To paraphrase something someone else said: If a kid insists he is actually Spider-Man and you say he isn’t, you are not “erasing” him or denying his existence (much less issuing a death threat or committing “literal genocide”). You are simply stating a fact about reality.
But the hysteria I am seeing in my social circles online is unreal. I just wish I could have a rational discussion with these people. How can the term “transgender” even be meaningful or defined absent the reality of sex? Though I suppose even that could be twisted around: if sex isn’t a real thing, if male and female are not a true binary distinction, then there really wouldn’t be a difference between “trans” and “cis” people and I guess everyone would just be what they say they are at any given moment. (Which, to be clear, is absurd.)
Sorry, trans activists, but the winner of the 1976 men’s Olympic decathlon was not (and still isn’t) a woman, and the star of the movie Juno wasn’t (and still isn’t) a man. But they both still exist, as the unique humans they have always been.
And perhaps those "gender" celebrities could have had the option of a wellness program to recover from obsessive cross-sex ideation and rumination. The hormones and surgeries do not reconnect mind and body, but rather choreograph a social/political path, a religious cause, which is placebo effect and not addressing the problem. The shrinks simply got it wrong, all the way back to James/Jan Morris and Renee Richards. (the later confesses his regret in private now, he did so to a friend of mine at his Manhattan medical practice a decade ago)
Another thought: sadly, I fear that at best this will come off as one of those “hate the sin, love the sinner” approaches. The argument will be made that even if this isn’t a “war on trans-identified PEOPLE,” it’s a war on trans identification, and that will be portrayed as just as bad.
But I just want to shake those people who insist “trans women are women” and ask them to define “women” and “trans” in a way that isn’t circular, or dependent on either gender stereotypes or on the binary nature of sex.
I have to try to find it, but a few years back (gahd, I've been seeing the emperor's nudity for so, so long) someone did a nice piece that was titled something like "It Didn't Have to Be This Way." Like, all you had to do was stick with "transwomen." Trying to make everyone else participate in the tautology of TWAW was insanity.
We put together a federal bill that is much more extensive than this EO. Major components of our bill were used but not everything we wanted. We floated our ideas to Democrats but they wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. There was also huge resistance from feminists who wanted to essentially ban the words gender, transgender, cisgender and the like. Instead we decided it was more effective to define them in ways that disempower them legally, politically and socially. We don't want a multiyear fight over this. Our thinking is that issues like this keep us fighting Left to Right for decades while bigger problems are not addressed (climate, perpetual wars for profit) are successfully hidden “behind the curtain.” So we want to spend our time unraveling the damage rather than keep the country split with blue states having injunctions against the Trump EO.
We need to undo years of miseducation of youth. The best way to do that is flip gender ideology on it's head by reframing the discussion, including terms. So we took the bill to Republicans who promoted major parts of it. Our bill is much more comprehensive and includes features that will prevent Democrats from ever pulling a subversive trick like their sneaky redefinition of sex again. While not banning transitioning outright, it contains details that will have transitioning profiteers shaking in their boots. We also separate LGB rights from the TQ+ craziness to reinforce the protected class necessary for sexual orientation.
Now on to the harder work of convincingly Republicans to incorporate more of our ideas. Contact me via substack messages if you want to help. Join us.
How do we ban the teaching of gender identity ideology (e.g. The Genderbread Person and "sometimes boys discover they were born with girls' brains") in K-12 without violating the First Amendment's free speech guarantee? Can we rely on the fact that courts have recognized that school kids' constitutional rights are more limited than adults? Or frame it in terms of a ban on teaching information about human behavior that has not been scientifically proven?
I suppose you have to start with Edwards v. Aguillard, which tossed out a state law that prohibited K-12 schools from teaching evolution unless they also taught creationism, and other cases on creationism/"intelligent design," like the Kitzmiller case in Pennsylvania.
Also look for cases on sex-ed classes, which would be more closely related to this issue. There have been cases arguing that sex ed classes were not ok either because they failed to teach "medically accurate" info or they taught info that was not medically accurate.
