Great article, sensible and honest. I am a former ( and maybe future?) democrat who was alienated from the party due to several issues, one of which was trans extremism. I was absolutely sympathetic towards trans people. In Washington DC where I lived, there were many trans people, and I found them a colorful and interesting part of the cultural scene. OF COURSE, trans people should have all the civil rights of every citizen. Extra bathrooms, gender neutral bathrooms, I was never against this if done sensibly.
What alienated me was when the non profits and the "movement" starting going after children. Drag Queen story hour for toddlers... Public ( and private) school curriculums that tell children that maybe they were born in the "wrong" body and they can change their gender. This is emotional abuse of young children. Biological sex is a reality that every child gradually comes to terms with during the first two decades of life. This journey is not over until well after puberty.
Every child should be embraced for who they are and how they are but putting labels on young children as " gay" or " trans" is wrong. Young adults, probably after some experimentation, can decide what they want to be in the world. But introducing children to these issues is not age appropriate and is counterproductive. The vast majority of parents were never asking for this either, even in deep blue communities- especially when schools are failing in their first job of teaching math, language and writing skills).
Close, but no cigar. You got the sex part right, but you've utterly bungled "gender". You were right to separate out sex from gender, but you've completely mangled the crucial distinction between gender EXPRESSION (dressing and acting femininely or masculinely) from gender IDENTITY — the pseudoscientific concept at the heart of transgender ideology, which encourages people to hate their bodies if they dress or act masculinely or femininely while their sex traits and pronouns are not correspondingly male or female.
You see, trans is not and never was about gender expression. It was always about sex, as in biological sex, as well as the act of sex. The majority of gay people who identify as "trans women" are NOT just expressing their natural femininity, they are seeking to emulate females for the sake of dating and mating. They want to be seen not just as feminine, but as f***able in the eyes of the straight men they covet. Talk to any adult gay male "trans woman" (barring the poor kids whose parents pushed them into it) and you'll see that his decision to "go trans" had everything to do with the male gaze and nothing to do with simply having a feminine disposition.
Talk to any butch lesbian "trans man" and you'll see her "male" identity has everything to do with ESCAPING the male gaze, with NOT being seen as a sex object in the eyes of straight men. They do this by pretending to be FELLOW "straight" men. The difference between a butch lesbian who doesn't "go trans" and one who does is not a matter of how butch she is; it's a matter of how well she can hold true to herself amid society's sexism.
And then there's the vast majority of trans-identifying people: the straight men themselves. Almost all of these men have autogynephilia — a sexual fixation on their own bodies. It's like a narcissistic form of heterosexuality: they're biologically wired to be attracted to female bodies and to be averse to male bodies (like all heterosexual men are), but the object of their sexual fixation is their own bodies. They want to date and mate with their own selves, quite literally. So again, this has nothing to do with mere "gender expression", and everything to do with biological sex: sex with self-as-male icks them out because they're straight; sex with self-as-female turns them on. They euphemistically call it "gender euphoria" when they imagine they've turned female, but it's really just bog-standard erotic arousal — dilated pupils, quickened heart rate, erection, sweat — only it's directed at oneself instead of at one's partner. Over time, the erotic thrill of pretending to be a woman settles into pair-bonded comfort. The orgiastic honeymoon period subsides, and he settles into a domestic "relationship" with his female alter-ego. At this point, he might even opt to part with his penis and testicles and consummate the "marriage" with a vaginoplasty. (Though, as you know, the majority of "trans women" keep their penises, for they're never quite committed enough to forgo masturbation for the rest of their lives.)
This isn't just speculation. It's all incredibly well-known and well-documented in sexological circles.
It's very strange that you failed to mention any of this in your article. But that's par for the course: nobody likes to explain what trans actually IS, because once people see what it is, they can't un-see how terribly regressive the whole thing is.
It's all about straight men at the end of the day. The trans movement is just a big old reinforcement of the patriarchy. It realigns everyone else towards straight men's needs and wants. When gay men go trans, it's because they want to be sexually objectified by straight men. (Just listen to the lyrics to any Kim Petras song for proof of that.) When lesbians go trans, it's because they want OUT of straight men's sexual objectification — they are the inverse mirror-image of gay men in that sense. And when straight men go trans, it's because they want sexual attention from THEMSELVES.
