So, in my quest to understand some of the gender ideology movement promoters (GIMPs) I’ve been reading some stuff. All of the websites for official health agencies, or official social support services (etc), that I’ve looked at say essentially the same thing and I have completely gone off gingerbread cookies. These GIMP resources have not clarified things for me very much.
I try my best - mostly I'm just trying to get stuff off my chest, trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense any more - and hoping that by some impossible feat of magic my words can make a tiny difference.
Jul 22, 2022·edited Jul 24, 2022Liked by Rudolph Rigger
Dunno, Gimping may have worked better for me, I was that tomboy, back in 1970. I was not socialized to use hammers and tools, to mess with cars and engines, which WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HELPFUL because I ended up working in a male dom area (Cad drafting and construction, furniture building) So all my life I have had to play catchup to the skills of men and it HAS KINDA SUCKED to always be in that position. I would beg you all to TEACH YOUR KIDS ALL THE SKILLS THEY NEED TO SURVIVE NO MATTER WHAT THOSE SKILLS ARE and NO MATTER WHAT SEX YOUR KIDS ARE.
I applaud your mathematical analogies and sophistry. However, the GIMPs are just another useful idiot seeking control over the "others" they have placed into silos, while pretending that utopia is just around the corner after the next compliance measure.
I am fine with adults wearing whatever they like, painting themselves with whatever colored camouflage that they think is attractive, and putting tab A into whatever (legal) slot B they prefer.
But leave the kids ALONE. That is a red line that can not be crossed, ever, end of storytime.
Without boundaries, the subjective truth fallacy/delusion spreads faster than any engineered virus.
The term "social construct" is one Butler and the gyno-jihadis misused most profoundly.
They stole it from sociology, where it meant social as in the obvious common sense: shared among and by fellow humans around you, and construct to separate it from things occuring naturally and spontaneously - weather for example.
It never meant "a bunch of people sat down and thought up rules and norms for who's who and what's what" - and I blame US feminism for that one, due to the very simple fact that their point of reference for how societal order is created is the US constitution and Bill of Rights; two documents actually developed by sitting down and mulling it over and then putting pen to paper.
But our dearly departed social constructs evolved over time, slowly and semi-spontaneously, based on the demands and circumstances of physical objective reality (which I guess means different things to a physicist?). Also, consider the class and race (US definition) aspects: by her own theory, Butler's background is crucial to how she puts together her theory, how she justifies her statements and what she interprets as truth. Women of the working class of all races (rememeber: US def.) as well as of the farmer families were concerned with women's issues only as it pertained to everyday life: wages, time off, sick leave, pregnancy, workplace hazards and such - same as the men (yes, including pregnancy - he wants sex but that means risking another mouth to feed on the same paycheck).
Butler, not to mention the real hobgoblins of the feminist tribe, Dworkin and Solanas, ignores all that as does most US feminists. Unsurprising given that the background is the same as for many of the british suffragetts. Upper middle class women and girls, the kind that got an education so as to be able to make intelligent conversation but not for any real use and who knew they were going to marry men of the same or better class, meaning these ladies never held a job or was ever going to, except for fun. This divide was strong in feminism all the way to the 1980s, when the actual real struggle was won.
But the radicals, the manhaters, the marxist political lesbians (yes, it's a thing, has been since the 1920s), and the deranged remained and picked up french deconstructionist philosophy. A school of though mostly characterised by effete french semi-aristos with pedophile tendencies (Foucault, most prominently) and completely disconnected from reality. Worse, postmodernism is nothing but a re-hash of the philosophical parts of de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Bedoom'. Half the book is porn, written in such a clinical and mechanical manner it becomes hilarious rather than erotic, but the other half is a series of discourses on morality, the citizen and the state. What Foucault did, basically, was he re-wrote it sans porn, using three times the number of words and as complicated grammar as he could manage (complex grammar being a point of its own to french writers - any actual frenchman could explain it a lot better than me though, I can't even read Gaston LaGaffe in french.)
