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Notes -
It's a shaky conjecture, in my opinion. While there are definitely men who use the trans movement for their direct benefit (male rapists claiming they are women to get into women's prisons or antisocial schoolboys claiming they are girls to get into girls' bathrooms and showers), they all do this because they have nothing to lose in a total institution and because they can get away with not conforming to their new role.
If you try to pull this kind of non-conformance in a non-total institution ("Would you tell Janice over there she can't use he/his pronouns and remain a woman? Would you tell her she has to wear make-up to remain a woman? Would you tell her she can't have facial hair and remain a woman? Would you tell her she can't change her name to a historically male one and remain a woman? I am also a woman and demand to be treated like one!") you will be outed as a phony by those who are recognized as trans, neither attaining that new "marginalized minority" status nor retaining your "honest white male" status.
Is going on "full trans" really worth it? Would you put on a mask you aren't allowed to take off, a mask that comes with a bunch of hormones you have to pump into your body? Would you do that for an annual raise of $100K? $200K? I sincerely doubt cynical men who are willing to disfigure their bodies and live a life of deception outnumber those who are sincerely dissatisfied with their lives as men and think living as women will make them happier.
(This is probably a conversation for the culture war thread, not SQS, but whatever)
I don't think that the latter category is necessarily excluded from "white males trying to become a marginalized group". That is, cynical exploitation of the system is sufficient but not necessary for this to be a factor. Some men are sincerely dissatisfied with their lives, and have been convinced that men are privileged oppressive patriarchs who oppress everyone else, and viscerally reject that identity because they don't feel privileged or oppressive and don't want to be. Instead, they are bullied and socially outcast and don't fit in with more masculine men, and thus feel that they must be part of an oppressed group. They are being oppressed by other white men (the bullies/normies), so they must be something other than a white man, hence trans.
Or something like that. I am not a clinical psychologist, I don't purport to know exactly what goes through the mind of someone in this situation (I was a weird social outcast, sort of, but very much not woke so I coped in completely different ways). And each individual is different so will have different responses to this situation. But it seems very plausible to me that social outcasts will look for reasons and excuses as to why they are different from everyone else, and why the people who pick on them are inherently evil in a morally objective way that makes them truly the bad guys. Taking on an oppressed identity makes your bullies into bigots and allows you to unite allies against them, even if they were previously bullying you for reasons unrelated to your identity. And, importantly, you don't need to be a cynical opportunist or a sleaze trying to sexually assault women, just be hurt and confused and subject to the same mental biases that everyone has that let us justify beliefs that are beneficial to ourselves.
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You don't have to go on hormones or have surgery if you're operating under self-identification policies.
No, but you have to make a serious effort or you'll get called out for trolling. Most men would love to hang out in the women's showers at a gym, but most men wouldn't just walk in there as-is and say it's okay because they're actually trans or non-binary or whatever. Chances are the gym is just going to kick you out and only relent after some rights group makes a stink about it, which isn't going to happen unless you can convince them that you're legitimate. If you're willing to put in the work, yeah, you can get the status, but it's not something that can be held casually. You're name is going to be in the news and the community will view you as a member of the LGBT community because why the hell else would an LGBT advocacy group be raising a stink about this? For the gym's part, it's a rare enough occurrence that they'll take their chances on kicking out obvious men and issue an apology later and chalk it up to a training issue or whatever. Given the horniness of the average male, the fact that there isn't a total inundation of women's locker rooms by this point is pretty good evidence that it isn't the problem some people, myself included, were concerned about.
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I agree that the hypothesis goes too far, but regarding this question I have to ask - have you ever been love bombed? Particularly when your life consisted solely of experiences of being a shy barely tolerated misfit? For a lot of people just this factor alone will be worth it, at least until the high wears off.
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