I want to live in a world where gay men can be fabulously feminine and find wonderful partners who love them WITHOUT FEELING like they have to turn their bodies into synthetic copies of straight women. I want to live in a world where lesbians can be gloriously butch without feeling uncomfortable in their perfectly healthy female bodies.
And also — this is the most important and most controversial part: I want to live in a world where men with autogynephilia are understood to have a hard-wired, atypical sexuality, which they did not choose to be born with, and which can indeed cause them great distress. Some degree of concession for this in public is necessary: men who pair-bond with themselves and dress femininely in public because of AGP have a right to dress in ways that make themselves feel comfortable — within reason. (No sexy schoolgirl outfits at the office. But a modest blouse is fine.)
As to "trans rights", well, you skirted the hard questions altogether, didn't you. Not only is biological sex binary, but spaces reserved for women's privacy and dignity are the exclusive domain of females. And spaces reserved for gay men (leather bars and such) are the exclusive domain of gay males. No one has the right to force anyone else to not acknowledge their biological sex. Ever. No exceptions. Trans women are men. Period. Trans men are women. Period.
This is especially crucial, because of what's being done to women's rights, and also because of what's being done to young people. They've been misled to believe that gender expression and gender identity are the same thing — that being a feminine boy means requiring "gender affirming care". NOBODY requires "gender" affirming "medicine". It was never "gender" medicine in the first place: it was always about satisfying straight males' ideas of social norms, and satisfying straight males' sexual desires.
Talk to detransitioners and you'll see. The difference between a trans person and a detrans person isn't that they've undone the medical procedures they've had — that's tragically impossible. It’s that they’ve had a change of perspective on the world around them and how they fit into it. The vast majority of people who’ve already adopted trans identities and medicalized themselves would never have done so if they’d known that the cultural climate over the past few years was only a blip, and that the rest of the world was not going to go along forever with their pretend identities.
The vast majority of people who decided they were trans did so because they were misled. And their continued happiness is dependent on keeping them in the dark about the reality of sex. Once they realize not only that sex and gender are different things, but that gender expression doesn't necessitate medically-assisted "gender identity", happiness turns to anguish and regret.
So we've got a crisis on our hands. We want to show kindness and compassion to those who've already adopted trans identities. But at the same time, we want to minimize the number of new ones moving forward as much as possible, because trans is ultimately maladaptive and rooted in pseudoscientific, regressive ideas.
The only way to do that is to tell the truth, the whole truth, the HARD truth, even if it hurts some trans people's feelings. It's the sunk cost fallacy: we keep doubling down on transitioning more and more people because it's too painful to cut our losses and admit that we blew it. But we're just prolonging the crisis and hurting more people.
So.
I firmly reject your "liberal manifesto for trans activism" because it perpetuates the lie and does not reckon with the whole truth.
True compassion, true humanism, true progress, requires telling the whole truth. Trans identities are pseudoscientific fictions, they're UNHEALTHY beliefs. People are free to believe in unhealthy things. It shouldn't be illegal to believe in your own mind that you've got a magical "gender identity", just is it shouldn't be illegal to believe in Scientology or the Book of Mormon. But "gender identity" is an UNHEALTHY belief, and as such, a true liberal worldview must not be afraid to say so out loud, and we should limit the degree to which it's accommodated in the secular sphere.
> It's all about straight men at the end of the day.
Nope, trans is the pet project of the radfems. They got to thinking that, as the song says: "I'm just as bad as you, there ain't nothing I can't do ..." men and women were interchangeable in their doctrine, ergo there's no reason to make any distinctions between them and -- taken to the limit -- one can change from being a man to being a women as easily as changing underwear.
Please note that by far the majority of trans activists are white radfem women and that these bitchez are far and away the leaders of the attack on TERFS like JK Rowling. Yes, there are a small number of male pervs who go along with all this because they gain access to more females -- thus the rapist who self-IDs as a women so as to get sent to a women's prison where he can keep raping. Or the voyeur or pedo who likes changing in the women's room. What's not to like? I can understand the thrill myself.
I can partly agree to at least a part of this, although I take strong exception to your language. ("Bitchez"? C'mon, dude.)
Feminists (not necessarily "radical" ones) have indeed embraced transgender pseudoscience in great numbers. This is a logical extension of one particular (misguided) strain of feminism that refused to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes. I think you're probably right that the majority of *activists* pushing gender woo today are feminist women. That's certainly the case in academia, where feminist academia (erstwhile "women's studies" departments) has been all but merged into gender identity pseudoscience (they're all "gender studies" departments now).
