I discovered from lived experience as an adult my transition though initially successful eventually faded away to becoming a burden on my life.I was an extremely shy,awkward,emotionally insecure child and a prime target for being bullied. Many years passed until as an adult I believed gender transition was the answer to my problems. Instead gender transition eventually amplified my emotional insecurities and I became a person living in a prison of fear. The most basic mundane routines of life became mountains of emotional turmoil. I eventually realized the crux of my turmoil was my conscience convicting me that living as a trans woman was sustaining a false identity resulting in increased anxiety,guilt and fear. I restored my born male identity and although I cannot reverse the surgical modification to my physical body or my lifelong shyness; living in truth lifted the emotional burdens of shame,guilt, and fear. I believe my story is not unique and it's too bad young people can't be taught to be thankful for who they biologically are. I believe gender dysphoria is real however most of today's transitioners are misdiagnosing themselves and being enabled by a false ideology that will harm themselves and many others. If one can't learn to live in truth and accept themselves as they are how else is one going to live?
This is tragic. Of course there are no role models for this person- up until recently women choosing to do this were rare. Gavin is one of the role models/guinea pigs for medical transition. For a while Gavin was speaking to high school students at GSA weekend conferences attended by GLAAD and GLSEN. My oldest took me to one of these before I knew what I was dealing with. She was a lesbian and I was supportive… Parents and kids were separated and attended seminars about pronoun usage and states that afforded legal protection for LGBT people. I remember thinking the pronoun thing was so odd- I mean aren’t my pronouns obvious? Why do I have to introduce myself with them? It took some time for me to see what they were doing. There were adults manning tables giving out pins with various flags. It felt creepy but I couldn’t explain why and I brushed it off. Gavin’s speech was a tear jerker. The story was about the high school and the bathrooms / legal victory but mostly about the moment that Gavin’s mother finally came to accept the new name. It was about the death of the old kid and a rebirth of a new one. It was encouraging the kids in the room to pursue medical transition and the parents to facilitate it. So much for being your true self and finding “happiness”. The truth is this narcissistic obsession with your “gender identity” is really just a path to nowhere.
Dr. Elliot Kaminetsky, child psychologist has now re-categorized this malady as Identity-Based Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. GLAAD and all those will probably say that's akin to murder.
Thank you, Eliza, for writing this. You are right that Grimm is not the perfect “poster boy” as she used to be nine years ago, but the Guardian published her story not because they don't need her anymore. Now, they promote her struggles to blame Americans for "stripping trans rights nationwide." And, by "trans rights," they now mean the "right" to demand society to pay them for everything, starting from hormones and surgeries to food and housing. The more mental and physical problems Grimm and other victims of the trans cult have, the more demands the cult can force on society.
It's a long time overdue to start treating gender medicine as a medical scam and massive child abuse.
The misogyny is real in America, and it's called Transgender Equality.
Grimm talks in the profile about being a stoner: 🥺
Another issue around which the current pop advice given to young people is 100% false, damaging, and will end in disaster for many of them. Marijuana is not benign.
Thanks for this tidbit. The recreational drugs are an important detail. She's potentially damaging her lungs with pot as well as her liver and kidneys with testosterone poisoning.
This is so sad. The childhood experience of not fitting in is similar to those narratives of the gay person trapped in a rigid social setting. But from the 1960s onward, that person would escape to the big city (especially SF or NYC) and find happiness, or at least sexual fulfillment. Instead, today we see stories like these—where is the Mecca for young people like this?
This is heartbreaking. Grimm is clearly a struggling, traumatized young person (and yes, I agree with some of the other commenters that the way the adults, and students, spoke about and treated Grimm was traumatizing and they should not be let off the hook and Grimm should not be blamed for the effects that treatment had). But I want to know if any of these orgs using Grimm as a mouthpiece and a useful instrument are supporting Grimm in any way? Is Grimm able to get any therapy anywhere that would actually address the trauma or the other mental health issues without being accused of being invalidating or non-affirming? If the comment above about the Guardian article saying Grimm is a "stoner" is correct, would anyone be allowed to say, "This isn't good for you. Stop"?
I have long suspected that gender medicine preys not just on vulnerable kids but on floundering families: this network and sense of purpose spring up around you if you convert to the cause. How well was this child’s mother doing when genderism came along? Not well enough to help her young adult child pay rent. Not every parent can of course, but the sense of a sort of general lack of flourishing / no robust family safety net comes through.
Not sure what a robust family safety net would be? No offense, just asking. I'm a firm believer in a social safety net, most especially a smaller-scale community or neighborhood safety net, but I've never seen such a thing in existence, at least not in these United States.
This is yet more proof that it is impossible to disprove the myth of transgenderism.
