It might seem as if my mind is made up about a lot of issues, but that's not true at all. Especially when it comes to trans issues. Even though I’ve been having conversations with and about trans people for years, I constantly ask myself if I'm missing something. I consciously seek out a variety trans perspectives. I’m always trying to avoid speaking over people whose voices should be heard.
General observation: whether it's the history of mathematics, contemporary software development, postmodernism, or this "trans" fad, the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon.
These people are as obsessed with their gender identities as RKBA nutters are with their guns. Transphobic (afraid of them? I don't think so), transantagonisic, trans woman/man .... can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?
Note too that one of them concedes openly that not all "trans" people are dysphoric. For those who are not, I don't need to invent a new word, we already have one.
"Fakes"
Truly dysphoric people are suffering and, unlike past attitudes toward homosexuality, the pain is not from bigotry, it's internal. They deserve our support and respect. I can't say the same for the other 99.9% who are clearly in it for attention and who urge young girls to get surgery. The activists whom Steve wrote about (like the one on Medium flipping off the reader) have a lot to answer for.
I appreciate Jenny’s inherent honesty. As a natel woman who identifies as male, they are at least genuinely in tune with who they are, what they are, and who they would want to be. I can respect that because it’s not a lie. It’s a choice. Others responding seem to lack that clarity.
"meaningful community doesn’t form around skin or religion or gender identity. And certainly not around nastiness and entitlement. Community forms around values. It forms around actions. It forms around the way we treat people who think differently to us": This is so simple and yet so important to keep in mind nowadays... it seems to me that when it comes to identity issues people are loosing the track, so thank you for expressing this beautiful and powerful message and let's hope more and more people will be able to escape the cages of there social identities and try to build connections based on values and ideas, "beyond their own victimhood".
I know Jenny, I became friends with her when I first joined Medium. She was one of the other female writers who wrote about feminism without identifying with victimhood. When I talk to her today, usually on Twitter, I go by he/him and call him Ian which is his new name. I like Jenny/Ian and especially that s/he is not a douche. But transmen rarely are. Transwomen, of the Moira kind, are the sources of most of all the sturm und drang.
It's funny how so many people think that putting on a dress or a sports jersey magically turns someone into a male-thinking man and a female-thinking woman (or, as in the case of the prison system, turning a sex offender into a progressive feminist). It's harder to change brains than bodies and frankly, plenty of transwomen are still, as Jenny pointed out, entitled men and quiet, don't-rock-the-boat transmen are doing what quiet girls who don't want attention do. I suspect transmen have a lot more to worry about than transwomen who are still able-bodied men. Can you just imagine a transman trying to join a football team? Even if he was large and strong (think of someone like Leslie Jones), how dangerous will this be? In addition to still being weaker than all your teammates, male sports are notoriously toxic masculine and these dudes may not take kindly to a transman on the team. And how does a toxic masculine male - or several of them - demonstrate to a woman that this is her place, and this is what she was made to do...?
Fun times in the locker room, indeed.
I'm putting my foot down on this "transwomen are women" crap. They are NOT. I can get along with them just fine as long as they're not entitled pindicks and respect my rights as a woman. I don't care how people 'identify' even if I might privately think they're insane. We're all deluded about something, we're the worst judges of ourselves, however positively or negatively we think about ourselves. So, I won't cast too many asparagus :) at people who identify as a different gender. There are some real ones, and having known one long before it was cool, I saw the very real challenges s/he faced as well as how painful it was to be forced into the man label when s/he really wanted to be a woman.
I'm not sure I believe Moira's that kind, though. He sounds way too much like an entitled, narcissistic man for me to take him too seriously.
"Obnoxious, unreasonable behaviour tends to do that. And so, if we’re exposed to enough Moiras, it’s tempting to assume their behaviour represents the “trans community."
The Moiras do represent the "trans" community; they are however unlikely to be representative of it. Most of us have no in-person exposure to the "trans" community. Any experience with them is likely to lead to efforts to avoid any more of it because they never talk about anything but their "gender identity" and they tend to be painfully self-absorbed.
But narcissism isn't combative rage, and the "trans" activists we read online or see in the media are almost all people of seething rage and combative belligerence. OK, not all "trans" people are like them, but they are the public face of the "trans" community.
Just as fundamentalist bigots have become the face of American Christianity and hate-crazed irrational people have become the face of conservatism.
That the corpus of these groups are not all like these horrid people is a mere footnote and of scholarly interest alone. I give you credit, Steve, for perennially observing this difference but your observation is not widely shared. Moreover, using the most extreme elements of The Other Side to represent the whole is a deeply established tactic, it works, and people are not about to stop using it.
A lot of Christians are decent and charitable people; most liberals are not outrage-spraying "woke" SJWs; some conservatives really do believe in sealed borders and small government.
It doesn't matter.
Because in every one of these cases it's the extremists who are running things. Minority though they may be. The ascendancy of the ugly minority is one of the sordid truths of these awful times.
"Trans people sit above everybody on the victimhood hierarchy"
A women who works as a counselor to families once told me that it's the Victim who holds the most power in any system. It got me thinking how the powerful will play that card any time someone tries to take their power away (Trump's lost election and Justice Kavanaugh confirmation hearings came to mind at the time). Whether it is deliberate or instinctive, it's hard to tell, but some people (like Moira) know the truth of this and wield it.
It's a useful bypass - rather than use reasoning or give evidence, you can show how you are the one suffering most and cut any argument at the pass.
"But meaningful community doesn’t form around skin or religion or gender identity. And certainly not around nastiness and entitlement. Community forms around values. It forms around actions. It forms around the way we treat people who think differently to us."
