"Gender journey" is when menopausal affluent European ladies of the chattering classes go to Gambia to buy sex from young men/underage boys. It's quite a problem, for the Gambians as it helps entrench sex slave trade, and for the Western nations since these women bring home all kinds of diseases and parasites.
(Anyone feeling a smidge upset? Then go to you municipal library and dig up feminist and mainstream articles from the 1980s and 1990s, on men going to Pattaya, Thailand, to buy sex. See if you find that equally upsetting for the same reason.)
Some are born with deformed genitalia and need plastic surgery. Some even may need hormonal therapy to have normal puberty.
But no-one can ever change their sex.
And gender is originally a valid concept: it concerned how items of clothing, cultural mores and rituals and so on were tied to the sex of the performer, nothing more.
It was kidnapped by the disgusting pedo-homo-trans-fetishists, because they are running out of "assigned Holy victim-groups" to abuse for their own self-aggrandizement. The Negros, Arabs, moslems, gypsies, and so on are objecting to being their pet cause, finding the whole thing belittling in the extreme, insulting, umanly, unnatural and wrong.
And they aren't shy about blackening the eye of some do-gooder word-magic-believer trying to impart on them the Woke WoMan's Burden".
Another thing: all these trends in psychotic mental disorders come only after the media hype them up. In the 1980s, it was borderline and repressed memories. In the 1990s it was anorexia/bulimia. Et cetera.
Want to be real angry? Try look up the "cure"-rate of psychiatry as a science. It's success-rate is worse than the penal system's.
I keep coming back to this 'original' meaning and re-writing it as sex-based behaviours, roles and expectations that are said to be typical of one's sex. Like a set of laws or a code of conduct for some club membership is that something we can be said to 'have' on an individual level?
I suppose it's a bit like the whole pronoun nonsense in which we are said to 'possess' our very own pronouns!
Like you I believe that the expansion of 'psychiatric', erm, conditions has just fooled people into thinking there's something 'medically' wrong with themselves when, in reality, they're entirely within 'normal' ranges of human behaviour and feeling. It's the mental health version of hypochondria I guess.
I think it's true that you can actually 'think' yourself into an actual depressive state, for example. Obviously, not all, etc, etc.
It helps understanding if one adopts the longer perspective: the gender-cult is the opposite end of the pendulum swing to the Victorian-era rules on dress-code, mannerisms and so on:
More precisely, it is a reaction based in the modern-day interpretation of and judgement on the Victorian era social codes, as communicated and defined and criticised by inter-war era cultural radicals, later filtered and re-worked during the 1960s and again in the 1990s.
For a physics-equivalent imagine that you take the collected research of Niels Bohr and condense it into one 300 page volume. Twenty years later, someone distills that into 30 pages. Twenty years later again, someone else gets it down to 3 pages, and finally someone crunches it into 300 letters.
And then you try to build a model explaining sub-atomic thingamabobs based on those 300 letters.
That's how the gender-hoopla, academic feminism, post/de-colonialism and so on came about.
And Psychiatry is the gateway to a pharmaceutical hell many youngsters (and oldsters too!) find themselves in... and cannot escape. "Are you feeling sad/lonely/bored/anxious? Try this mind f&cking med with every side effect known to man. You'll be on your way to your own personal nightmare in no time!"
If they “cure” them they lose their $$ train. They don’t want to cure them. They want to hook them on life-long therapy sessions and psychoactive pharmaceuticals. I’ve an acquaintance who is truly addicted to her psychiatrist and the often changing meds and therapy sessions. She’s as screwed up and unhappy now as she was 10 years ago. But she’s convinced she’s “better” and that her doctor is a mental health guru. She’s still single, alone, angry, overweight, depressed and suffers anxiety. But she’s in her way to a better life…and it’s only been ten years!! What’s the rush? Psychiatry is, to me, an absolute joke.
Recidivism rates for sexual offenders and pedophiles are quite high. One study showed that those treated by psychiatrists had higher recidivism rates than those not treated.
Yeah - I too wonder whether 'therapy' actually makes things worse, on average. It seems to be a bit of a lottery whether you get a therapist who is capable of actually helping you live a happier and more internally balanced life.
I haven’t thought about that book in years. It’s probably been 40 years since I read it. Maybe I’ll pick it up again.
I prefer the coin toss method if decision making. Heads we go to Montana. Tails we go to Wyoming. (Having seen most of Europe in my younger years I prefer to stay stateside these days). Heads we get a Golden Retriever. Tails we get a German Shepherd. (We have two of each)
I read it in the early 90s the first time. Had it among my books on "English Literary History" when at uni. One professor, a guest-lecturer from San Francisco, spotted it and remarked: "That's a very dangerous book".