But the activists aren't the same as the trans people themselves. And they aren't the same still as the founders of the movement. With the exception of the "they/them"s who are mostly misguided feminist activist women, plus a few insufferably self-righteous beardy-bro "allies" with big egos and low critical thinking skills, most adult "trans" people are straight men. And if you look back through trans history, all of the movement's founders were wealthy, white, powerful men with fetishes. All of them.
So: yes, lots of feminist cheerleaders for trans nonsense. Tragically. But the core of the movement, as well as its origin, comes from men.
And of course, I think you and I both agree that this movement *benefits* straight men above all.
A terrible irony, then, that so many women's rights advocates were hoodwinked by it.
> But the activists aren't the same as the trans people themselves.
That's very largely true. Indeed it seems to me that the majority of the noise comes from cis-hetro academic wimin who feel the need to display their woke virtue all the louder for not being either gay or trans themselves -- very transgressive so one's doctrinal purity must be displayed all the more visibly.
> most adult "trans" people are straight men. And if you look back through trans history, all of the movement's founders were wealthy, white, powerful men with fetishes.
I'll not contradict. Perhaps a few dichotomies are needed. Firstly, as with most sane people, my huge problem with all this evil is the surge of teenage girls who have jumped on the bandwagon -- with warm encouragement from their teachers. Tens of thousands are or will be mutilated and their lives ruined.
Indeed, 'real' trannies, as you say, are perhaps best described as fetishists. Clearly mentally disturbed in some way or other for sure. It is clear that the 'winners' in all this are indeed the males who use trans to get close to cunts via their status as 'penis lesbians'. Nevertheless it's women who insist on giving them the keys to the girl's dorm. Without the radfems help, I suspect these pervs would still be mostly in the closet. No need to try to apportion the blame for this tho -- both the sort of men you describe and their radfem allies have worked hard to make this happen. The thing is to stop it, not worry about who's guiltier.
But yeah, it is almost Shakespearian that no one has done more harm to women's rights that the feminists themselves -- in the service of men of a certain kind, I have nothing in common with these creeps other than the same XY chromosomes.
This is one of the best-argued cases I've seen to help clear up the public's confusions about trans issues. It's persuasion -- and Persuasion -- at its best.
I'd add only one point about politics. I agree completely with the data and obvious conclusion about how trans activists have muddied the waters and done themselves and the people they claim to represent no favors at all. The results can't be denied. Or they can be denied, but only by the most oblivious...
But there is a fundamental distinction between advocates and politicians that is being missed. I served as legal counsel to a state senator and then as legislative director for our state Department of Insurance. I cannot fault advocates for advocating; that is their job, and they get paid to do it aggressively. But the best of them know that politics is hard, and that the job of elected officials is to hear everyone out, distinguish better from worse arguments, weigh the politics of their constituents, public policy options, and common sense, and make very hard but necessary compromises about the final language that will become law. There is only so much that the government can do in a democratic republic where, by definition, there is seldom if ever full agreement on anything. Even 90% agreement is a warning sign of things going wrong, and 70% agreement is an extremely high bar to reach. That's the hard reality of liberty, free speech and assembly, elected representatives at all levels of government, and the genius of our Constitution. Disagreement is in the nature of our politics, and of our varied selves.
That is why it is not advocates who make final decisions, it is governments assembled, partisans debating, and finally exercises of compromise and judgment where solutions to problems are sorted out and enacted, partially enacted, or not enacted at all.
On this issue, the absolute advocacy of the trans advocates is accepted by one of the parties unquestioningly. As Mr. Paul writes, that somehow has come to require no persuasion at all. If trans advocates advocate the most extreme and inflexible moralized conclusions, the democratic party must accept those as is. And Republicans naturally overreact to the Democrats extremism.
That is slowly changing. The first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride of Delaware, has both credibility and realism to bring to the table; Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachussets has survived vilification for his modest moderation; Pete Buttigieg, too, has tested the waters of trans judiciousness. It is a little mind-boggling there are so few after the failure of Kamala Harris on this issue, but if parties, like people, don't learn from their mistakes, where would we be?
