DiscussionThose of you who were once full on SJWs, what was your woke breaking point?

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[–]loveSloaneSuperDuperBi 42 insightful - 3 fun42 insightful - 2 fun43 insightful - 3 fun -  (5 children)

I asked a question because I was confused (this was in an online space, not at all lgbt related, but they’d made a post about making sure to use “inclusive language” and I was looking for clarity so I didn’t upset or offend anyone). I got a bunch of responses attacking me for my “cis privilege” and telling me to educate myself. They told me it was inevitable that I held some level of transphobia (just because I’m “cis”) and that I should examine myself and my biases. A lot of “be better” and “don’t question other’s identities” and an ironic “listen to trans people when we speak because we understand better than you” (understand what, exactly idk because nobody attempted to answer). I genuinely felt horrible, I felt guilty and like I’d disrespected people who were constantly being disrespected and abused. I asked for sites and sources to read so I could educate myself. They then told me that they weren’t going to “do the work” for me, that they were tired of the emotional labor (I guess copying and pasting a link was emotionally draining 🙄), one person even said he’d (“she’d”) send me links and answer my questions if I payed him, and conveniently linked his Venmo and PayPal accounts.

My gut told me this was a rude and irrational reaction, but it came from so many people and I like I said I felt guilty, so I ignored my gut and told myself that they were right and I needed to be a better ally. So I attempted to “educate myself”. I read a lot of tra approved articles that didn’t make sense and eventually accidentally found some gender critical articles and just some articles that weren’t necessarily “gc”, but were addressing some of the tra rhetoric and the contradictions within it. I started to agree that the ideology didn’t make much sense, but I still felt like it was better to support the trans community and be an ally since they faced so much discrimination and violence...

... then I found the real statistics on the suicide rates and murder/attack rates, and then I found Reddit subs through a link on a site. Which led me to the gcdebatesqt sub on Reddit where I saw tras and trans people debate gender critical people. I saw questions that normally go unaddressed being answered. I saw straight from the mouth (well fingers) of trans people how they saw women, how they viewed sexuality and sex itself. I didn’t comment or even have an account, I just read. And ended up making a throw away and going to trans subs and seeing even more unfiltered misogyny and delusions. I saw so much evidence of unchecked mental illness, hatred for women, rape apologia and incel speak, I literally felt sick to my stomach, but I still felt guilty for some reason.

So, I used my throwaway to make a post in the debate sub, I didn’t state any opinions, I just asked questions that I had before and that had come up since I attempted to “educate myself” to be a better ally.

The responses, from both gc and qt, coupled with the amount of lies, misinformation, and manipulation I saw once I got past the articles written by trans people or tras, is what made me become more vocal. But I think what broke me was just the fact that they refused to deal with any concerns or questions any one has. They just attempt to silence people, they tell us we are wrong but can’t answer questions or tell us why they are right. It’s all about feelings- but only their feelings matter.

If they had answered my questions, I’d have accepted their answer and never dug deeper.

I didn’t expect this to be that long lol my bad

[–]loveSloaneSuperDuperBi 40 insightful - 1 fun40 insightful - 0 fun41 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The question I asked, btw: “what’s wrong with saying “no uterus, no opinion?”

This was when Trump was first elected and a lot of people were afraid that abortion would be made illegal. There were a lot of posts of “a woman’s right to choose” and “no uterus, no opinion” and tras got upset at the language because they’re fucking insane.

The irony being that “no uterus, no opinion” doesn’t exclude transmen or “non binary” women who could have been affected by this. I wasn’t even asking about “a woman’s right to choose”

[–]odiusgay man 16 insightful - 6 fun16 insightful - 5 fun17 insightful - 6 fun -  (2 children)

If they had answered my questions, I’d have accepted their answer and never dug deeper.

They never had any answers, believe me.

[–]loveSloaneSuperDuperBi 23 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 0 fun24 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That’s true. I’ve since realized they don’t answer these questions because they can’t and they know they can’t. So they try to flip it on us so that we are somehow wrong for asking in the first place.

