I always say that true "transphobia" (which should perhaps be renamed as "mistransia" like misandria and misogyny) is precisely that: treating gender non-conforming individuals who are distressed about their place in society (they have no place in some circles, and are not particularly welcome by many, as people tend to be made uncomfortable by sexual ambiguity for some reason that I wish was scientifically researched), as if their bodies were legitimate experimental grounds. Treating gender non-conforming individuals, many of whom are gay/lesbian/bi, as if their long-term health was less important than that of gender-conforming individuals. Treating gender non-conforming individuals' mental health as messed up to begin with, as so flawed, that they cannot benefit from regular talk therapy to find ways to live proudly and well as gender non-conforming individuals by focusing on the world and not on themselves, and focusing on being persons who do things, as opposed to persons who are things... Treating gender non-conforming individuals as if their endocrine systems were not as complex and as delicate as that of all other individuals. As if their ovaries, their testes, their uteruses, their breasts, their penises, the muscle tissue in their arms or legs, parts of their colons, etc., were harvestable/cuttable/extractable, based on their "self-diagnosis" or self-expressed desires, without any consideration for their knowledge or lack thereof, of the consequences of these interventions. Treating them as if their reproduction did not matter at all, as if their becoming sterilized were no big deal...
That is indeed, mistransia: the hatred of gender non-conforming individuals whose personhood and humanity is dismissed, disrespected and instrumentalized the moment they are cast as "trans".
This is so well said and such an interesting, insightful way of looking at this. It reminds me of the interview on the “Gender: A Wider Lens” podcast with the Dutch researchers who were discussing part of the Dutch Protocol used on kids. The hosts later talk about how shockingly dismissive the Dutch researchers were of all the mental health problems and life struggles their research participants continued to have after medical treatments. They had an attitude of, “Well, OF COURSE they’re still going to struggle and be unhappy” because the gender nonconformity and the gender confusion made these young people into something so different from everyone else that, well, what could you expect? So even the “gold standard” of this care seems predicated on a presupposition that these children are incapable of having normal lives with normal relationships
Yes, exactly! I listened to that episode as well, and to sasha and stella's comments afterwards. I think that many doctors do and recommend things to gender non-conforming individuals that they would never consider recommending to gender-conforming individuals, whom they think of as "normal". Nothing sounds more patronizing, dismissive and disrespectful than so-called "gender affirming care". Total mistransia!
"People tend to be made uncomfortable by sexual ambiguity." Yes! I will go even further and state most people are bothered by those whose appearance isn't ambiguous, but whose behavior and actions don't conform strictly to sex stereotypes. I have a drawer full of the T-shirts as I'm middle-age and an average heterosexual female with what I like to say is a bull-dyke brain. I know males are stronger, just as I know women are generally more nurturing and accommodating, but I also know the female brain works just as well as the male brain. More upper body strength does not make a better functioning brain any more than the ability to gestate makes a better brain. I'm very direct and confident in my ability to problem solve, and this sometimes turns into nasty encounters, such as when I I was starting to change a flat on my car in a restaurant parking lot when a man offered to "help" and I thanked him very politely and told him I prefer to change the tire myself. Apparently, he wasn't really offering to "help" because I had only one correct response as he started screaming at me and calling me names to the point the patrons in the restaurant could hear him. Then there's the time I picked up an appliance for my sister and was getting ready to offload when the carpenter working on her house came out and literally started directing me on how I was going to take the appliance off the truck. I told him I had another way I was removing the appliance and he started screaming at me. My truck, my rules, is apparently unacceptable. My sister had never seen what I sometimes go through and she was just staring at him in amazement. Then there's the countless times a guy wants to give me a "lesson" about something, not knowing anything about my knowledge level, and when I politely (I'm always polite and always thank for the offer) decline the lesson, I often get a nasty reaction from not just the man, but often women nearby. I believe if I looked "butch," this would not be a problem. Many people seem to need life simplified, with very strict appearance and role conformity. I can deal with the hostility but If I was a child today, the T lunatics would be chasing me with a needle full of testosterone and a scalpel to cut off any female parts. I have to shout out to those men who've offered help on occasion, without devolving into a screaming lunatic when I let them know I've got whatever I'm working on under control. Shout out to those women who don't intervene to tell me to "let him do it." My truck, my rules.
And the "surprise" is worse--expecting a person to behave one way (you don't look butch, so you're expected to behave "feminine", which means, you know, accepting if not outright asking for male assistance with certain "masculine" tasks) and having them behave as if they were donning traits of the opposite sex is jarring for many, and upsetting for some. I truly believe that there is some "knee-jerk" reaction regarding sexual/gender ambiguity that makes people uncomfortable, some part of our brain that categorizes individuals according to their sex/appearance (appearance includes other traits, obviously), that doesn't respond well to ambiguity or unexpectedness in these very basic categories of male/female, masculine/feminine. It explains why some cultures, with very rigid gender norms, create "third" categories for feminine men, because once they're in that category, they have a proper place and the social order is maintained... I have looked for scientific articles about this subject but it doesn't appear to be something that evolutionary scientists, sexologists, biologists, neurologistis or psychologists have looked into...
