Eliza, I’ve enjoyed following you and reading your work over the past few months and this is one of my favorites so far. When you convince trans people (or anyone, really) that there is a bogeyman around every corner, everyone starts to look like a bogeyman. (Bogeyperson? Is that more inclusive?)
I think your point that “trans rights” has become synonymous not with actual rights but with this intense need to control people’s speech’s and expression (and who we sleep with, something I find so abhorrent) is so important and cannot be overstated. I am generally pro-decency—call people what they ask to be called; however, I’m not pro-consequence—lose your job, get banned from the platform—over a refusal to use made up neopronouns. Maybe there are a few trans people who are in such a fragile state that using the wrong pronouns might cause them to melt into a puddle on the floor, but I can’t help but wonder if much of the rage over “misgendering” is reflexive, learned, or downright performative.
To that point about the trans rights movement seeking to control thought and speech, I think that ended up being the thrust of the 2020 “racial reckoning” here in the U.S. What started as this real moment of collective effervescence and consciousness over the ways racism still pervades fizzled into this intensely individual witch hunt, trying to prove everyone had racism in their hearts, making these absurdly abstracted, associative claims about how innocuous comment A invoked the symbolism of racist thing B and therefore person C was clearly racist, and we must collectively shun them, get them fired, ruin their lives. It is the death knell of social movements to try and control speech and thought—the winners are not the oppressed people in question but the grifters like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram
X. Kendi who seize on a moment to peddle their snake oil to help you fix your alleged thought crimes.
Here in the U.S., as hardcore conservative lawmakers actually engage in poorly crafted legislative overreach and use trans people as a pawn in the culture war to rile up their base, trans activists continue to focus their ire on the liberals and LGB individuals who actually care about their wellbeing. But if you question plainly obvious phenomena like the spike in young transitioners, the puberty blockers that are handed out like candy, the clear correlation between mental health challenges and the self-proclaiming of trans and non-binary identities, or, god forbid, you don’t want to fuck a trans person, you become the monster.
Matty, your insights are as good as Eliza's, especially the one about the witch hunts.
I am out of the workforce, but if I were still working, I would not be able to call any single person "they" or "them" -- as a writer, I just object too much to such a perversion of the language. No one so far has asked me to call them "they" or "them". If anyone ever does, I think my response will be, "Sorry, I'm not willing to play those games." I just can't imagine any person -- especially a child -- being so precocious as to insist on being called special words, especially special words that don't make much sense. "Get over yourself!"
Thanks the compliment, Caleb. I’m not sure I’d go that far--whatever insight I might have is because of people like Eliza who share their careful, critical writing with all of us.
I’ll admit the “they/them” pronoun series doesn’t put me off in quite the same way. If your name were unisex like Sam or Sydney or Taylor, there’s a good chance I might refer to “their comment above” without thinking twice about it, just because it’s common parlance and feels less clunky than “his or her comment above.” It’s the ze/zim/zir, ey/em/eir, and the absurd ones derived from other nouns, like fae/faer/faerself (faerie) or bun/bunself (bunny) that I really struggle to take seriously. And don’t get me started on it/its--if you refer to yourself as an “it,” to me, you are a person carrying around a deep hurt and somehow dehumanizing yourself helps distract from that pain. Much like cutting and other self harm behavior.
I work in a field that isn’t counseling but has some counseling elements, where making people feel comfortable, at ease, and respected allows me to do my job more effectively. So I don’t mind making an effort to try and use the pronouns a person elects for themselves (see? I didn’t even type that to make a point! It’s just second nature when referring to an unknown). That’s what I mean when I say pro-decency. I don’t feel a need to prove or enact my free speech rights by refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns just because I can. That doesn’t mean I think people should be dragged through the streets when they get it wrong, or that I don’t support other people’s right to speak as they wish.
Having these conversations on a macro level is also very different, to me, than having them on an individual level. I don’t feel like it’s my place to be an arbiter or judge of someone’s identity, unless perhaps it’s someone with whom I already have a deep enough relationship with where we can talk about the nature of who we are as people on many dimensions. I also think when you consume a lot of trans and gender discourse, it can sometimes become easy to only treat trans people discursively, not as individual people. As a person engaged in this conversation and critical of many elements of the movement, I try not to let my macro views and beliefs play out in my relationship to an individual.
