I got permission to share this email I got from a fellow grad student, a doctoral student in philosophy we’ll call Foster: I wanted to email because I have recently been interested in trying to construct a general-purpose description of trans activism's distinctive aims and claims. More specifically, it can be difficult to bring out the radical nature of trans activism without relying on terms that might be unfamiliar (e.g. "biological women") or premises that are too familiarly in dispute (e.g. "all adult human males are men"). The following description is my attempt to meet this challenge. I hope that it might be of some interest? At any rate, I would be curious what you thought.
Perhaps I'm just tired, but I'm not sure what Foster is asking of you. He or she seems to be asking, what is the purpose of transgender ideology? Here is a quote from one of my own articles:
"Trans people have developed an entire ideology which is designed to justify their existence. I’m not saying that they NEED to justify their existence, but that is apparently how THEY feel given that their ideology has no other discernible purpose." (I'm using capital letters here because I can't do italics.)
When you get right down to it, that's what I think is going on. They have redefined "gender" to mean "how you feel about yourself". So, if a man feels like a woman, then that magically makes him a REAL woman! What they don't understand, of course, is that how you feel about yourself is just how you feel about yourself; it doesn't change what you are. But since people in Western society want to be polite, we go along with the pretense. But going along with the pretense doesn't make it is true.
Everything in transgender ideology is dependent on this redefinition of the word "gender". For example, trans women moving into women's sports would not be happening if no one believed that trans women were actual women. To the extent that trans women ARE moving into women's sports, it is only because liberals have adopted this redefinition of "gender" and don't want to hurt the feelings of trans people (lest they commit suicide en masse).
It's my hypothesis that transgender ideology has made such inroads into liberal society because this time, liberals want to "get it right". We liberals DIDN'T get it right on racial justice. We gave lip service to it, but then excluded blacks from our neighborhoods and jobs. We have given lip service to a lot of progressive ideas, but didn't live up to our words.
I think that another reason liberals are taking trans people so seriously is that they are pitiful. Fifty years ago, all that a comedian had to do to get guffaws was to put a dress on -- Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, Harvey Korman never got more laughs than when they were wearing pearls. It seems that the more pitiful a group is, the more we must take them seriously, lest our true prejudices show. Now that trans activists are making more and more demands on society, they may not be laughed at any more, but they WILL be hated.
They are doomed to fail, of course. Biologists determine the gender of animals by inspecting animals' reproductive systems, and there is no escaping the fact that human beings are animals.
Number 1 is where all conversation about this seems to stop with my friends who believe in gender identity stuff.
I say to them "physical, material, biological reality will always trump someone's feelings". And they can't agree with that, and the conversation is at an end.
Timby, those people may take your comment to mean that you don't care how trans people feel. I don't think they understand your real point: That how a person feels doesn't, and shouldn't change what a person IS. In other words, you are making an argument for reality instead of sentiment. Trans activists have shown that when we focus entirely on feelings, then people will take advantage of that. That is certainly what trans women are doing as they move aggressively into women's sports without any regard for fairness or the integrity of women's sports.
There ARE feelings which define the people who feel them. For example, I am gay. My attraction to my own sex can be called a "feeling", and that attraction classifies me as a homosexual. Now, a transgender woman "feels" like a woman, and that is what makes her a trans woman. But it does NOT make her a REAL woman! For her feelings to make her a REAL woman, physical reality itself has to be disregarded. No matter what anyone says, you can't be a real woman if you have a man's body. Period.
The point I keep trying to make is this: Sure, if you are a man who feels like a woman (or vice versa), go for it, but don't expect the whole world to kneel at your feet as you take your feelings to mean you are more important than other people. As Blaire White (a conservative trans woman) keeps saying, trans people are trying to deconstruct our culture just so that they can feel normal.
Someone can only know what it "feels" like to be themselves. I don't know what it "feels like to be a man," I just am one. I am unable to make any further claims to the generality of other male human beings, let alone female ones. I don't and can't know what it feels like to be anyone else but me. I don't believe anyone else has that ability either. One can empathize and sympathize; one can get some sense of the subjectivity of others, but I don't think that the cross-personal (let alone cross-sexual) knowlegde being claimed by trans-identified individuals is possible. Feeling that one is "trapped" or "born into" the wrong body doesn't mean one actually is. On what basis are we supposed to believe and reify these feelings? Why are we expected to take them as a reflection of reality and reorganize large parts of our society to accommodate people with those feelings? We do not offer the same power to impose their unsubstantiated feelings to anorexics. We would be doing them no favours if we were to smile and nod and agree with their inaccurate body self-image. It would be harmful to them if we "affirmed" and "validated" their belief that they were obese when they are not. Why are we expected to "affirm" and "validate" the (I believe) equally inaccurate feelings and self perceptions of trans identified people?