I don't care which sex people are, what their sexual orientation is. I don't want people's mental health problems of sexual or any other variety forced on me - at work, at school, everywhere. It's none of my business. I'm not interested in your Gender Jesus; I don't believe GJ, and I'm not interested in joining the church/cult. Just leave me alone.
There's no such thing as a "natal" female, just as there are no "natal" males, implying one can actually change sex beyond birth. There are females and males and some who cross-dress to try and appear as the opposite sex, and some who mutilate their bodies and take puberty blockers and hormones, but their sex has not changed. There's no such thing as "trans" kids or "transmasculine" kids. There are a few children, mostly male, with mental health problems (gender dysphoria) and there are children influenced by a social contagion and/or influenced by adults who will use and abuse them to make money.
Contrary to the profoundly anti-scientific dogma peddled by most feminists, sex is NOT "immutable" 🙄.
To have sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither are, ipso facto, sexLESS. More particularly, dysphoric children who have their gonads removed are turned into sexless eunuchs.
"It's always the feminists." There are many "waves" of feminism and I'm going to say most older feminists do not support this dogma. According to a 2019 gallup poll, 64% of men and 79% of women support the trans dogma, so that would be "most" men. Fortunately support dropped a bit in the 2021 poll, down to 57% and 74%, respectively. By the above polls, that would mean this old feminist is up against a majority of MEN and WOMEN who support this drivel. But the old feminists always knew we should never rest and we were right.
Really? What about the men with their sexualized cross-dressing and sexual fetishes over the centuries? I consider the cross-dressing and sexual fetishes in the realm of "gender." SOME women saw opportunity and joined the party because, well, some women are perverts just as some men are perverts. Judith Butler is one. The younger women I've talked to who say they support this drivel DO NOT consider themselves feminists, although no doubt some others do. As is usual, they rush to protect the worst men and attack "feminists." The goal of misogynists (both male and female misogynists) back in the day was to attack any female who stepped out of line and professed support for opportunity and self-determination for women. They made feminism a dirty word, just like the #MeToo movement made "men" a dirty word. I like rainbows but now that has been co-opted by the T cult, just as the word feminism has been co-opted by the Progressives. The bottom line from the poll is a majority of men and women support the T cult, although there are more females, as I would expect because females are generally more accommodating. Going back and forth over who is worse is pointless.
Sure, there have been plenty of gender-non-conforming individuals over the centuries.
But as a philosophy and an ideology -- Butler being the cuckoo in the nest, that seems fairly recent. You might take a gander at Colin Wright's synopsis in a tweet, and my various comments on a post on the topic at his Substack:
The doomsday cult is definitely contributing to the problem and no doubt driving some females to annihilate their reproductive capability rather than doom a child to a dystopian future. There are also those non-conforming girls and boys who seem to feel pressured to conform their bodies to fit a stereotype.
Activists so often frame this as “the next civil rights movement.” Yet within the civil rights movement, activists wanted as much sunlight as possible on medical mistreatment of POC and sexual minorities, whether it was exposing and looking head-on at the “father of gynecology” J. Marion Sims’ brutal experimental surgeries on enslaved women to the poor medical treatment in segregated hospitals during Jim Crow or demanding better research and medical care for HIV/AIDS in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
I have tried for a long to put myself in the shoes of one of these clinicians, trying to understand their motivations and steelmanning their arguments to make sure I wasn't missing something myself. Ultimately I came up empty-handed.
Some are clearly true believers, but I suspect this number is actually pretty small. Most doctors aren't silly enough to actually buy into this stuff after thinking seriously about it. They are a disproportionately influential group, however.
Others who go along with it seem not to think about it too deeply. Doctors usually aren't dumb but as a profession we are good at following orders. Having a shiny, neat looking protocol with "best practices" and "gold standards" etc is increasingly used as a substitute for good old fashioned thinking. This tendency is probably reinforced by the kids who come in and seem to show initial improvement (perhaps from the attention, etc etc), as well as family pressure in some cases. If I prescribe sertraline to someone with severe panic attacks and they really do seem to get better (at least for a while), it can be difficult to change course when it seems like you are helping your patient.
My guess is that the majority of physicians don't care about the issue at all for various reasons, including just not wanting to get involved in a publicly controversial fight like this. Those who do care about it see that their options for expressing their thoughts are limited.
What the allies and cross-sex ideating individuals fail to recognize is the utter narcissism they express when demanding to be recognized as something they are not. They also do not recognize the contradictions in the 73 "identities" promoted, while at the same time promoting non-science based concepts denying basic biology. They will not admit that the 40 times higher suicide rate in natal females (yes, 40 times higher) in the Swedish study (Dheine, et al, 2011) who had "top surgeries" 10 to 20 years prior, is a red flag and warning for long term satisfaction for individuals who altered their bodies to appear as the opposite sex. They de-platform the regretters, desistors and detransitioners. They vilify the ex-wives, silencing us. For a quite intelligent live stream with references to the studies:
Activist suggests some kind of moral or higher cause for humanity where in this instance PR may more accurately describe the actors or agents like many other industries with destructive outcomes like tobacco or oil saving face for the industry/company is part of the remit and how wages are earned for the PR executives and kudos for sycophantic minions.
