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.
You seem to fancy yourself an expert on these matters, but the details (like claiming that post-op trans women can't masturbate) betray a striking lack of familiarity or interest in trans people's minds or bodies. I'll allow the possibility that some non-zero number of people who fit your just-so story may exist, but presenting these two types as not only typical, but THE definitive explanation of what is going on with every trans person, comes across to me as either ignorance, or dishonest opportunism.
Maybe you can shed some light on this as a gay man yourself, but I fail to understand why a gay man in this day and age would feel compelled to make himself into an ersatz woman to pursue sexual gratification through straight men. It runs counter to what every gay man I have ever known has to say for his experience, which is invariably rooted in an appreciation of his own maleness (regardless of the style of his gender expression) and a desire to pursue relations with other gay men as such. Kim Petras sings about men in the same way any modern female pop singer does. What about her lyrics mark her as different from the rest? Why would she go through any of this, including genital surgery, if she were just a gay man trying to get laid? All the gay men I know like being men, physically and socially, and they really, REALLY like their penises. Your reasoning creates a trap in which any trans person expressing any sexual desire whatsoever proves that it was all about sex all along, and is therefore not to be taken seriously.
You can find a few self-identified autogynephiles around the Internet, but this description of doesn't match the inner worlds or behavior generally exhibited by trans women in media or real life, either. On what grounds should I believe you possess the truth, while people like Sarah McBride or Kim Petras are lying to me? Have you taken your own advice to talk to "any" of these people?
I dislike activist excess on these issues as much as anyone, but reacting to it by radicalizing in the opposite direction benefits no one. The way out is to take a clear-eyed look at the policy implications while treating the involved parties with respect, as the author of this piece proposes, not to embrace the tired old pop-sexology tropes you are trying to pass off as hard truths.
I'll stop you right at the first sentence. I had gender dysphoria. I was a homeless teen. My gay friends took to trans because they were prostitutes that aged out of the pedophiles as they got older, and wearing panties was the next wave of selling themselves to pervs. (My friend was murdered in a fucking parking lot stairwell while wearing women's clothes, and to this day the media won't even admit that he was a gay man, because the trans activists want a victim for themselves.) I worked at a trans bar after that, and it was a bunch of mentally ill people. You seem to fit that cohort. Just oblivious, perhaps because of how homosexuality combined with autism, in the prism of contemporary society, confuses the fuck out of autistic people. You seem hella confused about some basic facts that are extremely easy to decipher for everyone else. Your whole comment kinda reads like autistic homo who doesn't understand society. Frankly. Here's how it boils down: humans come in two sexes. Everyone can see everyone else's sex. If you don't like the sex you are, that's not a fixable problem: everyone CAN SEE IT. Charlatans will sell you "sex changes" but they're lying: no one really believes a fake vagina made out of asshole flesh tastes the same as a real pussy when they're eating it. And they're all lying to humour you. Most people figure this out sooner or later. The autistic people take longer to figure it out. So do the distressed gays. The fetishists, meanwhile, are marauding all over town.
I'm sorry you had that experience, and I suppose that goes part of the way toward explaining why you're so animated over this. I understand on some level that gay people have done all sorts of things to survive while being forced to the margins of society, but what I want to know is why you think gay people in a present-day developed country, where being gay is not stigmatized, where one can fire up Grindr or Sniffies any time they want, or pursue serious monogamous relationships culminating in marriage, or anything in between, would do this. What makes you so sure that the things you saw in that environment neatly explain what's going on with all of these people now? If you want society not to retroactively label your friend, a gay man trying to make the best of difficult circumstances, as a trans martyr, perhaps you should also be able to accept that the people we are talking about here and now, who are generally described as "transgender," are not the same as your friend.
Nobody here (not the author, not the commenters I've seen) is arguing that there are more than two sexes, or that biological sex is mutable. I don't think anyone else here is under any illusions about what transgender surgeries (whatever one chooses to call them) do or don't accomplish, either. A passing interest in this topic as a human phenomenon and a public policy question will impart more knowledge about those procedures than you demonstrate (making them out of "asshole flesh" is a rare last-ditch technique, for example). If you want to style yourself an authority on these issues, it would serve you well to know these things, but the raw anger you bring to this makes me suspect your goal is just to lash out and provoke.
Go ahead and cut your own dick off, anytime you want. The government will even pay for it. Funny thing is: EVERYONE is under illusions about what cutting your dick off does. Everyone. This is all about whipping people up in to frenzies about their bodies and how they should, or shoudn't be. And I can't stand the bystanders who condescendingly say, "what's the problem with a consenting adult choosing to cut his dick off and sterilize himself?" while obstinately pretending not to see the cultural currents that led ALL of these men to do so. NOBODY chooses to cut their dick off in a vacuum. It's a cultural contagion. And virtually NOBODY wants to have sex with whatever fake genitals that result. And NOBODY wants to reconcile with this. A "vaginoplasty" is not a vagina. Straight guys don't want to eat a gay guy's fake pussy made out of his dick and his ass flesh. That right there should be the end of it. But they lie for virtue points, and no one is holding them to account.
