I’ve got a new post up at Genspect: There’s a painful gap that stretches between what trans activists mean when they talk about acceptance—or self-acceptance or authenticity—and what those terms actually mean. These concepts undergo a botched transition
Eliza, I love the way you wrote this. You have such a delicious analysis of this issue, amd way with words.
Somewhat similar to how you phrased it, when someone asks me, "Why not let them be who they are?" I reply, "Be who they are? Or be who they aren't?"
"They have a legal right to believe whatever they wish, and to state those beliefs. Those are their First Amendment rights. However, they do not have the right to tell those of us who disagree with them what we must believe or say. Those are OUR First Amendment rights. I would gladly defend their rights to freedom of thought and speech, and I expect them to defend mine."
Please everyone! Understand that this networking we do in comments, here and on youtube, make a difference to individuals. I now have a ROGD mother (mother of teen girl presenting with rapid onset gender dysphoria) now subscribing to my YouTube channel for healthy mind/body movement (Ute Heggen channel) for dealing with the extreme trauma of a child who entered a cult. As detransitioner, Michelle Alleva, explains at channel, Thoughts on Things and Stuff (cult expert Jonathan Streeter) those who are deeper into it sincerely want and need (as narcissistic fuel) more recruits to the group. Everyone ingroup validates each other and shares, indoctrinates chants and mantras to repeat to the parents and friends who are saying "Whoa, there." First, my former husband found other cross--dressers in bars in Manhattan. Then he found a non-credentialed groomer (huge conflicts of interest, her husband was an endocrinologist) and then he found Dr. Christine Wheeler, PhD "sexologist' who had the temerity to submit a sworn affidavit to the custody case stating her diagnosis was "July 20, 1993, in the initial appointment." So this immediate affirmation goes back 30 years. All based on poor quality "data." The work and effort to "pass" is exhausting and thus requires narcissistic fuel from every sector. uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com (recent post is reply to Randi Weingarten)
Ute, I’m a big fan of what you’re about! You remind me of Helen Keller’s tutor in, “The Miracle Worker.” Not your demeanor, just the fact that what you’re recommending is as innovative and foreign to the way things are currently being done that you have an uphill battle, like she did showing that severely disabled people like Helen were capable of learning to read and write. Our bodies are incapable of lying to us, and deeper mind-body connection is the antidote to all of this rather extreme dissociation that is currently being expressed. Thanks for that “diagonal” move on the mat! It’s been helpful promoting my myofascial realignment. ☮️❤️🐾
This makes my day! Movement across the diagonals of the body have some special connectedness. I learned about it from a Feldenkrais physical therapist. Here's a link to the sequence. Hope I understood correctly: There's a little intro, then the movement
It's said that sunlight is the best sanitizer, and your words of white hot truth are blazing all over the trans myth, baking it to a crisp! The two things that irritate me the MOST about trans ideology are the AUDACITY of their deceit- calling their delusional pantomime authentic, but demanding authentic women call ourselves cis, and the constant shifting of goal posts for their own transformation and for the demands they make of US. No matter how far we go to accommodate them, it's never enough, and there is always some new thing they want from us, and it's always an awful violation of our boundaries. I no longer harbor the tiniest shred of compassion for these rapey little narcissists. They are entitled to mental healthcare and the medications necessary to stabilize their insanity, along with the ordinary protections that disabled people require to prevent discrimination. Nothing more. Not one goddamned thing more than that!!!
Eliza, your insight into the permutations of this issue are always excellent. The deviousness of transgender activists is quite astonishing. Most marginalized groups are satisfied to be protected in employment, housing and public accommodations. But to avoid being dubbed a "transphobe", a person must accept the entirety of transgender ideology, no matter how illogical it is. I'm particularly annoyed by the way they use the word "authentic". In order to be one's "authentic self", a trans person must take hormones and have multiple surgeries and retrain their behavior. It is the exact antithesis of accepting yourself as you are. Now, I don't mind anything that a trans person might decide to do to his or her body, but please don't pass it off as authenticity. At a very fundamental level, I feel that trans people are deceptive. On several occasions I have found myself attracted to a handsome young man, only to discover that he was a trans man (with God knows what in his pants). Trans men are also moving into gay porn (which I'm not embarrassed to say that I use as a man who has been single for thirty years). I now have to look at images of men with vaginas. Trans people have come between me and the liberal poetry editors that I need to publish my poetry, and now they are ruining my porn.