Anyway, these are sort of rambling thoughts your comment brings up for me. At the end of the day, I think what it shows is that, when speech isn’t constrained, people can have different opinions and still get along just fine, and have substantive conversations on complex subjects. And our words—though they may be critical, exacting, challenging, clunky, transitory, or anything else—are certainly not violence.
You are more thoughtful and accommodating than I am. I have, actually, met a few trans people, but because I was talking directly to them, I just referred to them as "you". Like a lot of people, I hate transgender ideology on principle but don't have that much direct experience with trans people. I applaud your tolerance. However, I also feel that if you do what they want you to do (refer to them as "they/them" or something more ridiculous) you may be enabling their narcissism. I am a male and have the attitude that "life is hard", and so naturally I think that non-binary people should "get over it". As a consequence of my attitude, my own life has been hard, and I have learned from experience that expecting too much from the world doesn't have good results. That just feeds into the "get over it" attitude. However, my natural tendency is to be polite and even friendly to strangers, so perhaps I wouldn't be as much of a jerk as I make myself out to be.
I like your use of the term "macro". I think I'll use that myself. It's certainly easier than saying, "when discussing the overall issue...".
By the way, reading Eliza's article has sharpened my ideas on the topic too.
There is no reason to attack the only lawmakers who are actually trying to protect children from being maimed by this cult. I'm certain if the exact same legislation were introduced by a Democrat, you'd call it a godsend. Refusal to acknowledge that people you dislike are doing good things is too unserious an attitude for what's at stake.
Hi Simon, I definitely would not be celebrating the same move by Democrats. My issue isn’t with the fact that conservatives are the ones passing the legislation, it’s with the idea of the state inserting itself into these medical decisions at all. I can comfortably hold the belief that much youth gender transition is rushed and also that not all youth gender transition is bad. Trying to rein in the problematic parts with blanket bans on interventions that do help people find happiness and wholeness, in my opinion, is not the way forward. I would like to see stricter ethical guidelines and more evaluation before taking steps to help young people medically transition, and I would like to see more honesty around the irreversibility if things like blockers and HRT, but I do not believe the answer lies in taking tools out of doctor’s toolkit. I do think the answer to this challenging and extremely fraught question sits at the nexus of the doctor-patient-parent relationship, and I don’t believe that outright bans help said nexus find an answer.
I am very wary of heavy-handed government interventions in personal decision making in general. It’s easy to see that heavy-handedness as a good thing when it’s being used to advance your own views, but it’s a very slippery slope.
Matty, Simon does make a good point. I have actually felt relieved that some of the Red states are legislating against transitioning in childhood, although I do think they are going overboard in trying to regulate it.
On the other hand, it CAN be argued that this trans fad has to be allowed to play out. I don't believe that any person under 18 has the maturity to transition, but does that mean that the law should get involved? If the laws were more intelligently crafted, my answer would probably be "yes". The most important thing to do is to protect children from trans propaganda, and from their own foolishness.
Simon, if you are a political conservative, I'd be interested to have a conversation with you. I'm a liberal, though I am conservative on some issues. I'm curious about the conservative mindstate.
I address most of what I would say here in my response to Simon above, but what I will say is that I think both things can be true: that there is a youth transition fad, AND that in some cases, youth transition is absolutely the best thing for severely dysphoric kids. And if those things are both true, then trying to address the former by outright banning the latter is not the right solution. And what’s more, heavy-handed legislative bans only reaffirm the learned victimhood and phobia Eliza writes about here.
Yes, what you said to Simon answered my questions too. You have a well-balanced point of view, and you are probably right. I fall into the "there ought to be a law" category, but not every social problem can be cured with legislation. However, I believe very strongly that no child has the right to make such choices for the adult yet to come, and for that reason I believe that all transitioning should be done by people 18 or older. If that means that a child has to wait a number of years, so be it.
Yes... reading studies with the high rates of desistance naturally occurring during puberty makes it difficult to support minors medically transitioning.
