I have a new post up at Genspect on YouTube influencers, trans identity, and doubt. As your child consolidates a trans identity, they’ll inevitably experience questions and doubts—after all, what’s more questionable or doubtful than the idea that despite your body—your only way of existing in the world—and despite your entire upbringing, you were never what you appear and always knew yourself to be?
One of the things that has become clear to me is that trans activists are trying to increase their numbers. I find myself thinking about Anita Bryant, who was so obsessed with the idea that GAYS were trying to convert children. She was HALF right -- it wasn't gays who wanted to do that, it was a much more dangerous group yet to come, trans activists. However, for trans people to try to influence children is much worse than gays trying to influence children. That's because the trans life is such a highly medicalized life. To be your "true self" requires hormones and multiple operations. Most children would be better off just accepting their sex as their gender.
Trans people are seeking legitimacy. The purpose of their ideology (the focus of which is "gender identity") is to make them appear normal. ("I feel like a woman, therefore I AM a woman just like you are.) If they can increase their numbers, then that makes them seem even more legitimate, and it gives them power in society. Already, however, their power in our society is outsized, although I couldn't tell you why.
Basically, if you are one person out of 200 who dresses like the opposite sex, then you look more like a weirdo than if you are one out of 20, and that makes trans people feel less legitimate. If the group you are part of is 5% or 10% of the population, like it is with gays, then society has no choice but to accommodate you.
Trans people have been presenting themselves to society as experts on gender, but they aren't. If anything, they are just experts on gender dysphoria -- but truly, I don't think they are even experts on gender dysphoria. If they were, they would have better judgement about who is trans and who isn't.
In other words, they would recognize that a lot of kids question their gender (especially now that it is trendy to do so), but that doesn't mean all those kids are trans. (The idea that just THINKING about one's gender makes a child trans is obvious nonsense.) I think that trans activists KNOW that they are trying to convert kids who aren't actually trans, but they don't care. They are so hungry to feel normal and/or to increase their numbers that they will try to convert anyone.
Even though they are at odds with each other, trans activists and born-again Christians remind me of each other. In both cases, they are intent on gaining influence over as many people as they can, no matter how bad their ideas are.
Maybe kids are experiencing distress because their HUMAN feelings, interests, and behaviors are being categorized into masculine and feminine. Maybe instead of telling kids to change their bodies, we should allow them to change their minds and challenge sexist bullshit.
Maybe less to do with "masculine" and "feminine" themselves than with the efforts of the transloonie nutcases to turn "male" and "female" into genders.
The late Justice Scalia had a nice analogy differentiating between the two:
"Gender is to sex as masculine is to male, as feminine is to female."
There ARE differences - on average. Not just physiologically but psychologically and behaviorally.
Trying to sweep those differences under the carpet or ignore them is part of the problem. "gender" is something of a so-far imperfect way of dealing with them, but a step in the right direction. Why I've argued in favour of a "rationalization of gender", of putting the concept on a more scientific footing:
Everyone's entitled to their point of view. I'm only interested in how these ideas are used to oppress women. I've written about it on my own substack and there's plenty of radical feminist literature on the subject if you're interested. If women weren't oppressed by the idea of behavior and emotions that are "natural" or "proper" to females, I highly doubt it would be an issue. But we are. I'm only interested in discussing how these ideas are used to oppress women.
"entitled to their point of view" - no matter how wrong they are? 😉
No doubt some value in the "political project" of providing equal rights and opportunities to women. However, while I HAVE read about "radical feminist literature" on gender, much of it seems little more than anti-scientific claptrap. For instance, the book "Professing Feminism" - by a couple of women, Koertge & Patai - talks about the "virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students" in various Women Studies programs:
Great deal of rot through much of feminism, radical feminism in particular. If you're starting off from invalid or untenable premises then you're unlikely to get to where you want to go. You might take a gander at a couple of posts by UK philosopher Kathleen Stock, one of which talks, some what vaguely, about the "risible absurdities" in much of feminism, the other of which argues that rad fems' attempts to "abolish gender" were "barking (mad)":
As I've argued on my own Substack, there is some merit in the concept of gender - at least as a rough synonym for personality differences between men and women. But I also think it needs to be put on a more scientific footing before it can become more of a help than a hindrance.
Why can't our gender just be the same as our sex? That's my point of view. The word "gender" simply encompasses secondary sexual characteristics as well as primary sexual characteristics (i.e., our sex).
