Putting this together, I realized why I’ve felt so busy this year… there’s a lot more where all of this came from (check the archives, if you’re curious) but these are some of my favorite pieces and conversations from the first half of 2023.
I continue to be impressed, Eliza, by the depth of your understanding of this topic, and especially your understanding of all the myriad nuances.
I've been thinking lately about the effect transgenderism has had on our culture, especially how the liberals (of which I am one) have picked up on the ideology and adopted it without question. It astonishes me even more that all of those medical organizations have adopted the ideology. One gets the feeling that the officials at the organizations went through a process that was something like this: "We don't understand this issue, so we'll just accept what the trans people are saying because they know better than the rest of us -- and besides, they are so pitiful that we owe it to them to do that." But such a position would have resulted in luke-warm acceptance at best, not the cultish devotion we are seeing. For years I saw liberals as responsible, intelligent, compassionate people. It seems, however, that they crave the cult mind-state just as conservatives do. The cult mind-state is a little like cocaine, a soothing addiction that somehow lifts adult responsibilities from people's shoulders.
I also think that liberals as a group may be a little humiliated by the whole racial thing: For decades they fancied themselves to be free of racial prejudice, but then it turned out that they were almost as bigoted as the conservatives. When trans people came along, I think that some of them told themselves that "this time" they would get it right. This theory, however, may be bunk, as I suspect most liberals haven't confronted their racism.
The entire specter of a tiny minority of trans people shaming all of the world's liberals into adopting their bad ideas is still a phenomenon that puzzles me no end. Trans people are like fishermen with the most fantastically delicious bait on their hooks. But because it doesn't appeal to ME, I don't understand why it appeals to anyone.
Talking about cults, I'm coming to see Taylor Swift as a cult figure. Maybe that's it: I don't understand the cults of the world because I am basically a loner.
I have another theory (not fully thought through). There is actually very little racism against minorities in most spheres (there may always be pockets). What is called “structural racism” is likely the overhang of racist legacies but is increasingly problems of class rather than race (eg policing issues). We live in a society much closer to MLK’s vision than activists will admit. Likewise the huge progress in gay rights has normalized gay marriage and families, etc. So, all of a sudden, activists are left without causes. Racism, sexism, homophobia have largely legally been overcome.
Transgenderism comes along claiming to be the next cause. It’s easy to claim they are discriminated against because many people do feel a revulsion. I do--the ick factor is real. Ah ha! As a good liberal I can overcome that revulsion! I can join the next civil rights cause! I can prove my liberal bona fides by embracing the cause, even as young people in my life are suddenly engulfed by it--as a longtime friend explained, “We must support our young people!”
For me personally, I suddenly woke up when I discovered Nina Paley, a favorite filmmaker and artist, was canceled. Wait, what, why? Down the rabbit holes I went.
I no longer prove my liberal bona fides by embracing trans “rights.” But having experienced being a liberal supporter of trans “rights” without thinking about it much, I think I understand the path many have walked. Like many cult supporters, I didn’t join a cult, I thought only that I was supporting a good cause.
I would find your comment helpful and instructive except that I don't agree that there is "very little racism in most spheres". I see humanity consumed and convulsing with prejudice and bigotry. I am white, and I have no problem identifying the racism in other white people. Just the fact that I live in a smallish town in Rhode Island which is purely white, with almost no black people living here, is clear evidence of racism. The white landlords won't rent to black people. A lot of white people do a good job of pretending that the race issue is over, but it isn't. Institutional racism remains in place, not because of institutional forces, but because of racism. In the U.S., black people remain poorer than whites, and it is not because of class. In fact, the disparity in class is BECAUSE of racism. So you see, it's the other way around from what you said: Racism keeps black people in a lower class.
I see racism everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court is full of conservative racists. If they weren't racist, then they would not keep ruling that affirmative action is unconstitutional. It is the most effective solution to racism, so naturally a court of white people will rule against it.
Yes, we can agree to disagree on this particular topic. I'm sorry that your community seems so hostile to people different from them. But the jurists ruling against Affirmative Action are applying a principal that discrimination based on skin color is wrong. There are black intellectuals (Glenn Loury, etc) who agree that AA is wrong and moreover ineffective. One can be anti-AA and yet believe in equal civil rights for all groups.
But I won't try to convince you of this. I believed what you believed until recently. I will note that many of the anti-racism activists who preach skin-color essentialism (dividing us into affinity groups, accusing many of us of unconscious racism) also tend to endorse the gender stereotypes common in trans activism. I think it consistent to resist essentialism in all its forms whatever the identity attribute.
