like it was a strawman when there are tons of stories of lesbians having this experience.

[–]neveragain 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It was a very shallow, superficial overview of GC thinking.

Yes, precisely. In that sense it's a very good video for purposes of advancing the TRA ideology, because it presents strawman arguments for GC views which are easily dismissed. I really wonder if Contrapoints believes that he made a good faith representation here, or if he intentionally dumbed everything down. Before I fully peaked I really liked his videos because I thought they were sincere (I think I've actually watched all of them, some more than once), but now confronted with evidence that he's misrepresenting things like the cotton ceiling ... Well, it's just like all the other gaslighting that so many trans people have done, I guess.

I'm struck particularly now as I scrub back through the video with the segment on "Abolish Gender", which is a complete and utter strawman. Abolishing gender is not about deleting any and all gender expression so that we are now languageless robots, it's about expanding the range of accepted gender expression for both men and women. So a woman can feel comfortable with her womanhood however she chooses to express it, instead of girls who do not like the colour pink now being told that they're probably nonbinary or trans, and leaving everyone else to be labelled with "cis" as though we're happy about the walls of conformity closing in around us.

[–]Anna_Nym 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I wasn't on the old board, but I've seen detrans and trans people on Twitter talk about it. The impression I got was that there was a lot of mockery and negative discussion of trans appearances. So that may be where Contra got the strawman about innate disgust.

I do not generally feel disgust at trans appearance, whether they are passing or not. But I do feel disgust at trans women who bimbofy themselves and then claim the bimbofication makes them a woman. It's not disgust at the appearance, but disgust at what the overall action signifies about their perception of women. This is different from a trans person dressing in a sexy way, although it's difficult to put that difference into words. I suspect everyone here knows exactly what I mean, though. It's also different to me from a man who knows he has a cross-dressing or other form of fetish and enacts it in an appropriate, consensual space without claiming it turns him into a literal woman.

Contra also claims not to have a fetishistic motivation for transitioning, but there is a lot of video evidence to the contrary. Ever since learning about that, I've become more skeptical about how honest Contra is.

[–]neveragain 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I do feel disgust at trans women who bimbofy themselves and then claim the bimbofication makes them a woman

You know, I was thinking about this and AGP the other day, and also thinking about Contra's AGP video. I watched that when I had no idea what the hell AGP was and just sort of accepted his dismissal of it at face value, and even then, there was a line in there that really put me off. It was the part where he's talking about how he doesn't have a fetish about his own body, and one of the justifications he uses is that (slightly paraphrased) "when there's developments I'll check it out, but I'm not like, 'Oh yeah I have tits now that's so hot' -- well, it's kind of hot. But hot in the sense that someone else might find them attractive."

And I was so taken aback because I was remembering my own experience going through puberty, growing breasts -- the whole deal with having to wear bras, having to worry if people could see the bra through my shirt, the self-consciousness -- I don't believe any young girl going through puberty is thinking, "awesome, now people can sexualise me." It was like cold water splashed in my face: this person does not and is not capable of thinking about breasts the way women think about them. This is the point of view of a male, through and through.

And the line about women buying lingerie for themselves as if it's a good argument for women having AGP! Absolutely no clue about what it means for a woman to accept and cherish her body. I mean why would he? He has no concept of the young girl, who is thrown into the uncertain and frightening ocean of the male gaze. So it follows that he has no concept of the woman, who brings herself to shore and embraces the body she once rejected, because its inexorable changing threw her into the depths.

[–]Anna_Nym 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, the more trans women are given space to talk, the clearer it is that AGP types have no idea what it's like to move through the world as a woman in an embodied way. And how can they? They lack the physical vulnerability; they lack the socialization; and very few of them pass at all. They have their own experiences, which are valid. I wish they were willing to claim and identify them. I think a lot of the tensions would be solved by that simple action of accepting their identities as what they are (trans women or trans men) and not trying to make them into something they simply aren't (natal women or natal men).

Unfortunately, the prominent activists are not willing to do this. The majority of trans people I've known in real life have been so much more grounded and honest about the differences between them and natal females or males. I think activism in the Internet area, unfortunately, rewards the most authoritarian and extreme ideologues of all types.