Breaking up is hard to do—whether you’re breaking up with a partner, a cult, or a way of seeing the world: Radfem "peaking" is working and I don't want it to. I'm terrified. Please help. I don't want to be transphobic even though I'm not really trans anymore.
I came to your blog through watching your - "the radical center" interview yesterday. Like your post today - that interview was wonderfully nuanced and very insightful. As a 71 year old retired clinical social worker I have somehow only came to a place of deeply examining these issues in the last year, as they weren't really part of the terrain when I retired in 2014 out of Alaska. Over the last year I've read over a dozen books hoping to "catch up" on gender-theory and the overall CSJ madness that I had been rather blissfully unaware of for far too long. Both your writing and your thoughtful insightful analysis stand out Eliza. You provide a refreshing voice and perspectives, and I very much hope you are able to complete your book project. Thank you for your work.
And now the original post is gone, for the following reason:
"Your post was removed because it broke the subreddit rule 6: No trolling. No reposting of trolling/transphobic content.
"While this post in particular is toeing the line due to heavy discussion of transphobic topics, it was removed due to the sheer amount of TERFs and transphobes that were drawn to this post to post hurtful things to the community and try to convince you their transphobic way of thinking is right."
there is no such thing as transition. no such thing as trans. just confused people trying to be something they can never be. redrawing the map does not change the land.
This whole discourse just reaffirms what a cult trans is. Praying my daughter will struggle with these very questions and be persuaded toward reality and sanity in the end. Thank you for this document!
Jul 17, 2023·edited Jul 17, 2023Liked by Eliza Mondegreen
I am sure she does struggle with these questions, as does my daughter. How can they not? Praying that they both, along with young women in the post above, will meet people who will have positive influence and help them out of this evil cult.
"Trans people have been around in many different cultures and are far older than most historians will lead you on to believe." I'd like to know how one arrives at this claim. Any ideas? I read some of Histories of the Transgender Child. I also know that part of this claim is based on some cultures having a kind of "third category" for male homosexuals. But it still puzzles me that they talk about history. What's the history? Am I missing something?
Re the post: thanks for posting it here. It's been removed so I didn't get the comments about OCD. I remember how I felt when I was leaving Christianity behind. I had a few days of sheer terror that I was losing my faith. At the time, I was thinking a lot about the God of the old testament and how he didn't seem to be the same God as the one in the new testament. So I read Genesis and Leviticus in one sitting to try and convince myself that I could solve my conondrum. I can't remember why I chose those two books. I just thought it'd help me. That's where the similarities end. I didn't go online. I told my pastor and he said I could pray to God about my unbelief and ask him to help me believe. Nobody, other than me, freaked out.
The point you make about language is very important. I think when you live in a world where the meaning of words has been manipulated to such an extent, it is hard to believe that others are using words in a transparent way. It's also difficult to trust yourself to know what you really think and feel if your thoughts have been hijacked by an ideology that doesn't allow dissent or even questioning.
You're not missing something. They're inventing history out of whole cloth. My guess is there have always been a few people who felt, for many different reasons (because same-sex attracted, because constrained by sex roles), that they ought to have been born the opposite sex. And this isn't trans. Trans is a creation of ideology and medical tech and didn't exist before mid-20th century. But if only it *always* existed, it would make it hard to question.
Thank you again Eliza. This recent invention that is 'trans' has parasitized the LGB rights legacy orgs and misrepresented LGB history to justify the utter absurdity of 'transgenderism' and that a person can be born in the wrong body. It is antithetical to being LGB which is based on the material reality of sex. And is blatant homophobia b/c it extends the old 'you were born wrong' trope that was used to invalidate LGBs. It is unfortunate that vulnerable people--esp. so-called gender non-conforming and/or same-sex attracted people--believe that they can't just be who they are w/o adopting the nonsense that they are 'born in the wrong body' and have to adopt the fictional 'identity' of 'trans' that they are the opposite sex.
There have also always been people with Body Identity Integrity Disorder. There have always been people who believed they were famous historical figures. There have always been people vulnerable to cults.
So what?
Nobody's trying to start a worldwide cult demanding that people who believe they're able-bodied amputees are being subject to genocide if the taxpayer won't pay for their unnecessary amputations.
Nobody's trying to start a cult demanding that people who believe they're famous historical figures are being subjected to genocide if they're not treated as though they actually were those figures.
Mental illness and demands for power have always been part of the human race.
It's another case of DARVO. Trans activists have created a whole new vocabulary, which they impose upon us by wildly discriminatory laws that destroy the rights, safety, privacy, and dignity of women and children, but it's TERFS who are duplicitous in our language? SMDH. Maybe TERFS should form a secret society that requires someone vouch for new members. Like Freemasons. How about Freematrons™? We'll have our own rituals and a secret handshake. I nominate Eliza to be Grand Poobah of Freematrons™.
The subtle paranoia and confusion in this writing is hard to miss. For me this all points to the lack of agreement in the mental health field and the attempt to normalize thinking that at times is alarming in its conceptualizations. This borders on delusional at times!
The male lurkers are so inevitable and so sinister on these forums full of young women talking to one another. Of course we “TERFs” focus on the sinister men in their movement.