If the person thrives after transition, that is obviously proof that they could never have been happy without transition. If the person fails to thrive, that is obviously proof that transphobia makes it very difficult to live one's authentic "trans" life. If the person changes their mind, realizing this was all a horrible mistake, this was obviously the result of both transphobia and internalized transphobia. That is true whether or not the person ends up happy as a detransitioned person. (They would have been even happier if they had not detransitioned, or perhaps they are part of that rare 1% who were never "really" trans to begin with - the exception that proves the rule.)
This poor young woman is miserable and the author of this article could not possibly believe a large part of her misery is her inability to accept herself as she really is - an autistic, masculine lesbian woman who grew up in a homophobic environment, and another large part of her misery is the medical interventions that have made her less healthy.
Nobody stops to think that there is simply no reason to believe anyone with a healthy body needs to drastically alter its appearance in order to ever be happy, or that lying about one's biology is a mental/emotional burden. If they stopped and thought for a single minute, they would realize that this entire intervention is pointless at best, and highly destructive at worst.
Basically, this is the "I think, therefore, I am" theory, whereby we cannot truly know anything other than that we exist. However, that idea draws every bit of reality into question, which is no way to live!
And we can never prove or disprove whether someone must, to ever have a semblance of happiness or peace, chemically and/or surgically alter their appearance to the opposite sex and be referred to as such.
Fairly durable theme of venerable provenance, that dichotomy between dreaming & reality. Not sure if you're much of a fan of The Matrix movies, but you probably know that it's the creation of a pair of brothers/sisters/transwomen, "Lana Wachowski (born Larry Wachowski; June 21, 1965) and Lilly Wachowski (born Andy Wachowski)":
Maybe moot how much they've contributed to the transgender clusterfuck (excuse my French) with their take on that dichotomy, but I've always been somewhat amused to see that the movie at least genuflects to something of an underlying reality in the machines tending humans perpetually stuck in mechanical wombs.
Dreamtime -- Big Time (the title of another classic sci-fi story):
But still, some fuzzy boundaries between those two states:
"Thus shall you think of this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud; A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."
Female bodies that don’t want to wear stereotypical feminine clothes, that have short, cropped hair and unshaven legs are not male nor “should have been male”.
I continue to be in awe over how regressive and superficial trans ideology is.
I’m not sure if I agree with your deconstruction where you take blame from actually transphobic reactions to 16 y/o and put in on Grimm’s choice to transition. Ofc social transition set the cascading events and whole thing could be avoided, but after all it’s the adults calling her freak caused her ptsd.
So I partly agree with you -- namely, the adults who called Grimm names should be ashamed! This is the worst part about being gender critical, tbh. Too many people believe this makes cruelty acceptable. When I was a 16yo autistic girl I was telling everyone at school with 90% sincerity and 10% knowing it was wishful thinking that I was descended from Elves. If someone had told me you could surgically modify your ears to be pointed I'm sure I'd have been tempted. She's not a freak, she was just a teen girl with a lot of baggage T_T
Where I disagree with you is this: I spent years in spaces that were heavily trans and, like, this is what all my trans friends end up like. None of them had the publicity of Grimm. All of them transitioned as adults (many of them in college, but some later) and so they didn't have to deal with the same type of scrutiny as a high school girl in a small town. Still. I do believe most if not all of them would be struggling even if they hadn't transitioned, but boy does transitioning seem to exacerbate existing mental health problems and completely screw up their physical health. Homeless and unemployed and catastrophizing about everything....
on that note. oh man the climate catastrophizing (sometimes other fun catastrophizing--back in 2016 it was all about how we were going to get nuked.) I say this as someone who considers myself to have a lot in common with trans people, but we're not talking about a mentally resilient group here, and I can promise if Grimm spends any time socializing with other trans people they encourage that. I know what those spaces are like because every single space I've ever been in turned into "now everyone is trans. and there's me over here." Whatever anxiety you express, the response will amount to "not only SHOULD you be anxious about X, but you should be MORE anxious about it."
For sure. When my daughter was in middle school climate catastrophizing was the mark of a good, deeply thinking, socially aware person. I guess it is all linked in a way. First, both trans obsession and climate obsession attract the same type of a person with autistic traits. (So then they see how similar they are to one another and mistakenly attribute similarity to trans identity). Second, both obsessions are antinatilist. One claims that having biological children is irresponsible, the other makes it impossible.
