My latest for UnHerd, a.k.a. more shooting fish in barrels: Trans activists in the academy have abandoned their training in historical methods in order to reimagine figures from Roman emperors to Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I (as far as I know, no such attempts have been made on QEII), and author
One of the worst examples I've seen of this is when Portland Center Stage produced a show about the great Portlander and chef James Beard. Someone who wanted to show how queer or how with-it they were decided to retroactively queer James Beard. That's correct. They took a gay man who was by all appearances every inch an old queen, robbed him of that authentic identity and rebranded him as a queer man. It was an irresponsible anachronism because during Beard's life "queer" had yet to be transformed from an insult into the name of a tiresome hipster scene.
Thank you, Ollie. As a gay man of 73, I remember when "queer" was a slur -- until, that is, those "Queer Eye" people decided to get cute. (I never saw that show, as I didn't have cable TV.)
A couple years ago I became incensed when a straight man, Eddie Glaude (a black man and a professor at Princeton), was interviewed on the PBS NewsHour about the late James Baldwin. Glaude used the word "queer" frequently in that interview, to the point where Judy Woodruff looked a little uncomfortable (but said nothing about it). Now, Baldwin was both gay and black, and Glaude's interest in Baldwin was that he was black. But Glaude, as a straight man, really had no business calling Baldwin "queer". Baldwin was of a generation of gays that didn't use that word. I emailed Glaude and chewed him out. (He was unrepentant.)
I fully understand that the word "gay" isn't perfect. It conjures up images of shallow gay men dressing up and going out on the town, but it nonetheless has a better meaning than "queer". Queer means nothing good: "strange, odd, weird, unusual, abnormal" -- what person with any self-respect wants to be called THAT?
Now, if Glaude can call gay people "queer", why can't I use the N-word? (I don't actually want to use the N-word, but you get my point.)
Thanks for writing about this. This topic irritates me also.
Frida Kahlo is another one that trans people are trying to reinvent. Why? Because once, as a joke, she dressed as a man (at the age of 17, I think) for a family photo. In every other instance, she wore feminine clothes, not to mention flowers in her hair. She was a brilliant artist and highly intelligent, even when she was young. Dressing as a man for a picture was just the kind of wry social statement she might think to make, as she understood all about sexual politics. But doing that once didn't make her trans.
There’s not much to say about this is there, other than to agree it’s completely dementing. It really is a totalitarian impulse isn’t it, extending in all directions, whether that’s by trying to control people’s private thoughts in the present, or by ‘transing’ the whole of history. The frantic ambition of gender ideology seems to be in direct relation to the flimsiness of its claims.
"Totalitarian" is a good word. I'm reminded that trans people see themselves as experts on everything related to gender, but why should people who have a medical condition (gender dysphoria) be the experts? Why should they be able to tell me, a perfectly normal person, that it is my "gender identity" (which I don't acknowledge that I have) that makes me male, and not my body? Perhaps they are experts on their own dysfunction, but that's all.
Talking about totalitarianism, I continue to be astonished when I read articles that espouse all of the trans B.S. as if it were fact -- and not just fact today, but as if it has been fact for a thousand years. I remember the first time I made a comment about transgenderism on a Washington Post article (one of the few newspapers that still allow comments), someone swooped in and "corrected" me, saying that gender and sex were different things. To have someone with such dumb ideas talking down to me still burns me up.
The WaPo ran a headline recently asking how Nikki Haley's "gender" affected her candidacy. I pushed back, saying that it's doubtful Haley would acknowledge having such a thing as a gender. I added that Nikki probably interprets how others respond to her and how she responds to others in terms of her sex, in other words, as a woman. I then chided WaPo for ignoring Haley's intersectionality profile and urged that they run pieces exploring how Trump and DeSantis's "gender" affected their campaign.
To their credit, the WaPo's moderators, who in my experience censor criticism of trans, did not take my comment down. It's probably because I stayed away from the third-rail topic: trans.
