As usual, great article. You’ve put into eloquent words my thoughts exactly. Little by little these woke liberal leaders/politicians/academia/control freaks have the average citizens afraid to speak out, to dare to not go with the group think. But I speak out “oh, FFS, wearing a dress and lipstick does not make you an actual woman”. Then I’m not invited to the groups ‘reindeer games’ ever again. I’m older, 70, and praying sanity prevails and little by little people see the light.
I'm hoping that a lot of this gender nonsense is just a societal phase. I'm all for letting people express themselves as they wish, but whilst I'm OK with a "live and let live" attitude, it's not one that is reciprocated by the activists who are pushing for "live and think as we tell you - or else"
Have you ever read about the Anabaptists? They also objected (and object) to baptism 'before the age of reason', and separated themselves from the Catholic (and Lutheran?) tradition exactly because of this objection. See the Amish and the Mennonites.
Regarding the trans stuff, I'm trusting that in most cases good old developmental biology will override the effects of the current wokery chattery. That set of natural influences won't work, of course, if a particular kid jumps or falls into pharmacological hands.
How do we tell? It's pretty easy for me. In the last few years I've witnessed through my middle and high school children the absolute social contagion that is this 'identity' ideology/religion permeate their schools and social circles. They tell me it's now "cool" to be trans, or bi, or nonbinary, or non-conforming or L M N O P Q R S T... When they tell me, for example, their friend formerly known as Sally "now goes by Sal, and he/him", my first question is, "Is SHE planning to tell, or has she told, HER family?" If the answer is no, then I know Sally is 'fake trans' and just wants to be "cool" at school, but not seen or treated differently outside of school. That's not real/serious/conventional trans.
From the Cleveland Clinic website on Delusional Disorder:
"Non-bizarre delusions are different from bizarre delusions, which include beliefs that are impossible in our reality, such as believing someone has removed an organ from your body without any physical evidence of the procedure.
People with delusional disorder often continue to socialize and function well, apart from the subject of their delusion. Generally, they don’t behave in an odd or unusual manner. This is unlike people with other psychotic disorders, who might also have delusions as a symptom. In some cases, however, people with delusional disorder might become so preoccupied with their delusions that their lives are disrupted."
The "in our reality" of the definition is this: XX or XY. Have a vagina? You're a woman. You don't? You're not.
The sexual revolution has swept all foes before it and is mopping up pockets of resistance, so we dance around this disorder. To pretend that the science has changed in this case is beyond absurd.
One of my problems with the "gender spectrum" is that it provides no explanation for how it "feels" to "identify" as male, female, or somewhere in between. It's often taught alongside sexuality, but at least with sexuality we all know the meanings of the terms. A gay man is attracted to men. But how does he know he's a man and they're men? That GI Joe/Barbie poster is actually the first time I've actually seen someone try to explain it scientifically on paper, and I appreciate that. What I'm thinking is that during every era in Western history prior to the invention of yoga pants, I would have been male. My children would have been nourished by my male placenta within my male uterus, and later fed from my male mammaries. Actually, it's really a shame time machines don't exist on so many levels, but from a feminist (but never TERF-y!) perspective, perhaps most of all because we can't go back in history and tell the many people who identified as female that the only thing standing between them and a more liberated lifestyle was their ignorant choice not to identify as male. (We could also give them the formula to invent yoga pants and also, less significantly, advise them to ensure doctors wash their hands before delivering babies from their-- likely male-- birth canals.)
I have no idea what it feels like to "be a man" - I only know what it feels like to be me - and I happen to be a man. Is what I 'feel' the same as what other men 'feel'? Dunno, don't care, stupid question 😂
This obsession with 'feeling like' something is bonkers.
I note with some inordinate amount of shame-free pleasure that biologicalwomen insisting they are men have become virtually invisible.
It just goes to show some very obvious things with feminism and postmodernism, which are the parents (or primogenitors or zygote-enablers or...) of the trans-whateverism.
Feminists will always fawn publicly over men living up to their ideological whimsy, to the detriment of allother women. Feminists will always sacrifice anything and everything for their ideology to be proven right both in the ethical/moral sense as well as the factual sense: if it leads to the end of western civilisation and therefore the freedoms and rights western women enjoy, it's worth it to the feminists. After all, what better way to prove how free you are than to voluntary and publicly don shackels?