I’d argue that climate doomerism is form of self harm too - it’s bombarding yourself with news that validate depression talk. Yeah climate change is real, but we shouldn’t spend our good years constantly torturing ourselves with apocalypse to come
You're not criticizing climate change realism, are you? Catastrophizing about anything is not good or mentally healthy. But I often wonder how generation after generation of youth are expected to learn about and accept and "get on with life" in a world such as ours...? Wearing blinders is not an option, imo, especially for the young, and why should it be? Facing facts and making common sense choices is better than denialism. Many of us adults don't know what we're doing, so how can we expect children to learn from us?
by catastrophizing I don't mean they have anxiety about non-issues but rather....okay, let me tell you a reason I friend broke up with someone. Because his response to anyone questioning if puberty blockers was harmful was "we're all going to be dead in 5 years anyway because of climate change so why does it matter?"
there's a pervasive sense of existential despair about everything that doesn't lead to anything productive. It just leads to self-destructive behaviors and to encouraging other people to self-destruct, too.
I get what you're saying and agree. Catastrophizing helps no one, and actually harms. Sounds like your friend was also making a "thought-terminating" argument in favor of puberty blockers, and I wonder if he was planning to let his own child use them... (or maybe thought he had no choice). Although I do think times have become desperate in many respects, I also firmly believe most of us have way more than 5 years ahead of us. Climate change is definitely an existential problem though, long-term, especially for certain groups in the world, depending on where they live and how impoverished they are. Nature has been trying to tell the human race how to live more harmoniously for centuries and we just haven't been listening... Nevertheless, eat, drink, and be merry! And stand up against trans and other lunacies -- doing so can make life worth living in its own way. ❤️
Offtop but high-five with elves! As 13-15 y/o autistic I was fascinated by dark elves (drows) and this was my beauty ideal, and with mix of honesty and edginess I was telling people this is who I want to be. Oh god so cringe.
Not cringe at all! Elves are beautiful (if imaginary). You may have been a budding actor or artist, or similar. Nothing wrong with having an imagination, it's often that there aren't many regular, healthy outlets for it, as with creativity and diversity in general. American pop culture offers so little to many of its young people in that respect (in my opinion, anyway).
ohh the honesty and edgy combination is so real. But elves are cool, like Mildred says, and also "cringe" is just our perception of behavior we either matured past OR that we recognize was out of sync with our peers and now we have enough self-consciousness to be embarrassed by this.
Also, though, I have kids, and the older two are teen/pre-teen so I'm trying to NOT call my younger self cringe because it would reflect on the things they're into. (BTW one of them loves drow because they're matriarchal and worship spiders. She's my Edgy(tm) child for sure.)
lollll shoutout to the elves!! What is it about elves that feels so comfortable to socially-alienated tween and teen girls??🧝🏻♀️ Not LOTR-obsessed me at 12 trying to make friends by trying to teach everyone to write in runes 😬
I see a little of body mod stuff in my area. And I’ve definitely seen a few pointy ear pierced folks. And sharpened teeth. If it was just this from the old heavy piecing and tattoo’d Goth and Vampire 1990 and early aughts it would be a different world than the surgical and endocrinologist medical induced sickness.
You are right that Grimm's problems are the direct result of adult's behaviors, but the real transphobic abusers are not the ones who wanted her to stay out of boys' bathrooms. The real abusers were her teachers and trans activists who affirmed and celebrated an autistic tomboy's delusion belief that she was born in the wrong body and must transition or die of suicide.
Transgenerism is the most misogynistic cult in the history of the Western civilization. Trans activists use her to push the ideas of forcing society to let men pretending to be women be treated like real women; the gender-affirming industry uses her to coerce parents to transition their daughters; testosterone she is taking accelerates her mental decline; if she attempts or commits suicide, they will use her as a new number in their statistics; no one is willing to start addressing the real causes of her problems.
When we point a finger at some dude whom she would never have met if she had been given the help she needed, we only help the cult to prey on more victims.
Imo it’s important to be accurate. Yes, there are plenty of problems with transgenderism, but here Eliza tries to deconstruct media narrative and omits a big contribution to Grimm’s story.
Adults (or anyone) calling you names doesn't cause PTSD. That is a completely exaggerated claim. Anxiety, perhaps.
Regrettably, in Grims case, it didn't cause appropriate reflection. She proved incapable of accepting the possibility that the brutal feedback of the majority of the people around her might have any credibility. As she grows older and more sick mentally and physically and increasingly dependent on assistance from others for food, healthcare and shelter perhaps she'll cultivate the ability to listen.
Bullying in general and on a regular basis can cause CPTSD, and that's a fact. I'm thinking this boyish, overweight, "oddball" girl would have been bullied no matter what her choices had been. Her mother (and father?) were naive and manipulated into thinking "transitioning" would solve the issues their daughter was having. Some kids never have much of a chance, due to family issues, lack of opportunity, physical and health issues, etc. It's our society's lack of real humane values that's at fault, I'm convinced of that.
I don’t know about PTSD thing. My instincts tell me it’s exaggerated, but who knows how badly it affected her, here we’re not able to assess that. I generally think she approached the challenge with victimhood mentality and heard threats that wasn’t said.
