In online FTM/transmasculine and nonbinary communities, the most consistent theme isn’t positive identification with masculinity but rather rejection of femaleness. Listen for a few minutes and you’ll hear a lot of variations of “I’m not sure what my gender is but I
It seems like the first girl isn't struggling as much to imagine her future self as a man, but as an ADULT living an adult life with adult responsibilities.
Almost all of the FTMs seem to driven by running away from themselves. So many of the newest cohort aren't even running from gender and are having to try harder and more desperately to cram distresses increasingly distant from gender into the gender box because they think transition is the not pathway out of whatever their distress is since "gender dysphoria" and "trans" have become the Michael Phelps in the cultural symptom pool of distress.
I'm starting to believe what makes a "happily" transitioned person has less to do with winning the lottery of passing, having few medical complications, or living in an environment where everyone sees them the way they want to be seen (assuming they can figure out what that is), but winning the lottery of having a mix of personality traits that keeps them from feeling the "chafing of fraudulence."
"winning the lottery of having a mix of personality traits that keeps them from feeling the "chafing of fraudulence."
I think you're exactly right about this. Several people have said versions of the people who do the best are the ones who are autistic *enough* that they take other people's politeness literally.
Autistic people are often naturally less gender conforming anyway, so add gullibility and naivete and you have a recipe for someone who really believes.
It seems that there are a variety of factors like low intellectual curiosity or else high narcissism at play, but the one common trait that predicts success regardless of other traits is extreme naïveté.
"low intellectual curiosity" would definitely explain how a boy like the MTF of this article could be completely oblivious to the many potential mentors he could have had through Hollywood's film and TV stereotypes of sensitive men. Alan Aldas abound, if you are truly drawn to them, as I have always been. I don't believe for one minute that he IS sensitive, since he casually mentions "misandry" without a clue as to how thoroughly misogynistic that whole concept is. He also dances around his sexual orientation, telling us he "likes" girls, without making it clear whether or not he is attracted to them. My feeling is that he is a closeted gay man, desperately grappling with his internalized homophobia.
Transgenderism as a recipe for solipsism. No room left for concern about the rest of the world: poverty, wars, the climate and biodiversity catastrophes. This is the "Me" generation on steroids and stilts.
Yes, but it also sounds awfully like religious doubt and religious guilt ("Bless me Reddit for I have sinned. I have doubts".
I was curious to see how it compares so I found this . The OP says
"Later that night, I was in bed, and I started having doubts about my faith. I don't want to doubt it, because I believe it, but, no matter how hard I tried to push the doubts away, they kept coming back. Right now I'm currently struggling with them.
Yes: transgender ideology displays just about all the classic features of a cult. I tried your link but was blocked: no idea why, as I don't very often look at Reddit. It all strikes me as massive doses of imposter syndrome... where cult indoctrination plus rejection of birth sex is all in the head, without reaching the body. Any "gender dysphoria" is strictly limited to deep discomfort with social interactions of eg "being treated as a woman" despite basically still feeling like a woman in every way beyond dress. All these people would be so much better off without the option of "trans" identification: to be able to fight unwanted sex role stereotyping directly: for the women, as feminists. Instead of consigning themselves to a horrible purgatory of not being able to find any kind of identity except with the un-belonging of other lost souls. I feel more inclined to blame the transactivists who preyed on their insecurities with false promises to pull them into this pit of despair, than any resulting self-indulgent mental contortions in trying to reconcile themselves to such an impossible situation.
Yes, and add onto that male narcissism, pornography addiction, social media, past childhood sexual abuse (especially for girls), and a desire to escape from being abused and manipulated by a woman-hating society (especially for girls), and this is the result.
This reminds me of something my psychiatrist told me years ago during a year of therapy during a difficult time in my life...” people think narcissism is just vanity and self love, but that’s not the case, narcissism is when a person can’t look away from the mirror because if they do, they don’t exist for themselves, they are nothing. And the mirror is not only a real mirror. Everyone is a narcissist’s mirror for them, and you can only have a relationship with them by being their mirror. If you can reflect a pleasing image of them back, you simply are no use to them, and you become peripheral.” The internet has cultivated narcissistic tendencies in young people at their most vulnerable when their image of themselves is at its most fragile and malleable...