Wait... if I cut my dick off, I stay a man, I just did a dumb thing. I am now "a man with the wrong genitals." I got Cultural Contagion or something.
Literally what trans people are telling you is going on though. Mother Nature, so to speak, cut their dick off -- made a mistake from how their mind's sex develops. Sex is part nature part nurture, and the part that's nature only mostly lines up mind's sex with repro system sex (it doesn't even give you one sex's reproductive system ~0.1% of the time).
You can write as many paragraphs as you want in reply, but this pretty much totally dead ends your "all trans people are lying or ill" argument. Feel free to ignore trans activists on pretty much anything else. I personally agree that gender identity is dumb. Of course someone can be ill about their mind's sex and trans activists need to answer for that rather than sweep it all under the "gender identity" rug. But they're not all lying!
Sex is 100% nature and 0% nurture. It's established at the moment of conception, the second the sperm enters the egg.
The only reason people "feel" like their sex is "wrong" is because of cultural stuff. THAT part is nurture, but that part is NOT sex. That's "gender identity", which is 100% nurture and 0% nature. It's a social contagion, it only exists in the West, only since the 20th Century, and hyper-accelerated since Tumblr and iPhones. C'mon, man. This isn't really that difficult.
Sex: a material property you're born with, reflected in myriad aspects of your body and personality, which everyone can see and deduce. (Because that's how evolution works.) Some people adhere to the stereotypes associated with their sex; others diverge from it. That's fine. We can still tell everyone's fundamental sex, and we ALL react instinctually to each others' sexes all the time. That's what sexual orientation is.
Gender identity: an abstract, modern concept invented by people who became confused and distressed about their sex because of shame about their stereotype-defiant behaviours, or because of guilt and shame about their homosexuality, or because of a deeply-held sexual fixation (a fetish) for transforming into a female (in the case of straight men).
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).
I'm unsure where and how firm the lines should be on youth transition, but I agree in so far as activists trying to present this as a settled issue was a counterproductive overreach. There are questions about how to diagnose. There's the delicate balance of an early start on medication being very helpful in some ways to people's future wellbeing, but coming with potential tradeoffs for future surgery outcomes and sexual function even when excluding the possibility that someone may later come to the realization that they are not trans (Jazz Jennings, if I remember right, is a famous example of this). A general prohibition on surgeries before age 18 seems reasonable enough and in line with common practice as it already exists. I think some kind of social accommodation may be warranted, but in what form, especially if kids aren't undergoing any pharmaceutical interventions yet? And in terms of education, I want people who feel like they need help with gender issues to know that they can get it, but I don't think we should to be trying to proactively identify them. It's tough because I can see that trans kids are not a fake phenomenon and I don't want to just tell them that they have to wait until they're 18 before they can do anything at all about it, but self-ID is clearly not enough to go on, there's a danger of people in charge feeling like they always have to say yes, and the whole thing has become so politicized that it's hard to see through. I hope someday things will cool down and the professionals can sort it out in a way that most people find credible.
Yes, I agree. Several European countries which were previously allowing gender transition surgery on minors, have banned it. Sweden being one. The research does not support the claims by activists that transition surgery reduces suicides or reliably improves mental health outcomes. I agree that its a complex issue with kids. Allowing a 7 year old to self identify is a very bad idea ( as Bill Maher said, he identifed as a pirate as a kid, but luckily his parents didn't let him cut off his leg). On the other hand, a seventeen year old who really wants to dress and behave as the sex they are not, is a very different situation. I would say its best to allow this young person to try on a different identity, and why not use the pronouns they ask for.
I believe that the statistics are pretty solid that before the trans craze, gender dysphoria in children was extremely rare, like one in 40,000. ( Dr. Miriam Grossman cited this statistic as I recall).
> 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.
Chromosome level testing is hardly required. 99% of the time one's biological sex is quite obvious. Hair color is far less determinative yet it is included as a biomarker because every little bit of information helps. Consider: if the immigration officers are told 'be on the lookout for a white, male, 160lbs, 6'1", traveling with a false passport ', they are simply trying to narrow a search, are they not? They are interested in physical facts, not Identities. On a passport, 'M' indicates a person with a penis in the same way that '5'10" indicates, not a person who Identifies as 5'10" -- even tho they are 4'8" -- it indicates someone who is actually 5'10".
