Reading this, my head hurt. I am grateful to not have to live in a needlessly complex mind like that. It must be such hard work making your own live as difficult as possible.
When trying to reply I faced a conundrum; should I toxically splash my maleness all over the place or just flutter my eyes and coquettishly laugh?
In the end I decided for mostly male, with maybe a smidgeon of femininity, and a dollop of giraffe.
It's funny, but also kind of sad the strands of nothingness these young folk tie themselves up with.
It's word-salad central that seems designed to divert from the real problems they face. You'll note that it's all about looks and appearance and how they are perceived by others. And not a single blessed word about what it is they want to do with their lives, the kind of person they want to be, or what they want to contribute to the world.
Maybe they think being male in a girly way even though they're female will smash the patriarchy or sumfin. Who knows what they think? Do they?
They need to, as the saying goes, get a life. Learn to paint or carve or play music. Grow some veg and herbs. Fix cars or help out at the local homeless shelter. Take disabled kids horseriding. Write a novel. Do something. Anything, except living inside their own heads so much.
Yes, so very true. When I was an adolescent/young adult, I was searching for my path. I was a good student, and picked up a lot of other stuff.
This narcissistic self-absorption with "how I present" and "putting out a very ambiguous message" means that they spend no time developing their talents and finding a path. Sad. No one wants to hire such persons even for cashier.
There's the rub. If the comments those young women post reflect their actual mental state, then it is likely they'd be a disruptive presence in the workplace and unable to do their work in a satisfactory manner.
Ordinarily an employer would have the leeway to decline to hire such people or fire them, but an increasing number of states and municipalities are making gender identity a protected characteristic like race, age, sex, etc. It's sad to have to say this, but the best resolution to this predicament would be that they're too impaired to leave their parents' basements or their apartments in search of employment.
If they are in your employ, you cannot fire them if they become trans. But if they are not in your employ, and are considered for hire, you don't need to hire them. There are a dozen reasons why you might not wish to hire them. I don't see an action about "failure to hire" to be successful.
I don’t know how you have the fortitude to keep trying to untangle this mess. These young people are tying themselves into mental Gordian knots, and society has yet to find the blade of communication that will slice through this confusion.
"If I could've chosen, I'd be a cis woman. Unfortunately for me, I either have to pick between being confident in my looks, or passing [as male]. "
WTF? This is from someone born female. I suppose what she really means is that if she hadn't had to choose she'd be what she started out as, and that would be preferable.
Some of the people cited here talk as though they were choosing among the bewildering array of choices at Starbucks. What a strange world we're living in these days.
I think what she really means is “if I could have chosen, I would be happy in my body, with no worries or stress about being female. But since I’m not, that must mean I’m trans, and therefore have to choose between the feminine things I like and passing convincingly as a man.”
You're no doubt right, and actually I think this is a large part of what seems to me to be so pernicious about this whole phenomenon: who among us has always felt totally fine with and in their body? Leaping to the conclusion that one must be trans if puberty (for instance) is uncomfortable seems like it's just not a healthy or desirable response.
Yes- and 'passing as a male;' lol .. more delusion, if she thinks people see the beard and flat chest and deep voice- but don't notice tiny hands, child-bearing hips, and so many other giveaway clues!
How do the cishet trans allies who champion gender identity ideology and play key roles in holding our institutions captive conceive of the inner lives of females who think they're males? What do they imagine goes through the minds of young women who've been bitten by the gender bug before, during and after they transition? Do they suppose they're just like the average well adjusted teen (they do exist, right?) except for the trans thing? Do they see transitioning as just another step on the road to adulthood and self-fulfillment like taking the SATs, getting a learner's permit and winning a lead role in the school play?
If so, Ms. Mondegreen's essays would blow their minds. Gender identity ideology has driven these young women mad. They're experiencing a living hell. Reality isn't just a foreign country to them; it's an altogether different galaxy.