Data is useful. One day I will get around to counting how many "suck my girl- . . ." comments were written in as a response to facts. I hope the parents of this young woman realize they have an opening to bring her back. She needs to be off of the computer and choosing a project to help someone else. For starters on data, here are the stats from 43 trans widows, and some of us have been forced to do the command from the first line, above. And worse. Most of these dudes are dangerously mentally ill. They know exactly when to "act kind and nice." We've all seen it.
Jul 17, 2023·edited Jul 17, 2023Liked by Eliza Mondegreen
I can't say much because it's past my bedtime, but the level of confusion in the minds of these people is astonishing. I was never, ever this confused when I was young.
After reading this, I find myself wondering what all the hateful lies are that "terfs" are telling people -- to love yourself as the woman you are? To fight against being a second-class citizen instead of pretending you are a male?
Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist -- Supposedly, that's a slur. But I almost wish I were a woman so I could call myself that. I would wear that label with pride. (Hey, now I know what to be "proud" of!)
I'm inserting part of a comment here from the article on your Vienna and Salzburg trip. I don't think anyone will read it on the other article.
==========
I'm a little depressed tonight. I just saw an episode of Family Feud in which one of the family panels was all ridiculous-looking drag queens. (The other panel also had a drag queen in it.) I sat there looking at the absurd feminine figures, most with ridiculous wigs, thinking, "Why do you guys hate women so much?" Trans people (of which I consider drag queens to be a part) are succeeding at promoting drag as part of "diversity", when in fact it is simply a sexual fetish. Why is it okay for men to mock women by dressing up as exaggerated prostitutes and femmes fatales, yet it's not okay for whites to dress up in black face and do minstrel shows? To me, they are the same thing. Steve Harvey, the host, didn't look very comfortable.
The trans thing is now hitting closer to home. I know a lesbian couple (not the couple across the street who idle their cars constantly, but another one) in their 70's who adopted a girl about a decade ago. The girl is now 13, and the couple has split up. One of the "mothers" has been actively bad-mouthing the other "mother". The mother who was doing that had custody but decided she didn't want custody any more, and the girl is now living with the other mother (the one I know). The girl clearly has serious emotional problems. She was letting herself go to the point where her hair had become dirty and matted. Well, this girl has suddenly given herself an unusual male name (they always give themselves unusual names for some reason). I warned the mother that the girl may be going down the trans path, and under no circumstances should she let the girl take testosterone or any other physical treatment. She said she won't, but I'm still worried about the girl. Neither of these mothers is an enlightened person. The girl herself allowed the other mother to poison her mind, but now she has to live with the mother she came to hate. It's a bad situation, and the girl herself doesn't seem very clear-headed (from what I have heard -- I haven't met the girl yet).
Young kids don't know when their minds are being poisoned. They can't "allow" it. They absorb what's provided and permitted by the adults in their lives. Whatever that happens to be, that's their "normal". And really, what you described there is such a typical modern selfishness story where the already well established needs of children are dismissed by "progressive" adults pursuing their own wants and "rights". A lesbian couple in their late 50s decide that they want a child. Human society says "We don't want to look bigoted, or ageist, or whatever, so no problem!" and hands over a toddler for them to adopt and raise. A few years later they can't manage to honor their commitments to each other or to the child they adopted. Both are expendable in the pursuit of their own individual happiness. So she (already burdened with the baggage of being adopted) becomes another emotionally damaged child of a broken home, thoughtlessly used as a pawn and a weapon, except this time there's a geriatric rainbow flag over the doorway. It is a bad situation. It's no surprise that she's looking unkempt and lost. She is. But absolutely none of it was that 13 year old child's fault.
Let's not vilify them b/c they are a homosexual couple getting a divorce instead of the legion of heterosexuals who do the same thing everyday. The touchstone in divorce proceedings should be the best interest of the child whether it is a same-sex or opposite-sex couple.
We're in utterly new territory here. It is still yet to be determined if same sex parenting is in the best interests of children. Meanwhile, heterosexuality is our default. It's how we naturally reproduce. The standard family unit of father/mother/children has served us well for thousands of years. And up until the 1970s or so, "broken homes" from divorce were rare. We already know that divorce is bad for kid's emotional development unless there are extenuating circumstances like abuse or whatever. The results are in on that. All because we can push past natural limits these days and redefine "family" to suit modern adult needs doesn't mean that we should. Or that there will be "equal outcomes" for offspring when we do. Homosexual pairings in other species do occur, but usually in captivity, and never for very long.
Ned, I'm gay. Believe it or not, I agree with you in many respects. Mother/father/child is the most normal configuration for a family, and may be the healthiest. However, your picture of the past is too rosy. In the 1970s and before there were plenty of broken homes -- families where a parent had died, families where the father left (that happens a lot), etc. Hell, my own parents separated in the 1960s. If a child ends up with two fathers or two mothers, that is better than if the child becomes an orphan. So I think you need to stop putting the ideal situation -- mother/father/child -- on a pedestal as if it were the only workable arrangement.