Humans can't change sex. There are only two sexes. Someone's "gender identity" cannot change either of those facts. It's just the way things are. It is not bigotry to say any of these things. Yet we are being told it is. Women are paying a high price for defending their lebitimate right and need for single sex spaces, facilities, and institutions. Trans identified males are forcing their way into these spaces in the name of "inclusivity" on the strength of their "gender identity." This is one of the reasons I refuse to use the term "transwoman." These individuals are male. Always have been, always will be. The determination of trans identified males to violate women's boundaries is a huge red flag that demonstrates the need for those very boundaries. The refusal of trans activists to acknowledge the threat that gender self-ID poses to women's safety is another. Under self ID, any male can simply declare that they are a woman, thereby gaining access to women's single sex spaces. Statistcally speaking, males represent a threat to women's safety that women do not pose to men. There is no way for women to tell which males are safe and which are dangerous. The safest course of action is to bar all males from such spaces. Until very recently, this logic was widely accepted. But now trans activism tells us that there is a class of male who should be allowed into what have been, until now, female only facilities, spaces, and organizations. Along comes the thought-terminating mantra "trans women are women." These so-called "transwomen," we are told, should be permitted to enter along with "the rest of the women." "They're women: it's right in their in the name." Sure, and "sawhorses" are horses, but you'll never see one entered in the Kentucky Derby. Using preferred language and pronouns obscures the fact that these are men demanding (and winning) access to female only spaces. This is not hypothetical or conjectural. It's happening. Male sex offenders are now housed in women's prisons on the strength of "self ID." Men's "feelings" are more important to women's safety. This is institutional capture in action. Men's delusional fantasies are indulged; the price is paid by flesh and blood women. Some might say that these male prisoners aren't "really" trans, that they're just opportunistic predators. Well, guess what? There's no way for anyone to tell the difference. This goes for all men (see above). The authorities in charge have decided to accept them as the genuine article. Easy for them, as they're not the ones at risk from their oh-so-progressive open-mindedness.
Clarity is vital. Language is half the battle. Allowing trans activists to hijack the language we use to discuss, and yes, DEBATE these issues, lets them portray women's legitimate defence of their sex-based rights as evil bigotry. The demand to "centre" trans identified male "rights" to female only spaces is a call for women to surrender and subordinate their needs and safety to those of men.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. However, I do believe that transgender dysphoria is a real thing. My first experience with a dysphoric man was instructive. His feeling that he should be a woman was so strong that he asserted it aggressively, so much so that he made me nervous and I ended up changing my phone number. The shame of it was, he was a handsome man that I otherwise was attracted to.
My explanation won't satisfy you because it is metaphysical. I believe in reincarnation. (For what it's worth, I don't believe that we reincarnate thousands of times, like the Buddhists believe. The source that I believe in gave ten as an average.) That source also said that a soul must reincarnate as both a man and a woman. He gave an explanation for effeminate men which can be applied to trans people also: A soul may have a fear of being one sex or the other, and so may choose to be (for example) a male for five lives in a row, long after he should have reincarnated as a woman. That can result in a man who is absolutely determined that he is really a woman because a woman is what he NEEDS TO BE to further his spiritual growth. Becoming a fake woman may satisfy the need to some extent, but it doesn't give him the real experience womanhood -- menstruation, childbirth and motherhood, or chronic second-class citizenship in all societies. (All this may not apply to the men who transition in middle-age because it gives them a sexual thrill, but I can't say that for sure.)
Now, before you laugh at me for my beliefs, please keep in mind that at least two major religions with tens of millions of adherents -- Hinduism and Buddhism -- say reincarnation is real, so this is not a kooky or extreme view. An opinion poll once showed that about a third of American Christians believe in reincarnation.
So I do believe that gender dysphoria is a real thing, but I still think that probably only one out of five people who are transitioning today (to whatever extent transitioning is possible) are truly dysphoric. The others are looking for solutions to other psychological problems, and therein is the problem, because detransitioning is not really possible.
The hubris of transgender activists to believe that they can reconstruct all of society to suit themselves is so infuriating that sometimes I wish I had the power to execute them all at once with a single thought. (I keep telling myself, "No, Caleb, don't execute them, just make them enlightened -- no need to go for the most extreme punishment.") But I am not a TV witch, nor am I Q, so I can't do that.
For what it's worth, reincarnation, if it is real, gives us a reason why abortion is not murder: The source I believe in (the Seth Material) said the soul usually enters the fetus shortly before, during or after birth, long after any abortion would have taken place. A fetus without a soul is not a full human being.
I think it is all bonkers. There are male and female and heterosexual and gay. That is it. They are trying to prevent masculinity in the world So there is no fight among the people when they get to the agenda of full-blown tyranny and communism.
Also look at this link, it has 2 videos, from Matt Walsh that shows Vanderbilt Clinic talking about the profit to be made from transition surgeries and an administrator saying, if you don't want to do this work, go somewhere else.
There is a reason there has been an explosion of trans children in the last 3 to 5 years. It's not that somehow the planets aligned or these 3 and 5 year old now feel safe to come out. It's because there are adults in this movement and institutions, profiting from grooming and indoctrinating them, at early and impressionable ages.
In another of Eliza's posts, I wrote that if you gave me a few months, overwhelming media, celebrity (movies being made), political support and radicalized parents, I could convince kindergarteners the were a given animal. Within a year I could have scores of them eating, sleeping and living like that animal and within 5 years I would have them speaking a different language.
There's an agenda behind what we are seeing, but we (society) are being sold an equity and inclusion grift. The way you know that's true, they use it with all the radical issues, they are pushing.
This is a really good approach - maybe it might lead to some self-reflection from those transphile activists who see themselves as something completely different.
I haven't seen anyone attempt this - it's an interesting perspective; as usual you are getting me thinking.
From my interactions with trans activists and politicians who are steeped in the ideology, I don't think this is an accurate description of the current ideology. Here's what I'd go with:
1. The only real way to identify if someone is male or female is to find out if they believe they are male or female.
2. Believing you are male or female indicates that you have a male or female mind, which is the true mark of being male or female. (Mind, not brain; it's more metaphysical than physical.)
3. There are no defining physical characteristics of males or females.
4. Due to white colonial cishetero/patriarchy/capitalism/whatever, the Uninformed Masses associate being a woman or man with certain physical characteristics, which makes it difficult for women with beards, penises, adam's apples (etc) to function in society and leads to severe oppression for them and psychological distress.
