There were times when the GC subreddit or people who identified as gender critical put me off. That was mostly because they could be mocking or cruel. Though I suppose that's to be expected in a safe space that is the only area available to vent frustrations.

I was there mainly because I disagreed that gender identity was different than internalized gender stereotypes and wasn't inherent. I believed that the idea of being gender dysphoric simply reaffirmed the boxes of gender that feminists have been fighting against for decades. I also hadn't seen some of the extreme examples that were frequently brought up - not being allowed to say "woman" or acknowledge biological sex in any capacity. Those things seemed like extreme strawmen that must have been misinterpreted, exaggerated, or made up entirely.

I waffled for an extremely long time and could see how the liberal left got to the conclusions they did (accepting marginalized people is important!) but thought that if they were forced to think critically about their positions and understand the nuance and the logical end of their arguments, they'd understand. They'd find space to hold sex dysphoric people without becoming gender essentialists and cannibalizing women's spaces. Nope. And it just kept getting worse. Now people on facebook are saying sex isn't real at all, people on reddit are saying that people born male and living as a women were actually born female, they were just assigned incorrectly, in CMV that genital preferences aren't transphobic just so long as you try to unlearn them (as though conversion therapy has ever worked...).

I tried really hard to not peak and for a time, it was stalled, or very slow going. But even with all my goodwill toward mainstream liberal feminism, it was unavoidable. In fact, I've abandoned liberalism in all fronts for radical progressivism and I don't think there's any going back.