Not in a scolding way or any kind of "You oughtn't read such", just a flat and slightly bemused tone of voice.
I still wonder what she meant.
Being an avid player of boardgames, tabletop games and p&p RPGs since I was 11, using dice comes natural. But not just D6s - D4, D8, D10, D12 ("the forgotten die"), D20, D100.
And one thing you learn is that probability has a sense of humour and drama. Twice in my life I have seen people roll '1' on the same twenty-sided die, seven throws in a row.
"Anything but a '1'" is something you rarely if ever a wargamer say - that's not just taunting Murphy, that's motorboating The Lady herself.
My father gave me the book to read. I’m guessing he wanted me to learn something but we never did discuss the book after I read it. He was a bit of a nomad and was often gone for months living on some commune or something.
I still love board games. We used to have “game night” every Sunday when I lived in the city. We’d get 10-12 people every week for a potluck and games. We had a game of Settlers of Catan that went on forever.
Settlers is good fun and a great pick-up game. Complex yet uncomplicated.
Two of my favourites are Diplomacy (due to the lack of chance) and Illuminati (the Steve Jackson card game).
A cousin of mine has a full set of the original Games Workshop Talisman game - all the boards. Forget the kitchen table - you need the kitchen floor or a ping-pong table. I don't think we've ever finished a full-set game.
There was a real funny Post-Apocalyptic RPG called Twilight: 2000. The setting is eastern Poland or thereabouts right after the Cold War went hot. The characters are typically various US soldiers, cut off from everything due to fallout and EMP, trying to find some functioning US command post to get word about home.
You could play it as a Gung-Ho action hero stomp fest, or as a bleak dismal survival horror.
Then there was Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Kult, Mutant, Gamma World, WEGSWD6, Rolemaster, Traveller... and the solo-adventure books. Great for when riding the train long-distance.
Kids these days with their electronic doodads and geegaws, they don't get what they're missing.
Kids today have no imagination to carry them away to adventures and foreign places in worlds unknown! When we were kids we didn’t have all the technology (which I think is a detriment to children) to entertain us. We had to learn and cultivate ways to entertain ourselves. We had to learn how to build our friend community and problem solve. We made up adventure games. We had fights. We worked things out. We got injured. (I ended up in hospital emergency after a great battle between my Aramis and my cousins Porthos. Still have the scars 40 years later!). And we learned COPING SKILLS. Something today’s younger folks sorely lack.
As RR continues to write posts in quest of the elusive rationality he thinks might at least *ostensibly* underlie “gender” ideology, I thought this might be of interest:
One of the schoolbooks at issue in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case affirming families’ right to opt out of the indoctrination, entitled “Born Ready,” has a “transgender” child’s older brother say, “This doesn’t make sense. You can’t *become* a boy. You have to be born one.”
The very significant scolding response from the kids’ mother is, “Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.”
There you have it: get the children to switch off their brains, warp the concept of love out of recognition, and its mission accomplished for the genderists.
Yes, perhaps I'm chasing after an elusive goal myself. I see quite a few writers and commentators who I respect seeming to believe 'gender' has some utility and benefit as a concept. I just don't get it because I can't see what it 'adds' to the conversation or, indeed, to any insight or understanding. I have that uncomfortable feeling that I'm missing something.
I actually think it detracts from our insight and understanding. What does it mean to say we 'have' a gender? What IS it that we have? If it's a word that just means "typical sex-based behaviours, roles, and expectations" then it's not something we 'have', as such. If it's some kind of inner sense of whether we are male or female, then what does that even mean?
We can certainly look at ourselves and think "my behaviours and wishes and the expectations and roles I wish society to expect of me more closely align with those typically associated with the opposite sex" - then 'gender' used as a word to mean this would just be a shorthand for a set of character traits. But what does that *really* tell us? Basically something along the lines of not all men leave the loo seat up. Wow, big deal. How many of these 'typical' traits do we have to possess before we can consider ourselves to 'be' of the opposite gender?
Every which way I try to slice the gender cake I end up with an inedible mess.
It reminds me of the first year of covid where I tortured myself trying to find what I was 'missing'. I was doing my own thinking and analysis and coming to opposite conclusions from those presented by 'experts' and so, naturally, I thought I was getting something wrong or missing a few things.