5. One way to alleviate this distress is through surgical intervention, which is necessary and lifesaving if desired by an individual, although that individual will still always be oppressed (likely the most oppressed of all; is not the fact that they were forced to alter their body proof of this?). Age is not really a factor here; when you know you're female or male, you know it.
6. Another alternative option is to fight back against the oppression of white cisheteronormativity by Queering Things. To do this, you must through your own example show the whitecisheteros how wrong they are about their definitions... for example, by having a penis and looking like a lumberjack and using the women's room because you're a woman. This choice is very brave, though, and not something you can ask of a transperson because it is too much for most to bear. These brave transpeople who Queer Things are also deeply oppressed because whitecisheteros want them to stop destroying the whitechisheteropatriarchy.
7. Being oppressed due to their status as female, female people SHOULD have their own spaces and activities; naturally, these spaces/activities should also include females with (or who were born with) penises. Anything else would be deeply discriminatory and transphobic.
I had the office of a representative of mine (for state legislature) respond to my email by telling me there are no males in our women's prisons, that the state women's prisons are female-only, including "transgender females." (Never mind that some transmen, in addition to the transwomen my initial email was focused on, are housed in our women's prisons; transmen are basically forgotten unless convenient.) I think this grad student is working with some stale ideology; it used to be that transwomen were (technically, if you whispered about it) male or maybe "males who have surgically transitioned to female," but now they're just "female like any other woman" regardless of surgical status.
1. Whether you are male or female depends upon if your body developed in utero in a manner organized to produce either small gametes (male) or large gametes (female), regardless of if your testes or ovaries ever managed to be functional enough to be fertile or developed well enough to appear "normal." This is almost always determined by your XY or XX chromosomes (with some extremely rare possible exceptions like if an SRY gene gets on an X chromosome). Basically, what everyone used to think was male or female (and still do for all species except humans), only with a specific focus on how differences of sexual development don't exclude a person from a sex class (ie Caster Semenya is male because he has internal testes).
2. Men are adult human males, women are adult human females, boys are young human males, girls are young human females.
3. Altering your body or making yourself appear to be the opposite sex by using the socially constructed gender markers of your society doesn't change your sex. A male who successfully disguises as a female is still a male.
4. Children (under 18) are not mentally mature enough to consent to irreversible body modification that is not medically indicated and can impact their health/functioning. (Or perhaps even people under age 25, depending upon who you ask.)
5. Males and females should not be required to perform gender (dressing or acting a certain way based on their sex).
6. "Gender" is a tool of oppression in society, particularly for females. Performing gender (heels, makeup, submissiveness, etc) harms women individually and as a class.
7. Females are on average physically weaker than males and can sometimes get pregnant; in addition, males are far more likely than females to commit violent or sexual crimes. These things make it necessary for women to have safe spaces separate from males in certain situations so that they are not preyed upon (as easily). These spaces include prisons, bathrooms, changing rooms, rape crisis centers, etc. The difference in average physical strength also necessitates exclusively female sports categories, or females will not have a chance to compete in sports at high levels.
I'm sure there's some variance, but that's what I'd say is fairly standard. There are definitely a few different strains (or maybe levels?) of gender critical, just like there are with trans ideology (but what I summarized in the earlier comment was the newest ideology which I felt was surprisingly popular even among politicians and has beat the oldschool trans ideology).
I would suggest to Foster, that trans activism, is not only at the street level, but now endemic, within institutions. Their motivation is less about identity, equity and trans rights and more about money and pushing an agenda, that if complied with brings funding and a seat at the table of influence.
I shared the link below in another of your posts and I would urge you to pass it on to Foster. I think we all get mired, in the outlandish examples we see in the daily parades and activist demonstrations. What is lost, as with many critical issues today, is the constantly churning institutional juggernaut, behind the scenes. At some point the manipulation moves from the organic activist group, to the boardrooms and D.C. bureaucracies.
I commend Forster for the effort, but he needs to go deeper. With few exceptions, the trans cytokine storm we've seen in the past 3 years, is more a symptom of manipulation, by those who are profiting by it's end result.
While calling genderism an "ideology" is convenient, I think it suggests that its ideas have a higher degree of coherence and consistency than they actually posess. If "gender identity" supposed to be some fundamental, foundational, core aspect of a person, a fixed sense of felt internal existence that takes precedence over the physical body, how can the movement touting this idea also accept the concept of gender "fluidity?" How is it that the "trans umbrella" is elastic enough to contain AGP kinksters and dysphoric, autistic teenage girls? How can it be absolutely necessary for dysphoric children to be put on the pathway of sexual mutilation and lifelong medicalization, and yet fully intact adult males can simply declare themselves to be women and demand access to single-sex spaces for women based on nothing more than that declaration? Has anyone, anywhere ever offered a non-circular definition of "gender" that did not fall back on sexist, patriarchal stereotypes? Or, a definition of "gender identity" that couldn't be replaced with "personality?"
Along with "aims and claims" one might also add "strategy and tactics." Key aspects of methodology are institutional capture, and "NO DEBATE." Institutional capture is a means of acheiving political goals and political power through back room dealing that avoids the oversight and accountability that is supposed to be a part of policy formation and regulatory enforcement in nominally democratic societies. Alongside the more clandestine quest for unwarranted and unearned poer and influence, "NO DEBATE" is an intimidating rhetorical cudgel brandished to shame opponents into silence, but also a smokescreen intended to obscure the fact that the claims of trans activism, as well as the demands they are forcing through, cannot survive open, public discussion. Questioning or resistance is branded as hateful, genocidal bigotry. Failure to agree that men can be women is "refusing to allow us to exist" or "wanting us all dead." The hyperbole is to camouflage the activist inability to answer the legitimate questions and concerns of women defending their rights.