Because "sex" encompasses ONLY a very narrow range of PRIMARY sexual characteristics - i.e., having functional gonads of only TWO types, those without being sexless. At least according to the standard biological definitions; try taking a close look at them:
Though so-called biologists Heying, Hilton, and Wright want to turn the sexes into a quite unscientific trinary by encompassing "past, present, or future functionality":
But how can "gender" be the same as "sex" if "gender" encompasses "sex", if it includes "sexual characteristics" not included in "sex"? Even in your lexicon the words refer to quite different sets of things.
The problem is that every man and their dogs has a different set of definitions for both sex and gender. We can't possibly agree on policies based on them if we can't even agree on what the words mean.
You may wish to look at a fairly readable discussion on different types of definitions here:
It's such a compelling message, that the mere presence of doubt means you're trans. As I read this, I thought about how my confused, immature kid would interpret these messages. I can see that if he didn't dig too deep, didn't think about all of the horrendous mistakes someone could make based on that logic, he could find comfort in knowing that doubt was normal and that yes, he really is trans. Because if he isn't, then he's lost. These people, these influencers, are parasites. They suck the life and love out of our children and leave them destroyed and empty. They attack the most vulnerable. They shatter families. I don't know how to break this horrible spell but similar to the small steps that lock our kids in, with every passing day we don't gain back ground, the further and further from our reality-based society we drift, and the deeper this thing sinks its claws in.
I spend too much time on Twitter and I think a lot about doubt in that hellscape. I don't know anyone fighting this cult who hasn't had moments of doubt. it's impossible not to when every major medical association (and seemingly everyone else, too) tells you in so many ways that you're wrong. Yet the people I encounter who are all in on BeKind™ do not seem to doubt at all, even when faced with clear evidence. That ability to look reality in the face and claim not to see it is just one more objectively fascinating (and unsettling) aspect to this whole mess.
I watched about 10 mins of that video "Am I Really Trans?". I could not help but notice that this person was lying almost continuously EXCEPT when advertising the sponsor.
Why give this sort of brainwashing any promotion?
Even by disapproving or analysing, we are giving support and placing globalist mind control into the vision of those who really don't need to be subjected to such manipulation.
It's mind-blowing that this kind of content can stay on mainstream platforms but the mildest criticism of its argument would most certainly result in a dogpile, cancellation forthwith, and, if the pinkyblue zealots can push hard enough, public shame and loss of income.
Doubt, discomfort, dukkha . . . there is no end to it. Facing this Truth can undo a lot of potential harm.
While it is true that doubt can creep into anyone's mind about anything at all, there is something insidious about this message. This is a tactic used by manipulative people, cult leaders, anyone who wants to brainwash people for whatever reason, even if it's just to normalize their own choices and squelch their own doubts. The argument is that, no matter what you feel like, you're probably "trans," whatever that means. It pre-supposes that "being trans" is real, and reinforces the message that, if you feel uncomfortable with your sexed body in any way, shape or form (as almost every teenager and many young adults do at one point or another), you are "trans" and you will likely need to medically alter your body, or, at the very least, you will need to reject the fact that you are biologically male or female.
Great essay again. And of course bloody criminal, in more ways than one, what gender ideology is doing to autistic and dysphoric children.
But I wonder whether you and the team over there at Genspect have much in the way of a coherent conception of gender. Some justification to argue that, given the absence of a scientific and rational definition for the concept, it is maybe not surprising that the kids are "confused". Probably why Posie Parker has some justification for asking, as she did in a YouTube video some time back, whether feminism itself isn't culpable, to a rather large extent, for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French.
Something that philosopher Kathleen Stock underlined by arguing, more or less, that transgenderism has reduced much of feminism to a pile of "risible absurdities" - or just made them more evident, that feminism itself is in need of a serious "reboot":
Though I think the rot goes rather deep, no more evident than in Wikipedia's article on gender. ICYMI, my "tale of woe" about being "deplatformed" there for objecting to their article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard which claimed that "she" had "transitioned to female":
Some chapter and verse on the rot in feminism itself, but of particular note is a quote of UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan to the effect that feminism rests on a mistake, the conflation of epistemology and politics. They're as guilty of Lysenkoism as is Wikipedia.
I've shared your post and your sm on my Substack. The purpose is to bring awareness. I'm running in my local civic election as an Independent Candidate for School Trustee in a far-left region (Vancouver, Canada) that views trans promotion and trans activism as correct and "progressive" positions. I'll delete it if you prefer.
