Men are using gender theory to avoid accusations of misogyny when abusing/insulting women online. Having 'they/them' on your Tumblr/Twitter is the ultimate get out of jail free card. You can be outed as a literal paedophile, yet the comments will just be 'erm yeah sweety this person may be a paedophile but they also use they/them pronouns? And you said him? You're literal trash lol bye.' Men whose one sop (sic) to feminine appearance is wearing eyeliner or nail varnish are now accusing women of 'trying to kill them'. Yeah, a white suburban teen who borrows his sister's makeup is truly at a risk of violence (from radical feminists, of course, not men) on a par with that of a trans sex worker in Brazil. How silly of me not to realise this. Women who are all 'Kill all men! Misandry!!!', yet will defend the most manly looking, misogyny/racism/homophobia-spouting man if he claims to be a woman. 99% of feminist spaces have been taken over by trans debate. Violence has been redefined as 'was a bit mean to me on the internet once' (and of course, rape threats/death threats to radical feminists aren't violent at all.) 'Terfs have caused the deaths of over 50,000 trans women' - what? I've seen intelligent grown women reblog this unquestioningly - how on earth can they think that's true?

I only was non-critical of transgender when I didn't know anything about it. Originally, I thought it was some poor intersex individuals who had gone through surgery as kids and now wanted to change to the sex they were the most comfortable as. As soon as I encountered actual trans people online, I got very critical. It was through feminist sites, and they would link to sites for trans people, and those sites were full of sexist stereotypes. Boys are like this, girls like this. It was so blatantly sexist and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t discussed. Also read some blogs by ”trans women”. They were blatantly men with fetishes. No one else seemed to notice. The obsession with underage anime girls, pin ups, taking photos of themselves in revealing clothing saying that transitioning made them hornier, etc. I would look at those photos and think, ”man”. No way a man turns into a woman like me just because he wears some ”sexy” clothing. I never bought it but everyone else seemed to. It was incredibly weird.

First time I met a transgender man IRL, it was a man looking exactly like an ordinary guy who had been let into a safe women's space without anyone getting to have an opinion on it. This safe space is now "inclusive" (to males), so not a safe space for women anymore. That place had long been under threats and such from (ordinary) men who didn't like that there was a healing place just for female people away from them - looks like men finally found a way to invade/shut down women's spaces. It was a very painful thing to have experienced IRL when I really needed such a place back then. Many did, and still do.

I am intersex and I used to think I could get along with the trans community and slowly it came to me how toxic and self absorbed the trans community. It's sad how bad it is they constantly prey on getting young followers telling them any gender variance means they must be trans, but don't worry even though your trans you don't need to be proactive about it. No just whine like the rest of us and pick your own custom title, because your a special snowflake and if anyone disagrees they hate you. Only we love you for you. God it's disgusting. I'm sorry if that came off bad, I don't hate trans people I hate that specific ideology they could be such a good force for gender equality but no they squander it.

Same here. I don't think there's any purposeful mal intent in the movement. They've just all become so deluded that they think it helps everyone. They all follow each other around and around and around forever, convincing each other and themselves that nobody cares and making everyone feel more hopeless and angry. From the outside, it's sad.

I used to be a fan of YouTuber Gigi Gorgeous. At the time, his name was Gregory Gorgeous and he did tutorials on makeup and I thought it was wonderful that he ignored harmful gender roles and knew that guys liking makeup was ok, and wearing it didn't mean he was a woman.

Then he came out as transgender in this video in which he says

I think that my choice to be a woman, makes me more woman than a lot of women out there.

I didn't know exactly why that bothered me, so I kept quiet about it for a while, but eventually I learned about how treating woman as an identity is harmful to actual women, because it's actually a biological reality. I would also argue it's misogynistic because their idea of 'woman' is often dresses and makeup, and because of how often M2Ts claim they 'feel female', as if they know what it's like to be female better than actual women.

I got more into radical feminism over time (I was a fun fem when I watched the video, sex-positive, 'trans women are women' etc), and I learned about how gender is a hierarchy, not a spectrum, and how treating it like a spectrum ignores the fact that women get the shit end of the stick compared to men, so that's when I decided that speaking my mind was more important than not being called names by angry, delusional men. Other people in this thread have said similar things, and I have also noticed that men calling women TERFS/saying they deserve to die/joking about killing them are forms of men trying to intimidate women into silence. I've already dealt with that kind of behaviour from males almost my whole life, and I'm not going to let it work anymore (provided I can safely speak out).

(I want to preface this by stating that my "peak trans moment" will probably sound very petty, but it is what it is.) 