Jamie Paul provides the roadmap, not for advocates but for elected officials of good will in both parties, but mostly the democrats. Their capitulation to trans advocates is the blockage in our system. The advocates, too, are going to have to stomach the bitter taste of compromise, but there are many compromises available that do much less harm than the current warfare. For the first time in history a small but significant minority of people are willing to identify publicly as some form of transsexual/transgender. The public needs time to sort through what this means. And politics needs some breathing room. Political compromises have always been the right approach to that. We need to open the way for a few of them.
Very well said, David. I agree, ultimately the mission of advocates is to move the needle of public opinion, which in turn becomes reflected in elected political leadership and falls into their hands. That process will entail compromise that the hardliners on both sides will hate (I have heard from both at length).
> Gender represents cultural expectations for the two sexes as well as how an individual feels or identifies
In any society, particularly a democracy, how one 'feels' is a private matter of no relevance to how society functions or how you are treated or what you can demand. Both ways. Neither do we any longer have inquisitions that make it their business what you think, and it is equally but oppositely wrong for anyone to suppose that their feelings or 'Identity' are things that can be imposed on others. If someone with a penis Identifies as a woman that's very sad, but it is his problem and/or his affair. Society should deal with reality -- he will use the men's change room please and in sports he will compete with other males. His Gender Identity is -- or should be -- no more relevant than his favorite color or his political opinion.
In the case of self-ID on passports, that this would be completely ridiculous is blatantly obvious. The biometrics on passports and DL's and any other form of ID are there to provide hard evidence that you are the legal holder of that document by making it possible to match what is indicated on the document with what is actually seen. Gender Identity is as relevant on a passport as one's religion or favorite hockey team because they serve as no 'filter'.
> To be a tomboy was once frowned upon.
I'm 69 and when I was a kid being a tomboy was absolutely fine. Now, God help us, a tomboy is told they are really a boy and warmly encouraged to start hormone treatment, leading to eventual mutilation, sterilization and a life spent in a medicalized body. Of course there is a backlash.
Anyway, the author does understand that it's the excesses of the woke/trans fanatics that have created the backlash. Now, if we could just return to a focus on reality, not Identity, then perhaps reasonable accommodations might be considered.
None of your arguments work outside of western Europe and the Anglosphere. For the simple reason that the vast majority of the human race does not believe in something called "human rights."
You should break down your stats by race and religion, and the correlation to population replacement.
Great article, sensible and honest. I am a former ( and maybe future?) democrat who was alienated from the party due to several issues, one of which was trans extremism. I was absolutely sympathetic towards trans people. In Washington DC where I lived, there were many trans people, and I found them a colorful and interesting part of the cultural scene. OF COURSE, trans people should have all the civil rights of every citizen. Extra bathrooms, gender neutral bathrooms, I was never against this if done sensibly.
What alienated me was when the non profits and the "movement" starting going after children. Drag Queen story hour for toddlers... Public ( and private) school curriculums that tell children that maybe they were born in the "wrong" body and they can change their gender. This is emotional abuse of young children. Biological sex is a reality that every child gradually comes to terms with during the first two decades of life. This journey is not over until well after puberty.
Every child should be embraced for who they are and how they are but putting labels on young children as " gay" or " trans" is wrong. Young adults, probably after some experimentation, can decide what they want to be in the world. But introducing children to these issues is not age appropriate and is counterproductive. The vast majority of parents were never asking for this either, even in deep blue communities- especially when schools are failing in their first job of teaching math, language and writing skills).
Close, but no cigar. You got the sex part right, but you've utterly bungled "gender". You were right to separate out sex from gender, but you've completely mangled the crucial distinction between gender EXPRESSION (dressing and acting femininely or masculinely) from gender IDENTITY — the pseudoscientific concept at the heart of transgender ideology, which encourages people to hate their bodies if they dress or act masculinely or femininely while their sex traits and pronouns are not correspondingly male or female.
You see, trans is not and never was about gender expression. It was always about sex, as in biological sex, as well as the act of sex. The majority of gay people who identify as "trans women" are NOT just expressing their natural femininity, they are seeking to emulate females for the sake of dating and mating. They want to be seen not just as feminine, but as f***able in the eyes of the straight men they covet. Talk to any adult gay male "trans woman" (barring the poor kids whose parents pushed them into it) and you'll see that his decision to "go trans" had everything to do with the male gaze and nothing to do with simply having a feminine disposition.
Talk to any butch lesbian "trans man" and you'll see her "male" identity has everything to do with ESCAPING the male gaze, with NOT being seen as a sex object in the eyes of straight men. They do this by pretending to be FELLOW "straight" men. The difference between a butch lesbian who doesn't "go trans" and one who does is not a matter of how butch she is; it's a matter of how well she can hold true to herself amid society's sexism.
