‘Trans genocide’ is back. And that means we need to talk about phobia indoctrination again—because there’s no trans genocide. Claims of ‘trans genocide’ rest on two pillars. The first is the idea that ‘trans’ pharmaceuticals and surgeries are life-saving, therefore regulations that restrict access in any way—such as by removing public funding or opening providers up to malpractice suits—are by definition life-threatening. (Never mind that the evidence doesn't support the idea that transition is life-saving.)
I was a gender non-conforming child raised in Thailand, a culture that recognizes this cross-dressing phenomena with its own third gender tradition. This tradition rests on the concept that we are all born with karma from a previous life. I was enormously empowered when my aunt told me, at the age of 8 that I had the spirit of a boy. It made me feel like I had a reason for being and a destiny to unravel that was unique to this past life and that my family would honor this past and also gently shepherd me into my unfamiliar female body which would offer me new lessons to learn in this life. I immigrated to the U.S. shortly after and came of age as a butch lesbian which I am to this day. That was in the '70s when things still made sense.
So this brand new American interpretation of the "trans child" as somehow a biological aberration is running roughshod over my entire cultural upbringing. It feels, not only like a cultural appropriation, but a Western medical abomination. Western medicine being a big cultural difference to Asian medicine. Ironically Thailand was the sex change capital of the world until the U.S. took over. Thai people understand this to be plastic surgery to enhance one's presentation just as it is for women wanting to enhance and preserve their beauty (a big industry in Thailand). We never claimed that this cross-dressing population was anything but the sex they were born, and most if not all are gay.
To watch this trans issue become a focal point of political rhetoric now polarizing the population here in the U.S. is equally alarming for Thailand is also the country of perpetual coups, but at least we are used to the temporary destabilization. The last one nearly completely trashed the emerging embracing of democracy as a citizen participation activity. Freedom of information is once again severely monitored and protests are carefully watched. But compared to this constant mindfuckery I find it quite peaceful and I look forward to clearing my head and breathing easier every time I return.
Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, I stay engaged hoping to pierce some sense into those going along with this cult, which is just about everyone I know from the gay community. At least I can hammer on them with facts and news about what is going on. No one is bothering to look beyond the social justice slogans. Thank you for this article being both breaking news and analysis. It has prompted me to see deeper into the psyche of this coup.
"It made me feel like I had a reason for being and a destiny to unravel that was unique to this past life and that my family would honor this past and also gently shepherd me into my unfamiliar female body which would offer me new lessons to learn in this life" Amanda, I wish I could give this 100 "likes". Are you a writer? If you have written anything else about third gender in Thailand (or anything else on transgender topic), pleas share a link! And please consider writing something for PITT.
Oh thank you so much for the hundred likes. I would love to write something for PITT. I have a brief piece here http://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2021/06/to-incarnate-as-woman.html. Last year I published my second memoir. It does not address trans ideology, it just makes space for my gender non-conforming boyhood as it was informed by my Thai heritage and my coming of age as an American immigrant. To give myself that space I had to learn all I could about trans ideology to make sure people would not assume I was trans (which they may do anyway, but no matter, I saved myself). I am currently writing another book to address the trans part. It is both memoir of being peaked and a dummies guide to all things trans. It includes the insight from my Thai heritage that I have parsed out here. I want this book to explain to my peers and elders, in clear (correct pronoun) language, what people need to know just to get their arms around this topic and all the arenas it is impacting. I am hoping that a funny, lightly held, non-judgmental approach by a butch lesbian will facilitate easy reading and learning for my liberal leaning readers. It is almost finished; I hope to have it out this year as a self published effort on the Kindle platform where my last book resides. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
I look forward to reading it! Not enough ( almost nothing really) is being said about kids like you and my son and millions of others that were/are gender non- conforming and happy in their whole, healthy bodies! My son loved dolls, pink nail polish... we were at a nail salon years ago and when asked what color he wanted, he chose pink( of course!) The ladies at the salon began to giggle and even though I didn’t speak their native language, I knew they were laughing at him. It made me rethink his choice so I asked him if blue or black like a rocker🤘might be better? I also mentioned to him that it may cause less of an issue with the other boys( bullies who use the f word and I don’t mean fuck) . He said” mom, if they don’t like my pink nails then they’re not my friends anyway”! And with that he asked for sparkles on top! Needless to say, it was a great moment for me and him❤️
Thank you for your wonderful comment! I raised a very effeminate boy who (to no ones surprise) came home at 13 and said “mom, I have a surprise to tell you” and I turned around and said “I know, I’ve always known- you’re gay”! He looked up at me and said “mom, you ruined my surprise “! We laughed and laughed! He’s one of the reasons why this fight means so much to me! And the fact that I have 2 daughters. Misogyny and homophobia are the foundations of this cult!
As someone born intersex, the race for gender-altering surgeries is hard for me to imagine, too - mostly because surgeons' promises exceed what can be delivered ...by a long way, in my experience. There's plenty of room in any sex for flair, expression, and acceptance.
Eliza, great work as usual but I'd like to add another set of lenses. You may recall some weeks back I wrote about incentives, and I think that also helps us understand the "trans genocide" meme.
In contemporary progressive discourse, moral authority is gained by having oppressed, intersectional identities, with "transwomen of color" probably winning the top prize. Being a middle class, white, cisgender, straight kid gives you no authenticity, no moral authority, and a great deal of unearned responsibility for everything from racism to climate change. So what better way to shed yourself of "white privilege" or "cisheteronormativity" than being a potential victim of LITERAL GENOCIDE?
That's one set of incentives. The other is, well, where we are right now, which is the internet. A few internet communities reward and validate reason, compromise, moderation in speech and thought, genuine reflection upon the other's point of view, and so on. But most don't, as you well know- most internet spaces reward the most emotionally charged claims, and this is by design. The algorithms at the big tech companies push the emotionally charged claims/memes/articles because that keeps us engaged on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. In turn, this creates a cycle of one-upmanship, where "these laws are unreasonable and may have bad outcomes" is outdone by "the GOP is racist and transphobic" which leads to "Republicans are FASCISTS" and onward to "they're literally GENOCIDING US." That's the logic of online discourse- the biggest flame wins the most attention.
This is not to say that phobia indoctrination isn't real- of course it is- it's to say that phobia indoctrination is hypercharged when it's enmeshed in the weird incentives of progressive politics and the evil algorithms of Big Tech.
If we were all sitting around in a coffee shop and someone said, "I'm being genocided by Ron Desantis", we'd all say, let's get you some decaf, c'mon, you're right here and you're fine. That's the opposite of online discourse, right?
"This is not to say that phobia indoctrination isn't real- of course it is- it's to say that phobia indoctrination is hypercharged when it's enmeshed in the weird incentives of progressive politics and the evil algorithms of Big Tech."
Totally agree. Wide assortment of incentives. But some definitely believe it and are terrified.
You left out a few criteria from the intersectionality checklist. The ultimate winner of the oppression Olympics is the differently abled, neurodivergent transwoman of color.
She is also probably a lesbian, bless her heart, and is being discriminated against by other lesbians who refuse to date her 'cause they are a bunch of genitalia-obsessed terfs.
Those of us who've divorced a husband after he went down the glitter rabbit hole are familiar with this rhetoric on a personal level. As FR Prete said a short time ago here, this is all DARVO; overblown word salad to distract from the mother erasure and female erasure these men engage in within families, sports and society. The states passing laws to restrict the medicalization of children exhibiting this psychiatric illness, a social contagion, are advised to find catchy descriptors for their legislation and get it out on the airwaves. Ironically, I wouldn't be surprised if a rash of detransitioning is coming. On the personal level, my soon-to-be ex husband claimed I "forcibly ejected" him from our home in court documents and that I assaulted him twice, in sworn affidavits--a ploy to get custody of our two sons. He moved out when we were 900 miles away in another state. He is more than 4 inches taller than me and I would have been quite battered if he'd had to defend himself from my fists. It is a habit they have, connected to the pathological narcissism. Wrong sex hormones do shrink the brain, the evidence tells us.
Your book was one of the most beautifully written and affecting things I have read of late. There is no group more deserving of support than women and children who have gone through this particular form of misery. I escaped from an abusive husband and took my extremely pregnant self to another country. But you didn’t have that option. I cried and cried when I read your story. And cheered you on, too.
I don't see transgenderism as being a 20th century phenomenon. I believe trans people have always been with us -- that is, if you define a trans person as someone who wants to be the opposite sex. Western culture has, I'm sure, always been intolerant of them, but there are probably other cultures that tolerated them to some extent, Eastern cultures especially. In ages when surgery wasn't possible, such people would have limited themselves to dressing and acting like the opposite sex. Even so, it is pretty disingenuous of any person in a Western culture to speak of "transcestors".
It seems to me that the chief weapon that trans activists have used to convince the public that they must be given everything they want is the idea that trans people suffer so much that they are always on the verge of suicide. I do think it's true that suicide is more prevalent among trans people, but that's to be expected when you believe you are something you are not -- i.e., a man who thinks he's a woman, or vice versa. Clearly, these people have psychological problems. Even so, to claim that you suffer more than other people is pretty nervy given the amount of suffering that human beings in general endure.
We also need to remember that many trans people are not trans at all. They are people with other psychological problems who have glommed onto the idea of being trans because it suits their emotional needs. Indeed, it's pretty infuriating to think that a lot of those people who are blocking the doorways at lectures, or shaming others for not believing in gender identity, or talking about their "transcestors" are not even trans, just confused.
I think there have always been people who wished they had been born the opposite sex, or even tried in various ways to live as though they were members of the opposite sex (and not for instrumental reasons, like women who knew they were women who wanted to go to medical school or fight in a war). But I don't think that's at all the same thing as people being 'really trans' or even 'trans' in the same sense that people today are, now that a different set of concepts about identity and different set of technological tools to transform the body exist.
Absolutely! I have a very real example of one such person. My aunt was married for over 50 years to a man that occasionally wore women’s clothing - he was called a transvestite. My point is that he lived to a ripe old age, but there was considerable damage done to their 4 children but that’s for another day!
Sad..it’s the children who suffer from the mental problems of the adults. The whole trans ideology is based not only on lies but on the mentally unstable. The idea of being “born in the wrong body “ is absolutely nonsense.Unfortunately, social media has blown it out of proportion, and the medical and pharmaceutical industry are only too happy to go along with this very lucrative business.
[To Eliza] I understand what you are saying, but the view of transgender activists has evolved in just the last five years or so. They no longer see it as necessary that trans people have all the treatments and operations. They see their feelings as all-important, probably in the same way that ancient trans people did.