You're asking exactly the right question: Why wouldn't trans activists who are truly concerned about gender dysphoric/trans-identifying children want to have the best possible psychological and physical care? This should be of utmost importance. The fact that this is not the case in 99% of these activists reveals that their intentions and motivations are not genuine.
What's horrible about this is that this blind ideology will destroy children's bodies:
Unfortunately there is a great deal of ideological claptrap in much of feminism that has contributed substantially to the problem.
Fairly decent article over at RLS that acknowledges those "contributions" before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by laying the bulk of the blame at the feet of the scapegoat of postmodernism:
Think the roots of the problem go rather deeper than that, and which condemn much of society -- on virtually all sides of the transgender clusterfuck -- for pervasive scientific illiteracy:
Oh yes, scientific illiteracy definitely plays a huge role - "science" (TM) is certainly not what it used to be, given that institutions have long been ideologically captured and won't even accept the material reality in front of their eyes.
Which makes all of this all the more flabbergasting and dramatic: We are denying basic biological facts. We are telling kids you can "change your sex", which is beyond unscientific. And we are denying the most fundamental fact of all (I, for one, cannot think of something more fundamental), namely the sexual dimorphism of human nature. Male + female = offspring. That's it.
And my articles on the corruption of various Statistics departments -- including New Zealand's, and, sadly, Canada's own -- and on, more generally, the increasing prevalence of outright Lysenkoism
But quite agree with your comments about "change your sex" -- a particularly odious and egregious "Big Lie". "Not through me", as Solzhenitsyn put it.
IF we were to redefine sex so reproductive ability wasn't an essential trait -- as too many are clearly trying to do -- THEN, sure, change your genitalia, change your sex. But much of biology, if not all of it, is based on understanding evolution, a central or essential element of which is, of course, reproduction.
People aren't obliged to reproduce, of course. But to trick autistic and dysphoric children into thinking that mangling their genitalia turns them into the opposite sex has to qualify as a medical scandal of the first water, a crime of the century. Bunch of "doctors" should lose their licenses, if not be strung up by their nuts and left to twist in the wind.
Likewise agree with your comments about sexual dimorphism. ICYMI, very good article here -- even just the abstract and introduction -- on how the evolution of that dimorphism goes back some billion years to two fundamentally and profoundly different types of gametes:
But they do know. If they were truly operating in a parallel truth-universe, they'd be like "come and see all the gender affirming surgeries we are doing on minors!"
They don't want us to see because they already know what they are doing is wrong. This is truly a case where it is not stupidity. It's malice.
I agree. I think there are some people who really are just genuinely stupid, but the most aggressive pushers of this ideology know what they're doing: they know what they want and how to get it. Of course, sometimes what they want is as simple as a socially and culturally approved cudgel to beat people (usually women) with, but a goal's a goal.
Talk about virtuous lies: I read Freddie DeBoer’s post about his position on trans. He accepts all the lies, assumes there are no or fewer harms than claimed, and dismisses any concerns about medicalizing children. I am continually astonished at those who can “see through” other issues but who will not take a closer look at this. I’ve also noticed that the smart people who saw through crypto as a scam are likewise tweeting about trans genocide. Disappointing. Could be that identity politics (as in, an identity group is threatened, man the ramparts!) is just too powerful for those on the left who otherwise pride themselves on their discernment skills.
The reason is that he has "trans" friends and family members. To acknowledge it's a sham carries to great a social cost to him. Notice he now has a policy of no comments on posts related to the subject - he knows the commenters' points are too good to allow others (or himself) to read.
We’re failing to address the complete medicalization and of life. we seem to ardently gravitate towards threshold life changes, birth, death and now puberty.
For those too young to remember, time to enlist Rosey Grier, former pro football player and minister, in the fight to protect children. According to a web search, he's still alive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0AZ_fKcWME
TOTALLY! I use Rosey Grier as an example all the time. By today's rules he'd be "non binary" but the fact is he was a very masculine athlete who enjoyed needlepoint and that was that.
I don't remember that episode but now I'm going to look for it. War has many fronts and as far as I know, tiktok has been overrun by the T cult troops. Libs of TikTok seems to be aimed at adults (necessary), but we need someone who can aim a message at the children. We need to go where the children go. Ridding K-12 of the T cult is great, but the children will still be on social media. I'm thinking the beautiful and brilliant Casey DeSantis would be an obvious choice to develop a plan to target children with a positive message on tiktok and other social media.
I don’t think the message would be well received coming from a Republican governor’s wife. It will be as ineffectual as Nancy Reagan’s “just say no.” The best people to speak to young people considering this route would be detransitioners or desisters who have gone down the road a bit and experienced the pitfalls first-hand. I don’t want to put any pressure on them as they’ve been through enough, but they are our best hope at getting through to the young people who are hypnotized by Tic-Tok.
