I've been thinking about telling the story of why I've started listening to more gender critical voices, despite being a previously committed queer folk.

It's not that long, or rare. But still, I could do with getting it down and told. Doesn't matter how many people see it.

When I went to university, I fell in with a queer/polyamorous group. I had a long-term bf at the time, who I had been with since I was 17, but I still hung out with this group, despite being at a remove from the polyamory side.

Over the years I stayed in touch with a lot of the people from this gang, met new ppl as they came & went. Got engaged to my bf, who liked BDSM, so managed to bond with some people over that. I never was, and actually felt uncomfortable with it, but I didn't want to seem prudish.

Around 5 years ago, my relationship with my fiance started to fray. I had lost my mum & I had been assaulted by my sister while she was sick, bc I had told her to stop asking mum questions which she couldn't understand, due to her failing mental capabilities (brain tumour.)

My fiance, with my decreased ability to cater to his needs in my depression etc, started leaning far more into the BDSM side of things. Started hanging out with that group more, going to their club w me tagging along miserably. He didn't do anything with anyone when I was there.

Weirdly, in all my time I knew him, this fiancé was *wildly* transphobic. As in, we had blazing rows cos of dark shit he would say whenever the topic came up, or if he insulted anyone. I won't repeat them here, but trust me.

These weren't "dog whistles", these were fog horns.

Our relationship finally crashed and burned, and honestly, thank god it did. What a weak person he was in the end. I ended up sleeping rough for a few weeks in the aftermath, as I couldn't go back to my family home as my abusive af brother assaulted me when I tried.

For some nights, a friend from the old queer/polyamoury put me up, while I sorted out my own place. I got more involved with the group than I had before. I was no longer "with them, but at a distance." I was part of the polyamoury/queer melange.

I indulged in my long-held Sapphic tendencies, and changed my presentation completely, cutting my hair, losing weight and putting on muscle. I started writing a series of short stories for a zine we circulated in our local queer bookshop (really).

My aim was to play. I'd been locked up in a coercive relationship since I was a teenager, and I had seen all these people have such a free, fun time. I was never as immersed in the polyamoury constant exchange of partners, but I definitely indulged.

I began to understand the concept of gender as something to be untied from bio sex completely but which cld be used as a shorthand to help people express the inner parts of themselves tht resisted easy naming. You feel like a girl? You mean you feel giddy, vulnerable & delighted.

It rested on stereotypes, but if that was the code, the language that people understood and could find meaning in, then so be it. It helped them, and with the decoupling from bio, it would mean the stereotypes of the different sexes would eventually fade away.

I indulged in this feeling. I would make myself look like a guy, and then the next month, dress like a femme fatale, then back again, or mix differing aspects (my combat boots with my high slit skirt.)

I still think there is value in this approach. It's why I'm not full GC.

So, for the last 4 years, this became my serious source of social support and creative inspiration. I am still nothing but grateful for it. To the gender screwy people who showed me the empowerment in the fun of genderscrewiness

Things started to sour for me in late 2019.

The first memorable moment of was when someone linked a Riley J Dennis video to our FB group, about how bio sex was a social construct.

Now, I am a social historian & I have some familiarity in zoology (family & personal interest.) My reaction to the vid was this gif

It was utter BS - it badly mangled the meaning of "social construct" to produce a fatuous argument - that other ppl started seriously discussing. I have a long history of being gaslit, first by my family & then by my ex, so I was very uncomfortable with how it was being treated.

My "gaslighting!!" alarm bells continued when someone mentioned a male individual, who looked male, w a penis, having unprotected PIV sex w a woman & called them lesbians.

I was not at all wet behind the ears w the unexpected wonders of queerness, but this just felt needless.

It felt like the sex-positive, fantasy BDSM group were starting to want their identities used in sex-play recognised by the wider group. But rather it being playful and part of a wider game, they were politically now being counted as lesbians. Despite being a straight couple.

The guy dressed femme sometimes, but he was bearded most of the time.

