The language of gender ideology lets adherents signal to one another without communicating. Restore language to a tool of communication and the ideology falls apart.
It's astonishing (well, nothing is "astonishing" anymore) that clinicians have adopted all of this newspeak: assigned sex at birth, chest surgery, top surgery, bottom surgery… For what other conditions has new, "affirming" terminology been developed? I heard this was because the actual terms were in and of themselves too distressing to hear for trans-identifying young people. How does any of this make sense to anyone? How stable is someone who cannot bear to hear the realities of their procedures? A cancer diagnosis is terrifying. Why don't we have more fun names for chemo?
It doesn't surprise me that clinicians have adopted newspeak for the procedures they sell. Yeet those teets! Make the product sound cute and celebratory and you'll sell more of them.
What surprises me is that the entirety of the mass media has gone along with it. Turn on the radio, and every day it's "Gender affirming," "trans kids," "excluding trans people from sports," etc. Those aren't neutral terms, they aren't reporting, they're proselytizing.
I think the mass media is, more than anything at this point, a business scrabbling for clicks. Maybe I romanticize the days of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather (I was a teenager during those years), but most of what you read now is purely opinion and largely clickbait to inflame the masses and keep them stuck in the group-hate. It's good for business. "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." They have zero interest in alienating their angry woke base. And I have to believe there's significant money behind it. 4.8M views of Bill Maher's trans segment and not a peep out of them.
Thinking back on this, I just wanted to add that when I had chemo, one of the two regimens was a treatment that had a nickname. It was this mad scientist, viscous red stuff that went into my IV. They called it "The Red Devil." They didn't call it "The Strawberry Surprise."
Still, underlines the stark horror of what the odious euphemism of "gender-affirming care" really entails.
Why there's substantially more value in the standard biological definitions for the sexes, as opposed to the risibly anti-scientific "patchwork definitions of the social sciences":
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences [and by Genspect, & Emma Hilton] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
Fantastic that you broke through to your classmate by simply speaking plainly about the brutality of what is happening. I was just thinking yesterday about the powerful letter you wrote to a friend who could not hear you, the first post of yours I read. And your letter was so beautiful and strong, it was horrifying that even with the bond of friendship you could not break through. I have lost important friends too. While I do not regret standing up and doing my best to communicate my views, it is still a source of grief and also an experience of failure, as I did not manage to get through to them. The ones who keep a loving bond but still disagree with me give me hope. But I think the air we are all breathing is changing every day. Your fellow classmate has had these questions and open spaces for you to reach because the questions are in the air she breathes, the air of our shared culture. Because we who are fighting this are putting them in the air! Each and every one of the Awakening Woke are so important, because of all the other woke people in their lives.
Yes. Language is so powerful. We must scrutinise every word, every phrase. Even the term of 'gender ideology' is potentially misleading. To what extent is gender ideology even about gender at all? Would it be more accurate to call it a rejection of gender altogether? A 'non-gender ideology' perhaps?
100 years ago we might expect the first thing female 'trans kids' were encouraged to do would be study hard, get a good job, learn to put your own hardships and vanity to one side and prioritise providing protection and resources for women and children (and the community as a whole). Because THAT was the male gender role. The rugged clothing, short hair and plain demeanour was more of a NATURAL CONSEQUENCE of the male gender role, rather than the thing itself.
To what extent are the current prescriptions for 'trans kids' (male or female) about gender at all, if these powerful gender roles (gendered behaviour) are not part of those prescriptions?
And how can one be said to 'identify with a particular gender' if one does not feel innately compelled to inhabit those gender roles (gendered behaviour) in some form or other? (and there are many and varied ways to express male/ female gendered behaviour beyond traditional pair bonding and parenting roles).
The 'transexuals' of the past (and throughout history) generally did seek to conform to gender roles (as much as was practically/ medically possible). Many were traditionalists at heart (a source of anguish given their circumstances).
However, the modern 'transgender' phenomenon does not seem to even recognise the concept of innate gendered behaviour at all. 'Gender' has now become a Pink Floyd T-shirt worn by someone who has never actually heard a Pink Floyd song, and probably wouldn't like it if they did.
But the same can be said of wider (post feminist) society. To what extent has mainstream society itself become 'transgender' (which is to say 'post-gender' or 'de-gendered') by default? And if so, what factors might be causing it? (I have some theories on my blog FWIW).
Are 'trans kids' (in the modern context) just the tip of the spear? The bleeding edge of social progress? Or rather, technological progress (cybernetic/ transhumanist progress)? And if so, do we want to keep participating (and buying into) that kind of progress?
I agree with your premise. But, please, please, please, change the emphasis on sterilization, when the other harms are so dire: harm to bone growth, neurological development, foreclosing future orgasmic capacity, risks of stroke, heart attack, and shortened life span. Not to minimize sterilization, for those who will want children in future (many won't), but induced disabilities need to get more attention than they have been. People in their 20s with osteoporosis, crumbling joints and jaws, for example.
It's astonishing (well, nothing is "astonishing" anymore) that clinicians have adopted all of this newspeak: assigned sex at birth, chest surgery, top surgery, bottom surgery… For what other conditions has new, "affirming" terminology been developed? I heard this was because the actual terms were in and of themselves too distressing to hear for trans-identifying young people. How does any of this make sense to anyone? How stable is someone who cannot bear to hear the realities of their procedures? A cancer diagnosis is terrifying. Why don't we have more fun names for chemo?