I understand the distress of gender dysphoria (GID) can be quite severe, but our process for evaluating who will ultimately benefit is extremely weak. The dearth of quality research showing improvement in long term quality of life for youth transitioning, safety, risks, and successes of medical intervention leaves a lot to be desired. The anxiety of gender dysphoria may be more likely to be successfully managed with sound therapeutical processes when a person has to find alternative ways (other than medical transition) to alleviate their distress. Prior to the recent rise in trans-identifying youth having the option to medicalize... there doesn't seem to have been a rash of suicidal ideation/suicide in dysphoric children. How did they manage?
I guess part of what I see is that the anxiety/mental anguish of GD spikes because the obsessive compulsive thought patterns with changing gender has a "fix" that one convinces oneself is THE answer to stop the pain. And if this is legal, and "gatekept", the mentally immature person suffering will not benefit from other non-invasive approaches when they think/obsess over the "cure" being withheld.
Good point. Children, just like adults, can suffer from obsessions. Children can be very determined and headstrong -- and I do believe that they are probably more prone to suicide than adults are. That could be an argument in favor of allowing kids to transition. But I am stuck on the idea that the child doesn't have the right to change genders (to the extent that is possible) for the adult yet to come. This should be an adult decision. I wonder if it wouldn't be enough to tell kids that they have to wait until they are older to transition, but that in the mean time, they can dress and live as the opposite sex to whatever extent pleases them.
But let's not forget that many kids who question their gender do not have true gender dysphoria, and will grow out of those feelings. If children ARE allowed to transition before becoming adults, all of the energy and determination must come from the child. If adults try to influence the child, the wrong decision may be made. My concern is that some progressive parents, the moment the child mentions gender, will immediately bring the child to a professional to start the process.
Excellent article. Your insights are always spot-on. After reading this article, it is hard not to think of the transgender movement as a dishonest cult. They are not just trying to control the behavior of the public, but the behavior of their own members. And the fact that they vilify any person with a different opinion just shows how weak their ideas and arguments are.
As a gay person, I find this paranoia among trans people to be somewhat irritating because gay people have come in for much more persecution over the centuries -- and all because homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible and the Koran. If trans people are finding that people dislike them, it may have to do with the fact that they are making themselves so visible, and because their demands of society are so ridiculous. There are still countries in the Middle East which are executing gays.
But I think it is only the activists who are this dishonest. Most trans people are more reasonable than the activists are. But the fact that trans activists have to control their members just shows how unhealthy the movement is. It shouldn't be a movement at all. It really is nothing more than a mental state (like homosexuality) which some people need to deal with.
Of all the people writing about the movement, I think you are the most insightful. But how do we get more people to read your articles? I suspect that the only people who are reading your pages on Substack are the people who already agree with you.
I'm a relatively "online" person - and so while I recall as these things started to turn up in the then-classically-liberal circles I frequented, when it was still possible to be sympathetic while telling a joke, I recall with perfect clarity my first exposure to this sort of indoctrination.
It was the summer of 2012 - and there was a member of a moderate-sized community who we all knew and liked, even if we privately acknowledged she was a little bit high-strung and unpredictably reactive at times. While hanging out as a group of perhaps a dozen of us one afternoon, I got to asking her exactly what she meant by the whole "non-binary" thing - amazing that just 10 years ago one could still do that openly and expect discourse rather than an excommunication - and we talked a bit. It didn't seem so shocking to me that an art-school student would adopt an "alternative" persona - shrugging off gender norms. Where I think my skepticism about all of this took firm hold was when she explained to me how being non-binary was a secret in her real-life, because she was in mortal danger if people in her moderately sized city in Florida found out. Specifically I recall her saying that if she were to wear jeans to the mall, she might be raped and killed - and she was dead serious, getting agitated when I tried to suss out whether that was some form of very dark, cynical humor (which was the norm in the community).
Raped and killed, in American suburbia, because she was a college-age woman wearing jeans. She believed this, because this is what she had been taught to believe in those circles. Ten years ago. And now such declarations, and more, are taken as empirical fact, not to be questioned, as rooted in fact as germ theory and plate tectonics.
And now our entire society is expected to center this woman's fear and accommodate her in any way she demands, not because she is in danger, but because she *thinks* she is in danger. The person who cries loudest about their discomfort wins the right to have feelings, while everyone else must sublimate their own concerns, even if the repercussions for ignoring their concerns are literally dangerous to them. The potential rapist must be allowed to use the ladies' bathroom, even though 25% of the women and girls who use that facility have been sexually assaulted. Pure madness.