For a fun time, check out Dworkin and Solanas and compare to Butler. (Definitions of fun may vary. No liability accepted.)
Not sure I agree with all that but I do think that Butler is not to be trusted. Definitely using gender to raise up an army of neutered monks for a new world order.
To me, trusted doesn't enter into it. Her argument, logic and reason makes up a coherent structure to be analysed both whether it conforms to objective reality, inasmuch as such can be measured and determined, and how her subjective interpretations and experiences are communicated.
See, thing is, postmodernism was originally not an ideological, epistemological or ontological position such as it is today, but a tool for analysing the interplay between medium and message (and audience, though some argue audience is part of the medium and message).
So, using it as a tool the very weaponisation and arms race of language pomo's having been up to in force since the late sixties, one can quite easily depower, deflower (academically) and neuter 99% of their claims - in real life this usually amounts to the PC/pomo/woke (same thing, really) avoiding any and all debates and arguments with you, seeing as you by turning their weaponisation of language into a MAD-doctrine makes further power plays on their part untenable.
When debating before faculty, this means you give the decisionmakers an 'out' without them having to pick sides or coming out as "anti-feminist" or fall victim to other such inquisitorial-in-spirit labelling.
The ulterior motive being to defund the pomos, without enabling them to offer meaningful resistance.
Much as with Christianity ("love your enemy" became "hate your enemy" and capitalism ("free market" became captured, crony market"), post-modernism has been turned against its own precepts ("resistance and deconstruction became its own hegemony"). What I like about feminism, is that, with all its faults and blindnesses, it has maintained a kind of core integrity, and that integrity allows it to call out the astro-turf trans activism. Yes, there is still a huge CLASS hole in the middle of feminism where upper-middle class mostly Jewish and Anglo women were declaring the right to work, whereas, for instance, black women were wanting the right NOT to work two and three poverty jobs, and as mentioned, rural women had a whole batch of other concerns. I still find especially radical feminism quite compelling, and obviously in my latest article I find them the BEST opponent of a nefarious and very real patriarchal trans activism. https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf
Thanks for the book recommendations-- I just put them on my reading list. Your assessment of the "baked in" nature of these categories seems to precisely narrow in on the problem with current attitudes toward gender. Combined with the tendency to pathologize many aspects of the human condition-- anxiety, depression, lack of ability to concentrate on tasks perceived as boring, inability to sit still for long periods of time-- this has led to a situation that defies logic. We can observe that male seahorses give birth, but we do not call them females. We can observe that male peacocks are all dolled up, yet we do not call them females. We can observe that male penguins care for their eggs, yet we do not call them females. Yet we cannot accept that if a boy or man is having a feeling or a thought or an experience, that must be within the realm of possibility for a human boy or man because that's what he IS.
I actually referred to (and promoted) your excellent article in my own Substack article, because I thought it was that good. You got me thinking in such an engaged way that one of my comments ended up becoming the basis for an essay. Thanks for the inspiration. This really shows what a community of writers and thinkers and lovers of humanity can do! https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf
Brilliantly analyzed and compassionately argued. These two qualities rarely make it into even Substack essays, because people are trying to communicate and fortify a position. By expressing empathy for Judith Butler's intent, but then demonstrating how it "inverted" itself (non-mathematically in a way that is somewhat irreversible, at least for the childhood those having "gender reassignment") you make the intelligent and persuasive conclusion that those who appear to have started the stampede to abolish gender stereotypes have been taken over by those who now want to abolish sex and gender altogether, a VERY different thing (abolishing counterproductive social restrictions around what biology ought to mean vs. abolishing the distinction and definition of biological sex itself, conflating this with gender, and therefore any destroying any ground upon which to support those who have been discriminated against).
