My latest for Genspect, on infantilization in trans spaces: Spend any time whatsoever in trans spaces and one of the first things you’ll notice is the rampant infantilization. There are grown adults snuggling with cuddly toys and blaming every kind of negative emotion and social transgression on going through “second puberty” (sorry: still not a thing!). They try to recreate the childhoods and rites of passage they never experienced: giggly sleepovers, bubble-gum pink, sparkly lipgloss and painted nails, truth or dare, learning how to shave and tie ties. They cling to childish hobbies and interests, like Pokémon or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or My Little Ponies, or overidentify with the underage aesthetics of anime. Middle-aged men dress up like schoolgirls, tugging frilly knee socks up over their bony joints and tying bows in their hair.
So fascinating how a clear delusional disorder can become normalized by those afraid to state the obvious. The power of the fringe to mold supposed intelligent minds to see up as down, wrong is right is indeed through the looking glass in this day and age!
Great piece. Like so much in gender ideology, "baby trans" idea may also have been borrowed from earlier lesbian culture (maybe male gay culture too, I don't know). I don't know if it's still used these days, but I recall the phrase "baby dyke" used in lesbian spaces in the past. But from what I observed in people I knew, young newly-out lesbians in their 20s or late teens affectionately referenced to in this way (and who sometimes referred to themselves this way) were not inducted into a cult and were certainly not infantilized. They were just seen as young and unused to being out as lesbians in a mostly-straight world, who probably had things to learn as they sometimes awkwardly entered lesbian spaces and learned new cultural customs and rules. They were not treated as children and did not act like children.
In the rest of the article: “Happiness can be found only through submission to the mystery of gender, which one is unfit to judge.” I think this is also how the capture of “allies” occurs - their suspension of disbelief is fortified by submission to this “mystery”. It really is religious, eh?
This article gives an excellent analysis of why many trans identified activists and healthcare providers desperately cling to the idea that children can and should be sent through a medicalized transition instead of normal puberty. Prior to medically transitioning as adults, these people longed to be the other sex. After transitioning, however, they still long for something they cannot have, which is to have transitioned before puberty. The core problem is the resistance against accepting limitations imposed by biology---what they are trying to do is impossible at any age.
I came to this issue indirectly - from 35+ years of the study of government propaganda operations related to illegal wars and foreign policy operations. What strikes me as profoundly important in all this is that we are quite clearly being "gaslighted" by the big boys - by Western oligarchy. I dare say you know you are being "gaslighted" when All of Academia, All of MSM, All the big NGO's, All of the Fortune 500 corporations, All Western governments, most if not All of the various professional organizations and licensing bodies in medicine and helping professions, our civil services, and smaller entities like our school boards and even my local YMCA - are ALL SINGING THE SAME SONG - and that song is irrational, illogical, anti-science, has no standing in material reality, and essentially amounts to a quasi-relious scarification cult that valorizes child sacrifice. That is gaslighting of the highest order no doubt.
The same Western oligarchy that can openly state that willfully bringing about the deaths of a half-a-million Iraqi children was - quote - "worth it" - certainly isn't promoting this agenda because of its concern for the "feelings" of a hodgepodge of autogynephillic males and the increasing numbers of young people struggling with navigating their adolescence in an increasingly mad world.
I have started reading Debbie Hayton's book "Transgender Apostate". The first chapter is a retrospective on her childhood in which she (as a boy) was nearly obsessed with girl's clothing and the idea of being a girl. For some reason, as a boy she was focussed on one item of clothing in particular -- tights -- an item which, true enough, boys and men rarely wear. She believes that she was developing autogynephilia at an early age, but it seems to me that she was too young to be developing what I consider to be a sexual fetish. I would never say this to her, but I don't think she really knows why she had gender dysphoria as a child. However, her book is good evidence that for many children it is a real thing. Among other things, she can't trace her obsession with being a girl to any particular event. As an anti-trans activist who sometimes feels contempt for trans people because of their bad behavior (shaming people who don't agree with them; influencing children to increase their numbers; trying to tell people how to talk; pushing their way into women's spaces; etc.), Hayton's book is a reminder that gender dysphoria is a real thing for a lot of people, and even for children, and that is helping me keep my contempt under control. It reminds me that I am fighting transgender ideology, and not transgender people themselves.
Hayton herself is against transgender ideology. She freely admits that she is a man who feels like a woman, and not an actual woman. She demonstrates for us how mature and well-behaved trans people should be acting, instead of the paranoid and childish people on social media that Eliza describes, or the aggressive demonstrators who try to shut down every lecture or conference on the issue, or who falsely claim that society is trying to erase them.
Trans are desperate to shed the (accurate) image of the ugly, hulking crossdresser trying to lure children to topless pool parties. The best way to do this was to paste the innocent faces of children across the front of the movement, and convince everyone that these fragile young kids will most certainly kill themselves if we don't rush them into medical treatment immediately. Drag story hour lets the despicable ogres pose with their grooming targets as if to say "See? I'm smol, too!".
It's quite challenging reading that Daily Mail piece you linked to. There's no ultimate reason to deny an adult (50-something man with seven kids) deciding he's an eight-year-old girl and moving in with "adoptive parents" who are apparently happy to have him live with them and play with their kids and grandkids, then switching to being six to be the youngest to please one of the new siblings who was seven. Is the golden rule being broken? Not as far as we know. Is mental illness real, or an oppressive social construct? If someone says they're happy doing something that seems insane to us, on what grounds are we to judge them insane? What if someone admits they're insane, but doesn't mind? Do people have the right to their insanity?