I didn't mean to suggest she should be the public face, but instead she would be the organizer. She knows media. I also believe there needs to be messaging out there that shows young people that there are many who do/don't conform to sex stereotypes, but they accept themselves and are accepted by others.
Brings to mind other times and places in which virtuous lies were justified: the Soviet regime was so sure its lies were virtuous that its main organ was named Pravda, or “Truth.”
Kinda think that women -- in general -- are, to a not inconsiderable extent, the authors of their own misfortunes in this transgender clusterfuck.
Biology offers a way off the horns of their dilemma, but most apparently reject the proffered solution because it doesn't comport with their vanities or their preconceptions.
You are talking BS but like your misogynist brethren you blame women and feminists for the actions of disordered, misogynist, porn-sick male fetishists. The male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists who are the primary funders, promoters, and beneficiaries of this pernicious trans movement--along w/ some insufferable homo men as well-- have bullied their way into women's spaces and orgs. And there are some women who call themselves feminists--mostly those 'academic feminists'-- who do not represent all feminists or women's rights advocates or liberationists and certainly not the radical feminists and lesbian feminists who have been the most vehement against these male perverts. It is the radical feminists and lesbian feminists who have been pushing back on these disgusting male sexual fetishists w/ their pornified parodies of women for decades. Janice Raymond, a lesbian feminist professor at the U of Mass, wrote her book, The Transsexual Empire, in 1979, calling out the danger of 'trans' to women. And they have continued to push back on the 'trans' BS and have been bullied, threatened, de-platformed, and attacked for doing so.
Why have these men only "bullied their way into" feminist organizations so much more effectively than other organizations? Why does every poll show greater support for transgender ideology among women than among men? Why are mothers more likely to trans their children than men are? I don't know exactly what the answers to these questions are, but asking them is not misogyny (just like questioning the trans movement isn't evidence of a phobia).
You are literally commenting on a site where feminists and other women are calling out and pushing back on the trans lunacy. There are feminists who have never accepted this male fetishism and I focus on those women as they are feminists who center women. Male fetishists (troons) who have inserted themselves into women's orgs and call themselves feminists are delusional, disordered predators b/c no decent man would do that. And any woman who would countenance such behavior should be ashamed of themselves as they are no supporter of women.
I didn't say there were no women or feminists who oppose gender nonsense (although conservative women are better about it). Only that a great number are agreeable with it, especially those in nominally feminist institutions.
But y'all seem rather reluctant to consider how and what feminism has contributed to the transgender clusterfuck. "gender" is -- to a large extent -- the creation, if not the Frankensteinian monster, of feminism.
It is the monster of male fetishism and women are not responsible for disordered men's sexual fetishes and paraphilias--they are responsible for their delusions and their pervy behavior--they have to take responsibility for themselves.
Good questions -- the answers to which aren't particularly flattering to either women or feminism in general. The former generally not well-served by the latter.
ICYMI, a rather brilliant essay on the topic by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico, the link to which Colin Wright had tweeted several years ago:
Much of feminism has, rather sadly, been corrupted by a great deal of anti-scientific and postmodernist claptrap. Methinks that Eliza might find it useful or profitable to promote a discussion on the topic -- even if it may, at least in the short term, jeopardize the buttering of her own bread ...
That's the rot at the heart of much of feminism -- 23 "sects", according to Wikipedia, at each other's throats over ideological claptrap, much of it motivated by putting feelings before facts -- see Dale.
A recent case in point being the rather unedifying spectacle, a cat fight that only needs a mud pit to complete the picture, between the three "tribes" headed by Jane Clare Jones, Posie Parker, and the Sex Matters group (Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce).
A pox on all your houses -- "when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers"
I left replies to her Tweet re: SEGM, Finland & Sweden, Tavistock, the APA’s retraction. Looks like the evidence is starting to stack up that she’s a duplicitous liar trying to bury the truth.
What kind of disgusting person tries to hide the truth about mutilating children and mentally ill people?
I always say that true "transphobia" (which should perhaps be renamed as "mistransia" like misandria and misogyny) is precisely that: treating gender non-conforming individuals who are distressed about their place in society (they have no place in some circles, and are not particularly welcome by many, as people tend to be made uncomfortable by sexual ambiguity for some reason that I wish was scientifically researched), as if their bodies were legitimate experimental grounds. Treating gender non-conforming individuals, many of whom are gay/lesbian/bi, as if their long-term health was less important than that of gender-conforming individuals. Treating gender non-conforming individuals' mental health as messed up to begin with, as so flawed, that they cannot benefit from regular talk therapy to find ways to live proudly and well as gender non-conforming individuals by focusing on the world and not on themselves, and focusing on being persons who do things, as opposed to persons who are things... Treating gender non-conforming individuals as if their endocrine systems were not as complex and as delicate as that of all other individuals. As if their ovaries, their testes, their uteruses, their breasts, their penises, the muscle tissue in their arms or legs, parts of their colons, etc., were harvestable/cuttable/extractable, based on their "self-diagnosis" or self-expressed desires, without any consideration for their knowledge or lack thereof, of the consequences of these interventions. Treating them as if their reproduction did not matter at all, as if their becoming sterilized were no big deal...