One of the things that has become clear to me is that trans activists are trying to increase their numbers. I find myself thinking about Anita Bryant, who was so obsessed with the idea that GAYS were trying to convert children. She was HALF right -- it wasn't gays who wanted to do that, it was a much more dangerous group yet to come, trans activists. However, for trans people to try to influence children is much worse than gays trying to influence children. That's because the trans life is such a highly medicalized life. To be your "true self" requires hormones and multiple operations. Most children would be better off just accepting their sex as their gender.
Trans people are seeking legitimacy. The purpose of their ideology (the focus of which is "gender identity") is to make them appear normal. ("I feel like a woman, therefore I AM a woman just like you are.) If they can increase their numbers, then that makes them seem even more legitimate, and it gives them power in society. Already, however, their power in our society is outsized, although I couldn't tell you why.
Basically, if you are one person out of 200 who dresses like the opposite sex, then you look more like a weirdo than if you are one out of 20, and that makes trans people feel less legitimate. If the group you are part of is 5% or 10% of the population, like it is with gays, then society has no choice but to accommodate you.
Trans people have been presenting themselves to society as experts on gender, but they aren't. If anything, they are just experts on gender dysphoria -- but truly, I don't think they are even experts on gender dysphoria. If they were, they would have better judgement about who is trans and who isn't.
In other words, they would recognize that a lot of kids question their gender (especially now that it is trendy to do so), but that doesn't mean all those kids are trans. (The idea that just THINKING about one's gender makes a child trans is obvious nonsense.) I think that trans activists KNOW that they are trying to convert kids who aren't actually trans, but they don't care. They are so hungry to feel normal and/or to increase their numbers that they will try to convert anyone.
Even though they are at odds with each other, trans activists and born-again Christians remind me of each other. In both cases, they are intent on gaining influence over as many people as they can, no matter how bad their ideas are.
Maybe kids are experiencing distress because their HUMAN feelings, interests, and behaviors are being categorized into masculine and feminine. Maybe instead of telling kids to change their bodies, we should allow them to change their minds and challenge sexist bullshit.
Maybe less to do with "masculine" and "feminine" themselves than with the efforts of the transloonie nutcases to turn "male" and "female" into genders.
The late Justice Scalia had a nice analogy differentiating between the two:
"Gender is to sex as masculine is to male, as feminine is to female."
ICYMI, my elaboration on that theme:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
I see gender as the ranking of the sexes.
There ARE differences - on average. Not just physiologically but psychologically and behaviorally.
Trying to sweep those differences under the carpet or ignore them is part of the problem. "gender" is something of a so-far imperfect way of dealing with them, but a step in the right direction. Why I've argued in favour of a "rationalization of gender", of putting the concept on a more scientific footing:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/i/64264079/rationalized-gender
Fairly decent article here at "4th Wave Now" which gives solid evidence of those psychological differences:
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
Everyone's entitled to their point of view. I'm only interested in how these ideas are used to oppress women. I've written about it on my own substack and there's plenty of radical feminist literature on the subject if you're interested. If women weren't oppressed by the idea of behavior and emotions that are "natural" or "proper" to females, I highly doubt it would be an issue. But we are. I'm only interested in discussing how these ideas are used to oppress women.
"entitled to their point of view" - no matter how wrong they are? 😉
No doubt some value in the "political project" of providing equal rights and opportunities to women. However, while I HAVE read about "radical feminist literature" on gender, much of it seems little more than anti-scientific claptrap. For instance, the book "Professing Feminism" - by a couple of women, Koertge & Patai - talks about the "virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students" in various Women Studies programs:
https://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2009/07/27/professing-feminism-noh/
Great deal of rot through much of feminism, radical feminism in particular. If you're starting off from invalid or untenable premises then you're unlikely to get to where you want to go. You might take a gander at a couple of posts by UK philosopher Kathleen Stock, one of which talks, some what vaguely, about the "risible absurdities" in much of feminism, the other of which argues that rad fems' attempts to "abolish gender" were "barking (mad)":
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender
As I've argued on my own Substack, there is some merit in the concept of gender - at least as a rough synonym for personality differences between men and women. But I also think it needs to be put on a more scientific footing before it can become more of a help than a hindrance.
Why can't our gender just be the same as our sex? That's my point of view. The word "gender" simply encompasses secondary sexual characteristics as well as primary sexual characteristics (i.e., our sex).
Because "sex" encompasses ONLY a very narrow range of PRIMARY sexual characteristics - i.e., having functional gonads of only TWO types, those without being sexless. At least according to the standard biological definitions; try taking a close look at them:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
Though so-called biologists Heying, Hilton, and Wright want to turn the sexes into a quite unscientific trinary by encompassing "past, present, or future functionality":
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
But how can "gender" be the same as "sex" if "gender" encompasses "sex", if it includes "sexual characteristics" not included in "sex"? Even in your lexicon the words refer to quite different sets of things.