I want to think that if the straight defenders of genderism were to immerse themselves in the online madhouse where Ms. Modegreen does her research the experience might shake their beliefs. It would be helpful to the sex realist cause if she were to distill the crazy essence of this contingent of "trans youth" in book form. Let the public know that mental illness and a pathological obsession with gender identity go hand in hand, and show them what it looks like in all its gory detail. There will be those who will not be moved; in fact, they may celebrate the disordered thinking for establishing a new frontier in the queering of humankind. They are a minority. Looking into this abyss would surely cause the average trans ally to reconsider his or her views.
I can tell you from firsthand experience what they think. They think they are being kind, compassionate, progressive, and the exact opposite of those hateful people who aren't 100% on board with this. They believe they are doing the Right Thing™️. You show you're a good person by affirming these young people and never ever questioning anything. They aren't thinking anything beyond that because they have been trained to fear even thinking anything that questions the narrative because those thoughts are hateful and hurt people. They would never read an essay like this because reading something that questions the narrative is just as dangerous and harmful in their minds.
The idea that humouring and affirming children's weird beliefs is virtuous is one of the most bizarre aspects of the Trans movement, but it's not without precedent.
Children are usually some kind of idiot, so are teens, so adults who take their lead are even bigger idiots.
Well, I guess the "trans community" has finally demonstrated to me that gender is entirely fluid and spectral, just a judgement in the eye of the biased beholder. Now, when I see a person with a beard and no breasts wearing a dress, I won't immediately recognise them as a confused transvestite/TIM, since they might be an even more confused TIF masquerading as a transvestite TIM (or something). I have now been faced squarely with my archaic transphobia, since at this point I have to give up trying to decide what sex anyone is anymore. Yay for me, enlightened at last!
Why do these girls say they feel like/are “guys” rather than boys or men? Maybe “guy” has become the new “not like other girls?” As a woman, cis, heteronormative, or what have you, I don’t think I ever felt particularly “womanly”; I certainly didn’t spend any time pondering how other people might perceive my femininity, just tried to look pretty but not too sexual. I think the poster’s comment about trying so hard to live up to the expectations of society or images on social media could have been her wake up call. Eliza, are you ever tempted to hop onto to one of these forums with gentle advice or encouragement that might lead these girls out of their own delusional thinking?
One of my daughter's friends is "non-binary". She usually dresses very femininely, in a goth-weirdo kind of way, but is unmistakably a girl. Apparently, she does not like to be referred to as a girl, because she equates that with being "weak", "overly emotional", and "shallow".
I find all this thinking to be incredibly sexist and regressive. Is it social media that causes girls to think that they have to be a vapid influencer taking photos of her butt in order to be a woman? As a child of the '70s, I grew up with the "Free to be you and me!" kind of messaging - boys can be nurses or hair stylists, girls can be structural engineers or astronauts, we weren't supposed to be bound by the rigid gender roles of the past any more. It was supposed to be OK to be a weird girl who wasn't necessarily into "girly" stuff.
I'm not sure what went awry, because the younger generation today seems to be even more obsessed with rigid gender roles except now they think they can somehow actually change into a man or a woman simply by having a crew cut or putting on a dress.
I guess in part it's because "Free to be you and me" overpromised a bit? Being an astronaut would be very difficult to combine with motherhood. A man who is a hair stylist will be pegged as gay by most people (plus most hair stylists don't make a lot of money and men are judged based on their financial success much more than women and it's not entirely unjustified) .
True, and there are certainly differences in interest level between men and women. For example, there are about equal numbers of women and men with bachelor's degrees in mathematics; but men are more inclined to pursue graduate degrees in math and to go into engineering, physics or computer science; while women tend to go into teaching.
I think most women just tend to find living things more interesting than inanimate things; hence the large number of female biologists vs. the much lower number of female physicists.
Interestingly, nursing has had quite an increase in men in the past 30 years or so. It used to be very rare to see a male nurse, but now I know quite a few.
My impression is that there is a lot of that happening. Actresses such as Emma Watson - sexualised from long before her majority - seem to be claiming to be "non-binary" for that very reason. And, to be honest, I can't entirely regard it as an irrational response - weak, cowardly, dishonest, yes, but not irrational.
I feel like the translation of all of these young women’s Byzantine thought spirals is: “I’d rather just be myself ie a woman, but then people would treat me like a subhuman object.”