I agree with the replies to Nedweenie. Ned is talking like a real weenie. A weenie with rose-colored glasses on about the traditional nuclear family. He seems to mean well, but only knows how to think along a narrow line. Children are actually best off (imo) when they have reliable extended close-knit family, who live nearby, and interact in a very friendly way with their neighbors (as long as their neighbors are good people), and vice versa, if that makes sense. Sounds pie in the sky unfortunately. It's just a version of "It takes a village to raise a child." That old saying didn't come out of nowhere. It's the truth.
No matter when you go on the Internoodle, there's always someone who can't resist name calling and strawmanning. And jumping to conclusions. I am female, prefer polarized lenses, and didn't say at all that extended close knit families were a bad thing. I really don't know where you got that one.
Lesbians have been having children for decades and they turn out as well as other children. And let's be clear about why there were not as many divorces in the past and that is b/c women had fewer options for financial independence--many were trapped in unhappy marriages. And there were no domestic abuse shelters in the past as well to support women and children. And while I think the nuclear family can be a good situation w/i which to rear children in the course of human history that configuration is relatively new. I would imagine even transwidows are less likely to stay in marriages nowadays than they used to be--see this interesting article that prob. would not get published today. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BkIQTu7BV2nifZ3sbSFpS7spWb9od3YU/view
Divorce is far better for children than living with an abusive male who will oppress the family and instill a sense of inferiority in female children. Lesbian couples are safer for children than either het couples or gay male couples, simply because it tends to be males who are more likely to sexually abuse children. Statistics bear this out.
I think it better if parents can keep a marriage together but not if it is too toxic--'the marriage survived but the people did not' is not role-modeling a healthy marriage for the children.
Ah, there's nothing like a bit of shameless misandry! Oh those oppressive and abusive males who ruin everything! Yeah, whatever. But I will point out that males who are not biologically related to the children in the household are the biggest sexual abuse threat to them. That's a relevant detail in our revolving spouses world. As to lesbian couples, they may be "safer" for children from a sexual abuse perspective, but in 2010 and 2013 the US CDC determined that after bisexual women, their category is next for highest incidence of intimate partner domestic violence. Above that of heterosexual women. Interestingly enough, the latest CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in 2017 has summaries for most of the data collected, but the Victimization by Sexual Orientation summary is still "coming soon!" in 2023. Here's the 2010 version: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_sofindings.pdf
I agree with you, Ned, although T. Lister makes a good point. There are so many orphans who need homes that we can't say "no" to people who want to adopt as long as they seem to be normal. The real problem with society is that humans are reproducing too fast. We need birth control and abortion to keep our population down.
Just to clarify: I don't actually know when this lesbian couple adopted the girl. I can find out. All I know is that they have had the girl for a number of years. But you are right -- the girl is now a pawn between them.
Since family having is so economically difficult and socially "unliberated" now of course there's an effect on the adoption market. But lowering standards is not a good remedy for difficult predicaments. Not when we're talking about raising the next generation in healthy environments. They will be adults someday. As to needing more birth control and abortion, I believe that we need more reverence towards sex and its primary (and still unavoidable) function: reproduction. And marriage and family making. But that's me. And thanks but there's no need to find out any more details on your neighbor's situation on my account.
"Lowering standards", "healthy environments". As I said above, Ned, the ideal situation isn't always the reality.
"Reverence towards sex" -- that certainty SOUNDS good! But how do you make it happen? How do you put reverence in the hearts of other people who are simply horny? Guess what -- you don't!
You sound like a conservative to me, Ned, a conservative with ideas about how things "should" be, -- but I'm not hearing any solutions as to how we can get to a better place. To say we need more reverence towards sex suggests that we need better social standards that we teach to our children. But if today's adults don't have the wisdom to do that, how do we change that? The world is over-populated, and that is resulting in social chaos that is out of our control.
I agree that the ideal isn't always attainable. But we should try to strive towards it whenever and however possible. Especially when we see that our faith in tech and progress is producing even more complicated predicaments, and not less.
Reverence is acknowledging meaning and value. Meaning and value are created and defined by limits. Sure, we're horny. But we used to have socially imposed limits on sex because Nature showed us that licentious sexual behavior to appease that horniness had negative outcomes for the individual, their offspring, and the community at large. STDs. Inbreeding depression. Bastards. Nature also made it difficult for us to perpetuate the species, so every human life was precious and certain conventions that yielded the best results were adopted. Being the clever apes that we are, we have managed to assert our wills over Nature. But if we go so far as to destroy Her, we will destroy ourselves. We do not exist outside Her ecosystems. And she always bats last.
Right now the Devouring Mother alphas in our society are entertaining an egregore that insists that everything is oppressive and that everything will be grand and "equitable" if everyone gets the pony that they want. If we destroy "discrimination". Meanwhile, reality is very discriminatory. It's inequitable and stubborn. As is evolutionary biology. And the lessons of Pottenger's cats. Thankfully collective human consciousness can and does change. Even if this current phase continues beyond my lifetime, I am confident it won't last. We simply don't have the juice for it.
I'm not one for idpol labels. I don't think that idpol can be fought by using it. But if I were to describe myself I'd say that I'm a Spiritual Ecologist+Reactionary Feminist: a dirt worshiping pagan who doesn't think that the two human sexes are interchangeable Meat Legos. So I'm not exactly a capital C Conservative. But there is some overlap. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Thanks for playing. I appreciate your thoughts.