You know, there could be some useful expansion to the 'M' or 'F' choice. 'X' would be useful for genuine hermaphrodites or post-surgical trannies. 'TW' for transwoman ... why not? It would tell the authorities that this is a male who might be wearing a wig and lipstick -- don't be suspicious of fraud, he's a trannie -- let him pass. I mean 'her'.
Just going to point out that you have all these problems anyway with men and women who just don't look like their sexual archetype, not to mention trans people who have been passing well before the modern trans debate took place.
That's why feminists point out the anti trans stance is about forcing women to be feminine (and men to be masculine I'll add) as much as it's about forcing people to conform to their birth gender.
There will always be a problem Dan, there is no perfect solution here, only doing as much as practically possible to help the people who look at passports determine if the guy holding the passport is the guy in the passport. No one is being 'forced' to do anything. If you are a male with an 'M' but a cross-dresser you can be expected to get a second look from a customs official. But it most likely won't go further than that. If your PP says you are 5'6" but you look like you're 6' you'll probably get a second look, too -- but it might be as simple as the official noticing that you're wearing platform shoes. Get the point? The biometrics are hard identifiers, not windows into a person's mental infirmities. Customs officials or cops have no interest in 'Identity'. Your Gender Identity is a relevant to them as your favorite color. But if I was a transwoman trying to get into Russia, to be honest I'd dress as a man while going thru customs, and I think you would too. And I'd want an 'M' in my passport to avoid ... complications.
You know trans people often pass, *completely* pass, like a muscular man with a beard who is a woman "down there." I'm confused what letter you want on their passport to minimize weird looks or complication at the airport.
Firstly, trans-identifying people rarely pass, especially up close in person as opposed to in digitally touched-up photos. Females who take T do better than males who try to pass as women, to be fair. That's the power of testosterone, and the low standards of male presentation compared to female presentation, for you. And let's not forget that the ones who do pass aren't innocent victims born that way — they went out of their way to camouflage their sex, often at extreme cost and taking extreme measures. It's stupid to say, "well, you've gone this far to lie about your sex, so I guess we should all just accept the lie now." Better to not reward such deeply unhealthy practices with the big prize of being "accepted" legally as the other sex, no matter how PROFITABLE such practices (extreme cosmetic "gender" surgeries) are to unscrupulous gender medicine pushers, and how alluring they are to people who overwhelmingly have poor mental health to begin with.
Secondly, it's incredibly stupid to falsify the sex on people's passports instead of just reminding airport workers that transsexuals exist. It's incredibly easy for people to understand that crossdressers and cosmetically-modified transsexuals are a thing that's been around for decades. This isn't rocket science. And it's incredibly obvious that faking the sex on a passport has nothing to do with "avoiding complications" and everything to do with humouring unscientific fantasies on the part of sexually obsessive men who won't take no for an answer, and mentally confused and struggling women, autistics, and gays. This latter group would do far better with therapy to come to terms with reality, not more reinforcement of their delusions, which in all likelihood will subside over time. And especially for that latter group: the further along their delusions are humoured out of pity, the harder they crash when the fog eventually lifts.
Better to never humour anyone in the first place, and to always make sure that in the secular sphere (official government documents, medical records, doctors' visits, sports eligibility, public spaces like community centre changing rooms) sex is reaffirmed as unchangeable for everyone — no exceptions — no matter how confused they are (in the case of the gay and autistic people misguided into trans identities), or nor matter how sexually fixated on "womanhood" they are (in the case of the fetishists who are really driving this movement).
We need to radically backtrack on all this. The cost has already gotten too high. It won't be easy, but it must be done.
I'd say 'TF' and 'TM' so that officials are alerted to the fact that the person in front of them will appear to be a member of the other sex, but that this does *not* flag anything suspicious. When there is enough perfection in the transition, as you say, it can be hard to spot, and that's fine IF the person is not investigated further, but if they are investigated further, and the person identified with an 'M' turns out to be in fact a female, trouble could follow -- it would be taken as a false passport in any country that is not woke -- which is still most of them. Either the sex marker should be eliminated, OR it should convey objective information that has nothing to do with anyone's state of mind.
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).
Except the bit where you forgot to put your chips on the table about whether "trans women" can use women's spaces or sports or not. And you forgot to put your chips on the table about "trans kids" and you forgot to put your chips on the table about what exactly trans is and isn't. You don't seem to have actually placed a gambit the fuck at all. A whole lot of words for someone who's ultimately too scared to say anything. Hmm.
You are complaining off-topic through the whole of the comments section. The issue may be very important to you, but if you'd like to see progress, allow people to discuss specifics of it, rather than discussing every bit of it all at once.