People started getting more aggressively pecked at to remember pronouns, which pissed me off, cos it wasn't previously a big deal, & the pronouns were getting steadily trickier to remember.

One guy started getting really nastily slated behind his back for not remembering pronouns & not calling people by their persona's name on a night out (some ppl "put on" an identity for special occasions). This guy was awkward as hell & probably was on the spectrum.

It felt mean, unnecessary, and not recognising that, hey, if you pick they/them pronouns, people with motor function issues, autism, or other processing conditions may struggle a little bit more.

There was a definite "spoilt brat" attitude creeping in.

Not everyone was following this trend, some ppl were like me, and slowly withdrew into our own little circle. We all wanted to be kind & take ppl's identities srsly, but I really don't think I was the only one who was finding it more difficult to nod along.

In the run up to lockdown, something had been happening in the group that had really seemed off to me. A girl had started showing up at this bar we went to, which wasn't a queer bar, but it had a lot of different social groups you see regularly on a night out.

She started showing up alone, without anyone, but she knew someone behind the bar, & then she'd recognise someone at one of the tables, & then someone in our group also knew her, vaguely, from uni. She was nice, but a little odd, the way she bounced from gang to gang.

Someone told me (and this is heresy, so take it with all the salt you need) that she had been raised in a fundamentalist Christian sect& when she went to uni she had gotten involved with a guy from their LGBT soc. She realised she was bi. Somehow her family found out.

And her family withdrew from her. After that, she would show up to other peoples' nights out or parties uninvited, which unsurprisingly, made people who were unaware of her circumstances rather irritated with her.

She eventually found the polyamoury group.

In the time I've known her, which is just under two years, this girl has fast-forwarded through all stages of queerness like they are Pokemons she has to catch. She was bi, then lesbian, then pan, then femme-sexual, then trans, then non-binary, now trans-masculine.

And she (he?) has documented all of this on social media, in detail.

She got involved with a "trans woman" in the group, who, as those quotations should indicate, I don't see as really trans.

Because this person had unprotected PIV sex with this girl, and got her pregnant.

This "trans woman" is also a toxic person. Exceptionally narcissistic, bitchy, and I think has manipulated this girl. They've had arguments on Insta, and the detail of the mental turmoil this "trans woman" is suffering is straight out of a manual for narcissists.

She announced her pregnancy the October before lockdown, and was talking about how much she hopes her family won't try to get involved. She is cycling through parental terms to call herself. She's since had the baby, and she's just got pregnant again, by the same "sperm donor".

I have watched this happen from a distance, and I feel like I'm witnessing a travesty. This is not a healthy person in a good relationship. She is only 24, and she's already pregnant for a second time from someone who is downright manipulating her.

And no one is saying anything. She's in *deep* with this politicised messaging about queerness and pronoun-policing, and she's one of the most vocal/active on social media. The old group, the one with the creativity in gender expression and the playfulness, seems to have gone.

The drama of the group, the gaslighting.... it's made me step back, and then step back again.

When the JK Rowling thing happened, when that had the most hyperbolic, overblown reactions, that was another straw. Maybe not the last, but I feel I'm close to it now.

The Mary Beard thing brought back how angry I am at it all, that ridiculous way people who know nothing about what queer circles are like right now try to swing in with their views to condemn someone who did nothing wrong.

I'm sick of it. I need reality.

I miss that group. I miss the creativity it afforded me.

But I'm not going to pretend that that girl is not in her position because she is female.

I'm not going to pretend that a guy, who looks like a guy, who is having sex with a woman and gets her pregnant, is a lesbian.

I'm sick of the sniping & trashing at non-compliance, telling us to chant slogans that oversimplify complicated situations. I'm sick of being made to feel like I'm unkind cos I can't accept "trans women are women" without an asterix.

I've experienced plenty of abusive and coercive relationships. And what is occurring right now in so many queer groups, feels like that shaky, frightening ground. There will never be enough hoops to jump through, or misdemeanours to forgive.