Your prescriptions are for the whole human race, but only some people are listening.
Please, please, please don't personify nature or anything else as a woman. It is sexist and sounds old-fashioned and generally obnoxious. What you are demonstrating is that femaleness was up for grabs by men long before the trans idiots came along.
Storms are not female, ships are not female, nature is not female. Only females are female.
Good for you for talking to the girl's mother. Perry. I hope she listened. If you are friendly/neighborly enough with her, you may want to repeat the message or give her more information at some point.
BTW, my understanding of the word feminist is that it is anyone who supports female rights. So, since you can be a feminist, you can totally be a TERF - no estrogen or boob implants required :)
Thanks, Moom. I have always thought it was nervy of a man to claim the title of "feminist". It is a little like trans women claiming the word "woman" for themselves -- an overreach. Women don't need another man claiming their titles for himself. However, I believe in reincarnation. I may have been a woman in the past.
The fear she is expressing at her apostasy is really something. Imagine how it feels to want so badly to believe so many lies, and it isn’t working anymore, but you still plead for help believing. It is really confounding how some of the commenters tell her that body acceptance is bigoted. They can stick that label on anything and it would make trans-questioning people avoid it.
You’re one of my favorite gender critical reads; your analysis is really cutting.
My favorite part of this article was near the ending, when you dissected the fact that genderists don’t know how to palate plain and direct speech anymore because they’re so accustomed to filling in the gaps and imagining a meaning from swallowing so much trans fluff.
Good luck to her. Once you peak, there’s no going back. Although, some try to continue living in denial, and as a side note, (and speaking from experience), living with cognitive dissonance and denial is much easier when you’re on the wrong psychiatric meds. The mental fog is unreal.
Trans activists are almost as aggressive as Scientologists when it comes to terrorizing the members of the cult who work up the courage to leave. TERFs need our own Leah Remini.
Yeah. Any dissent, even a question, is a major threat to a high control group. You know those commenters were just two seconds away from calling her TERF scum, and making her lose her entire support system (as many people rely heavily on the internet for socialization). She’s on thin ice with them, yet feels too much doubt to continue nodding and smiling. Her words hint strongly at internal conflict and near panic, because she’s convinced that being a non-believer is the precipice of morality, and even “existence”. It’s an unfortunate position, but as we know, a position not based in reality. Little does she know, we would welcome her. I certainly would.
I really want to send this to a friend who's sister is in a vulnerable state and I suspect experiencing similar... but I know it will just get me pushed farther away from potentially helping later.
Jeez. What a horrible state of mind to be caught in. I agree she should get off social media but I think it should be all of it, not just radical feminist social media. Might give her a chance to clear her head. Also, all the "good/bad" talk seems to be making things worse. All people have the capacity for harm, trying to imagine someone (or a group of people) as all good or all bad is stressful because you're either trying to be "all good" (and never quite measuring up) or constantly avoiding being "all bad". Human beings are more complex than that.
The compulsion to place everything into a good/bad category is likely attributed to the anxiety that people with autism and OCD have over uncertainty. Everything needs to be defined in order to feel safe. It's a primal survival instinct for them, which makes it very difficult to challenge.
Great point and so true. I wonder about the reciprocal impact of the belief "Everything is knowable" or "I must be certain". Learning to live with uncertainty can be so helpful for us all.
Nobody should be accepting mental health recommendations from anonymous people on internet forums and social media.
Another probably less favorable view: I recently tried to interact with a TERF organization in San Francisco. I use that term because they actually call themselves that. The organization seemed very insular and frankly, seemed to hold me in suspicion either because I'm older or because I'm heterosexual. They also required members to use WhatsApp. When I signed up for this, I found myself barraged with texts. The organization seemed to have an insider group. Newcomers were treated with suspicion. One member of the organization responded angrily when I told her by email that I thought that bating and yelling at Scott Wiener, a pro-trans California politician, was not an effective way of advancing a critique about the demotion of women's sex based rights, and parental rights, as secondary to gender identity rights. She told me that I was a "distraction" and then bad mouthed me to the rest of the members of the group.
So, my conclusion is that at least one TERF group in San Francisco is, in fact, very exclusionary and does not broadly represent women or women's sex based rights.
Other organizations such as Sex Matters in the UK seem to be on the right track with focusing on trying to defend women's sex based rights in policy.
The fact is that many corners of the internet are very dark. That goes for both sides of this debate.
The pandemic is over. It's time for people to talk like adults, without a hidden agenda or power grab, face to face.
Marnie, thanks for this. Can I ask if it was SF TERFS? I just got a suggestion to connect with them, but haven't yet. Did you find other organizations to connect with in the Bay Area?
I haven't found other organizations in the Bay Area working to preserve women's sex based rights in a vein similar to Sex Matters in the UK. Nationally, I think the Independent Women's Forum is the closest in terms of policy and strategy to Sex Matters in the UK.
