I don’t understand what it feels like to be trans. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve spent hours debating the metaphysical inconsistencies of being “born in the wrong body.” I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what it “feels like” to be a man. I’ve asked countless people how undergoing surgery and taking hormones brings them closer to a more “authentic self.” But in the end, that doesn’t matter.
Continuing. The thrust of your opening post is to encourage dialogue and civility and mutual understanding, and while I would be wrong to argue against that noble premise *in generality* I think it's irresponsible to counsel love and support and acceptance for something so unhealthy and so alarming.
Check it: there are thirteen year old girls getting surgeries happily administered by unscrupulous surgeons who accept a certificate of eligibility easily obtained for a fee over the Internet along with the many thousands of dollars they charge. Sorry but this is not something we should just open our arms in hugs for.
But! If one of these girls goes to a counselor looking for the permission to get sliced, and the counselor decides that she is merely an unhappy person seeking an escape from misery and is not actually dysphoric, *he will be fired*. The imperative to validate everything "trans" is monstrous and I really cannot understand why, even in the name of being kind to one another, you would go along with it.
Even if it's just puberty-blocking hormones and not surgery, these girls are screwing up their bodies for what is very likely just a phase. The law needs to step in.
OK, I'm going to try to keep this level and keep the "nonbinary" crap out of it.
I am gay. For some reason people lump gay and bisexual people in with this ensemble of gender bending trends as though we have something to do with each other. Homosexuality has been a steady 3-5% of human population across continents of culture and millennia of time. While people have become more open, less reluctant to come out, as social acceptance waxed, there has never been a surge to 30% or 50% or 80% of the population. Homosexuality is clearly as much a part of normal human variation as left-handedness, and its concomitant psychological maladies can all be lain at the feet of prejudice.
Suppose the percentage identifying as gay suddenly went up tenfold. My delight at all the new potential sex partners would be completely swamped by puzzlement and suspicion; sexual orientation is a fundamental aspect of identity and a sudden change from its constancy would raise alarms.
Gender identity is a lot more fundamental than sexual orientation; very few gay people wish they could be the opposite sex, and the overlap between the LG and the T is insignificant.
And yet. You mention a 4000% (!) increase in teenage girls identifying with the opposite gender and just breeze along as though this is nothing but a statistic. It is a fuck of a lot more than that. Even a 40% increase should raise alarms.
First of all it is coming at a time when "trans" is trendy, part of a nearly mindless impulse toward a set of ill-conceived social goals mostly inspired by postmodernism, the most intellectually vapid movement in the history of social thought. By stringent medical definition gender dysphoria affects one in 30,000 male births and one in 100,000 female. If we are seeing a forty-fold increase in the latter, we should be looking for explanations a lot more carefully than we rush to encouraging acceptance of what is clearly a dangerously unhealthy trend.
In a stunning turn of events this weird surge is coming at a time of unprecedented personal stress and dissatisfaction, we are living through year after year of Cuban Missile Crisis level anxiety every day as the country enters its second civil war.
The serial killer in Silence of the Lambs was murdering young woman to make a "woman suit" because he had been rejected for reassignment surgery. He hated his life and wanted to be something different. And what could be more different than gender? I see explanations like this as a lot more plausible than believing that, all of a sudden, forty time the usual number of young girls want to change their gender.
Not buying that for a second.
And ... the stridently totalitarian (you know what I mean) rhetoric of this movement is incongruent with true conviction, it is at the level of rhetorical violence, people trying to convince not just others but convince themselves that their preposterous beliefs ("a trans woman is not a man") are true.
"I would give it all away in a heartbeat to be allowed to feel comfortable and not expected to look, act or sound a certain way."
For me, this sentence is staggering. The writer is saying that they would rather harm their body than work through emotional discomfort.
A big part of passing from adolescence into adulthood is figuring out who you are, separate from everyone else's expectations of you. And it can be painful and hard. You can't avoid this or outsource this.
At the same time, geez. Cutting off your breasts so people won't expect you to look a certain way? Just show up to work or school in clean clothes and a washed face and that's it. Deodorant is a nice bonus. Everybody is not looking at you and thinking about you! That's how adolescents think. The truth is that everyone is thinking about themselves, not you.
Life is hard, but it's actually really easy too. Go outside, work in the garden, use your body and be a human animal on this planet. Find your joy!!
In the words of Auntie Mame, "Life's a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."
The comments have taken a path that needs to be traveled. If I was gay, after getting past the reluctance to openly be one of the 3-5%, I think I could be comfortable in my own body.
Some have suggested that the denial of homosexuality with "I'm trans" can become a tragedy when drugs and surgery are resorted to when they may well later get past the idea. I agree.