Thank you…I meant to write “If you CAN’T reflect a pleasing image of themselves”; I made a mistake! The “narcissistic supply” idea. It makes me admire desisters and detransitioners even more. The road back must be very lonely. BTW, I love your column in Substack…Brilliant analysis , research and insights.
Some of the damage of introducing the idea that you're supposed to have an experience of gender is on full display here. There is no distinct qualia associated with womanhood or manhood. There is nothing you're supposed to be feeling that tells you you're in the right body.
The internet has given us all a megaphone to talk to the world but it has driven us mad. What comes across most starkly: the puny hectoring tik tok self demanding to be seen, always upping the ante of outrageous behavior.
Sad, all this self-obsession. I like what another commenter here said about there being no room left to think about war, poverty, the climate crisis, etc. Or feminism. So true.
And I want to tell each of these people that it's perfectly ok to be one's sex, but to not comply with the demeaning, dehumanizing, dishonest patriarchal "sex role" expected of one's sex. Because those sex roles are stereotypes that have been created by men for the purpose of oppressing women. And who wants to be part of that anymore. If you don't perfectly fit all the stereotypes for your sex, congratulations! You're normal. Instead of trying to fit the stereotypes, reject them. Break free from them. End them. Disprove them. Don't be limited by them, whether the set of stereotypes for your own sex, or the opposite sex.
The navel gazing in all of this is hard to take. What a sad affair after all the progress and insght of the second wave of feminism. I think instead of complaining about and trying to debunk and debate gender identity nonsense claims, their sayings and on their terms we may be more effective to directly say to people to reject the sex stereotyping, and that it's perfectly fine to be a woman or man who doesn't fit the stereotypes. In fact, it's an important women's liberation project to reject them.
I've had some surprisingly nuanced discussions with my teenage daughter about this. She would like to be referred to as "they/them," but not because of some delusion that she somehow exists outside of the sex binary. Rather, she indeed rejects sex stereotypes, and thinks that for the vast majority of life situations, it should be no one's concern whether a given person is (biologically) male or female; hence, she objects to pronouns that distinguish between the two.
Your daughter is smart. I agree with her, and think that's a great idea for reducing the amount of irrelevant sex marking of people in language. Thank you. Would you please tell her thank you, and that I'm going to explore that?
I, too, object to gendered pronouns for the same reason. However, I so far decline to choose an individual response to that (meaning, I decline to request others to refer to me as they/them). Rather, I try using they/them for others as much as possible. It's been a slow ramp-up because I don't enjoy confused looks from others, but I've been making forward progress.
This makes me think about how horribly cruel the #bekind message/movement is. The kindest thing we as a society can do for these people is to tell them the truth. The kindness thing their therapists can do is to get in touch with reality. The kindest thing doctors , scientists, and journalists can do is to tell openly that you can only be the sex you were born What is so kind about lying people to their faces? Isn't it called gaslighting? Even laughing at and ridiculing those who don't pass is less cruel than affirming.
Right! And frankly, these people so obsessed with themselves don’t deserve any pity! “Be kind” where kindness is warranted.. those suffering from cancer, from hunger.
These mental illnesses need to be treated with confronting their pain with truth for sure!
Yes. When I encounter the young women with hips and beards and no breasts, I feel very sad for them. I do feel pity. They're just confused young people who have been sucked into this movement. (I know some who have been on testosterone for longer pass fairly well, but the ones I'm talking about look like exactly what they are).
These people are consumed by sex stereotypes and spend their time performing what they perceive as masculine and feminine. Perhaps the lack of certainty in our family and societal roles, and a discomfort with choosing a path has contributed to this mess. There were simpler times, when one knew what was expected and a life trajectory may have been more stable (but not necessarily better in many ways). There were many decades of opening wide choice and opportunity for both men and women, but this cult seems to be an attempt to undo much of that advancement.
“....being viewed as Prey, the common experience of women to hate feminity in the patriarchy...”
They really believe that other women enjoy being viewed as Prey, eh? Must be because they think we hate *femininity* “in the patriarchy,” when no, we hate the patriarchy itself, and all patriarchal religions that oppress women, with gender ideology being one of the worst (if not the all time worst). I think the end-goal of transhumanist TIMs is to do away with female humans altogether and use technology to create babies in artificial wombs.