And then there's the vast majority of trans-identifying people: the straight men themselves. Almost all of these men have autogynephilia — a sexual fixation on their own bodies. It's like a narcissistic form of heterosexuality: they're biologically wired to be attracted to female bodies and to be averse to male bodies (like all heterosexual men are), but the object of their sexual fixation is their own bodies. They want to date and mate with their own selves, quite literally. So again, this has nothing to do with mere "gender expression", and everything to do with biological sex: sex with self-as-male icks them out because they're straight; sex with self-as-female turns them on. They euphemistically call it "gender euphoria" when they imagine they've turned female, but it's really just bog-standard erotic arousal — dilated pupils, quickened heart rate, erection, sweat — only it's directed at oneself instead of at one's partner. Over time, the erotic thrill of pretending to be a woman settles into pair-bonded comfort. The orgiastic honeymoon period subsides, and he settles into a domestic "relationship" with his female alter-ego. At this point, he might even opt to part with his penis and testicles and consummate the "marriage" with a vaginoplasty. (Though, as you know, the majority of "trans women" keep their penises, for they're never quite committed enough to forgo masturbation for the rest of their lives.)
This isn't just speculation. It's all incredibly well-known and well-documented in sexological circles.
It's very strange that you failed to mention any of this in your article. But that's par for the course: nobody likes to explain what trans actually IS, because once people see what it is, they can't un-see how terribly regressive the whole thing is.
It's all about straight men at the end of the day. The trans movement is just a big old reinforcement of the patriarchy. It realigns everyone else towards straight men's needs and wants. When gay men go trans, it's because they want to be sexually objectified by straight men. (Just listen to the lyrics to any Kim Petras song for proof of that.) When lesbians go trans, it's because they want OUT of straight men's sexual objectification — they are the inverse mirror-image of gay men in that sense. And when straight men go trans, it's because they want sexual attention from THEMSELVES.
I want to live in a world where gay men can be fabulously feminine and find wonderful partners who love them WITHOUT FEELING like they have to turn their bodies into synthetic copies of straight women. I want to live in a world where lesbians can be gloriously butch without feeling uncomfortable in their perfectly healthy female bodies.
And also — this is the most important and most controversial part: I want to live in a world where men with autogynephilia are understood to have a hard-wired, atypical sexuality, which they did not choose to be born with, and which can indeed cause them great distress. Some degree of concession for this in public is necessary: men who pair-bond with themselves and dress femininely in public because of AGP have a right to dress in ways that make themselves feel comfortable — within reason. (No sexy schoolgirl outfits at the office. But a modest blouse is fine.)
As to "trans rights", well, you skirted the hard questions altogether, didn't you. Not only is biological sex binary, but spaces reserved for women's privacy and dignity are the exclusive domain of females. And spaces reserved for gay men (leather bars and such) are the exclusive domain of gay males. No one has the right to force anyone else to not acknowledge their biological sex. Ever. No exceptions. Trans women are men. Period. Trans men are women. Period.
This is especially crucial, because of what's being done to women's rights, and also because of what's being done to young people. They've been misled to believe that gender expression and gender identity are the same thing — that being a feminine boy means requiring "gender affirming care". NOBODY requires "gender" affirming "medicine". It was never "gender" medicine in the first place: it was always about satisfying straight males' ideas of social norms, and satisfying straight males' sexual desires.
Talk to detransitioners and you'll see. The difference between a trans person and a detrans person isn't that they've undone the medical procedures they've had — that's tragically impossible. It’s that they’ve had a change of perspective on the world around them and how they fit into it. The vast majority of people who’ve already adopted trans identities and medicalized themselves would never have done so if they’d known that the cultural climate over the past few years was only a blip, and that the rest of the world was not going to go along forever with their pretend identities.
The vast majority of people who decided they were trans did so because they were misled. And their continued happiness is dependent on keeping them in the dark about the reality of sex. Once they realize not only that sex and gender are different things, but that gender expression doesn't necessitate medically-assisted "gender identity", happiness turns to anguish and regret.
So we've got a crisis on our hands. We want to show kindness and compassion to those who've already adopted trans identities. But at the same time, we want to minimize the number of new ones moving forward as much as possible, because trans is ultimately maladaptive and rooted in pseudoscientific, regressive ideas.