I am left to wonder how many of the people claiming to be transexual are just homosexuals in denial or confused adolescents fleeing the emotional pressure of their world. That needs to be part of the conversation. Genuine gender dysphoria vs. something else? It is a disservice to the second group to not suggest that they may be making a horrible mistake.
Steve, I'm surprised they haven't kicked you off Medium at this point. I can't always read your articles since I'm limited to three a month, but after Chris Fox mentioned how crazy(-ier) the left has gotten there, I wondered why they even tolerate you at all, esp with what you say about the trans community. Facts, evidence, and critical thinking are verboten, and often a good way to get banned.
The ones who are in power in the trans movement, the ones seeking to *preserve* their power, are those men who've adopted trans in an effort to get fuzzy-headed feminists more susceptible to male authority than they realize to get on board and support their 'victimhood'.
It's why I said in my most recent article that Dave Chappelle's question about whether transwomen are regarded by natal women as 'gender blackface', which I didn't really resonate with before, now sounds like there may be some there there.
A so-called 'progressive' friend of mine, not one I've ever met personally but who I met online through a good friend and we've been online friends for more than twenty years, defriended me on Facebook over the article. Because I don't have a deep emotional attachment to this person I'm best described as disappointed with her over this. She was once far more tolerant with me over a political issue far more important than the 'gender blackface' comments she disliked and 'misgendering' she accused me of. It'll be the subject of my next article after I'm done with the one I'm working on. I've thought a lot about the about-face she's done from when she was once a true progressive, and now a fundamentalist soldier in the woke cult, with merely belief in one god separating the two.
This is How The Left Was Lost, and I think it means the right will start winning from now on. And when that happens, the left will forever point the finger of blame at others (somewhat justifiably) but never ask themselves whether *they* contributed to the hatred and bigotry they claimed to abhor.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, queer politics and activism are such that the goal has become determining who is in your tribe, or not, rather than an exchange of ideas and experiences.
Those of us who believe that we could find some common ground from talking/listening to one another fail to understand the authoritarian nature of queer/trans politics. And certainly not all trans/queer individuals fall into that category, but those that don’t also face suspicion from the tribe.
This conversation as led me to a thought that had not occurred to me. While I have compassion and empathy for the dysphoric, the thought that a huge portion of trans people may have just been duped into a what could turn out to be temporary thought that they are trans and are doing physical harm to themselves seems worthy of more compassion and empathy. Actually, more than that but addressing it would certainly get us kicked off of Medium. How many who were a part of the fad of having a face that looks like their tackle box exploded in their face are still sporting that look?
Steve, has the "are you really trans?" idea been raised in your conversations or is something only mentioned here where you aren't going to cancel or censor?
Continuing. The thrust of your opening post is to encourage dialogue and civility and mutual understanding, and while I would be wrong to argue against that noble premise *in generality* I think it's irresponsible to counsel love and support and acceptance for something so unhealthy and so alarming.
Check it: there are thirteen year old girls getting surgeries happily administered by unscrupulous surgeons who accept a certificate of eligibility easily obtained for a fee over the Internet along with the many thousands of dollars they charge. Sorry but this is not something we should just open our arms in hugs for.
But! If one of these girls goes to a counselor looking for the permission to get sliced, and the counselor decides that she is merely an unhappy person seeking an escape from misery and is not actually dysphoric, *he will be fired*. The imperative to validate everything "trans" is monstrous and I really cannot understand why, even in the name of being kind to one another, you would go along with it.
Even if it's just puberty-blocking hormones and not surgery, these girls are screwing up their bodies for what is very likely just a phase. The law needs to step in.
OK, I'm going to try to keep this level and keep the "nonbinary" crap out of it.
I am gay. For some reason people lump gay and bisexual people in with this ensemble of gender bending trends as though we have something to do with each other. Homosexuality has been a steady 3-5% of human population across continents of culture and millennia of time. While people have become more open, less reluctant to come out, as social acceptance waxed, there has never been a surge to 30% or 50% or 80% of the population. Homosexuality is clearly as much a part of normal human variation as left-handedness, and its concomitant psychological maladies can all be lain at the feet of prejudice.
Suppose the percentage identifying as gay suddenly went up tenfold. My delight at all the new potential sex partners would be completely swamped by puzzlement and suspicion; sexual orientation is a fundamental aspect of identity and a sudden change from its constancy would raise alarms.
Gender identity is a lot more fundamental than sexual orientation; very few gay people wish they could be the opposite sex, and the overlap between the LG and the T is insignificant.
And yet. You mention a 4000% (!) increase in teenage girls identifying with the opposite gender and just breeze along as though this is nothing but a statistic. It is a fuck of a lot more than that. Even a 40% increase should raise alarms.