And I certainly think they’re not wrong. But I don’t understand the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude to the problem of male supremacy. Fight back! It sounds silly, but if someone compliments me on a dress I’m wearing, I’ll say, “thank you, it makes me feel like a Victorian archeologist.” The word “feminine” means “things one typically associates with women.” Well I associate intellect, emotional sensitivity, wisdom, and both general and highly-specialized competence with women…so that’s what femininity means, to me. So wear your ruffles and if someone comments on them, thank them for noticing your love of the intricate, and your mathematical mind.
Who will partner these ambiguous its? What man wants a woman with a beard and a skirt? The need for ambiguity leads to no interest from men. What women are interested in women who look like men?
What you’ve shown here reinforces an earlier point I think you made, that the girls/women who buy into this are often far more gender conforming than the women who reject it.
And this is not gender identity issues? Those that strive to have this very significant internalized confusion of their self system normalized sound so confused and flailing to be seen as perfectly normal, just draw the attention they say they abhor.
If only we could send them all into a natural environment--work on a farm, a cabin in the wilderness, an aid worker in a Third World country--no phone or internet.
Right you are, Melissa but guess how your kind, compassionate, and reasonable statement will be interpreted: "Transphobes campaign for stripping trans people of basic human rights, sending them to labor camps and off-shore prisons". This is , like, LITERAL VIOLENCE, Melissa
I can see MTFs getting really mad at these girls for infringing on their territory. How will the well-meaning allies know whom to "sir" and whom to "ma'am"?
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck , the most affirming and logical conclusion is that it probably is a cat... But what if it is a well-disguised proud duck?
This makes me long for the days when that Silver Ring Thing was the weirdest youth subculture I had to deal with. Can't believe I miss the second Bush administration...
I know someone like this. She once posted on FB that being on T and having her breasts removed "freed" her to grow her hair long and paint her nails.
Reading this, my head hurt. I am grateful to not have to live in a needlessly complex mind like that. It must be such hard work making your own live as difficult as possible.
When trying to reply I faced a conundrum; should I toxically splash my maleness all over the place or just flutter my eyes and coquettishly laugh?
In the end I decided for mostly male, with maybe a smidgeon of femininity, and a dollop of giraffe.
It's funny, but also kind of sad the strands of nothingness these young folk tie themselves up with.
It's word-salad central that seems designed to divert from the real problems they face. You'll note that it's all about looks and appearance and how they are perceived by others. And not a single blessed word about what it is they want to do with their lives, the kind of person they want to be, or what they want to contribute to the world.
Maybe they think being male in a girly way even though they're female will smash the patriarchy or sumfin. Who knows what they think? Do they?
They need to, as the saying goes, get a life. Learn to paint or carve or play music. Grow some veg and herbs. Fix cars or help out at the local homeless shelter. Take disabled kids horseriding. Write a novel. Do something. Anything, except living inside their own heads so much.
Yes, so very true. When I was an adolescent/young adult, I was searching for my path. I was a good student, and picked up a lot of other stuff.
This narcissistic self-absorption with "how I present" and "putting out a very ambiguous message" means that they spend no time developing their talents and finding a path. Sad. No one wants to hire such persons even for cashier.
There's the rub. If the comments those young women post reflect their actual mental state, then it is likely they'd be a disruptive presence in the workplace and unable to do their work in a satisfactory manner.
Ordinarily an employer would have the leeway to decline to hire such people or fire them, but an increasing number of states and municipalities are making gender identity a protected characteristic like race, age, sex, etc. It's sad to have to say this, but the best resolution to this predicament would be that they're too impaired to leave their parents' basements or their apartments in search of employment.
If they are in your employ, you cannot fire them if they become trans. But if they are not in your employ, and are considered for hire, you don't need to hire them. There are a dozen reasons why you might not wish to hire them. I don't see an action about "failure to hire" to be successful.
I don’t know how you have the fortitude to keep trying to untangle this mess. These young people are tying themselves into mental Gordian knots, and society has yet to find the blade of communication that will slice through this confusion.