Teachers in K-12 schools do not have a First Amendment right to teach whatever they want.
I think your “middle way” approach is the right one and I’ve been waiting for someone to go on this direction. I’m not currently able to do any activism but I’d like to stay up to date on your progress. Will message you.
The quick answer to your question - no. He's declaring war on the people who are harming vulnerable children, teens and young adults, eroding society's sense of reality, squashing First Amendment rights, and violating women's rights and women's boundaries. Anyone who is not in some way encouraging, pushing or actually doing such harm or violating such rights is not the object of the war. I would venture to guess that many trans-identified people are more victim than culprit. So no, I see no declaration of war on those who have transitioned, only a war on those (trans-identified or not) who are doing harm.
That doesn't mean I agree with everything else he is doing (there is much I disagree with), but he is on the right track with this particular Executive Order!
Yes, definitely! In the same way that I was DECLARING WAR on my narcissistic ex boyfriend anytime I made a boundary that inconvenienced and upset him. Narcissistic injury which then causes over dramatization and lashing out! Because how dare you not submit.
At this point I'm like "so what if it is war?" We have two mutually incompatible belief systems and I don't see any comprises that a majority on either side will accept. It's absurd to say, but this feels like one of those civilizational disagreements that's on par with something like slavery. You have to pick one side and trying to compromise on such an important issue just isn't really possible.
You have one side that thinks some women are born with a terrible birth defect, namely that they happen to have the exact same anatomy as a healthy man. These people are willing to do anything to protect those vulnerable women. We have Doctors with MDs teaching classes on how to induce men to lactate so these poor unfortunate women can bond with their youngsters by breastfeeding them. They think they are being compassionate.
Then you have people like you and me that see this as the most hideous form of child abuse.
How exactly are we going to work out reasonable compromises?
It's felt more like a war on normies by the trans and alphabets mafia, than the other way around.
As someone pointed out a day or two ago, the trans fanatics just pushed it too far. It came to the point where the >99% felt bullied by the <1%. Consider the malicious loon Lily Tino who posts daily videos about how "she" is being misgendered everywhere in an attempt to get service workers fired. Recently, Lilykins claimed to have been the victim of misgendering three times in one day?
Sweetie, if everyone is misgendering you, it's a sure sign that you are an utter failure at presenting as a woman. Perhaps, you need to give up on that fantasy? (Too bad your man parts are in a landfill somewhere.)
I honestly don't care what people do in private even if it's caused by a fetish or mental illness. Just stay out of women and girls' spaces and sports, and keep your annoying pronouns to yourself.
BTW, LGBTQ comedian Thai Rivera has now done three or four videos on Lily. He's very witty and funny.
I listened to a Quilette podcast in which the host interviewed a trans woman who had gone to great lengths to pass as a convincing woman, including facial feminization surgery. He talked about his girfriends and criticized today's young trans women for not caring sufficiently about appearing real. He and his husband both have high-powered careers.
The thesis seemed to be that trans women who really do seem like women - sound like one, look like one, appear to think like one - have somehow earned their female identity and should therefore be considered women. I strongly disagree, but I can see how others might want to go along with the fiction because on the surface they are the real deal. However, I can't seem to find the podcast just now. Odd.
I think that men often think of women in terms of their physical bodies. It's just how their brains work. Heterosexual men see big boobs on a male transgender like Blair White, who displays her silicon packages in the manner that many men want women to display our breasts, and their male minds see that person as a female. Blair has also done feminization facial surgery and dolls herself up with lots of makeup. Then there's the hair flip, lol. She even slows down the video to make her “female” mannerisms stand out more. Many men see that and think: Woman!
The same goes for men who want to BE women. They never try to look like a butch lesbian. Nope, they go for the porn star ickyness instead. Male transgenders are identifying into a stereotype, not identifying as women. Their male minds think that bizarre, made up pornish image is what a woman should look like. So that's what they “identify” as – Fake women.