The only way to do that is to tell the truth, the whole truth, the HARD truth, even if it hurts some trans people's feelings. It's the sunk cost fallacy: we keep doubling down on transitioning more and more people because it's too painful to cut our losses and admit that we blew it. But we're just prolonging the crisis and hurting more people.
So.
I firmly reject your "liberal manifesto for trans activism" because it perpetuates the lie and does not reckon with the whole truth.
True compassion, true humanism, true progress, requires telling the whole truth. Trans identities are pseudoscientific fictions, they're UNHEALTHY beliefs. People are free to believe in unhealthy things. It shouldn't be illegal to believe in your own mind that you've got a magical "gender identity", just is it shouldn't be illegal to believe in Scientology or the Book of Mormon. But "gender identity" is an UNHEALTHY belief, and as such, a true liberal worldview must not be afraid to say so out loud, and we should limit the degree to which it's accommodated in the secular sphere.
That's the hard truth.
Nice post, but I disagree with this:
> It's all about straight men at the end of the day.
Nope, trans is the pet project of the radfems. They got to thinking that, as the song says: "I'm just as bad as you, there ain't nothing I can't do ..." men and women were interchangeable in their doctrine, ergo there's no reason to make any distinctions between them and -- taken to the limit -- one can change from being a man to being a women as easily as changing underwear.
Please note that by far the majority of trans activists are white radfem women and that these bitchez are far and away the leaders of the attack on TERFS like JK Rowling. Yes, there are a small number of male pervs who go along with all this because they gain access to more females -- thus the rapist who self-IDs as a women so as to get sent to a women's prison where he can keep raping. Or the voyeur or pedo who likes changing in the women's room. What's not to like? I can understand the thrill myself.
I can partly agree to at least a part of this, although I take strong exception to your language. ("Bitchez"? C'mon, dude.)
Feminists (not necessarily "radical" ones) have indeed embraced transgender pseudoscience in great numbers. This is a logical extension of one particular (misguided) strain of feminism that refused to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes. I think you're probably right that the majority of *activists* pushing gender woo today are feminist women. That's certainly the case in academia, where feminist academia (erstwhile "women's studies" departments) has been all but merged into gender identity pseudoscience (they're all "gender studies" departments now).
But the activists aren't the same as the trans people themselves. And they aren't the same still as the founders of the movement. With the exception of the "they/them"s who are mostly misguided feminist activist women, plus a few insufferably self-righteous beardy-bro "allies" with big egos and low critical thinking skills, most adult "trans" people are straight men. And if you look back through trans history, all of the movement's founders were wealthy, white, powerful men with fetishes. All of them.
So: yes, lots of feminist cheerleaders for trans nonsense. Tragically. But the core of the movement, as well as its origin, comes from men.
And of course, I think you and I both agree that this movement *benefits* straight men above all.
A terrible irony, then, that so many women's rights advocates were hoodwinked by it.
> But the activists aren't the same as the trans people themselves.
That's very largely true. Indeed it seems to me that the majority of the noise comes from cis-hetro academic wimin who feel the need to display their woke virtue all the louder for not being either gay or trans themselves -- very transgressive so one's doctrinal purity must be displayed all the more visibly.
> most adult "trans" people are straight men. And if you look back through trans history, all of the movement's founders were wealthy, white, powerful men with fetishes.
I'll not contradict. Perhaps a few dichotomies are needed. Firstly, as with most sane people, my huge problem with all this evil is the surge of teenage girls who have jumped on the bandwagon -- with warm encouragement from their teachers. Tens of thousands are or will be mutilated and their lives ruined.
Indeed, 'real' trannies, as you say, are perhaps best described as fetishists. Clearly mentally disturbed in some way or other for sure. It is clear that the 'winners' in all this are indeed the males who use trans to get close to cunts via their status as 'penis lesbians'. Nevertheless it's women who insist on giving them the keys to the girl's dorm. Without the radfems help, I suspect these pervs would still be mostly in the closet. No need to try to apportion the blame for this tho -- both the sort of men you describe and their radfem allies have worked hard to make this happen. The thing is to stop it, not worry about who's guiltier.
But yeah, it is almost Shakespearian that no one has done more harm to women's rights that the feminists themselves -- in the service of men of a certain kind, I have nothing in common with these creeps other than the same XY chromosomes.
Skakespearean, indeed.