Phobia-inducing indoctrination clearly suspends all ability for rational thought. Trousers have been "unisex" attire for decades in any US or European shopping mall: hence are the obvious best attire for anyone claiming to be "non-binary". Whereas skirts are practically and symbolically female -- as well as making rape attempts easier.
It's quite fascinating how easily the trans activists have taken control of the narrative and demonized women for simply wanting to keep their existing rights and for wanting to protect children. The apathy and gullibility of the public has led us down this dark trajectory and many actual young people's lives have been irrevocably damaged or lost. THEY, the trans extremists, are responsible, not radical feminists.
Lesbians advocate for all women, and gay men generally support lesbians, so although there have been power struggles within the movement, as well as a somewhat unequal division of labor and visibility, the LGB movement has been fairly balanced in its representation of men and women.
The trans movement has no such balance. It is comprised of men who hate women out of envy, and women who hate themselves out of internalized misogyny. It's a male supremacy movement, built on negative stereotypes, and expressing the full scope of toxic masculinity, especially the need for control and total domination over women. It's patriarchy on steroids.
Hear hear. Exactly what I thought on discovering what "TERF" meant -- following accusation. Transactivism appeared to be the latest wave of male misogyny: with special virulence and violence.
Misogynists have been accusing women of being evil temptresses, witches, in league with the devil, feminazis, and man-haters for centuries. Strangely enough, for all our supposed power, it's never amounted to us seizing power and actually committing genocide the way sociopathic males have for all of history.
What a fascinating post. I'm a fan of the podcast about cults "Let's talk about sects" and can see some potential common themes of coercive control exercised against groups of people - the division of the world into "them" and "us", the apocalyptic terrors, the grandiose tone, the attempts to limit engagement with the outside world. Of course, gender identity ideology does not employ the environmental tricks common to cults - eg limiting food and sleep, exhausting physical tasks, surveillance, requiring members to live together - yet I wonder if prolonged immersion in highly emotional and polarised digital spaces has a similar effect? (This may not be intentional, of course, just a highly unfortunate side effect of the technology.)
Does that person understand what "literally" means? And can't THEY spell "folks"?
I've seen similar phobia indoctrination coming from atheists (oh, excuse me, "Atheists") in online discussions of politics: "they want to burn me at the stake" and "they're literally killing us!"
This is a wonderful exploration of the techniques of cult indoctrination as applied to the Trans issue, and highlights the dangers humans are facing now. In fact, this month's Technology Review from MIT features this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1057135/transgender-contagion-gender-dysphoria/ which "reasonably" and "based on science" debunks the concept of ROGD, and ends with the suicide threat. It is sobering and saddening how a generation is succumbing to this takeover of thought, and to what end? Sterilization and medicalization, loss of women's rights, rigid gender policing, the end of freedom. Thank you for elucidating some of the mechanisms here. And in the same issue, a discussion of how Instagram filters promote cosmetic surgery...
Why would you expect individuals whose fundamental states of being are so far removed from reality to express themselves in ways moreso grounded?
I saw a graphic listing reasons for not using preferred pronouns with the top entry as, "I know you better than you know yourself." Well, yes. You are talking to someone so beyond the pale that a complete stranger finds it more malicious to at best, feed into your delusions, or at worst, delivers sexual gratification against the stranger's will by way of "validation" (this actually is sexual assault).
Eliza, I’ve enjoyed following you and reading your work over the past few months and this is one of my favorites so far. When you convince trans people (or anyone, really) that there is a bogeyman around every corner, everyone starts to look like a bogeyman. (Bogeyperson? Is that more inclusive?)
I think your point that “trans rights” has become synonymous not with actual rights but with this intense need to control people’s speech’s and expression (and who we sleep with, something I find so abhorrent) is so important and cannot be overstated. I am generally pro-decency—call people what they ask to be called; however, I’m not pro-consequence—lose your job, get banned from the platform—over a refusal to use made up neopronouns. Maybe there are a few trans people who are in such a fragile state that using the wrong pronouns might cause them to melt into a puddle on the floor, but I can’t help but wonder if much of the rage over “misgendering” is reflexive, learned, or downright performative.
