Do you think the number of misogynist, antisocial, and just generally unpleasant men is increasing?

neveragain · 2020-07-13T11:38:53+00:00

society is primarily made and ruled by and for men

I think that liberal intersectional feminism has had a significant role in the current state of things. I also think that, even if we somehow manage to take liberal intersectional feminism out of the equation when we look at current western society, that still doesn't mean men alone aren't capable of failing themselves.

neveragain · 2020-07-13T09:06:40+00:00

The main "argument" they use for being biologically female and always being biologically female from birth goes like this: "trans women are women" -> "therefore, a trans woman's body is a woman's body" -> "a woman's body is biologically female" -> "trans women always knew they were women" -> "therefore, a trans women is biologically female, and was thus from birth".

The above is fantastic proof that the TWAW statement will cause your brain to rot.

The other commonly used argument is based on the pseudo-science being peddled currently about biological sex being a mysterious unknowable spectrum. Basically, because all women's bodies are different (shape, size, hormone levels, chromosome outliers), we can't really say what a woman's body is, they all have barely anything in common after all, so therefore a trans woman's body may as well be biologically female. The differences are tiny and miniscule and biological sex is a mystery we are only just beginning to possibly maybe unravel!

neveragain · 2020-07-13T08:28:06+00:00

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.

neveragain · 2020-07-13T03:08:41+00:00

but in applicable cases they will use language that is nonspecific or vague

Yes, there is a tendency in MSM of all political leanings to omit information that does not fit particular narratives, and so I see why it would be very difficult to verify the identity of individuals in these cases if it's not reported. Thanks for sharing this specific case. I'm going to do some further reading.

neveragain · 2020-07-13T01:55:11+00:00

That's interesting. Do you have a link/source to the project in question if you remember what it was called? I'd love to look into it further.

neveragain · 2020-07-13T00:33:36+00:00

I can't speak for all the women here but as I said earlier, I don't mind men posting here at all. My concern was that the topic was framed in a way that centres men's issues. To put it crassly, it was, essentially, "Hey women, men's issues are getting worse, discuss." I understand that you may not have intended it to come across that way, and that with the recent Reddit banwave you also lost the GCGuys community (which I'm glad is reforming here on Saidit) and so may have been at a loss as to where to pose your question.

The topics in question do interest me, and they are important. But still, it's sort of like if I, a bisexual woman, went on the lesbian sub and asked them to discuss bisexuality. Do you see what I mean?

neveragain · 2020-07-12T16:26:06+00:00

Because they want the validation.

If a lesbian is willing to date a trans woman, then it means that a trans woman is a woman. However, if a lesbian says "no, I will not date trans women, categorically", then it means that trans women are not real women. Which they're not. But they want the affirmation that they are biologically female, because it is homosexuality. Hence all the bullshit and coercion about girldick.

It may be that it's a small portion who are actually browbeating lesbians and gay men, but so many of them (even the ones happy to date bisexuals) go along with it anyway because to not go along with it also implicitly invalidates them.

That's all this boils down to. Validate me.

Edit: Also, it's not like the lesbian community is massive to begin with, and I think there's evidence enough that lesbian spaces have been completely invaded by "transbians". We may not know the actual number of trans women who are actively doing this invasion, but clearly it's enough to be a huge problem. Lesbians are not allowed to be lesbians anymore.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T15:38:52+00:00

It is legit, in the sense that it is a leaflet published in 2015 by the NYC Commission on Human Rights. The descriptors listed are likely meant as a guide on terms commonly used when people refer to their gender identity or expression. We can infer this as the first page of the card specifically highlights gender ID and expression. That does not mean each of these descriptors are, individually, legally recognised genders. There is a difference. The page I linked goes into further detail about this leaflet.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T15:08:56+00:00

I'm new here myself, but you're absolutely welcome. I would love to hear your thoughts on everything if/when you feel like sharing.

The r/detrans subreddit was banned and unbanned recently. I'm not sure if that means the mod team there has been replaced with people who will police the content to fit the ideology. To my understanding there used to be detrans people on there with a wide range of opinions. As the old posts have not been deleted, the stories in the top all time list might still be a good resource for you as stories of other detransitioners with varying viewpoints (i.e. many of them are not GC thinkers, which may be valuable to you).

There was also an article posted on here very recently with interviews from FtMtF detransitioners (archive link because of paywall): https://archive.fo/yjJp5

I hope you will be able to find peace with yourself. Please take care.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T09:05:54+00:00

I think there's evidence that society at large is failing men. Or failing some men, especially those who do not have adequate support networks in real life.