Well, to me "sex" and "gender" mean the same thing, except that "gender" has more applications than "sex". As I say in one of my articles, "gender" could not exist without "sex" -- all manifestations of our gender exist as an outgrowth of our sex. If sex didn't exist, gender wouldn't exist either.
WaPo kicked me off of their site a couple years ago. Back then, you could comment on articles even if you didn't pay them. Towards the end, they were censoring me constantly. I'm back on WaPo, paying them $2 a month for one year, and fewer of my comments are being censored (but some are). There are just too many anti-trans people posting there for them to censor them all. Even though WaPo is 1000% in the corner of trans people and ideology (to the extent that their reporting is often nauseating, like when they defend ridiculous-looking drag queens), they finally figured out that they can't censor EVERYONE they don't agree with without alienating paying customers.
‘Elagabalus, “long regarded as mad and one of the worst Roman emperors […] is perhaps now best thought of as a transgender teen”.’
I actually lolled
Seeing as a Elagabalus, among such things as marrying multiple wives including a vestal virgin, and dressing up as a woman to prostitute himself to men, was most famous for creating a new religion where he replaced Jupiter as the head of the pantheon of gods with himself and forced priests to worship this new religion under his supervision...I’d say that actually sounds about right.
Not to pop off, but I don’t believe in such overly-simplistic umbrella terms as “autogynephile”- nor do I like pseudo-scientific identity labels for behaviors like cross dressing that most likely have a wide variety of psychological origins and purposes. It’s as absurd to call Elagabalus an autogynephile as it is to call him transgender. He was a man who did many strange and unlikable things for inscrutable reasons that are largely lost to history.
I'm mostly joking about how absurd it is that projecting one modern identity on a historical figure is trendy and another is verboten, even though they both have similarities to his reported behavior. Trying to pin these terms on historical figures is silly, but I think it's a perfectly good term to use for people now. There are people who seem to be sexually aroused by feminizing themselves. Putting a label on them doesn't explain everything about them, but neither do the labels heterosexual or homosexual explain everything about gay or straight people.
I understand! :) I just don’t buy the HSTS vs agp dichotomy. I think it’s way too complicated with all the ROGD people out there. For cross-dressing/identifying men who do exhibit sexual behavior as a predominant feature of their crossdressing, I prefer to use the term “transvestic fetishism” in an attempt to avoid “Apg” (a behavior) being turned into an identity- which we are in fact now seeing happening, unfortunately. People are trying to turn this unhealthy/maladaptive behavior into a “its who I am” rights movement. Framing behaviors as identities is how we got in this mess to begin with.
You make a good point about sexual orientation labels- I agree that they oversimplify human sexuality. I guess I don’t have the same problem of turning these terms into identities though bc sexual orientation (straight, gay, bi and anything in between) aren’t disordered behaviors that harm people.
Calling someone “an agp” is like turning any other disorder into an identity- but even worse, bc it’s not an innate part of their brain, it’s disordered behavior they arrive at through choice. So it’s so much worse than calling an autistic person “an autist”- bc at least autism is a part of their brain. Agp isn’t a developmental disorder. It’s a behavior (a disordered one). Just like being trans isn’t technically something you ARE in any material way- it’s something you are bc it’s something you DO.
To the degree I studied the history of Chinese philosophy, I noticed an interesting pattern. Innovations usual presented themselves as ancient wisdom. The reason was that the very concept of originality was suspect. An idea that hadn't proven itself through the test of time wasn't an idea worth considering. It might seem strange to many moderns, but the fetishization of originality is peculiarly western and modern. It wasn't fashionable even in Europe until the 17th century, before which the authority of Aristotle was recognized even when flatly contradicted by the evidence of the senses. Perhaps the activist tendency to read "transness" into the distant past indicates it's really rooted in a reactionary ideology, despite presenting itself as a radical one.