To that point about the trans rights movement seeking to control thought and speech, I think that ended up being the thrust of the 2020 “racial reckoning” here in the U.S. What started as this real moment of collective effervescence and consciousness over the ways racism still pervades fizzled into this intensely individual witch hunt, trying to prove everyone had racism in their hearts, making these absurdly abstracted, associative claims about how innocuous comment A invoked the symbolism of racist thing B and therefore person C was clearly racist, and we must collectively shun them, get them fired, ruin their lives. It is the death knell of social movements to try and control speech and thought—the winners are not the oppressed people in question but the grifters like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram
X. Kendi who seize on a moment to peddle their snake oil to help you fix your alleged thought crimes.
Here in the U.S., as hardcore conservative lawmakers actually engage in poorly crafted legislative overreach and use trans people as a pawn in the culture war to rile up their base, trans activists continue to focus their ire on the liberals and LGB individuals who actually care about their wellbeing. But if you question plainly obvious phenomena like the spike in young transitioners, the puberty blockers that are handed out like candy, the clear correlation between mental health challenges and the self-proclaiming of trans and non-binary identities, or, god forbid, you don’t want to fuck a trans person, you become the monster.
Thank you for your work.
Matty, your insights are as good as Eliza's, especially the one about the witch hunts.
I am out of the workforce, but if I were still working, I would not be able to call any single person "they" or "them" -- as a writer, I just object too much to such a perversion of the language. No one so far has asked me to call them "they" or "them". If anyone ever does, I think my response will be, "Sorry, I'm not willing to play those games." I just can't imagine any person -- especially a child -- being so precocious as to insist on being called special words, especially special words that don't make much sense. "Get over yourself!"
Thanks the compliment, Caleb. I’m not sure I’d go that far--whatever insight I might have is because of people like Eliza who share their careful, critical writing with all of us.
I’ll admit the “they/them” pronoun series doesn’t put me off in quite the same way. If your name were unisex like Sam or Sydney or Taylor, there’s a good chance I might refer to “their comment above” without thinking twice about it, just because it’s common parlance and feels less clunky than “his or her comment above.” It’s the ze/zim/zir, ey/em/eir, and the absurd ones derived from other nouns, like fae/faer/faerself (faerie) or bun/bunself (bunny) that I really struggle to take seriously. And don’t get me started on it/its--if you refer to yourself as an “it,” to me, you are a person carrying around a deep hurt and somehow dehumanizing yourself helps distract from that pain. Much like cutting and other self harm behavior.
I work in a field that isn’t counseling but has some counseling elements, where making people feel comfortable, at ease, and respected allows me to do my job more effectively. So I don’t mind making an effort to try and use the pronouns a person elects for themselves (see? I didn’t even type that to make a point! It’s just second nature when referring to an unknown). That’s what I mean when I say pro-decency. I don’t feel a need to prove or enact my free speech rights by refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns just because I can. That doesn’t mean I think people should be dragged through the streets when they get it wrong, or that I don’t support other people’s right to speak as they wish.
Having these conversations on a macro level is also very different, to me, than having them on an individual level. I don’t feel like it’s my place to be an arbiter or judge of someone’s identity, unless perhaps it’s someone with whom I already have a deep enough relationship with where we can talk about the nature of who we are as people on many dimensions. I also think when you consume a lot of trans and gender discourse, it can sometimes become easy to only treat trans people discursively, not as individual people. As a person engaged in this conversation and critical of many elements of the movement, I try not to let my macro views and beliefs play out in my relationship to an individual.
Anyway, these are sort of rambling thoughts your comment brings up for me. At the end of the day, I think what it shows is that, when speech isn’t constrained, people can have different opinions and still get along just fine, and have substantive conversations on complex subjects. And our words—though they may be critical, exacting, challenging, clunky, transitory, or anything else—are certainly not violence.
You are more thoughtful and accommodating than I am. I have, actually, met a few trans people, but because I was talking directly to them, I just referred to them as "you". Like a lot of people, I hate transgender ideology on principle but don't have that much direct experience with trans people. I applaud your tolerance. However, I also feel that if you do what they want you to do (refer to them as "they/them" or something more ridiculous) you may be enabling their narcissism. I am a male and have the attitude that "life is hard", and so naturally I think that non-binary people should "get over it". As a consequence of my attitude, my own life has been hard, and I have learned from experience that expecting too much from the world doesn't have good results. That just feeds into the "get over it" attitude. However, my natural tendency is to be polite and even friendly to strangers, so perhaps I wouldn't be as much of a jerk as I make myself out to be.