Back in the day I used to lurk some 4chan boards, and while I can't speak to the culture over there now, the common creed at the time was "no women exist on the internet". Lurking Twitch streams now, depending on the streamer the chat has a similar vibe. Times change, but badly socialised men have always existed.

I don't know that labelling these men as "generally unpleasant" is particularly helpful though. While I was peaking I spent quite some time reading accounts of AGP from self-identified AGP males, and frankly it sounds like a terrible condition to deal with. Some of these men were clearly at their wit's end trying to figure out how to live with it while not being able to speak about it outside of small communities online.

That said, I'm not on here to point at incels or AGPs like a circus attraction. I don't think this forum is the best choice for this discussion. I'm here to speak about trans ideology impacting women's rights. I'm not against men posting here, but you've framed your post in a way that centres men's issues -- perhaps it would be a good idea to reflect on why you felt the need to come here and do that.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T07:15:47+00:00

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.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T06:33:50+00:00

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.)

neveragain · 2020-07-12T05:22:49+00:00

No it isn't, it's bad reporting. See my other comment in this thread or take a look at: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/45675/does-new-york-city-legally-recognize-31-different-genders

neveragain · 2020-07-12T05:20:35+00:00

Please note that these are not legally recognised genders, per se. I looked this up and the assertion that they are appears to be bad reporting. See this page: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/45675/does-new-york-city-legally-recognize-31-different-genders

NYC recognises 3 genders on birth certificates (M, F, and X for nonbinary).

The list here of "31 genders" is a guideline given on descriptors people may use when referring to their gender expression. It's tied in with anti-discrimination legislation based on gender identity and expression, but it doesn't mean these terms listed here are legally recognised as genders. This is why the list reads really weirdly and has repeating statements like "Female-to-Male" and "FTM". Trans people also don't describe their gender, specifically, using terms like "FTM" to begin with so you can see how this is a false narrative.

The real list of Tumblr genders that enbies can fall into is waaaay more out there.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T04:56:44+00:00

You're not alone! None of us are alone, and we're not going to take this bullshit any longer. I'm really grateful to have found this community as well.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T03:02:58+00:00

There's division within the trans community about this. It used to be a harsher divide -- that is, some trans people were very vocal about "trans trenders" (i.e. nonbinary "enby" and genderqueer, agender etc.) and were all about gatekeeping transition as being from male to female or female to male within the strict binary. These days a lot of these people have softened their views most likely due to pressure and now accept enby identities, except some of them still believe that enbies should "get their own movement" instead of co-opting the trans movement. Blaire White is a good example of a trans woman who has gone through this shift.

There's a lot of contradiction within the ideology (think of self-ID vs "I have a female brain") that believers are not allowed to question.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T02:26:53+00:00

I'm sorry to inform you that it's definitely not a satirical document and transmaxxers are basically self-identified incels who have decided to become trans women to improve their quality of life and gain access to women's spaces and the ability to demand sex from lesbians.

neveragain · 2020-07-12T00:51:59+00:00

I've watched the current gender theory evolve over the past decade. I'll try and explain it succinctly.

Gender is a social construct. Traditionally, it is tied to biological sex: if you are male, you are a man; if you are female, you are a woman. Gender manifests as societal expectations on a certain way of behaviour and a certain way of appearance based on your sex. Man: assertive, protector, provider, stoic. Woman: nice, emotional, submissive, requires protection.

So as gender is a social construct, we can technically construct as many genders as we please. The correct answer to the question "How many genders do you think there are?" is "Infinite" or "I don't know". Anyone can come up with a new gender at any time, because under this new gender theory, a gender is essentially an expression of someone's unique personality. And there are endless permutations of personality.

So what's the problem? Do we just have to accept that people are who they say they are?

The problem is this: when someone self-identifies as a particular gender, they are not only defining themselves -- they are defining everyone else. If I am a galaxy-gender and that gender is the feeling of being made of star stuff, then it follows that other genders are not like this. Well, you might think, that's fine, because I'm certainly not going to say that I'm galaxy-gender, so it doesn't matter. Right?

Consider the difference between the following two statements:

1) Some men are trans women.

2) Trans women are women.

Over a decade ago, the first statement was the default. This was around the time I first became aware of the trans movement, and actually read several pieces of writing about how gender was a social construct based on biological sex, and how trans people were challenging the bounds of their gender expectations. A trans woman, born male, is a person breaking free of the societal expectations of being a man. That's how the argument for acceptance of trans people was presented. Nowadays, of course, it's transphobic.