Eliza, what a brilliant column - again. Thank you. I will post it on the Prostitution Research & Education FB page, also going to put it into a pdf and post on our website if that is OK? Will include how to sub to you. I love the comments, including "tantrum politics." I have ben thinking that while we TERFS are accused of complicity with the Right - in fact, the complicity is between the reactionary Right and the reactionary Left. Calling the Left woke doesnt capture the sinister nature of their willingness to get into lockstep with this trans cult. They are truly reactionary IMO.
Eliza, you are doing such wonderful ethnograpic work with these young people!
I don't think it is solopsistic since there is an intense anxiety about the other and how one will be percieved. Self absorbed might be better.
This underlines for me the double whammy of social media and COVID. This person could just as well be obsessing over the creation for an avatar on social media. It is all self creation in a vacuum.
There is also a frenitic absorption in behavioral cybernetics. The person posits a self and how it might be recieved and the feedback loop, and then tries to self-adjust to make the reception better and tries to refine an ever more perfect self with minimal negative reception.
"i [sic] cant figure out how to imagine myself as nonbinary, although thats what i am. i guess i dont have the capacity for that type of nuance in these types of mental scenarios)"
To state the obvious, this person is overthinking the situation. The reason she can't imagine herself as nonbinary is twofold. First, she is clearly not nonbinary. The cruelest part of gender identity ideology is how effective it is at alienating susceptible people from their biological sex and cultural sex roles and how shitty it is at replacing them with a stable identity and way of being that won't skitter away the moment a person lets their guard down.
More importantly, is anyone nonbinary? I don't know who coined the term nor could I explain the canonical thinking behind it. Assuming for the sake of argument that it was Judith Butler, is there any reason to think that the term "nonbinary" is anything more than a metaphor in some grand theoretical narrative about gender? What if nonbinary doesn't even have a lofty academic pedigree? Maybe she and others like her are chasing a fiction that emerged from some big-city scene as just another way of owning the cishets?
It seems like the first girl isn't struggling as much to imagine her future self as a man, but as an ADULT living an adult life with adult responsibilities.
Almost all of the FTMs seem to driven by running away from themselves. So many of the newest cohort aren't even running from gender and are having to try harder and more desperately to cram distresses increasingly distant from gender into the gender box because they think transition is the not pathway out of whatever their distress is since "gender dysphoria" and "trans" have become the Michael Phelps in the cultural symptom pool of distress.
I'm starting to believe what makes a "happily" transitioned person has less to do with winning the lottery of passing, having few medical complications, or living in an environment where everyone sees them the way they want to be seen (assuming they can figure out what that is), but winning the lottery of having a mix of personality traits that keeps them from feeling the "chafing of fraudulence."
"winning the lottery of having a mix of personality traits that keeps them from feeling the "chafing of fraudulence."
I think you're exactly right about this. Several people have said versions of the people who do the best are the ones who are autistic *enough* that they take other people's politeness literally.
Autistic people are often naturally less gender conforming anyway, so add gullibility and naivete and you have a recipe for someone who really believes.
Those personality traits that stop chafe may be psychopathic or sociopathic. That would explain a lot
It seems that there are a variety of factors like low intellectual curiosity or else high narcissism at play, but the one common trait that predicts success regardless of other traits is extreme naïveté.
"low intellectual curiosity" would definitely explain how a boy like the MTF of this article could be completely oblivious to the many potential mentors he could have had through Hollywood's film and TV stereotypes of sensitive men. Alan Aldas abound, if you are truly drawn to them, as I have always been. I don't believe for one minute that he IS sensitive, since he casually mentions "misandry" without a clue as to how thoroughly misogynistic that whole concept is. He also dances around his sexual orientation, telling us he "likes" girls, without making it clear whether or not he is attracted to them. My feeling is that he is a closeted gay man, desperately grappling with his internalized homophobia.
Transgenderism as a recipe for solipsism. No room left for concern about the rest of the world: poverty, wars, the climate and biodiversity catastrophes. This is the "Me" generation on steroids and stilts.
Yes, but it also sounds awfully like religious doubt and religious guilt ("Bless me Reddit for I have sinned. I have doubts".
I was curious to see how it compares so I found this . The OP says
"Later that night, I was in bed, and I started having doubts about my faith. I don't want to doubt it, because I believe it, but, no matter how hard I tried to push the doubts away, they kept coming back. Right now I'm currently struggling with them.