First of all it is coming at a time when "trans" is trendy, part of a nearly mindless impulse toward a set of ill-conceived social goals mostly inspired by postmodernism, the most intellectually vapid movement in the history of social thought. By stringent medical definition gender dysphoria affects one in 30,000 male births and one in 100,000 female. If we are seeing a forty-fold increase in the latter, we should be looking for explanations a lot more carefully than we rush to encouraging acceptance of what is clearly a dangerously unhealthy trend.
In a stunning turn of events this weird surge is coming at a time of unprecedented personal stress and dissatisfaction, we are living through year after year of Cuban Missile Crisis level anxiety every day as the country enters its second civil war.
The serial killer in Silence of the Lambs was murdering young woman to make a "woman suit" because he had been rejected for reassignment surgery. He hated his life and wanted to be something different. And what could be more different than gender? I see explanations like this as a lot more plausible than believing that, all of a sudden, forty time the usual number of young girls want to change their gender.
Not buying that for a second.
And ... the stridently totalitarian (you know what I mean) rhetoric of this movement is incongruent with true conviction, it is at the level of rhetorical violence, people trying to convince not just others but convince themselves that their preposterous beliefs ("a trans woman is not a man") are true.
"I would give it all away in a heartbeat to be allowed to feel comfortable and not expected to look, act or sound a certain way."
For me, this sentence is staggering. The writer is saying that they would rather harm their body than work through emotional discomfort.
A big part of passing from adolescence into adulthood is figuring out who you are, separate from everyone else's expectations of you. And it can be painful and hard. You can't avoid this or outsource this.
At the same time, geez. Cutting off your breasts so people won't expect you to look a certain way? Just show up to work or school in clean clothes and a washed face and that's it. Deodorant is a nice bonus. Everybody is not looking at you and thinking about you! That's how adolescents think. The truth is that everyone is thinking about themselves, not you.
Life is hard, but it's actually really easy too. Go outside, work in the garden, use your body and be a human animal on this planet. Find your joy!!
In the words of Auntie Mame, "Life's a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."
The comments have taken a path that needs to be traveled. If I was gay, after getting past the reluctance to openly be one of the 3-5%, I think I could be comfortable in my own body.
Some have suggested that the denial of homosexuality with "I'm trans" can become a tragedy when drugs and surgery are resorted to when they may well later get past the idea. I agree.
I am left to wonder how many of the people claiming to be transexual are just homosexuals in denial or confused adolescents fleeing the emotional pressure of their world. That needs to be part of the conversation. Genuine gender dysphoria vs. something else? It is a disservice to the second group to not suggest that they may be making a horrible mistake.
Steve, I'm surprised they haven't kicked you off Medium at this point. I can't always read your articles since I'm limited to three a month, but after Chris Fox mentioned how crazy(-ier) the left has gotten there, I wondered why they even tolerate you at all, esp with what you say about the trans community. Facts, evidence, and critical thinking are verboten, and often a good way to get banned.
The ones who are in power in the trans movement, the ones seeking to *preserve* their power, are those men who've adopted trans in an effort to get fuzzy-headed feminists more susceptible to male authority than they realize to get on board and support their 'victimhood'.
It's why I said in my most recent article that Dave Chappelle's question about whether transwomen are regarded by natal women as 'gender blackface', which I didn't really resonate with before, now sounds like there may be some there there.
A so-called 'progressive' friend of mine, not one I've ever met personally but who I met online through a good friend and we've been online friends for more than twenty years, defriended me on Facebook over the article. Because I don't have a deep emotional attachment to this person I'm best described as disappointed with her over this. She was once far more tolerant with me over a political issue far more important than the 'gender blackface' comments she disliked and 'misgendering' she accused me of. It'll be the subject of my next article after I'm done with the one I'm working on. I've thought a lot about the about-face she's done from when she was once a true progressive, and now a fundamentalist soldier in the woke cult, with merely belief in one god separating the two.
This is How The Left Was Lost, and I think it means the right will start winning from now on. And when that happens, the left will forever point the finger of blame at others (somewhat justifiably) but never ask themselves whether *they* contributed to the hatred and bigotry they claimed to abhor.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, queer politics and activism are such that the goal has become determining who is in your tribe, or not, rather than an exchange of ideas and experiences.
Those of us who believe that we could find some common ground from talking/listening to one another fail to understand the authoritarian nature of queer/trans politics. And certainly not all trans/queer individuals fall into that category, but those that don’t also face suspicion from the tribe.
This conversation as led me to a thought that had not occurred to me. While I have compassion and empathy for the dysphoric, the thought that a huge portion of trans people may have just been duped into a what could turn out to be temporary thought that they are trans and are doing physical harm to themselves seems worthy of more compassion and empathy. Actually, more than that but addressing it would certainly get us kicked off of Medium. How many who were a part of the fad of having a face that looks like their tackle box exploded in their face are still sporting that look?
Steve, has the "are you really trans?" idea been raised in your conversations or is something only mentioned here where you aren't going to cancel or censor?