Nowadays, the assertion is that a trans woman is a woman. They are not men. They are women because they say they are. They are no longer males, because that's transphobic, but females.

Have you noticed how trans men and women tend to use gender stereotypical appearance markers? Trans men will grow a beard as soon as possible. Trans women will get long hair and put on a dress and make up. This is because stereotypical appearance markers are the easiest way to signify to an observer that they identify a certain way and would like to be treated as such. If you confront a trans person about this use of stereotypes, they will say that well of course not all men have beards and not all women are hyper feminine. And then you walk away and think, well, that's true, so everything's fine.

But let's couple this with everything else. A trans woman, with all of the stereotypical appearance markers and stereotypical behaviour, is a literal woman. Meanwhlie, someone else, born female, is deciding that they don't "feel like a woman" and are nonbinary, and they signify this by dressing in a gender neutral way. So if a female dressing in a gender neutral way is not a woman, and a male dressing in a stereotypically feminine way is a woman, then what is a woman? Instead of expanding the confinements of gender and abolishing them -- i.e. a male human should be allowed to wear dresses and be feminine -- we are shrinking the definition of woman and man back into restrictive stereotypes. Why are so many young girls coming out as trans? Well why wouldn't they, when the only way they can escape the ever restrictive bounds of womanhood and express their unique personalities is to not be a woman?

So there you have it. There certainly can be an infinite number of genders. But it is not doing us much good, and frankly it is fucking stupid.

neveragain · 2020-07-10T14:30:22+00:00

In retrospect, I've been peaking slowly over the course of the past few years. But this time I've broken the tree line on this mountain of ridiculousness and I can actually see the horizon. Oh my god. I'm writing this more for myself to think over everything, and I apologise for the length. (In fact I'm really, really sorry about how long this is, I don't expect anyone to read through it all.)

My observations on the TRA/gender ID movement have been piecemeal through the years. I was 100% on board with trans rights over a decade ago, when the narrative as I understood it was something like, "biological sex is real, but gender is a social construct, we should break down these constructs and support trans people who are at the forefront challenging restrictive social norms." It made sense; trans people had dysphoria, which sounded horrible, and they deserved support.

Then after a few years when Tumblr really took off I started hearing about the (in)famous list of genders that one could now supposedly be. I skimmed through the list and thought it was pretty silly, but the people participating in this seemed to mostly be teenagers, and I remembered very well my own teenage years struggling with identity and latching on to words and labels that I thought could clarify my sense of self. We all go through it, I thought. Let the teens have their galaxy-genders or whatever. In a few years they'd grow out of it; I didn't think this would really leave Tumblr.

But they didn't grow out of it, and it grew far beyond Tumblr.

To be fair, you don't really see many galaxy-genders nowadays. Instead it's coalesced into enbies, and genderqueer, who all fell under the trans umbrella. Everyone else was now to be labelled "cis". I was made to understand at first that this simply meant "not trans", but then later learnt that it actually denoted someone whose gender identity conformed with what they were "assigned" at birth. This made me a bit confused, because I honestly couldn't see how this new wave of trans folk could feel so comfortable labelling everyone else as gender conforming. I didn't really see how my own lived experience as a woman was so different from a nonbinary person's -- everything seemed to be based on aesthetics and feelings, like your gender was determined by how you felt about what sort of clothes you should wear that day. This was so confusing. I've never dressed in the stereotypical feminine way, and I didn't understand why it mattered so much. At this point some of my friends online also started questioning their gender identity, with a few adopting "they/them" pronouns. Their reasoning seemed to be that they were not comfortable with being treated like women, and that they didn't feel like one. Again, confusion for me. What on earth did 'feeling like a woman' mean?? I must be missing something, I thought. I should educate myself.

Later, while looking into drama about neo-pronouns, I became aware of division in the trans community. Some trans people were saying you needed dysphoria to be trans, and some were saying that you didn't. Wait, what? You didn't? Oh. Apparently now all that was needed was self-identification. If you felt more "comfy" as another gender, then you were that gender. Right, okay. I was trying to come to terms with this when I started seeing stories of parents pushing children to transition because the kid liked playing with dolls more than trucks, or something. This was alarming to me, and when I tried to educate myself further on the topic I found again this division of truscums vs tucutes. The tucute narrative was entirely against gatekeeping, and their enthusiasm for children to be put on hormone blockers and eventually HRT seemed to be based on the argument that these children were being given the opportunity to be better looking, 'passing' adults. This did not seem to be good reasoning to me, but the TRA movement was very, very vocal about female brains stuck in male bodies (but what? wasn't dysphoria now unnecessary?) and insistent that even small children would be aware of this.