Gender comes in three kinds - masculine, feminine, and neuter. Romance languages have it, Slavic languages have it, German has it - der, die, das. Over and above that, it's an advertising thing, pink for girls, blue for boys, and so forth. There are people who cross the lines - girls who are "tomboys" - in old age they become "harridans" - and we have effeminate boys and men, too. Of course, the former are biological females, the latter are biological males, and nothing changes that - and especially not hormone "therapy" and cosmetic surgery. That is just medical quackery, like using hysterectomies to cure hysteria, though to have been caused by a free-floating uterus or something - remove the uterus, and voila, problem solved, the affected woman would no longer have the desire to go into bars or vote, which were exclusively for men. Bad education and moral hysteria whipped up by social media are the root cause of this nonsense, along with bloviations by social "scientists" trying to turn a quick buck.
I do think we need some kind of structure, or purpose, or meaning in our lives - which doesn't have to be anything grand or grandiose. Progressives just seem to want to untether us from anything that actually gives our lives grounding.
"...and his uncle, and the uncle’s dentist’s cousin’s next-door neighbour’s pet dog appear to do so."
I'm screaming and crying my eyes out! (Laughing real hard.) My friends and I used to say things like that back in the late 70s. I had no idea anyone else did this!
Huge over-simplification of issues facing trans people. You have really got it in for trans people in blog after blog. How specifically have you been harmed by trans people? What is it that you once were able to do, and no longer are able to, because LGBT+ got our rights in a few states in a few countries?
You repeatedly call being transgender "delusion", which therefore makes being gay, lesbian or bisexual, or left-handed also "delusions", because the only way you know if someone is homosexual, transgender or left-handed is when they tell you. You don't suggest a credible motivation for someone to imagine they are any of these ubiquitously disliked things, and to endure the deleterious consequences that societies the world over inflict upon disliked minorities. Yet here you are, proselytising that you know us better than we know ourselves.
The only "binary" that is incontrovertible is that of spermatozoa meets ovum, and makes zygote. In other respects, the containing biology of reproduction features a bewildering array of naturally occurring variations:
1. What biological sex is a person who looks female externally but who has XY chromosomes? Look up Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/ These people are usually raised as female, and very often nobody knows that they have XY chromosomes until puberty or later. Studies estimate that the prevalence of 46,XY DSD in females is around 6.4 per 100,000 live-born females, which makes them 'biological men': https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27603905/
5. What biological sex is a person who has both XX and XY cells scattered throughout their body? Look up genetic mosaicism – people who are formed from the fusion of two embryos in the uterus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559193/
A friend of mine, assigned male at birth, heterosexual and married to a woman with a family of their own biological children, unexpectedly started growing female breasts at puberty, to the extent they were lactating, such that he eventually had to have a mastectomy. It was only then it was discovered that he has XX chromosomes, making him a "biological woman". According to the Supreme Court ruling, and ditto for Trump's executive order in the USA, he should use the men's bathroom because he was assigned male at birth, yet he has female chromosomes.
Likewise, according to the UK Supreme Court ruling, and the Trump administration in the US, a trans man (born female) with an award-winning six-pack, a beard, a man's voice, hairy legs and a surgically engineered penis, must now use the women's rest room, and compete in women's sports, because it says "female" on their birth certificate, e.g. Cody Harman: https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a43882661/cody-harman-interview/
Trans girl (born male) Rebekkah in this video likewise risks beaten up if she uses the compulsory men's room, and clearly will be annihilated if she plays in the men's hockey team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoB0D2jfAk4
All males start out life in the womb with phenotypically female genitalia:
"During early development the gonads of the fetus remain undifferentiated; that is, all fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female. After approximately 6 to 7 weeks of gestation, however, the expression of a gene on the Y chromosome induces changes that result in the development of the testes. Thus, this gene is singularly important in inducing testis development."
What if this gene doesn't trigger testosterone to show up on time, or at all? This means the man is born with a woman's body. Sex is wired into you, the genitals are only ratified after 7 weeks. What if the gene manifests when it shouldn't, and the female ends up with a penis?
Your assertion that Nature never gets anything wrong is not based on reason or evidence. Nature does random stuff all the time, and messing with gender is just one of them.
Thanks once again for the lengthy reply Derek. You do know we're not going to agree on this don't you? But anyway, it deserves a response.
Are the only issues we are allowed to be concerned about those which only *directly* impact us? That's a strange position to take. There are hundreds of things we might be concerned about that have never caused us any direct harm, and yet your claim is we essentially have no right to comment on them or even be concerned.
Could it be, perhaps, that I'm concerned about the direction society is taking with the promotion of an ideology that has, and is, causing measurable harm in all sorts of ways? Could it be that I'm concerned about the rights of women to safety, privacy and dignity? Might I also be concerned about the opportunities denied young girls as they are bested on the track by those who have undergone a male puberty? Perhaps I'm also concerned by those women inmates who have been raped by 'women' with penises? Or maybe I'm terrified that my granddaughter will be captured by this ideology in the future and wish to embark on a process of medicalization that will ruin her life?