Given what I know about oriental medicine, I wouldn't be surprised if, centuries ago, trans women found ways to develop small breasts, change the appearance of their faces, or even had their genitals altered. Acupuncture can be used as a local anesthetic, which would have made small medical procedures possible. However, I'm just guessing.
I'm also pretty sure that those ancient trans people had their own version of gender identity. Remember, I believe in reincarnation, and that people with gender dysphoria have likely chosen the wrong gender before they were born. In my view, that is why their feelings that they are the wrong sex are so intense. I also believe that's why very young children sometimes get the idea that they are the wrong sex, because they have memories of past lives. (The Seth Material is the basis for my religious views, and Seth -- the soul channelled by the psychic -- said that young children often have flashbacks to previous existences, flashbacks which fade as they age.)
My point is that I do see a continuation from the past to the present. However, it's clear that today's situation is out of control because of the misuse of medicine, and the ready acceptance of plastic surgery. I remember when Phyllis Diller had to justify her face lifts in front of an angry talk-show audience. Those days have certainly passed.
"Trans", like everything after LGB, is a FEELING. "Trans" people are, like every other human, either MALE or FEMALE; either STRAIGHT, GAY, or BI. In other words, boring like the rest of us. Feelings should not be a protected civil rights category. It's insane.
I think the reason trans ideology has gotten so far ahead of itself is that most people *do* identify with their sex and so they sympathize with those who ID with the opposite sex. I would call that “cis” and myself nonbinary, but in trans ideology “cis” means anyone who is not trans and good luck pining down the meaning of nonbinary (to me it seems to be a bunch of “me too” people overthinking it).
Back in the olden days of Oprah and Phil Donahue they would periodically do shows on transsexuals, and *always* one of the guests would ask the audience to imagine how they would feel if they woke up one morning as the opposite sex and it was always an “aha” moment for most of the audience. To me s a young gay boy it was a shock that most people identified with their bodies so much since why would you want to do that, as most of us are kind of repulsive, even when young? That was a very successful approach, i thought, but for some reason it has fallen into disfavor with the post modern crowd.
Many of these radical TRAs are fundamentally self destructive, hence their reckless absolutism (any backlash will just validate their martyr complexes), and their self righteous straight allies will never face the consequence of the inevitable backlash: but it scares a lot of gays and i imagine a lot of trans people, because we are the ones that will endure the backlash whether we are allowed to have any say in this debate or not.
Ps, ive read a lot of the Seth material. As far as reincarnation and gender he says that some souls are attracted to or avoid one physical sex or the other for whatever reasons and so they have a lot consecutive lives as one sex. As a result the aspects of the other sex tend not to be given expression until those aspects of the soul become pent up and end up being expressed in exaggerated or distorted ways (such as especially effeminate men or butch women, or hypermasc men or hyperfemme women having their first male life after a long series of female lives or vice versa.) But he would also say its always about unique individual circumstances and that the main error would be to limit your identity and thus inhibit and limit your experience of yourself and your “entity” (your greater self leading multiple, simultaneous existences in this and other worlds)and of the universe by your limited/limiting ideas about physical traits or personal or cultural beliefs about gender, race, age, religion, science, etc.
First of all, I'm gay too. And secondly, it is nice to meet someone who is familiar with the Seth Material. I agree with what you said in your last paragraph, although I tend to explain it with slightly different words. So, let's say a soul doesn't want to be a woman because of (1) the pain and danger of childbirth, and (2) women's subservient status to men in almost every society. So the soul incarnates as a man life after life. At a certain point, the soul needs to experience womanhood for its spiritual development, but again it chooses to reincarnate as a man. That man, in a futile effort to experience womanhood, will decide he is really a woman trapped in a man's body, and he will become trans. It is the spiritual imperative that he experience womanhood that makes him so certain that he is really a woman. The truth is, though, that no soul can experience womanhood unless he becomes a real woman.
That's basically the explanation that I have been giving for transgenderism.
By the way, I've never found the human body repulsive. It is only when it starts to degenerate that it becomes so. Biology is a messy business, and I look forward to future lives in a purely spiritual form.
I’m afraid I am not the most patient person and having read all the Seth stuff in my youth Im not that good at dealing with the simplifications and the Law of Attraction bastardizations of it by a lot of the other Seth fans. Crotchety old man warning.
As far as your interpretations of it, I would ask why they are so concrete and broad. The soul is not bisexual in the sense that there are defined male or female aspects to it, because there are no inherently male or female traits. Those traits are sorted into masc or fem by the cultural and personal beliefs, and during a particular life or series of lives the social or familial or whatever environments will tend to enforce those gender norms by compulsion of some traits and suppression of others. Then the aspects of the soul not given expression find a way out and the compelled traits may start to falter. Its not that those traits like submissiveness and passivity or dominance and aggression are inherently male or female.
If there is a biological dimension to how a one sided series of incarnations might affect ones physical appearance or health I cant ever remember it being addressed in the seth material. i guess its possible. Certainly in most cultures in this line of world development the burdens of child bearing fall heavily on females. But avoiding female incarnations would not be the only way to avoid the drudgery of childbearing. One could choose to be lesbian, or a religious convent life, or an infertile life. Or by finding an alternate “probability” system to incarnate in where the gender and parental burdens on females are not so onerous. But we choose these shitty world circumstances in part because we have had a hand in making them and so must encounter them to recognize our own beliefs and their effects which we tend to become deaf and blind too, or we project the causes of those circumstance on other people or forces. And hopefully we learn to use those beliefs more constructively and purposefully instead of thrashing around reactively like animals caught in a net. at least according to Seth, or my reading thereof
The other reason I dont have much patience for this subject is that its almost all talk, no do. Aside from a couple intense psychic experiences in my teens, plus a lot of deja vu and the occasional precognitive dreams I have not developed psychic abilities to any appreciable degree and have never met anyone else who has. The pros are either frauds or grossly overselling their abilities. The amateurs just seem to love the sound of their own voices. It just seems like wanking to discuss. But being me, i had to put in my 2 cents about the seth material cuz “someone on the internet was wrong”, or at least was verging on oversimplification. I think mansplaining is what the kids call it these days.
But back to Seth, one of his main generalizations about the sex roles in our historical line of development is that men’s domination of women is a reflection of man’s (the species’) domination of nature. As long as our attitudes and beliefs about our relationship to nature dont change, neither will sex roles change. So obviously our attempts to manipulate sex/gender via medicine and surgery would not fundamentally alter or subvert those roles, they will just reinforce the status quo.
I may have extrapolated more from the Material than Seth actually said. I do remember that he said that each soul must experience being a man, a woman and a child -- and those three things can be accomplished in two lives, although most souls live more lives than that. You and I are obviously remembering the same passage in which Seth said that an effeminate man may be one who needs to incarnate as a woman but avoids doing so. I took that and applied it to trans people. Back in the 60's and 70's, there weren't many transsexuals around, and I don't think Seth said anything about them specifically, although I may have forgotten. The Seth Material is so voluminous that I never finished all the books.
Actually he said mother and father roles, not man and woman.
He did not go into trans that i ever recall. but did say that sex is merely a “biological focus”, and that there is no single psychological trait that is inherently male or female, much less a group or set of them.
He talks about sexuality a bit. Does say that homosexuality is a distortion but so is heterosexuality as we mostly experience it in our culture. He told Rob and Jane they were essentially bisexuual, but I think he was not talking about sexual attraction, just meant that they were well balanced and did not limit themselves to sexual stereotypes. Those words did not always mean what we take them to mean today.
Homosexuality is not an “identity” which is one of my pet peeves with the transplainers. A lot of gay men and lesbians seems to make it central to their lives and cover everything with rainbows, but its just a sexual attraction and is not protected in law just because it is an identity. Thats the kind of dumb stuff that makes me hopeless about people who are supposedly on my side of political, religious and culture war arguments. The dummines always take over the wheel and drive the car into the ditch.
Confused and angry , because they know deep down that it is nonsensical to think a man can become a woman or visa versa . It’s the anger at knowing they’re wrong that makes them throw hissy fits!
CR, I think it's only a few segments of the non-trans population that are on board with trasgenderism: intellectuals, bleeding-heart liberals, people who want to be part of every trend, people with strong parental feelings, businesses that want to be on-board with every trend that might increase their sales. Politicians needing votes! Most people don't care because they don't know any trans people.
I'm not sure that I accept your idea that trans people are being accepted because they parody society's gender role-playing. Most trans people, I think, don't "pass" very well, which means that they don't blend in with their adopted gender very well. Also, there are some very visible trans women activists who sport beards (as a way to be contrary, I'm sure).
My view remains that trans people have managed to paint themselves as the most pitiful of the pitiful, so pitiful and endangered that they require special accommodations from society, along with the maximum amount of sympathy. I also feel that there are some liberals who feel ashamed for not getting it "right" on racism -- and what I mean by that is that a lot of liberals are indeed racist. When this new, most-pitiful group came along, it gave them an opportunity to polish their liberal bona fides. Of course, the same people are still failing women as a group -- but they don't see women as an oppressed group because women are ubiquitous, not to mention that probably half of them blame their mothers for all their problems.
I believe it is also dangerous in that it is authoritarian. Having lived under an authoritarian regime in Nazi Germany, I can see many similarities. For example, the change in language to bolster up their control, the ousting of people who disagree with them, even to the point of having them lose their jobs, the hatred of anyone who does not agree with them. It’s an authoritarian religion in the zeal with which it is pushed on others .
It is high time that these people are stopped. They can believe whatever the hell they want to believe , crazy stuff like men can be women, etc. but keep it to themselves. Don’t make the rest of us believe their insanity.
Most days I just wish for some friggin clarity on these matters.
Is it my 'ancient' brain that simply can't process concepts like 'gender' or 'gender identity' or 'authentic self' or whatever 'non-binary' is supposed to mean?
And I have no idea how to 'identify' **AS** something.
Although I'm essentially retired now (a bit early - I really need to get back to work) I have been for most of my career a theoretical physicist engaged in academic and industrial research. I'm used to starting with 'axioms' (or laws) and figuring out the *consequences* of these in various scenarios. I try to do a similar job with the 'axioms' of gender ideology and end up getting quickly unstuck - the bloody stuff just doesn't make any kind of sense to me.
Stuck in the middle of all this are human beings who, for one reason or another, have convinced themselves they 'really' **are** the opposite sex in what seems to me to be in some mystical fashion, similar to the assumption of the existence of a soul.
Might be true. Might not be true. But one thing is absolutely 100% certain - we don't have anything like a firm enough understanding of the phenomenon to be so certain that things like "affirming" therapy are the one-size-fits-all gold standard of treatment - particularly when it comes to children. Especially when it comes to children. Their identities are not fully formed, and are very responsive/adaptive to their environment and the people guiding them - and it's debatable that adults have a 'fully-formed' identity either.