Note also the widespread attempts by a range of organizations and institutions to remove the word "women" from their communications and vocabulary, supposedly for the sake of "inclusion." Notice that there is no "inclusive" effort to erase the word "men" in the equivalent places. This gives much of the game away right here. It's a movement intended to redefine the concept of "woman" in such a way that it can be applied to any man who wishes to. Language is half the battle, which is why I do not use the term "transwoman." Men cannot be women. Ever. Humans can't change sex.
As a first approximation, I think the goal is the elimination of any rights, spaces, positions, etc. that are solely for women. Trans identified females are mostly forgotten in this, but useful insofar as they serve the goals of trans identified males. If this were a movement for the primary benefit of women claiming to be men, it would have gotten nowhere. It doesn't matter that the claims of "gender ideology" are all over the map. They're not trying to win arguments, because, frankly, they can't. It doesn't matter that the strategy and tactics are unlike those used by legitimate social justice movements. They have no interest in addressing, or even accurately characterizing women's real concerns. This isn't about "equality" or "justice" or "fairness." It's about power, appropriation, and colonization. There's not enough lipstick in the world to prettify that pig.
Something I'd meant to add in my comment above regarding strategy and tactics of gender ideology is its forced teaming with LGB rights. Trans activism has successfully managed to graft itself to the movement for lesbian, gay and bisexual people's rights without really having any connection to this struggle. Sexual orientation is based on the attraction to sexed bodies and is a matter of relationship with others. "gender identity" is supposed to be about the internal sense of who one "really is," often in spite of the sexed body of the person in question. But now, everyone is supposed to be part of one big LGBT "community."
This successful co-optation of pre-existing organizations have given trans activism a massive leg up in power and influence, bypassing the need to create their own organizations from scratch. Why go through all the growing pains, the struggle for support and recognition, when you can just move into someone else's group, with all that hard work in building things already done for you? Not only have they moved in, in many instances they've taken over, so that it's become all T, all the time. Example, Stonewall UK. Meanwhile, you claim the allegiance, support, and voice of a much larger group than your own small numbers could possibly muster. Never mind that your aims might be counter to those of the groups into which you've inserted yourself. You simply repurpose the group's original goals and mission statement to reflect your needs. So instead of homosexuality being "same sex attraction," it is redefined as "same gender attraction," thereby allowing men to become "lesbians." And if anyone complains or wants out of this akward, arranged marriage, you become the abusive spouse, refusing to release them from their obligation to serve you. "NO LGB WITHOUT THE T!" You can't ride the coattails of of someone who wants to take their coat back. It's unseemly to be seen stealing the coat, so your best move is to claim it was yours all along. So we get the rewriting of history so that a trans identified woman (who apparently wasn't there) started the Stonewall riot instead of the lesbian who was.
Another excellent analysis and what I have been shouting from the rooftops. The T is parasitic and force-teamed onto LGB for greater acceptance and also b/c they know they cannot make their case on its own merit. LGB rights (as are women's rights) are based on the material reality of sex but trans rights are based on the incoherent invented ideology of 'gender identity' w/ no material reality--it is a fiction and they know it. Moreover, the big drivers and funders of the movement are male heterosexual cross-dressers w/ a fetish--autogynephiles--males w/ pervy paraphilias some of whom claim to be lesbian. See the 11th Hour blog and the Denton document.
I would add that the adoption of gender identity ideology by young people (who are not responsible for inventing it, but who have become its foot soldiers) is also informed by the "three great untruths" articulated by Haidt and Luckianoff in The Coddling of the American Mind: trust your feelings above all else; what doesn't kill you makes you weaker; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. While not specific to gender identity ideology, these pervasive untruths helped prepare the ground for its capture of many young people, especially young women.
The preamble is confusing... "More specifically, it can be difficult to bring out the radical nature of trans activism without relying on terms that might be unfamiliar (e.g. "biological women") or premises that are too familiarly in dispute (e.g. "all adult human males are men")."
Is this grad student for realsies? Is it part of a survey? Why ask you, when your writing speaks for itself and there are ample examples of the radical nature of TA everywhere?
Is Foster looking for endorsement or discourse? Strange to me.
Sandra, yes definitely the Cass Report and I mentioned the Denton doc above. And the doc you linked is, of course, trans propaganda shot-through w/ lies. All who don't countenance the trans cult fiction are right-wing which is nonsense as I suspect most of us here are (small 'l') liberals if not some Liberals too. But cults survive and maintain cohesion by using fear and by lying to their members. As I said above, the trans movement is parasitic and has used the acceptance LGB people attained to gain greater acceptance. But trans is very different and their aims are quite destructive re the boundaries of sex, gender, and sexuality--blurring those lines is the goal even though 'gender' itself was just an invention by the strange Dr. John Money. But what has been truly astounding and disappointing is the utter capture by transgender ideology of so many institutions and so-called professions including medicine and law both supposedly evidence-based and bound by ethical precepts. But money talks and ethics walks. (See the 11th Hour blog).
Perhaps I'm just tired, but I'm not sure what Foster is asking of you. He or she seems to be asking, what is the purpose of transgender ideology? Here is a quote from one of my own articles:
"Trans people have developed an entire ideology which is designed to justify their existence. I’m not saying that they NEED to justify their existence, but that is apparently how THEY feel given that their ideology has no other discernible purpose." (I'm using capital letters here because I can't do italics.)