H. P. Lovecraft was now trans apparently. I've seen people who've been retconned to be trans who never were, and then after they decide this was the case, it's "transphobic" not to refer to them by their pronouns.
And he also displayed an almost freudian ICK factor when presented with women. Most in his stories are evil or cultist and greater writers than I have historically spoken of his monsters as 'vaginal'. So nah, I so totally doubt anything claimed 'trans' about HPL. If anything, I see him as a proto geek-bro.
Agreeing with some of the other comments, by alleging that there were always "transgender" people, the declarants are seeking to legitimize this new concept. More specifically, they are trying to capitalize on the thing that allowed homosexuality to become acceptable. We collectively agree that sexual orientation is something one is born with, and, therefore, it would be cruel to penalize a gay person for something they could never have changed. This notion has helped homosexuality to gain mainstream acceptance. (Of course, this doesn't have to be the basis for our acceptance. We could instead simply agree that, well, "love is love" and there is nothing wrong with having intimate relations with someone of the same sex as long as the parties are consenting. We could agree that, whether or not homosexuality is inborn, it is not harming anyone and has beauty in it. This is not to say I think people "choose" to be gay - but what if they did? Wouldn't it still be fine?)
Anyway, if there were always "transgender" people, and this is an uncommon (but apparently only as uncommon as being a redhead since at least 2% of the young population seems to be "trans"), in-born characteristic, then we have to accept it as long as it isn't harming others. (Some people might be born with characteristics such as a violent streak, and we never just accept that!).
That, I think, is why some people go to such ridiculous lengths to re-write history.
Well said. The logic is solid and obvious- we MUST reject trans ideology 100% because the majority of those pushing this agenda are bad actors in their vicious disregard for the harm done to women's rights and children's safety, and the free license given to dangerous predators.
"Why not own their invention, rather than impose it on those who came before them? "
Because they know, at some level, that trans isn't real.
We gay men can point to Old Testament scripture that condemns gay sex to show that same-sex attraction has been documented as having been part of the human experience for thousands of years. That may be its only use on the side of good.
Trans people can't do that because the historical record isn't there. So, like art forgers, trans activists have to rifle through the archives, so to speak, plant fakes and claim to find them. There's a special place in art-historical hell for any dissertation advisor or editor of a peer-reviewed journal who is complicit in legitimizing such drivel.
There are a few ancient cultures where trans people are known to exist, but not that many, so I basically agree with you. Japan is one of them. Back then, of course, I don't think anyone was having operations.
Has anyone tried to posthumously “trans” David Bowie, the most famous gender -bender of them all? (IMO) Much of my generation might go to war over that if any TRA dares to even hint at it. How sad that the world has regressed so much towards sex stereotypes.
They will no more likely to acknowledge the newness of their beliefs than did the radical reformers of the 16th century who had "discovered" the true way of being Christian and the true interpretation of the Gospels.
I know the illogic very well, as a trans widow. My former husband has the triumvirate of physical abuse by his father as a child, inheriting the red haired appearance of his mother, crisis in his early thirties (after fathering our 2 children) of another male developing dominance in his workplace. Then boom, become a "trans woman" and get a job at the Guggenheim museum, then an equity contract at a database management company. All while claiming to be under employed and unable to pay child support. My channel on youtube (search the name) features the story of 55 more trans widows.
In my experience with these people, it's because they have a deep need to imagine that what they're creating is "natural" - that the society they want is the proper, original version of humanity and they're simply fighting to remove the unnatural later additions and return to the way things should be. They want to cast themselves as reactionaries rather than revolutionaries.
This is how all of history is being re-created: through a contemporary social lens. Everyone living 2,000 years ago who did not think the way people are supposed to think now is criticized and condemned for wrongthink
"don't misgender me!!" but it's perfectly fine to retcon the identities of people who've been dead and gone for centuries without their consent?!