It doesn't surprise me that clinicians have adopted newspeak for the procedures they sell. Yeet those teets! Make the product sound cute and celebratory and you'll sell more of them.
What surprises me is that the entirety of the mass media has gone along with it. Turn on the radio, and every day it's "Gender affirming," "trans kids," "excluding trans people from sports," etc. Those aren't neutral terms, they aren't reporting, they're proselytizing.
I think the mass media is, more than anything at this point, a business scrabbling for clicks. Maybe I romanticize the days of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather (I was a teenager during those years), but most of what you read now is purely opinion and largely clickbait to inflame the masses and keep them stuck in the group-hate. It's good for business. "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." They have zero interest in alienating their angry woke base. And I have to believe there's significant money behind it. 4.8M views of Bill Maher's trans segment and not a peep out of them.
Thinking back on this, I just wanted to add that when I had chemo, one of the two regimens was a treatment that had a nickname. It was this mad scientist, viscous red stuff that went into my IV. They called it "The Red Devil." They didn't call it "The Strawberry Surprise."
Indeed. But not just "sterilize kids", but turn them into sexless eunuchs.
On which Helen Joyce had some pithy comments, though Standpoint is defunct and there are some formatting problems:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201113021904/https://standpointmag.co.uk/speaking-up-for-female-eunuchs/
Still, underlines the stark horror of what the odious euphemism of "gender-affirming care" really entails.
Why there's substantially more value in the standard biological definitions for the sexes, as opposed to the risibly anti-scientific "patchwork definitions of the social sciences":
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences [and by Genspect, & Emma Hilton] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
No doubt that adults should, presumably, be allowed to do that to themselves - something of a thing during the heyday of Imperial China:
https://www.usrf.org/news/010308-hiddenpower.html
However, dysphoric and autistic children? Crime of the century, Mengele compounded with Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Fantastic that you broke through to your classmate by simply speaking plainly about the brutality of what is happening. I was just thinking yesterday about the powerful letter you wrote to a friend who could not hear you, the first post of yours I read. And your letter was so beautiful and strong, it was horrifying that even with the bond of friendship you could not break through. I have lost important friends too. While I do not regret standing up and doing my best to communicate my views, it is still a source of grief and also an experience of failure, as I did not manage to get through to them. The ones who keep a loving bond but still disagree with me give me hope. But I think the air we are all breathing is changing every day. Your fellow classmate has had these questions and open spaces for you to reach because the questions are in the air she breathes, the air of our shared culture. Because we who are fighting this are putting them in the air! Each and every one of the Awakening Woke are so important, because of all the other woke people in their lives.
Yes. Language is so powerful. We must scrutinise every word, every phrase. Even the term of 'gender ideology' is potentially misleading. To what extent is gender ideology even about gender at all? Would it be more accurate to call it a rejection of gender altogether? A 'non-gender ideology' perhaps?
100 years ago we might expect the first thing female 'trans kids' were encouraged to do would be study hard, get a good job, learn to put your own hardships and vanity to one side and prioritise providing protection and resources for women and children (and the community as a whole). Because THAT was the male gender role. The rugged clothing, short hair and plain demeanour was more of a NATURAL CONSEQUENCE of the male gender role, rather than the thing itself.
To what extent are the current prescriptions for 'trans kids' (male or female) about gender at all, if these powerful gender roles (gendered behaviour) are not part of those prescriptions?
And how can one be said to 'identify with a particular gender' if one does not feel innately compelled to inhabit those gender roles (gendered behaviour) in some form or other? (and there are many and varied ways to express male/ female gendered behaviour beyond traditional pair bonding and parenting roles).
The 'transexuals' of the past (and throughout history) generally did seek to conform to gender roles (as much as was practically/ medically possible). Many were traditionalists at heart (a source of anguish given their circumstances).
However, the modern 'transgender' phenomenon does not seem to even recognise the concept of innate gendered behaviour at all. 'Gender' has now become a Pink Floyd T-shirt worn by someone who has never actually heard a Pink Floyd song, and probably wouldn't like it if they did.
But the same can be said of wider (post feminist) society. To what extent has mainstream society itself become 'transgender' (which is to say 'post-gender' or 'de-gendered') by default? And if so, what factors might be causing it? (I have some theories on my blog FWIW).
Are 'trans kids' (in the modern context) just the tip of the spear? The bleeding edge of social progress? Or rather, technological progress (cybernetic/ transhumanist progress)? And if so, do we want to keep participating (and buying into) that kind of progress?
Brilliant article!
I agree with your premise. But, please, please, please, change the emphasis on sterilization, when the other harms are so dire: harm to bone growth, neurological development, foreclosing future orgasmic capacity, risks of stroke, heart attack, and shortened life span. Not to minimize sterilization, for those who will want children in future (many won't), but induced disabilities need to get more attention than they have been. People in their 20s with osteoporosis, crumbling joints and jaws, for example.
If it's wrong in plain English, then plain English must be the first target.
Yes, exactly.
word
Really sorry but twitter is stopping me from posting your emails!
Oh, weird... what message are you getting?
Nothing! It looks OK then it just doesn't work. Same with glinner and similar substacks.
Thanks for letting me know... not really great!
Of course it is possible that it's me, not you.
I seem to have succeeded, Chris. Well see how long it stays up!
Brilliant.