[–]reluctant_commenter 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing, no that all is really interesting to read. I was never an aggressively pro-trans person but I had a similar phase as you, of "Why am I supposedly evil for questioning this?" In my case, I really started wondering when I started searching for "lesbian" content on Tumblr and I saw post after post about how you're a sick-minded bigot if you're only attracted to "cis" women (real women) and not transwomen. I feel deeply ashamed, but like you, I kept reading and eventually wound up here.

If they had answered my questions, I’d have accepted their answer and never dug deeper.

EXACTLY same here!

[–]GConly 30 insightful - 3 fun30 insightful - 2 fun31 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Anthropology degree. It exposed me to just how much bullshit the woke push as fact.

Went downhill from there.

[–]odiusgay man 28 insightful - 1 fun28 insightful - 0 fun29 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I wouldn't say I was a "full on SJW," but I was certainly sympathetic to their ideas. When I first came out as gay (this was in 2009), I was very interested in transgender issues, and I read a lot of articles, watched a lot of documentaries and lurked on forums. Not because I had an interest in transitioning, but because I always found it fascinating, and we were the "lgbt community" (or so I was told), so I wanted to learn more about my community. I never really understand why people transitioned (there was a lot less talk of dysphoria then), but I just read those forums and sorta assumed that transgender people knew something I didn't.

It's funny, people say if you want to stop someone from being a homophobe, introduce them to a gay person, but I wasn't "transphobic" until I met trans people. This was at my college's lgbt club. Well, it was more like the lgbT club. Not only were there tons of trans people, but it seemed very obvious that being trans was a trend. They worshipped trans people, and talked like trans people were the only real "queer" people. They hated "cis gay men." At the time, all the trans were FTM, and when you came out as trans, they lauded you with praise and support, and instantly became your best friend. I saw a number of girls go from "ally" to "genderqueer" to "FTM" in only a semester or two and it was just sad. You could tell it was an act, like they behaved and dressed how they thought boys did.

Other than that they were just very obnoxious people. Blue hair, loved Homestuck, called themselves queer, those types. I grew up in a big, diverse city and I always thought I'd met every kind of person there was, but I had never met anyone as obnoxious as these people. They were very nasty, cultish people. It was really clear that these were young people who were maybe bullied as kids, and now were relishing in the opportunity to bully others. They seriously lowered my opinion of the human race.

But I tried to ignore them. I made friends with other gay men (the gay men and the queer types were like two totally different clubs), but at least at first I still went to their meeting. I remember once, they were lecturing us about privilege or transwhatever, and my mind got flooded with questions. Questions like:

  • what is a gender?

  • what is a man? what is a woman?

  • how many genders are there? How do we know?

  • what exactly does it mean to identify with a gender?

  • is Switzerland a gender? Why not?

  • how am I supposed to know what gender I am?

I kept them to myself of course (I knew what they'd do to me if I asked). But it was at that moment I realized transgender people were full of shit. And to this day, I've never seen a satisfactory explanation for any of those questions.

What really peak transed me was this guy, let's call him Adrian. He and I bonded because he was also gay and also skeptical of their transgender ideas and nasty behavior. I got weird vibes about him and I heard rumors that he did something to another guy in the club (someone who later became my friend). Also everyone in the club hated him, and talked shit about him all the time. But I was very lonely and was going through a difficult home life. I was just happy someone was interested in me so I repressed my suspicions and hung around him and his boyfriend.

I don't want to go into too much detail but he ended up sexually assaulting me. It took me courage to stop talking to him, but something weird happened in between. Over the summer, he started identifying as trans. First genderqueer, then MTF. It came out of nowhere. We had conversations about how we weren't trans (as did his boyfriend and I, who is now also trans). But even stranger still everyone started to love him. People that used to hate his guts were suddenly his best friend. The pariah of the club became a sort of motherly figure. People existed like the Adrian they hated never existed. It was surreal.

