We spend a lot of time talking about women, men, men who identify as women, and why all of this matters. There was no way for me to write that sentence that wouldn’t piss someone off. So let’s unload the language. Let's talk about cats and dogs instead.
You are giving me flashbacks to the wretched hour-plus in 2015 when I had to sit through a fully staged children’s theater production about a dog princess named Chou-Chou who “always felt like a cat on the inside.”
I also find myself exhausted by the Diogenes-like demands of my descriptions of patently obvious things that everyone knows, agreed on, and had always known and agreed on because of their total obviousness until this nonsense came along.
Like if I was asked to describe a car and said something like "a metal passenger vehicle that's powered by gas or electricity and has four tires" and they took a tire off a car or showed me a new solar-powered car to say "Ha! There actually is no such thing as a car then!" - even though every sane person would have no trouble maintaining their understanding of what a car is.
Or saying for example, that humans breathe air, but then having someone demand the exact parts-per-million of each element or gas that makes up what we breathe, and casting doubt on the first claim because the average layman doesn't have the answer or that there are minor variations from place to place in the way there are minor variations from woman to woman
It's all such a navel-gazing nonsensical waste of time from overprivileged narcissists.
What's also bewildering is that their whole ideology undercuts their own position as well - how could one transition from one to the other without a first definition of each category. Sure they identify based on traits (men are boorish Ken dolls and women are Barbies with spinny skirts), but in order to have a "trans" identity, they must be moving from one sex category to the other. What's a transitioning person doing if they don't know what they started out as?
Yes, but what about foxes? Doesn’t their existence (a canine with retractable claws and cat-like eyes and whiskers) prove that cats and dogs are actually on a spectrum? Joking😂
Because it’s a holiday Monday, and I am giving myself a break from all things related to gender ideology, I will just comment that although *I* thoroughly enjoyed this analogy, my three cats narrowed their eyes and snorted derisively at the entire notion. And they were quite right to do so. 😉
All of us who read your articles and comment here are in touch with the outrageousness of the demands of the transgender movement, as follows:
- their destructive influence on children;
- their invasion of women's private spaces;
- their invasion of women's sports;
- their redefinition of what "gender" is, and what "men" and "women" are;
- their special vocabulary which puts their slant on the way we talk;
- their use of cancel culture (shaming, name-calling, etc.) to enforce their ideas.
That short list is enough to make me actively dislike trans people. But the truth is that I don't know any. I have met about four trans people, but only for brief moments -- like the young woman who inspected my home for Section 8 and called herself "Timothy". Is there anyone here who has a loved one who is trans who might give us a different perspective on them?
I recently read a letter to an advice columnist which basically said, "My 23-year-old daughter has 'come out' as non-binary and wishes to be called 'they' and 'them'. I am cooperating, but X relatives are not. What can I do?"
If one of my brothers (I have five) told me he was nonbinary and wanted to be called "they" and "them", I would say, "Sure, when you grow a second head." Is part of my (our) problem that I (we) simply don't know anyone who is trans, and that makes it impossible for me (us) to be sympathetic?
Yesterday I spent time with a 5-yr-old grandson, who asked Nana how I knew that the people who passed by us on bicycles were either men or women, because "some men have long hair, and you can't see inside their clothes". He was right, of course. Over the course of the rest of our bike-hike in a local park, I tried to explain in age-appropriate ways that boys and girls grow up differently, and then I gave clues to cues about those differences, and then we practiced a bit on people who passed by. For children, it's actually not so simple to tell the difference - especially when adults wear face masks (covering up facial structure and/or facial hair), baseball caps that cover balding heads, or wear over-sized shirts and identical shorts, disguising overall physical musculature. Small kids don't know. yet, and don't know what pronouns to learn or use. And teaching them is a balancing act, to be honest, between being factual and avoiding stereotype, even under thee best of circumstances.
Ah, yes. The first paragraph captures the analogy I use when gender ideologists argue that bottom surgery results are no different than the real thing since "there's lots of variation in cis women/men vaginas/penises." Like, no. There's also lots of variation in what a dog can look like, but that doesn't mean it's logical to categorize a cat as a dog. Not just because there's a substantial difference in appearance, but also because dogs and cats are defined and categorized based on much more than JUST appearance.