When you get right down to it, that's what I think is going on. They have redefined "gender" to mean "how you feel about yourself". So, if a man feels like a woman, then that magically makes him a REAL woman! What they don't understand, of course, is that how you feel about yourself is just how you feel about yourself; it doesn't change what you are. But since people in Western society want to be polite, we go along with the pretense. But going along with the pretense doesn't make it is true.
Everything in transgender ideology is dependent on this redefinition of the word "gender". For example, trans women moving into women's sports would not be happening if no one believed that trans women were actual women. To the extent that trans women ARE moving into women's sports, it is only because liberals have adopted this redefinition of "gender" and don't want to hurt the feelings of trans people (lest they commit suicide en masse).
It's my hypothesis that transgender ideology has made such inroads into liberal society because this time, liberals want to "get it right". We liberals DIDN'T get it right on racial justice. We gave lip service to it, but then excluded blacks from our neighborhoods and jobs. We have given lip service to a lot of progressive ideas, but didn't live up to our words.
I think that another reason liberals are taking trans people so seriously is that they are pitiful. Fifty years ago, all that a comedian had to do to get guffaws was to put a dress on -- Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, Harvey Korman never got more laughs than when they were wearing pearls. It seems that the more pitiful a group is, the more we must take them seriously, lest our true prejudices show. Now that trans activists are making more and more demands on society, they may not be laughed at any more, but they WILL be hated.
They are doomed to fail, of course. Biologists determine the gender of animals by inspecting animals' reproductive systems, and there is no escaping the fact that human beings are animals.
I would boil it down even simpler (edited to refine my thoughts):
1.) Subjective feeling about identity trumps physical reality.
2.) The way you feel now is how you will always feel; feelings never change.
3.) In accordance with points 1 and 2, engage in revolutionary upheaval of both your body and society. The sooner and more dramatic the better.
Number 1 is where all conversation about this seems to stop with my friends who believe in gender identity stuff.
I say to them "physical, material, biological reality will always trump someone's feelings". And they can't agree with that, and the conversation is at an end.
Makes me sad.
Timby, those people may take your comment to mean that you don't care how trans people feel. I don't think they understand your real point: That how a person feels doesn't, and shouldn't change what a person IS. In other words, you are making an argument for reality instead of sentiment. Trans activists have shown that when we focus entirely on feelings, then people will take advantage of that. That is certainly what trans women are doing as they move aggressively into women's sports without any regard for fairness or the integrity of women's sports.
There ARE feelings which define the people who feel them. For example, I am gay. My attraction to my own sex can be called a "feeling", and that attraction classifies me as a homosexual. Now, a transgender woman "feels" like a woman, and that is what makes her a trans woman. But it does NOT make her a REAL woman! For her feelings to make her a REAL woman, physical reality itself has to be disregarded. No matter what anyone says, you can't be a real woman if you have a man's body. Period.
The point I keep trying to make is this: Sure, if you are a man who feels like a woman (or vice versa), go for it, but don't expect the whole world to kneel at your feet as you take your feelings to mean you are more important than other people. As Blaire White (a conservative trans woman) keeps saying, trans people are trying to deconstruct our culture just so that they can feel normal.
Someone can only know what it "feels" like to be themselves. I don't know what it "feels like to be a man," I just am one. I am unable to make any further claims to the generality of other male human beings, let alone female ones. I don't and can't know what it feels like to be anyone else but me. I don't believe anyone else has that ability either. One can empathize and sympathize; one can get some sense of the subjectivity of others, but I don't think that the cross-personal (let alone cross-sexual) knowlegde being claimed by trans-identified individuals is possible. Feeling that one is "trapped" or "born into" the wrong body doesn't mean one actually is. On what basis are we supposed to believe and reify these feelings? Why are we expected to take them as a reflection of reality and reorganize large parts of our society to accommodate people with those feelings? We do not offer the same power to impose their unsubstantiated feelings to anorexics. We would be doing them no favours if we were to smile and nod and agree with their inaccurate body self-image. It would be harmful to them if we "affirmed" and "validated" their belief that they were obese when they are not. Why are we expected to "affirm" and "validate" the (I believe) equally inaccurate feelings and self perceptions of trans identified people?
Humans can't change sex. There are only two sexes. Someone's "gender identity" cannot change either of those facts. It's just the way things are. It is not bigotry to say any of these things. Yet we are being told it is. Women are paying a high price for defending their lebitimate right and need for single sex spaces, facilities, and institutions. Trans identified males are forcing their way into these spaces in the name of "inclusivity" on the strength of their "gender identity." This is one of the reasons I refuse to use the term "transwoman." These individuals are male. Always have been, always will be. The determination of trans identified males to violate women's boundaries is a huge red flag that demonstrates the need for those very boundaries. The refusal of trans activists to acknowledge the threat that gender self-ID poses to women's safety is another. Under self ID, any male can simply declare that they are a woman, thereby gaining access to women's single sex spaces. Statistcally speaking, males represent a threat to women's safety that women do not pose to men. There is no way for women to tell which males are safe and which are dangerous. The safest course of action is to bar all males from such spaces. Until very recently, this logic was widely accepted. But now trans activism tells us that there is a class of male who should be allowed into what have been, until now, female only facilities, spaces, and organizations. Along comes the thought-terminating mantra "trans women are women." These so-called "transwomen," we are told, should be permitted to enter along with "the rest of the women." "They're women: it's right in their in the name." Sure, and "sawhorses" are horses, but you'll never see one entered in the Kentucky Derby. Using preferred language and pronouns obscures the fact that these are men demanding (and winning) access to female only spaces. This is not hypothetical or conjectural. It's happening. Male sex offenders are now housed in women's prisons on the strength of "self ID." Men's "feelings" are more important to women's safety. This is institutional capture in action. Men's delusional fantasies are indulged; the price is paid by flesh and blood women. Some might say that these male prisoners aren't "really" trans, that they're just opportunistic predators. Well, guess what? There's no way for anyone to tell the difference. This goes for all men (see above). The authorities in charge have decided to accept them as the genuine article. Easy for them, as they're not the ones at risk from their oh-so-progressive open-mindedness.
