I’ve got a question that will help me with a pitch I’m writing…
Most people are familiar with #peaktrans (if you’re not, there’s a primer and a bunch of examples here). I don’t know about you, but there was the moment I realized the trans ideology was crazy bullshit (2013-2014) and then there was the moment I realized we were putting kids on puberty blockers—stunting their cognitive development and putting them on the road to sterilization—in the name of this crazy bullshit (2017).
That second moment hit later—and harder.
So one way to put the question might be:
When did you realize the trans movement was a teenage social contagion/body-modification cult/global marketing campaign pushing disembodiment and sex erasure/cover for predatory males/deadly poison for left politics, truth-seeking/sense-making institutions, and open societies/transhumanist front/ [insert your realization here…]?
Thank you for all your work, Eliza. I've been supportive of rights (and education) for everyone as long as I've been an adult and have great sympathy for trans people who are just trying to live a quiet life in this mess. But for a long time, I've felt uncomfortable about the untruths being told by the trans extremists (that the rights of women and girls would not be affected, that drugs, hormones, binders etc. given to children are safe, that trans suicide rates are higher than any others - all untrue) and about compelled speech and the violent/ menacing shutdown of debate. The turning point for me though was more visceral. About 10 years ago I was diagnosed with severe ptsd because of a long abusive marriage and have had trauma support from a number of wonderful women. In the early stages any male company frightened me (I couldn't use public transport without panics) though slowly things have improved. My #peaktrans came when the trans MTF (no GRC or surgery) head of the Edinburgh Rape Centre in Scotland said on twitter that any woman coming to the centre for help and who said she needed to be only with female-bodied people (as I did for years), that woman should have her 'bigotry' addressed by the centre. Needing female company was central to my being safe enough to recover. Being told what to think, be and do by a male-bodied person is the core of domestic abuse and can only make previous trauma worse. I don't understand why the head of that centre is still in that job. The disregard and lack of understanding of abused women shocks me.
I first peaked due to Lia Thomas. He was literally the impossible to ignore elephant in the room... then came the Dutch poster supposedly celebrating trans rights with an obviously mentally unwell (lots of self harm scars and a teddybear) young woman with mastectomy stars... that elicited a sick to my stomach feeling and that ice cold feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize the real world impact of this zany ideology... then came the stories of detransitioners ...