I haven't seen the footage of these meetings, so perhaps the language was over the top. However, this community claims that words are violence. Many detransitioners tell us that the pain of the double mastectomy recovery is the cause of the PTSD. Also the stoner detail. Illegal drugs are often part of this scene. I know, my former husband who now claims to be "mother" of our sons, dropped acid and smoked pot when we first met. I said that's out or I'm out and he quit, to later secretly crossdress and take estrogen after fathering our 2 sons.
I thought so too. I am not on the gender train by any mean, but I thought what happened in those hearings were plain wrong. A grown man looks at a confused 16yr old and calls her a freak, what do you expect? It matters not whether you agree with someone's conclusions about their identity—you just cannot go around causing psychological harm to people by being callous and vile. I think everyone involved in bullying and making life difficult for Grimm ought to be utterly ashamed of themselves.
On the other hand, the "trans community" tells trans widows like me to kill ourselves by lying down in traffic or jumping off a tall building (both comments on my channel) as well as calling me a witch and claiming I "wasn't enough of a woman" to "keep" my transitioning husband. He lied, he criticized, he spent the family budget. There was no question that I'd divorce him. Then he got a tech job, lied about that and skipped out of paying child support. I document trans widows' experiences. Of 63, more than a third were sexually assaulted by lingerie-wearing husband before exiting the marriage. Of course, my ex claimed I assaulted him.
This cult does not protect its own and damages society wholesale.
I agree, no excuse for cruelty like that. Under the circumstances though, and given it was a public controversy, where a young woman was demanding to be treated like a young man... nastiness and bullying was bound to come out of the public woodwork (still no excuse). Grimm needed kindness and counseling (as do many troubled teens), not "transitioning" and access to the boys' restroom, and that was lacking, as is often the case.
I see and I support programs for detransitioners and for family members, but I'd like to see more discussion of prevention. We need to start discussions re how to support children's emotional development and self confidence at an early age, maybe 5-6, in schools and elsewhere. To allow real diversity, not the pseudodiversity that in reality erases diversity among humans. There is little support and even less funding in the USA, for programs that actually support children's emotional health. This seems important to me. We need to prevent this kind of tragedy in the first place.
I wonder if it's worth comparing the dynamics of people who transition either as teens or twenty somethings with the dynamics of people who were part of the ex-gay movement of the 00s.
When people talk about gay conversion therapy these days they usually paint pictures of unwilling gay teens being sent of to camps or adults bullied by their families into taking part, but that overlooks that lots of gay people signed up willingly. Just like with trans related therapies nowadays, there was a market for gay conversion therapy not even 20 years ago, and the ex-gays were often front and centre.
It was very hard for people to argue against people claiming that they'd successfully changed their sexual orientation through therapy because, well, they would know, wouldn't they? You either had to argue that they were lying in the sense that they weren't actually gay, or that they were living in self denial.
I have memories of reading articles by ex-ex-gays who eventually admitted that they had basically been lying, but in the sense that they had lied to themselves first, and then lied to the world as a way of reinforcing the first lie. In many cases it was having to live the lie they had publicly trumpeted, without the constant praise and love bombing that came with first joining the movement that eventually broke them.
When it comes to same sex-attracted people who transition and “become straight,” there’s no difference between them and the people who sign up to become “ex-gays”. The only difference is the political left does not celebrate the latter.
From the photo, it appears that Gavin is not a healthy weight and is not feeling connected mind and body. Does the Guardian include the iatrogenic harm testosterone causes in the female body? Note the recent death of Griffin Sean (Makayla) Sivret, (dead at 24) who died of sepsis and liver failure after a "phalloplasty" at Boston Children's Hospital and several emergency surgeries at another Massachusetts hospital. As with men trying to "pass" as female, women like Gavin and Griffin develop a certain "look" and will never "pass." If they were told they would be completely, seamlessly folded into the male category biologically, the doctors/therapists lied to them. Another woman, Liam Johns, (dead at 35) mother of 2 young daughters, died of liver failure after dialysis stopped working. Most likely the pregnancies and testosterone before and after put her organs into overload.
So sad for a young person. But stoners . . . overweight is not unusual. Never smoked the stuff myself. Didn't want to empty the fridge in a frenzy of "the munchies."
I discovered from lived experience as an adult my transition though initially successful eventually faded away to becoming a burden on my life.I was an extremely shy,awkward,emotionally insecure child and a prime target for being bullied. Many years passed until as an adult I believed gender transition was the answer to my problems. Instead gender transition eventually amplified my emotional insecurities and I became a person living in a prison of fear. The most basic mundane routines of life became mountains of emotional turmoil. I eventually realized the crux of my turmoil was my conscience convicting me that living as a trans woman was sustaining a false identity resulting in increased anxiety,guilt and fear. I restored my born male identity and although I cannot reverse the surgical modification to my physical body or my lifelong shyness; living in truth lifted the emotional burdens of shame,guilt, and fear. I believe my story is not unique and it's too bad young people can't be taught to be thankful for who they biologically are. I believe gender dysphoria is real however most of today's transitioners are misdiagnosing themselves and being enabled by a false ideology that will harm themselves and many others. If one can't learn to live in truth and accept themselves as they are how else is one going to live?