But don't listen to me! The trans stuff has unmoored me from all my formerly rock solid beliefs! Best wishes for the New Year!
No, we are not going to agree to disagree on this topic, and wishing me a happy New Year doesn't end the conversation. If you don't believe that racism exists in the U.S. except in a few "pockets", you are most likely a racist yourself. The evidence is all around us to be seen. It isn't hidden, and there are no economic or social factors keeping it in place. It is being kept in place by racist people, not just the people who are openly racist, but the ones who pretend there isn't a real problem. The world that you seem to believe in -- one in which all our problems will work out because people are essentially rational and honest -- just doesn't exist.
I'm living in a white community, not because I want to, but because this was where my mother lived in her final years, and once I was here (to watch over her), I decided to stay because I didn't have a car and finding a new place without a car isn't easy. When I was looking for a roommate about five years ago, a black man showed up on a bicycle to see the apartment. The first thing he said was that he was sorry for not telling me he was black. It was clear that he was terrified to be in a white neighborhood. He was afraid he'd be stopped by the police just for biking through the area. This is just one experience I've had. At 73, I've had a lot of them.
By the way, the people who divide society into "affinity groups" are the racists, not the ones who just want everyone to get along. Identity politics was put in place by the bigots precisely because THEY are the ones who hate this group, hate that group, hate this group, hate that group -- don't you see? That forces the rest of us to see the world in the same "essentialist" way that they do so that we can fight their bigotry.
Haven't you noticed that the people who hate one group tend to hate them all? The same person who hates blacks will also hate homosexuals and will also hate Jews and will also be a misogynist. It all ties together. They hate everyone who is different from them. In other words, THEIR group (whatever it is -- usually white, male, straight and Christian) is the "essential" group, and all the others are hated.
Your "essentialism" argument is backfiring on you.
Dear Eliza, I can't tell you how much I've appreciated your investigations into this subject over the year. Your compassionate, intelligent and inquisitive approach stood out among the various sources I followed to try to get my head around it. A big part of that, I think, is your lurking in the right places online, analysing what you found there, and your courage to sit with the assemblage of elders in their weird communions and report back to the outside world. Your reporting on the struggles of young women and girls, and of parents, has been deeply moving, and your assessment of the science enlightening. I feel confident that all these efforts will have changed many minds (despite how hard it seems sometimes to change a single mind) and contributed significantly to the change we've seen in the tenor of the debate over recent months. You illustrate for me that to be on the right side of history we should avoid the desire to be on the right side of history, and just try to be on the right side of the particular judgement before us at any given time. Thank you.
Eliza, I've tried to become a paid subscriber multiple times, but the subscription never goes through. It might be entirely user error on my end (we had some credit card fraud a while back, so now my CC company is fussy about online purchases). However, if it is on your end, that would be terrible and would mean other people cannot become paid subscribers.
You've clearly been a "busy" girl. 🙂 Though maybe a large part of that has been an unfortunate necessity of having to deal with a rather toxic ideology, the pervasiveness of scientific illiteracy, a serious social pathology, and the resulting medical scandal -- a plague of almost biblical proportions. But a "happy New Year" to you too -- hopefully the tide is turning.
En passant, it seems that your link to the McGill "talk on campus about sex vs. gender identity" now says, "The page you requested does not exist." Maybe they were properly embarrassed by their handling of it or their responses to the protests?
But some reason to argue that part and parcel of all of that is your, "it started with one person I loved and the fragile falsities they desperately needed to be true" -- "fragile falsities" being particularly apt, cogent and insightful. Apropos of which and in "a note from our sponsor"🙂 , y'all might have some interest in my "Reality and Illusion: Being vs Identifying As", the theme for which is largely based on Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?":
But of particular note, and of more than passing relevance to that medical scandal and to your "fragile falsities", is this elaboration on Albee's play and philosophy (hopefully not too much of a "bad word"😉🙂) :
Wikipedia: "Reality and Illusion: Albee has said that the title of the play 'means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf ... who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.' .... Albee's interest in the theme of reality versus illusion is expressed in a number of his plays. .... Albee says, 'There was a time when people believed in deities. And then revolutions came – industrial, French, Freudian, Marxist. God and absolutes vanished. Individuals find this very difficult and uncomfortable. All they have left is fantasy or the examination of the self.' .... According to Lawrence Kingsley, Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as 'George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion.' ...."