French pedophiles will indeed as you say reduce reality using Reductio as Absurdum to prove thatnothing is real; therefore reality is what you can claim it is, if the claim is succesful. From climate to religion to physics to sex.
Combined, it is a cult where mentally ill people are encouraged to mutilate themselves and are (briefly) worshipped for it. I say briefly on purpose. Consider this: how many trans-somethings, darlings of the media and other boggarts of the same ilk, hae any lasting power as a phenomenon of their own?
None. They are but tokens to be used and used up as The Cause demands. Any word not according to the catechism, any action not pre-approved by dogma - and the transhuman becomes as apostate to be either shamed and threatened into silenced, or a heretic to be hounded.
Mention that you regret your genital mutliation, cancer-inducing steroid-treatment, and so on? Heretic. Witch. Traitor. Cleanse and burn and purify. Out comes the Malleus Transhumanitarium.
Mention the staggering suicide-rates for transers post-transition? See above. And so on.
Ever wonder why you see so little of FtM-trans? Because as small weedy "men" previously known as women, they learn the lessons we men learn from infancy: don't talk smack unless you want to get in a barney; stand up for yourself or be known as a wuss; don't be a bloody anorak; and don't run crying to Daddy or Mumsy over every little thing you big girls blouse you.
Girls aren't brought up like that, so when they think that wearing a binder, getting a crew cut, and so on is enough, oh are they in for a surprise:
99 out 100men will simply ignore them. Exactly the way most men ignore eachother unless they have to interact. And women are the polar opposite: not interacting as much as possible means there's somehing wrong.
Funny how most trans are cured almost immediately when no-one cares or makes allowances for them. Same with ADHD, Aspergers, anorexia, and most post-1980s mental disorders. When being "sick in the head" meant being institutionalised and loss of liberties, freedoms and rights, virtually no-one was it.
I am OK with most (all?) of the goals of early feminism, but like a lot of these social movements they seem to start in a good place, fighting for real justice, but then morph into the bonkers. Same with things like 'intersectionality' and 'CRT' - some initial good points, but then veered off the road into the Woke Wilderlands.
Modern feminism kind of lost me when they went full-on ranty about patriarchy, toxic masculinity, rape culture, manspreading, mansplaining, metoo, believe all women, etc etc. Not that (again) there aren't some legitimate points in all of these things (there are), but everything sort of got pushed to the extreme.
Lesbo speaks. 2 of my ex partners went through sex changes after I was with them*, and I also know 2 other people who did as well, all female to male transitions. They all had suffered abuse from their fathers, sexual or neglect. So, I think that may be part of their decision to want to carry on as people who at least look like men in the world, a final fuck you to the abuse they experienced. Just sayin, there are reasons people make these decisions and they are often uncomfortable and hard to discuss reasons. If sex changes were possible hundreds of years ago, I think some women would have made the same choice, historically, to become men, simply from the power inequity in sex.
*yeah, I wonder if it was me, too. Maybe I am a man-maker? Am I gay or straight? But my Dad was kind to me, always, so my big 'deviancy' is that I don't wear womens clothes, or makeup, or do girly stuff. It always seemed really vapid to me, more a hardware store type.
Dig a little deeper when you hear about sex change stories, there are always reasons you can't see at first. Show me one where there is not some kind of abuse or neglect involved, every time. People sick of being vulnerable in the way that women are truly vulnerable Call it what you will.
Only teasing (of course), but you ask interesting questions again. I also know from experience (not mine, but that of long-term partners) just how deep and damaging childhood trauma can be and how it can manifest in a whole range of really difficult issues in adulthood.
If you take someone suffering from BPD as a result of childhood trauma, for example, then not only can the outward behaviour be very unstable but there can also be a similar lack of stability when it comes to any sense of 'self' (we might say identity here) - and it's really this inner turmoil that generates the fear that leads to the outward acting out and manipulation. Partners of people with BPD become like a kind of 'mirror' in which the sufferer sees themself.
People who abuse and damage children are the dregs - not only do they often take away a childhood, but they severely restrict the chance that a person will have a happy adulthood.
I've no idea whether some kind of childhood trauma as an 'explanation' for 'trans' would be true in all cases, but something like this that can be a ***huge*** factor in subsequent adult development surely should not be overlooked.
Interesting point. But do you think that, if sex changes had been possible hundreds of years ago, would more men have transitioned as well? In other words, now that both female2male and male2female rates seem on the rise, do we have to treat the phenomena as one, or is there just a background factor influencing both?