“Your” porn? Perhaps you could respect yourself more and learn to fantasize without preformed images being fed to you on a screen. I sympathize with you on the liberal poetry editors issue, but “your” porn? I promise you, the best stuff can be generated by your own brain! I’m a GenX heterosexual woman, and was wondering just what was going on with men until I found a website in 2015 that helped me understand the situation better. Gary Wilson is/was a high school science teacher and his wife is/was a relationship counselor who set up a website for discussing romantic relationships, and kept getting questions from men about whether they were addicted to porn. He’s now published a book about it, and I urge you to check out the website, https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/. Men discussing this issue with other men free from judgement may be helpful for you, so that you won’t be compelled to blame “transgenders” from invading “your” porn. As a woman, knowing that pornographers *know*what their products do to men and they produce and push it onto them anyway completely infuriates me, and I hope when users of porn discover this for themselves, that it infuriates them, too. Your male biology is being used against you by these sadistic pimps. I used to be “live and let live” with the subject of porn, until I found out about its deleterious effects on non-users, in addition to the direct impact it has on users. No judgement, just men helping other men. Please just check it out!
But, you ARE full of judgement. You are dripping with judgement. I used to be embarrassed to use porn, but then realized that it is everywhere and huge numbers of people look at it, so I stopped being embarrassed. I am a visual person and need an image in order to masturbate. I am also 72 years old. No one wants me now. That's just the way it is. I don't believe that I have an issue in this area, and I don't need your help.
I am gay, incidentally, so no woman was harmed in the porn that I look at. (I agree with anti-porn activists that porn harms women.) The interesting different between straight porn and gay porn is that the male actors in gay porn enjoy what they are doing. Female actors tend to do it, not because they like sex, but to get on camera. (Of course, both groups are trying to make money.)
So, please take your judgemental attitude and ----------------- (fill in the blank). Porn is here to stay.
Go ahead and say whatever you like, but porn is treating your fellow humans as objects for your own gratification and is deeply damaging to all the souls of all involved: participants, viewers, those that make a buck off of it, etc.
Calling other people judgmental doesn't change the fact that it is always wrong to use other humans as means to your own ends.
Not to mention that many performers have sad histories involving past sexual trauma and then are economically exploited.
So, yeah. I'm going to go ahead and make a judgment that porn is wrong
Please be sure to read my comment at the bottom of this thread. A huge amount of the porn available on the internet is being posted by people of THEMSELVES, people who are not making any money from it but enjoy showing themselves to the public. I would like to hear your arguments against THAT.
Go fuck yourself, you narcissistic wanker. Oh, that’s right! That’s what you do. What a toxic load of shit you’re carrying. Attempting to encourage men to help other men help themselves isn’t being judgmental. You are a load of dominator crap that will be rotting off of the Earth because of the cancer it is. Just another dumbass dominator male who proclaims to others that he knows things. Your kind of immaturity is cancerous, and it’s no wonder so many State Departments of Health have declared the porn situation to be a public health crisis. The collateral damage inflicted on non-users is what is motivating the activism against it. How utterly arrogant of you to underestimate the power of those who don’t share your perverted views about humans. Shallow-assed objectifying commodification of human beings isn’t tolerable to intelligent, humane people.
Dave and T.B.: Human society is far more varied and rich than either of you realize. People make their choices, and judging people harshly doesn't help in any situation. In fact, making the kinds of judgements you are making may be more harmful to society than anything I am doing. So, why don't you now harangue me for for eating meat, which I do? Or for buying foods in plastic containers, which I do? We all do the best that we can, and that applies to me also.
T.B., I see that all it took was one comment from me to unmask the ugliness of your character. Good luck with that. At least Dave tried to be civil in his remarks.
Both of you should get a button that says "I am part of cancel culture" and wear it proudly. Porn is legal. It is here to stay. Get over it.
Something just occurred to me. There are dozens of social media sites which are overwhelmed with members posting naked pictures of themselves and their friends making home-made porn. No one is paying them, yet the number of people doing this is in the tens of thousands. Reddit alone has hundreds if not thousands of people who are exposing themselves on a daily basis.
If people are doing this voluntarily, and if the numbers of people are in the tens of thousands, how can either of you say that anyone is being exploited?
And it isn't just social media. There are multiple web sites which are devoted to porn. Some of the porn on those sites constitutes promotional segments from porn publishers, but a lot of the porn being posted is made by amateurs who make no money from it -- NO MONEY AT ALL. They do it for fun and pleasure.