One of the worst examples I've seen of this is when Portland Center Stage produced a show about the great Portlander and chef James Beard. Someone who wanted to show how queer or how with-it they were decided to retroactively queer James Beard. That's correct. They took a gay man who was by all appearances every inch an old queen, robbed him of that authentic identity and rebranded him as a queer man. It was an irresponsible anachronism because during Beard's life "queer" had yet to be transformed from an insult into the name of a tiresome hipster scene.
Thank you, Ollie. As a gay man of 73, I remember when "queer" was a slur -- until, that is, those "Queer Eye" people decided to get cute. (I never saw that show, as I didn't have cable TV.)
A couple years ago I became incensed when a straight man, Eddie Glaude (a black man and a professor at Princeton), was interviewed on the PBS NewsHour about the late James Baldwin. Glaude used the word "queer" frequently in that interview, to the point where Judy Woodruff looked a little uncomfortable (but said nothing about it). Now, Baldwin was both gay and black, and Glaude's interest in Baldwin was that he was black. But Glaude, as a straight man, really had no business calling Baldwin "queer". Baldwin was of a generation of gays that didn't use that word. I emailed Glaude and chewed him out. (He was unrepentant.)
I fully understand that the word "gay" isn't perfect. It conjures up images of shallow gay men dressing up and going out on the town, but it nonetheless has a better meaning than "queer". Queer means nothing good: "strange, odd, weird, unusual, abnormal" -- what person with any self-respect wants to be called THAT?
Now, if Glaude can call gay people "queer", why can't I use the N-word? (I don't actually want to use the N-word, but you get my point.)
"Tiresome hipster scene" -- I like that.
Thanks for writing about this. This topic irritates me also.
Frida Kahlo is another one that trans people are trying to reinvent. Why? Because once, as a joke, she dressed as a man (at the age of 17, I think) for a family photo. In every other instance, she wore feminine clothes, not to mention flowers in her hair. She was a brilliant artist and highly intelligent, even when she was young. Dressing as a man for a picture was just the kind of wry social statement she might think to make, as she understood all about sexual politics. But doing that once didn't make her trans.
When one of these “enlightened” declares Mohamed to be trans, I’ll know they are serious.
I'm just gonna preemptively pop some popcorn for that one hahaha
There’s not much to say about this is there, other than to agree it’s completely dementing. It really is a totalitarian impulse isn’t it, extending in all directions, whether that’s by trying to control people’s private thoughts in the present, or by ‘transing’ the whole of history. The frantic ambition of gender ideology seems to be in direct relation to the flimsiness of its claims.
"Totalitarian" is a good word. I'm reminded that trans people see themselves as experts on everything related to gender, but why should people who have a medical condition (gender dysphoria) be the experts? Why should they be able to tell me, a perfectly normal person, that it is my "gender identity" (which I don't acknowledge that I have) that makes me male, and not my body? Perhaps they are experts on their own dysfunction, but that's all.
Talking about totalitarianism, I continue to be astonished when I read articles that espouse all of the trans B.S. as if it were fact -- and not just fact today, but as if it has been fact for a thousand years. I remember the first time I made a comment about transgenderism on a Washington Post article (one of the few newspapers that still allow comments), someone swooped in and "corrected" me, saying that gender and sex were different things. To have someone with such dumb ideas talking down to me still burns me up.
The WaPo ran a headline recently asking how Nikki Haley's "gender" affected her candidacy. I pushed back, saying that it's doubtful Haley would acknowledge having such a thing as a gender. I added that Nikki probably interprets how others respond to her and how she responds to others in terms of her sex, in other words, as a woman. I then chided WaPo for ignoring Haley's intersectionality profile and urged that they run pieces exploring how Trump and DeSantis's "gender" affected their campaign.
To their credit, the WaPo's moderators, who in my experience censor criticism of trans, did not take my comment down. It's probably because I stayed away from the third-rail topic: trans.