You should also note here, despite your claim to the contrary, that I'm attacking an *ideology*, a set of ideas, and not the people themselves - although I can understand why that would upset someone, particularly when such ideologies have been internalized and embedded as 'identity'.
Claiming to be something you are manifestly not is very different from the expression of a preference. We might, for example, say that someone's preference for peas over brussels sprouts is innate - it certainly seems to be in my case because I find sprouts to taste horrible. Is this some kind of delusion?
Why, then, would we ever think homosexuality is a delusion? And besides which, sexual arousal is something that can be directly measured. If you're a man who is sexually attracted to other men then there's not much we can do about that - and why would we want to anyway?
Trans people and activists make a claim about reality that is measurably at odds with reality. LGB people make no such claim. See the difference?
In most day-to-day interactions this claim doesn't matter. Why should I bother whether the person who makes my coffee believes themselves to be a different sex to the one they were born as? Why should I be 'hateful' in that kind of interaction?
The problem is is that there are certain situations when one's sex really does matter - and these mostly impact women.
I don't want to see trans people harmed. At all. I don't, however, view disagreeing with an ideology they believe in, however fervent that belief, as being harmful - but others definitely see disagreement as 'harm'.
If I accept the standard premise that trans people are marginalized and terribly oppressed - which is not entirely true, if we're honest - then what you're suggesting to be the 'solution' to that is for me, and others like me, to accept an untruth. I don't find that to be an acceptable solution.
And you haven't attempted to address why trans (someone believing themselves to be the opposite sex) is logically different to believing oneself to be a wolf, say, or of a different race. It's the only psychological claim that differs from measurable reality I'm aware of that is NOT treated as a delusion of some form. What makes trans so different that it is not considered to be a delusion of some kind?
And, once again, you launch into the whole DSD thing as if this says anything meaningful about either trans or the sex binary. It's a fascinating *disorder* which comes in many varieties - and it's one of the many things that can go wrong with normal healthy bodily development. Only a tiny, tiny, fraction of people who consider themselves to be trans will have a DSD. Trans, therefore, is a separate issue.
It's 'natural' only in the sense that nature has produced it - it's a case where something has gone *wrong* with a normal, healthy, developmental process.
I don't know how to resolve this issue, but simply accepting an ideology as 'truth' when it makes little coherent sense and is not properly backed up by rigorous science isn't it.
All humans start their existence as zygotes with phenotypically female genitalia. I have repeatedly pointed you to the origin of transgender people, likely in the first 6-7 weeks of pregnancy, where something goes awry with the expression of the Y chromosome and hormones entering the womb in triggering the development of the external genitalia. It is at this point that a girl may start developing a male body, or a boy a female body:
With over 170,000 members, the APA is well placed to advise on transgender issues.
Why would a cisgender man (born male and manifesting as male), sexually oriented towards females, "choose" to have his male genitalia removed, take oestrogen hormones over months and years, surgically engineer a functioning vagina, grow breasts, don women's attire, knowing the hugely deleterious consequences that follow? What's in it for him?
You have decided you know that a trans person is not trans, but is merely an ideologue, but unless you are trans yourself, you cannot say for certain whether being transgender is a decision people make or not. You are not them, and they are not you.
And left handed people can, and have pretended to be right-handed for centuries as a safeguard against repression; same goes for gay people entering marriages with the opposite sex to avoid prosecution, persecution or violence. The only way you know if someone is homosexual or left handed is if they tell you they are. Unless you are homosexual yourself, you cannot say for certain whether being gay was a "decision" I made or not - same goes for transgender people. They tell you they are transgender, but your retort is, "No you're not. I know you better then you know yourself. You are an ideology."
In Iran, President Ahmadinejad declared there were no homosexuals in his country:
"Gender journey" is when menopausal affluent European ladies of the chattering classes go to Gambia to buy sex from young men/underage boys. It's quite a problem, for the Gambians as it helps entrench sex slave trade, and for the Western nations since these women bring home all kinds of diseases and parasites.
(Anyone feeling a smidge upset? Then go to you municipal library and dig up feminist and mainstream articles from the 1980s and 1990s, on men going to Pattaya, Thailand, to buy sex. See if you find that equally upsetting for the same reason.)
Some are born with deformed genitalia and need plastic surgery. Some even may need hormonal therapy to have normal puberty.
But no-one can ever change their sex.
And gender is originally a valid concept: it concerned how items of clothing, cultural mores and rituals and so on were tied to the sex of the performer, nothing more.