I have noted this: Respect, protection, and support of people who feel they are quite literally the opposite sex (and have put the time and work into "transitioning" over many years when they are fully developed) IS a valid form of upholding social justice. Hystericizing, especially gay teens or those with insecurities about their identities, and then railroading them into puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgery is the EXACT OPPOSITE. It is the imposition of "heteronormativity" and "patriarchy" in other forms.
By abolishing the whole notion of sex, now Title IX becomes meaningless. Any (usually "white") dude (observing the color and sex of almost all the major trans "activists" I have seen in the news) can now feel completely entitled to move right into the women's world and plunder what gains and reparations have been established there for himself
Man, are there ridiculous examples like the "trans-women" who set "women's" track records in Connecticut and the "trans-woman" who impregnated two biological women in a "woman's" prison and trans activist insistence that lesbians should not "discriminate" against "women" with penises. Each example is a re-inscription of patriarchal imperative and control and REGRESSIVE to the extreme, but somehow passed off incredibly as progressive.
As shown in the books Irreversible Damage and What Makes a Woman and more and more newspaper articles, many "trans" teens are actually either people confused about their gender roles and identity (and just need time to iron it out themselves over time) OR actually GAY teens who cannot admit same-sex attraction, who are now being funneled into being a heterosexual "opposite" partner through "transitioning" so they can fit into antiquated "heteronormative" standards.
This gut-wrenching irony is unfortunately not funny, but tragic, because this is happening on the bodies of not just adults but CHILDREN (so we can now throw outright promotion of child abuse into the mix), and yes it is "irreversible." You cannot get a childhood back ruined by the psychological and medical abuse. Any serious professional who has any experience with kids (I have been in education for more than three decades) knows that identity is biologically, psychologically, and necessarily PLASTIC when they are young, but adults with their own motives (including profit motives) are IMPOSING a static solution to something that is not even a problem, but a very normal tumultuous caterpillar-to-butterfly period in the lives of especially adolescent girls.
This is part of our larger social disease of trying to eliminate any human struggle or confusion by imposing a scientific, medical, social "assignment" from the top-down and REMOVING the very challenge that allows us TO AUTHENTICALLY FIND OUT WHO WE ARE. Once again patriarchal culture is trying to subjugate Mother Nature, and violently at that-- on the bodies of children and against the beautiful reality of biological sex distinction.
You see this same misbegotten reasoning and approaches to allergies (by removing peanuts, for instance, makes people MORE susceptible to peanut allergies rather than less) and providing "vaccines" to remove some symptoms and pain that make people more susceptible to re-infection over time (something called "negative efficacy" and now PROVEN with mRNA vaccines in peer-reviewed studies).
The arrogance, the arrogance.
Let's stop thinking childishly in "adult" bodies and minds (maybe we adults should "transition" to the more innocent and realistic "play" of childhood) that we can stop challenge and change and impose our own narrow, man-made (literally) designs to divert or cease a change and growth that appears to be unstoppable. Let us cease our war with nature and work with her. Let us acknowledge the perennial and beautiful qualities of biological sex itself. This ultimately is a war on not only nature but the human nature of learning, struggle, change, and triumph. Don't condemn the conditions of formation, the creative play that meaningfully earned identity requires.
When I was young, around 7 or 8, I pretended to be a girl when playing out in the woods, because I had read a book in the Wizard of Oz series (by Frank L. Baum). In that book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, a young girl (Ozma) who was to rule Oz as a princess had a turned into a young boy (Tip) to hide her from bad witches. She was changed BACK to become a beautiful girl, and rightfully rule when the time was right. "Trans-positive" interpretations of this get it EXACTLY WRONG (https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2013/02/28/ozma-l.-frank-baums-trans-positive-oz-character). The girl was transitioned to a boy to hide her from the ravages of an evil society (which hated beautiful feminine rulership), and then BACK (i.e. "detransitioning") in order to restore the proper order.
It is time we stop intervening in a natural process and protect, respect, and support children's own sturggle, triumph, and EARNED identity. It is time we support masculine-acting girls as girls, and feminine-acting boys as boys, rather than condemning them or stuffing them into another body. This will work itself out. It does NOT need our imposition, but our understanding and humility.