That's a great way of putting it. Activists and politicians have different jobs, which means activists should bend their efforts toward being as persuasive and strategic as possible, while politicians should engage with them without outsourcing their reasoning to them. One of my big takeaways from the past decade or so of US politics is that lots of things were caused to go off the rails by people forgetting what their jobs were.
I still think you are missing a huge component of the language around this issue. You launched into the definition of gender as if your definition is settled (which I recognize is the currently used definition by activists and academia regarding this topic). When did the definition of gender change to what you have here? I just looked in my 2004 Merriam Webster dictionary and the definition for gender is:
1. any of two or more divisions within a grammatical class that determine agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms.
2. sex
Most people still use "Gender" interchangeably with "Sex" - you sign up for something and until very recently the question about "Sex" was labelled as "Gender". People politely said "gender" rather than sex for these types of question.
So - when did this definition you use for "Gender" become THE DEFINITION?
I argue it hasn't. What you are talking about is "Gender Identity" or "Gender Ideology" and should never be referred to simply as "Gender."
If you ask a person on the street "how many genders are there" I bet 90% of them think of the old definition of the word and say 2, not because all of them are "anti-trans" but because they use the word gender as a synonym for sex.
And, even other language on this topic is very confused and confusing, I still have to remind my husband, who hears me rant on this topic regularly and we have a close family friend who is a trans boy (now man), that a "Trans woman" is a male who identifies as a woman. If even he gets confused/needs a reminder the general population is pretty confused.
Even with all of that language confusion (some of which I don't think you clear up) I do agree that it is true that the activists have made their whole project less popular. Like another commenter, I'm a disaffected Dem due primarily to this topic. I started off just wary of the medicalization of youth, quickly jumped to males in female places (particularly sports/prisons) which I didn't even know was happening, and now I'm avoiding pronouns I'm so opposed to the whole ideology (I use them to be polite for people I know - I have a few colleagues who I respect pronouns, but use names instead whenever possible). I personally think Dems have completely lost the plot and I don't know if they can get back into a stance of reality and sanity, but I am interested to see if they figure out how to moderate.
The objections you raise to a gender-critical worldview are understandable, but I'd argue that your ire should mostly be directed to the *illiberal* gender-critical people, and not the whole movement. Illiberal GCs may be the most visible on the internet, but that doesn't mean a liberal GC is an oxymoron.
When I say that I don't believe in gender, that doesn't imply that I have to deny the existence of gender dysphoria. I accept the fact that most people are mind-body dualists, which allows for the possibility that there can be a mismatch between one's inner self and one's body. As a physicalist, the concept of an inner self makes little sense, but I don't want to impose my physicalist worldview on others.
I don't wish to ban the gender-affirming worldview from public life, but neither should it be presented as the only way to behave compassionately towards others. The saying "there's no such thing as a trans child" should morph into something more persuasive. Gender identity is meaningless, you can act in whatever "gender-nonconforming" way that you'd like.
I've been playing with this idea: humans are about 99% sexually dimorphic. Female is the egg-making archetype and male is the sperm-making archetype. 99% of people easily fall into one of the two archetypes. The remaining 1% have intersex traits and basically get assigned a sex more or less randomly. It's fair to say sex is 99% biological construct and 1% social construct. Really seems to me like trans is an intersex trait where a trans person's mind's sex does not match their reproductive system and seems trans activists are saying their mind's sex is a more important sex trait in determining their sex than their reproductive system's sex.
This seems to work? "define woman" is clear and non-circular, the biology of sex traits is above the fold, there's a clear path to trans rights from this framework, and it does away with this "gender identity" thing. I meet some conservative concerns like: if your mind is trans-sex your body-sex still matters (e.g. sports), and it's at least conceptually possible for someone to lie about being trans instead of "I am male/female" being presumed infallible.
It means I wade into "sex is a social construct" but people use this as an even more extreme retreat from "define woman" which I'm obviously not. I'd rather be messaging "sex is 99% biological" than "gender identity" at this point.
In the opening sentences, I think this is already inaccurate based on the legal arguments for the case. Legal cynicism may (or may not) be a fine way for you to see the world, but it feels to me like opening the article with this denies any opportunity to take what you say at face value.
For others: the case was about whether a Tennessee law banning cross-sex hormones was sex discrimination (because it blocks natal males and females feom different hormones, see?). The Supreme Court said this was silly and we already have laws preventing e.g. natal males from exposing different genitals from natal females in public, so this line of argumentation is no good.
The article, as I read it, presents this as the Supreme Court voting NO on "Trans?", but that's not fair according to my summary.
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.
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.