"https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/ajjjv3/i_have_been_having_doubts/
Yes: transgender ideology displays just about all the classic features of a cult. I tried your link but was blocked: no idea why, as I don't very often look at Reddit. It all strikes me as massive doses of imposter syndrome... where cult indoctrination plus rejection of birth sex is all in the head, without reaching the body. Any "gender dysphoria" is strictly limited to deep discomfort with social interactions of eg "being treated as a woman" despite basically still feeling like a woman in every way beyond dress. All these people would be so much better off without the option of "trans" identification: to be able to fight unwanted sex role stereotyping directly: for the women, as feminists. Instead of consigning themselves to a horrible purgatory of not being able to find any kind of identity except with the un-belonging of other lost souls. I feel more inclined to blame the transactivists who preyed on their insecurities with false promises to pull them into this pit of despair, than any resulting self-indulgent mental contortions in trying to reconcile themselves to such an impossible situation.
Agree100% These self absorbed jerks make me sick!
Yes, and add onto that male narcissism, pornography addiction, social media, past childhood sexual abuse (especially for girls), and a desire to escape from being abused and manipulated by a woman-hating society (especially for girls), and this is the result.
This reminds me of something my psychiatrist told me years ago during a year of therapy during a difficult time in my life...” people think narcissism is just vanity and self love, but that’s not the case, narcissism is when a person can’t look away from the mirror because if they do, they don’t exist for themselves, they are nothing. And the mirror is not only a real mirror. Everyone is a narcissist’s mirror for them, and you can only have a relationship with them by being their mirror. If you can reflect a pleasing image of them back, you simply are no use to them, and you become peripheral.” The internet has cultivated narcissistic tendencies in young people at their most vulnerable when their image of themselves is at its most fragile and malleable...
That's a really interesting way to describe narcissism.
Thank you…I meant to write “If you CAN’T reflect a pleasing image of themselves”; I made a mistake! The “narcissistic supply” idea. It makes me admire desisters and detransitioners even more. The road back must be very lonely. BTW, I love your column in Substack…Brilliant analysis , research and insights.
Some of the damage of introducing the idea that you're supposed to have an experience of gender is on full display here. There is no distinct qualia associated with womanhood or manhood. There is nothing you're supposed to be feeling that tells you you're in the right body.
It’s all complete navel gazing! Me, me, me! Grow up !
The internet has given us all a megaphone to talk to the world but it has driven us mad. What comes across most starkly: the puny hectoring tik tok self demanding to be seen, always upping the ante of outrageous behavior.
I love this article of yours. Thank you, Eliza.
Sad, all this self-obsession. I like what another commenter here said about there being no room left to think about war, poverty, the climate crisis, etc. Or feminism. So true.
And I want to tell each of these people that it's perfectly ok to be one's sex, but to not comply with the demeaning, dehumanizing, dishonest patriarchal "sex role" expected of one's sex. Because those sex roles are stereotypes that have been created by men for the purpose of oppressing women. And who wants to be part of that anymore. If you don't perfectly fit all the stereotypes for your sex, congratulations! You're normal. Instead of trying to fit the stereotypes, reject them. Break free from them. End them. Disprove them. Don't be limited by them, whether the set of stereotypes for your own sex, or the opposite sex.
The navel gazing in all of this is hard to take. What a sad affair after all the progress and insght of the second wave of feminism. I think instead of complaining about and trying to debunk and debate gender identity nonsense claims, their sayings and on their terms we may be more effective to directly say to people to reject the sex stereotyping, and that it's perfectly fine to be a woman or man who doesn't fit the stereotypes. In fact, it's an important women's liberation project to reject them.
I've had some surprisingly nuanced discussions with my teenage daughter about this. She would like to be referred to as "they/them," but not because of some delusion that she somehow exists outside of the sex binary. Rather, she indeed rejects sex stereotypes, and thinks that for the vast majority of life situations, it should be no one's concern whether a given person is (biologically) male or female; hence, she objects to pronouns that distinguish between the two.
Your daughter is smart. I agree with her, and think that's a great idea for reducing the amount of irrelevant sex marking of people in language. Thank you. Would you please tell her thank you, and that I'm going to explore that?
I, too, object to gendered pronouns for the same reason. However, I so far decline to choose an individual response to that (meaning, I decline to request others to refer to me as they/them). Rather, I try using they/them for others as much as possible. It's been a slow ramp-up because I don't enjoy confused looks from others, but I've been making forward progress.