When I first signed up for okcupid, like the good libfem I was I was very open to the idea of potentially dating a trans woman, and would look at their profiles and interact with trans women like I would with any other woman whose profile I came across. I noticed that these trans women, however, were very obviously inexperienced in the realm of what sorts of poses/pictures/outfits/make-up were "flattering" for a person, and because of this for some inexplicable reason I felt resentment toward them. Although it was unfortunate, I had internalized at a very young age that my primary purpose and value as a human being was to look attractive or be perceived as attractive to men - and as such, I had painstakingly spent a large portion of my life caring about and trying to control my appearance, learning "rules" like "women shouldn't have wrinkly foreheads in photos", or "you should try to pose so that your stomach looks as thin as possible" or "you shouldn't take a picture with your face at that angle, because it makes your face look fat." I hated these rules, but they were a part of me - a part of most, if not all, women I knew. All of the women I knew at the time, like me, had this sort of internal dialogue constantly running in the background of their minds while in public... "have my bangs fallen out of place? do my thighs look large flattened out like this? do my arms look too fat? is my zit showing through? should I eat this, or should I avoid it because it'll make me gain weight?"

And yeah, the fact that these trans women clearly never had to learn these rules - never had to live them for years and years and years on end, never had to spend large portions of their life focusing on or hating themselves because of how well they conformed to what "women are suppose to look like" - it kind of annoyed me.

So, fool-heartedly, I posted this grievance in a personal post on tumblr and as can be expected - I started getting a lovely series of violent threats. At this point, I had already spoken with and planned to meet up with a trans woman for a date, and several things this person said/did just further reinforced my confusion about trans women in general... the biggest red flag being that this person kept pressuring me into conversations about (and later, just pressuring me into having) sex in the exact same way that straight men had with me in the past... the more I got to know this person, the more it felt like there was nothing "woman" about them (to me, and I was just comparing this person to all of the women I knew at the time and all of the men I had had experiences with at the time). This person tried to present themselves as more emotional/more quick to cry than most men I knew, and they were not averse to wearing "women's clothing"/eyeliner but other than that... personality-wise, I could not distinguish them from the men I knew.

In my confusion, I searched and searched for anyone else who felt that something was a bit off with the transgender movement/ideology... at first, to be honest, mostly for emotional support/validation, because by even questioning/resenting trans women for not being socialized as "cis" women, I had become the target of a lot of hatred... but yeah. Eventually I found this place. Glad to know I'm not alone.

What you're referencing is not petty - it's called body monitoring and women are socialized to do it continually (literally every 30 seconds on average). An interesting 12 minute TED talk from Dr. Caroline Heldman that touches on it: "The Sexy Lie"It's just another one of the countless aspects of female socialization that males can't even imagine.

It's a serious drain on our brain power to be constantly worrying about how we look. But oh well, we 'cis' women are just so privileged and comfortable with ourselves and our femininity! 

i'm reluctant to post here much because i was born male and i'll be on my way if i'm not welcome here but i figured i'd share one of my peak trans moments.

this was over a year ago. i just recently decided to be more intellectually honest with myself about my gender critical views, so i was more lib/ intersectionalist fem at the time. i don't remember how, but i came across a MtT blog on tumblr. i have a lot of issues with my gender role, i've always despised being associated with other men and the roles that go along with it. i'm not trans. at the time i was already aware that my gender dysphoria was more about my reluctance to associate with other males and the hostile attitude surrounding them. this message was me being awk and trying to reach out so someone but enough with the preface, i'll respond if anyone cares to inquire further.

read these in reverse: http://imgur.com/a/VVzuT

[i said i don't struggle with gender roles...haha...i think part of that message was me kind of backing off, feeling weird about opening up so much to a stranger] i thought transitioning was something people did because of an innate quality about themselves that they could not overcome otherwise. i never thought that someone would say their reasons to transition were political. this really made me doubt the concept of being trans. how is political motivation a legitimate reason to change your identity? this concept really blew my mind. isn't that in and of itself proof that gender is socialized, and dysphoria pertaining to it is just that? social? i also found it interesting that i never once said that i identified as cis, but i guess if i'm not trans then i'm cis? whatever happened to the trans friendly concepts of being queer or nonbinary or genderfluid or things like that? the slight insinuation that i should further pursue my gender questioning was kind of weird to me, like they were encouraging me to transition? didn't i just explain that it's more of a contempt toward men than feeling like i'm the wrong gender or sex? this exchange ended after this. it really made me question why people might transition, and the trans agenda.

so, that, plus the cotton ceiling [which honestly, i probably was one of those types not too long ago], the worshipping of caitlyn jenner, and the validation that MtT seem to seek out in the form of harassment or being oppressed in a way that is similar to the way women are, are my peak trans moments.