Well, to me "sex" and "gender" mean the same thing, except that "gender" has more applications than "sex". As I say in one of my articles, "gender" could not exist without "sex" -- all manifestations of our gender exist as an outgrowth of our sex. If sex didn't exist, gender wouldn't exist either.
WaPo kicked me off of their site a couple years ago. Back then, you could comment on articles even if you didn't pay them. Towards the end, they were censoring me constantly. I'm back on WaPo, paying them $2 a month for one year, and fewer of my comments are being censored (but some are). There are just too many anti-trans people posting there for them to censor them all. Even though WaPo is 1000% in the corner of trans people and ideology (to the extent that their reporting is often nauseating, like when they defend ridiculous-looking drag queens), they finally figured out that they can't censor EVERYONE they don't agree with without alienating paying customers.
‘Elagabalus, “long regarded as mad and one of the worst Roman emperors […] is perhaps now best thought of as a transgender teen”.’
I actually lolled
Seeing as a Elagabalus, among such things as marrying multiple wives including a vestal virgin, and dressing up as a woman to prostitute himself to men, was most famous for creating a new religion where he replaced Jupiter as the head of the pantheon of gods with himself and forced priests to worship this new religion under his supervision...I’d say that actually sounds about right.
An autogynophile, maybe ..
Not to pop off, but I don’t believe in such overly-simplistic umbrella terms as “autogynephile”- nor do I like pseudo-scientific identity labels for behaviors like cross dressing that most likely have a wide variety of psychological origins and purposes. It’s as absurd to call Elagabalus an autogynephile as it is to call him transgender. He was a man who did many strange and unlikable things for inscrutable reasons that are largely lost to history.
I'm mostly joking about how absurd it is that projecting one modern identity on a historical figure is trendy and another is verboten, even though they both have similarities to his reported behavior. Trying to pin these terms on historical figures is silly, but I think it's a perfectly good term to use for people now. There are people who seem to be sexually aroused by feminizing themselves. Putting a label on them doesn't explain everything about them, but neither do the labels heterosexual or homosexual explain everything about gay or straight people.
I understand! :) I just don’t buy the HSTS vs agp dichotomy. I think it’s way too complicated with all the ROGD people out there. For cross-dressing/identifying men who do exhibit sexual behavior as a predominant feature of their crossdressing, I prefer to use the term “transvestic fetishism” in an attempt to avoid “Apg” (a behavior) being turned into an identity- which we are in fact now seeing happening, unfortunately. People are trying to turn this unhealthy/maladaptive behavior into a “its who I am” rights movement. Framing behaviors as identities is how we got in this mess to begin with.
You make a good point about sexual orientation labels- I agree that they oversimplify human sexuality. I guess I don’t have the same problem of turning these terms into identities though bc sexual orientation (straight, gay, bi and anything in between) aren’t disordered behaviors that harm people.
Calling someone “an agp” is like turning any other disorder into an identity- but even worse, bc it’s not an innate part of their brain, it’s disordered behavior they arrive at through choice. So it’s so much worse than calling an autistic person “an autist”- bc at least autism is a part of their brain. Agp isn’t a developmental disorder. It’s a behavior (a disordered one). Just like being trans isn’t technically something you ARE in any material way- it’s something you are bc it’s something you DO.
To the degree I studied the history of Chinese philosophy, I noticed an interesting pattern. Innovations usual presented themselves as ancient wisdom. The reason was that the very concept of originality was suspect. An idea that hadn't proven itself through the test of time wasn't an idea worth considering. It might seem strange to many moderns, but the fetishization of originality is peculiarly western and modern. It wasn't fashionable even in Europe until the 17th century, before which the authority of Aristotle was recognized even when flatly contradicted by the evidence of the senses. Perhaps the activist tendency to read "transness" into the distant past indicates it's really rooted in a reactionary ideology, despite presenting itself as a radical one.