You seem to fancy yourself an expert on these matters, but the details (like claiming that post-op trans women can't masturbate) betray a striking lack of familiarity or interest in trans people's minds or bodies. I'll allow the possibility that some non-zero number of people who fit your just-so story may exist, but presenting these two types as not only typical, but THE definitive explanation of what is going on with every trans person, comes across to me as either ignorance, or dishonest opportunism.
Maybe you can shed some light on this as a gay man yourself, but I fail to understand why a gay man in this day and age would feel compelled to make himself into an ersatz woman to pursue sexual gratification through straight men. It runs counter to what every gay man I have ever known has to say for his experience, which is invariably rooted in an appreciation of his own maleness (regardless of the style of his gender expression) and a desire to pursue relations with other gay men as such. Kim Petras sings about men in the same way any modern female pop singer does. What about her lyrics mark her as different from the rest? Why would she go through any of this, including genital surgery, if she were just a gay man trying to get laid? All the gay men I know like being men, physically and socially, and they really, REALLY like their penises. Your reasoning creates a trap in which any trans person expressing any sexual desire whatsoever proves that it was all about sex all along, and is therefore not to be taken seriously.
You can find a few self-identified autogynephiles around the Internet, but this description of doesn't match the inner worlds or behavior generally exhibited by trans women in media or real life, either. On what grounds should I believe you possess the truth, while people like Sarah McBride or Kim Petras are lying to me? Have you taken your own advice to talk to "any" of these people?
I dislike activist excess on these issues as much as anyone, but reacting to it by radicalizing in the opposite direction benefits no one. The way out is to take a clear-eyed look at the policy implications while treating the involved parties with respect, as the author of this piece proposes, not to embrace the tired old pop-sexology tropes you are trying to pass off as hard truths.
I'll stop you right at the first sentence. I had gender dysphoria. I was a homeless teen. My gay friends took to trans because they were prostitutes that aged out of the pedophiles as they got older, and wearing panties was the next wave of selling themselves to pervs. (My friend was murdered in a fucking parking lot stairwell while wearing women's clothes, and to this day the media won't even admit that he was a gay man, because the trans activists want a victim for themselves.) I worked at a trans bar after that, and it was a bunch of mentally ill people. You seem to fit that cohort. Just oblivious, perhaps because of how homosexuality combined with autism, in the prism of contemporary society, confuses the fuck out of autistic people. You seem hella confused about some basic facts that are extremely easy to decipher for everyone else. Your whole comment kinda reads like autistic homo who doesn't understand society. Frankly. Here's how it boils down: humans come in two sexes. Everyone can see everyone else's sex. If you don't like the sex you are, that's not a fixable problem: everyone CAN SEE IT. Charlatans will sell you "sex changes" but they're lying: no one really believes a fake vagina made out of asshole flesh tastes the same as a real pussy when they're eating it. And they're all lying to humour you. Most people figure this out sooner or later. The autistic people take longer to figure it out. So do the distressed gays. The fetishists, meanwhile, are marauding all over town.
I'm sorry you had that experience, and I suppose that goes part of the way toward explaining why you're so animated over this. I understand on some level that gay people have done all sorts of things to survive while being forced to the margins of society, but what I want to know is why you think gay people in a present-day developed country, where being gay is not stigmatized, where one can fire up Grindr or Sniffies any time they want, or pursue serious monogamous relationships culminating in marriage, or anything in between, would do this. What makes you so sure that the things you saw in that environment neatly explain what's going on with all of these people now? If you want society not to retroactively label your friend, a gay man trying to make the best of difficult circumstances, as a trans martyr, perhaps you should also be able to accept that the people we are talking about here and now, who are generally described as "transgender," are not the same as your friend.
Nobody here (not the author, not the commenters I've seen) is arguing that there are more than two sexes, or that biological sex is mutable. I don't think anyone else here is under any illusions about what transgender surgeries (whatever one chooses to call them) do or don't accomplish, either. A passing interest in this topic as a human phenomenon and a public policy question will impart more knowledge about those procedures than you demonstrate (making them out of "asshole flesh" is a rare last-ditch technique, for example). If you want to style yourself an authority on these issues, it would serve you well to know these things, but the raw anger you bring to this makes me suspect your goal is just to lash out and provoke.
Go ahead and cut your own dick off, anytime you want. The government will even pay for it. Funny thing is: EVERYONE is under illusions about what cutting your dick off does. Everyone. This is all about whipping people up in to frenzies about their bodies and how they should, or shoudn't be. And I can't stand the bystanders who condescendingly say, "what's the problem with a consenting adult choosing to cut his dick off and sterilize himself?" while obstinately pretending not to see the cultural currents that led ALL of these men to do so. NOBODY chooses to cut their dick off in a vacuum. It's a cultural contagion. And virtually NOBODY wants to have sex with whatever fake genitals that result. And NOBODY wants to reconcile with this. A "vaginoplasty" is not a vagina. Straight guys don't want to eat a gay guy's fake pussy made out of his dick and his ass flesh. That right there should be the end of it. But they lie for virtue points, and no one is holding them to account.