On inauguration day, I was tired of seeing post after post on LinkedIn boldly claiming that Trump wants to erase all of trans community and that they need to stay united in love and acceptance, resist all attempts to invalidate their gender etc etc...
Trans activists were the ones who declared war by insisting that humans are so special that we can pray the biology away. All Trump did by signing the executive order recognizing male and female was retracting lies. And retracting lies is not a declaration of war. It is an armistice.
As much as I want to get back to binary sex for policy, I do worry a little that the Trump executive order removed protections for just plain gender expression in say the Fair Housing Act. While I think trying to slide those protections in under the guise of the protected category of sex, I'd like to see more of the gender critical crowd assert what they are for as much as what they are against. If you don't live in state where the GOP is mostly evangelicals, you might not realize that many in the GOP think you should be able to fire or not hire people for mere gender expression. Biden was wrong to jumble this kind of protection into the same EO that redefined men and women, but I think some people are so maddened by wokeness that they don't understand that in the US, religious evangelicals want a whole lot more than just keeping the sex binary for official policy.
Lily Alexandre's DIY HRT youtube video is fascinating, the comments even more so. The video is about doing something that's risky and kind of tones down the risk, while the comment section is full of people (no idea what age they are) terrified out of their minds and in no good space to be doing a risk assessment of this kind anyway.
They way trans culture is now, it would be a colossal mistake to make it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
How would employers screen out aggressive autogynephiles claiming to be women who will creep out the real women on the staff or fire the AGPs after they've disrupted the work environment with their histrionics?
How would a boss deal with the youngster who is so focused on their gender identity that they can't do their job, preferring instead to carry the activist cause into the workplace or put off co-workers with their incessant talk about their gender journey?
To paraphrase something someone else said: If a kid insists he is actually Spider-Man and you say he isn’t, you are not “erasing” him or denying his existence (much less issuing a death threat or committing “literal genocide”). You are simply stating a fact about reality.
But the hysteria I am seeing in my social circles online is unreal. I just wish I could have a rational discussion with these people. How can the term “transgender” even be meaningful or defined absent the reality of sex? Though I suppose even that could be twisted around: if sex isn’t a real thing, if male and female are not a true binary distinction, then there really wouldn’t be a difference between “trans” and “cis” people and I guess everyone would just be what they say they are at any given moment. (Which, to be clear, is absurd.)
Sorry, trans activists, but the winner of the 1976 men’s Olympic decathlon was not (and still isn’t) a woman, and the star of the movie Juno wasn’t (and still isn’t) a man. But they both still exist, as the unique humans they have always been.
And perhaps those "gender" celebrities could have had the option of a wellness program to recover from obsessive cross-sex ideation and rumination. The hormones and surgeries do not reconnect mind and body, but rather choreograph a social/political path, a religious cause, which is placebo effect and not addressing the problem. The shrinks simply got it wrong, all the way back to James/Jan Morris and Renee Richards. (the later confesses his regret in private now, he did so to a friend of mine at his Manhattan medical practice a decade ago)
Another thought: sadly, I fear that at best this will come off as one of those “hate the sin, love the sinner” approaches. The argument will be made that even if this isn’t a “war on trans-identified PEOPLE,” it’s a war on trans identification, and that will be portrayed as just as bad.
But I just want to shake those people who insist “trans women are women” and ask them to define “women” and “trans” in a way that isn’t circular, or dependent on either gender stereotypes or on the binary nature of sex.
I have to try to find it, but a few years back (gahd, I've been seeing the emperor's nudity for so, so long) someone did a nice piece that was titled something like "It Didn't Have to Be This Way." Like, all you had to do was stick with "transwomen." Trying to make everyone else participate in the tautology of TWAW was insanity.
The bill we wrote separates sexual orientation from gender identity. It allows the government to address LGB concerns separately from TQ+ insanity.
I sent you a substack message in case you want to get involved.
"It allows the government to address LGB concerns separately from TQ+ insanity."
Thank you!