I came to your blog through watching your - "the radical center" interview yesterday. Like your post today - that interview was wonderfully nuanced and very insightful. As a 71 year old retired clinical social worker I have somehow only came to a place of deeply examining these issues in the last year, as they weren't really part of the terrain when I retired in 2014 out of Alaska. Over the last year I've read over a dozen books hoping to "catch up" on gender-theory and the overall CSJ madness that I had been rather blissfully unaware of for far too long. Both your writing and your thoughtful insightful analysis stand out Eliza. You provide a refreshing voice and perspectives, and I very much hope you are able to complete your book project. Thank you for your work.
Thank you for taking the time to write to me. It means a lot.
And now the original post is gone, for the following reason:
"Your post was removed because it broke the subreddit rule 6: No trolling. No reposting of trolling/transphobic content.
"While this post in particular is toeing the line due to heavy discussion of transphobic topics, it was removed due to the sheer amount of TERFs and transphobes that were drawn to this post to post hurtful things to the community and try to convince you their transphobic way of thinking is right."
there is no such thing as transition. no such thing as trans. just confused people trying to be something they can never be. redrawing the map does not change the land.
This whole discourse just reaffirms what a cult trans is. Praying my daughter will struggle with these very questions and be persuaded toward reality and sanity in the end. Thank you for this document!
I am sure she does struggle with these questions, as does my daughter. How can they not? Praying that they both, along with young women in the post above, will meet people who will have positive influence and help them out of this evil cult.
"Trans people have been around in many different cultures and are far older than most historians will lead you on to believe." I'd like to know how one arrives at this claim. Any ideas? I read some of Histories of the Transgender Child. I also know that part of this claim is based on some cultures having a kind of "third category" for male homosexuals. But it still puzzles me that they talk about history. What's the history? Am I missing something?
Re the post: thanks for posting it here. It's been removed so I didn't get the comments about OCD. I remember how I felt when I was leaving Christianity behind. I had a few days of sheer terror that I was losing my faith. At the time, I was thinking a lot about the God of the old testament and how he didn't seem to be the same God as the one in the new testament. So I read Genesis and Leviticus in one sitting to try and convince myself that I could solve my conondrum. I can't remember why I chose those two books. I just thought it'd help me. That's where the similarities end. I didn't go online. I told my pastor and he said I could pray to God about my unbelief and ask him to help me believe. Nobody, other than me, freaked out.
The point you make about language is very important. I think when you live in a world where the meaning of words has been manipulated to such an extent, it is hard to believe that others are using words in a transparent way. It's also difficult to trust yourself to know what you really think and feel if your thoughts have been hijacked by an ideology that doesn't allow dissent or even questioning.
You're not missing something. They're inventing history out of whole cloth. My guess is there have always been a few people who felt, for many different reasons (because same-sex attracted, because constrained by sex roles), that they ought to have been born the opposite sex. And this isn't trans. Trans is a creation of ideology and medical tech and didn't exist before mid-20th century. But if only it *always* existed, it would make it hard to question.
Thank you again Eliza. This recent invention that is 'trans' has parasitized the LGB rights legacy orgs and misrepresented LGB history to justify the utter absurdity of 'transgenderism' and that a person can be born in the wrong body. It is antithetical to being LGB which is based on the material reality of sex. And is blatant homophobia b/c it extends the old 'you were born wrong' trope that was used to invalidate LGBs. It is unfortunate that vulnerable people--esp. so-called gender non-conforming and/or same-sex attracted people--believe that they can't just be who they are w/o adopting the nonsense that they are 'born in the wrong body' and have to adopt the fictional 'identity' of 'trans' that they are the opposite sex.
Thank you!
There have also always been people with Body Identity Integrity Disorder. There have always been people who believed they were famous historical figures. There have always been people vulnerable to cults.
So what?
Nobody's trying to start a worldwide cult demanding that people who believe they're able-bodied amputees are being subject to genocide if the taxpayer won't pay for their unnecessary amputations.
Nobody's trying to start a cult demanding that people who believe they're famous historical figures are being subjected to genocide if they're not treated as though they actually were those figures.
Mental illness and demands for power have always been part of the human race.
That's why we have civilization.
When did reality become an ideology?
"Secret meanings" = sorcery. It's magical harm.
It's another case of DARVO. Trans activists have created a whole new vocabulary, which they impose upon us by wildly discriminatory laws that destroy the rights, safety, privacy, and dignity of women and children, but it's TERFS who are duplicitous in our language? SMDH. Maybe TERFS should form a secret society that requires someone vouch for new members. Like Freemasons. How about Freematrons™? We'll have our own rituals and a secret handshake. I nominate Eliza to be Grand Poobah of Freematrons™.
The subtle paranoia and confusion in this writing is hard to miss. For me this all points to the lack of agreement in the mental health field and the attempt to normalize thinking that at times is alarming in its conceptualizations. This borders on delusional at times!
The paranoia is far from subtle in the post above.
The male lurkers are so inevitable and so sinister on these forums full of young women talking to one another. Of course we “TERFs” focus on the sinister men in their movement.
Data is useful. One day I will get around to counting how many "suck my girl- . . ." comments were written in as a response to facts. I hope the parents of this young woman realize they have an opening to bring her back. She needs to be off of the computer and choosing a project to help someone else. For starters on data, here are the stats from 43 trans widows, and some of us have been forced to do the command from the first line, above. And worse. Most of these dudes are dangerously mentally ill. They know exactly when to "act kind and nice." We've all seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA_5p3yI7d0&t=13s
The TERFs are right, they are trying to save your life, I hope you have the courage and good sense to really listen to what they are saying.