Well said. Can I ask, don't you think asking the question "who am I?" makes the question impossible to answer?
My thought: the fact that you can ask, means that there's someone asking. As that means that someone exists to ask, there must already be an identity doing the asking and the act of asking the question externalises the identification process, making it dependent on articifial sources where the asker tries to identify with something that is not him/her self.
So the more the person searches and asks and questions and decontructs and critiques, the less it grows on its own accord and the less it automously and automatically internalise experiences that had the question never been consciously asked would have been made part of the identity looked for.
Or in normal english: You are what you do. Right up until the subjecive runs headfirst into the semi-immovable object of physical reality. I'd argue that "helping" children consciously identify as something or other (doesn't have to be what sex they have or which of n+1 genders they like) in reality destroys their ability to be a whole person.
Asking "Who am I?" is a potentially double-edged sword. If asked out of searching and confusion, you will likely try to grab on to some exterior construct that isn't really you at all, but a dispossessed avatar of some sort. If one asks, "Who am I?" like, say, Thich Nhat Hanh, then realizing there is a asker BEHIND all form that is the real being, one is oppositely RELEASED from all forms. I like to do neither. I like to ask "Who am I?" as a ongoing co-creative endeavor, like "Who am I now?" and "now" and I don't mind using my mind and concepts to wonder and string together a procession of identities to notice that I move and grow and love in new (and hopefully deeper, more substantive ways). There is no need for the first one. There is tremendous need for the second to break us out of the first. And the fun and creativity of life invites the third!
I actually referred to (and promoted) your excellent article in my own Substack article, because I thought it was that good. You got me thinking in such an engaged way that one of my comments ended up becoming the basis for an essay. Thanks for the inspiration. This really shows what a community of writers and thinkers and lovers of humanity can do! https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf
Keep up this fantastic output, Rudolph! Thanks.
Much appreciated Alex
I try my best - mostly I'm just trying to get stuff off my chest, trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense any more - and hoping that by some impossible feat of magic my words can make a tiny difference.
Dunno, Gimping may have worked better for me, I was that tomboy, back in 1970. I was not socialized to use hammers and tools, to mess with cars and engines, which WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HELPFUL because I ended up working in a male dom area (Cad drafting and construction, furniture building) So all my life I have had to play catchup to the skills of men and it HAS KINDA SUCKED to always be in that position. I would beg you all to TEACH YOUR KIDS ALL THE SKILLS THEY NEED TO SURVIVE NO MATTER WHAT THOSE SKILLS ARE and NO MATTER WHAT SEX YOUR KIDS ARE.
I applaud your mathematical analogies and sophistry. However, the GIMPs are just another useful idiot seeking control over the "others" they have placed into silos, while pretending that utopia is just around the corner after the next compliance measure.
I am fine with adults wearing whatever they like, painting themselves with whatever colored camouflage that they think is attractive, and putting tab A into whatever (legal) slot B they prefer.
But leave the kids ALONE. That is a red line that can not be crossed, ever, end of storytime.
Without boundaries, the subjective truth fallacy/delusion spreads faster than any engineered virus.
If she likes the color blue, she can become a German weatherwoman.
I think pretty soon all these weather people will have to be wearing flame-retardant suits
Ha!
The term "social construct" is one Butler and the gyno-jihadis misused most profoundly.
They stole it from sociology, where it meant social as in the obvious common sense: shared among and by fellow humans around you, and construct to separate it from things occuring naturally and spontaneously - weather for example.
It never meant "a bunch of people sat down and thought up rules and norms for who's who and what's what" - and I blame US feminism for that one, due to the very simple fact that their point of reference for how societal order is created is the US constitution and Bill of Rights; two documents actually developed by sitting down and mulling it over and then putting pen to paper.