And then along came the JKR saga. There were whispers that she was a TERF. To be honest I didn't pay it a lot of mind to begin with, when it was just something about her liking the wrong tweet. Later, she made a tweet that supposedly fully outed her TERFy ways. I read the tweet and thought the line about sleeping with anyone who'll have you was a little condescending in tone, but the way social media reacted, you'd think she'd commited the most heinous of crimes.

I started getting real curious, because I knew (knew!) that TERFs were bad people, but what were the TERFs saying? I found the subreddit and had a read. And I'm sorry to say that I didn't get it. The sidebar had something about breaking the chains of gender, but to my understanding that was what the trans movement was trying to do. Right? All these new gender identities and self-ID into whatever people felt like was about everyone breaking free from their chains, supposedly, so what on earth was GC talking about?

JKR came back to tweet some more, which I was alerted to by some friends, who filled my feed with screencaps and derisive captions. I went to read JKR's tweets, and here's the thing: I knew enough about TRA ideology at this point that I could see exactly where JKR was offending them, but I also didn't disagree with what JKR was saying. A lot of impossible mental gymnastics would be necessary for me to believe that biology is some sort of mystical thing that doesn't really exist and/or something that we humans having no understanding of. I'd come across the whole "intersex people exist so therefore trans! fluidity!" argument before and hadn't ever found it very convincing, and didn't think trans people needed it as an argument in the first place.

I went back to the GC subreddit, and it just so happened that at this point there was a highly upvoted post with a lengthy explanation about biological essentialism, how GC thinkers viewed it, and how other people thought GC thinkers viewed it. I really want to thank the author of that post, which is now sadly gone in the purge, because it explained things clearly for me. I guess you could say that JKR peaked me, but really I think it was this post in particular. It set off a bit of an avalanche.

I've been reading as much as I can ever since. More than I ever have on this topic. What trans people are saying. What GC thinkers are saying. What LGB people are saying. And I discovered a lot of things that I had previously not been aware of or had not fully understood:

TRAs will say they are not denying the reality of biological sex when directly confronted about this, despite huge evidence to the contrary. Different TRAs will have different talking points, but what it essentially boils down to is that biological reality is inconvenient and incompatible with the TWAW assertion, and so therefore must be eradicated through pseudo-science or just thoroughly ignored if one is to have a politically correct conversation.
AGP. I'd heard about AGP through a Youtube video before. The youtube video in question presented AGP as a bad theory without basis, which I took at face value at the time. Now I have been reading accounts by AGP males, who definitely exist in considerable numbers, and this has been eye-opening.
The whole girldick narrative. Trans people when confronted by how rapey this is would always backtrack and say that of course they would never violate consent boundaries, and that if you didn't want to sleep with a specific trans person you were well within your rights! Except if you look deeper into this (which I finally did), lesbians who did not want girldick were transphobic, were all sorts of things. Good god, the rape threats on social media by trans women, written using reference to their dicks which they're supposedly so sensitive and dysphoric about.
Bisexuality and homosexuality now being transphobic. I've tended to think of myself as bi (though I've only to date had relationships with other women, but that's another story), and at this I was truly astounded. I've never been that involved in LGBT communities ... when did this bizarre shift even happen.
Intrusion into women's spaces, physically and linguistically. For some reason this narrative is usually centred on the bathroom debate. But bathrooms are only a tiny part of what is going on. TRAs will scoff at the idea that TWAW and the relentless validation of trans women has real costs for bio women. "We're just updating the language to be more inclusive, no one is saying cis women can't talk about their experiences!" Except this is a blatant lie. See what is going on over at Reddit, for one. See what is going on in DV shelters. See what is happening to lesbians. Everything that reminds AGP trans women about their biological reality as males must be colonised.

As far as I can see anyone on social media who does not want to be dogpiled must stay silent. TRAs when confronted with evidence of their own terrible behaviour will first gaslight you by saying that's not what's happening (i.e. no one is saying biological sex isn't real! no one is sending rape threats to women!) and then when that fails they will call you transphobic, at which point it is acceptable to burn you at the stake.

Again I'm sorry for the length. I'm just really -- I don't even know. Seriously. What the fuck. What the fuck.

neveragain