How do you self-righteous moralists explain that? The fact is that images are part of human culture, and people like to be seen in images. They do it because they are proud of their bodies, or because it helps them to meet sex partners. And since it is all voluntary and no one is being paid, it simply isn't possible to pretend that what's happening is a bad thing. It is called "freedom" -- freedom to do what you want as long as you are not hurting anyone. Without realizing it, the two of you have taken a position AGAINST FREEDOM.
I want to thank the two of you for opening my eyes. Yes, in the back of my head I felt a little embarrassment for indulging in porn, but that is now over. The two of you would erase the freedoms of people doing harmless things that you simply don't approve of. YOU are on the wrong side of this issue, not me!
This is a well written article with very astute observations. You're on to something deep here.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the works of Hegel, but your article reminds me of his "Science of Logic." The shortest TL;DR I can give is that we're constantly in this cycle of being turning into non-being and then back into being, with the cycle itself called "becoming." It's a process of continuously discarding the non-relevant parts of the self while retaining its essence or core, and the goal is to perpetually be in that state of becoming. This is essentially akin to the "always transforming yourself" you identified. It's all very Occult.
Last thing I'll mention is your use of the words "original" and "facsimile" reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." It's a commentary on how modern Western culture has lost its connection to meaning with our constant pursuit of facsimiles. I think you may enjoy it; though, there's a lot of cynical pessimism (bordering on nihilism) in the book that you'll need to wade through.
Thought-provoking article. Whether you're living in an oppressive society or an abusive relationship, language is twisted to suit the needs of the oppressor/abuser. Abuse is "love", objectification is "liberating", assertiveness and demanding respect or accountability is "hate", your sense that something is wrong is "paranoia", your desire to leave is "selfish".
Because the oppressor/abuser is so insistent and because they promise what we most deeply desire (love, acceptance) we focus all our energy on decreasing the dissonance between what we're being told (abuse is love) and what we know to be true (abuse is degrading and hurtful). We do everything in our power to MAKE what they say seem true. But the truth is, genuine acceptance is something that comes from within. It can't be given or taken away.
Eliza, I love the way you wrote this. You have such a delicious analysis of this issue, amd way with words.
Somewhat similar to how you phrased it, when someone asks me, "Why not let them be who they are?" I reply, "Be who they are? Or be who they aren't?"
"They have a legal right to believe whatever they wish, and to state those beliefs. Those are their First Amendment rights. However, they do not have the right to tell those of us who disagree with them what we must believe or say. Those are OUR First Amendment rights. I would gladly defend their rights to freedom of thought and speech, and I expect them to defend mine."
Thank you for another great post.
And thank you for your great post on Eliza’s great post!
When are you going to write the definitive book about this topic? I'd buy it.
Yes, I would gladly buy it, too.
We could learn a lot about how to respond in discussions on this.
Please everyone! Understand that this networking we do in comments, here and on youtube, make a difference to individuals. I now have a ROGD mother (mother of teen girl presenting with rapid onset gender dysphoria) now subscribing to my YouTube channel for healthy mind/body movement (Ute Heggen channel) for dealing with the extreme trauma of a child who entered a cult. As detransitioner, Michelle Alleva, explains at channel, Thoughts on Things and Stuff (cult expert Jonathan Streeter) those who are deeper into it sincerely want and need (as narcissistic fuel) more recruits to the group. Everyone ingroup validates each other and shares, indoctrinates chants and mantras to repeat to the parents and friends who are saying "Whoa, there." First, my former husband found other cross--dressers in bars in Manhattan. Then he found a non-credentialed groomer (huge conflicts of interest, her husband was an endocrinologist) and then he found Dr. Christine Wheeler, PhD "sexologist' who had the temerity to submit a sworn affidavit to the custody case stating her diagnosis was "July 20, 1993, in the initial appointment." So this immediate affirmation goes back 30 years. All based on poor quality "data." The work and effort to "pass" is exhausting and thus requires narcissistic fuel from every sector. uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com (recent post is reply to Randi Weingarten)
Ute, I’m a big fan of what you’re about! You remind me of Helen Keller’s tutor in, “The Miracle Worker.” Not your demeanor, just the fact that what you’re recommending is as innovative and foreign to the way things are currently being done that you have an uphill battle, like she did showing that severely disabled people like Helen were capable of learning to read and write. Our bodies are incapable of lying to us, and deeper mind-body connection is the antidote to all of this rather extreme dissociation that is currently being expressed. Thanks for that “diagonal” move on the mat! It’s been helpful promoting my myofascial realignment. ☮️❤️🐾
This makes my day! Movement across the diagonals of the body have some special connectedness. I learned about it from a Feldenkrais physical therapist. Here's a link to the sequence. Hope I understood correctly: There's a little intro, then the movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVAfsQPAgI&t=3s
It's said that sunlight is the best sanitizer, and your words of white hot truth are blazing all over the trans myth, baking it to a crisp! The two things that irritate me the MOST about trans ideology are the AUDACITY of their deceit- calling their delusional pantomime authentic, but demanding authentic women call ourselves cis, and the constant shifting of goal posts for their own transformation and for the demands they make of US. No matter how far we go to accommodate them, it's never enough, and there is always some new thing they want from us, and it's always an awful violation of our boundaries. I no longer harbor the tiniest shred of compassion for these rapey little narcissists. They are entitled to mental healthcare and the medications necessary to stabilize their insanity, along with the ordinary protections that disabled people require to prevent discrimination. Nothing more. Not one goddamned thing more than that!!!