That is indeed, mistransia: the hatred of gender non-conforming individuals whose personhood and humanity is dismissed, disrespected and instrumentalized the moment they are cast as "trans".
This is so well said and such an interesting, insightful way of looking at this. It reminds me of the interview on the “Gender: A Wider Lens” podcast with the Dutch researchers who were discussing part of the Dutch Protocol used on kids. The hosts later talk about how shockingly dismissive the Dutch researchers were of all the mental health problems and life struggles their research participants continued to have after medical treatments. They had an attitude of, “Well, OF COURSE they’re still going to struggle and be unhappy” because the gender nonconformity and the gender confusion made these young people into something so different from everyone else that, well, what could you expect? So even the “gold standard” of this care seems predicated on a presupposition that these children are incapable of having normal lives with normal relationships
Yes, exactly! I listened to that episode as well, and to sasha and stella's comments afterwards. I think that many doctors do and recommend things to gender non-conforming individuals that they would never consider recommending to gender-conforming individuals, whom they think of as "normal". Nothing sounds more patronizing, dismissive and disrespectful than so-called "gender affirming care". Total mistransia!
"People tend to be made uncomfortable by sexual ambiguity." Yes! I will go even further and state most people are bothered by those whose appearance isn't ambiguous, but whose behavior and actions don't conform strictly to sex stereotypes. I have a drawer full of the T-shirts as I'm middle-age and an average heterosexual female with what I like to say is a bull-dyke brain. I know males are stronger, just as I know women are generally more nurturing and accommodating, but I also know the female brain works just as well as the male brain. More upper body strength does not make a better functioning brain any more than the ability to gestate makes a better brain. I'm very direct and confident in my ability to problem solve, and this sometimes turns into nasty encounters, such as when I I was starting to change a flat on my car in a restaurant parking lot when a man offered to "help" and I thanked him very politely and told him I prefer to change the tire myself. Apparently, he wasn't really offering to "help" because I had only one correct response as he started screaming at me and calling me names to the point the patrons in the restaurant could hear him. Then there's the time I picked up an appliance for my sister and was getting ready to offload when the carpenter working on her house came out and literally started directing me on how I was going to take the appliance off the truck. I told him I had another way I was removing the appliance and he started screaming at me. My truck, my rules, is apparently unacceptable. My sister had never seen what I sometimes go through and she was just staring at him in amazement. Then there's the countless times a guy wants to give me a "lesson" about something, not knowing anything about my knowledge level, and when I politely (I'm always polite and always thank for the offer) decline the lesson, I often get a nasty reaction from not just the man, but often women nearby. I believe if I looked "butch," this would not be a problem. Many people seem to need life simplified, with very strict appearance and role conformity. I can deal with the hostility but If I was a child today, the T lunatics would be chasing me with a needle full of testosterone and a scalpel to cut off any female parts. I have to shout out to those men who've offered help on occasion, without devolving into a screaming lunatic when I let them know I've got whatever I'm working on under control. Shout out to those women who don't intervene to tell me to "let him do it." My truck, my rules.
And the "surprise" is worse--expecting a person to behave one way (you don't look butch, so you're expected to behave "feminine", which means, you know, accepting if not outright asking for male assistance with certain "masculine" tasks) and having them behave as if they were donning traits of the opposite sex is jarring for many, and upsetting for some. I truly believe that there is some "knee-jerk" reaction regarding sexual/gender ambiguity that makes people uncomfortable, some part of our brain that categorizes individuals according to their sex/appearance (appearance includes other traits, obviously), that doesn't respond well to ambiguity or unexpectedness in these very basic categories of male/female, masculine/feminine. It explains why some cultures, with very rigid gender norms, create "third" categories for feminine men, because once they're in that category, they have a proper place and the social order is maintained... I have looked for scientific articles about this subject but it doesn't appear to be something that evolutionary scientists, sexologists, biologists, neurologistis or psychologists have looked into...
"Transphobia" : Fear of the Trans mob.
I don't care which sex people are, what their sexual orientation is. I don't want people's mental health problems of sexual or any other variety forced on me - at work, at school, everywhere. It's none of my business. I'm not interested in your Gender Jesus; I don't believe GJ, and I'm not interested in joining the church/cult. Just leave me alone.
There's no such thing as a "natal" female, just as there are no "natal" males, implying one can actually change sex beyond birth. There are females and males and some who cross-dress to try and appear as the opposite sex, and some who mutilate their bodies and take puberty blockers and hormones, but their sex has not changed. There's no such thing as "trans" kids or "transmasculine" kids. There are a few children, mostly male, with mental health problems (gender dysphoria) and there are children influenced by a social contagion and/or influenced by adults who will use and abuse them to make money.
Contrary to the profoundly anti-scientific dogma peddled by most feminists, sex is NOT "immutable" 🙄.