General observation: whether it's the history of mathematics, contemporary software development, postmodernism, or this "trans" fad, the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon.
These people are as obsessed with their gender identities as RKBA nutters are with their guns. Transphobic (afraid of them? I don't think so), transantagonisic, trans woman/man .... can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?
Note too that one of them concedes openly that not all "trans" people are dysphoric. For those who are not, I don't need to invent a new word, we already have one.
"Fakes"
Truly dysphoric people are suffering and, unlike past attitudes toward homosexuality, the pain is not from bigotry, it's internal. They deserve our support and respect. I can't say the same for the other 99.9% who are clearly in it for attention and who urge young girls to get surgery. The activists whom Steve wrote about (like the one on Medium flipping off the reader) have a lot to answer for.
"𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘐’𝘮 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐’𝘮 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐’𝘮 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯. 𝘐 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘦 43 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦. 𝘐’𝘮 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯." -Jenny
That was unexpected, at least to me. Shreds the idea of a monolithic community.
I appreciate Jenny’s inherent honesty. As a natel woman who identifies as male, they are at least genuinely in tune with who they are, what they are, and who they would want to be. I can respect that because it’s not a lie. It’s a choice. Others responding seem to lack that clarity.
So grateful for people like Jenny and Alexander!
"meaningful community doesn’t form around skin or religion or gender identity. And certainly not around nastiness and entitlement. Community forms around values. It forms around actions. It forms around the way we treat people who think differently to us": This is so simple and yet so important to keep in mind nowadays... it seems to me that when it comes to identity issues people are loosing the track, so thank you for expressing this beautiful and powerful message and let's hope more and more people will be able to escape the cages of there social identities and try to build connections based on values and ideas, "beyond their own victimhood".
I know Jenny, I became friends with her when I first joined Medium. She was one of the other female writers who wrote about feminism without identifying with victimhood. When I talk to her today, usually on Twitter, I go by he/him and call him Ian which is his new name. I like Jenny/Ian and especially that s/he is not a douche. But transmen rarely are. Transwomen, of the Moira kind, are the sources of most of all the sturm und drang.
It's funny how so many people think that putting on a dress or a sports jersey magically turns someone into a male-thinking man and a female-thinking woman (or, as in the case of the prison system, turning a sex offender into a progressive feminist). It's harder to change brains than bodies and frankly, plenty of transwomen are still, as Jenny pointed out, entitled men and quiet, don't-rock-the-boat transmen are doing what quiet girls who don't want attention do. I suspect transmen have a lot more to worry about than transwomen who are still able-bodied men. Can you just imagine a transman trying to join a football team? Even if he was large and strong (think of someone like Leslie Jones), how dangerous will this be? In addition to still being weaker than all your teammates, male sports are notoriously toxic masculine and these dudes may not take kindly to a transman on the team. And how does a toxic masculine male - or several of them - demonstrate to a woman that this is her place, and this is what she was made to do...?
Fun times in the locker room, indeed.
I'm putting my foot down on this "transwomen are women" crap. They are NOT. I can get along with them just fine as long as they're not entitled pindicks and respect my rights as a woman. I don't care how people 'identify' even if I might privately think they're insane. We're all deluded about something, we're the worst judges of ourselves, however positively or negatively we think about ourselves. So, I won't cast too many asparagus :) at people who identify as a different gender. There are some real ones, and having known one long before it was cool, I saw the very real challenges s/he faced as well as how painful it was to be forced into the man label when s/he really wanted to be a woman.
I'm not sure I believe Moira's that kind, though. He sounds way too much like an entitled, narcissistic man for me to take him too seriously.
"Obnoxious, unreasonable behaviour tends to do that. And so, if we’re exposed to enough Moiras, it’s tempting to assume their behaviour represents the “trans community."
The Moiras do represent the "trans" community; they are however unlikely to be representative of it. Most of us have no in-person exposure to the "trans" community. Any experience with them is likely to lead to efforts to avoid any more of it because they never talk about anything but their "gender identity" and they tend to be painfully self-absorbed.
But narcissism isn't combative rage, and the "trans" activists we read online or see in the media are almost all people of seething rage and combative belligerence. OK, not all "trans" people are like them, but they are the public face of the "trans" community.
Just as fundamentalist bigots have become the face of American Christianity and hate-crazed irrational people have become the face of conservatism.
That the corpus of these groups are not all like these horrid people is a mere footnote and of scholarly interest alone. I give you credit, Steve, for perennially observing this difference but your observation is not widely shared. Moreover, using the most extreme elements of The Other Side to represent the whole is a deeply established tactic, it works, and people are not about to stop using it.
A lot of Christians are decent and charitable people; most liberals are not outrage-spraying "woke" SJWs; some conservatives really do believe in sealed borders and small government.
It doesn't matter.
Because in every one of these cases it's the extremists who are running things. Minority though they may be. The ascendancy of the ugly minority is one of the sordid truths of these awful times.
"Trans people sit above everybody on the victimhood hierarchy"
A women who works as a counselor to families once told me that it's the Victim who holds the most power in any system. It got me thinking how the powerful will play that card any time someone tries to take their power away (Trump's lost election and Justice Kavanaugh confirmation hearings came to mind at the time). Whether it is deliberate or instinctive, it's hard to tell, but some people (like Moira) know the truth of this and wield it.
It's a useful bypass - rather than use reasoning or give evidence, you can show how you are the one suffering most and cut any argument at the pass.
How to lose your job in one easy lesson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFjUjSJplfs
"But meaningful community doesn’t form around skin or religion or gender identity. And certainly not around nastiness and entitlement. Community forms around values. It forms around actions. It forms around the way we treat people who think differently to us."
Thank you!!