It was kidnapped by the disgusting pedo-homo-trans-fetishists, because they are running out of "assigned Holy victim-groups" to abuse for their own self-aggrandizement. The Negros, Arabs, moslems, gypsies, and so on are objecting to being their pet cause, finding the whole thing belittling in the extreme, insulting, umanly, unnatural and wrong.
And they aren't shy about blackening the eye of some do-gooder word-magic-believer trying to impart on them the Woke WoMan's Burden".
Another thing: all these trends in psychotic mental disorders come only after the media hype them up. In the 1980s, it was borderline and repressed memories. In the 1990s it was anorexia/bulimia. Et cetera.
Want to be real angry? Try look up the "cure"-rate of psychiatry as a science. It's success-rate is worse than the penal system's.
I keep coming back to this 'original' meaning and re-writing it as sex-based behaviours, roles and expectations that are said to be typical of one's sex. Like a set of laws or a code of conduct for some club membership is that something we can be said to 'have' on an individual level?
I suppose it's a bit like the whole pronoun nonsense in which we are said to 'possess' our very own pronouns!
Like you I believe that the expansion of 'psychiatric', erm, conditions has just fooled people into thinking there's something 'medically' wrong with themselves when, in reality, they're entirely within 'normal' ranges of human behaviour and feeling. It's the mental health version of hypochondria I guess.
I think it's true that you can actually 'think' yourself into an actual depressive state, for example. Obviously, not all, etc, etc.
It helps understanding if one adopts the longer perspective: the gender-cult is the opposite end of the pendulum swing to the Victorian-era rules on dress-code, mannerisms and so on:
More precisely, it is a reaction based in the modern-day interpretation of and judgement on the Victorian era social codes, as communicated and defined and criticised by inter-war era cultural radicals, later filtered and re-worked during the 1960s and again in the 1990s.
For a physics-equivalent imagine that you take the collected research of Niels Bohr and condense it into one 300 page volume. Twenty years later, someone distills that into 30 pages. Twenty years later again, someone else gets it down to 3 pages, and finally someone crunches it into 300 letters.
And then you try to build a model explaining sub-atomic thingamabobs based on those 300 letters.
That's how the gender-hoopla, academic feminism, post/de-colonialism and so on came about.
That's an interesting way of looking at it - will ponder.
I actually find some of Bohr's work (although he definitely did some great stuff) to be impenetrable - a bit like watching an Ingmar Bergman movie.
And Psychiatry is the gateway to a pharmaceutical hell many youngsters (and oldsters too!) find themselves in... and cannot escape. "Are you feeling sad/lonely/bored/anxious? Try this mind f&cking med with every side effect known to man. You'll be on your way to your own personal nightmare in no time!"
If they “cure” them they lose their $$ train. They don’t want to cure them. They want to hook them on life-long therapy sessions and psychoactive pharmaceuticals. I’ve an acquaintance who is truly addicted to her psychiatrist and the often changing meds and therapy sessions. She’s as screwed up and unhappy now as she was 10 years ago. But she’s convinced she’s “better” and that her doctor is a mental health guru. She’s still single, alone, angry, overweight, depressed and suffers anxiety. But she’s in her way to a better life…and it’s only been ten years!! What’s the rush? Psychiatry is, to me, an absolute joke.
Recidivism rates for sexual offenders and pedophiles are quite high. One study showed that those treated by psychiatrists had higher recidivism rates than those not treated.
Yeah - I too wonder whether 'therapy' actually makes things worse, on average. It seems to be a bit of a lottery whether you get a therapist who is capable of actually helping you live a happier and more internally balanced life.
The older I get, the more I come to see the description of psychology and psychiatry in 'The Dice Man' as more documentary than fiction...
I haven’t thought about that book in years. It’s probably been 40 years since I read it. Maybe I’ll pick it up again.
I prefer the coin toss method if decision making. Heads we go to Montana. Tails we go to Wyoming. (Having seen most of Europe in my younger years I prefer to stay stateside these days). Heads we get a Golden Retriever. Tails we get a German Shepherd. (We have two of each)
I read it in the early 90s the first time. Had it among my books on "English Literary History" when at uni. One professor, a guest-lecturer from San Francisco, spotted it and remarked: "That's a very dangerous book".
Not in a scolding way or any kind of "You oughtn't read such", just a flat and slightly bemused tone of voice.
I still wonder what she meant.
Being an avid player of boardgames, tabletop games and p&p RPGs since I was 11, using dice comes natural. But not just D6s - D4, D8, D10, D12 ("the forgotten die"), D20, D100.
And one thing you learn is that probability has a sense of humour and drama. Twice in my life I have seen people roll '1' on the same twenty-sided die, seven throws in a row.