I can't say much because it's past my bedtime, but the level of confusion in the minds of these people is astonishing. I was never, ever this confused when I was young.
After reading this, I find myself wondering what all the hateful lies are that "terfs" are telling people -- to love yourself as the woman you are? To fight against being a second-class citizen instead of pretending you are a male?
Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist -- Supposedly, that's a slur. But I almost wish I were a woman so I could call myself that. I would wear that label with pride. (Hey, now I know what to be "proud" of!)
I'm inserting part of a comment here from the article on your Vienna and Salzburg trip. I don't think anyone will read it on the other article.
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I'm a little depressed tonight. I just saw an episode of Family Feud in which one of the family panels was all ridiculous-looking drag queens. (The other panel also had a drag queen in it.) I sat there looking at the absurd feminine figures, most with ridiculous wigs, thinking, "Why do you guys hate women so much?" Trans people (of which I consider drag queens to be a part) are succeeding at promoting drag as part of "diversity", when in fact it is simply a sexual fetish. Why is it okay for men to mock women by dressing up as exaggerated prostitutes and femmes fatales, yet it's not okay for whites to dress up in black face and do minstrel shows? To me, they are the same thing. Steve Harvey, the host, didn't look very comfortable.
The trans thing is now hitting closer to home. I know a lesbian couple (not the couple across the street who idle their cars constantly, but another one) in their 70's who adopted a girl about a decade ago. The girl is now 13, and the couple has split up. One of the "mothers" has been actively bad-mouthing the other "mother". The mother who was doing that had custody but decided she didn't want custody any more, and the girl is now living with the other mother (the one I know). The girl clearly has serious emotional problems. She was letting herself go to the point where her hair had become dirty and matted. Well, this girl has suddenly given herself an unusual male name (they always give themselves unusual names for some reason). I warned the mother that the girl may be going down the trans path, and under no circumstances should she let the girl take testosterone or any other physical treatment. She said she won't, but I'm still worried about the girl. Neither of these mothers is an enlightened person. The girl herself allowed the other mother to poison her mind, but now she has to live with the mother she came to hate. It's a bad situation, and the girl herself doesn't seem very clear-headed (from what I have heard -- I haven't met the girl yet).
Young kids don't know when their minds are being poisoned. They can't "allow" it. They absorb what's provided and permitted by the adults in their lives. Whatever that happens to be, that's their "normal". And really, what you described there is such a typical modern selfishness story where the already well established needs of children are dismissed by "progressive" adults pursuing their own wants and "rights". A lesbian couple in their late 50s decide that they want a child. Human society says "We don't want to look bigoted, or ageist, or whatever, so no problem!" and hands over a toddler for them to adopt and raise. A few years later they can't manage to honor their commitments to each other or to the child they adopted. Both are expendable in the pursuit of their own individual happiness. So she (already burdened with the baggage of being adopted) becomes another emotionally damaged child of a broken home, thoughtlessly used as a pawn and a weapon, except this time there's a geriatric rainbow flag over the doorway. It is a bad situation. It's no surprise that she's looking unkempt and lost. She is. But absolutely none of it was that 13 year old child's fault.
Let's not vilify them b/c they are a homosexual couple getting a divorce instead of the legion of heterosexuals who do the same thing everyday. The touchstone in divorce proceedings should be the best interest of the child whether it is a same-sex or opposite-sex couple.
We're in utterly new territory here. It is still yet to be determined if same sex parenting is in the best interests of children. Meanwhile, heterosexuality is our default. It's how we naturally reproduce. The standard family unit of father/mother/children has served us well for thousands of years. And up until the 1970s or so, "broken homes" from divorce were rare. We already know that divorce is bad for kid's emotional development unless there are extenuating circumstances like abuse or whatever. The results are in on that. All because we can push past natural limits these days and redefine "family" to suit modern adult needs doesn't mean that we should. Or that there will be "equal outcomes" for offspring when we do. Homosexual pairings in other species do occur, but usually in captivity, and never for very long.
Ned, I'm gay. Believe it or not, I agree with you in many respects. Mother/father/child is the most normal configuration for a family, and may be the healthiest. However, your picture of the past is too rosy. In the 1970s and before there were plenty of broken homes -- families where a parent had died, families where the father left (that happens a lot), etc. Hell, my own parents separated in the 1960s. If a child ends up with two fathers or two mothers, that is better than if the child becomes an orphan. So I think you need to stop putting the ideal situation -- mother/father/child -- on a pedestal as if it were the only workable arrangement.
I agree with the replies to Nedweenie. Ned is talking like a real weenie. A weenie with rose-colored glasses on about the traditional nuclear family. He seems to mean well, but only knows how to think along a narrow line. Children are actually best off (imo) when they have reliable extended close-knit family, who live nearby, and interact in a very friendly way with their neighbors (as long as their neighbors are good people), and vice versa, if that makes sense. Sounds pie in the sky unfortunately. It's just a version of "It takes a village to raise a child." That old saying didn't come out of nowhere. It's the truth.