To have sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither are, ipso facto, sexLESS. More particularly, dysphoric children who have their gonads removed are turned into sexless eunuchs.
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
"It's always the feminists." There are many "waves" of feminism and I'm going to say most older feminists do not support this dogma. According to a 2019 gallup poll, 64% of men and 79% of women support the trans dogma, so that would be "most" men. Fortunately support dropped a bit in the 2021 poll, down to 57% and 74%, respectively. By the above polls, that would mean this old feminist is up against a majority of MEN and WOMEN who support this drivel. But the old feminists always knew we should never rest and we were right.
"feminists" were apparently the early adopters of the concept of gender if not one of its progenitors.
Some merit in the concept of gender as personalities and personality types by sex which more sensible feminists have promoted:
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
But most of the rest seems little more than quite unscientific if not anti-scientific claptrap. See "Professing Feminism":
https://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2009/07/27/professing-feminism-noh/
Really? What about the men with their sexualized cross-dressing and sexual fetishes over the centuries? I consider the cross-dressing and sexual fetishes in the realm of "gender." SOME women saw opportunity and joined the party because, well, some women are perverts just as some men are perverts. Judith Butler is one. The younger women I've talked to who say they support this drivel DO NOT consider themselves feminists, although no doubt some others do. As is usual, they rush to protect the worst men and attack "feminists." The goal of misogynists (both male and female misogynists) back in the day was to attack any female who stepped out of line and professed support for opportunity and self-determination for women. They made feminism a dirty word, just like the #MeToo movement made "men" a dirty word. I like rainbows but now that has been co-opted by the T cult, just as the word feminism has been co-opted by the Progressives. The bottom line from the poll is a majority of men and women support the T cult, although there are more females, as I would expect because females are generally more accommodating. Going back and forth over who is worse is pointless.
Sure, there have been plenty of gender-non-conforming individuals over the centuries.
But as a philosophy and an ideology -- Butler being the cuckoo in the nest, that seems fairly recent. You might take a gander at Colin Wright's synopsis in a tweet, and my various comments on a post on the topic at his Substack:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1234040036091236352
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/who-or-what-is-to-blame-for-gender/comment/13262777
You might take a gander at feminist Janice Raymond's paper from 1979, The Transsexual Empire. https://janiceraymond.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/The%20Transsexual%20Empire.pdf
The doomsday cult is definitely contributing to the problem and no doubt driving some females to annihilate their reproductive capability rather than doom a child to a dystopian future. There are also those non-conforming girls and boys who seem to feel pressured to conform their bodies to fit a stereotype.
Activists so often frame this as “the next civil rights movement.” Yet within the civil rights movement, activists wanted as much sunlight as possible on medical mistreatment of POC and sexual minorities, whether it was exposing and looking head-on at the “father of gynecology” J. Marion Sims’ brutal experimental surgeries on enslaved women to the poor medical treatment in segregated hospitals during Jim Crow or demanding better research and medical care for HIV/AIDS in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
I have tried for a long to put myself in the shoes of one of these clinicians, trying to understand their motivations and steelmanning their arguments to make sure I wasn't missing something myself. Ultimately I came up empty-handed.
Some are clearly true believers, but I suspect this number is actually pretty small. Most doctors aren't silly enough to actually buy into this stuff after thinking seriously about it. They are a disproportionately influential group, however.
Others who go along with it seem not to think about it too deeply. Doctors usually aren't dumb but as a profession we are good at following orders. Having a shiny, neat looking protocol with "best practices" and "gold standards" etc is increasingly used as a substitute for good old fashioned thinking. This tendency is probably reinforced by the kids who come in and seem to show initial improvement (perhaps from the attention, etc etc), as well as family pressure in some cases. If I prescribe sertraline to someone with severe panic attacks and they really do seem to get better (at least for a while), it can be difficult to change course when it seems like you are helping your patient.
My guess is that the majority of physicians don't care about the issue at all for various reasons, including just not wanting to get involved in a publicly controversial fight like this. Those who do care about it see that their options for expressing their thoughts are limited.
What the allies and cross-sex ideating individuals fail to recognize is the utter narcissism they express when demanding to be recognized as something they are not. They also do not recognize the contradictions in the 73 "identities" promoted, while at the same time promoting non-science based concepts denying basic biology. They will not admit that the 40 times higher suicide rate in natal females (yes, 40 times higher) in the Swedish study (Dheine, et al, 2011) who had "top surgeries" 10 to 20 years prior, is a red flag and warning for long term satisfaction for individuals who altered their bodies to appear as the opposite sex. They de-platform the regretters, desistors and detransitioners. They vilify the ex-wives, silencing us. For a quite intelligent live stream with references to the studies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CptU1MGq6zA&t=1s
Activist suggests some kind of moral or higher cause for humanity where in this instance PR may more accurately describe the actors or agents like many other industries with destructive outcomes like tobacco or oil saving face for the industry/company is part of the remit and how wages are earned for the PR executives and kudos for sycophantic minions.
