I'm male. Having medically and surgically transitioned, I live conventionally as a woman but I don't assert a status as such. I benefit only from being able to change my sex marker on passport and driving licence (without a spurious GRC, sod that nonsense). I discovered I was the wrong sex at 4. I see it as a variation on male homosexuality which in turn I see as a prehistoric group benefit of a small percentage of non-competing but productive males. I am grateful if people extend to me a compassionate fiction in my routine dealings. Whatever Trans is, it has little to do with me or those like me, just quietly getting on with it with none of the aggro the activists claim is ubiquitous. Although it could be a destabilising threat. It seems to be fetishistic or autogynaephilic. IMHO gender is an invention of the 1950s. There is only sex. Sex should not be compromised by a conflation with the invented idea. I am not offended by people who assert that a woman is an adult human female because I agree. That doesn't change what my brain has been insistently telling me all my life at a profound level, not 'I want to be' but 'I am' despite that clearly being incorrect. The Trans and their activist pink haired allies do not speak for me so go ahead and critique these extremists on that basis. I will not be used as a human shield by woke revolutionaries. Keep it up, RR. x
I only object to the idea of gender being a recent invention - I was quite fascinated by Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae". What is new is the use of gender as a weapon in societal struggles.
I think we often go wrong on history by just distinguishing between "the present and very recent past" and just "what came before". The first half of the 20th century is not representative for what came before, not for sex and gender, not for child rearing, not for religion, not for working habits, not for food, not for anything.
Gender was borrowed from it's language use in the 50s by the awful Dr John Money and by Harry Benjamin to justify their activities and theories. You can disagree with the facts, I spose. Before that, sure, plenty of messing with sex roles back to the beginning but no gender. Homosexuals sometimes hid in travesti. Backwards projecting gender into the distant past and transing Heliogabalus assumes gender is real. It isn't. It's made up. Point to it. Describe it without sex stereotypes. Not possible. Dressing up and tottering on heels isn't inhabiting your skin. Surgery and hormones have enabled some progress although many are getting surgery as shouldn't. But a bloke in a skirt is still a bloke in a skirt. Not many understand the profound effect of sex hormones on the psyche. It isn't possible to live as a member of the opposite sex while hormonally that of one's birth sex. Hormones drive behaviours. Still a fox in the hen house. And then there's all the awful stuff girls are going through, railroaded into blockers and surgery. I have no patience with any apologist for gender woo. It's pseudo-religion. Early feminists thought they could use gender as social construct to say men and women are indistinguishable except in plumbing and thus gain equality. They didn't think it through. Now it's used against them. Gender is so mainstream no-one can even see it for the mysticism it is.
I'm more than happy to extend a "compassionate fiction", and more. It's very hard to talk about these gender issues without treading on someone's toes - but obviously something was going a bit wrong for you at a very early age. Your biology and the way people treated you wasn't matching what was going on in your thoughts and feelings and sense of self.
I actually only care about the "why" insofar as it helps us understand how to alleviate suffering. I don't know, but I suspect, that most women on hearing your story would not really have an issue with fully welcoming you as a member of the "club", so to speak - or at the very least an honorary member. I wouldn't have an issue with it either.
It doesn't strike me that you're "taking anything away" from the notion of womanhood - or trying to. You're just trying to find a place to belong. I have much more of an issue with those who demand we talk about "birthing people" or "chest feeders", (and the like) so as not to offend a very tiny number of people.
To be honest, it's a minefield. Had things just quietly stayed with issues like yours I'm sure so much could have been changed for the better. But no - the woke agenda had to push it way too far - beyond the acceptance of most people. Gender-fluid, non-binary, pansexual, otherkin, and so on - it all went into some surreal landscape where it looks more like cries for attention (look at how special I am) than any genuine identity. That's what it looks like from the outside anyway.
It's hard to take someone seriously when they identify as a wolf. But what is the essential logical difference between this and a man who "identifies" as a woman? I'm not having a go at you here at all with this - merely pointing out there are some very serious problems with the whole "self-identification" agenda. Problems I don't have good answers to.