Navel gazing says it all!
This makes me think about how horribly cruel the #bekind message/movement is. The kindest thing we as a society can do for these people is to tell them the truth. The kindness thing their therapists can do is to get in touch with reality. The kindest thing doctors , scientists, and journalists can do is to tell openly that you can only be the sex you were born What is so kind about lying people to their faces? Isn't it called gaslighting? Even laughing at and ridiculing those who don't pass is less cruel than affirming.
Right! And frankly, these people so obsessed with themselves don’t deserve any pity! “Be kind” where kindness is warranted.. those suffering from cancer, from hunger.
These mental illnesses need to be treated with confronting their pain with truth for sure!
I think they do deserve compassion but certainly not in the form they are receiving.
Yes. When I encounter the young women with hips and beards and no breasts, I feel very sad for them. I do feel pity. They're just confused young people who have been sucked into this movement. (I know some who have been on testosterone for longer pass fairly well, but the ones I'm talking about look like exactly what they are).
These people are consumed by sex stereotypes and spend their time performing what they perceive as masculine and feminine. Perhaps the lack of certainty in our family and societal roles, and a discomfort with choosing a path has contributed to this mess. There were simpler times, when one knew what was expected and a life trajectory may have been more stable (but not necessarily better in many ways). There were many decades of opening wide choice and opportunity for both men and women, but this cult seems to be an attempt to undo much of that advancement.
These people are Living in permanent cognitive dissonance.
And have been contaminated with current lies .. about” assignments “ at birth , “ nonbinary” and other such nonsense!
The internalized misogyny in TIFs is staggering.
Has no one explained to them that ‘identity’ is a lifelong act of exploration and experimentation? They need skilled psychotherapeutic input imo.
“....being viewed as Prey, the common experience of women to hate feminity in the patriarchy...”
They really believe that other women enjoy being viewed as Prey, eh? Must be because they think we hate *femininity* “in the patriarchy,” when no, we hate the patriarchy itself, and all patriarchal religions that oppress women, with gender ideology being one of the worst (if not the all time worst). I think the end-goal of transhumanist TIMs is to do away with female humans altogether and use technology to create babies in artificial wombs.
Eliza, what a brilliant column - again. Thank you. I will post it on the Prostitution Research & Education FB page, also going to put it into a pdf and post on our website if that is OK? Will include how to sub to you. I love the comments, including "tantrum politics." I have ben thinking that while we TERFS are accused of complicity with the Right - in fact, the complicity is between the reactionary Right and the reactionary Left. Calling the Left woke doesnt capture the sinister nature of their willingness to get into lockstep with this trans cult. They are truly reactionary IMO.
Yes, please do!
Eliza, you are doing such wonderful ethnograpic work with these young people!
I don't think it is solopsistic since there is an intense anxiety about the other and how one will be percieved. Self absorbed might be better.
This underlines for me the double whammy of social media and COVID. This person could just as well be obsessing over the creation for an avatar on social media. It is all self creation in a vacuum.
There is also a frenitic absorption in behavioral cybernetics. The person posits a self and how it might be recieved and the feedback loop, and then tries to self-adjust to make the reception better and tries to refine an ever more perfect self with minimal negative reception.
Fantastic intelligence work. Very helpful. Thank you.
"i [sic] cant figure out how to imagine myself as nonbinary, although thats what i am. i guess i dont have the capacity for that type of nuance in these types of mental scenarios)"
To state the obvious, this person is overthinking the situation. The reason she can't imagine herself as nonbinary is twofold. First, she is clearly not nonbinary. The cruelest part of gender identity ideology is how effective it is at alienating susceptible people from their biological sex and cultural sex roles and how shitty it is at replacing them with a stable identity and way of being that won't skitter away the moment a person lets their guard down.
More importantly, is anyone nonbinary? I don't know who coined the term nor could I explain the canonical thinking behind it. Assuming for the sake of argument that it was Judith Butler, is there any reason to think that the term "nonbinary" is anything more than a metaphor in some grand theoretical narrative about gender? What if nonbinary doesn't even have a lofty academic pedigree? Maybe she and others like her are chasing a fiction that emerged from some big-city scene as just another way of owning the cishets?
"your Gender's birthsex being viewed as Prey" Wow that is so sad. I'm in my 50's. Being a young woman was supposed to be better by now.