Ah, perhaps...when you look at the clothing men wore back in the day, and the wigs....and the lace....men already wore lots of hosiery, and funny poofy pants.....so, maybe the men didn't have to have a sex change, they were already living in a world that was ok with making men pretty. Still the wigs in some parliaments! thanks cm2784...
" what’s the way out of this hideous mess we have created for ourselves?"
excuse me: WE created?
THEY created it, the loonies created it, We had nothing to do with it.
in my book, DSM, admittedly quite an early version, THEY are categorised as suffering from a mental disorder.
and no matter how many lunatics there are, their lunacy never becomes normalcy.
It's the 'we' of 'society'.
As a society, 'we' have created this mess.
But, yup, the loonies appear to be running the asylum at the moment
As usual, great article. You’ve put into eloquent words my thoughts exactly. Little by little these woke liberal leaders/politicians/academia/control freaks have the average citizens afraid to speak out, to dare to not go with the group think. But I speak out “oh, FFS, wearing a dress and lipstick does not make you an actual woman”. Then I’m not invited to the groups ‘reindeer games’ ever again. I’m older, 70, and praying sanity prevails and little by little people see the light.
Thanks CarolAnne
I'm hoping that a lot of this gender nonsense is just a societal phase. I'm all for letting people express themselves as they wish, but whilst I'm OK with a "live and let live" attitude, it's not one that is reciprocated by the activists who are pushing for "live and think as we tell you - or else"
Have you ever read about the Anabaptists? They also objected (and object) to baptism 'before the age of reason', and separated themselves from the Catholic (and Lutheran?) tradition exactly because of this objection. See the Amish and the Mennonites.
Regarding the trans stuff, I'm trusting that in most cases good old developmental biology will override the effects of the current wokery chattery. That set of natural influences won't work, of course, if a particular kid jumps or falls into pharmacological hands.
From the slide I learned that there are five types of men, but they only differ by colour. And the one manspreading with his arms is almost a girl.
How do we tell? It's pretty easy for me. In the last few years I've witnessed through my middle and high school children the absolute social contagion that is this 'identity' ideology/religion permeate their schools and social circles. They tell me it's now "cool" to be trans, or bi, or nonbinary, or non-conforming or L M N O P Q R S T... When they tell me, for example, their friend formerly known as Sally "now goes by Sal, and he/him", my first question is, "Is SHE planning to tell, or has she told, HER family?" If the answer is no, then I know Sally is 'fake trans' and just wants to be "cool" at school, but not seen or treated differently outside of school. That's not real/serious/conventional trans.
From the Cleveland Clinic website on Delusional Disorder:
"Non-bizarre delusions are different from bizarre delusions, which include beliefs that are impossible in our reality, such as believing someone has removed an organ from your body without any physical evidence of the procedure.
People with delusional disorder often continue to socialize and function well, apart from the subject of their delusion. Generally, they don’t behave in an odd or unusual manner. This is unlike people with other psychotic disorders, who might also have delusions as a symptom. In some cases, however, people with delusional disorder might become so preoccupied with their delusions that their lives are disrupted."
The "in our reality" of the definition is this: XX or XY. Have a vagina? You're a woman. You don't? You're not.
The sexual revolution has swept all foes before it and is mopping up pockets of resistance, so we dance around this disorder. To pretend that the science has changed in this case is beyond absurd.
One of my problems with the "gender spectrum" is that it provides no explanation for how it "feels" to "identify" as male, female, or somewhere in between. It's often taught alongside sexuality, but at least with sexuality we all know the meanings of the terms. A gay man is attracted to men. But how does he know he's a man and they're men? That GI Joe/Barbie poster is actually the first time I've actually seen someone try to explain it scientifically on paper, and I appreciate that. What I'm thinking is that during every era in Western history prior to the invention of yoga pants, I would have been male. My children would have been nourished by my male placenta within my male uterus, and later fed from my male mammaries. Actually, it's really a shame time machines don't exist on so many levels, but from a feminist (but never TERF-y!) perspective, perhaps most of all because we can't go back in history and tell the many people who identified as female that the only thing standing between them and a more liberated lifestyle was their ignorant choice not to identify as male. (We could also give them the formula to invent yoga pants and also, less significantly, advise them to ensure doctors wash their hands before delivering babies from their-- likely male-- birth canals.)