I like your use of the term "macro". I think I'll use that myself. It's certainly easier than saying, "when discussing the overall issue...".
By the way, reading Eliza's article has sharpened my ideas on the topic too.
There is no reason to attack the only lawmakers who are actually trying to protect children from being maimed by this cult. I'm certain if the exact same legislation were introduced by a Democrat, you'd call it a godsend. Refusal to acknowledge that people you dislike are doing good things is too unserious an attitude for what's at stake.
Hi Simon, I definitely would not be celebrating the same move by Democrats. My issue isn’t with the fact that conservatives are the ones passing the legislation, it’s with the idea of the state inserting itself into these medical decisions at all. I can comfortably hold the belief that much youth gender transition is rushed and also that not all youth gender transition is bad. Trying to rein in the problematic parts with blanket bans on interventions that do help people find happiness and wholeness, in my opinion, is not the way forward. I would like to see stricter ethical guidelines and more evaluation before taking steps to help young people medically transition, and I would like to see more honesty around the irreversibility if things like blockers and HRT, but I do not believe the answer lies in taking tools out of doctor’s toolkit. I do think the answer to this challenging and extremely fraught question sits at the nexus of the doctor-patient-parent relationship, and I don’t believe that outright bans help said nexus find an answer.
I am very wary of heavy-handed government interventions in personal decision making in general. It’s easy to see that heavy-handedness as a good thing when it’s being used to advance your own views, but it’s a very slippery slope.
Quick parentheses (really getting a lot out of your comments, my thought are similar - but less eloquent:-))
Matty, Simon does make a good point. I have actually felt relieved that some of the Red states are legislating against transitioning in childhood, although I do think they are going overboard in trying to regulate it.
On the other hand, it CAN be argued that this trans fad has to be allowed to play out. I don't believe that any person under 18 has the maturity to transition, but does that mean that the law should get involved? If the laws were more intelligently crafted, my answer would probably be "yes". The most important thing to do is to protect children from trans propaganda, and from their own foolishness.
Simon, if you are a political conservative, I'd be interested to have a conversation with you. I'm a liberal, though I am conservative on some issues. I'm curious about the conservative mindstate.
I address most of what I would say here in my response to Simon above, but what I will say is that I think both things can be true: that there is a youth transition fad, AND that in some cases, youth transition is absolutely the best thing for severely dysphoric kids. And if those things are both true, then trying to address the former by outright banning the latter is not the right solution. And what’s more, heavy-handed legislative bans only reaffirm the learned victimhood and phobia Eliza writes about here.
Yes, what you said to Simon answered my questions too. You have a well-balanced point of view, and you are probably right. I fall into the "there ought to be a law" category, but not every social problem can be cured with legislation. However, I believe very strongly that no child has the right to make such choices for the adult yet to come, and for that reason I believe that all transitioning should be done by people 18 or older. If that means that a child has to wait a number of years, so be it.
Yes... reading studies with the high rates of desistance naturally occurring during puberty makes it difficult to support minors medically transitioning.
I understand the distress of gender dysphoria (GID) can be quite severe, but our process for evaluating who will ultimately benefit is extremely weak. The dearth of quality research showing improvement in long term quality of life for youth transitioning, safety, risks, and successes of medical intervention leaves a lot to be desired. The anxiety of gender dysphoria may be more likely to be successfully managed with sound therapeutical processes when a person has to find alternative ways (other than medical transition) to alleviate their distress. Prior to the recent rise in trans-identifying youth having the option to medicalize... there doesn't seem to have been a rash of suicidal ideation/suicide in dysphoric children. How did they manage?
I guess part of what I see is that the anxiety/mental anguish of GD spikes because the obsessive compulsive thought patterns with changing gender has a "fix" that one convinces oneself is THE answer to stop the pain. And if this is legal, and "gatekept", the mentally immature person suffering will not benefit from other non-invasive approaches when they think/obsess over the "cure" being withheld.