The problem is that every man and their dogs has a different set of definitions for both sex and gender. We can't possibly agree on policies based on them if we can't even agree on what the words mean.
You may wish to look at a fairly readable discussion on different types of definitions here:
https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm#part5
I forgot that you are someone I decided to avoid. You are argumentative and have strange ideas.
It's such a compelling message, that the mere presence of doubt means you're trans. As I read this, I thought about how my confused, immature kid would interpret these messages. I can see that if he didn't dig too deep, didn't think about all of the horrendous mistakes someone could make based on that logic, he could find comfort in knowing that doubt was normal and that yes, he really is trans. Because if he isn't, then he's lost. These people, these influencers, are parasites. They suck the life and love out of our children and leave them destroyed and empty. They attack the most vulnerable. They shatter families. I don't know how to break this horrible spell but similar to the small steps that lock our kids in, with every passing day we don't gain back ground, the further and further from our reality-based society we drift, and the deeper this thing sinks its claws in.
I spend too much time on Twitter and I think a lot about doubt in that hellscape. I don't know anyone fighting this cult who hasn't had moments of doubt. it's impossible not to when every major medical association (and seemingly everyone else, too) tells you in so many ways that you're wrong. Yet the people I encounter who are all in on BeKind™ do not seem to doubt at all, even when faced with clear evidence. That ability to look reality in the face and claim not to see it is just one more objectively fascinating (and unsettling) aspect to this whole mess.
I watched about 10 mins of that video "Am I Really Trans?". I could not help but notice that this person was lying almost continuously EXCEPT when advertising the sponsor.
Why give this sort of brainwashing any promotion?
Even by disapproving or analysing, we are giving support and placing globalist mind control into the vision of those who really don't need to be subjected to such manipulation.
It's mind-blowing that this kind of content can stay on mainstream platforms but the mildest criticism of its argument would most certainly result in a dogpile, cancellation forthwith, and, if the pinkyblue zealots can push hard enough, public shame and loss of income.
Doubt, discomfort, dukkha . . . there is no end to it. Facing this Truth can undo a lot of potential harm.
While it is true that doubt can creep into anyone's mind about anything at all, there is something insidious about this message. This is a tactic used by manipulative people, cult leaders, anyone who wants to brainwash people for whatever reason, even if it's just to normalize their own choices and squelch their own doubts. The argument is that, no matter what you feel like, you're probably "trans," whatever that means. It pre-supposes that "being trans" is real, and reinforces the message that, if you feel uncomfortable with your sexed body in any way, shape or form (as almost every teenager and many young adults do at one point or another), you are "trans" and you will likely need to medically alter your body, or, at the very least, you will need to reject the fact that you are biologically male or female.
Great essay again. And of course bloody criminal, in more ways than one, what gender ideology is doing to autistic and dysphoric children.
But I wonder whether you and the team over there at Genspect have much in the way of a coherent conception of gender. Some justification to argue that, given the absence of a scientific and rational definition for the concept, it is maybe not surprising that the kids are "confused". Probably why Posie Parker has some justification for asking, as she did in a YouTube video some time back, whether feminism itself isn't culpable, to a rather large extent, for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French.
Something that philosopher Kathleen Stock underlined by arguing, more or less, that transgenderism has reduced much of feminism to a pile of "risible absurdities" - or just made them more evident, that feminism itself is in need of a serious "reboot":
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp
Might be some value in asking how feminism itself has contributed to that rather sad state of affairs ...
Third wave "inclusive" feminism is definitely culpable, to a rather large extent, for the whole transgender clusterfuck.
Indeed.
Though I think the rot goes rather deep, no more evident than in Wikipedia's article on gender. ICYMI, my "tale of woe" about being "deplatformed" there for objecting to their article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard which claimed that "she" had "transitioned to female":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
Some chapter and verse on the rot in feminism itself, but of particular note is a quote of UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan to the effect that feminism rests on a mistake, the conflation of epistemology and politics. They're as guilty of Lysenkoism as is Wikipedia.
I've shared your post and your sm on my Substack. The purpose is to bring awareness. I'm running in my local civic election as an Independent Candidate for School Trustee in a far-left region (Vancouver, Canada) that views trans promotion and trans activism as correct and "progressive" positions. I'll delete it if you prefer.
'A Letter To Gay Men - A Warning' from EDI Jester on YouTube.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LDiZH59n3Ko0ALJF4OKtwCTQLESpjo17/view