There's just too much we don't understand about all of this for any dogmatic position to be wholly accurate. The real question is how, as a society, we tolerate "difference"? And perhaps it's better to talk of acceptance rather than in terms of tolerance. Is it right to force the vast majority of normal people into a particular worldview, or set of actions, in order to achieve this tolerance/acceptance? By 'normal' here I'm using it in a technical non-judgemental sense (outside of the "norm").
It's an important discussion - one that is not at all well-served by casting people who have genuine questions and concerns as "hateful bigots" and the like. My own view is that the woke extremists have just made everything so much worse. Everything they touch turns to shit - as someone recently said! A great strategy for destabilization, not such a great strategy if you actually want to make a positive change for those you care to claim about.
Yep. Agree completely. (I don't "identify as" anything btw. I reject the whole concept. As you say, there is an unsaid "...and I demand you positively comply with whatever identity I assume or I'll beat you with this stick", however outré or even temporally variable the identity is.)
I've always believed in common sense, humility, and compassion when it comes to this issue.
I have witnessed the side I THOUGHT represented those things turn illogical, arrogant, and downright hateful. I don't think it's helping people who want to live their lives as women, including and especially those who were born with those characteristics. At the end of the day, transwomen aren't women, but that's okay. They still are deserving of respect and rights. It is to me profoundly discriminatory and prejudiced to think that rights for any marginalized group must be based upon a fundamental lie. They want to try to call those out who fight the lie as bigoted because, perhaps, they cannot imagine a world in which we horrid and hateful people who believe biology is real actually don't have a problem with how people choose to express their gender identity.
My husband thought the UN tweet to be particularly unfortunate, or deliciously mischievous. “Trans women are women”, the tweet says, then qualifying when that is true: “at the end of the day” — so presumably after sufficient beer. What’s not to love?
One of my first thoughts was, "What in the world had you, in the UK, watch a Dr. Phil show?" (I'm an American living in the UK, and I had no idea that the Dr. Phil show was still running. I remember back in the day when it was aired before Oprah at 4:00.) Does the Dr. Phil show air on the BBC here? Or ITV? Sky?
My other thought was that this topic is all over the place these days, and it's no surprise that Dr. Phil featured this on his show. I think it's good that he has these topics. (Have you heard about that horribly impolite and rude girl on his show "Catch me outside!" https://youtu.be/R8l2Ga3_wvU )
I read Diana's comment and she said, "At the end of the day, transwomen aren't women." When I read that, I had to read it again and thought, I don't think this is what a transwoman thinks. But I don't know. I'm nearly 50, and more and more I feel like I am way behind on this issue, and to me it seems to be rapidly evolving.
It's interesting because in the Dr. Phil clip, the guest 'Addison' says, "Transwomen are women, and transmen are men too." https://youtu.be/iw075B9iqxw?t=223
Matt Walsh did his own segment on his YouTube channel (I didn't even know him before this) and shared that after the show was recorded, Addison posted on their Instagram account saying they were traumatized and were depressed and even having nightmares because of how they felt deceived by the show, the panel, and the show's producers.
And then you mention how this is similar to how this has similarities with Covid, vaccines, and masks. Totally agree. I don't wear masks at all (I stopped way back in 2020 when I saw a tweet saying that by me wearing one, it fuels the narrative and I'm continually feeding it), and yet I have friends who agree that masks don't work, but they still wear them because it makes people feel 'safe'.
I bet at least 50% of the people who still wear masks indoors, at the supermarket for example, wear theirs because they want to help everyone feel safe, and they don't want to ruffle any feathers. At this point, I wanna say to these people, c'mon, wake up and grow a pair.
I watched a small portion of that Dr. Phil episode myself, and only to see what Matt Welch said on the issue. However, I find it amusing that a show based on a lie, i.e., that the host is a doctor, is pushing another lie by proffering sex and/or gender is fluid.
Is it a kind of honor if the bots are starting to show up on your substack? Does it mean you have reached a certain level of spread? Congratulations, then, it is well deserved.