Clarity is vital. Language is half the battle. Allowing trans activists to hijack the language we use to discuss, and yes, DEBATE these issues, lets them portray women's legitimate defence of their sex-based rights as evil bigotry. The demand to "centre" trans identified male "rights" to female only spaces is a call for women to surrender and subordinate their needs and safety to those of men.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. However, I do believe that transgender dysphoria is a real thing. My first experience with a dysphoric man was instructive. His feeling that he should be a woman was so strong that he asserted it aggressively, so much so that he made me nervous and I ended up changing my phone number. The shame of it was, he was a handsome man that I otherwise was attracted to.
My explanation won't satisfy you because it is metaphysical. I believe in reincarnation. (For what it's worth, I don't believe that we reincarnate thousands of times, like the Buddhists believe. The source that I believe in gave ten as an average.) That source also said that a soul must reincarnate as both a man and a woman. He gave an explanation for effeminate men which can be applied to trans people also: A soul may have a fear of being one sex or the other, and so may choose to be (for example) a male for five lives in a row, long after he should have reincarnated as a woman. That can result in a man who is absolutely determined that he is really a woman because a woman is what he NEEDS TO BE to further his spiritual growth. Becoming a fake woman may satisfy the need to some extent, but it doesn't give him the real experience womanhood -- menstruation, childbirth and motherhood, or chronic second-class citizenship in all societies. (All this may not apply to the men who transition in middle-age because it gives them a sexual thrill, but I can't say that for sure.)
Now, before you laugh at me for my beliefs, please keep in mind that at least two major religions with tens of millions of adherents -- Hinduism and Buddhism -- say reincarnation is real, so this is not a kooky or extreme view. An opinion poll once showed that about a third of American Christians believe in reincarnation.
So I do believe that gender dysphoria is a real thing, but I still think that probably only one out of five people who are transitioning today (to whatever extent transitioning is possible) are truly dysphoric. The others are looking for solutions to other psychological problems, and therein is the problem, because detransitioning is not really possible.
The hubris of transgender activists to believe that they can reconstruct all of society to suit themselves is so infuriating that sometimes I wish I had the power to execute them all at once with a single thought. (I keep telling myself, "No, Caleb, don't execute them, just make them enlightened -- no need to go for the most extreme punishment.") But I am not a TV witch, nor am I Q, so I can't do that.
For what it's worth, reincarnation, if it is real, gives us a reason why abortion is not murder: The source I believe in (the Seth Material) said the soul usually enters the fetus shortly before, during or after birth, long after any abortion would have taken place. A fetus without a soul is not a full human being.
I think you have summarized it most succinctly.
I think it is all bonkers. There are male and female and heterosexual and gay. That is it. They are trying to prevent masculinity in the world So there is no fight among the people when they get to the agenda of full-blown tyranny and communism.
We must stop this idiocy.
Just posted this further down in my comments.
This is institutional.
Counselors are the tip of the spear in this ideology push.
https://files.courageisahabit.org/s/i5XJBdrbdKppJpf
Also look at this link, it has 2 videos, from Matt Walsh that shows Vanderbilt Clinic talking about the profit to be made from transition surgeries and an administrator saying, if you don't want to do this work, go somewhere else.
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313369528635392
That's horrendous
Agreed.
There is a reason there has been an explosion of trans children in the last 3 to 5 years. It's not that somehow the planets aligned or these 3 and 5 year old now feel safe to come out. It's because there are adults in this movement and institutions, profiting from grooming and indoctrinating them, at early and impressionable ages.
In another of Eliza's posts, I wrote that if you gave me a few months, overwhelming media, celebrity (movies being made), political support and radicalized parents, I could convince kindergarteners the were a given animal. Within a year I could have scores of them eating, sleeping and living like that animal and within 5 years I would have them speaking a different language.
There's an agenda behind what we are seeing, but we (society) are being sold an equity and inclusion grift. The way you know that's true, they use it with all the radical issues, they are pushing.
This is a really good approach - maybe it might lead to some self-reflection from those transphile activists who see themselves as something completely different.
I haven't seen anyone attempt this - it's an interesting perspective; as usual you are getting me thinking.
Yes, that is a correct summary... as out of touch with reality as it is.
From my interactions with trans activists and politicians who are steeped in the ideology, I don't think this is an accurate description of the current ideology. Here's what I'd go with:
1. The only real way to identify if someone is male or female is to find out if they believe they are male or female.
2. Believing you are male or female indicates that you have a male or female mind, which is the true mark of being male or female. (Mind, not brain; it's more metaphysical than physical.)
3. There are no defining physical characteristics of males or females.
4. Due to white colonial cishetero/patriarchy/capitalism/whatever, the Uninformed Masses associate being a woman or man with certain physical characteristics, which makes it difficult for women with beards, penises, adam's apples (etc) to function in society and leads to severe oppression for them and psychological distress.