You're an eloquent writer. I hope you will continue to write about your experience. Your voice is valuable.
This is tragic. Of course there are no role models for this person- up until recently women choosing to do this were rare. Gavin is one of the role models/guinea pigs for medical transition. For a while Gavin was speaking to high school students at GSA weekend conferences attended by GLAAD and GLSEN. My oldest took me to one of these before I knew what I was dealing with. She was a lesbian and I was supportive… Parents and kids were separated and attended seminars about pronoun usage and states that afforded legal protection for LGBT people. I remember thinking the pronoun thing was so odd- I mean aren’t my pronouns obvious? Why do I have to introduce myself with them? It took some time for me to see what they were doing. There were adults manning tables giving out pins with various flags. It felt creepy but I couldn’t explain why and I brushed it off. Gavin’s speech was a tear jerker. The story was about the high school and the bathrooms / legal victory but mostly about the moment that Gavin’s mother finally came to accept the new name. It was about the death of the old kid and a rebirth of a new one. It was encouraging the kids in the room to pursue medical transition and the parents to facilitate it. So much for being your true self and finding “happiness”. The truth is this narcissistic obsession with your “gender identity” is really just a path to nowhere.
Dr. Elliot Kaminetsky, child psychologist has now re-categorized this malady as Identity-Based Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. GLAAD and all those will probably say that's akin to murder.
Thank you, Eliza, for writing this. You are right that Grimm is not the perfect “poster boy” as she used to be nine years ago, but the Guardian published her story not because they don't need her anymore. Now, they promote her struggles to blame Americans for "stripping trans rights nationwide." And, by "trans rights," they now mean the "right" to demand society to pay them for everything, starting from hormones and surgeries to food and housing. The more mental and physical problems Grimm and other victims of the trans cult have, the more demands the cult can force on society.
It's a long time overdue to start treating gender medicine as a medical scam and massive child abuse.
The misogyny is real in America, and it's called Transgender Equality.
Grimm talks in the profile about being a stoner: 🥺
Another issue around which the current pop advice given to young people is 100% false, damaging, and will end in disaster for many of them. Marijuana is not benign.
Thanks for this tidbit. The recreational drugs are an important detail. She's potentially damaging her lungs with pot as well as her liver and kidneys with testosterone poisoning.
100% on the heavy THC usage , more about hazing out the reality that one is trying to run away from I think. Heavy on the coping distractions.
An entire generation of people incapable of sustaining themselves is unsustainable.
This is so sad. The childhood experience of not fitting in is similar to those narratives of the gay person trapped in a rigid social setting. But from the 1960s onward, that person would escape to the big city (especially SF or NYC) and find happiness, or at least sexual fulfillment. Instead, today we see stories like these—where is the Mecca for young people like this?
This is heartbreaking. Grimm is clearly a struggling, traumatized young person (and yes, I agree with some of the other commenters that the way the adults, and students, spoke about and treated Grimm was traumatizing and they should not be let off the hook and Grimm should not be blamed for the effects that treatment had). But I want to know if any of these orgs using Grimm as a mouthpiece and a useful instrument are supporting Grimm in any way? Is Grimm able to get any therapy anywhere that would actually address the trauma or the other mental health issues without being accused of being invalidating or non-affirming? If the comment above about the Guardian article saying Grimm is a "stoner" is correct, would anyone be allowed to say, "This isn't good for you. Stop"?
I have long suspected that gender medicine preys not just on vulnerable kids but on floundering families: this network and sense of purpose spring up around you if you convert to the cause. How well was this child’s mother doing when genderism came along? Not well enough to help her young adult child pay rent. Not every parent can of course, but the sense of a sort of general lack of flourishing / no robust family safety net comes through.
Not sure what a robust family safety net would be? No offense, just asking. I'm a firm believer in a social safety net, most especially a smaller-scale community or neighborhood safety net, but I've never seen such a thing in existence, at least not in these United States.
This is yet more proof that it is impossible to disprove the myth of transgenderism.
If the person thrives after transition, that is obviously proof that they could never have been happy without transition. If the person fails to thrive, that is obviously proof that transphobia makes it very difficult to live one's authentic "trans" life. If the person changes their mind, realizing this was all a horrible mistake, this was obviously the result of both transphobia and internalized transphobia. That is true whether or not the person ends up happy as a detransitioned person. (They would have been even happier if they had not detransitioned, or perhaps they are part of that rare 1% who were never "really" trans to begin with - the exception that proves the rule.)