I have no idea what it feels like to "be a man" - I only know what it feels like to be me - and I happen to be a man. Is what I 'feel' the same as what other men 'feel'? Dunno, don't care, stupid question 😂
This obsession with 'feeling like' something is bonkers.
I note with some inordinate amount of shame-free pleasure that biologicalwomen insisting they are men have become virtually invisible.
It just goes to show some very obvious things with feminism and postmodernism, which are the parents (or primogenitors or zygote-enablers or...) of the trans-whateverism.
Feminists will always fawn publicly over men living up to their ideological whimsy, to the detriment of allother women. Feminists will always sacrifice anything and everything for their ideology to be proven right both in the ethical/moral sense as well as the factual sense: if it leads to the end of western civilisation and therefore the freedoms and rights western women enjoy, it's worth it to the feminists. After all, what better way to prove how free you are than to voluntary and publicly don shackels?
French pedophiles will indeed as you say reduce reality using Reductio as Absurdum to prove thatnothing is real; therefore reality is what you can claim it is, if the claim is succesful. From climate to religion to physics to sex.
Combined, it is a cult where mentally ill people are encouraged to mutilate themselves and are (briefly) worshipped for it. I say briefly on purpose. Consider this: how many trans-somethings, darlings of the media and other boggarts of the same ilk, hae any lasting power as a phenomenon of their own?
None. They are but tokens to be used and used up as The Cause demands. Any word not according to the catechism, any action not pre-approved by dogma - and the transhuman becomes as apostate to be either shamed and threatened into silenced, or a heretic to be hounded.
Mention that you regret your genital mutliation, cancer-inducing steroid-treatment, and so on? Heretic. Witch. Traitor. Cleanse and burn and purify. Out comes the Malleus Transhumanitarium.
Mention the staggering suicide-rates for transers post-transition? See above. And so on.
Ever wonder why you see so little of FtM-trans? Because as small weedy "men" previously known as women, they learn the lessons we men learn from infancy: don't talk smack unless you want to get in a barney; stand up for yourself or be known as a wuss; don't be a bloody anorak; and don't run crying to Daddy or Mumsy over every little thing you big girls blouse you.
Girls aren't brought up like that, so when they think that wearing a binder, getting a crew cut, and so on is enough, oh are they in for a surprise:
99 out 100men will simply ignore them. Exactly the way most men ignore eachother unless they have to interact. And women are the polar opposite: not interacting as much as possible means there's somehing wrong.
Funny how most trans are cured almost immediately when no-one cares or makes allowances for them. Same with ADHD, Aspergers, anorexia, and most post-1980s mental disorders. When being "sick in the head" meant being institutionalised and loss of liberties, freedoms and rights, virtually no-one was it.
Funny that.
I am OK with most (all?) of the goals of early feminism, but like a lot of these social movements they seem to start in a good place, fighting for real justice, but then morph into the bonkers. Same with things like 'intersectionality' and 'CRT' - some initial good points, but then veered off the road into the Woke Wilderlands.
Modern feminism kind of lost me when they went full-on ranty about patriarchy, toxic masculinity, rape culture, manspreading, mansplaining, metoo, believe all women, etc etc. Not that (again) there aren't some legitimate points in all of these things (there are), but everything sort of got pushed to the extreme.
Lesbo speaks. 2 of my ex partners went through sex changes after I was with them*, and I also know 2 other people who did as well, all female to male transitions. They all had suffered abuse from their fathers, sexual or neglect. So, I think that may be part of their decision to want to carry on as people who at least look like men in the world, a final fuck you to the abuse they experienced. Just sayin, there are reasons people make these decisions and they are often uncomfortable and hard to discuss reasons. If sex changes were possible hundreds of years ago, I think some women would have made the same choice, historically, to become men, simply from the power inequity in sex.
*yeah, I wonder if it was me, too. Maybe I am a man-maker? Am I gay or straight? But my Dad was kind to me, always, so my big 'deviancy' is that I don't wear womens clothes, or makeup, or do girly stuff. It always seemed really vapid to me, more a hardware store type.
Dig a little deeper when you hear about sex change stories, there are always reasons you can't see at first. Show me one where there is not some kind of abuse or neglect involved, every time. People sick of being vulnerable in the way that women are truly vulnerable Call it what you will.