As a parent myself, I consider it a great blessing that my kids have grown up in saner times. I try to imagine the absolute terror had one of my daughters come home from school one day and told me they 'were' a boy. Transphobic? Possibly - but the thought of my child undergoing traumatic surgery and living a life on medication would scare the shit out me. It certainly wouldn't be any cause for *celebration*.
I'd rather see 'talking' therapies being used to steer people away from this medicalization, and if this is deemed to be trans 'genocide', then I'm all for it. I'd much rather pay Freud than Frankenstein.
Parent of two elementary school age girls and properly terrified. Thankfully we were already homeschoolers long before I realized the extent of this, but I'm a neon blue state so the ideology is everywhere. Doing my best to keep them grounded in nature, and we're low tech with them, but it's unnerving raising children in a time when a group of people have decided that objective reality is up for debate.
I really can't even fathom what's going through the minds of 'educators' when they ask young kids about what 'gender' they are, or what sexual orientation they might be.
I understand the desire to instil "non-discriminatory" attitudes - which is, overall, a very good thing - but some of the stuff I've seen that school kids are exposed to goes rather beyond this and into the territory of "indoctrination".
They're being taught a 'model' that purports to describe 'reality' when, in fact, it has little basis in reality (or science, for that matter).
The 'genderbread' model is, in my view, more of a 'dangerbread' model.
Not being able to wrap your head around this insanity just means that you yourself are sane. None of it makes any sense: there are just so many internal inconsistencies (gender identity is innate and fixed -- except when it’s fluid!) and tautological definitions (“gender identity” is the gender you feel you are -- with no further definition of “gender”).
We are being asked to respect someone’s assertion that they “feel like” a particular gender (sex) and therefore for some or all purposes actually “are” that gender (sex). But that makes no sense. I am a woman but make no claim to know what it “feels like” to be a woman; I only know what it feels like to be me. I can no more state that my experience of being a woman “feels like” that of other women, than to state that my experience of, say, the color red is the same as anyone else’s. We simply do not have any way to directly compare inner (mental, emotional, sensory, etc.) experiences of different people other than by self-reporting. And I have yet to see an articulation of what it “feels like” to be a woman (or man, or “non-binary”) that isn’t heavily reliant on gender (sex) stereotypes.
I often think about a (hetero) relationship where, one morning, the lass wakes up and declares that 'she' is now a 'he'. The powerful GenderMagic now kicks in and automatically turns the lad gay!
Ever since all the IdentityWoo reared its hydra-like heads of incomprehension I've been trying to figure out the question of what it is that makes me a man. I have been known to cry during a movie (The Notebook - I'm looking at you). So I must be a 'woman', right? On the other hand I can't tell the difference between Autumnal Forest White and Venetian Gondola White at the paint store - so I must be a 'man', right?
The only thing that is not changeable, or based on stereotypes or assumed characteristics, is my biology. That's the only fixed reality here.
You know, Dr. Mom, only about ten years ago trans people weren't pretending that their gender identity made them "real" members of the opposite sex. That is something fairly new, and it is a way in which their overreach has achieved new heights. But I am glad that they are pushing that idea, because it is obviously ridiculous to most people. The more ridiculous their ideas, the more quickly the whole thing will be discredited and society will get back to normal.
Well said!This ideology is unfortunately a boon to the medical industrial complex and big Pharma . no they did not start this, they have an interest in perpetuating it. Talking therapies don’t make much profit so they are deemed old-fashioned now. And so Frankenstein no rules.
It's just so DARVO. The only agents of genocide are the medical corporations and their program of mass self-sterilization, sexual mutilation surgeries, and metabolic diseases caused by huge doses of wrong sex steroids. For PROFIT. The tranz are committing slow suicide and have been directed to target the people trying to stop the eugenic atrocity as the cause of their distress.
I love that story of adding sparkles on top. It shows his spirit and refusal to be put on the defensive. You are reminding me of so many incidences where my collective family supported my gender non-conforming choices from my choice of toys (a gun to play cops and robbers) to my request for trousers with pockets. Your gentle guidance about what others might think being informative rather than restrictive. As an old timer I rarely got to hear such stories of support for a gay child which is why all this trans affirming support just feels doubly wrong. It is so clearly a scripted narrative that eclipses organic preferences. I certainly wanted support as a teen for my emerging sexuality, but the trans narrative demands another level of thought. It forces them to take up the belief that being gender non-conforming is not a matter of preference, but a symptom of being biologically incorrect. I don't believe that a young person would come up with that themselves.
In that one moment, I was in awe of him! No one is a perfect parent but allowing boys who happen to like Barbie dolls and girls who play cops and robbers to mutilate their beautiful, perfect bodies is obscene! I’m going to say this every minute of every day if I have to! This entire ideology is homophobic and misogynistic and it must be stopped! Let’s protect our gay and lesbian kids! Can’t wait to read your book!❤️
One small point of disagreement, when you say Trump's proposals include
"investigating pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks for suppressing negative transition outcomes to controversial ones like banning pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for minors"
the latter should not be controversial. Indeed the two parts are closely linked. If the medical-pharmaceutical complex is presenting transition as a cure for psychological and emotional distress, and asking children too young to buy a beer or get a tattoo to consent to removal of healthy organs, removal of fertility, anorgasmia, lifelong medicalisation, and in the case of girls, premature menopause, when they are too young to understand the concepts, then banning them seems a rational response.
That doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do (I think it's probably the right thing to do, personally, since the capture of medical associations has been so total that they're incapable of self-regulation). But it's controversial, even among people who oppose gender transition of minors!
I’m confused too about this being seen as controversial but I am in the UK where surgery and cross sex hormones (other than puberty blockers) aren’t legal for under 16s. I think surgery isn’t legal for under 18s here, so this isn’t considered controversial here, only by TRAs.
The videos I’ve seen by gender critical trans identifying people such as Blaire White and Buck Angel are outspokenly against gender surgery on minors.
Unfortunately, surgery on the 16-17 age group does not seem to be illegal in the UK. See https://archive.ph/pM264 . These Scottish patients were operated on in England, so I assume it is legal across the UK.
Thank you for sharing this - they are referred pre 18 but not operated on till adults. 18 is still so young though imo and especially considering that the common co-morbidities are not addressed. I feel sick with it all. When will the balance tip with more people aware of the harms?! 😢
boy are you wrong. new zealand rocked until the WEF sent us jacinda ardern. i could list all the outrageous things she has done to completely trash us but i wouldn't want to make your head explode.
i am so excited about her coming. i plan on having a fan girl moment when she is in auckland. hope she can pull it off. we are so into censorship here now and govt control...
The sad thing is, such hysterical reactions may end up being an awful self-fulfilled prophecy. If TRA and trans people actually believe that Trump's words amount to genocide, then if Trump gets elected , there may be a huge increases in suicide, especially among the young. The kool-aid drinking analogy sounds even scarier now. As much as I am grateful to people on the right who are fighting this , we cannot destroy this cult (while hopefully saving every single deluded member) without good science and honest politicians and journalists on the left.
Tell me where they are on the left! Unfortunately, it is the left that is supporting the trans cult. I think that if you want to fight this trans ideology, you will have to vote for Republicans.
And that’s a huge problem for many people. It leaves democrats like me homeless politically. I cannot vote for Biden again when he sits down with the likes of a Dylan Mulvaney at the White House to discuss girlhood! Or champion male athletes who are mediocre at best in their own league but then set new record wins when competing against young women athletes! The political party I believed in has left me!
I’m a native New Yorker- raised my family in the West Village on 12th Street. Then made the mistake of moving to California ( that’s another story, I digress!) I know there are many of us- lifelong Democrats who feel disenfranchised but like you, I could never in good conscience vote for Trump! I won’t make the mistake of voting for Biden/Harris(😱) again which may mean that for the first time in my life, I won’t vote- I hate the way that sounds and feels!!!
I am in the same sad position! Always having voted as a Democrat , I have seriously considered registering as an Independent, though in New York, you can’t vote in the primary. Am I ready to register as a Republican? I don’t know, though one can cross party lines no matter how one is registered.
I definitely won’t vote for Biden , since he is the asskisser of all things trans .. so is Governor Hochul! It’s a real conundrum.
Since you are in such a blue state, your vote in presidential elections is probably just symbolic anyway and doesn't make a difference. You may make a difference voting for sane politicians more locally (or maybe the primaries, so we have someone to choose from? ). I actually know close to nothing about politics so don't take my comment too seriously. :)
I will most certainly not vote for anyone who supports trans agenda and will probably vote republican this time. Trump's words sound very reasonable (and I hardly ever agree with what he says on anything). Yes, I know it's the left that is supporting the cult and I am disgusted. My only point is that the trans-identifying young people don't trust anything that comes from the right and I am terrified for my daughter and young people like her. Yes, she and others like her are entitled young idiots but they are OUR entitled young idiots and we the parents want to save them. (She is not a TRA, not politically active at all but she does feel "threatened" by "transphobes"). That's why I keep hoping (against all odds) for a magic unicorn Democratic politician.
You're wrong when you say "it's the left that's supporting the cult." Look at the polls from the UK--it's disapproval across the board, and it's about 98% disapproval for biological males competing in women's sports. They are cheaters and the sooner we're rid of them, the better. I think some of my left-wing friends might not even be aware of this issue; they're more focused on social justice, Ukraine, climate change, and education. One recent conversation had my friend exclaiming "No! I've never heard of such a thing!" repeatedly while I was telling her about Will Thomas and Rhys MacKinnon. I'm a lifelong liberal who will NEVER, EVER vote Republican--the party of greed, racism, war, misogyny, attacks on education, and environmental destruction. I only stumbled into this subject recently when I ran across a tweet from an intellectually dishonest person who claimed that Joan of Arc was really "nonbinary" and therefore we must all refer to her as "they." And then the Queen Elizabeth I claim--oh how I wish we could hear what Elizabeth herself would say to that "historian" who claims she wasn't really a woman!
I think part of the problem is just the fact that many well-intentioned people still see the trans issue as an extension of gay rights.
And by the way, it's a Democratic, not a democrat, politician.
Thanks for correcting my grammar, Petra. I made the change to my comment (I am not being sarcastic, I do appreciate it).