Good point. Children, just like adults, can suffer from obsessions. Children can be very determined and headstrong -- and I do believe that they are probably more prone to suicide than adults are. That could be an argument in favor of allowing kids to transition. But I am stuck on the idea that the child doesn't have the right to change genders (to the extent that is possible) for the adult yet to come. This should be an adult decision. I wonder if it wouldn't be enough to tell kids that they have to wait until they are older to transition, but that in the mean time, they can dress and live as the opposite sex to whatever extent pleases them.
But let's not forget that many kids who question their gender do not have true gender dysphoria, and will grow out of those feelings. If children ARE allowed to transition before becoming adults, all of the energy and determination must come from the child. If adults try to influence the child, the wrong decision may be made. My concern is that some progressive parents, the moment the child mentions gender, will immediately bring the child to a professional to start the process.
Excellent article. Your insights are always spot-on. After reading this article, it is hard not to think of the transgender movement as a dishonest cult. They are not just trying to control the behavior of the public, but the behavior of their own members. And the fact that they vilify any person with a different opinion just shows how weak their ideas and arguments are.
As a gay person, I find this paranoia among trans people to be somewhat irritating because gay people have come in for much more persecution over the centuries -- and all because homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible and the Koran. If trans people are finding that people dislike them, it may have to do with the fact that they are making themselves so visible, and because their demands of society are so ridiculous. There are still countries in the Middle East which are executing gays.
But I think it is only the activists who are this dishonest. Most trans people are more reasonable than the activists are. But the fact that trans activists have to control their members just shows how unhealthy the movement is. It shouldn't be a movement at all. It really is nothing more than a mental state (like homosexuality) which some people need to deal with.
Of all the people writing about the movement, I think you are the most insightful. But how do we get more people to read your articles? I suspect that the only people who are reading your pages on Substack are the people who already agree with you.
I'm a relatively "online" person - and so while I recall as these things started to turn up in the then-classically-liberal circles I frequented, when it was still possible to be sympathetic while telling a joke, I recall with perfect clarity my first exposure to this sort of indoctrination.
It was the summer of 2012 - and there was a member of a moderate-sized community who we all knew and liked, even if we privately acknowledged she was a little bit high-strung and unpredictably reactive at times. While hanging out as a group of perhaps a dozen of us one afternoon, I got to asking her exactly what she meant by the whole "non-binary" thing - amazing that just 10 years ago one could still do that openly and expect discourse rather than an excommunication - and we talked a bit. It didn't seem so shocking to me that an art-school student would adopt an "alternative" persona - shrugging off gender norms. Where I think my skepticism about all of this took firm hold was when she explained to me how being non-binary was a secret in her real-life, because she was in mortal danger if people in her moderately sized city in Florida found out. Specifically I recall her saying that if she were to wear jeans to the mall, she might be raped and killed - and she was dead serious, getting agitated when I tried to suss out whether that was some form of very dark, cynical humor (which was the norm in the community).
Raped and killed, in American suburbia, because she was a college-age woman wearing jeans. She believed this, because this is what she had been taught to believe in those circles. Ten years ago. And now such declarations, and more, are taken as empirical fact, not to be questioned, as rooted in fact as germ theory and plate tectonics.
And now our entire society is expected to center this woman's fear and accommodate her in any way she demands, not because she is in danger, but because she *thinks* she is in danger. The person who cries loudest about their discomfort wins the right to have feelings, while everyone else must sublimate their own concerns, even if the repercussions for ignoring their concerns are literally dangerous to them. The potential rapist must be allowed to use the ladies' bathroom, even though 25% of the women and girls who use that facility have been sexually assaulted. Pure madness.
Phobia-inducing indoctrination clearly suspends all ability for rational thought. Trousers have been "unisex" attire for decades in any US or European shopping mall: hence are the obvious best attire for anyone claiming to be "non-binary". Whereas skirts are practically and symbolically female -- as well as making rape attempts easier.
wow!
It's quite fascinating how easily the trans activists have taken control of the narrative and demonized women for simply wanting to keep their existing rights and for wanting to protect children. The apathy and gullibility of the public has led us down this dark trajectory and many actual young people's lives have been irrevocably damaged or lost. THEY, the trans extremists, are responsible, not radical feminists.