And an absolutely brilliant movie with Burton and Taylor -- one of the all-time greats, highly recommended.
Moot of course just exactly what are the "illusions" in play in that transgender clusterfuck, but some reason -- in fact, a great many reasons -- to argue that they're ubiquitous on all sides of the fence, even if showing some idiosyncratic differences. Apropos of which, of that pervasive scientific illiteracy, and of those "fragile falsities", consider some things precipitated by your recent link to several articles at The Critic, a review by "philosopher" and transwoman Alex Sharpe of recent books by Stock and Joyce:
Sharpe: "However, [Stock's] adversary, at least in relation to sex, is an imaginary foe for nobody holds the view biological sex is not real. It is true some trans activists and academics argue biological sex is not binary and even that sex exists on a spectrum. Indeed, it is clear, even on Stock’s account, that sex is not strictly binary."
But apart from Sharpe's rather "disingenuous" evasion -- a great many transactivists are busily engaged in bastardizing and corrupting biology by turning it into meaningless abstraction, into no more than a fashion "accessory" -- "she" at least emphasizes the fatal flaw in Stock's position -- and in that of many other so-called biologists and philosophers (*cough Colin Wright, Carole Hooven, Alex Byrne, .... *cough).
More particularly, both Sharpe "herself", and Joyce and Stock and all of those so-called biologists and philosophers, are unclear on the concept -- foundational to all of biology -- that the sexes are, by definition, a binary, but they are all likewise "unclear", if not clueless, that that does NOT mean -- contrary to GC dogma and their "fragile falsities" -- that everyone has to be either male or female from birth to death. "male" and "female" are in fact a binary, but they are NOT exhaustive categories -- a rather desperate if not pathological and quite problematic "illusion" to insist otherwise.
I continue to be impressed, Eliza, by the depth of your understanding of this topic, and especially your understanding of all the myriad nuances.
I've been thinking lately about the effect transgenderism has had on our culture, especially how the liberals (of which I am one) have picked up on the ideology and adopted it without question. It astonishes me even more that all of those medical organizations have adopted the ideology. One gets the feeling that the officials at the organizations went through a process that was something like this: "We don't understand this issue, so we'll just accept what the trans people are saying because they know better than the rest of us -- and besides, they are so pitiful that we owe it to them to do that." But such a position would have resulted in luke-warm acceptance at best, not the cultish devotion we are seeing. For years I saw liberals as responsible, intelligent, compassionate people. It seems, however, that they crave the cult mind-state just as conservatives do. The cult mind-state is a little like cocaine, a soothing addiction that somehow lifts adult responsibilities from people's shoulders.
I also think that liberals as a group may be a little humiliated by the whole racial thing: For decades they fancied themselves to be free of racial prejudice, but then it turned out that they were almost as bigoted as the conservatives. When trans people came along, I think that some of them told themselves that "this time" they would get it right. This theory, however, may be bunk, as I suspect most liberals haven't confronted their racism.
The entire specter of a tiny minority of trans people shaming all of the world's liberals into adopting their bad ideas is still a phenomenon that puzzles me no end. Trans people are like fishermen with the most fantastically delicious bait on their hooks. But because it doesn't appeal to ME, I don't understand why it appeals to anyone.
Talking about cults, I'm coming to see Taylor Swift as a cult figure. Maybe that's it: I don't understand the cults of the world because I am basically a loner.
I have another theory (not fully thought through). There is actually very little racism against minorities in most spheres (there may always be pockets). What is called “structural racism” is likely the overhang of racist legacies but is increasingly problems of class rather than race (eg policing issues). We live in a society much closer to MLK’s vision than activists will admit. Likewise the huge progress in gay rights has normalized gay marriage and families, etc. So, all of a sudden, activists are left without causes. Racism, sexism, homophobia have largely legally been overcome.
Transgenderism comes along claiming to be the next cause. It’s easy to claim they are discriminated against because many people do feel a revulsion. I do--the ick factor is real. Ah ha! As a good liberal I can overcome that revulsion! I can join the next civil rights cause! I can prove my liberal bona fides by embracing the cause, even as young people in my life are suddenly engulfed by it--as a longtime friend explained, “We must support our young people!”
For me personally, I suddenly woke up when I discovered Nina Paley, a favorite filmmaker and artist, was canceled. Wait, what, why? Down the rabbit holes I went.