But our dearly departed social constructs evolved over time, slowly and semi-spontaneously, based on the demands and circumstances of physical objective reality (which I guess means different things to a physicist?). Also, consider the class and race (US definition) aspects: by her own theory, Butler's background is crucial to how she puts together her theory, how she justifies her statements and what she interprets as truth. Women of the working class of all races (rememeber: US def.) as well as of the farmer families were concerned with women's issues only as it pertained to everyday life: wages, time off, sick leave, pregnancy, workplace hazards and such - same as the men (yes, including pregnancy - he wants sex but that means risking another mouth to feed on the same paycheck).
Butler, not to mention the real hobgoblins of the feminist tribe, Dworkin and Solanas, ignores all that as does most US feminists. Unsurprising given that the background is the same as for many of the british suffragetts. Upper middle class women and girls, the kind that got an education so as to be able to make intelligent conversation but not for any real use and who knew they were going to marry men of the same or better class, meaning these ladies never held a job or was ever going to, except for fun. This divide was strong in feminism all the way to the 1980s, when the actual real struggle was won.
But the radicals, the manhaters, the marxist political lesbians (yes, it's a thing, has been since the 1920s), and the deranged remained and picked up french deconstructionist philosophy. A school of though mostly characterised by effete french semi-aristos with pedophile tendencies (Foucault, most prominently) and completely disconnected from reality. Worse, postmodernism is nothing but a re-hash of the philosophical parts of de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Bedoom'. Half the book is porn, written in such a clinical and mechanical manner it becomes hilarious rather than erotic, but the other half is a series of discourses on morality, the citizen and the state. What Foucault did, basically, was he re-wrote it sans porn, using three times the number of words and as complicated grammar as he could manage (complex grammar being a point of its own to french writers - any actual frenchman could explain it a lot better than me though, I can't even read Gaston LaGaffe in french.)
For a fun time, check out Dworkin and Solanas and compare to Butler. (Definitions of fun may vary. No liability accepted.)
Not sure I agree with all that but I do think that Butler is not to be trusted. Definitely using gender to raise up an army of neutered monks for a new world order.
To me, trusted doesn't enter into it. Her argument, logic and reason makes up a coherent structure to be analysed both whether it conforms to objective reality, inasmuch as such can be measured and determined, and how her subjective interpretations and experiences are communicated.
See, thing is, postmodernism was originally not an ideological, epistemological or ontological position such as it is today, but a tool for analysing the interplay between medium and message (and audience, though some argue audience is part of the medium and message).
So, using it as a tool the very weaponisation and arms race of language pomo's having been up to in force since the late sixties, one can quite easily depower, deflower (academically) and neuter 99% of their claims - in real life this usually amounts to the PC/pomo/woke (same thing, really) avoiding any and all debates and arguments with you, seeing as you by turning their weaponisation of language into a MAD-doctrine makes further power plays on their part untenable.
When debating before faculty, this means you give the decisionmakers an 'out' without them having to pick sides or coming out as "anti-feminist" or fall victim to other such inquisitorial-in-spirit labelling.
The ulterior motive being to defund the pomos, without enabling them to offer meaningful resistance.
Much as with Christianity ("love your enemy" became "hate your enemy" and capitalism ("free market" became captured, crony market"), post-modernism has been turned against its own precepts ("resistance and deconstruction became its own hegemony"). What I like about feminism, is that, with all its faults and blindnesses, it has maintained a kind of core integrity, and that integrity allows it to call out the astro-turf trans activism. Yes, there is still a huge CLASS hole in the middle of feminism where upper-middle class mostly Jewish and Anglo women were declaring the right to work, whereas, for instance, black women were wanting the right NOT to work two and three poverty jobs, and as mentioned, rural women had a whole batch of other concerns. I still find especially radical feminism quite compelling, and obviously in my latest article I find them the BEST opponent of a nefarious and very real patriarchal trans activism. https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf
Thanks Rikard
As usual a very detailed and insightful comment - very much appreciated.
