I don't agree that the medical intervention of a healthy body's natural development is essential. Many teenage girls are horrified at the way their bodies develop, they feel gross and insecure and wrong in their own skin. By the time they've reached adulthood, many if not most of them grow out of it. Impeding natural development robs teenagers of the opportunity to outgrow their discomfort with their changing bodies.

I truly hope that as more and more of us desist, this will become the new and real movement of gender nonconformity in society. So many conservatives and zealots have latched on to supporting the genderist movement because it reinforces their core values - that gender stereotypes are linked to sex and that homosexuality is wrong.

They take gender-nonconforming children who would likely grow up to be healthy homosexual adults and transform them into the image of straight men or women opposite to their actual sex. In some countries, being homosexual is punishable by death and gender transition surgeries are required by law.

The whole movement is backwards and proving to be nothing but harmful. It brainwashes people into total self-loathing denial about their biology to the point of short circuiting and becoming suicidal over other people not validating their ideas of what they are inside their heads. It's making people so sick and it breaks my heart. The world needs us, the desisters, to push back against this movement and show what true self-acceptance means. We are the real freedom of expression, the real 'free to be me', and our experiences of going blind and then regaining our sight gives us the power to guide the rest of society through this dark period in history.

This would be wonderful, in my view. I'm a gender abolitionist, I think the boxes society shoves people into are harmful and unnecessary. Being open and proud of your biological sex while screwing every gender stereotype in your path and showing that men can be just as feminine and beautiful as society expects women to be is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful ways to wreck those boxes.

I'm doing my part as well just by being myself while letting the world know that I'm a woman. I'm very androgynous, never wear makeup, don't shave anything but my head, wear the clothes I like which just happen to mostly come from the men's section of a store. I don't do it to prove any point, this is just naturally who I am and it makes me no less of a woman. I'm shaping the idea of what a woman can be to fit myself as a female person. You shape the idea of what a man can be in your own image, too, just by being out and setting the example.

The only thing I'd point out is that you aren't actually presenting as "female" - there's no way to present as female unless it's what you are, it's just a sex category. You're presenting as male, an expression of maleness that people aren't used to, and our close-minded society might interpret your presentation as that of a woman. Keep correcting them until they learn.

Exactly. And the only reason the bulk of them (I'm speaking for girls again because I'm not as familiar with boys) feel such discomfort when their bodies start developing is the insane pressure society places on them to achieve mainstream beauty standards, accept their role as sex objects, and perform femininity. A girl rejecting womanhood is most likely not the result of her being out of alignment with her body, but of her aging into an incredibly sick society.

That's what has been bothering me. I totally agree with GC arguments and they really helped me during my desisting process, but the groups and the people involved in those communities themselves... it's so hit or miss. I've had to call people out over there a number of times for being hateful or promoting female stereotypes and been attacked for it. It's just a very high octane, angry kind of environment that sometimes feels as inflexible to varying opinions as the QT/TRA side does. I'm so tired of all the toxicity. I don't hate trans people, I hate what's happening to their movement. I don't hate men, I just want being a lesbian (a homosexual female) to be accepted in society. I've felt isolated from any semblance of real community for such a long time, stuck between these two extreme groups. That's why I was so relieved to find this sub.

I just got here lol but as an ex-nb desister I vote yes. It's definitely a different experience from having identified as the opposite of your sex and gone through medical transition, but neither is more or less significant than the other. I went through the past ten years basically as an un-woman, feeling completely "other" and unwelcome in women's environments while also not finding any sense of belonging in men's environments.

I always knew I was female biologically and also homosexual, but my physical dysphoria and my mental anguish around it was a huge struggle to overcome. I never bothered anyone to change their pronoun usage for me, though didn't correct anyone the many times I was accidentally called 'he' or 'sir'. You could say I was partly in the closet, because I didn't want to make myself seem even more weird than I already felt I was, and because my experience of gender was intensely personal rather than being something I wanted to share and get validation for.

The "trendy folx" have turned nonbinary into a pretty silly thing that makes it somewhat embarrassing to relate to myself, but it's literally the only thing that fit during my gender cult experience. I didn't belong to either of the two recognized, socially acceptable gender binaries.

What an extreme and glorious relief to realize that gender wasn't actually real and I could absolutely embrace myself as a woman simply because I'd been born female. Then to find groups like this where I feel truly welcome and at least a little understood, it's such a helpful thing.

It fills me with so much joy that I seriously tear up even thinking about it. The relief I felt the first time, just over a year ago, that I let the idea of gender go and embraced myself as exactly who and what I am. It makes me tear up again to witness others reaching that same place. I'm so deeply happy for you, my gorgeous brother.

I can't properly describe just how good it feels. For me, it means over a decade of weight and expectation and constant comparisons with other people, just melting away. I feel like I could fly. I want everyone to be able to feel that same freedom and that's what pushes me to keep fighting this nasty gender movement, despite all the hostility and the target it paints on my forehead. I'm never going to stop fighting and I'm so very happy to have sisters and brothers standing by my side.

That's really sad, I hope your little bro manages to grow out of it the way a lot of us have here and comes to accept himself (I don't use pronouns disrespectfully but for me it's important to use correct ones for the sake of mental health and clarity, especially when the person in question isn't present to be impacted by it).

As a lesbian, I have experienced the harm of that rhetoric firsthand and have been verbally attacked by transwomen as well as other lesbians who blindly support the male privilege to identify as lesbian. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity whatsoever, I knew that even when I was indoctrinated and didn't consider myself a woman - I still always knew I was a female and a homosexual.

If they didn't conflate gender with sex so much and try to force us to invalidate ourselves for the sake of their validation (to metaphorically cannibalize the validity of other people's experiences), there would be so much more opportunity for constructive communication and problem solving between our communities.

Thanks for taking the time to respond so thoroughly. Yeah politically homeless feels about right for me. The funny thing is some of the more level headed people in the GC groups say they're in the same boat. It really seems like the place might have been overtaken by some strict conservatives or something, similarly to how the far-left extremists took over things.

I agree with GC on a literal basis, that is, thinking critically of the concept of gender and wanting to dissect and understand it rather than blindly following what other people tell me about it, wanting to rationally understand the impact it's had on my personal life experience and how it's impacting oppressed and marginalized groups outside of the QT sphere.

Those conversations still make it worthwhile for me to participate in that sub, but then I see some topics, like for example talking about hating little boys because their male genes predetermine them to be evil.. and it isn't being widely downvoted by the members of the sub.. and I just can't even believe what I'm reading.

Maybe the term 'politically eclectic' is more fitting? Eclectic is the path I've taken with my spirituality since I was thirteen, not devoting myself to any one school of thought but taking each stance and argument on its own and deciding whether or not it falls in line with my beliefs.

Gender Critical - critical of the concept of gender as it refers to the clusters of stereotypes tied to biological sex. Being GC basically means that women are women because we're adult human females and that has no bearing on our personalities, sense of fashion, interests, etc. Same with men being men.