"If I could've chosen, I'd be a cis woman. Unfortunately for me, I either have to pick between being confident in my looks, or passing [as male]. "
WTF? This is from someone born female. I suppose what she really means is that if she hadn't had to choose she'd be what she started out as, and that would be preferable.
Some of the people cited here talk as though they were choosing among the bewildering array of choices at Starbucks. What a strange world we're living in these days.
I think what she really means is “if I could have chosen, I would be happy in my body, with no worries or stress about being female. But since I’m not, that must mean I’m trans, and therefore have to choose between the feminine things I like and passing convincingly as a man.”
You're no doubt right, and actually I think this is a large part of what seems to me to be so pernicious about this whole phenomenon: who among us has always felt totally fine with and in their body? Leaping to the conclusion that one must be trans if puberty (for instance) is uncomfortable seems like it's just not a healthy or desirable response.
Yes- and 'passing as a male;' lol .. more delusion, if she thinks people see the beard and flat chest and deep voice- but don't notice tiny hands, child-bearing hips, and so many other giveaway clues!
How do the cishet trans allies who champion gender identity ideology and play key roles in holding our institutions captive conceive of the inner lives of females who think they're males? What do they imagine goes through the minds of young women who've been bitten by the gender bug before, during and after they transition? Do they suppose they're just like the average well adjusted teen (they do exist, right?) except for the trans thing? Do they see transitioning as just another step on the road to adulthood and self-fulfillment like taking the SATs, getting a learner's permit and winning a lead role in the school play?
If so, Ms. Mondegreen's essays would blow their minds. Gender identity ideology has driven these young women mad. They're experiencing a living hell. Reality isn't just a foreign country to them; it's an altogether different galaxy.
I want to think that if the straight defenders of genderism were to immerse themselves in the online madhouse where Ms. Modegreen does her research the experience might shake their beliefs. It would be helpful to the sex realist cause if she were to distill the crazy essence of this contingent of "trans youth" in book form. Let the public know that mental illness and a pathological obsession with gender identity go hand in hand, and show them what it looks like in all its gory detail. There will be those who will not be moved; in fact, they may celebrate the disordered thinking for establishing a new frontier in the queering of humankind. They are a minority. Looking into this abyss would surely cause the average trans ally to reconsider his or her views.
I can tell you from firsthand experience what they think. They think they are being kind, compassionate, progressive, and the exact opposite of those hateful people who aren't 100% on board with this. They believe they are doing the Right Thing™️. You show you're a good person by affirming these young people and never ever questioning anything. They aren't thinking anything beyond that because they have been trained to fear even thinking anything that questions the narrative because those thoughts are hateful and hurt people. They would never read an essay like this because reading something that questions the narrative is just as dangerous and harmful in their minds.
The idea that humouring and affirming children's weird beliefs is virtuous is one of the most bizarre aspects of the Trans movement, but it's not without precedent.
Children are usually some kind of idiot, so are teens, so adults who take their lead are even bigger idiots.
Well, I guess the "trans community" has finally demonstrated to me that gender is entirely fluid and spectral, just a judgement in the eye of the biased beholder. Now, when I see a person with a beard and no breasts wearing a dress, I won't immediately recognise them as a confused transvestite/TIM, since they might be an even more confused TIF masquerading as a transvestite TIM (or something). I have now been faced squarely with my archaic transphobia, since at this point I have to give up trying to decide what sex anyone is anymore. Yay for me, enlightened at last!
Why do these girls say they feel like/are “guys” rather than boys or men? Maybe “guy” has become the new “not like other girls?” As a woman, cis, heteronormative, or what have you, I don’t think I ever felt particularly “womanly”; I certainly didn’t spend any time pondering how other people might perceive my femininity, just tried to look pretty but not too sexual. I think the poster’s comment about trying so hard to live up to the expectations of society or images on social media could have been her wake up call. Eliza, are you ever tempted to hop onto to one of these forums with gentle advice or encouragement that might lead these girls out of their own delusional thinking?
One of my daughter's friends is "non-binary". She usually dresses very femininely, in a goth-weirdo kind of way, but is unmistakably a girl. Apparently, she does not like to be referred to as a girl, because she equates that with being "weak", "overly emotional", and "shallow".