Wait... if I cut my dick off, I stay a man, I just did a dumb thing. I am now "a man with the wrong genitals." I got Cultural Contagion or something.
Literally what trans people are telling you is going on though. Mother Nature, so to speak, cut their dick off -- made a mistake from how their mind's sex develops. Sex is part nature part nurture, and the part that's nature only mostly lines up mind's sex with repro system sex (it doesn't even give you one sex's reproductive system ~0.1% of the time).
You can write as many paragraphs as you want in reply, but this pretty much totally dead ends your "all trans people are lying or ill" argument. Feel free to ignore trans activists on pretty much anything else. I personally agree that gender identity is dumb. Of course someone can be ill about their mind's sex and trans activists need to answer for that rather than sweep it all under the "gender identity" rug. But they're not all lying!
Sex is 100% nature and 0% nurture. It's established at the moment of conception, the second the sperm enters the egg.
The only reason people "feel" like their sex is "wrong" is because of cultural stuff. THAT part is nurture, but that part is NOT sex. That's "gender identity", which is 100% nurture and 0% nature. It's a social contagion, it only exists in the West, only since the 20th Century, and hyper-accelerated since Tumblr and iPhones. C'mon, man. This isn't really that difficult.
Sex: a material property you're born with, reflected in myriad aspects of your body and personality, which everyone can see and deduce. (Because that's how evolution works.) Some people adhere to the stereotypes associated with their sex; others diverge from it. That's fine. We can still tell everyone's fundamental sex, and we ALL react instinctually to each others' sexes all the time. That's what sexual orientation is.
Gender identity: an abstract, modern concept invented by people who became confused and distressed about their sex because of shame about their stereotype-defiant behaviours, or because of guilt and shame about their homosexuality, or because of a deeply-held sexual fixation (a fetish) for transforming into a female (in the case of straight men).
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).
I'm unsure where and how firm the lines should be on youth transition, but I agree in so far as activists trying to present this as a settled issue was a counterproductive overreach. There are questions about how to diagnose. There's the delicate balance of an early start on medication being very helpful in some ways to people's future wellbeing, but coming with potential tradeoffs for future surgery outcomes and sexual function even when excluding the possibility that someone may later come to the realization that they are not trans (Jazz Jennings, if I remember right, is a famous example of this). A general prohibition on surgeries before age 18 seems reasonable enough and in line with common practice as it already exists. I think some kind of social accommodation may be warranted, but in what form, especially if kids aren't undergoing any pharmaceutical interventions yet? And in terms of education, I want people who feel like they need help with gender issues to know that they can get it, but I don't think we should to be trying to proactively identify them. It's tough because I can see that trans kids are not a fake phenomenon and I don't want to just tell them that they have to wait until they're 18 before they can do anything at all about it, but self-ID is clearly not enough to go on, there's a danger of people in charge feeling like they always have to say yes, and the whole thing has become so politicized that it's hard to see through. I hope someday things will cool down and the professionals can sort it out in a way that most people find credible.
Yes, I agree. Several European countries which were previously allowing gender transition surgery on minors, have banned it. Sweden being one. The research does not support the claims by activists that transition surgery reduces suicides or reliably improves mental health outcomes. I agree that its a complex issue with kids. Allowing a 7 year old to self identify is a very bad idea ( as Bill Maher said, he identifed as a pirate as a kid, but luckily his parents didn't let him cut off his leg). On the other hand, a seventeen year old who really wants to dress and behave as the sex they are not, is a very different situation. I would say its best to allow this young person to try on a different identity, and why not use the pronouns they ask for.
I believe that the statistics are pretty solid that before the trans craze, gender dysphoria in children was extremely rare, like one in 40,000. ( Dr. Miriam Grossman cited this statistic as I recall).
> 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.
If the airport doesn't do genetic analysis on travelers, I don't actually see how writing the sexual determination on passports helps either.
Chromosome level testing is hardly required. 99% of the time one's biological sex is quite obvious. Hair color is far less determinative yet it is included as a biomarker because every little bit of information helps. Consider: if the immigration officers are told 'be on the lookout for a white, male, 160lbs, 6'1", traveling with a false passport ', they are simply trying to narrow a search, are they not? They are interested in physical facts, not Identities. On a passport, 'M' indicates a person with a penis in the same way that '5'10" indicates, not a person who Identifies as 5'10" -- even tho they are 4'8" -- it indicates someone who is actually 5'10".
