The reason I am now gender critical (or, as many of my fellow Irish lefties would have it, a monster) is that I started listening carefully to what was being claimed by the trans side.
Before I did that, I was trotting along with the crowd, blissfully woke.
1/

2/ I saw women on Twitter being threatened and bullied. I knew the first time I read the word 'terf' (aimed at a woman by a man I knew, or thought I knew) that it was a threat, not just an objective term. And even though I thought that woman was not only wrong but unkind,

3/ I didn't believe his venom was going to change her mind, and nor did I think *anyone* deserved to be spoken to that way.
People shouting at me wouldn't have changed my mind, so I decided to try to change GC women's minds by engaging in proper discussion.

4/ But to do that properly, you can't rely on glib mantras. You have to actually know exactly what it is you're asserting, you have to know, clearly, why you believe it. And that's when I realised I didn't know. What did I mean when I said trans women are women? When I said I was

5/ a woman, I meant I was female. That's it. There's no other property I share with all other women. To say there is - that somehow we all like the same things, or think similarly - is sexist. The psychological trait most closely aligned with sex is sexual orientation, but

6/ patently, I do not believe that lesbians are somehow not women, or that the butchest lesbian in the world is less of a woman than Dolly Parton. Because I'm not a regressive sexist homophobe, you see.
So then I decided to listen to trans people, and see if they had the answer.

7/ And I found, after many Youtube videos and reading Reddit discussions, and then articles, and listening to radio interviews, that they didn't. It didn't make any sense.
Is dysphoria real? Of course.
Does that magically make someone the opposite sex? No.
Then, and ONLY then,

8/ did I start watching the @Womans_Place_UK talks, all online (so you can check them for all that alleged hate - spoiler, there isn't any) and I found only women who were thinking clearly and logically, and trying to find some way of preserving everyone's rights.

9/ But, none of this will matter to the many Irish people who, knowing the damage that unquestioning dogma did to Irish women, yet try to punish and ostracise anyone who questions this new belief system. It won't matter that I originally engaged to defend Self ID, or that

10/ it was listening to the pro-Self ID side that changed my mind, not listening to evil British feminists. I'm on blocklists, I'm unworthy of association.
But do you know what? Growing up under a suffocating religion, being made, every week, to say things I didn't believe,

11/ made me feel like I was going crazy. I will happily be ostracised by the 'left' of Ireland rather than submit to that again, or join in forcing it on anyone else. Self ID is the Left's Eighth Amendment, in its disregard for the rights of women. Someday, people will see that.