At first he started going by a feminized version of his name (think Adrienne). But then he picked a name for himself that was so bizarre, I wrote in my diary at the time that it was like naming your dog Cervical Cancer. All that changed about him was his wardrobe and his propensity to wear makeup. He looked like a clown. And yet everyone was calling him this dumb name, making excuses for his shitty behavior, and all I saw was the same man. I was told "trans women are women," and "trans men are men," but I'd met them and I knew nothing could be further from the truth.

And it wasn't just me. I thought back to that friend of mine. He had fear in his eyes when he saw Adrian- I think he sexually assaulted him too. And there was another guy in the club- real twink, me, my friend and this new boy all were. And I saw him chatting him up, I knew what he planning. I knew what kind of man he was. No woman does what he did. And so I never called him "she."

Years later I discovered /r/tumblrinaction, which lead me to /r/gendercritical, which lead to me to The Man Who Would be Queen. I read that book in one night. Finally, transgender people made sense. And I've been a terf ever since.

[–]ChodeSandwichtender and moist 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I was being treated for body dysmorphic disorder and I couldn't make sense of the "differences" between trans dysphoria and what I was dealing with. Some people tried to recruit me, but it never really stuck because my focus areas and obsessions were mostly unisex. I really did try to make sense of it. I read everything I could and talked to trans people. I thought it would make me a good and educated person but deep down, I was terrified that if these people were really men and women, it meant that my constant churning thoughts were real too and I was really hideously deformed. My skepticism grew and broke over when a particular person tried to tell me that people with BDD can basically get whatever surgery they want to feel better and only poor suffering trans people have to deal with doctors and their fussy gatekeeping. Every part of that claim was a lie, and I knew it. This was at the time of peak popularity for born again national embarassment Bruce Jenner; he'd been out for a while and swiped woman of the year, but his unwoke conservative opinions hadn't blown up on tumblr and twitter yet.

[–]reluctant_commenter 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I thought it would make me a good and educated person but deep down, I was terrified that if these people were really men and women, it meant that my constant churning thoughts were real too and I was really hideously deformed.

EXACTLY!!! And that's why this is all so messed up :(

I hope you're doing well these days.

[–]ChodeSandwichtender and moist 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I am, thank you. :) It took a couple therapists and a lot of work but I made it.

[–]reluctant_commenter 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm really glad to hear that, that's awesome. Congrats :)

[–]psufanof2631 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I started questioning gender ideology. Never got an answer for questions like "if gender isn't the same as sex, then what is it?" or "what is the meaning of gender identity if you can identify as anything?" or "what makes gender identity different from personality?"

Slowly started to realize that a lot of this ideology is nonsense at best, and homophobia with extra steps at worst.

[–]julesburm1891 16 insightful - 3 fun16 insightful - 2 fun17 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I went bowling with a group of people that included a transbian. (For reference, the transbian is rather overweight and a very sedentary person. The women in the group are all reasonably fit and active.) The transbian was smoking all the women on every single bowl. Being a competitive woman who has been consistently running and lifting since I was 15, I started pushing myself harder. No matter how hard I threw the ball, the transbian was throwing 2-3 mph faster than me. After we finished bowling, the transbian turned around and said, “wow that was so much easier when I was in a different body.” And that was the exact moment I was done forever.

[–]SkinnyVanilla 16 insightful - 3 fun16 insightful - 2 fun17 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

There was a literal poem glorifying some guy's girldick on Actual Lesbians. I commented that a lesbian forum was probably not the most appropriate place for a paean to the glory of dick. I got banned. So, unable to participate in the lesbian forum, and at last curious whether those evil terves on Gender Critical were really as bad as they said, I started to read.

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 14 insightful - 2 fun14 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

(ETA: I am not sure I was a full-on SJW but there was a time when I felt that term as an insult.) It's a blur now. I remember finding myself with a growing questioning of all the REEEEEEE about "TERFs" that was coming across my Facebook feed for a while two or three years ago, and feeling a sense of doubt that there really were all these horrible awful women in existence as they claimed, because the things people were screeching about them caring about seemed rather reasonable to me. Soon thereafter I found the GC subreddit. That led me to LGBdroptheT.

Streisand effect FTW.