You say you only recently stumbled into this subject. I've been forcefully thrown into it 3.5 years ago with my daughter's declaration of trans identity. For you it's probably just another social justice issue (and I thank you for taking it seriously) but for me and other parents like me it's life and death. It's our children . So, we looked into it very very deeply. It's the left that screams "affirmative care" and bans talk therapy for gender confused children as "conversion therapy". I don't see any Democratic politicians that speak up of the danger of transition, about the risk of hormones and amputating healthy body parts. Nobody on the left talks about detransitioners. Please, name those who do, and I will be delighted to support them. As of now, I will be a one-issue voter. You may see it as amoral but I need to think of my daughter and sons and daughters of other people I've met through this nightmare. Read their stories on PITT. And I used to think people were "well-intentioned". Not any more. Nobody who is well-informed on this issue can still see it as an extension of gay rights.
I very much doubt that even Trump called for "trans genocide". I certainly hope the US can get rid of Biden, Harris and Co. in 2024. I don't know much about de Santis, and, anyway, I can't vote. I'm waiting for my own people to kick Trandeau to the curb. Please!
Sophistry. Trans people have managed to make what SEEMS to be a logical argument (based on identity), but which ignores science. They are patterning their push for rights on the gay model, but their situation is different. Gays are indeed discriminated against for their identity -- but then, there is no proof they aren't gay. Trans people want their rights based on their identity as the opposite gender, but then there is plenty of evidence that they are not, and cannot be, the opposite gender.
And that is why they are such an angry lot. They know that they are wrong, and when one is wrong, and is challenged on that basis, one gets very angry and defensive.
Years ago, when I first got into this fight, I read a long comment (on another article not on Substack) by a man who had worked at a trans clinic. I don't recall his exact language now, but he said that getting bottom surgery (which is the goal of most serious trans women) didn't do anything to make them happy. Their vaginas were fake, of course, and they quickly realized that a fake vagina is just a surgeons handiwork and didn't make them real women, so their anger persisted. (I have generously rephrased what he said, as I don't remember his exact language now, but I believe that this is true.)
The point is, no one can change reality, and pretending that your altered body is the real thing is just a fool's errand. I am reminded of the pre-op trans man who was thrilled to learn that she was going to be given a large penis. What penis? A cigar shaped roll of fat with skin on it from your arm is not a penis. All trans people must ultimately face the fact that they are facsimiles of what they want to be. All that any trans person can achieve is an appearance. A few trans people have managed to be satisfied with just appearances, but many of them are not -- and thus the dysphoria continues.
TRAs accusing others of wanting their genocide smacks of projection to me.
I saw a video clip on Twitter yesterday of a young white man with sparkly eye-shadow and pig tails (so presumably 'trans') declaring that no one should be 'cis' at it was the equivalent of clubbing baby seals.
This fringe whackery is good for a chuckle, but if we add it to the recently much discussed Scottish 'decapitate all terfs' protest sign along with all the other violent rhetoric targeting GC people, I wonder: 'who wants to genocide whom?'
Although I'm not on TikTok, Blaire White (an anti-trans activist on YouTube) frequently copies over pictures of various trans and non-binary people from TikTok, and they all look bizarre. Apparently, being non-binary means you get to dress up in all kinds of colorful clothes and accessories, some masculine though most of them feminine. In other words, being non-binary means you get to look like a kook.
Yes, she's a transgender woman, but she has all the right ideas. She feels, as I do, that trans people are demanding too much from the general public. And although she doesn't like to be "misgendered" (having worked very hard to look feminine), she acknowledges that she is a man. Unlike me, though, she is a conservative on most issues. I am liberal on most issues.
I've tried listening to it several times but always get bored -- though people whose judgment I trust have raved about it - anyway, the guy who made the Martyr Made podcast about Jim Jones' People's Temple (the original koolaid drinkers, literal not metaphorical) has said he sees tremendous parallels between that cult and its ratcheting paranoid rhetoric of external threat (deployed to police cult members' doubts) and gender ideology. Since gender ideology has adherents in many mainstream institutions, not just in an isolated compound in Guyana, if they really come to believe the End is Nigh the number of people they may be willing to take down with them could be frighteningly enormous.
It is “frighteningly enormous “- you can’t turn on your tv and watch an awards show without them trying to bully society into compliance. Brian Murphy’s Golden Globe speech made me ill and the other night’s Grammy Awards was another “trans rights are human rights” puke fest!
The arts are bowing down to the golden calf..I’m glad I didn’t watch! What about “ Jewish rights are human rights”, “Catholic rights are human rights “, “Women’s rights are human rights” “ children’s rights are human rights“ ?
And why do we need “ Trans Remembrance Day”? Why not a whole month ?
All this is just a way to make us conform to their ideology!
We (Terfs) are early to the trans party. I’m sure that they are their own worst enemy and with every new “Trans something day, month” more people will wake up and say NO!
This rhetoric is obviously ridiculous, although the number of people who buy into it (including my own kid) is scary. One thing that I think would be helpful would be for gender-critical groups and especially candidates to clearly state their positions, both what they believe should be done and should not be done. For example, I think nearly all of us would agree that people should be free to dress in whatever clothing they want, regardless of whether it is traditional for their sex or not, under most circumstances. (Should there be exceptions? Probably, and we’d need to outline those.) We can all agree that no one should be subject to arrest or violence for dressing in a manner or participating in activities traditionally associated with the opposite sex. We can probably also state that housing and job discrimination against gender nonconforming people should be illegal. We should allow people currently receiving medical treatments for gender dysphoria to continue their current treatment. We should allow families to make decisions about social transitions of minors without government interference. We should as much as possible protect trans people in situations where they might be vulnerable or subject to bias, without infringing in the rights of others (eg. house them in a prison unit away from the general population as they would for someone who is a known informer or who is disabled). We should allow adults who have received intensive counseling to initiate medical transition if desired. (I’m stating my own opinions here, yours may be different.) If those types of things are clearly stated up front, along with the proposed limitations (no medical transitions for minors, physical sex is still the deciding factor for locker rooms, prisons, and sports teams), it becomes a lot harder for these groups to convince reasonable but uninformed people (I.e. most of the population) that they are victims and we are all violent bigots.
Honestly, the trans movement is SO good at spreading propaganda and lies and practicing tactics of undue influence. Our side needs to get smarter about how to counteract those tactics and spread the truth as effectively as they are spreading lies. So far we have not been very good at demonstrating what’s really happening and more and more of the uninformed are believing the lies.
I like most of what you say, but I don’t believe that there are as many truly trans people who need medical attention..I think most of them need psychiatric care. I would not be for allowing surgical or hormonal therapy for anyone under 21.
On the other hand , I want politicians to be honest in what they believe, and anyone on the trans wagon will never get my vote. I doubt that any Democrats will be against the ideology, sadly .
Let me be clear - I don’t believe there’s any such thing as “truly trans”. I personally think that nearly everyone would be better off learning self acceptance, and that there may be a very, very small number of people who for whatever reason will never be able to make peace with who they are and will be happier presenting as the opposite sex.
However, I also support the right of adults to believe different things than I do, and to live their lives as they see fit as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. That includes supporting the rights of people to do things that I think are really, really stupid or self destructive, like getting a full face tattoo or surgically removing body parts.
I don’t think these people need medical treatment. Like you, I think they need psychiatric help. But they believe otherwise, and I will not force my opinions on them any more than I want them to force their opinions on my child.
I think respecting each others’ rights to believe different things and each live according to our beliefs is the only way to move forward and reach some kind of sanity in our society on this topic.
Dee, I think the issue is not trans-identifying people's rights but doctors / scientists responsibility. Of course every person should have the right to receive proper treatment for a medical condition, when such treatment is available. The doctors are responsible for defining such conditions and providing proper treatment. The patients do not have the right to demand random treatment and surgeries. One can't walk into a doctor's office and demand a prescription medication that has nothing to do with a condition they have. But people just don't know better and trust the lie that cross-sex hormones is the right treatment. The medical / scientific community needs to step up.
I still think the only way we are going to reach any peace on this is to reassure people living this lifestyle and happy with it that we aren’t trying to take away their access to the medical treatments that enable the lifestyle. Do I think their lifestyle is horribly harmful to them? Yes, I do. And I wish the medical industry had never begun offering these kinds of treatments, just as they don’t offer elective leg amputations or prescribe opiates to anyone who requests them. But IMO that ship has sailed, and we’re not going to bring it back anytime soon. What we CAN do is put limits on the new people who begin medical treatments, and require extensive counseling first, and stop affirming and instead explore the reasons behind this and make it a goal to help people become comfortable with themselves, with transition only as a last resort for those who can’t. We can stop the propaganda about being born this way, or that if you ever feel uncomfortable with yourself it means you are trans, or that it’s ever possible to truly change sex or eliminate the importance of physical sex in some situations. We can protect women’s rights by maintaining a legal definition of sex that is not influenced by gender identity. If we fight for these things, but with compromises that allow people who consider themselves trans to continue living the life they choose and be treated with respect, we have a better chance of the reasonable but uninformed people of the world realizing we’re on the right side.
I also think that they are their own worst enemies and that needs to be highlighted in more mainstream media. Fox is one of the only media outlets that shows the TRA’s in their true and ugly light. And because it’s Fox, many people (some of my immediate family) think it’s not “that bad”! People need to see them attacking women physically and verbally at rallies where women just want to speak! The TRA’s use sound machines, bells, whistles, drums to drown out women’s voices- they are a despicable group of misogynists!
I have lately listened to Tucker Carlson...and on this issue , he is absolutely right! I would lose a lot of friends if I said that, but I find this issues so important that I willingly listen to those who realize the insanity of this.
I was a gender non-conforming child raised in Thailand, a culture that recognizes this cross-dressing phenomena with its own third gender tradition. This tradition rests on the concept that we are all born with karma from a previous life. I was enormously empowered when my aunt told me, at the age of 8 that I had the spirit of a boy. It made me feel like I had a reason for being and a destiny to unravel that was unique to this past life and that my family would honor this past and also gently shepherd me into my unfamiliar female body which would offer me new lessons to learn in this life. I immigrated to the U.S. shortly after and came of age as a butch lesbian which I am to this day. That was in the '70s when things still made sense.
So this brand new American interpretation of the "trans child" as somehow a biological aberration is running roughshod over my entire cultural upbringing. It feels, not only like a cultural appropriation, but a Western medical abomination. Western medicine being a big cultural difference to Asian medicine. Ironically Thailand was the sex change capital of the world until the U.S. took over. Thai people understand this to be plastic surgery to enhance one's presentation just as it is for women wanting to enhance and preserve their beauty (a big industry in Thailand). We never claimed that this cross-dressing population was anything but the sex they were born, and most if not all are gay.