Eliza, your insight into the permutations of this issue are always excellent. The deviousness of transgender activists is quite astonishing. Most marginalized groups are satisfied to be protected in employment, housing and public accommodations. But to avoid being dubbed a "transphobe", a person must accept the entirety of transgender ideology, no matter how illogical it is. I'm particularly annoyed by the way they use the word "authentic". In order to be one's "authentic self", a trans person must take hormones and have multiple surgeries and retrain their behavior. It is the exact antithesis of accepting yourself as you are. Now, I don't mind anything that a trans person might decide to do to his or her body, but please don't pass it off as authenticity. At a very fundamental level, I feel that trans people are deceptive. On several occasions I have found myself attracted to a handsome young man, only to discover that he was a trans man (with God knows what in his pants). Trans men are also moving into gay porn (which I'm not embarrassed to say that I use as a man who has been single for thirty years). I now have to look at images of men with vaginas. Trans people have come between me and the liberal poetry editors that I need to publish my poetry, and now they are ruining my porn.
“Your” porn? Perhaps you could respect yourself more and learn to fantasize without preformed images being fed to you on a screen. I sympathize with you on the liberal poetry editors issue, but “your” porn? I promise you, the best stuff can be generated by your own brain! I’m a GenX heterosexual woman, and was wondering just what was going on with men until I found a website in 2015 that helped me understand the situation better. Gary Wilson is/was a high school science teacher and his wife is/was a relationship counselor who set up a website for discussing romantic relationships, and kept getting questions from men about whether they were addicted to porn. He’s now published a book about it, and I urge you to check out the website, https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/. Men discussing this issue with other men free from judgement may be helpful for you, so that you won’t be compelled to blame “transgenders” from invading “your” porn. As a woman, knowing that pornographers *know*what their products do to men and they produce and push it onto them anyway completely infuriates me, and I hope when users of porn discover this for themselves, that it infuriates them, too. Your male biology is being used against you by these sadistic pimps. I used to be “live and let live” with the subject of porn, until I found out about its deleterious effects on non-users, in addition to the direct impact it has on users. No judgement, just men helping other men. Please just check it out!
But, you ARE full of judgement. You are dripping with judgement. I used to be embarrassed to use porn, but then realized that it is everywhere and huge numbers of people look at it, so I stopped being embarrassed. I am a visual person and need an image in order to masturbate. I am also 72 years old. No one wants me now. That's just the way it is. I don't believe that I have an issue in this area, and I don't need your help.
I am gay, incidentally, so no woman was harmed in the porn that I look at. (I agree with anti-porn activists that porn harms women.) The interesting different between straight porn and gay porn is that the male actors in gay porn enjoy what they are doing. Female actors tend to do it, not because they like sex, but to get on camera. (Of course, both groups are trying to make money.)
So, please take your judgemental attitude and ----------------- (fill in the blank). Porn is here to stay.
Go ahead and say whatever you like, but porn is treating your fellow humans as objects for your own gratification and is deeply damaging to all the souls of all involved: participants, viewers, those that make a buck off of it, etc.
Calling other people judgmental doesn't change the fact that it is always wrong to use other humans as means to your own ends.
Not to mention that many performers have sad histories involving past sexual trauma and then are economically exploited.
So, yeah. I'm going to go ahead and make a judgment that porn is wrong
Please be sure to read my comment at the bottom of this thread. A huge amount of the porn available on the internet is being posted by people of THEMSELVES, people who are not making any money from it but enjoy showing themselves to the public. I would like to hear your arguments against THAT.
