Peak Trans

Peak Trans is often misunderstood. Often times, it’s a moment when a person who previously followed and defended gender ideology begins to question it. The person then realizes that certain things don’t add up.

Reaching peak trans for me was similar to many others. It was a slow, but gradual process. Eventually, I couldn’t reconcile it and my views shifted.

I remember seeing a TV show, I think it was Degrassi maybe, where a transman (transgender female) stated how they’ve known since they were a little kid that they were a “boy between the ears.” The reasons she listed were: She always enjoyed boys toys and she hated wearing dresses. Seeds of doubt had already been planted into my mind, but I still didn’t question it because I thought that I must not understand it. Clearly a person wouldn’t go through all of this trouble and put themselves in danger for fun. So I bought into the idea that brains are sexed and can be born into the wrong body.

Few years later, I saw a study on the news that discussed the release of testosterone in the womb. Again, it discussed how brain sex can be different then physiological sex. Okay, so then there must be something in the brain that causes these people severe physical discomfort with their biological sex. Sure, I accepted that, although the doubts were continuing to grow. My background is in science, so I am aware of how inconclusive studies can be, especially about topics that are so new.

Then Bruce Jenner came out. This was when I was on the verge of peak trans. Normally I don’t concern myself with celebrity gossip, so I accepted it, unthinkingly, and moved on. But later on I attempted to understand it, and watched an interview with him and Barbra Walters. His reasons for transition were very similar: always wanted to wear dresses and women’s clothing, loved make-up, etc. When he came out, it seemed that he was the epitome of female stereotypes. He said he always “thought like a woman.” I’ve known some of the most amazing, powerful, inspiring women in my life time. There are many things that I, and other men, can learn from these women. I didn’t understand how someone could categorize thinking like a woman without using sex-based stereotypes.

I dug into the rabbit hole of the internet. Reading blogs of people who identified as transgender and watching YouTube videos where people described how they “knew” they were meant to be the opposite sex. Once more, I saw the listing of sex-based stereotypes. Enjoying gender specific toys as children, connecting more with the opposite sex, feeling more comfortable in gender specific clothing, etc.

This didn’t answer my questions. Many gay men or lesbian women engage in plenty of gender non-conforming behavior. Many of them are uncomfortable with imposed gender norms. What would make them any different from the people who are identifying as transgender?

My questions lead me to online forums where people were questioning whether they were transgender or not. What I found was, many of them kept saying “If you have the question it, then you must be trans. But it is a deeply personal experience so only you can decide, but since you questioned it just know that the only way to prevent yourself from depression and suicide is to transition immediately.”

Majority of the trans people didn’t have physical sex dysmorphia, their reasons were simply: “I would just be happier as a woman.” But what does that mean? Why would altering your body, wearing stereotypical womens clothing, and changing your name make you infinitely happier if you weren’t experiencing discomfort with your biological sex? Why can’t you be a man, yet enjoy all of those things, and still be happy?

The obsession with physical appearance seemed to throw my brain into a loop. Anyone is a man or a woman who says they are a man or a woman? Then what is the meaning of the word? It just is. That seemed to be the common answer. You are what you say you are regardless of biological reality. Many claim that it isn’t based on sex-based stereotypes, yet continue to reinforce the idea that their reasons for transition were based on sex-based stereotypes.

Going deeper and deeper into this ideology seemed to conflict with my beliefs on a fundamental level. I couldn’t be the only one who felt this way. But I’ve always been liberal, and followed liberal ideas. It was either you were a liberal, or you were a conservative bigot.

Somehow I came across a Gender Critical forum. It was like finding a light switch after fumbling around in the dark. The critiques of gender and how it ties back to patriarchy made so much sense to me. The way the group seemed to critically analyze everything as opposed to instructing others to blindly accept. My entire life made sense.

There was something empowering surrounding the idea of being a gender non-conforming male in a patriarchal society. Men don’t use violence against me, and if they did I wouldn’t hesitate to reciprocate. However, I am now learning to disown gender completely. It is harmful to everyone. As I’ve mentioned in one of my previous posts, everyone person I know feels suffocated to an extent by their expected gender roles. Some can just fair better than others. In many ways, I am supportive of men and women bending gender and performing roles expected of the opposite sex. It’s the perfect way to bend and break an archaic system that does nothing but damage everyone in society. My issue comes when those same sex-based stereotypes that I, and many others, have been fighting so hard to dismantle and destroy completely, are being used as reasons for being “born as the wrong sex.”

Brains are sexed? How could I not see past my own misogyny? How did I blindly accept this? Women are seen as sex objects. Meant to be pretty and petite, subordinate, and accepting of male aggression and sexuality. This taught to us at so many avenues of society. Growing up as a man, I can honestly say that men are taught by our surroundings and each other to measure our manhood on the basis of how many women we have sex with. Women are trophies for men. Any man that can claim to be a woman only does so on the basis of sex-based stereotyping.

By equating womanhood with articles of clothing, or other capitalist goods that encourage women to perform for the sake of male pleasure, men who become transwomen are then defining what it means to be a woman. This is not progressive. Men have defined what it means to be a man and a woman for centuries. From what I can tell, this is just another form of misogyny.

More FtT decide to detransition (which is a lot more common then the world would have you believe) as opposed to MtT. Why is this? Because men aren’t taught to question themselves, they are taught that what we believe is law, and we are entitled to things as we define them. I could have easily explained my softer personality as me actually being a woman. But I couldn’t bring myself to say that I’m a woman because I was raised around women.

Part of being raised around women was the idea to question myself and look at how I can change myself for the world, because that’s how most women are taught. How can women change themselves to better fit into a male dominated society? Men are not taught this, and I quickly learned this the more I made male friends. It would only make sense that men will tend to go to great lengths to define what it means to be a woman, and speak over actual women who’s lived experience doesn’t matter anymore.

Trends and patterns don’t lie. The way society works is so devastatingly consistent with the radical feminist analysis of patriarchy that it’s scary. Most people who “disagree” with feminism (root feminism, not this contorted, liberal, third wave, male-pleasing feminism) are simply not reading into it enough. Because there is nothing in our genetics that teaches us to like certain colors, or find certain toys appealing. If we think critically about the way our society works, and see the way history used power structures such as race and gender to define how everyone should behave, we would soon learn that today’s norms wouldn’t exist without the questioning and critical thinking.

If second wave feminism didn’t exist, and women just thought “who the hell cares about going to school? Why are women being such victims? We’re just naturally unfit to be educated and homemaking is our forte,” would women today be able to excel and break into fields that were previously male dominated?

Because the truth is, accepting gender ideology means that I’d have to accept that men are one way, and women are another way. Which means, I’d have to also accept the analysis performed at different points in history that say, based on science, women are inferior to men, and black people are inferior to white people. Both of these are not true, have been debunked, and accepting that brains are sexed would go against everything I believe in.

I see so many men struggle because they are taught to suppress emotions from an early age. We are taught that weakness is wrong, unless we want to be associated with girls–which is a negative thing because women<men. It kills men on the inside, whether majority of them want to admit it or not. But this is nothing compared to the subordination and double-standard we use against women. They are a class that still do not have the equality they deserve. To say that this is true means you haven’t looked into the analysis enough to know why society is the way it is.

Here you have it, I’ve hit peak trans. I can’t actively agree with the ideology and support women at the same time. I am gender critical because a system like gender does nothing but cause harm to everyone.