I'm learning a lot so please keep them coming - if you have time
Thanks for the book recommendations-- I just put them on my reading list. Your assessment of the "baked in" nature of these categories seems to precisely narrow in on the problem with current attitudes toward gender. Combined with the tendency to pathologize many aspects of the human condition-- anxiety, depression, lack of ability to concentrate on tasks perceived as boring, inability to sit still for long periods of time-- this has led to a situation that defies logic. We can observe that male seahorses give birth, but we do not call them females. We can observe that male peacocks are all dolled up, yet we do not call them females. We can observe that male penguins care for their eggs, yet we do not call them females. Yet we cannot accept that if a boy or man is having a feeling or a thought or an experience, that must be within the realm of possibility for a human boy or man because that's what he IS.
I actually referred to (and promoted) your excellent article in my own Substack article, because I thought it was that good. You got me thinking in such an engaged way that one of my comments ended up becoming the basis for an essay. Thanks for the inspiration. This really shows what a community of writers and thinkers and lovers of humanity can do! https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf
Brilliantly analyzed and compassionately argued. These two qualities rarely make it into even Substack essays, because people are trying to communicate and fortify a position. By expressing empathy for Judith Butler's intent, but then demonstrating how it "inverted" itself (non-mathematically in a way that is somewhat irreversible, at least for the childhood those having "gender reassignment") you make the intelligent and persuasive conclusion that those who appear to have started the stampede to abolish gender stereotypes have been taken over by those who now want to abolish sex and gender altogether, a VERY different thing (abolishing counterproductive social restrictions around what biology ought to mean vs. abolishing the distinction and definition of biological sex itself, conflating this with gender, and therefore any destroying any ground upon which to support those who have been discriminated against).
I have noted this: Respect, protection, and support of people who feel they are quite literally the opposite sex (and have put the time and work into "transitioning" over many years when they are fully developed) IS a valid form of upholding social justice. Hystericizing, especially gay teens or those with insecurities about their identities, and then railroading them into puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgery is the EXACT OPPOSITE. It is the imposition of "heteronormativity" and "patriarchy" in other forms.
By abolishing the whole notion of sex, now Title IX becomes meaningless. Any (usually "white") dude (observing the color and sex of almost all the major trans "activists" I have seen in the news) can now feel completely entitled to move right into the women's world and plunder what gains and reparations have been established there for himself
Man, are there ridiculous examples like the "trans-women" who set "women's" track records in Connecticut and the "trans-woman" who impregnated two biological women in a "woman's" prison and trans activist insistence that lesbians should not "discriminate" against "women" with penises. Each example is a re-inscription of patriarchal imperative and control and REGRESSIVE to the extreme, but somehow passed off incredibly as progressive.
As shown in the books Irreversible Damage and What Makes a Woman and more and more newspaper articles, many "trans" teens are actually either people confused about their gender roles and identity (and just need time to iron it out themselves over time) OR actually GAY teens who cannot admit same-sex attraction, who are now being funneled into being a heterosexual "opposite" partner through "transitioning" so they can fit into antiquated "heteronormative" standards.
This gut-wrenching irony is unfortunately not funny, but tragic, because this is happening on the bodies of not just adults but CHILDREN (so we can now throw outright promotion of child abuse into the mix), and yes it is "irreversible." You cannot get a childhood back ruined by the psychological and medical abuse. Any serious professional who has any experience with kids (I have been in education for more than three decades) knows that identity is biologically, psychologically, and necessarily PLASTIC when they are young, but adults with their own motives (including profit motives) are IMPOSING a static solution to something that is not even a problem, but a very normal tumultuous caterpillar-to-butterfly period in the lives of especially adolescent girls.
This is part of our larger social disease of trying to eliminate any human struggle or confusion by imposing a scientific, medical, social "assignment" from the top-down and REMOVING the very challenge that allows us TO AUTHENTICALLY FIND OUT WHO WE ARE. Once again patriarchal culture is trying to subjugate Mother Nature, and violently at that-- on the bodies of children and against the beautiful reality of biological sex distinction.