😂
OMG what did you do you do to them Jacquelyn?
Only teasing (of course), but you ask interesting questions again. I also know from experience (not mine, but that of long-term partners) just how deep and damaging childhood trauma can be and how it can manifest in a whole range of really difficult issues in adulthood.
If you take someone suffering from BPD as a result of childhood trauma, for example, then not only can the outward behaviour be very unstable but there can also be a similar lack of stability when it comes to any sense of 'self' (we might say identity here) - and it's really this inner turmoil that generates the fear that leads to the outward acting out and manipulation. Partners of people with BPD become like a kind of 'mirror' in which the sufferer sees themself.
People who abuse and damage children are the dregs - not only do they often take away a childhood, but they severely restrict the chance that a person will have a happy adulthood.
I've no idea whether some kind of childhood trauma as an 'explanation' for 'trans' would be true in all cases, but something like this that can be a ***huge*** factor in subsequent adult development surely should not be overlooked.
Interesting point. But do you think that, if sex changes had been possible hundreds of years ago, would more men have transitioned as well? In other words, now that both female2male and male2female rates seem on the rise, do we have to treat the phenomena as one, or is there just a background factor influencing both?
Ah, perhaps...when you look at the clothing men wore back in the day, and the wigs....and the lace....men already wore lots of hosiery, and funny poofy pants.....so, maybe the men didn't have to have a sex change, they were already living in a world that was ok with making men pretty. Still the wigs in some parliaments! thanks cm2784...
I came across this document: Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review. https://www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf
"There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have
a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of
testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass
(LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after
12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance
advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height.
This is contrasted with other changes, such as hemoglobin (HG), which
normalize within the cis women range within four months of starting
testosterone suppression. For pre-suppression trans women it is currently
unknown when during the first 12 months of suppression that any advantage
may persist. The duration of any such advantage is likely highly dependent on
the individual's pre-suppression LBM which, in turn varies, greatly and is highly
impacted by societal factors and individual circumstance. "
(Would love to hear your take on this 'review'.)
Thanks for your awesome writing!
I came across this document: Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review. https://www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf
"There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have
a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of
testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass
(LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after
12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance
advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height.
This is contrasted with other changes, such as hemoglobin (HG), which
normalize within the cis women range within four months of starting
testosterone suppression. For pre-suppression trans women it is currently
unknown when during the first 12 months of suppression that any advantage
may persist. The duration of any such advantage is likely highly dependent on
the individual's pre-suppression LBM which, in turn varies, greatly and is highly
impacted by societal factors and individual circumstance. "
(Would love to hear your take on this 'review'.)
Thanks for your awesome writing!
I came across this document: Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review. https://www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf
"There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have
a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of
testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass
(LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after
12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance
advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height.
This is contrasted with other changes, such as hemoglobin (HG), which
normalize within the cis women range within four months of starting
testosterone suppression. For pre-suppression trans women it is currently
unknown when during the first 12 months of suppression that any advantage
may persist. The duration of any such advantage is likely highly dependent on
the individual's pre-suppression LBM which, in turn varies, greatly and is highly
impacted by societal factors and individual circumstance. "
(Would love to hear your take on this 'review'.)
Thanks for your awesome writing!
I came across this document: Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review. https://www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf
"There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have
a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of
testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass
(LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after
12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance
advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height.
This is contrasted with other changes, such as hemoglobin (HG), which
normalize within the cis women range within four months of starting
testosterone suppression. For pre-suppression trans women it is currently
unknown when during the first 12 months of suppression that any advantage
may persist. The duration of any such advantage is likely highly dependent on
the individual's pre-suppression LBM which, in turn varies, greatly and is highly
impacted by societal factors and individual circumstance. "
(Would love to hear your take on this 'review'.)
Thanks for your awesome writing!
I came across this document: Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review. https://www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf
"There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have
a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of
testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass
(LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after
12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance
advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height.
This is contrasted with other changes, such as hemoglobin (HG), which
normalize within the cis women range within four months of starting
testosterone suppression. For pre-suppression trans women it is currently
unknown when during the first 12 months of suppression that any advantage
may persist. The duration of any such advantage is likely highly dependent on
the individual's pre-suppression LBM which, in turn varies, greatly and is highly
impacted by societal factors and individual circumstance. "
(Would love to hear your take on this 'review'.)
Thanks for your awesome writing!