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Are these people capable of looking both ways before crossing the road? They seem to have confused messy sociobiological reality for online avatar design.

It’s a shame that a deep-seated curiosity about what it might feel like to be the opposite sex (perfectly normal) doesn’t always translate into empathy and rejection of regressive stereotyping.

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I was struck by this comment:

"...I finally understood why I've been quietly miserable my entire adult life, the prospect of leaving things as they were for even a second longer than I had to was intolerable. I'm not just hopelessly broken - there's actually a way to feel fully alive and maybe even happy for more than a few minutes at a time? Sign me up! Even knowing I may risk blowing up my life as it stands, that's a good bet - as I am, most of my energy is spent forcing the despair down so I can perform a halfway-reasonable simulation of living. I've wasted enough time twisting myself up into the semblance of what everyone else thought I was. I want to find out - finally - who I really am."

Imagine reading this anywhere else. There's no mention of "gender" or "transition" here. It tells the universal and timeless story of the existential angst we all deal with to some extent or another: "Am I really living? Life is hard and sometimes feels intolerable. Am I living for myself or who others think I am or should be? Am I a broken person? Can I be free of all this self-doubt and the pain that is part of the human experience?" Seen anywhere else, we would recognize this talk for what it is, not a sign someone is "born in the wrong body." The promises of transitioning and hormones provide a direct path out of all of the pain of being human. This is what I'm talking about with my comment on the "questions about the boys" post from last week. Is there some form of AGP that is a pseudo-AGP, a script picked up from being on these Reddit pages where this kind of generalized life dissatisfaction gets molded into an AGP script that can easily take over a man's life, and some boys and men are more susceptible to latching onto this explanation and the script than others because of individual life circumstances and personality and temperament traits?

(I'm not denying AGP or fetishes/paraphilias exist. I'm saying this might apply to a subset of the men and boys)

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I think we've touched base on another thread and I owe you a response. But I agree, I think practitioners, sexologists are too naive to the culture bound and I wholeheartedly agree it's not all about gender. We need to think broader and return to concepts like dissociative identity disorder.

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I agree that therapists need to be looking at issues beyond gender, although there's a good argument to be made that dissociative identity disorder is another culture bound syndrome being spread through social contagion, often with the same issues at its root.

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Yes thats what I mean, I'm not necessarily in favour of what the DSM has to say about it, just that the problem may be situated in people struggling with identity, with ideas around gender filling the void. Similarly, generalized anxiety, ocd, depersonalization - these may be closer to the truth for some people.

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Yes, completely agree. It seems we really need to go back to the basics

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Great comment! I totally agree.

Except: AGP? I assume it's not Adjusted Gross Profit, which is what I found when I googled it. Please explain?

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Yes, this assumption that the body is a machine rather than, say, an ecosystem, is so clear when they assume exogenous hormones are like fuel for an engine—you’ll run better on the “correct” fuel! When, of course, it’s more like dumping oil into a coastal ecosystem.

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The guy needs psychotherapy.

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he needs to come clean with his intended wife and tell her exactly what the situation is. If he doesn't the wife will be the prisoner in a fake relationship.

l was married to my 2nd husband for 30 years when he told me he was a transvestite. l was devastated not by the revelation but the fact he had kept the secret all our marriage.

a big fat lie is not the way to start a marriage.

l am divorced now but the hurts still buried deep inside

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Faith, if you haven't participated in my study, 20 Questions to Ask a Trans Widow, please find me at uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com and use the contact form to request the survey. I'm the only person in the world collecting data on us. Best to you, Ute

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l have sent a message. l totally agree that this is valuable data you are collecting

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He won't.

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As always, I feel something maybe only the Germans have a word for, a helpless preemptive vicarious regret, the angst of the bystander seeing all the signs of a bad accident developing. These social media sites also remind me of the poor folk in war-torn Russia with Putin's propaganda systematically pumped into their heads. Why does nobody provide alternative views, I ask rhetorically, knowing the reason. It's the same reason I eventually gave up at so-called Talk Rational, it's too demoralising, even rather scary, endlessly being called a Nazi, "arguing in bad faith," and told to "just go away and die already." Or your account might be banned. Even if you stay, it's worrying that the propagandists seem to feed off your opposition. Here is evidence of the real live dragon in our midst, the sick infectious infidel! Look how scaly his skin is, and the vicious transphobic fire he breathes! Have courage, good knights!

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They heavily censor these sites so they are the worst kind of echo chambers, another under talked about feature of the 'open' internet...

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Indeed - where does a male human get the idea of what it could be like to be female, having never experienced it?? He only sees what is on the surface and can only be an artificial approximation of what he sees.

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Where do men today get the idea they’re women? It’s in the air. It’s everywhere. Pity the susceptible among us like this man.