Of course we'd have a conflict!
FWIW I'd just like to say that I have always been unashamedly pro-feline...😉💅
You are giving me flashbacks to the wretched hour-plus in 2015 when I had to sit through a fully staged children’s theater production about a dog princess named Chou-Chou who “always felt like a cat on the inside.”
I also find myself exhausted by the Diogenes-like demands of my descriptions of patently obvious things that everyone knows, agreed on, and had always known and agreed on because of their total obviousness until this nonsense came along.
Like if I was asked to describe a car and said something like "a metal passenger vehicle that's powered by gas or electricity and has four tires" and they took a tire off a car or showed me a new solar-powered car to say "Ha! There actually is no such thing as a car then!" - even though every sane person would have no trouble maintaining their understanding of what a car is.
Or saying for example, that humans breathe air, but then having someone demand the exact parts-per-million of each element or gas that makes up what we breathe, and casting doubt on the first claim because the average layman doesn't have the answer or that there are minor variations from place to place in the way there are minor variations from woman to woman
It's all such a navel-gazing nonsensical waste of time from overprivileged narcissists.
What's also bewildering is that their whole ideology undercuts their own position as well - how could one transition from one to the other without a first definition of each category. Sure they identify based on traits (men are boorish Ken dolls and women are Barbies with spinny skirts), but in order to have a "trans" identity, they must be moving from one sex category to the other. What's a transitioning person doing if they don't know what they started out as?
Yes, but what about foxes? Doesn’t their existence (a canine with retractable claws and cat-like eyes and whiskers) prove that cats and dogs are actually on a spectrum? Joking😂
Because it’s a holiday Monday, and I am giving myself a break from all things related to gender ideology, I will just comment that although *I* thoroughly enjoyed this analogy, my three cats narrowed their eyes and snorted derisively at the entire notion. And they were quite right to do so. 😉
All of us who read your articles and comment here are in touch with the outrageousness of the demands of the transgender movement, as follows:
- their destructive influence on children;
- their invasion of women's private spaces;
- their invasion of women's sports;
- their redefinition of what "gender" is, and what "men" and "women" are;
- their special vocabulary which puts their slant on the way we talk;
- their use of cancel culture (shaming, name-calling, etc.) to enforce their ideas.
That short list is enough to make me actively dislike trans people. But the truth is that I don't know any. I have met about four trans people, but only for brief moments -- like the young woman who inspected my home for Section 8 and called herself "Timothy". Is there anyone here who has a loved one who is trans who might give us a different perspective on them?
I recently read a letter to an advice columnist which basically said, "My 23-year-old daughter has 'come out' as non-binary and wishes to be called 'they' and 'them'. I am cooperating, but X relatives are not. What can I do?"
If one of my brothers (I have five) told me he was nonbinary and wanted to be called "they" and "them", I would say, "Sure, when you grow a second head." Is part of my (our) problem that I (we) simply don't know anyone who is trans, and that makes it impossible for me (us) to be sympathetic?
This is top notch. It's so obvious put in these terms
Yesterday I spent time with a 5-yr-old grandson, who asked Nana how I knew that the people who passed by us on bicycles were either men or women, because "some men have long hair, and you can't see inside their clothes". He was right, of course. Over the course of the rest of our bike-hike in a local park, I tried to explain in age-appropriate ways that boys and girls grow up differently, and then I gave clues to cues about those differences, and then we practiced a bit on people who passed by. For children, it's actually not so simple to tell the difference - especially when adults wear face masks (covering up facial structure and/or facial hair), baseball caps that cover balding heads, or wear over-sized shirts and identical shorts, disguising overall physical musculature. Small kids don't know. yet, and don't know what pronouns to learn or use. And teaching them is a balancing act, to be honest, between being factual and avoiding stereotype, even under thee best of circumstances.
Ah, yes. The first paragraph captures the analogy I use when gender ideologists argue that bottom surgery results are no different than the real thing since "there's lots of variation in cis women/men vaginas/penises." Like, no. There's also lots of variation in what a dog can look like, but that doesn't mean it's logical to categorize a cat as a dog. Not just because there's a substantial difference in appearance, but also because dogs and cats are defined and categorized based on much more than JUST appearance.