To watch this trans issue become a focal point of political rhetoric now polarizing the population here in the U.S. is equally alarming for Thailand is also the country of perpetual coups, but at least we are used to the temporary destabilization. The last one nearly completely trashed the emerging embracing of democracy as a citizen participation activity. Freedom of information is once again severely monitored and protests are carefully watched. But compared to this constant mindfuckery I find it quite peaceful and I look forward to clearing my head and breathing easier every time I return.
Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, I stay engaged hoping to pierce some sense into those going along with this cult, which is just about everyone I know from the gay community. At least I can hammer on them with facts and news about what is going on. No one is bothering to look beyond the social justice slogans. Thank you for this article being both breaking news and analysis. It has prompted me to see deeper into the psyche of this coup.
"It made me feel like I had a reason for being and a destiny to unravel that was unique to this past life and that my family would honor this past and also gently shepherd me into my unfamiliar female body which would offer me new lessons to learn in this life" Amanda, I wish I could give this 100 "likes". Are you a writer? If you have written anything else about third gender in Thailand (or anything else on transgender topic), pleas share a link! And please consider writing something for PITT.
Oh thank you so much for the hundred likes. I would love to write something for PITT. I have a brief piece here http://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2021/06/to-incarnate-as-woman.html. Last year I published my second memoir. It does not address trans ideology, it just makes space for my gender non-conforming boyhood as it was informed by my Thai heritage and my coming of age as an American immigrant. To give myself that space I had to learn all I could about trans ideology to make sure people would not assume I was trans (which they may do anyway, but no matter, I saved myself). I am currently writing another book to address the trans part. It is both memoir of being peaked and a dummies guide to all things trans. It includes the insight from my Thai heritage that I have parsed out here. I want this book to explain to my peers and elders, in clear (correct pronoun) language, what people need to know just to get their arms around this topic and all the arenas it is impacting. I am hoping that a funny, lightly held, non-judgmental approach by a butch lesbian will facilitate easy reading and learning for my liberal leaning readers. It is almost finished; I hope to have it out this year as a self published effort on the Kindle platform where my last book resides. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
I look forward to reading it! Not enough ( almost nothing really) is being said about kids like you and my son and millions of others that were/are gender non- conforming and happy in their whole, healthy bodies! My son loved dolls, pink nail polish... we were at a nail salon years ago and when asked what color he wanted, he chose pink( of course!) The ladies at the salon began to giggle and even though I didn’t speak their native language, I knew they were laughing at him. It made me rethink his choice so I asked him if blue or black like a rocker🤘might be better? I also mentioned to him that it may cause less of an issue with the other boys( bullies who use the f word and I don’t mean fuck) . He said” mom, if they don’t like my pink nails then they’re not my friends anyway”! And with that he asked for sparkles on top! Needless to say, it was a great moment for me and him❤️
Thank you for your wonderful comment! I raised a very effeminate boy who (to no ones surprise) came home at 13 and said “mom, I have a surprise to tell you” and I turned around and said “I know, I’ve always known- you’re gay”! He looked up at me and said “mom, you ruined my surprise “! We laughed and laughed! He’s one of the reasons why this fight means so much to me! And the fact that I have 2 daughters. Misogyny and homophobia are the foundations of this cult!
As someone born intersex, the race for gender-altering surgeries is hard for me to imagine, too - mostly because surgeons' promises exceed what can be delivered ...by a long way, in my experience. There's plenty of room in any sex for flair, expression, and acceptance.
Eliza, great work as usual but I'd like to add another set of lenses. You may recall some weeks back I wrote about incentives, and I think that also helps us understand the "trans genocide" meme.
In contemporary progressive discourse, moral authority is gained by having oppressed, intersectional identities, with "transwomen of color" probably winning the top prize. Being a middle class, white, cisgender, straight kid gives you no authenticity, no moral authority, and a great deal of unearned responsibility for everything from racism to climate change. So what better way to shed yourself of "white privilege" or "cisheteronormativity" than being a potential victim of LITERAL GENOCIDE?
That's one set of incentives. The other is, well, where we are right now, which is the internet. A few internet communities reward and validate reason, compromise, moderation in speech and thought, genuine reflection upon the other's point of view, and so on. But most don't, as you well know- most internet spaces reward the most emotionally charged claims, and this is by design. The algorithms at the big tech companies push the emotionally charged claims/memes/articles because that keeps us engaged on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. In turn, this creates a cycle of one-upmanship, where "these laws are unreasonable and may have bad outcomes" is outdone by "the GOP is racist and transphobic" which leads to "Republicans are FASCISTS" and onward to "they're literally GENOCIDING US." That's the logic of online discourse- the biggest flame wins the most attention.
This is not to say that phobia indoctrination isn't real- of course it is- it's to say that phobia indoctrination is hypercharged when it's enmeshed in the weird incentives of progressive politics and the evil algorithms of Big Tech.
If we were all sitting around in a coffee shop and someone said, "I'm being genocided by Ron Desantis", we'd all say, let's get you some decaf, c'mon, you're right here and you're fine. That's the opposite of online discourse, right?
Blech.
"This is not to say that phobia indoctrination isn't real- of course it is- it's to say that phobia indoctrination is hypercharged when it's enmeshed in the weird incentives of progressive politics and the evil algorithms of Big Tech."
Totally agree. Wide assortment of incentives. But some definitely believe it and are terrified.
You left out a few criteria from the intersectionality checklist. The ultimate winner of the oppression Olympics is the differently abled, neurodivergent transwoman of color.
She is also probably a lesbian, bless her heart, and is being discriminated against by other lesbians who refuse to date her 'cause they are a bunch of genitalia-obsessed terfs.
🤣🤣🤣
Those of us who've divorced a husband after he went down the glitter rabbit hole are familiar with this rhetoric on a personal level. As FR Prete said a short time ago here, this is all DARVO; overblown word salad to distract from the mother erasure and female erasure these men engage in within families, sports and society. The states passing laws to restrict the medicalization of children exhibiting this psychiatric illness, a social contagion, are advised to find catchy descriptors for their legislation and get it out on the airwaves. Ironically, I wouldn't be surprised if a rash of detransitioning is coming. On the personal level, my soon-to-be ex husband claimed I "forcibly ejected" him from our home in court documents and that I assaulted him twice, in sworn affidavits--a ploy to get custody of our two sons. He moved out when we were 900 miles away in another state. He is more than 4 inches taller than me and I would have been quite battered if he'd had to defend himself from my fists. It is a habit they have, connected to the pathological narcissism. Wrong sex hormones do shrink the brain, the evidence tells us.
I am sorry that you had to personally experience the dangers of this awful cult.
Your book was one of the most beautifully written and affecting things I have read of late. There is no group more deserving of support than women and children who have gone through this particular form of misery. I escaped from an abusive husband and took my extremely pregnant self to another country. But you didn’t have that option. I cried and cried when I read your story. And cheered you on, too.
I don't see transgenderism as being a 20th century phenomenon. I believe trans people have always been with us -- that is, if you define a trans person as someone who wants to be the opposite sex. Western culture has, I'm sure, always been intolerant of them, but there are probably other cultures that tolerated them to some extent, Eastern cultures especially. In ages when surgery wasn't possible, such people would have limited themselves to dressing and acting like the opposite sex. Even so, it is pretty disingenuous of any person in a Western culture to speak of "transcestors".
It seems to me that the chief weapon that trans activists have used to convince the public that they must be given everything they want is the idea that trans people suffer so much that they are always on the verge of suicide. I do think it's true that suicide is more prevalent among trans people, but that's to be expected when you believe you are something you are not -- i.e., a man who thinks he's a woman, or vice versa. Clearly, these people have psychological problems. Even so, to claim that you suffer more than other people is pretty nervy given the amount of suffering that human beings in general endure.
We also need to remember that many trans people are not trans at all. They are people with other psychological problems who have glommed onto the idea of being trans because it suits their emotional needs. Indeed, it's pretty infuriating to think that a lot of those people who are blocking the doorways at lectures, or shaming others for not believing in gender identity, or talking about their "transcestors" are not even trans, just confused.
I think there have always been people who wished they had been born the opposite sex, or even tried in various ways to live as though they were members of the opposite sex (and not for instrumental reasons, like women who knew they were women who wanted to go to medical school or fight in a war). But I don't think that's at all the same thing as people being 'really trans' or even 'trans' in the same sense that people today are, now that a different set of concepts about identity and different set of technological tools to transform the body exist.
Absolutely! I have a very real example of one such person. My aunt was married for over 50 years to a man that occasionally wore women’s clothing - he was called a transvestite. My point is that he lived to a ripe old age, but there was considerable damage done to their 4 children but that’s for another day!
Sad..it’s the children who suffer from the mental problems of the adults. The whole trans ideology is based not only on lies but on the mentally unstable. The idea of being “born in the wrong body “ is absolutely nonsense.Unfortunately, social media has blown it out of proportion, and the medical and pharmaceutical industry are only too happy to go along with this very lucrative business.
[To Eliza] I understand what you are saying, but the view of transgender activists has evolved in just the last five years or so. They no longer see it as necessary that trans people have all the treatments and operations. They see their feelings as all-important, probably in the same way that ancient trans people did.
Given what I know about oriental medicine, I wouldn't be surprised if, centuries ago, trans women found ways to develop small breasts, change the appearance of their faces, or even had their genitals altered. Acupuncture can be used as a local anesthetic, which would have made small medical procedures possible. However, I'm just guessing.
I'm also pretty sure that those ancient trans people had their own version of gender identity. Remember, I believe in reincarnation, and that people with gender dysphoria have likely chosen the wrong gender before they were born. In my view, that is why their feelings that they are the wrong sex are so intense. I also believe that's why very young children sometimes get the idea that they are the wrong sex, because they have memories of past lives. (The Seth Material is the basis for my religious views, and Seth -- the soul channelled by the psychic -- said that young children often have flashbacks to previous existences, flashbacks which fade as they age.)
My point is that I do see a continuation from the past to the present. However, it's clear that today's situation is out of control because of the misuse of medicine, and the ready acceptance of plastic surgery. I remember when Phyllis Diller had to justify her face lifts in front of an angry talk-show audience. Those days have certainly passed.
Or maybe the identity as cats or dogs... whoops, it’s there already!🦊🐱🤣
"Trans", like everything after LGB, is a FEELING. "Trans" people are, like every other human, either MALE or FEMALE; either STRAIGHT, GAY, or BI. In other words, boring like the rest of us. Feelings should not be a protected civil rights category. It's insane.
I think the reason trans ideology has gotten so far ahead of itself is that most people *do* identify with their sex and so they sympathize with those who ID with the opposite sex. I would call that “cis” and myself nonbinary, but in trans ideology “cis” means anyone who is not trans and good luck pining down the meaning of nonbinary (to me it seems to be a bunch of “me too” people overthinking it).