This is one of the best-argued cases I've seen to help clear up the public's confusions about trans issues. It's persuasion -- and Persuasion -- at its best.
I'd add only one point about politics. I agree completely with the data and obvious conclusion about how trans activists have muddied the waters and done themselves and the people they claim to represent no favors at all. The results can't be denied. Or they can be denied, but only by the most oblivious...
But there is a fundamental distinction between advocates and politicians that is being missed. I served as legal counsel to a state senator and then as legislative director for our state Department of Insurance. I cannot fault advocates for advocating; that is their job, and they get paid to do it aggressively. But the best of them know that politics is hard, and that the job of elected officials is to hear everyone out, distinguish better from worse arguments, weigh the politics of their constituents, public policy options, and common sense, and make very hard but necessary compromises about the final language that will become law. There is only so much that the government can do in a democratic republic where, by definition, there is seldom if ever full agreement on anything. Even 90% agreement is a warning sign of things going wrong, and 70% agreement is an extremely high bar to reach. That's the hard reality of liberty, free speech and assembly, elected representatives at all levels of government, and the genius of our Constitution. Disagreement is in the nature of our politics, and of our varied selves.
That is why it is not advocates who make final decisions, it is governments assembled, partisans debating, and finally exercises of compromise and judgment where solutions to problems are sorted out and enacted, partially enacted, or not enacted at all.
On this issue, the absolute advocacy of the trans advocates is accepted by one of the parties unquestioningly. As Mr. Paul writes, that somehow has come to require no persuasion at all. If trans advocates advocate the most extreme and inflexible moralized conclusions, the democratic party must accept those as is. And Republicans naturally overreact to the Democrats extremism.
That is slowly changing. The first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride of Delaware, has both credibility and realism to bring to the table; Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachussets has survived vilification for his modest moderation; Pete Buttigieg, too, has tested the waters of trans judiciousness. It is a little mind-boggling there are so few after the failure of Kamala Harris on this issue, but if parties, like people, don't learn from their mistakes, where would we be?
Jamie Paul provides the roadmap, not for advocates but for elected officials of good will in both parties, but mostly the democrats. Their capitulation to trans advocates is the blockage in our system. The advocates, too, are going to have to stomach the bitter taste of compromise, but there are many compromises available that do much less harm than the current warfare. For the first time in history a small but significant minority of people are willing to identify publicly as some form of transsexual/transgender. The public needs time to sort through what this means. And politics needs some breathing room. Political compromises have always been the right approach to that. We need to open the way for a few of them.
Very well said, David. I agree, ultimately the mission of advocates is to move the needle of public opinion, which in turn becomes reflected in elected political leadership and falls into their hands. That process will entail compromise that the hardliners on both sides will hate (I have heard from both at length).
> Gender represents cultural expectations for the two sexes as well as how an individual feels or identifies
In any society, particularly a democracy, how one 'feels' is a private matter of no relevance to how society functions or how you are treated or what you can demand. Both ways. Neither do we any longer have inquisitions that make it their business what you think, and it is equally but oppositely wrong for anyone to suppose that their feelings or 'Identity' are things that can be imposed on others. If someone with a penis Identifies as a woman that's very sad, but it is his problem and/or his affair. Society should deal with reality -- he will use the men's change room please and in sports he will compete with other males. His Gender Identity is -- or should be -- no more relevant than his favorite color or his political opinion.
In the case of self-ID on passports, that this would be completely ridiculous is blatantly obvious. The biometrics on passports and DL's and any other form of ID are there to provide hard evidence that you are the legal holder of that document by making it possible to match what is indicated on the document with what is actually seen. Gender Identity is as relevant on a passport as one's religion or favorite hockey team because they serve as no 'filter'.
> To be a tomboy was once frowned upon.
I'm 69 and when I was a kid being a tomboy was absolutely fine. Now, God help us, a tomboy is told they are really a boy and warmly encouraged to start hormone treatment, leading to eventual mutilation, sterilization and a life spent in a medicalized body. Of course there is a backlash.
Anyway, the author does understand that it's the excesses of the woke/trans fanatics that have created the backlash. Now, if we could just return to a focus on reality, not Identity, then perhaps reasonable accommodations might be considered.
None of your arguments work outside of western Europe and the Anglosphere. For the simple reason that the vast majority of the human race does not believe in something called "human rights."
You should break down your stats by race and religion, and the correlation to population replacement.