5. One way to alleviate this distress is through surgical intervention, which is necessary and lifesaving if desired by an individual, although that individual will still always be oppressed (likely the most oppressed of all; is not the fact that they were forced to alter their body proof of this?). Age is not really a factor here; when you know you're female or male, you know it.
6. Another alternative option is to fight back against the oppression of white cisheteronormativity by Queering Things. To do this, you must through your own example show the whitecisheteros how wrong they are about their definitions... for example, by having a penis and looking like a lumberjack and using the women's room because you're a woman. This choice is very brave, though, and not something you can ask of a transperson because it is too much for most to bear. These brave transpeople who Queer Things are also deeply oppressed because whitecisheteros want them to stop destroying the whitechisheteropatriarchy.
7. Being oppressed due to their status as female, female people SHOULD have their own spaces and activities; naturally, these spaces/activities should also include females with (or who were born with) penises. Anything else would be deeply discriminatory and transphobic.
I had the office of a representative of mine (for state legislature) respond to my email by telling me there are no males in our women's prisons, that the state women's prisons are female-only, including "transgender females." (Never mind that some transmen, in addition to the transwomen my initial email was focused on, are housed in our women's prisons; transmen are basically forgotten unless convenient.) I think this grad student is working with some stale ideology; it used to be that transwomen were (technically, if you whispered about it) male or maybe "males who have surgically transitioned to female," but now they're just "female like any other woman" regardless of surgical status.
Now do this for Gender Critical Activists!
1. Whether you are male or female depends upon if your body developed in utero in a manner organized to produce either small gametes (male) or large gametes (female), regardless of if your testes or ovaries ever managed to be functional enough to be fertile or developed well enough to appear "normal." This is almost always determined by your XY or XX chromosomes (with some extremely rare possible exceptions like if an SRY gene gets on an X chromosome). Basically, what everyone used to think was male or female (and still do for all species except humans), only with a specific focus on how differences of sexual development don't exclude a person from a sex class (ie Caster Semenya is male because he has internal testes).
2. Men are adult human males, women are adult human females, boys are young human males, girls are young human females.
3. Altering your body or making yourself appear to be the opposite sex by using the socially constructed gender markers of your society doesn't change your sex. A male who successfully disguises as a female is still a male.
4. Children (under 18) are not mentally mature enough to consent to irreversible body modification that is not medically indicated and can impact their health/functioning. (Or perhaps even people under age 25, depending upon who you ask.)
5. Males and females should not be required to perform gender (dressing or acting a certain way based on their sex).
6. "Gender" is a tool of oppression in society, particularly for females. Performing gender (heels, makeup, submissiveness, etc) harms women individually and as a class.
7. Females are on average physically weaker than males and can sometimes get pregnant; in addition, males are far more likely than females to commit violent or sexual crimes. These things make it necessary for women to have safe spaces separate from males in certain situations so that they are not preyed upon (as easily). These spaces include prisons, bathrooms, changing rooms, rape crisis centers, etc. The difference in average physical strength also necessitates exclusively female sports categories, or females will not have a chance to compete in sports at high levels.
I'm sure there's some variance, but that's what I'd say is fairly standard. There are definitely a few different strains (or maybe levels?) of gender critical, just like there are with trans ideology (but what I summarized in the earlier comment was the newest ideology which I felt was surprisingly popular even among politicians and has beat the oldschool trans ideology).
Love it! Thank you!
I wish I had the graphic skills to make these into a “meme” or such!
I would suggest to Foster, that trans activism, is not only at the street level, but now endemic, within institutions. Their motivation is less about identity, equity and trans rights and more about money and pushing an agenda, that if complied with brings funding and a seat at the table of influence.
I shared the link below in another of your posts and I would urge you to pass it on to Foster. I think we all get mired, in the outlandish examples we see in the daily parades and activist demonstrations. What is lost, as with many critical issues today, is the constantly churning institutional juggernaut, behind the scenes. At some point the manipulation moves from the organic activist group, to the boardrooms and D.C. bureaucracies.
I commend Forster for the effort, but he needs to go deeper. With few exceptions, the trans cytokine storm we've seen in the past 3 years, is more a symptom of manipulation, by those who are profiting by it's end result.
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313369528635392
Additional institutional trans activist information, for Foster. School counselors are the tip of the spear, more so than counselors.
https://files.courageisahabit.org/s/i5XJBdrbdKppJpf
While calling genderism an "ideology" is convenient, I think it suggests that its ideas have a higher degree of coherence and consistency than they actually posess. If "gender identity" supposed to be some fundamental, foundational, core aspect of a person, a fixed sense of felt internal existence that takes precedence over the physical body, how can the movement touting this idea also accept the concept of gender "fluidity?" How is it that the "trans umbrella" is elastic enough to contain AGP kinksters and dysphoric, autistic teenage girls? How can it be absolutely necessary for dysphoric children to be put on the pathway of sexual mutilation and lifelong medicalization, and yet fully intact adult males can simply declare themselves to be women and demand access to single-sex spaces for women based on nothing more than that declaration? Has anyone, anywhere ever offered a non-circular definition of "gender" that did not fall back on sexist, patriarchal stereotypes? Or, a definition of "gender identity" that couldn't be replaced with "personality?"