This poor young woman is miserable and the author of this article could not possibly believe a large part of her misery is her inability to accept herself as she really is - an autistic, masculine lesbian woman who grew up in a homophobic environment, and another large part of her misery is the medical interventions that have made her less healthy.
Nobody stops to think that there is simply no reason to believe anyone with a healthy body needs to drastically alter its appearance in order to ever be happy, or that lying about one's biology is a mental/emotional burden. If they stopped and thought for a single minute, they would realize that this entire intervention is pointless at best, and highly destructive at worst.
Speaking of beliefs impossible to disprove, see Last Thursdayism: the belief that the world might as well have been created last Thursday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis#Beginning_of_false_creation
Basically, this is the "I think, therefore, I am" theory, whereby we cannot truly know anything other than that we exist. However, that idea draws every bit of reality into question, which is no way to live!
And we can never prove or disprove whether someone must, to ever have a semblance of happiness or peace, chemically and/or surgically alter their appearance to the opposite sex and be referred to as such.
"Between the idea, And the reality, Between the motion, And the act, Falls the Shadow"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/634202-between-the-idea-and-the-reality-between-the-motion-and
Fairly durable theme of venerable provenance, that dichotomy between dreaming & reality. Not sure if you're much of a fan of The Matrix movies, but you probably know that it's the creation of a pair of brothers/sisters/transwomen, "Lana Wachowski (born Larry Wachowski; June 21, 1965) and Lilly Wachowski (born Andy Wachowski)":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis
Maybe moot how much they've contributed to the transgender clusterfuck (excuse my French) with their take on that dichotomy, but I've always been somewhat amused to see that the movie at least genuflects to something of an underlying reality in the machines tending humans perpetually stuck in mechanical wombs.
Dreamtime -- Big Time (the title of another classic sci-fi story):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreaming
But still, some fuzzy boundaries between those two states:
"Thus shall you think of this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud; A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."
https://journeysonthesilkroad.com/content/sutra.html
Female bodies that don’t want to wear stereotypical feminine clothes, that have short, cropped hair and unshaven legs are not male nor “should have been male”.
I continue to be in awe over how regressive and superficial trans ideology is.
“. I was either going to live as the boy I was – or not at all.”
Translated-“Either do as I say or I will kill myself”
Classic emotional blackmail that these unwell children are taught to use against adults in order to manipulate them
I’m not sure if I agree with your deconstruction where you take blame from actually transphobic reactions to 16 y/o and put in on Grimm’s choice to transition. Ofc social transition set the cascading events and whole thing could be avoided, but after all it’s the adults calling her freak caused her ptsd.
So I partly agree with you -- namely, the adults who called Grimm names should be ashamed! This is the worst part about being gender critical, tbh. Too many people believe this makes cruelty acceptable. When I was a 16yo autistic girl I was telling everyone at school with 90% sincerity and 10% knowing it was wishful thinking that I was descended from Elves. If someone had told me you could surgically modify your ears to be pointed I'm sure I'd have been tempted. She's not a freak, she was just a teen girl with a lot of baggage T_T
Where I disagree with you is this: I spent years in spaces that were heavily trans and, like, this is what all my trans friends end up like. None of them had the publicity of Grimm. All of them transitioned as adults (many of them in college, but some later) and so they didn't have to deal with the same type of scrutiny as a high school girl in a small town. Still. I do believe most if not all of them would be struggling even if they hadn't transitioned, but boy does transitioning seem to exacerbate existing mental health problems and completely screw up their physical health. Homeless and unemployed and catastrophizing about everything....
on that note. oh man the climate catastrophizing (sometimes other fun catastrophizing--back in 2016 it was all about how we were going to get nuked.) I say this as someone who considers myself to have a lot in common with trans people, but we're not talking about a mentally resilient group here, and I can promise if Grimm spends any time socializing with other trans people they encourage that. I know what those spaces are like because every single space I've ever been in turned into "now everyone is trans. and there's me over here." Whatever anxiety you express, the response will amount to "not only SHOULD you be anxious about X, but you should be MORE anxious about it."
For sure. When my daughter was in middle school climate catastrophizing was the mark of a good, deeply thinking, socially aware person. I guess it is all linked in a way. First, both trans obsession and climate obsession attract the same type of a person with autistic traits. (So then they see how similar they are to one another and mistakenly attribute similarity to trans identity). Second, both obsessions are antinatilist. One claims that having biological children is irresponsible, the other makes it impossible.