"Anything but a '1'" is something you rarely if ever a wargamer say - that's not just taunting Murphy, that's motorboating The Lady herself.
My father gave me the book to read. I’m guessing he wanted me to learn something but we never did discuss the book after I read it. He was a bit of a nomad and was often gone for months living on some commune or something.
I still love board games. We used to have “game night” every Sunday when I lived in the city. We’d get 10-12 people every week for a potluck and games. We had a game of Settlers of Catan that went on forever.
Settlers is good fun and a great pick-up game. Complex yet uncomplicated.
Two of my favourites are Diplomacy (due to the lack of chance) and Illuminati (the Steve Jackson card game).
A cousin of mine has a full set of the original Games Workshop Talisman game - all the boards. Forget the kitchen table - you need the kitchen floor or a ping-pong table. I don't think we've ever finished a full-set game.
There was a real funny Post-Apocalyptic RPG called Twilight: 2000. The setting is eastern Poland or thereabouts right after the Cold War went hot. The characters are typically various US soldiers, cut off from everything due to fallout and EMP, trying to find some functioning US command post to get word about home.
You could play it as a Gung-Ho action hero stomp fest, or as a bleak dismal survival horror.
Then there was Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Kult, Mutant, Gamma World, WEGSWD6, Rolemaster, Traveller... and the solo-adventure books. Great for when riding the train long-distance.
Kids these days with their electronic doodads and geegaws, they don't get what they're missing.
Kids today have no imagination to carry them away to adventures and foreign places in worlds unknown! When we were kids we didn’t have all the technology (which I think is a detriment to children) to entertain us. We had to learn and cultivate ways to entertain ourselves. We had to learn how to build our friend community and problem solve. We made up adventure games. We had fights. We worked things out. We got injured. (I ended up in hospital emergency after a great battle between my Aramis and my cousins Porthos. Still have the scars 40 years later!). And we learned COPING SKILLS. Something today’s younger folks sorely lack.
I found this opinion piece from the NY Times revealing: How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way. https://archive.ph/k0Rp7
As RR continues to write posts in quest of the elusive rationality he thinks might at least *ostensibly* underlie “gender” ideology, I thought this might be of interest:
One of the schoolbooks at issue in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case affirming families’ right to opt out of the indoctrination, entitled “Born Ready,” has a “transgender” child’s older brother say, “This doesn’t make sense. You can’t *become* a boy. You have to be born one.”
The very significant scolding response from the kids’ mother is, “Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.”
There you have it: get the children to switch off their brains, warp the concept of love out of recognition, and its mission accomplished for the genderists.
Yes, perhaps I'm chasing after an elusive goal myself. I see quite a few writers and commentators who I respect seeming to believe 'gender' has some utility and benefit as a concept. I just don't get it because I can't see what it 'adds' to the conversation or, indeed, to any insight or understanding. I have that uncomfortable feeling that I'm missing something.
I actually think it detracts from our insight and understanding. What does it mean to say we 'have' a gender? What IS it that we have? If it's a word that just means "typical sex-based behaviours, roles, and expectations" then it's not something we 'have', as such. If it's some kind of inner sense of whether we are male or female, then what does that even mean?
We can certainly look at ourselves and think "my behaviours and wishes and the expectations and roles I wish society to expect of me more closely align with those typically associated with the opposite sex" - then 'gender' used as a word to mean this would just be a shorthand for a set of character traits. But what does that *really* tell us? Basically something along the lines of not all men leave the loo seat up. Wow, big deal. How many of these 'typical' traits do we have to possess before we can consider ourselves to 'be' of the opposite gender?
Every which way I try to slice the gender cake I end up with an inedible mess.
It reminds me of the first year of covid where I tortured myself trying to find what I was 'missing'. I was doing my own thinking and analysis and coming to opposite conclusions from those presented by 'experts' and so, naturally, I thought I was getting something wrong or missing a few things.
Gender comes in three kinds - masculine, feminine, and neuter. Romance languages have it, Slavic languages have it, German has it - der, die, das. Over and above that, it's an advertising thing, pink for girls, blue for boys, and so forth. There are people who cross the lines - girls who are "tomboys" - in old age they become "harridans" - and we have effeminate boys and men, too. Of course, the former are biological females, the latter are biological males, and nothing changes that - and especially not hormone "therapy" and cosmetic surgery. That is just medical quackery, like using hysterectomies to cure hysteria, though to have been caused by a free-floating uterus or something - remove the uterus, and voila, problem solved, the affected woman would no longer have the desire to go into bars or vote, which were exclusively for men. Bad education and moral hysteria whipped up by social media are the root cause of this nonsense, along with bloviations by social "scientists" trying to turn a quick buck.