No matter when you go on the Internoodle, there's always someone who can't resist name calling and strawmanning. And jumping to conclusions. I am female, prefer polarized lenses, and didn't say at all that extended close knit families were a bad thing. I really don't know where you got that one.
Lesbians have been having children for decades and they turn out as well as other children. And let's be clear about why there were not as many divorces in the past and that is b/c women had fewer options for financial independence--many were trapped in unhappy marriages. And there were no domestic abuse shelters in the past as well to support women and children. And while I think the nuclear family can be a good situation w/i which to rear children in the course of human history that configuration is relatively new. I would imagine even transwidows are less likely to stay in marriages nowadays than they used to be--see this interesting article that prob. would not get published today. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BkIQTu7BV2nifZ3sbSFpS7spWb9od3YU/view
Divorce is far better for children than living with an abusive male who will oppress the family and instill a sense of inferiority in female children. Lesbian couples are safer for children than either het couples or gay male couples, simply because it tends to be males who are more likely to sexually abuse children. Statistics bear this out.
I think it better if parents can keep a marriage together but not if it is too toxic--'the marriage survived but the people did not' is not role-modeling a healthy marriage for the children.
Ah, there's nothing like a bit of shameless misandry! Oh those oppressive and abusive males who ruin everything! Yeah, whatever. But I will point out that males who are not biologically related to the children in the household are the biggest sexual abuse threat to them. That's a relevant detail in our revolving spouses world. As to lesbian couples, they may be "safer" for children from a sexual abuse perspective, but in 2010 and 2013 the US CDC determined that after bisexual women, their category is next for highest incidence of intimate partner domestic violence. Above that of heterosexual women. Interestingly enough, the latest CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in 2017 has summaries for most of the data collected, but the Victimization by Sexual Orientation summary is still "coming soon!" in 2023. Here's the 2010 version: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_sofindings.pdf
There is no such thing as misandry, Mr. Weenie. Men do perform the majority of sexual assaults and violence toward women and children.
I agree with you, Ned, although T. Lister makes a good point. There are so many orphans who need homes that we can't say "no" to people who want to adopt as long as they seem to be normal. The real problem with society is that humans are reproducing too fast. We need birth control and abortion to keep our population down.
Just to clarify: I don't actually know when this lesbian couple adopted the girl. I can find out. All I know is that they have had the girl for a number of years. But you are right -- the girl is now a pawn between them.
Since family having is so economically difficult and socially "unliberated" now of course there's an effect on the adoption market. But lowering standards is not a good remedy for difficult predicaments. Not when we're talking about raising the next generation in healthy environments. They will be adults someday. As to needing more birth control and abortion, I believe that we need more reverence towards sex and its primary (and still unavoidable) function: reproduction. And marriage and family making. But that's me. And thanks but there's no need to find out any more details on your neighbor's situation on my account.
"Lowering standards", "healthy environments". As I said above, Ned, the ideal situation isn't always the reality.
"Reverence towards sex" -- that certainty SOUNDS good! But how do you make it happen? How do you put reverence in the hearts of other people who are simply horny? Guess what -- you don't!
You sound like a conservative to me, Ned, a conservative with ideas about how things "should" be, -- but I'm not hearing any solutions as to how we can get to a better place. To say we need more reverence towards sex suggests that we need better social standards that we teach to our children. But if today's adults don't have the wisdom to do that, how do we change that? The world is over-populated, and that is resulting in social chaos that is out of our control.
I agree that the ideal isn't always attainable. But we should try to strive towards it whenever and however possible. Especially when we see that our faith in tech and progress is producing even more complicated predicaments, and not less.
Reverence is acknowledging meaning and value. Meaning and value are created and defined by limits. Sure, we're horny. But we used to have socially imposed limits on sex because Nature showed us that licentious sexual behavior to appease that horniness had negative outcomes for the individual, their offspring, and the community at large. STDs. Inbreeding depression. Bastards. Nature also made it difficult for us to perpetuate the species, so every human life was precious and certain conventions that yielded the best results were adopted. Being the clever apes that we are, we have managed to assert our wills over Nature. But if we go so far as to destroy Her, we will destroy ourselves. We do not exist outside Her ecosystems. And she always bats last.
Right now the Devouring Mother alphas in our society are entertaining an egregore that insists that everything is oppressive and that everything will be grand and "equitable" if everyone gets the pony that they want. If we destroy "discrimination". Meanwhile, reality is very discriminatory. It's inequitable and stubborn. As is evolutionary biology. And the lessons of Pottenger's cats. Thankfully collective human consciousness can and does change. Even if this current phase continues beyond my lifetime, I am confident it won't last. We simply don't have the juice for it.
I'm not one for idpol labels. I don't think that idpol can be fought by using it. But if I were to describe myself I'd say that I'm a Spiritual Ecologist+Reactionary Feminist: a dirt worshiping pagan who doesn't think that the two human sexes are interchangeable Meat Legos. So I'm not exactly a capital C Conservative. But there is some overlap. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Thanks for playing. I appreciate your thoughts.
Your prescriptions are for the whole human race, but only some people are listening.