I no longer prove my liberal bona fides by embracing trans “rights.” But having experienced being a liberal supporter of trans “rights” without thinking about it much, I think I understand the path many have walked. Like many cult supporters, I didn’t join a cult, I thought only that I was supporting a good cause.
I would find your comment helpful and instructive except that I don't agree that there is "very little racism in most spheres". I see humanity consumed and convulsing with prejudice and bigotry. I am white, and I have no problem identifying the racism in other white people. Just the fact that I live in a smallish town in Rhode Island which is purely white, with almost no black people living here, is clear evidence of racism. The white landlords won't rent to black people. A lot of white people do a good job of pretending that the race issue is over, but it isn't. Institutional racism remains in place, not because of institutional forces, but because of racism. In the U.S., black people remain poorer than whites, and it is not because of class. In fact, the disparity in class is BECAUSE of racism. So you see, it's the other way around from what you said: Racism keeps black people in a lower class.
I see racism everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court is full of conservative racists. If they weren't racist, then they would not keep ruling that affirmative action is unconstitutional. It is the most effective solution to racism, so naturally a court of white people will rule against it.
Yes, we can agree to disagree on this particular topic. I'm sorry that your community seems so hostile to people different from them. But the jurists ruling against Affirmative Action are applying a principal that discrimination based on skin color is wrong. There are black intellectuals (Glenn Loury, etc) who agree that AA is wrong and moreover ineffective. One can be anti-AA and yet believe in equal civil rights for all groups.
But I won't try to convince you of this. I believed what you believed until recently. I will note that many of the anti-racism activists who preach skin-color essentialism (dividing us into affinity groups, accusing many of us of unconscious racism) also tend to endorse the gender stereotypes common in trans activism. I think it consistent to resist essentialism in all its forms whatever the identity attribute.
But don't listen to me! The trans stuff has unmoored me from all my formerly rock solid beliefs! Best wishes for the New Year!
No, we are not going to agree to disagree on this topic, and wishing me a happy New Year doesn't end the conversation. If you don't believe that racism exists in the U.S. except in a few "pockets", you are most likely a racist yourself. The evidence is all around us to be seen. It isn't hidden, and there are no economic or social factors keeping it in place. It is being kept in place by racist people, not just the people who are openly racist, but the ones who pretend there isn't a real problem. The world that you seem to believe in -- one in which all our problems will work out because people are essentially rational and honest -- just doesn't exist.
I'm living in a white community, not because I want to, but because this was where my mother lived in her final years, and once I was here (to watch over her), I decided to stay because I didn't have a car and finding a new place without a car isn't easy. When I was looking for a roommate about five years ago, a black man showed up on a bicycle to see the apartment. The first thing he said was that he was sorry for not telling me he was black. It was clear that he was terrified to be in a white neighborhood. He was afraid he'd be stopped by the police just for biking through the area. This is just one experience I've had. At 73, I've had a lot of them.
By the way, the people who divide society into "affinity groups" are the racists, not the ones who just want everyone to get along. Identity politics was put in place by the bigots precisely because THEY are the ones who hate this group, hate that group, hate this group, hate that group -- don't you see? That forces the rest of us to see the world in the same "essentialist" way that they do so that we can fight their bigotry.
Haven't you noticed that the people who hate one group tend to hate them all? The same person who hates blacks will also hate homosexuals and will also hate Jews and will also be a misogynist. It all ties together. They hate everyone who is different from them. In other words, THEIR group (whatever it is -- usually white, male, straight and Christian) is the "essential" group, and all the others are hated.
Your "essentialism" argument is backfiring on you.
Dear Eliza, I can't tell you how much I've appreciated your investigations into this subject over the year. Your compassionate, intelligent and inquisitive approach stood out among the various sources I followed to try to get my head around it. A big part of that, I think, is your lurking in the right places online, analysing what you found there, and your courage to sit with the assemblage of elders in their weird communions and report back to the outside world. Your reporting on the struggles of young women and girls, and of parents, has been deeply moving, and your assessment of the science enlightening. I feel confident that all these efforts will have changed many minds (despite how hard it seems sometimes to change a single mind) and contributed significantly to the change we've seen in the tenor of the debate over recent months. You illustrate for me that to be on the right side of history we should avoid the desire to be on the right side of history, and just try to be on the right side of the particular judgement before us at any given time. Thank you.