Along with "aims and claims" one might also add "strategy and tactics." Key aspects of methodology are institutional capture, and "NO DEBATE." Institutional capture is a means of acheiving political goals and political power through back room dealing that avoids the oversight and accountability that is supposed to be a part of policy formation and regulatory enforcement in nominally democratic societies. Alongside the more clandestine quest for unwarranted and unearned poer and influence, "NO DEBATE" is an intimidating rhetorical cudgel brandished to shame opponents into silence, but also a smokescreen intended to obscure the fact that the claims of trans activism, as well as the demands they are forcing through, cannot survive open, public discussion. Questioning or resistance is branded as hateful, genocidal bigotry. Failure to agree that men can be women is "refusing to allow us to exist" or "wanting us all dead." The hyperbole is to camouflage the activist inability to answer the legitimate questions and concerns of women defending their rights.
Note also the widespread attempts by a range of organizations and institutions to remove the word "women" from their communications and vocabulary, supposedly for the sake of "inclusion." Notice that there is no "inclusive" effort to erase the word "men" in the equivalent places. This gives much of the game away right here. It's a movement intended to redefine the concept of "woman" in such a way that it can be applied to any man who wishes to. Language is half the battle, which is why I do not use the term "transwoman." Men cannot be women. Ever. Humans can't change sex.
As a first approximation, I think the goal is the elimination of any rights, spaces, positions, etc. that are solely for women. Trans identified females are mostly forgotten in this, but useful insofar as they serve the goals of trans identified males. If this were a movement for the primary benefit of women claiming to be men, it would have gotten nowhere. It doesn't matter that the claims of "gender ideology" are all over the map. They're not trying to win arguments, because, frankly, they can't. It doesn't matter that the strategy and tactics are unlike those used by legitimate social justice movements. They have no interest in addressing, or even accurately characterizing women's real concerns. This isn't about "equality" or "justice" or "fairness." It's about power, appropriation, and colonization. There's not enough lipstick in the world to prettify that pig.
Something I'd meant to add in my comment above regarding strategy and tactics of gender ideology is its forced teaming with LGB rights. Trans activism has successfully managed to graft itself to the movement for lesbian, gay and bisexual people's rights without really having any connection to this struggle. Sexual orientation is based on the attraction to sexed bodies and is a matter of relationship with others. "gender identity" is supposed to be about the internal sense of who one "really is," often in spite of the sexed body of the person in question. But now, everyone is supposed to be part of one big LGBT "community."
This successful co-optation of pre-existing organizations have given trans activism a massive leg up in power and influence, bypassing the need to create their own organizations from scratch. Why go through all the growing pains, the struggle for support and recognition, when you can just move into someone else's group, with all that hard work in building things already done for you? Not only have they moved in, in many instances they've taken over, so that it's become all T, all the time. Example, Stonewall UK. Meanwhile, you claim the allegiance, support, and voice of a much larger group than your own small numbers could possibly muster. Never mind that your aims might be counter to those of the groups into which you've inserted yourself. You simply repurpose the group's original goals and mission statement to reflect your needs. So instead of homosexuality being "same sex attraction," it is redefined as "same gender attraction," thereby allowing men to become "lesbians." And if anyone complains or wants out of this akward, arranged marriage, you become the abusive spouse, refusing to release them from their obligation to serve you. "NO LGB WITHOUT THE T!" You can't ride the coattails of of someone who wants to take their coat back. It's unseemly to be seen stealing the coat, so your best move is to claim it was yours all along. So we get the rewriting of history so that a trans identified woman (who apparently wasn't there) started the Stonewall riot instead of the lesbian who was.
Another excellent analysis and what I have been shouting from the rooftops. The T is parasitic and force-teamed onto LGB for greater acceptance and also b/c they know they cannot make their case on its own merit. LGB rights (as are women's rights) are based on the material reality of sex but trans rights are based on the incoherent invented ideology of 'gender identity' w/ no material reality--it is a fiction and they know it. Moreover, the big drivers and funders of the movement are male heterosexual cross-dressers w/ a fetish--autogynephiles--males w/ pervy paraphilias some of whom claim to be lesbian. See the 11th Hour blog and the Denton document.
Excellent analysis.
I would add that the adoption of gender identity ideology by young people (who are not responsible for inventing it, but who have become its foot soldiers) is also informed by the "three great untruths" articulated by Haidt and Luckianoff in The Coddling of the American Mind: trust your feelings above all else; what doesn't kill you makes you weaker; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. While not specific to gender identity ideology, these pervasive untruths helped prepare the ground for its capture of many young people, especially young women.
Good point!
The preamble is confusing... "More specifically, it can be difficult to bring out the radical nature of trans activism without relying on terms that might be unfamiliar (e.g. "biological women") or premises that are too familiarly in dispute (e.g. "all adult human males are men")."
Is this grad student for realsies? Is it part of a survey? Why ask you, when your writing speaks for itself and there are ample examples of the radical nature of TA everywhere?
Is Foster looking for endorsement or discourse? Strange to me.
Sandra, yes definitely the Cass Report and I mentioned the Denton doc above. And the doc you linked is, of course, trans propaganda shot-through w/ lies. All who don't countenance the trans cult fiction are right-wing which is nonsense as I suspect most of us here are (small 'l') liberals if not some Liberals too. But cults survive and maintain cohesion by using fear and by lying to their members. As I said above, the trans movement is parasitic and has used the acceptance LGB people attained to gain greater acceptance. But trans is very different and their aims are quite destructive re the boundaries of sex, gender, and sexuality--blurring those lines is the goal even though 'gender' itself was just an invention by the strange Dr. John Money. But what has been truly astounding and disappointing is the utter capture by transgender ideology of so many institutions and so-called professions including medicine and law both supposedly evidence-based and bound by ethical precepts. But money talks and ethics walks. (See the 11th Hour blog).