[–]usehername 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was a full-on SJW. I and a friend unironically called ourselves that. I listened to stories of detransitioners and the house of cards fell. I realized because of groups like this one and GC that TRAs were lying about a lot of things, including Stonewall and the views of TERFs, who I had always understood to be ultra-conservative women. I let my SJW friend know "I think I'm a terf" and he called me for days in a row (several hour-long calls) trying to convince me to come back to his side, but it became clear that he was arguing in bad faith. He wasn't listening at all, never responded to my points directly, and was just repeating the same talking points over and over. I eventually cut contact (he was a bad friend anyway) and I found Magdalen Berns on YT and I've been on the side of science ever since.

Edit: Just added more detail

[–]barnarnasis this tv show my friend? 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I believed that not all trans people were like the "bad ones". I let people call me cis. I believed you really didn't need gender dysphoria to be trans -- I also learned through personal experience that you can have gender dysphoria and not be trans. I believed detransitioners were rare. I would insist TWAW without thinking too hard about what exactly that meant. Then I learned it meant that /only/ TW are women and that I'm now a uterus-haver. At that point I had already been slowly peaking thanks to the backlash against the pussy hats back in 2017, but my breaking point was definitely being identified by my uterus. (Closely followed by finding out how TW "breastfeed" and being absolutely horrified that anyone would willingly expose an infant to that chemical cocktail)

[–]Rubyredpython 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When I kept seeing post after post on actuallesbians and article after article on mainstream lesbian sites telling lesbians to accept dick and how we need to unpack our aversion to it and we can still date transbians and just not touch it during sex but we absolutely cannot say no to them. I'd just accepted myself as lesbian after years of confusion then a bit of time in denial and felt furious that someone was telling me I had no say over who invited themselves into my bed and I had to accept men in my dating pool. I'm also a live and let live person and it really annoyed me that the lgbt "community" was behaving like this. It all peaked me.

I joined right at the beginning of the end for a ton of online lesbian communities and it was horrific to see all these lesbian places get decimated from the inside out and no one else speak up in support of us. Everyone was telling us to include men in our spaces and our beds or we were horrible people. We were fetishists for only being attracted to women. It peaked me a second time.

[–]PeakingPeachEaterfemale♀ | detrans🦎 | eater of peaches 🍑 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Never really was full on SJW or "woke" despite transitioning. I guess I was more of a "Blaire White" type of trans, transmedicalist. I also hated myself a lot too so... Not something I saw as "fun" like others did and remembered hating "trans-trenders".

I fully disengaged from all that hippy crap of "love and acceptance" when I was in my late teens to early 20s. Helps that I went from being extremely religious to secular, so that effected how I view things from a more skeptical end.

I was a full on "anti-SJW" though during the late teens early 20s, edgy at the time but now don't care at all for SJWs nor Anti-SJWs, two sides of the same annoying ass coin.

Edit: I'm detrans now lol. I didn't clarify in my post. Was transitioning my teen years and chickened out when I read up on hormones/surgery and felt depressed that it'd NEVER be as authentic as being born a male. Detransitioned in early 20s and have been since.

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

Cotton ceiling and boxer ceiling did it for me. Everything else crumbled after that.

[–]Bright_paintingLoad, lesbian biologist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I peaked after a particularly heated argument with my mother (a true second-wave feminist) about the topic. She has always tried to learn about my interests and discuss them with me. (I realize first now that it must have been agonizing for her when I was a die-hard Winx-fan and could go on for hours upon hours about it...) But anyway, that evening she asked me about my online friends and the "trans-things" as she put it. The problem was that she asked me questions that I couldn't answer her on. She countered my arguments in such a way that I was speechless, and this made me angry. I said some regrettable things that evening, but her arguments stayed with me. Then, when I found a contradiction in the trans-ideology, the doubts that my mother had planted in my mind awoke. I did some research and my beliefs fell like a card house. I had thought that most trans people were quiet people who just wanted to live their lives in peace. What I found, to my disappointment, where that many of them weren't. They were mean and tried to bully lesbians and gay men into submission. It was a scary, but necessary wake-up call for me.