Lesbians advocate for all women, and gay men generally support lesbians, so although there have been power struggles within the movement, as well as a somewhat unequal division of labor and visibility, the LGB movement has been fairly balanced in its representation of men and women.
The trans movement has no such balance. It is comprised of men who hate women out of envy, and women who hate themselves out of internalized misogyny. It's a male supremacy movement, built on negative stereotypes, and expressing the full scope of toxic masculinity, especially the need for control and total domination over women. It's patriarchy on steroids.
Hear hear. Exactly what I thought on discovering what "TERF" meant -- following accusation. Transactivism appeared to be the latest wave of male misogyny: with special virulence and violence.
Misogynists have been accusing women of being evil temptresses, witches, in league with the devil, feminazis, and man-haters for centuries. Strangely enough, for all our supposed power, it's never amounted to us seizing power and actually committing genocide the way sociopathic males have for all of history.
Victim-blaming has a long tradition -- when was Genesis written? "Her fault -- she offered me the apple!"
Totally!
This. This. A thousand times THIS. 🙏🏼
I agree with the other commenters. Replace "TERFS" with "witches" and we're back to the Dark Ages. These demented woman-haters are frothing at the mouth for OUR blood, while projecting their sick murder fantasies on their intended victims. Unlike these misogynist psychopaths, WE have the receipts to prove who is really the threat to whom. Let's make sure as many people see this as possible: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOM9J_ZIrYtiMagVRr_jhagMR-XP59TBsJFLwNlcS13iIUT4ovqKRN9zttevr0PmA?pli=1&key=NmJuV1AyRnVSU3dOS2VObVhLSm1uNUkxRjRBSk9R
What a fascinating post. I'm a fan of the podcast about cults "Let's talk about sects" and can see some potential common themes of coercive control exercised against groups of people - the division of the world into "them" and "us", the apocalyptic terrors, the grandiose tone, the attempts to limit engagement with the outside world. Of course, gender identity ideology does not employ the environmental tricks common to cults - eg limiting food and sleep, exhausting physical tasks, surveillance, requiring members to live together - yet I wonder if prolonged immersion in highly emotional and polarised digital spaces has a similar effect? (This may not be intentional, of course, just a highly unfortunate side effect of the technology.)
Hey Eliza here's a great one found in the wild today, from the generally very liberal/progressive (formerly Yiddish/socialist) paper The Forward:
https://forward.com/opinion/515868/libs-of-tiktok-is-fueling-a-pogrom-against-trans-youth/
Libs of Tiktok is not just TERFY it's literally leading to POGROMS of trans folx. (Nice to drop POGROMS into a Jewish paper, nu?)
No, really, that's what the article says, because Libs of TIktok bad and dehumanization and Nazis. It's just a brilliant example of the genre.
Does that person understand what "literally" means? And can't THEY spell "folks"?
I've seen similar phobia indoctrination coming from atheists (oh, excuse me, "Atheists") in online discussions of politics: "they want to burn me at the stake" and "they're literally killing us!"
The writer refers to "gender-affirming hysterectomies for people under 18". "People"?
This is a wonderful exploration of the techniques of cult indoctrination as applied to the Trans issue, and highlights the dangers humans are facing now. In fact, this month's Technology Review from MIT features this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1057135/transgender-contagion-gender-dysphoria/ which "reasonably" and "based on science" debunks the concept of ROGD, and ends with the suicide threat. It is sobering and saddening how a generation is succumbing to this takeover of thought, and to what end? Sterilization and medicalization, loss of women's rights, rigid gender policing, the end of freedom. Thank you for elucidating some of the mechanisms here. And in the same issue, a discussion of how Instagram filters promote cosmetic surgery...
Crank the drama up to 11, and commence the orgy of self indulgent victimhood.
Why would you expect individuals whose fundamental states of being are so far removed from reality to express themselves in ways moreso grounded?
I saw a graphic listing reasons for not using preferred pronouns with the top entry as, "I know you better than you know yourself." Well, yes. You are talking to someone so beyond the pale that a complete stranger finds it more malicious to at best, feed into your delusions, or at worst, delivers sexual gratification against the stranger's will by way of "validation" (this actually is sexual assault).
👍🏾