Thank you so much for writing this! <3
Eliza, I've tried to become a paid subscriber multiple times, but the subscription never goes through. It might be entirely user error on my end (we had some credit card fraud a while back, so now my CC company is fussy about online purchases). However, if it is on your end, that would be terrible and would mean other people cannot become paid subscribers.
Oh, that's not good! Thanks for letting me know. If there are any details you remember from the failure of the subscription, please let me know.
Email me if you want to find a workaround... I have some ideas.
Hi! It was a Substack issue, but the help desk fixed it. Hopefully, no one else has been blocked. Anyway, I can't wait for book club!
Thank you! Next book is Suzanne o'sullivan's Sleeping Beauties. The doodle poll to schedule it has not gone out yet!
You've clearly been a "busy" girl. 🙂 Though maybe a large part of that has been an unfortunate necessity of having to deal with a rather toxic ideology, the pervasiveness of scientific illiteracy, a serious social pathology, and the resulting medical scandal -- a plague of almost biblical proportions. But a "happy New Year" to you too -- hopefully the tide is turning.
En passant, it seems that your link to the McGill "talk on campus about sex vs. gender identity" now says, "The page you requested does not exist." Maybe they were properly embarrassed by their handling of it or their responses to the protests?
https://www.mcgill.ca/humanrights/channels/event/sex-vs-gender-identity-debate-united-kingdom-and-divorce-lgb-t-344646
But some reason to argue that part and parcel of all of that is your, "it started with one person I loved and the fragile falsities they desperately needed to be true" -- "fragile falsities" being particularly apt, cogent and insightful. Apropos of which and in "a note from our sponsor"🙂 , y'all might have some interest in my "Reality and Illusion: Being vs Identifying As", the theme for which is largely based on Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?":
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
But of particular note, and of more than passing relevance to that medical scandal and to your "fragile falsities", is this elaboration on Albee's play and philosophy (hopefully not too much of a "bad word"😉🙂) :
Wikipedia: "Reality and Illusion: Albee has said that the title of the play 'means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf ... who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.' .... Albee's interest in the theme of reality versus illusion is expressed in a number of his plays. .... Albee says, 'There was a time when people believed in deities. And then revolutions came – industrial, French, Freudian, Marxist. God and absolutes vanished. Individuals find this very difficult and uncomfortable. All they have left is fantasy or the examination of the self.' .... According to Lawrence Kingsley, Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as 'George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion.' ...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F#Reality_and_illusion
And an absolutely brilliant movie with Burton and Taylor -- one of the all-time greats, highly recommended.
Moot of course just exactly what are the "illusions" in play in that transgender clusterfuck, but some reason -- in fact, a great many reasons -- to argue that they're ubiquitous on all sides of the fence, even if showing some idiosyncratic differences. Apropos of which, of that pervasive scientific illiteracy, and of those "fragile falsities", consider some things precipitated by your recent link to several articles at The Critic, a review by "philosopher" and transwoman Alex Sharpe of recent books by Stock and Joyce:
Sharpe: "However, [Stock's] adversary, at least in relation to sex, is an imaginary foe for nobody holds the view biological sex is not real. It is true some trans activists and academics argue biological sex is not binary and even that sex exists on a spectrum. Indeed, it is clear, even on Stock’s account, that sex is not strictly binary."
https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/10/08/review-of-helen-joyces-trans-when-ideology-meets-reality-london-oneworld-2021-pp-311-rp-16-99-and-kathleen-stocks-material-girls-why-reality-matters-for-feminism-london-fle/
But apart from Sharpe's rather "disingenuous" evasion -- a great many transactivists are busily engaged in bastardizing and corrupting biology by turning it into meaningless abstraction, into no more than a fashion "accessory" -- "she" at least emphasizes the fatal flaw in Stock's position -- and in that of many other so-called biologists and philosophers (*cough Colin Wright, Carole Hooven, Alex Byrne, .... *cough).
More particularly, both Sharpe "herself", and Joyce and Stock and all of those so-called biologists and philosophers, are unclear on the concept -- foundational to all of biology -- that the sexes are, by definition, a binary, but they are all likewise "unclear", if not clueless, that that does NOT mean -- contrary to GC dogma and their "fragile falsities" -- that everyone has to be either male or female from birth to death. "male" and "female" are in fact a binary, but they are NOT exhaustive categories -- a rather desperate if not pathological and quite problematic "illusion" to insist otherwise.
Griffiths: "What are biological sexes?":
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
Wiley: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles"
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202200173