You're asking exactly the right question: Why wouldn't trans activists who are truly concerned about gender dysphoric/trans-identifying children want to have the best possible psychological and physical care? This should be of utmost importance. The fact that this is not the case in 99% of these activists reveals that their intentions and motivations are not genuine.
What's horrible about this is that this blind ideology will destroy children's bodies:
https://twoplustwo.substack.com/p/why-are-so-many-children-declaring
Unfortunately there is a great deal of ideological claptrap in much of feminism that has contributed substantially to the problem.
Fairly decent article over at RLS that acknowledges those "contributions" before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by laying the bulk of the blame at the feet of the scapegoat of postmodernism:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/who-or-what-is-to-blame-for-gender
Think the roots of the problem go rather deeper than that, and which condemn much of society -- on virtually all sides of the transgender clusterfuck -- for pervasive scientific illiteracy:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
Oh yes, scientific illiteracy definitely plays a huge role - "science" (TM) is certainly not what it used to be, given that institutions have long been ideologically captured and won't even accept the material reality in front of their eyes.
Which makes all of this all the more flabbergasting and dramatic: We are denying basic biological facts. We are telling kids you can "change your sex", which is beyond unscientific. And we are denying the most fundamental fact of all (I, for one, cannot think of something more fundamental), namely the sexual dimorphism of human nature. Male + female = offspring. That's it.
"ideologically captured 'science' ", indeed.
ICYMI, a recent story from New Zealand by Dawkins on the corruption of science there by "other ways of knowing (woo)":
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-im-sticking-up-for-science/
And my articles on the corruption of various Statistics departments -- including New Zealand's, and, sadly, Canada's own -- and on, more generally, the increasing prevalence of outright Lysenkoism
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/statistics-departments-corrupted
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
But quite agree with your comments about "change your sex" -- a particularly odious and egregious "Big Lie". "Not through me", as Solzhenitsyn put it.
IF we were to redefine sex so reproductive ability wasn't an essential trait -- as too many are clearly trying to do -- THEN, sure, change your genitalia, change your sex. But much of biology, if not all of it, is based on understanding evolution, a central or essential element of which is, of course, reproduction.
People aren't obliged to reproduce, of course. But to trick autistic and dysphoric children into thinking that mangling their genitalia turns them into the opposite sex has to qualify as a medical scandal of the first water, a crime of the century. Bunch of "doctors" should lose their licenses, if not be strung up by their nuts and left to twist in the wind.
Likewise agree with your comments about sexual dimorphism. ICYMI, very good article here -- even just the abstract and introduction -- on how the evolution of that dimorphism goes back some billion years to two fundamentally and profoundly different types of gametes:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
But they do know. If they were truly operating in a parallel truth-universe, they'd be like "come and see all the gender affirming surgeries we are doing on minors!"
They don't want us to see because they already know what they are doing is wrong. This is truly a case where it is not stupidity. It's malice.
I agree. I think there are some people who really are just genuinely stupid, but the most aggressive pushers of this ideology know what they're doing: they know what they want and how to get it. Of course, sometimes what they want is as simple as a socially and culturally approved cudgel to beat people (usually women) with, but a goal's a goal.
Talk about virtuous lies: I read Freddie DeBoer’s post about his position on trans. He accepts all the lies, assumes there are no or fewer harms than claimed, and dismisses any concerns about medicalizing children. I am continually astonished at those who can “see through” other issues but who will not take a closer look at this. I’ve also noticed that the smart people who saw through crypto as a scam are likewise tweeting about trans genocide. Disappointing. Could be that identity politics (as in, an identity group is threatened, man the ramparts!) is just too powerful for those on the left who otherwise pride themselves on their discernment skills.
The reason is that he has "trans" friends and family members. To acknowledge it's a sham carries to great a social cost to him. Notice he now has a policy of no comments on posts related to the subject - he knows the commenters' points are too good to allow others (or himself) to read.
We’re failing to address the complete medicalization and of life. we seem to ardently gravitate towards threshold life changes, birth, death and now puberty.
I really appreciated the nuance of this piece.
For those too young to remember, time to enlist Rosey Grier, former pro football player and minister, in the fight to protect children. According to a web search, he's still alive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0AZ_fKcWME
TOTALLY! I use Rosey Grier as an example all the time. By today's rules he'd be "non binary" but the fact is he was a very masculine athlete who enjoyed needlepoint and that was that.
Do you recall the Brady Bunch episode where Rosie Grier tells Peter it's okay to be in the Glee Club?
I don't remember that episode but now I'm going to look for it. War has many fronts and as far as I know, tiktok has been overrun by the T cult troops. Libs of TikTok seems to be aimed at adults (necessary), but we need someone who can aim a message at the children. We need to go where the children go. Ridding K-12 of the T cult is great, but the children will still be on social media. I'm thinking the beautiful and brilliant Casey DeSantis would be an obvious choice to develop a plan to target children with a positive message on tiktok and other social media.