I find all this thinking to be incredibly sexist and regressive. Is it social media that causes girls to think that they have to be a vapid influencer taking photos of her butt in order to be a woman? As a child of the '70s, I grew up with the "Free to be you and me!" kind of messaging - boys can be nurses or hair stylists, girls can be structural engineers or astronauts, we weren't supposed to be bound by the rigid gender roles of the past any more. It was supposed to be OK to be a weird girl who wasn't necessarily into "girly" stuff.
I'm not sure what went awry, because the younger generation today seems to be even more obsessed with rigid gender roles except now they think they can somehow actually change into a man or a woman simply by having a crew cut or putting on a dress.
I guess in part it's because "Free to be you and me" overpromised a bit? Being an astronaut would be very difficult to combine with motherhood. A man who is a hair stylist will be pegged as gay by most people (plus most hair stylists don't make a lot of money and men are judged based on their financial success much more than women and it's not entirely unjustified) .
True, and there are certainly differences in interest level between men and women. For example, there are about equal numbers of women and men with bachelor's degrees in mathematics; but men are more inclined to pursue graduate degrees in math and to go into engineering, physics or computer science; while women tend to go into teaching.
I think most women just tend to find living things more interesting than inanimate things; hence the large number of female biologists vs. the much lower number of female physicists.
Interestingly, nursing has had quite an increase in men in the past 30 years or so. It used to be very rare to see a male nurse, but now I know quite a few.
I feel like non binary is the “not like other girls” identity and honestly it reads internalized misogyny
An NB's comment gave me the impression she was seeking shelter in a nonbinary identity to shield herself from men's expectations towards women.
My impression is that there is a lot of that happening. Actresses such as Emma Watson - sexualised from long before her majority - seem to be claiming to be "non-binary" for that very reason. And, to be honest, I can't entirely regard it as an irrational response - weak, cowardly, dishonest, yes, but not irrational.
Their misogyny is actually quite externalized
I feel like the translation of all of these young women’s Byzantine thought spirals is: “I’d rather just be myself ie a woman, but then people would treat me like a subhuman object.”
And I certainly think they’re not wrong. But I don’t understand the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude to the problem of male supremacy. Fight back! It sounds silly, but if someone compliments me on a dress I’m wearing, I’ll say, “thank you, it makes me feel like a Victorian archeologist.” The word “feminine” means “things one typically associates with women.” Well I associate intellect, emotional sensitivity, wisdom, and both general and highly-specialized competence with women…so that’s what femininity means, to me. So wear your ruffles and if someone comments on them, thank them for noticing your love of the intricate, and your mathematical mind.
Who will partner these ambiguous its? What man wants a woman with a beard and a skirt? The need for ambiguity leads to no interest from men. What women are interested in women who look like men?
From what I gather , there actually are men who are into this... These girls scornfully call them "chasers".
What you’ve shown here reinforces an earlier point I think you made, that the girls/women who buy into this are often far more gender conforming than the women who reject it.
I don't want to seem crazy, I just want to be crazy.
And this is not gender identity issues? Those that strive to have this very significant internalized confusion of their self system normalized sound so confused and flailing to be seen as perfectly normal, just draw the attention they say they abhor.
If only we could send them all into a natural environment--work on a farm, a cabin in the wilderness, an aid worker in a Third World country--no phone or internet.
Right you are, Melissa but guess how your kind, compassionate, and reasonable statement will be interpreted: "Transphobes campaign for stripping trans people of basic human rights, sending them to labor camps and off-shore prisons". This is , like, LITERAL VIOLENCE, Melissa
Nooooo not Third World Countries, save these places from gender ideology
I can see MTFs getting really mad at these girls for infringing on their territory. How will the well-meaning allies know whom to "sir" and whom to "ma'am"?
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck , the most affirming and logical conclusion is that it probably is a cat... But what if it is a well-disguised proud duck?
This makes me long for the days when that Silver Ring Thing was the weirdest youth subculture I had to deal with. Can't believe I miss the second Bush administration...