Go fuck yourself, you narcissistic wanker. Oh, that’s right! That’s what you do. What a toxic load of shit you’re carrying. Attempting to encourage men to help other men help themselves isn’t being judgmental. You are a load of dominator crap that will be rotting off of the Earth because of the cancer it is. Just another dumbass dominator male who proclaims to others that he knows things. Your kind of immaturity is cancerous, and it’s no wonder so many State Departments of Health have declared the porn situation to be a public health crisis. The collateral damage inflicted on non-users is what is motivating the activism against it. How utterly arrogant of you to underestimate the power of those who don’t share your perverted views about humans. Shallow-assed objectifying commodification of human beings isn’t tolerable to intelligent, humane people.
Dave and T.B.: Human society is far more varied and rich than either of you realize. People make their choices, and judging people harshly doesn't help in any situation. In fact, making the kinds of judgements you are making may be more harmful to society than anything I am doing. So, why don't you now harangue me for for eating meat, which I do? Or for buying foods in plastic containers, which I do? We all do the best that we can, and that applies to me also.
T.B., I see that all it took was one comment from me to unmask the ugliness of your character. Good luck with that. At least Dave tried to be civil in his remarks.
Both of you should get a button that says "I am part of cancel culture" and wear it proudly. Porn is legal. It is here to stay. Get over it.
Something just occurred to me. There are dozens of social media sites which are overwhelmed with members posting naked pictures of themselves and their friends making home-made porn. No one is paying them, yet the number of people doing this is in the tens of thousands. Reddit alone has hundreds if not thousands of people who are exposing themselves on a daily basis.
If people are doing this voluntarily, and if the numbers of people are in the tens of thousands, how can either of you say that anyone is being exploited?
And it isn't just social media. There are multiple web sites which are devoted to porn. Some of the porn on those sites constitutes promotional segments from porn publishers, but a lot of the porn being posted is made by amateurs who make no money from it -- NO MONEY AT ALL. They do it for fun and pleasure.
How do you self-righteous moralists explain that? The fact is that images are part of human culture, and people like to be seen in images. They do it because they are proud of their bodies, or because it helps them to meet sex partners. And since it is all voluntary and no one is being paid, it simply isn't possible to pretend that what's happening is a bad thing. It is called "freedom" -- freedom to do what you want as long as you are not hurting anyone. Without realizing it, the two of you have taken a position AGAINST FREEDOM.
I want to thank the two of you for opening my eyes. Yes, in the back of my head I felt a little embarrassment for indulging in porn, but that is now over. The two of you would erase the freedoms of people doing harmless things that you simply don't approve of. YOU are on the wrong side of this issue, not me!
Please read up about the lies of YouPorn or whatever it's called. It is not at all what you think it is in terms of people voluntarily acting on it.
Yes, time to help those concepts undergo detransition.
As always, brilliant use of logic and critical thinking by Eliza to disrupt the double-think cult.
Using “critical” and “disrupt” in their old-fashioned meanings.
This is a well written article with very astute observations. You're on to something deep here.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the works of Hegel, but your article reminds me of his "Science of Logic." The shortest TL;DR I can give is that we're constantly in this cycle of being turning into non-being and then back into being, with the cycle itself called "becoming." It's a process of continuously discarding the non-relevant parts of the self while retaining its essence or core, and the goal is to perpetually be in that state of becoming. This is essentially akin to the "always transforming yourself" you identified. It's all very Occult.
Last thing I'll mention is your use of the words "original" and "facsimile" reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." It's a commentary on how modern Western culture has lost its connection to meaning with our constant pursuit of facsimiles. I think you may enjoy it; though, there's a lot of cynical pessimism (bordering on nihilism) in the book that you'll need to wade through.
I look forward to your future work!
Thought-provoking article. Whether you're living in an oppressive society or an abusive relationship, language is twisted to suit the needs of the oppressor/abuser. Abuse is "love", objectification is "liberating", assertiveness and demanding respect or accountability is "hate", your sense that something is wrong is "paranoia", your desire to leave is "selfish".
Because the oppressor/abuser is so insistent and because they promise what we most deeply desire (love, acceptance) we focus all our energy on decreasing the dissonance between what we're being told (abuse is love) and what we know to be true (abuse is degrading and hurtful). We do everything in our power to MAKE what they say seem true. But the truth is, genuine acceptance is something that comes from within. It can't be given or taken away.
Excellent and thought provoking article, Eliza 👍👍
❤️❤️❤️
Someone with such a potty mouth shouldn't be sending hearts to anyone. Hypocrite.
Someone with such disdain for other people just goes trolling like you do. 😠😡🤬