The stupidity of progressives can’t be measured. Michael Savage said liberalism is a mental disorder. Progressivism is something worse.
I do think we need some kind of structure, or purpose, or meaning in our lives - which doesn't have to be anything grand or grandiose. Progressives just seem to want to untether us from anything that actually gives our lives grounding.
"...and his uncle, and the uncle’s dentist’s cousin’s next-door neighbour’s pet dog appear to do so."
I'm screaming and crying my eyes out! (Laughing real hard.) My friends and I used to say things like that back in the late 70s. I had no idea anyone else did this!
Well I suppose it just shows you how outdated my sense of humour is 🤣
It's still funny. Sometimes we still do it, too.
Huge over-simplification of issues facing trans people. You have really got it in for trans people in blog after blog. How specifically have you been harmed by trans people? What is it that you once were able to do, and no longer are able to, because LGBT+ got our rights in a few states in a few countries?
You repeatedly call being transgender "delusion", which therefore makes being gay, lesbian or bisexual, or left-handed also "delusions", because the only way you know if someone is homosexual, transgender or left-handed is when they tell you. You don't suggest a credible motivation for someone to imagine they are any of these ubiquitously disliked things, and to endure the deleterious consequences that societies the world over inflict upon disliked minorities. Yet here you are, proselytising that you know us better than we know ourselves.
The only "binary" that is incontrovertible is that of spermatozoa meets ovum, and makes zygote. In other respects, the containing biology of reproduction features a bewildering array of naturally occurring variations:
1. What biological sex is a person who looks female externally but who has XY chromosomes? Look up Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/ These people are usually raised as female, and very often nobody knows that they have XY chromosomes until puberty or later. Studies estimate that the prevalence of 46,XY DSD in females is around 6.4 per 100,000 live-born females, which makes them 'biological men': https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27603905/
2. What biological sex is a person who looks male externally but who has XX chromosomes? Look up Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. https://www.elsevier.es/es-revista-endocrinologia-nutricion-english-edition--412-articulo-sexual-differentiation-anomalies-xx-male-S2173509314001500
3. What biological sex is a person who is XO? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9967/#:~:text=A%20person%20with%20five%20X,ovarian%20follicles%20cannot%20be%20maintained.
4. What biological sex is a person who is XXY? https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/klinefelters-syndrome/
5. What biological sex is a person who has both XX and XY cells scattered throughout their body? Look up genetic mosaicism – people who are formed from the fusion of two embryos in the uterus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559193/
6. What biological sex is a person who has both male and female parts? Look up Intersex: https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/intersex-people
A friend of mine, assigned male at birth, heterosexual and married to a woman with a family of their own biological children, unexpectedly started growing female breasts at puberty, to the extent they were lactating, such that he eventually had to have a mastectomy. It was only then it was discovered that he has XX chromosomes, making him a "biological woman". According to the Supreme Court ruling, and ditto for Trump's executive order in the USA, he should use the men's bathroom because he was assigned male at birth, yet he has female chromosomes.
Likewise, according to the UK Supreme Court ruling, and the Trump administration in the US, a trans man (born female) with an award-winning six-pack, a beard, a man's voice, hairy legs and a surgically engineered penis, must now use the women's rest room, and compete in women's sports, because it says "female" on their birth certificate, e.g. Cody Harman: https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a43882661/cody-harman-interview/
Trans girl (born male) Rebekkah in this video likewise risks beaten up if she uses the compulsory men's room, and clearly will be annihilated if she plays in the men's hockey team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoB0D2jfAk4
All males start out life in the womb with phenotypically female genitalia:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222286/
"During early development the gonads of the fetus remain undifferentiated; that is, all fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female. After approximately 6 to 7 weeks of gestation, however, the expression of a gene on the Y chromosome induces changes that result in the development of the testes. Thus, this gene is singularly important in inducing testis development."
What if this gene doesn't trigger testosterone to show up on time, or at all? This means the man is born with a woman's body. Sex is wired into you, the genitals are only ratified after 7 weeks. What if the gene manifests when it shouldn't, and the female ends up with a penis?
Your assertion that Nature never gets anything wrong is not based on reason or evidence. Nature does random stuff all the time, and messing with gender is just one of them.
Finally, the Y chromosome is dying out and so we don't yet know where Mother Nature is taking us: https://www.deseret.com/2024/2/26/24083919/y-chromosome-disappearing/
Thanks once again for the lengthy reply Derek. You do know we're not going to agree on this don't you? But anyway, it deserves a response.