I'm male. Having medically and surgically transitioned, I live conventionally as a woman but I don't assert a status as such. I benefit only from being able to change my sex marker on passport and driving licence (without a spurious GRC, sod that nonsense). I discovered I was the wrong sex at 4. I see it as a variation on male homosexuality which in turn I see as a prehistoric group benefit of a small percentage of non-competing but productive males. I am grateful if people extend to me a compassionate fiction in my routine dealings. Whatever Trans is, it has little to do with me or those like me, just quietly getting on with it with none of the aggro the activists claim is ubiquitous. Although it could be a destabilising threat. It seems to be fetishistic or autogynaephilic. IMHO gender is an invention of the 1950s. There is only sex. Sex should not be compromised by a conflation with the invented idea. I am not offended by people who assert that a woman is an adult human female because I agree. That doesn't change what my brain has been insistently telling me all my life at a profound level, not 'I want to be' but 'I am' despite that clearly being incorrect. The Trans and their activist pink haired allies do not speak for me so go ahead and critique these extremists on that basis. I will not be used as a human shield by woke revolutionaries. Keep it up, RR. x
I only object to the idea of gender being a recent invention - I was quite fascinated by Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae". What is new is the use of gender as a weapon in societal struggles.
I think we often go wrong on history by just distinguishing between "the present and very recent past" and just "what came before". The first half of the 20th century is not representative for what came before, not for sex and gender, not for child rearing, not for religion, not for working habits, not for food, not for anything.
Gender was borrowed from it's language use in the 50s by the awful Dr John Money and by Harry Benjamin to justify their activities and theories. You can disagree with the facts, I spose. Before that, sure, plenty of messing with sex roles back to the beginning but no gender. Homosexuals sometimes hid in travesti. Backwards projecting gender into the distant past and transing Heliogabalus assumes gender is real. It isn't. It's made up. Point to it. Describe it without sex stereotypes. Not possible. Dressing up and tottering on heels isn't inhabiting your skin. Surgery and hormones have enabled some progress although many are getting surgery as shouldn't. But a bloke in a skirt is still a bloke in a skirt. Not many understand the profound effect of sex hormones on the psyche. It isn't possible to live as a member of the opposite sex while hormonally that of one's birth sex. Hormones drive behaviours. Still a fox in the hen house. And then there's all the awful stuff girls are going through, railroaded into blockers and surgery. I have no patience with any apologist for gender woo. It's pseudo-religion. Early feminists thought they could use gender as social construct to say men and women are indistinguishable except in plumbing and thus gain equality. They didn't think it through. Now it's used against them. Gender is so mainstream no-one can even see it for the mysticism it is.
Thanks for this Ataraxian.
I'm more than happy to extend a "compassionate fiction", and more. It's very hard to talk about these gender issues without treading on someone's toes - but obviously something was going a bit wrong for you at a very early age. Your biology and the way people treated you wasn't matching what was going on in your thoughts and feelings and sense of self.
I actually only care about the "why" insofar as it helps us understand how to alleviate suffering. I don't know, but I suspect, that most women on hearing your story would not really have an issue with fully welcoming you as a member of the "club", so to speak - or at the very least an honorary member. I wouldn't have an issue with it either.
It doesn't strike me that you're "taking anything away" from the notion of womanhood - or trying to. You're just trying to find a place to belong. I have much more of an issue with those who demand we talk about "birthing people" or "chest feeders", (and the like) so as not to offend a very tiny number of people.
To be honest, it's a minefield. Had things just quietly stayed with issues like yours I'm sure so much could have been changed for the better. But no - the woke agenda had to push it way too far - beyond the acceptance of most people. Gender-fluid, non-binary, pansexual, otherkin, and so on - it all went into some surreal landscape where it looks more like cries for attention (look at how special I am) than any genuine identity. That's what it looks like from the outside anyway.
It's hard to take someone seriously when they identify as a wolf. But what is the essential logical difference between this and a man who "identifies" as a woman? I'm not having a go at you here at all with this - merely pointing out there are some very serious problems with the whole "self-identification" agenda. Problems I don't have good answers to.
There's just too much we don't understand about all of this for any dogmatic position to be wholly accurate. The real question is how, as a society, we tolerate "difference"? And perhaps it's better to talk of acceptance rather than in terms of tolerance. Is it right to force the vast majority of normal people into a particular worldview, or set of actions, in order to achieve this tolerance/acceptance? By 'normal' here I'm using it in a technical non-judgemental sense (outside of the "norm").