You see this same misbegotten reasoning and approaches to allergies (by removing peanuts, for instance, makes people MORE susceptible to peanut allergies rather than less) and providing "vaccines" to remove some symptoms and pain that make people more susceptible to re-infection over time (something called "negative efficacy" and now PROVEN with mRNA vaccines in peer-reviewed studies).
The arrogance, the arrogance.
Let's stop thinking childishly in "adult" bodies and minds (maybe we adults should "transition" to the more innocent and realistic "play" of childhood) that we can stop challenge and change and impose our own narrow, man-made (literally) designs to divert or cease a change and growth that appears to be unstoppable. Let us cease our war with nature and work with her. Let us acknowledge the perennial and beautiful qualities of biological sex itself. This ultimately is a war on not only nature but the human nature of learning, struggle, change, and triumph. Don't condemn the conditions of formation, the creative play that meaningfully earned identity requires.
When I was young, around 7 or 8, I pretended to be a girl when playing out in the woods, because I had read a book in the Wizard of Oz series (by Frank L. Baum). In that book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, a young girl (Ozma) who was to rule Oz as a princess had a turned into a young boy (Tip) to hide her from bad witches. She was changed BACK to become a beautiful girl, and rightfully rule when the time was right. "Trans-positive" interpretations of this get it EXACTLY WRONG (https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2013/02/28/ozma-l.-frank-baums-trans-positive-oz-character). The girl was transitioned to a boy to hide her from the ravages of an evil society (which hated beautiful feminine rulership), and then BACK (i.e. "detransitioning") in order to restore the proper order.
It is time we stop intervening in a natural process and protect, respect, and support children's own sturggle, triumph, and EARNED identity. It is time we support masculine-acting girls as girls, and feminine-acting boys as boys, rather than condemning them or stuffing them into another body. This will work itself out. It does NOT need our imposition, but our understanding and humility.
Well said. Can I ask, don't you think asking the question "who am I?" makes the question impossible to answer?
My thought: the fact that you can ask, means that there's someone asking. As that means that someone exists to ask, there must already be an identity doing the asking and the act of asking the question externalises the identification process, making it dependent on articifial sources where the asker tries to identify with something that is not him/her self.
So the more the person searches and asks and questions and decontructs and critiques, the less it grows on its own accord and the less it automously and automatically internalise experiences that had the question never been consciously asked would have been made part of the identity looked for.
Or in normal english: You are what you do. Right up until the subjecive runs headfirst into the semi-immovable object of physical reality. I'd argue that "helping" children consciously identify as something or other (doesn't have to be what sex they have or which of n+1 genders they like) in reality destroys their ability to be a whole person.
Asking "Who am I?" is a potentially double-edged sword. If asked out of searching and confusion, you will likely try to grab on to some exterior construct that isn't really you at all, but a dispossessed avatar of some sort. If one asks, "Who am I?" like, say, Thich Nhat Hanh, then realizing there is a asker BEHIND all form that is the real being, one is oppositely RELEASED from all forms. I like to do neither. I like to ask "Who am I?" as a ongoing co-creative endeavor, like "Who am I now?" and "now" and I don't mind using my mind and concepts to wonder and string together a procession of identities to notice that I move and grow and love in new (and hopefully deeper, more substantive ways). There is no need for the first one. There is tremendous need for the second to break us out of the first. And the fun and creativity of life invites the third!
Great comment Zeus
I've only just noticed you write your own substack (sorry). I'm off to have a look.
I actually referred to (and promoted) your excellent article in my own Substack article, because I thought it was that good. You got me thinking in such an engaged way that one of my comments ended up becoming the basis for an essay. Thanks for the inspiration. This really shows what a community of writers and thinkers and lovers of humanity can do! https://citizenzeus.substack.com/p/what-if-advocating-for-sex-reassignment?sd=pf