I’d argue that climate doomerism is form of self harm too - it’s bombarding yourself with news that validate depression talk. Yeah climate change is real, but we shouldn’t spend our good years constantly torturing ourselves with apocalypse to come
You're not criticizing climate change realism, are you? Catastrophizing about anything is not good or mentally healthy. But I often wonder how generation after generation of youth are expected to learn about and accept and "get on with life" in a world such as ours...? Wearing blinders is not an option, imo, especially for the young, and why should it be? Facing facts and making common sense choices is better than denialism. Many of us adults don't know what we're doing, so how can we expect children to learn from us?
by catastrophizing I don't mean they have anxiety about non-issues but rather....okay, let me tell you a reason I friend broke up with someone. Because his response to anyone questioning if puberty blockers was harmful was "we're all going to be dead in 5 years anyway because of climate change so why does it matter?"
there's a pervasive sense of existential despair about everything that doesn't lead to anything productive. It just leads to self-destructive behaviors and to encouraging other people to self-destruct, too.
I get what you're saying and agree. Catastrophizing helps no one, and actually harms. Sounds like your friend was also making a "thought-terminating" argument in favor of puberty blockers, and I wonder if he was planning to let his own child use them... (or maybe thought he had no choice). Although I do think times have become desperate in many respects, I also firmly believe most of us have way more than 5 years ahead of us. Climate change is definitely an existential problem though, long-term, especially for certain groups in the world, depending on where they live and how impoverished they are. Nature has been trying to tell the human race how to live more harmoniously for centuries and we just haven't been listening... Nevertheless, eat, drink, and be merry! And stand up against trans and other lunacies -- doing so can make life worth living in its own way. ❤️
Offtop but high-five with elves! As 13-15 y/o autistic I was fascinated by dark elves (drows) and this was my beauty ideal, and with mix of honesty and edginess I was telling people this is who I want to be. Oh god so cringe.
Not cringe at all! Elves are beautiful (if imaginary). You may have been a budding actor or artist, or similar. Nothing wrong with having an imagination, it's often that there aren't many regular, healthy outlets for it, as with creativity and diversity in general. American pop culture offers so little to many of its young people in that respect (in my opinion, anyway).
ohh the honesty and edgy combination is so real. But elves are cool, like Mildred says, and also "cringe" is just our perception of behavior we either matured past OR that we recognize was out of sync with our peers and now we have enough self-consciousness to be embarrassed by this.
Also, though, I have kids, and the older two are teen/pre-teen so I'm trying to NOT call my younger self cringe because it would reflect on the things they're into. (BTW one of them loves drow because they're matriarchal and worship spiders. She's my Edgy(tm) child for sure.)
lollll shoutout to the elves!! What is it about elves that feels so comfortable to socially-alienated tween and teen girls??🧝🏻♀️ Not LOTR-obsessed me at 12 trying to make friends by trying to teach everyone to write in runes 😬
I see a little of body mod stuff in my area. And I’ve definitely seen a few pointy ear pierced folks. And sharpened teeth. If it was just this from the old heavy piecing and tattoo’d Goth and Vampire 1990 and early aughts it would be a different world than the surgical and endocrinologist medical induced sickness.
Ooos I mean a LOT of body mod OCD ness
You are right that Grimm's problems are the direct result of adult's behaviors, but the real transphobic abusers are not the ones who wanted her to stay out of boys' bathrooms. The real abusers were her teachers and trans activists who affirmed and celebrated an autistic tomboy's delusion belief that she was born in the wrong body and must transition or die of suicide.
Transgenerism is the most misogynistic cult in the history of the Western civilization. Trans activists use her to push the ideas of forcing society to let men pretending to be women be treated like real women; the gender-affirming industry uses her to coerce parents to transition their daughters; testosterone she is taking accelerates her mental decline; if she attempts or commits suicide, they will use her as a new number in their statistics; no one is willing to start addressing the real causes of her problems.
When we point a finger at some dude whom she would never have met if she had been given the help she needed, we only help the cult to prey on more victims.
Imo it’s important to be accurate. Yes, there are plenty of problems with transgenderism, but here Eliza tries to deconstruct media narrative and omits a big contribution to Grimm’s story.
Good points. I counter the trans trolls on my channel in the same way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgsq3wxXsDQ&t=20s
Adults (or anyone) calling you names doesn't cause PTSD. That is a completely exaggerated claim. Anxiety, perhaps.
Regrettably, in Grims case, it didn't cause appropriate reflection. She proved incapable of accepting the possibility that the brutal feedback of the majority of the people around her might have any credibility. As she grows older and more sick mentally and physically and increasingly dependent on assistance from others for food, healthcare and shelter perhaps she'll cultivate the ability to listen.
Bullying in general and on a regular basis can cause CPTSD, and that's a fact. I'm thinking this boyish, overweight, "oddball" girl would have been bullied no matter what her choices had been. Her mother (and father?) were naive and manipulated into thinking "transitioning" would solve the issues their daughter was having. Some kids never have much of a chance, due to family issues, lack of opportunity, physical and health issues, etc. It's our society's lack of real humane values that's at fault, I'm convinced of that.
