RE: What kept you from peaking?

( Kibeth )
Pre-peak, I didn't understand it but figured it's not my business what someone else does with their body. [...]. I thought we were just accepting that some men are more comfortable pretending to be women--not that they actually believed themselves to be the same as women. I didn't know how pernicious the movement had become.

I think the first hint of peaking came when I heard about JK Rowling's comments, looked them up myself and didn't see the issue. It was wild to me that everyone is supposed to pretend TIMs are the same as real women. I started to feel uncomfortable, but it was still just some radicals posting online, right? Except I started to hear the same TWAW bs from relatives and friends and well, literally everywhere else. [...]

I think there are probably a lot of people like I was who don't realize how much this is encroaching on our daily lives and have a live and let live attitude about it and so don't pay too much attention. And if they do have any discomfort or criticism, it's difficult to find impartial information to learn more, let alone talk about all of it without coming under fire.

( old_but_gold )
The sex/gender distinction.

I thought everyone understood that TIMs were mentally ill males and that it was a mere kindness to call them "women." I figured we can make room under that label to accommodate them, after all "gender" is just a social role right? That's why I parroted handmaiden lines.

When it finally dawned on me that, no, TRAs really want you to believe that TIMs are female and that they'll call you a bigot and a TERF for acknowledging that sex is a real thing and that it matters, no matter how kind you are about pointing it out and no matter where you restrict the meaningfulness of sex to (including sports, changing rooms, and prisons) -- that's when I peaked.

( AriadneOnNaxos )
I thought we were only pretending that people could change sex. My political tribe was committed to making a tiny minority of poor sad souls who had so internalised homophobia that they thought it was better to be the opposite sex than same-sex attracted feel better. It would be mean to keep telling them they could never actually be the opposite sex, so we told them they were whatever “on the inside”. Of course everybody understood that this was a polite fiction - everyone!