So fascinating how a clear delusional disorder can become normalized by those afraid to state the obvious. The power of the fringe to mold supposed intelligent minds to see up as down, wrong is right is indeed through the looking glass in this day and age!
Great piece. Like so much in gender ideology, "baby trans" idea may also have been borrowed from earlier lesbian culture (maybe male gay culture too, I don't know). I don't know if it's still used these days, but I recall the phrase "baby dyke" used in lesbian spaces in the past. But from what I observed in people I knew, young newly-out lesbians in their 20s or late teens affectionately referenced to in this way (and who sometimes referred to themselves this way) were not inducted into a cult and were certainly not infantilized. They were just seen as young and unused to being out as lesbians in a mostly-straight world, who probably had things to learn as they sometimes awkwardly entered lesbian spaces and learned new cultural customs and rules. They were not treated as children and did not act like children.
In the rest of the article: “Happiness can be found only through submission to the mystery of gender, which one is unfit to judge.” I think this is also how the capture of “allies” occurs - their suspension of disbelief is fortified by submission to this “mystery”. It really is religious, eh?
This article gives an excellent analysis of why many trans identified activists and healthcare providers desperately cling to the idea that children can and should be sent through a medicalized transition instead of normal puberty. Prior to medically transitioning as adults, these people longed to be the other sex. After transitioning, however, they still long for something they cannot have, which is to have transitioned before puberty. The core problem is the resistance against accepting limitations imposed by biology---what they are trying to do is impossible at any age.
I came to this issue indirectly - from 35+ years of the study of government propaganda operations related to illegal wars and foreign policy operations. What strikes me as profoundly important in all this is that we are quite clearly being "gaslighted" by the big boys - by Western oligarchy. I dare say you know you are being "gaslighted" when All of Academia, All of MSM, All the big NGO's, All of the Fortune 500 corporations, All Western governments, most if not All of the various professional organizations and licensing bodies in medicine and helping professions, our civil services, and smaller entities like our school boards and even my local YMCA - are ALL SINGING THE SAME SONG - and that song is irrational, illogical, anti-science, has no standing in material reality, and essentially amounts to a quasi-relious scarification cult that valorizes child sacrifice. That is gaslighting of the highest order no doubt.
The same Western oligarchy that can openly state that willfully bringing about the deaths of a half-a-million Iraqi children was - quote - "worth it" - certainly isn't promoting this agenda because of its concern for the "feelings" of a hodgepodge of autogynephillic males and the increasing numbers of young people struggling with navigating their adolescence in an increasingly mad world.
I have started reading Debbie Hayton's book "Transgender Apostate". The first chapter is a retrospective on her childhood in which she (as a boy) was nearly obsessed with girl's clothing and the idea of being a girl. For some reason, as a boy she was focussed on one item of clothing in particular -- tights -- an item which, true enough, boys and men rarely wear. She believes that she was developing autogynephilia at an early age, but it seems to me that she was too young to be developing what I consider to be a sexual fetish. I would never say this to her, but I don't think she really knows why she had gender dysphoria as a child. However, her book is good evidence that for many children it is a real thing. Among other things, she can't trace her obsession with being a girl to any particular event. As an anti-trans activist who sometimes feels contempt for trans people because of their bad behavior (shaming people who don't agree with them; influencing children to increase their numbers; trying to tell people how to talk; pushing their way into women's spaces; etc.), Hayton's book is a reminder that gender dysphoria is a real thing for a lot of people, and even for children, and that is helping me keep my contempt under control. It reminds me that I am fighting transgender ideology, and not transgender people themselves.
Hayton herself is against transgender ideology. She freely admits that she is a man who feels like a woman, and not an actual woman. She demonstrates for us how mature and well-behaved trans people should be acting, instead of the paranoid and childish people on social media that Eliza describes, or the aggressive demonstrators who try to shut down every lecture or conference on the issue, or who falsely claim that society is trying to erase them.
Trans are desperate to shed the (accurate) image of the ugly, hulking crossdresser trying to lure children to topless pool parties. The best way to do this was to paste the innocent faces of children across the front of the movement, and convince everyone that these fragile young kids will most certainly kill themselves if we don't rush them into medical treatment immediately. Drag story hour lets the despicable ogres pose with their grooming targets as if to say "See? I'm smol, too!".
This is one of your best, in my opinion. We can see exuberant, defiant arrested adolescence all over the culture now, and trans may be its apotheosis.
Thanks so much, very insightful.
It's quite challenging reading that Daily Mail piece you linked to. There's no ultimate reason to deny an adult (50-something man with seven kids) deciding he's an eight-year-old girl and moving in with "adoptive parents" who are apparently happy to have him live with them and play with their kids and grandkids, then switching to being six to be the youngest to please one of the new siblings who was seven. Is the golden rule being broken? Not as far as we know. Is mental illness real, or an oppressive social construct? If someone says they're happy doing something that seems insane to us, on what grounds are we to judge them insane? What if someone admits they're insane, but doesn't mind? Do people have the right to their insanity?