Back in the olden days of Oprah and Phil Donahue they would periodically do shows on transsexuals, and *always* one of the guests would ask the audience to imagine how they would feel if they woke up one morning as the opposite sex and it was always an “aha” moment for most of the audience. To me s a young gay boy it was a shock that most people identified with their bodies so much since why would you want to do that, as most of us are kind of repulsive, even when young? That was a very successful approach, i thought, but for some reason it has fallen into disfavor with the post modern crowd.
Many of these radical TRAs are fundamentally self destructive, hence their reckless absolutism (any backlash will just validate their martyr complexes), and their self righteous straight allies will never face the consequence of the inevitable backlash: but it scares a lot of gays and i imagine a lot of trans people, because we are the ones that will endure the backlash whether we are allowed to have any say in this debate or not.
Ps, ive read a lot of the Seth material. As far as reincarnation and gender he says that some souls are attracted to or avoid one physical sex or the other for whatever reasons and so they have a lot consecutive lives as one sex. As a result the aspects of the other sex tend not to be given expression until those aspects of the soul become pent up and end up being expressed in exaggerated or distorted ways (such as especially effeminate men or butch women, or hypermasc men or hyperfemme women having their first male life after a long series of female lives or vice versa.) But he would also say its always about unique individual circumstances and that the main error would be to limit your identity and thus inhibit and limit your experience of yourself and your “entity” (your greater self leading multiple, simultaneous existences in this and other worlds)and of the universe by your limited/limiting ideas about physical traits or personal or cultural beliefs about gender, race, age, religion, science, etc.
First of all, I'm gay too. And secondly, it is nice to meet someone who is familiar with the Seth Material. I agree with what you said in your last paragraph, although I tend to explain it with slightly different words. So, let's say a soul doesn't want to be a woman because of (1) the pain and danger of childbirth, and (2) women's subservient status to men in almost every society. So the soul incarnates as a man life after life. At a certain point, the soul needs to experience womanhood for its spiritual development, but again it chooses to reincarnate as a man. That man, in a futile effort to experience womanhood, will decide he is really a woman trapped in a man's body, and he will become trans. It is the spiritual imperative that he experience womanhood that makes him so certain that he is really a woman. The truth is, though, that no soul can experience womanhood unless he becomes a real woman.
That's basically the explanation that I have been giving for transgenderism.
By the way, I've never found the human body repulsive. It is only when it starts to degenerate that it becomes so. Biology is a messy business, and I look forward to future lives in a purely spiritual form.
I'd love to get to know you.
I’m afraid I am not the most patient person and having read all the Seth stuff in my youth Im not that good at dealing with the simplifications and the Law of Attraction bastardizations of it by a lot of the other Seth fans. Crotchety old man warning.
As far as your interpretations of it, I would ask why they are so concrete and broad. The soul is not bisexual in the sense that there are defined male or female aspects to it, because there are no inherently male or female traits. Those traits are sorted into masc or fem by the cultural and personal beliefs, and during a particular life or series of lives the social or familial or whatever environments will tend to enforce those gender norms by compulsion of some traits and suppression of others. Then the aspects of the soul not given expression find a way out and the compelled traits may start to falter. Its not that those traits like submissiveness and passivity or dominance and aggression are inherently male or female.
If there is a biological dimension to how a one sided series of incarnations might affect ones physical appearance or health I cant ever remember it being addressed in the seth material. i guess its possible. Certainly in most cultures in this line of world development the burdens of child bearing fall heavily on females. But avoiding female incarnations would not be the only way to avoid the drudgery of childbearing. One could choose to be lesbian, or a religious convent life, or an infertile life. Or by finding an alternate “probability” system to incarnate in where the gender and parental burdens on females are not so onerous. But we choose these shitty world circumstances in part because we have had a hand in making them and so must encounter them to recognize our own beliefs and their effects which we tend to become deaf and blind too, or we project the causes of those circumstance on other people or forces. And hopefully we learn to use those beliefs more constructively and purposefully instead of thrashing around reactively like animals caught in a net. at least according to Seth, or my reading thereof
The other reason I dont have much patience for this subject is that its almost all talk, no do. Aside from a couple intense psychic experiences in my teens, plus a lot of deja vu and the occasional precognitive dreams I have not developed psychic abilities to any appreciable degree and have never met anyone else who has. The pros are either frauds or grossly overselling their abilities. The amateurs just seem to love the sound of their own voices. It just seems like wanking to discuss. But being me, i had to put in my 2 cents about the seth material cuz “someone on the internet was wrong”, or at least was verging on oversimplification. I think mansplaining is what the kids call it these days.
But back to Seth, one of his main generalizations about the sex roles in our historical line of development is that men’s domination of women is a reflection of man’s (the species’) domination of nature. As long as our attitudes and beliefs about our relationship to nature dont change, neither will sex roles change. So obviously our attempts to manipulate sex/gender via medicine and surgery would not fundamentally alter or subvert those roles, they will just reinforce the status quo.
Well, you certainly had a lot to say.
I may have extrapolated more from the Material than Seth actually said. I do remember that he said that each soul must experience being a man, a woman and a child -- and those three things can be accomplished in two lives, although most souls live more lives than that. You and I are obviously remembering the same passage in which Seth said that an effeminate man may be one who needs to incarnate as a woman but avoids doing so. I took that and applied it to trans people. Back in the 60's and 70's, there weren't many transsexuals around, and I don't think Seth said anything about them specifically, although I may have forgotten. The Seth Material is so voluminous that I never finished all the books.
Actually he said mother and father roles, not man and woman.
He did not go into trans that i ever recall. but did say that sex is merely a “biological focus”, and that there is no single psychological trait that is inherently male or female, much less a group or set of them.
He talks about sexuality a bit. Does say that homosexuality is a distortion but so is heterosexuality as we mostly experience it in our culture. He told Rob and Jane they were essentially bisexuual, but I think he was not talking about sexual attraction, just meant that they were well balanced and did not limit themselves to sexual stereotypes. Those words did not always mean what we take them to mean today.
Homosexuality is not an “identity” which is one of my pet peeves with the transplainers. A lot of gay men and lesbians seems to make it central to their lives and cover everything with rainbows, but its just a sexual attraction and is not protected in law just because it is an identity. Thats the kind of dumb stuff that makes me hopeless about people who are supposedly on my side of political, religious and culture war arguments. The dummines always take over the wheel and drive the car into the ditch.
Confused and angry , because they know deep down that it is nonsensical to think a man can become a woman or visa versa . It’s the anger at knowing they’re wrong that makes them throw hissy fits!
CR, I think it's only a few segments of the non-trans population that are on board with trasgenderism: intellectuals, bleeding-heart liberals, people who want to be part of every trend, people with strong parental feelings, businesses that want to be on-board with every trend that might increase their sales. Politicians needing votes! Most people don't care because they don't know any trans people.
I'm not sure that I accept your idea that trans people are being accepted because they parody society's gender role-playing. Most trans people, I think, don't "pass" very well, which means that they don't blend in with their adopted gender very well. Also, there are some very visible trans women activists who sport beards (as a way to be contrary, I'm sure).
My view remains that trans people have managed to paint themselves as the most pitiful of the pitiful, so pitiful and endangered that they require special accommodations from society, along with the maximum amount of sympathy. I also feel that there are some liberals who feel ashamed for not getting it "right" on racism -- and what I mean by that is that a lot of liberals are indeed racist. When this new, most-pitiful group came along, it gave them an opportunity to polish their liberal bona fides. Of course, the same people are still failing women as a group -- but they don't see women as an oppressed group because women are ubiquitous, not to mention that probably half of them blame their mothers for all their problems.
"non-trans population" is actually just "population."
How annoying to be corrected. It's bad enough to have trans people telling me how to speak, without you doing it too.
"I take it that's why Perry wrote "non-trans population" as opposed to "cis population", which we can all be thankful for."
It still makes trans people the group to which we're compared, is her point (I think).
Sorry if I didn't grasp everything you were saying.
I believe it is also dangerous in that it is authoritarian. Having lived under an authoritarian regime in Nazi Germany, I can see many similarities. For example, the change in language to bolster up their control, the ousting of people who disagree with them, even to the point of having them lose their jobs, the hatred of anyone who does not agree with them. It’s an authoritarian religion in the zeal with which it is pushed on others .
It is high time that these people are stopped. They can believe whatever the hell they want to believe , crazy stuff like men can be women, etc. but keep it to themselves. Don’t make the rest of us believe their insanity.
My absolute favorite book as a teenager...
(I started to answer you, but I'm so dead tired, I'll have to do that later today.)
Most days I just wish for some friggin clarity on these matters.
Is it my 'ancient' brain that simply can't process concepts like 'gender' or 'gender identity' or 'authentic self' or whatever 'non-binary' is supposed to mean?
And I have no idea how to 'identify' **AS** something.
Although I'm essentially retired now (a bit early - I really need to get back to work) I have been for most of my career a theoretical physicist engaged in academic and industrial research. I'm used to starting with 'axioms' (or laws) and figuring out the *consequences* of these in various scenarios. I try to do a similar job with the 'axioms' of gender ideology and end up getting quickly unstuck - the bloody stuff just doesn't make any kind of sense to me.
Stuck in the middle of all this are human beings who, for one reason or another, have convinced themselves they 'really' **are** the opposite sex in what seems to me to be in some mystical fashion, similar to the assumption of the existence of a soul.
Might be true. Might not be true. But one thing is absolutely 100% certain - we don't have anything like a firm enough understanding of the phenomenon to be so certain that things like "affirming" therapy are the one-size-fits-all gold standard of treatment - particularly when it comes to children. Especially when it comes to children. Their identities are not fully formed, and are very responsive/adaptive to their environment and the people guiding them - and it's debatable that adults have a 'fully-formed' identity either.
As a parent myself, I consider it a great blessing that my kids have grown up in saner times. I try to imagine the absolute terror had one of my daughters come home from school one day and told me they 'were' a boy. Transphobic? Possibly - but the thought of my child undergoing traumatic surgery and living a life on medication would scare the shit out me. It certainly wouldn't be any cause for *celebration*.
I'd rather see 'talking' therapies being used to steer people away from this medicalization, and if this is deemed to be trans 'genocide', then I'm all for it. I'd much rather pay Freud than Frankenstein.
Parent of two elementary school age girls and properly terrified. Thankfully we were already homeschoolers long before I realized the extent of this, but I'm a neon blue state so the ideology is everywhere. Doing my best to keep them grounded in nature, and we're low tech with them, but it's unnerving raising children in a time when a group of people have decided that objective reality is up for debate.