You know, there could be some useful expansion to the 'M' or 'F' choice. 'X' would be useful for genuine hermaphrodites or post-surgical trannies. 'TW' for transwoman ... why not? It would tell the authorities that this is a male who might be wearing a wig and lipstick -- don't be suspicious of fraud, he's a trannie -- let him pass. I mean 'her'.
Just going to point out that you have all these problems anyway with men and women who just don't look like their sexual archetype, not to mention trans people who have been passing well before the modern trans debate took place.
That's why feminists point out the anti trans stance is about forcing women to be feminine (and men to be masculine I'll add) as much as it's about forcing people to conform to their birth gender.
There will always be a problem Dan, there is no perfect solution here, only doing as much as practically possible to help the people who look at passports determine if the guy holding the passport is the guy in the passport. No one is being 'forced' to do anything. If you are a male with an 'M' but a cross-dresser you can be expected to get a second look from a customs official. But it most likely won't go further than that. If your PP says you are 5'6" but you look like you're 6' you'll probably get a second look, too -- but it might be as simple as the official noticing that you're wearing platform shoes. Get the point? The biometrics are hard identifiers, not windows into a person's mental infirmities. Customs officials or cops have no interest in 'Identity'. Your Gender Identity is a relevant to them as your favorite color. But if I was a transwoman trying to get into Russia, to be honest I'd dress as a man while going thru customs, and I think you would too. And I'd want an 'M' in my passport to avoid ... complications.
You know trans people often pass, *completely* pass, like a muscular man with a beard who is a woman "down there." I'm confused what letter you want on their passport to minimize weird looks or complication at the airport.
Firstly, trans-identifying people rarely pass, especially up close in person as opposed to in digitally touched-up photos. Females who take T do better than males who try to pass as women, to be fair. That's the power of testosterone, and the low standards of male presentation compared to female presentation, for you. And let's not forget that the ones who do pass aren't innocent victims born that way — they went out of their way to camouflage their sex, often at extreme cost and taking extreme measures. It's stupid to say, "well, you've gone this far to lie about your sex, so I guess we should all just accept the lie now." Better to not reward such deeply unhealthy practices with the big prize of being "accepted" legally as the other sex, no matter how PROFITABLE such practices (extreme cosmetic "gender" surgeries) are to unscrupulous gender medicine pushers, and how alluring they are to people who overwhelmingly have poor mental health to begin with.
Secondly, it's incredibly stupid to falsify the sex on people's passports instead of just reminding airport workers that transsexuals exist. It's incredibly easy for people to understand that crossdressers and cosmetically-modified transsexuals are a thing that's been around for decades. This isn't rocket science. And it's incredibly obvious that faking the sex on a passport has nothing to do with "avoiding complications" and everything to do with humouring unscientific fantasies on the part of sexually obsessive men who won't take no for an answer, and mentally confused and struggling women, autistics, and gays. This latter group would do far better with therapy to come to terms with reality, not more reinforcement of their delusions, which in all likelihood will subside over time. And especially for that latter group: the further along their delusions are humoured out of pity, the harder they crash when the fog eventually lifts.
Better to never humour anyone in the first place, and to always make sure that in the secular sphere (official government documents, medical records, doctors' visits, sports eligibility, public spaces like community centre changing rooms) sex is reaffirmed as unchangeable for everyone — no exceptions — no matter how confused they are (in the case of the gay and autistic people misguided into trans identities), or nor matter how sexually fixated on "womanhood" they are (in the case of the fetishists who are really driving this movement).
We need to radically backtrack on all this. The cost has already gotten too high. It won't be easy, but it must be done.
I'd say 'TF' and 'TM' so that officials are alerted to the fact that the person in front of them will appear to be a member of the other sex, but that this does *not* flag anything suspicious. When there is enough perfection in the transition, as you say, it can be hard to spot, and that's fine IF the person is not investigated further, but if they are investigated further, and the person identified with an 'M' turns out to be in fact a female, trouble could follow -- it would be taken as a false passport in any country that is not woke -- which is still most of them. Either the sex marker should be eliminated, OR it should convey objective information that has nothing to do with anyone's state of mind.
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).
Except the bit where you forgot to put your chips on the table about whether "trans women" can use women's spaces or sports or not. And you forgot to put your chips on the table about "trans kids" and you forgot to put your chips on the table about what exactly trans is and isn't. You don't seem to have actually placed a gambit the fuck at all. A whole lot of words for someone who's ultimately too scared to say anything. Hmm.
You are complaining off-topic through the whole of the comments section. The issue may be very important to you, but if you'd like to see progress, allow people to discuss specifics of it, rather than discussing every bit of it all at once.
Nah, dude. I'm calling the truth. You're just annoyed at it. Cry harder, Alex.