It's an important discussion - one that is not at all well-served by casting people who have genuine questions and concerns as "hateful bigots" and the like. My own view is that the woke extremists have just made everything so much worse. Everything they touch turns to shit - as someone recently said! A great strategy for destabilization, not such a great strategy if you actually want to make a positive change for those you care to claim about.
Yep. Agree completely. (I don't "identify as" anything btw. I reject the whole concept. As you say, there is an unsaid "...and I demand you positively comply with whatever identity I assume or I'll beat you with this stick", however outré or even temporally variable the identity is.)
I've always believed in common sense, humility, and compassion when it comes to this issue.
I have witnessed the side I THOUGHT represented those things turn illogical, arrogant, and downright hateful. I don't think it's helping people who want to live their lives as women, including and especially those who were born with those characteristics. At the end of the day, transwomen aren't women, but that's okay. They still are deserving of respect and rights. It is to me profoundly discriminatory and prejudiced to think that rights for any marginalized group must be based upon a fundamental lie. They want to try to call those out who fight the lie as bigoted because, perhaps, they cannot imagine a world in which we horrid and hateful people who believe biology is real actually don't have a problem with how people choose to express their gender identity.
Beautifully put Diana
My husband thought the UN tweet to be particularly unfortunate, or deliciously mischievous. “Trans women are women”, the tweet says, then qualifying when that is true: “at the end of the day” — so presumably after sufficient beer. What’s not to love?
That reminds me of one of my favourite T-Shirt quotes:
"You look like I need another beer"
Unkind, but funny.
Be kind to people. Be unkind to sloppy writing.
One of my first thoughts was, "What in the world had you, in the UK, watch a Dr. Phil show?" (I'm an American living in the UK, and I had no idea that the Dr. Phil show was still running. I remember back in the day when it was aired before Oprah at 4:00.) Does the Dr. Phil show air on the BBC here? Or ITV? Sky?
My other thought was that this topic is all over the place these days, and it's no surprise that Dr. Phil featured this on his show. I think it's good that he has these topics. (Have you heard about that horribly impolite and rude girl on his show "Catch me outside!" https://youtu.be/R8l2Ga3_wvU )
I read Diana's comment and she said, "At the end of the day, transwomen aren't women." When I read that, I had to read it again and thought, I don't think this is what a transwoman thinks. But I don't know. I'm nearly 50, and more and more I feel like I am way behind on this issue, and to me it seems to be rapidly evolving.
It's interesting because in the Dr. Phil clip, the guest 'Addison' says, "Transwomen are women, and transmen are men too." https://youtu.be/iw075B9iqxw?t=223
Matt Walsh did his own segment on his YouTube channel (I didn't even know him before this) and shared that after the show was recorded, Addison posted on their Instagram account saying they were traumatized and were depressed and even having nightmares because of how they felt deceived by the show, the panel, and the show's producers.
And then you mention how this is similar to how this has similarities with Covid, vaccines, and masks. Totally agree. I don't wear masks at all (I stopped way back in 2020 when I saw a tweet saying that by me wearing one, it fuels the narrative and I'm continually feeding it), and yet I have friends who agree that masks don't work, but they still wear them because it makes people feel 'safe'.
I bet at least 50% of the people who still wear masks indoors, at the supermarket for example, wear theirs because they want to help everyone feel safe, and they don't want to ruffle any feathers. At this point, I wanna say to these people, c'mon, wake up and grow a pair.
Make America aware again
We are in an epidemic of living in fantasies, and that's not just scientism, but even religions and other team sports.
George Carlin said that he likes people, but hates groups, especially those that have special hats....
This is a great read about living in fantasies if you haven’t seen it https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/the-road-to-tyranny-is-paved-with
I watched a small portion of that Dr. Phil episode myself, and only to see what Matt Welch said on the issue. However, I find it amusing that a show based on a lie, i.e., that the host is a doctor, is pushing another lie by proffering sex and/or gender is fluid.
Is it a kind of honor if the bots are starting to show up on your substack? Does it mean you have reached a certain level of spread? Congratulations, then, it is well deserved.