It has to be pretty worrying right now.
I really can't even fathom what's going through the minds of 'educators' when they ask young kids about what 'gender' they are, or what sexual orientation they might be.
I understand the desire to instil "non-discriminatory" attitudes - which is, overall, a very good thing - but some of the stuff I've seen that school kids are exposed to goes rather beyond this and into the territory of "indoctrination".
They're being taught a 'model' that purports to describe 'reality' when, in fact, it has little basis in reality (or science, for that matter).
The 'genderbread' model is, in my view, more of a 'dangerbread' model.
Not being able to wrap your head around this insanity just means that you yourself are sane. None of it makes any sense: there are just so many internal inconsistencies (gender identity is innate and fixed -- except when it’s fluid!) and tautological definitions (“gender identity” is the gender you feel you are -- with no further definition of “gender”).
We are being asked to respect someone’s assertion that they “feel like” a particular gender (sex) and therefore for some or all purposes actually “are” that gender (sex). But that makes no sense. I am a woman but make no claim to know what it “feels like” to be a woman; I only know what it feels like to be me. I can no more state that my experience of being a woman “feels like” that of other women, than to state that my experience of, say, the color red is the same as anyone else’s. We simply do not have any way to directly compare inner (mental, emotional, sensory, etc.) experiences of different people other than by self-reporting. And I have yet to see an articulation of what it “feels like” to be a woman (or man, or “non-binary”) that isn’t heavily reliant on gender (sex) stereotypes.
I often think about a (hetero) relationship where, one morning, the lass wakes up and declares that 'she' is now a 'he'. The powerful GenderMagic now kicks in and automatically turns the lad gay!
Ever since all the IdentityWoo reared its hydra-like heads of incomprehension I've been trying to figure out the question of what it is that makes me a man. I have been known to cry during a movie (The Notebook - I'm looking at you). So I must be a 'woman', right? On the other hand I can't tell the difference between Autumnal Forest White and Venetian Gondola White at the paint store - so I must be a 'man', right?
The only thing that is not changeable, or based on stereotypes or assumed characteristics, is my biology. That's the only fixed reality here.
You know, Dr. Mom, only about ten years ago trans people weren't pretending that their gender identity made them "real" members of the opposite sex. That is something fairly new, and it is a way in which their overreach has achieved new heights. But I am glad that they are pushing that idea, because it is obviously ridiculous to most people. The more ridiculous their ideas, the more quickly the whole thing will be discredited and society will get back to normal.
Let’s hope and (for those of us who do) pray!🤞🤞🙏
Well said!This ideology is unfortunately a boon to the medical industrial complex and big Pharma . no they did not start this, they have an interest in perpetuating it. Talking therapies don’t make much profit so they are deemed old-fashioned now. And so Frankenstein no rules.
Now rules.
It's just so DARVO. The only agents of genocide are the medical corporations and their program of mass self-sterilization, sexual mutilation surgeries, and metabolic diseases caused by huge doses of wrong sex steroids. For PROFIT. The tranz are committing slow suicide and have been directed to target the people trying to stop the eugenic atrocity as the cause of their distress.
I love that story of adding sparkles on top. It shows his spirit and refusal to be put on the defensive. You are reminding me of so many incidences where my collective family supported my gender non-conforming choices from my choice of toys (a gun to play cops and robbers) to my request for trousers with pockets. Your gentle guidance about what others might think being informative rather than restrictive. As an old timer I rarely got to hear such stories of support for a gay child which is why all this trans affirming support just feels doubly wrong. It is so clearly a scripted narrative that eclipses organic preferences. I certainly wanted support as a teen for my emerging sexuality, but the trans narrative demands another level of thought. It forces them to take up the belief that being gender non-conforming is not a matter of preference, but a symptom of being biologically incorrect. I don't believe that a young person would come up with that themselves.
In that one moment, I was in awe of him! No one is a perfect parent but allowing boys who happen to like Barbie dolls and girls who play cops and robbers to mutilate their beautiful, perfect bodies is obscene! I’m going to say this every minute of every day if I have to! This entire ideology is homophobic and misogynistic and it must be stopped! Let’s protect our gay and lesbian kids! Can’t wait to read your book!❤️
I also want to say thank you for your kind words- I’ll pass them on to him❤️
One small point of disagreement, when you say Trump's proposals include
"investigating pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks for suppressing negative transition outcomes to controversial ones like banning pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for minors"
the latter should not be controversial. Indeed the two parts are closely linked. If the medical-pharmaceutical complex is presenting transition as a cure for psychological and emotional distress, and asking children too young to buy a beer or get a tattoo to consent to removal of healthy organs, removal of fertility, anorgasmia, lifelong medicalisation, and in the case of girls, premature menopause, when they are too young to understand the concepts, then banning them seems a rational response.
That doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do (I think it's probably the right thing to do, personally, since the capture of medical associations has been so total that they're incapable of self-regulation). But it's controversial, even among people who oppose gender transition of minors!
I’m confused too about this being seen as controversial but I am in the UK where surgery and cross sex hormones (other than puberty blockers) aren’t legal for under 16s. I think surgery isn’t legal for under 18s here, so this isn’t considered controversial here, only by TRAs.
The videos I’ve seen by gender critical trans identifying people such as Blaire White and Buck Angel are outspokenly against gender surgery on minors.
Unfortunately, surgery on the 16-17 age group does not seem to be illegal in the UK. See https://archive.ph/pM264 . These Scottish patients were operated on in England, so I assume it is legal across the UK.
Thank you for sharing this - they are referred pre 18 but not operated on till adults. 18 is still so young though imo and especially considering that the common co-morbidities are not addressed. I feel sick with it all. When will the balance tip with more people aware of the harms?! 😢
there is no such thing as someone who is truly trans. transition is impossible. no one can change sex. the whole thing is just rock solid lunacy.
But , Unfortunately they are trying to push their lunacy on sane people!
here in new zealand we are so far gone with this madness i don't think we will ever turn back. it is catastrophic.
I always thought New Zealand is a rational country?
boy are you wrong. new zealand rocked until the WEF sent us jacinda ardern. i could list all the outrageous things she has done to completely trash us but i wouldn't want to make your head explode.
Cara, Kellie-Jay Keen is going to be in Australia and. Ew Zealand in March! She will be touring “Let Women Speak”- that should stir stuff up!!!
i am so excited about her coming. i plan on having a fan girl moment when she is in auckland. hope she can pull it off. we are so into censorship here now and govt control...
The sad thing is, such hysterical reactions may end up being an awful self-fulfilled prophecy. If TRA and trans people actually believe that Trump's words amount to genocide, then if Trump gets elected , there may be a huge increases in suicide, especially among the young. The kool-aid drinking analogy sounds even scarier now. As much as I am grateful to people on the right who are fighting this , we cannot destroy this cult (while hopefully saving every single deluded member) without good science and honest politicians and journalists on the left.
Tell me where they are on the left! Unfortunately, it is the left that is supporting the trans cult. I think that if you want to fight this trans ideology, you will have to vote for Republicans.
And that’s a huge problem for many people. It leaves democrats like me homeless politically. I cannot vote for Biden again when he sits down with the likes of a Dylan Mulvaney at the White House to discuss girlhood! Or champion male athletes who are mediocre at best in their own league but then set new record wins when competing against young women athletes! The political party I believed in has left me!
I’ve never liked Trump, but he is making sense on the trans issue.. probably to get votes. I still don’t think I could vote for him.
I’m a native New Yorker- raised my family in the West Village on 12th Street. Then made the mistake of moving to California ( that’s another story, I digress!) I know there are many of us- lifelong Democrats who feel disenfranchised but like you, I could never in good conscience vote for Trump! I won’t make the mistake of voting for Biden/Harris(😱) again which may mean that for the first time in my life, I won’t vote- I hate the way that sounds and feels!!!
I am in the same sad position! Always having voted as a Democrat , I have seriously considered registering as an Independent, though in New York, you can’t vote in the primary. Am I ready to register as a Republican? I don’t know, though one can cross party lines no matter how one is registered.
I definitely won’t vote for Biden , since he is the asskisser of all things trans .. so is Governor Hochul! It’s a real conundrum.
Since you are in such a blue state, your vote in presidential elections is probably just symbolic anyway and doesn't make a difference. You may make a difference voting for sane politicians more locally (or maybe the primaries, so we have someone to choose from? ). I actually know close to nothing about politics so don't take my comment too seriously. :)
I will most certainly not vote for anyone who supports trans agenda and will probably vote republican this time. Trump's words sound very reasonable (and I hardly ever agree with what he says on anything). Yes, I know it's the left that is supporting the cult and I am disgusted. My only point is that the trans-identifying young people don't trust anything that comes from the right and I am terrified for my daughter and young people like her. Yes, she and others like her are entitled young idiots but they are OUR entitled young idiots and we the parents want to save them. (She is not a TRA, not politically active at all but she does feel "threatened" by "transphobes"). That's why I keep hoping (against all odds) for a magic unicorn Democratic politician.
You're wrong when you say "it's the left that's supporting the cult." Look at the polls from the UK--it's disapproval across the board, and it's about 98% disapproval for biological males competing in women's sports. They are cheaters and the sooner we're rid of them, the better. I think some of my left-wing friends might not even be aware of this issue; they're more focused on social justice, Ukraine, climate change, and education. One recent conversation had my friend exclaiming "No! I've never heard of such a thing!" repeatedly while I was telling her about Will Thomas and Rhys MacKinnon. I'm a lifelong liberal who will NEVER, EVER vote Republican--the party of greed, racism, war, misogyny, attacks on education, and environmental destruction. I only stumbled into this subject recently when I ran across a tweet from an intellectually dishonest person who claimed that Joan of Arc was really "nonbinary" and therefore we must all refer to her as "they." And then the Queen Elizabeth I claim--oh how I wish we could hear what Elizabeth herself would say to that "historian" who claims she wasn't really a woman!
I think part of the problem is just the fact that many well-intentioned people still see the trans issue as an extension of gay rights.
And by the way, it's a Democratic, not a democrat, politician.
Thanks for correcting my grammar, Petra. I made the change to my comment (I am not being sarcastic, I do appreciate it).