I’m writing this at the airport in Kansas City, Missouri. On the way to the food court I passed a restroom labeled “All Genders.” Even this deeply red state is gender affirming. This is the sort of thing that reinforces people’s gender delusions.

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I think Kansas City is a pretty liberal place (Missouri is red for sure, but bigger cities like Kansas City and St Louis are blue).

The "all genders" bathroom... sigh... If it wasn't just virtue signaling, surely gender-confused people could just use the "family bathroom", a perfectly helpful place where , say, a single dad could go with his 4 y.o. daughter....

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At the risk of sounding hopelessly cliché, "Tell me about your relationship with your mother.", comes to mind.

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Wow. The male sexual entitlement SCREAMS at you.

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I'm not sure what you mean here. Many do arrogntly say 'Yes I WILL be a woman- just because I want to'- but this guy is scared to even try. And are girls/women who want to transition to boys/men, being entitled also...?

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I have to add the information I recently learned about the deaths of 2 post op cross-sex ideating patients years after "transitioning"-- a failed "vaginoplasty" for "Ruby Fiera" who died of sepsis after uncontrolled infections a few months ago, at about 32 years old. The second is "Gruffin" a social media creator whose) name was Griffin Shaun Sivert, a female. She died last month and would have turned 24 at the end of August, after months of kidney dialysis for the organ failure the testosterone caused, lived with untreatable chronic bleeding for a year, and lived through uncontrolled brain bleeds at UMass hospital before dying there, from sepsis or all the above listed iatrogenic damage that "affirmative care" wrought on her body.

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Wait Ruby Fiera is dead?

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For some strange (self involved, I'll be told) reason, I interpreted the title as a reference to the obligation dude must be feeling to tell his fiancee the truth about his self doubts and break off a marriage that would become a prison for her. I figured he's realizing she's simply an innocent woman on a traditional trajectory, hardly deserving his "surprise." But duh, of course, he can't think about anyone but himself. Of course I know that. If anyone learns that they married and she's now a trans widow, get her in touch with the other 62 or so trans widows at my channel. Our arms are open.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owyUun77TKo&t=78s

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The woman be should set free is his fiancee.

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Yes!

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Indeed a lot draws from the decadent romanticism of the current times, 'finding our true selves', which is a modal mistake, mistaking having for being.

Is it the case that the forcefulness of these people is increasing - is it in reaction to an awareness that the edifice is crumbling? Perhaps that's overly hopeful.

If you transpose to homosexuality it is hard to imagine a gay person responding in the way these people are. The response to 'I keep wondering if I might be gay' would not I think be 'Stop denying it, you need to go have gay sex tomorrow or you'll spend the next twenty years being miserable'. I'm sure most people would admit you could explore it without jumping straight in the deep end.

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Aug 20·edited Aug 20

It turns out that 'finding our true selves' is something that is actually beyond a lot of people. Identifying what kind of person you really are requires a degree of dispassionate objectivity and for many of us the 'real me' is kinda mediocre.

I'm sure we all know someone who sees themselves as humble but is actually quite the braggart, or someone who sees themselves as a leader but who actually just sows chaos and demoralisation everywhere they get to give orders. Lot's of people aren't good at separating their inner self image from the reality that others see.

The Trans movement is that on steroids, or at least some form of cross sex hormone. They're Walter Mitty types who can't separate their fantasys from material reality. The person they imagine themselves as being crushes their objectivity, because fantasy is the only place where they can be who they want to be.

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If he's a 30 something and not a 13 something then they might have a point that it won't go away. It'll be something he has to carry with himself for the rest of his life. I wonder if it would be better for his future spouse if he trooned out before the wedding?

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I'd have put quotes around "meant" along with "run," "E," and "T." Meant by whom? God? If God exists, why would S/he/they/it have put you "in" the wrong body? But if God doesn't exist, and you're, say, just among the latest products of a billion+ years of reproductive evolution, then how does meant even apply. You are the body that emerged from your mother, who was female no matter how she identified, just as surely as your father was male.

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I was struck by the narcissism of these men as well as their delusion. What on earth is really going on inside their heads? Are they even capable of being truly honest with themselves or anyone else? Although they're at least showing this very scary part of themselves online. Thank you for trudging through this stuff and sharing it, Eliza! 👍🏼❤️

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They are trapped not in the wrong body, but in their own sad and confused emotions. That guy is saying 'I feel miserable. I feel I canot control my life. I am confused. I am unhappy, but don't know what I want.' Then his online "friends" say he'll feel better if he just transitions into a woman....!? (...err, as if that was even possible...)

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Mental Health issues

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...was my first thought. These quotes show men struggling with their life/ personal identity/ emotions. They look like they are searching for an external answer for their unhappiness- could equally be joining a religion, becoming a campaigner, taking up an obsessive hobby (hint- that could be a good bet!), becoming dependent on alcohol and drugs, or fixating on any other external focus for the next stage of their life... but their magic bullet of choice is to become trans... !?

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