H. P. Lovecraft was now trans apparently. I've seen people who've been retconned to be trans who never were, and then after they decide this was the case, it's "transphobic" not to refer to them by their pronouns.
did they forget about Lovecraft's more unsavory racist real life views? 😂
And he also displayed an almost freudian ICK factor when presented with women. Most in his stories are evil or cultist and greater writers than I have historically spoken of his monsters as 'vaginal'. So nah, I so totally doubt anything claimed 'trans' about HPL. If anything, I see him as a proto geek-bro.
Agreeing with some of the other comments, by alleging that there were always "transgender" people, the declarants are seeking to legitimize this new concept. More specifically, they are trying to capitalize on the thing that allowed homosexuality to become acceptable. We collectively agree that sexual orientation is something one is born with, and, therefore, it would be cruel to penalize a gay person for something they could never have changed. This notion has helped homosexuality to gain mainstream acceptance. (Of course, this doesn't have to be the basis for our acceptance. We could instead simply agree that, well, "love is love" and there is nothing wrong with having intimate relations with someone of the same sex as long as the parties are consenting. We could agree that, whether or not homosexuality is inborn, it is not harming anyone and has beauty in it. This is not to say I think people "choose" to be gay - but what if they did? Wouldn't it still be fine?)
Anyway, if there were always "transgender" people, and this is an uncommon (but apparently only as uncommon as being a redhead since at least 2% of the young population seems to be "trans"), in-born characteristic, then we have to accept it as long as it isn't harming others. (Some people might be born with characteristics such as a violent streak, and we never just accept that!).
That, I think, is why some people go to such ridiculous lengths to re-write history.
Well said. The logic is solid and obvious- we MUST reject trans ideology 100% because the majority of those pushing this agenda are bad actors in their vicious disregard for the harm done to women's rights and children's safety, and the free license given to dangerous predators.
If it has always been, the burden of proof is on the deniers; If it is brand new, the burden of proof is on the radicals.
"Why not own their invention, rather than impose it on those who came before them? "
Because they know, at some level, that trans isn't real.
We gay men can point to Old Testament scripture that condemns gay sex to show that same-sex attraction has been documented as having been part of the human experience for thousands of years. That may be its only use on the side of good.
Trans people can't do that because the historical record isn't there. So, like art forgers, trans activists have to rifle through the archives, so to speak, plant fakes and claim to find them. There's a special place in art-historical hell for any dissertation advisor or editor of a peer-reviewed journal who is complicit in legitimizing such drivel.
There are a few ancient cultures where trans people are known to exist, but not that many, so I basically agree with you. Japan is one of them. Back then, of course, I don't think anyone was having operations.
It was also a highly regulated social status that was not allowed to supercede the reigning social order or allow male intrusion into women's spaces.
Has anyone tried to posthumously “trans” David Bowie, the most famous gender -bender of them all? (IMO) Much of my generation might go to war over that if any TRA dares to even hint at it. How sad that the world has regressed so much towards sex stereotypes.
They will no more likely to acknowledge the newness of their beliefs than did the radical reformers of the 16th century who had "discovered" the true way of being Christian and the true interpretation of the Gospels.
I know the illogic very well, as a trans widow. My former husband has the triumvirate of physical abuse by his father as a child, inheriting the red haired appearance of his mother, crisis in his early thirties (after fathering our 2 children) of another male developing dominance in his workplace. Then boom, become a "trans woman" and get a job at the Guggenheim museum, then an equity contract at a database management company. All while claiming to be under employed and unable to pay child support. My channel on youtube (search the name) features the story of 55 more trans widows.
Sheesh! Everybody knows it's the archangels who are nonbinary.
In my experience with these people, it's because they have a deep need to imagine that what they're creating is "natural" - that the society they want is the proper, original version of humanity and they're simply fighting to remove the unnatural later additions and return to the way things should be. They want to cast themselves as reactionaries rather than revolutionaries.
This is how all of history is being re-created: through a contemporary social lens. Everyone living 2,000 years ago who did not think the way people are supposed to think now is criticized and condemned for wrongthink