That's a great way of putting it. Activists and politicians have different jobs, which means activists should bend their efforts toward being as persuasive and strategic as possible, while politicians should engage with them without outsourcing their reasoning to them. One of my big takeaways from the past decade or so of US politics is that lots of things were caused to go off the rails by people forgetting what their jobs were.
I still think you are missing a huge component of the language around this issue. You launched into the definition of gender as if your definition is settled (which I recognize is the currently used definition by activists and academia regarding this topic). When did the definition of gender change to what you have here? I just looked in my 2004 Merriam Webster dictionary and the definition for gender is:
1. any of two or more divisions within a grammatical class that determine agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms.
2. sex
Most people still use "Gender" interchangeably with "Sex" - you sign up for something and until very recently the question about "Sex" was labelled as "Gender". People politely said "gender" rather than sex for these types of question.
So - when did this definition you use for "Gender" become THE DEFINITION?
I argue it hasn't. What you are talking about is "Gender Identity" or "Gender Ideology" and should never be referred to simply as "Gender."
If you ask a person on the street "how many genders are there" I bet 90% of them think of the old definition of the word and say 2, not because all of them are "anti-trans" but because they use the word gender as a synonym for sex.
And, even other language on this topic is very confused and confusing, I still have to remind my husband, who hears me rant on this topic regularly and we have a close family friend who is a trans boy (now man), that a "Trans woman" is a male who identifies as a woman. If even he gets confused/needs a reminder the general population is pretty confused.
Even with all of that language confusion (some of which I don't think you clear up) I do agree that it is true that the activists have made their whole project less popular. Like another commenter, I'm a disaffected Dem due primarily to this topic. I started off just wary of the medicalization of youth, quickly jumped to males in female places (particularly sports/prisons) which I didn't even know was happening, and now I'm avoiding pronouns I'm so opposed to the whole ideology (I use them to be polite for people I know - I have a few colleagues who I respect pronouns, but use names instead whenever possible). I personally think Dems have completely lost the plot and I don't know if they can get back into a stance of reality and sanity, but I am interested to see if they figure out how to moderate.
The objections you raise to a gender-critical worldview are understandable, but I'd argue that your ire should mostly be directed to the *illiberal* gender-critical people, and not the whole movement. Illiberal GCs may be the most visible on the internet, but that doesn't mean a liberal GC is an oxymoron.
When I say that I don't believe in gender, that doesn't imply that I have to deny the existence of gender dysphoria. I accept the fact that most people are mind-body dualists, which allows for the possibility that there can be a mismatch between one's inner self and one's body. As a physicalist, the concept of an inner self makes little sense, but I don't want to impose my physicalist worldview on others.
I don't wish to ban the gender-affirming worldview from public life, but neither should it be presented as the only way to behave compassionately towards others. The saying "there's no such thing as a trans child" should morph into something more persuasive. Gender identity is meaningless, you can act in whatever "gender-nonconforming" way that you'd like.
No more they/them ads no more. Hey as the election in Virginia showed us it is not effective 🙂
I've been playing with this idea: humans are about 99% sexually dimorphic. Female is the egg-making archetype and male is the sperm-making archetype. 99% of people easily fall into one of the two archetypes. The remaining 1% have intersex traits and basically get assigned a sex more or less randomly. It's fair to say sex is 99% biological construct and 1% social construct. Really seems to me like trans is an intersex trait where a trans person's mind's sex does not match their reproductive system and seems trans activists are saying their mind's sex is a more important sex trait in determining their sex than their reproductive system's sex.
This seems to work? "define woman" is clear and non-circular, the biology of sex traits is above the fold, there's a clear path to trans rights from this framework, and it does away with this "gender identity" thing. I meet some conservative concerns like: if your mind is trans-sex your body-sex still matters (e.g. sports), and it's at least conceptually possible for someone to lie about being trans instead of "I am male/female" being presumed infallible.
It means I wade into "sex is a social construct" but people use this as an even more extreme retreat from "define woman" which I'm obviously not. I'd rather be messaging "sex is 99% biological" than "gender identity" at this point.
> been repudiated by the Supreme Court
In the opening sentences, I think this is already inaccurate based on the legal arguments for the case. Legal cynicism may (or may not) be a fine way for you to see the world, but it feels to me like opening the article with this denies any opportunity to take what you say at face value.
For others: the case was about whether a Tennessee law banning cross-sex hormones was sex discrimination (because it blocks natal males and females feom different hormones, see?). The Supreme Court said this was silly and we already have laws preventing e.g. natal males from exposing different genitals from natal females in public, so this line of argumentation is no good.
The article, as I read it, presents this as the Supreme Court voting NO on "Trans?", but that's not fair according to my summary.
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.