We put together a federal bill that is much more extensive than this EO. Major components of our bill were used but not everything we wanted. We floated our ideas to Democrats but they wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. There was also huge resistance from feminists who wanted to essentially ban the words gender, transgender, cisgender and the like. Instead we decided it was more effective to define them in ways that disempower them legally, politically and socially. We don't want a multiyear fight over this. Our thinking is that issues like this keep us fighting Left to Right for decades while bigger problems are not addressed (climate, perpetual wars for profit) are successfully hidden “behind the curtain.” So we want to spend our time unraveling the damage rather than keep the country split with blue states having injunctions against the Trump EO.
We need to undo years of miseducation of youth. The best way to do that is flip gender ideology on it's head by reframing the discussion, including terms. So we took the bill to Republicans who promoted major parts of it. Our bill is much more comprehensive and includes features that will prevent Democrats from ever pulling a subversive trick like their sneaky redefinition of sex again. While not banning transitioning outright, it contains details that will have transitioning profiteers shaking in their boots. We also separate LGB rights from the TQ+ craziness to reinforce the protected class necessary for sexual orientation.
Now on to the harder work of convincingly Republicans to incorporate more of our ideas. Contact me via substack messages if you want to help. Join us.
How do we ban the teaching of gender identity ideology (e.g. The Genderbread Person and "sometimes boys discover they were born with girls' brains") in K-12 without violating the First Amendment's free speech guarantee? Can we rely on the fact that courts have recognized that school kids' constitutional rights are more limited than adults? Or frame it in terms of a ban on teaching information about human behavior that has not been scientifically proven?
I suppose you have to start with Edwards v. Aguillard, which tossed out a state law that prohibited K-12 schools from teaching evolution unless they also taught creationism, and other cases on creationism/"intelligent design," like the Kitzmiller case in Pennsylvania.
Also look for cases on sex-ed classes, which would be more closely related to this issue. There have been cases arguing that sex ed classes were not ok either because they failed to teach "medically accurate" info or they taught info that was not medically accurate.
Teachers in K-12 schools do not have a First Amendment right to teach whatever they want.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Edwards-v-Aguilard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/historic-ruling-aclu-lawsuit-abstinence-only-sex-ed-violated-state-law
Exactly. You set the standard based on science. Then you fire teachers who don't believe in science.
More importantly, we need to do a better job of reclaiming women's rights than Trump can. Join us.
Happy to. How?
I think your “middle way” approach is the right one and I’ve been waiting for someone to go on this direction. I’m not currently able to do any activism but I’d like to stay up to date on your progress. Will message you.
The quick answer to your question - no. He's declaring war on the people who are harming vulnerable children, teens and young adults, eroding society's sense of reality, squashing First Amendment rights, and violating women's rights and women's boundaries. Anyone who is not in some way encouraging, pushing or actually doing such harm or violating such rights is not the object of the war. I would venture to guess that many trans-identified people are more victim than culprit. So no, I see no declaration of war on those who have transitioned, only a war on those (trans-identified or not) who are doing harm.
That doesn't mean I agree with everything else he is doing (there is much I disagree with), but he is on the right track with this particular Executive Order!
Yes, definitely! In the same way that I was DECLARING WAR on my narcissistic ex boyfriend anytime I made a boundary that inconvenienced and upset him. Narcissistic injury which then causes over dramatization and lashing out! Because how dare you not submit.
At this point I'm like "so what if it is war?" We have two mutually incompatible belief systems and I don't see any comprises that a majority on either side will accept. It's absurd to say, but this feels like one of those civilizational disagreements that's on par with something like slavery. You have to pick one side and trying to compromise on such an important issue just isn't really possible.
Yep.
You have one side that thinks some women are born with a terrible birth defect, namely that they happen to have the exact same anatomy as a healthy man. These people are willing to do anything to protect those vulnerable women. We have Doctors with MDs teaching classes on how to induce men to lactate so these poor unfortunate women can bond with their youngsters by breastfeeding them. They think they are being compassionate.