I don’t think the message would be well received coming from a Republican governor’s wife. It will be as ineffectual as Nancy Reagan’s “just say no.” The best people to speak to young people considering this route would be detransitioners or desisters who have gone down the road a bit and experienced the pitfalls first-hand. I don’t want to put any pressure on them as they’ve been through enough, but they are our best hope at getting through to the young people who are hypnotized by Tic-Tok.
I didn't mean to suggest she should be the public face, but instead she would be the organizer. She knows media. I also believe there needs to be messaging out there that shows young people that there are many who do/don't conform to sex stereotypes, but they accept themselves and are accepted by others.
brilliantly written.
Thank you for this essay Eliza!
Brings to mind other times and places in which virtuous lies were justified: the Soviet regime was so sure its lies were virtuous that its main organ was named Pravda, or “Truth.”
Kinda think that women -- in general -- are, to a not inconsiderable extent, the authors of their own misfortunes in this transgender clusterfuck.
Biology offers a way off the horns of their dilemma, but most apparently reject the proffered solution because it doesn't comport with their vanities or their preconceptions.
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
You are talking BS but like your misogynist brethren you blame women and feminists for the actions of disordered, misogynist, porn-sick male fetishists. The male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists who are the primary funders, promoters, and beneficiaries of this pernicious trans movement--along w/ some insufferable homo men as well-- have bullied their way into women's spaces and orgs. And there are some women who call themselves feminists--mostly those 'academic feminists'-- who do not represent all feminists or women's rights advocates or liberationists and certainly not the radical feminists and lesbian feminists who have been the most vehement against these male perverts. It is the radical feminists and lesbian feminists who have been pushing back on these disgusting male sexual fetishists w/ their pornified parodies of women for decades. Janice Raymond, a lesbian feminist professor at the U of Mass, wrote her book, The Transsexual Empire, in 1979, calling out the danger of 'trans' to women. And they have continued to push back on the 'trans' BS and have been bullied, threatened, de-platformed, and attacked for doing so.
Why have these men only "bullied their way into" feminist organizations so much more effectively than other organizations? Why does every poll show greater support for transgender ideology among women than among men? Why are mothers more likely to trans their children than men are? I don't know exactly what the answers to these questions are, but asking them is not misogyny (just like questioning the trans movement isn't evidence of a phobia).
You are literally commenting on a site where feminists and other women are calling out and pushing back on the trans lunacy. There are feminists who have never accepted this male fetishism and I focus on those women as they are feminists who center women. Male fetishists (troons) who have inserted themselves into women's orgs and call themselves feminists are delusional, disordered predators b/c no decent man would do that. And any woman who would countenance such behavior should be ashamed of themselves as they are no supporter of women.
I didn't say there were no women or feminists who oppose gender nonsense (although conservative women are better about it). Only that a great number are agreeable with it, especially those in nominally feminist institutions.
Thank you for the clarification Simon.
Good for you.
But y'all seem rather reluctant to consider how and what feminism has contributed to the transgender clusterfuck. "gender" is -- to a large extent -- the creation, if not the Frankensteinian monster, of feminism.
Motes and beams, pots and kettles.
It is the monster of male fetishism and women are not responsible for disordered men's sexual fetishes and paraphilias--they are responsible for their delusions and their pervy behavior--they have to take responsibility for themselves.
Anyone who aids fetishist men to gain access to vulnerable women is also responsible for their own behavior. Do you agree?
Good questions -- the answers to which aren't particularly flattering to either women or feminism in general. The former generally not well-served by the latter.
ICYMI, a rather brilliant essay on the topic by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico, the link to which Colin Wright had tweeted several years ago:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
Much of feminism has, rather sadly, been corrupted by a great deal of anti-scientific and postmodernist claptrap. Methinks that Eliza might find it useful or profitable to promote a discussion on the topic -- even if it may, at least in the short term, jeopardize the buttering of her own bread ...
🙄 "misogynist" and "troll" seem to be go-to replacements for playing the race card these days, particularly among various feminists.
And "BS"? You think Helen Dale is a "misogynist"? She said pretty much exactly what I've said in her review of Perry's recent book:
" ... Cordelia Fine, a philosopher now notorious for trying to edit science to fit in with feminism."
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/feminising-feminism/
That's the rot at the heart of much of feminism -- 23 "sects", according to Wikipedia, at each other's throats over ideological claptrap, much of it motivated by putting feelings before facts -- see Dale.
A recent case in point being the rather unedifying spectacle, a cat fight that only needs a mud pit to complete the picture, between the three "tribes" headed by Jane Clare Jones, Posie Parker, and the Sex Matters group (Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce).
A pox on all your houses -- "when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers"
Thank you for the reveal.
As what? Someone not particularly impressed by much of feminist ideology?
Over 20 different "sects" -- at last count, bit of a joke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies#Movements_and_ideologies
Seems like you might want to be a bit more critical of it yourself ...
I left replies to her Tweet re: SEGM, Finland & Sweden, Tavistock, the APA’s retraction. Looks like the evidence is starting to stack up that she’s a duplicitous liar trying to bury the truth.
What kind of disgusting person tries to hide the truth about mutilating children and mentally ill people?