Are the only issues we are allowed to be concerned about those which only *directly* impact us? That's a strange position to take. There are hundreds of things we might be concerned about that have never caused us any direct harm, and yet your claim is we essentially have no right to comment on them or even be concerned.
Could it be, perhaps, that I'm concerned about the direction society is taking with the promotion of an ideology that has, and is, causing measurable harm in all sorts of ways? Could it be that I'm concerned about the rights of women to safety, privacy and dignity? Might I also be concerned about the opportunities denied young girls as they are bested on the track by those who have undergone a male puberty? Perhaps I'm also concerned by those women inmates who have been raped by 'women' with penises? Or maybe I'm terrified that my granddaughter will be captured by this ideology in the future and wish to embark on a process of medicalization that will ruin her life?
You should also note here, despite your claim to the contrary, that I'm attacking an *ideology*, a set of ideas, and not the people themselves - although I can understand why that would upset someone, particularly when such ideologies have been internalized and embedded as 'identity'.
Claiming to be something you are manifestly not is very different from the expression of a preference. We might, for example, say that someone's preference for peas over brussels sprouts is innate - it certainly seems to be in my case because I find sprouts to taste horrible. Is this some kind of delusion?
Why, then, would we ever think homosexuality is a delusion? And besides which, sexual arousal is something that can be directly measured. If you're a man who is sexually attracted to other men then there's not much we can do about that - and why would we want to anyway?
Trans people and activists make a claim about reality that is measurably at odds with reality. LGB people make no such claim. See the difference?
In most day-to-day interactions this claim doesn't matter. Why should I bother whether the person who makes my coffee believes themselves to be a different sex to the one they were born as? Why should I be 'hateful' in that kind of interaction?
The problem is is that there are certain situations when one's sex really does matter - and these mostly impact women.
I don't want to see trans people harmed. At all. I don't, however, view disagreeing with an ideology they believe in, however fervent that belief, as being harmful - but others definitely see disagreement as 'harm'.
If I accept the standard premise that trans people are marginalized and terribly oppressed - which is not entirely true, if we're honest - then what you're suggesting to be the 'solution' to that is for me, and others like me, to accept an untruth. I don't find that to be an acceptable solution.
And you haven't attempted to address why trans (someone believing themselves to be the opposite sex) is logically different to believing oneself to be a wolf, say, or of a different race. It's the only psychological claim that differs from measurable reality I'm aware of that is NOT treated as a delusion of some form. What makes trans so different that it is not considered to be a delusion of some kind?
And, once again, you launch into the whole DSD thing as if this says anything meaningful about either trans or the sex binary. It's a fascinating *disorder* which comes in many varieties - and it's one of the many things that can go wrong with normal healthy bodily development. Only a tiny, tiny, fraction of people who consider themselves to be trans will have a DSD. Trans, therefore, is a separate issue.
It's 'natural' only in the sense that nature has produced it - it's a case where something has gone *wrong* with a normal, healthy, developmental process.
I don't know how to resolve this issue, but simply accepting an ideology as 'truth' when it makes little coherent sense and is not properly backed up by rigorous science isn't it.
All humans start their existence as zygotes with phenotypically female genitalia. I have repeatedly pointed you to the origin of transgender people, likely in the first 6-7 weeks of pregnancy, where something goes awry with the expression of the Y chromosome and hormones entering the womb in triggering the development of the external genitalia. It is at this point that a girl may start developing a male body, or a boy a female body:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222286/
Further information is also available from the American Psychological Association:
https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-identity-gender-expression
With over 170,000 members, the APA is well placed to advise on transgender issues.
Why would a cisgender man (born male and manifesting as male), sexually oriented towards females, "choose" to have his male genitalia removed, take oestrogen hormones over months and years, surgically engineer a functioning vagina, grow breasts, don women's attire, knowing the hugely deleterious consequences that follow? What's in it for him?
You have decided you know that a trans person is not trans, but is merely an ideologue, but unless you are trans yourself, you cannot say for certain whether being transgender is a decision people make or not. You are not them, and they are not you.
And left handed people can, and have pretended to be right-handed for centuries as a safeguard against repression; same goes for gay people entering marriages with the opposite sex to avoid prosecution, persecution or violence. The only way you know if someone is homosexual or left handed is if they tell you they are. Unless you are homosexual yourself, you cannot say for certain whether being gay was a "decision" I made or not - same goes for transgender people. They tell you they are transgender, but your retort is, "No you're not. I know you better then you know yourself. You are an ideology."
In Iran, President Ahmadinejad declared there were no homosexuals in his country:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3642673
He dismissed homosexuality as a "phenomenon", just as you are declaring trans people to be nothing more than an "ideology". What effrontery!