You say you only recently stumbled into this subject. I've been forcefully thrown into it 3.5 years ago with my daughter's declaration of trans identity. For you it's probably just another social justice issue (and I thank you for taking it seriously) but for me and other parents like me it's life and death. It's our children . So, we looked into it very very deeply. It's the left that screams "affirmative care" and bans talk therapy for gender confused children as "conversion therapy". I don't see any Democratic politicians that speak up of the danger of transition, about the risk of hormones and amputating healthy body parts. Nobody on the left talks about detransitioners. Please, name those who do, and I will be delighted to support them. As of now, I will be a one-issue voter. You may see it as amoral but I need to think of my daughter and sons and daughters of other people I've met through this nightmare. Read their stories on PITT. And I used to think people were "well-intentioned". Not any more. Nobody who is well-informed on this issue can still see it as an extension of gay rights.
They're not going to commit suicide. They're just hysterical.
The cult leaders themselves (TRAs) will not commit suicide, for sure. I am worried about the young teens they are leading astray.
Yes, but isn’t that why we all have parents?
They are being told by their favorite influencers to cut off their parents
Thank you. Thoughtful and thought provoking!
I very much doubt that even Trump called for "trans genocide". I certainly hope the US can get rid of Biden, Harris and Co. in 2024. I don't know much about de Santis, and, anyway, I can't vote. I'm waiting for my own people to kick Trandeau to the curb. Please!
Why is it that supposedly smart people have fallen hook, line and sinker for this ideology? I don’t get itAT ALL!
Sophistry. Trans people have managed to make what SEEMS to be a logical argument (based on identity), but which ignores science. They are patterning their push for rights on the gay model, but their situation is different. Gays are indeed discriminated against for their identity -- but then, there is no proof they aren't gay. Trans people want their rights based on their identity as the opposite gender, but then there is plenty of evidence that they are not, and cannot be, the opposite gender.
And that is why they are such an angry lot. They know that they are wrong, and when one is wrong, and is challenged on that basis, one gets very angry and defensive.
Years ago, when I first got into this fight, I read a long comment (on another article not on Substack) by a man who had worked at a trans clinic. I don't recall his exact language now, but he said that getting bottom surgery (which is the goal of most serious trans women) didn't do anything to make them happy. Their vaginas were fake, of course, and they quickly realized that a fake vagina is just a surgeons handiwork and didn't make them real women, so their anger persisted. (I have generously rephrased what he said, as I don't remember his exact language now, but I believe that this is true.)
The point is, no one can change reality, and pretending that your altered body is the real thing is just a fool's errand. I am reminded of the pre-op trans man who was thrilled to learn that she was going to be given a large penis. What penis? A cigar shaped roll of fat with skin on it from your arm is not a penis. All trans people must ultimately face the fact that they are facsimiles of what they want to be. All that any trans person can achieve is an appearance. A few trans people have managed to be satisfied with just appearances, but many of them are not -- and thus the dysphoria continues.
‘Hamper of shit cakes’ 😂. Great phrase.
TRAs accusing others of wanting their genocide smacks of projection to me.
I saw a video clip on Twitter yesterday of a young white man with sparkly eye-shadow and pig tails (so presumably 'trans') declaring that no one should be 'cis' at it was the equivalent of clubbing baby seals.
This fringe whackery is good for a chuckle, but if we add it to the recently much discussed Scottish 'decapitate all terfs' protest sign along with all the other violent rhetoric targeting GC people, I wonder: 'who wants to genocide whom?'
Exactly! Another cute saying by these “oppressed “ transies is “Kill all TERFS”! That’s their version of being “kind”!
I saw that. What an insane twit! I could barely look at him because I'm pretty sure that was sheer mental illness on display.
Although I'm not on TikTok, Blaire White (an anti-trans activist on YouTube) frequently copies over pictures of various trans and non-binary people from TikTok, and they all look bizarre. Apparently, being non-binary means you get to dress up in all kinds of colorful clothes and accessories, some masculine though most of them feminine. In other words, being non-binary means you get to look like a kook.
Maybe because they’re all kooks?
Isn't Blaire White also transgender?
Yes, she's a transgender woman, but she has all the right ideas. She feels, as I do, that trans people are demanding too much from the general public. And although she doesn't like to be "misgendered" (having worked very hard to look feminine), she acknowledges that she is a man. Unlike me, though, she is a conservative on most issues. I am liberal on most issues.
I've tried listening to it several times but always get bored -- though people whose judgment I trust have raved about it - anyway, the guy who made the Martyr Made podcast about Jim Jones' People's Temple (the original koolaid drinkers, literal not metaphorical) has said he sees tremendous parallels between that cult and its ratcheting paranoid rhetoric of external threat (deployed to police cult members' doubts) and gender ideology. Since gender ideology has adherents in many mainstream institutions, not just in an isolated compound in Guyana, if they really come to believe the End is Nigh the number of people they may be willing to take down with them could be frighteningly enormous.
It is “frighteningly enormous “- you can’t turn on your tv and watch an awards show without them trying to bully society into compliance. Brian Murphy’s Golden Globe speech made me ill and the other night’s Grammy Awards was another “trans rights are human rights” puke fest!
The arts are bowing down to the golden calf..I’m glad I didn’t watch! What about “ Jewish rights are human rights”, “Catholic rights are human rights “, “Women’s rights are human rights” “ children’s rights are human rights“ ?
And why do we need “ Trans Remembrance Day”? Why not a whole month ?
All this is just a way to make us conform to their ideology!
We (Terfs) are early to the trans party. I’m sure that they are their own worst enemy and with every new “Trans something day, month” more people will wake up and say NO!
I saw your complimentary comment ( on my age ,etc. )but can’t find it now.. but anyway, thank you.
❤️❤️❤️
To say that these people are undergoing genocide is demeaning the term . But then again, these people don’t care for truth.
No more facts, only “feelings, nothing more than feelings...”!
Yep, no more thinking, just blind faith in the cult. The cult that’s a lot like the Cultural Revolution in China !
This rhetoric is obviously ridiculous, although the number of people who buy into it (including my own kid) is scary. One thing that I think would be helpful would be for gender-critical groups and especially candidates to clearly state their positions, both what they believe should be done and should not be done. For example, I think nearly all of us would agree that people should be free to dress in whatever clothing they want, regardless of whether it is traditional for their sex or not, under most circumstances. (Should there be exceptions? Probably, and we’d need to outline those.) We can all agree that no one should be subject to arrest or violence for dressing in a manner or participating in activities traditionally associated with the opposite sex. We can probably also state that housing and job discrimination against gender nonconforming people should be illegal. We should allow people currently receiving medical treatments for gender dysphoria to continue their current treatment. We should allow families to make decisions about social transitions of minors without government interference. We should as much as possible protect trans people in situations where they might be vulnerable or subject to bias, without infringing in the rights of others (eg. house them in a prison unit away from the general population as they would for someone who is a known informer or who is disabled). We should allow adults who have received intensive counseling to initiate medical transition if desired. (I’m stating my own opinions here, yours may be different.) If those types of things are clearly stated up front, along with the proposed limitations (no medical transitions for minors, physical sex is still the deciding factor for locker rooms, prisons, and sports teams), it becomes a lot harder for these groups to convince reasonable but uninformed people (I.e. most of the population) that they are victims and we are all violent bigots.
Honestly, the trans movement is SO good at spreading propaganda and lies and practicing tactics of undue influence. Our side needs to get smarter about how to counteract those tactics and spread the truth as effectively as they are spreading lies. So far we have not been very good at demonstrating what’s really happening and more and more of the uninformed are believing the lies.
I like most of what you say, but I don’t believe that there are as many truly trans people who need medical attention..I think most of them need psychiatric care. I would not be for allowing surgical or hormonal therapy for anyone under 21.
On the other hand , I want politicians to be honest in what they believe, and anyone on the trans wagon will never get my vote. I doubt that any Democrats will be against the ideology, sadly .
Most of them don't even need psychiatric care. They need physical work, a worthwhile cause, goals in life, and separation from their electronics.
Let me be clear - I don’t believe there’s any such thing as “truly trans”. I personally think that nearly everyone would be better off learning self acceptance, and that there may be a very, very small number of people who for whatever reason will never be able to make peace with who they are and will be happier presenting as the opposite sex.
However, I also support the right of adults to believe different things than I do, and to live their lives as they see fit as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. That includes supporting the rights of people to do things that I think are really, really stupid or self destructive, like getting a full face tattoo or surgically removing body parts.
I don’t think these people need medical treatment. Like you, I think they need psychiatric help. But they believe otherwise, and I will not force my opinions on them any more than I want them to force their opinions on my child.
I think respecting each others’ rights to believe different things and each live according to our beliefs is the only way to move forward and reach some kind of sanity in our society on this topic.
Dee, I think the issue is not trans-identifying people's rights but doctors / scientists responsibility. Of course every person should have the right to receive proper treatment for a medical condition, when such treatment is available. The doctors are responsible for defining such conditions and providing proper treatment. The patients do not have the right to demand random treatment and surgeries. One can't walk into a doctor's office and demand a prescription medication that has nothing to do with a condition they have. But people just don't know better and trust the lie that cross-sex hormones is the right treatment. The medical / scientific community needs to step up.
I still think the only way we are going to reach any peace on this is to reassure people living this lifestyle and happy with it that we aren’t trying to take away their access to the medical treatments that enable the lifestyle. Do I think their lifestyle is horribly harmful to them? Yes, I do. And I wish the medical industry had never begun offering these kinds of treatments, just as they don’t offer elective leg amputations or prescribe opiates to anyone who requests them. But IMO that ship has sailed, and we’re not going to bring it back anytime soon. What we CAN do is put limits on the new people who begin medical treatments, and require extensive counseling first, and stop affirming and instead explore the reasons behind this and make it a goal to help people become comfortable with themselves, with transition only as a last resort for those who can’t. We can stop the propaganda about being born this way, or that if you ever feel uncomfortable with yourself it means you are trans, or that it’s ever possible to truly change sex or eliminate the importance of physical sex in some situations. We can protect women’s rights by maintaining a legal definition of sex that is not influenced by gender identity. If we fight for these things, but with compromises that allow people who consider themselves trans to continue living the life they choose and be treated with respect, we have a better chance of the reasonable but uninformed people of the world realizing we’re on the right side.
I also think that they are their own worst enemies and that needs to be highlighted in more mainstream media. Fox is one of the only media outlets that shows the TRA’s in their true and ugly light. And because it’s Fox, many people (some of my immediate family) think it’s not “that bad”! People need to see them attacking women physically and verbally at rallies where women just want to speak! The TRA’s use sound machines, bells, whistles, drums to drown out women’s voices- they are a despicable group of misogynists!
I have lately listened to Tucker Carlson...and on this issue , he is absolutely right! I would lose a lot of friends if I said that, but I find this issues so important that I willingly listen to those who realize the insanity of this.
I’m in the EXACT SAME POSITION! My own husband gets disturbed when I mention Tucker! Too bad🤣