CPTSD is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5.
So?
I don’t know about PTSD thing. My instincts tell me it’s exaggerated, but who knows how badly it affected her, here we’re not able to assess that. I generally think she approached the challenge with victimhood mentality and heard threats that wasn’t said.
I haven't seen the footage of these meetings, so perhaps the language was over the top. However, this community claims that words are violence. Many detransitioners tell us that the pain of the double mastectomy recovery is the cause of the PTSD. Also the stoner detail. Illegal drugs are often part of this scene. I know, my former husband who now claims to be "mother" of our sons, dropped acid and smoked pot when we first met. I said that's out or I'm out and he quit, to later secretly crossdress and take estrogen after fathering our 2 sons.
I thought so too. I am not on the gender train by any mean, but I thought what happened in those hearings were plain wrong. A grown man looks at a confused 16yr old and calls her a freak, what do you expect? It matters not whether you agree with someone's conclusions about their identity—you just cannot go around causing psychological harm to people by being callous and vile. I think everyone involved in bullying and making life difficult for Grimm ought to be utterly ashamed of themselves.
On the other hand, the "trans community" tells trans widows like me to kill ourselves by lying down in traffic or jumping off a tall building (both comments on my channel) as well as calling me a witch and claiming I "wasn't enough of a woman" to "keep" my transitioning husband. He lied, he criticized, he spent the family budget. There was no question that I'd divorce him. Then he got a tech job, lied about that and skipped out of paying child support. I document trans widows' experiences. Of 63, more than a third were sexually assaulted by lingerie-wearing husband before exiting the marriage. Of course, my ex claimed I assaulted him.
This cult does not protect its own and damages society wholesale.
I agree, no excuse for cruelty like that. Under the circumstances though, and given it was a public controversy, where a young woman was demanding to be treated like a young man... nastiness and bullying was bound to come out of the public woodwork (still no excuse). Grimm needed kindness and counseling (as do many troubled teens), not "transitioning" and access to the boys' restroom, and that was lacking, as is often the case.
I see and I support programs for detransitioners and for family members, but I'd like to see more discussion of prevention. We need to start discussions re how to support children's emotional development and self confidence at an early age, maybe 5-6, in schools and elsewhere. To allow real diversity, not the pseudodiversity that in reality erases diversity among humans. There is little support and even less funding in the USA, for programs that actually support children's emotional health. This seems important to me. We need to prevent this kind of tragedy in the first place.
Yet another autistic girl from a religious family who tried to Trans Away The Gay. Sad.
I wonder if it's worth comparing the dynamics of people who transition either as teens or twenty somethings with the dynamics of people who were part of the ex-gay movement of the 00s.
When people talk about gay conversion therapy these days they usually paint pictures of unwilling gay teens being sent of to camps or adults bullied by their families into taking part, but that overlooks that lots of gay people signed up willingly. Just like with trans related therapies nowadays, there was a market for gay conversion therapy not even 20 years ago, and the ex-gays were often front and centre.
It was very hard for people to argue against people claiming that they'd successfully changed their sexual orientation through therapy because, well, they would know, wouldn't they? You either had to argue that they were lying in the sense that they weren't actually gay, or that they were living in self denial.
I have memories of reading articles by ex-ex-gays who eventually admitted that they had basically been lying, but in the sense that they had lied to themselves first, and then lied to the world as a way of reinforcing the first lie. In many cases it was having to live the lie they had publicly trumpeted, without the constant praise and love bombing that came with first joining the movement that eventually broke them.
When it comes to same sex-attracted people who transition and “become straight,” there’s no difference between them and the people who sign up to become “ex-gays”. The only difference is the political left does not celebrate the latter.
From the photo, it appears that Gavin is not a healthy weight and is not feeling connected mind and body. Does the Guardian include the iatrogenic harm testosterone causes in the female body? Note the recent death of Griffin Sean (Makayla) Sivret, (dead at 24) who died of sepsis and liver failure after a "phalloplasty" at Boston Children's Hospital and several emergency surgeries at another Massachusetts hospital. As with men trying to "pass" as female, women like Gavin and Griffin develop a certain "look" and will never "pass." If they were told they would be completely, seamlessly folded into the male category biologically, the doctors/therapists lied to them. Another woman, Liam Johns, (dead at 35) mother of 2 young daughters, died of liver failure after dialysis stopped working. Most likely the pregnancies and testosterone before and after put her organs into overload.
Gavin has been heavy for the last 10 years. I have never seen a picture of her in a normal non-obese state.
So sad for a young person. But stoners . . . overweight is not unusual. Never smoked the stuff myself. Didn't want to empty the fridge in a frenzy of "the munchies."