Please, please, please don't personify nature or anything else as a woman. It is sexist and sounds old-fashioned and generally obnoxious. What you are demonstrating is that femaleness was up for grabs by men long before the trans idiots came along.
Storms are not female, ships are not female, nature is not female. Only females are female.
Good for you for talking to the girl's mother. Perry. I hope she listened. If you are friendly/neighborly enough with her, you may want to repeat the message or give her more information at some point.
BTW, my understanding of the word feminist is that it is anyone who supports female rights. So, since you can be a feminist, you can totally be a TERF - no estrogen or boob implants required :)
Thanks, Moom. I have always thought it was nervy of a man to claim the title of "feminist". It is a little like trans women claiming the word "woman" for themselves -- an overreach. Women don't need another man claiming their titles for himself. However, I believe in reincarnation. I may have been a woman in the past.
The fear she is expressing at her apostasy is really something. Imagine how it feels to want so badly to believe so many lies, and it isn’t working anymore, but you still plead for help believing. It is really confounding how some of the commenters tell her that body acceptance is bigoted. They can stick that label on anything and it would make trans-questioning people avoid it.
You’re one of my favorite gender critical reads; your analysis is really cutting.
My favorite part of this article was near the ending, when you dissected the fact that genderists don’t know how to palate plain and direct speech anymore because they’re so accustomed to filling in the gaps and imagining a meaning from swallowing so much trans fluff.
Good luck to her. Once you peak, there’s no going back. Although, some try to continue living in denial, and as a side note, (and speaking from experience), living with cognitive dissonance and denial is much easier when you’re on the wrong psychiatric meds. The mental fog is unreal.
Trans activists are almost as aggressive as Scientologists when it comes to terrorizing the members of the cult who work up the courage to leave. TERFs need our own Leah Remini.
Yeah. Any dissent, even a question, is a major threat to a high control group. You know those commenters were just two seconds away from calling her TERF scum, and making her lose her entire support system (as many people rely heavily on the internet for socialization). She’s on thin ice with them, yet feels too much doubt to continue nodding and smiling. Her words hint strongly at internal conflict and near panic, because she’s convinced that being a non-believer is the precipice of morality, and even “existence”. It’s an unfortunate position, but as we know, a position not based in reality. Little does she know, we would welcome her. I certainly would.
I really want to send this to a friend who's sister is in a vulnerable state and I suspect experiencing similar... but I know it will just get me pushed farther away from potentially helping later.
Jeez. What a horrible state of mind to be caught in. I agree she should get off social media but I think it should be all of it, not just radical feminist social media. Might give her a chance to clear her head. Also, all the "good/bad" talk seems to be making things worse. All people have the capacity for harm, trying to imagine someone (or a group of people) as all good or all bad is stressful because you're either trying to be "all good" (and never quite measuring up) or constantly avoiding being "all bad". Human beings are more complex than that.
The compulsion to place everything into a good/bad category is likely attributed to the anxiety that people with autism and OCD have over uncertainty. Everything needs to be defined in order to feel safe. It's a primal survival instinct for them, which makes it very difficult to challenge.
Great point and so true. I wonder about the reciprocal impact of the belief "Everything is knowable" or "I must be certain". Learning to live with uncertainty can be so helpful for us all.
An observation from a distance:
Nobody should be accepting mental health recommendations from anonymous people on internet forums and social media.
Another probably less favorable view: I recently tried to interact with a TERF organization in San Francisco. I use that term because they actually call themselves that. The organization seemed very insular and frankly, seemed to hold me in suspicion either because I'm older or because I'm heterosexual. They also required members to use WhatsApp. When I signed up for this, I found myself barraged with texts. The organization seemed to have an insider group. Newcomers were treated with suspicion. One member of the organization responded angrily when I told her by email that I thought that bating and yelling at Scott Wiener, a pro-trans California politician, was not an effective way of advancing a critique about the demotion of women's sex based rights, and parental rights, as secondary to gender identity rights. She told me that I was a "distraction" and then bad mouthed me to the rest of the members of the group.
So, my conclusion is that at least one TERF group in San Francisco is, in fact, very exclusionary and does not broadly represent women or women's sex based rights.
Other organizations such as Sex Matters in the UK seem to be on the right track with focusing on trying to defend women's sex based rights in policy.
The fact is that many corners of the internet are very dark. That goes for both sides of this debate.
The pandemic is over. It's time for people to talk like adults, without a hidden agenda or power grab, face to face.
Marnie, thanks for this. Can I ask if it was SF TERFS? I just got a suggestion to connect with them, but haven't yet. Did you find other organizations to connect with in the Bay Area?
Yes, it was SF TERFs.
I haven't found other organizations in the Bay Area working to preserve women's sex based rights in a vein similar to Sex Matters in the UK. Nationally, I think the Independent Women's Forum is the closest in terms of policy and strategy to Sex Matters in the UK.
The Women's Declaraton International conference is coming to SF in September. Maybe that will be an opportunity to find like-minded women?
Is there a formal announcement of this conference? I just went to the WDI website:
https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/news/
I don't see an announcement for any WDI conference in San Francisco.
Yes - it's on the WDI USA site: https://womensdeclarationusa.com/wdi-usa-2023-national-convention/