Then you have people like you and me that see this as the most hideous form of child abuse.
How exactly are we going to work out reasonable compromises?
It's felt more like a war on normies by the trans and alphabets mafia, than the other way around.
As someone pointed out a day or two ago, the trans fanatics just pushed it too far. It came to the point where the >99% felt bullied by the <1%. Consider the malicious loon Lily Tino who posts daily videos about how "she" is being misgendered everywhere in an attempt to get service workers fired. Recently, Lilykins claimed to have been the victim of misgendering three times in one day?
Sweetie, if everyone is misgendering you, it's a sure sign that you are an utter failure at presenting as a woman. Perhaps, you need to give up on that fantasy? (Too bad your man parts are in a landfill somewhere.)
I honestly don't care what people do in private even if it's caused by a fetish or mental illness. Just stay out of women and girls' spaces and sports, and keep your annoying pronouns to yourself.
BTW, LGBTQ comedian Thai Rivera has now done three or four videos on Lily. He's very witty and funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4O8pFmzb54
I listened to a Quilette podcast in which the host interviewed a trans woman who had gone to great lengths to pass as a convincing woman, including facial feminization surgery. He talked about his girfriends and criticized today's young trans women for not caring sufficiently about appearing real. He and his husband both have high-powered careers.
The thesis seemed to be that trans women who really do seem like women - sound like one, look like one, appear to think like one - have somehow earned their female identity and should therefore be considered women. I strongly disagree, but I can see how others might want to go along with the fiction because on the surface they are the real deal. However, I can't seem to find the podcast just now. Odd.
I think that men often think of women in terms of their physical bodies. It's just how their brains work. Heterosexual men see big boobs on a male transgender like Blair White, who displays her silicon packages in the manner that many men want women to display our breasts, and their male minds see that person as a female. Blair has also done feminization facial surgery and dolls herself up with lots of makeup. Then there's the hair flip, lol. She even slows down the video to make her “female” mannerisms stand out more. Many men see that and think: Woman!
The same goes for men who want to BE women. They never try to look like a butch lesbian. Nope, they go for the porn star ickyness instead. Male transgenders are identifying into a stereotype, not identifying as women. Their male minds think that bizarre, made up pornish image is what a woman should look like. So that's what they “identify” as – Fake women.
Was the interview with Brianna Wu?
On inauguration day, I was tired of seeing post after post on LinkedIn boldly claiming that Trump wants to erase all of trans community and that they need to stay united in love and acceptance, resist all attempts to invalidate their gender etc etc...
Trans activists were the ones who declared war by insisting that humans are so special that we can pray the biology away. All Trump did by signing the executive order recognizing male and female was retracting lies. And retracting lies is not a declaration of war. It is an armistice.
As much as I want to get back to binary sex for policy, I do worry a little that the Trump executive order removed protections for just plain gender expression in say the Fair Housing Act. While I think trying to slide those protections in under the guise of the protected category of sex, I'd like to see more of the gender critical crowd assert what they are for as much as what they are against. If you don't live in state where the GOP is mostly evangelicals, you might not realize that many in the GOP think you should be able to fire or not hire people for mere gender expression. Biden was wrong to jumble this kind of protection into the same EO that redefined men and women, but I think some people are so maddened by wokeness that they don't understand that in the US, religious evangelicals want a whole lot more than just keeping the sex binary for official policy.
Lily Alexandre's DIY HRT youtube video is fascinating, the comments even more so. The video is about doing something that's risky and kind of tones down the risk, while the comment section is full of people (no idea what age they are) terrified out of their minds and in no good space to be doing a risk assessment of this kind anyway.
They way trans culture is now, it would be a colossal mistake to make it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
How would employers screen out aggressive autogynephiles claiming to be women who will creep out the real women on the staff or fire the AGPs after they've disrupted the work environment with their histrionics?
How would a boss deal with the youngster who is so focused on their gender identity that they can't do their job, preferring instead to carry the activist cause into the workplace or put off co-workers with their incessant talk about their gender journey?