I'm not sure if there's something in the water, but for the past few months, there’s been a spate of highly-intellectual men making highly questionable claims about womanhood. We’ve seen Neil DeGrasse Tyson, world-famous science communicator, explaining what an individual would do if they woke up feeling “80% female and 20% male” (put on makeup, obviously), well-known psychotherapist, Scott Alexander, comparing the impulse to defend women’s rights to drug addiction, talk-show powerhouse, Jon Stewart, drawing an equivalence between children with paediatric cancer and children confused about their gender identity, and noted mathematician, Eric Weinstein, citing his belief that there are male brains in female bodies (shortly before admitting that he doesn't understand this stuff).
Excellent summary of this misogynistic shit-show. Thank you a hundred times for your meaningful support of women and our ongoing fight not to be defined by men.
This reminded me of two cases where activists try so hard to prove their point that they throw their own definitions out the window, and expose the flaws in their reasoning.
Back in 2022 a local publication, in an attempt to prove that trans people have Always Been With Us, profiled some woman from the 19th century who disguised herself as a man so she could get a good job and marry the woman she loved. It was perfectly clear from the context that this was nothing more than a disguise, intended to fool people into believing she was a man, but she was nevertheless hailed as a trans hero.
Another example is when people are called "transphobic" if they object to drag performances for children.
I have lost a lot of respect for NdT. He was fine as an astronomy popularizer, but since his sex scandal he seems to be strongly hewing to the CSJ lines and giving their arguments an unearned patina of respect.
I recently saw a cartoon with a bunch of zombies surrounding a house with only one person inside, with the text saying that it was NdT so there would be plenty of brain for everybody. That's his public image - a massively intelligent guy, who understands things at a level we mortal cannot. So now he's throwing that, um, popular credibility, on the side of some very unscientific ideologies.
I am happy to see you getting angry about this. It's overdue.
It's disheartening that clarity like logic and scientific literacy mean so little to most people. It's frightening that so people educated and intelligent people still believe that
* "gender dysphoria" has strict diagnostic criteria. It doesn't. An impromptu declaration of self-identity is all it takes
* gender transition "therapy" requires a year living as the opposite sex. That has not been true since the replacement of gender identity disorder with "gender dysphoria" in 2013.
* a newborn's sex is "assigned" by something like a coin toss, while the child's true sex awaits a decision made while the brain is immature enough to believe in Santa Claus.
I *get* why men outside the transnuts support this; on some level, many men want to 'help out a bro' in supporting a sexual fetish he himself probably doesn't share; because who knows what those feminazis will come after next??? What if they go after porn and prostitution? Droning on about sex trafficking, which NEVER happens? What I don't understand is why *women* go along with this, although someone in my comments section this weekend came up with a damned good theory: That this is another way for bad actors to prey upon women (and I would add, children) sexually. They create the woke cognitive confusion that what they do isn't sex ("gender dysphoria"), that the less woke groomed a woman is, the less cognitive confusion she has, and the more instantaneous the recognition of unwanted sex is, and that they groom adults to accept the fictional trans children is non-sexual in nature when it is frankly so.
I wrote an article a few months ago arguing that 'trans grooming' also includes the grooming of adults to accept, eventually, pedophilia, I talked about 'MAPs', and said I didn't think the woke would offer any barriers when the pedos came to them and said, "If your child is old enough to know what they are [gender-wise], they're old enough to know who they want to have sex with and your child says they want to have sex with me. Children know what's best for them, as you're fond of saying. Butt out!"
I really do believe this is where it's going, because the woke have been grooming themselves with its 'inclusivity' obsession and desire to be sexually open - you know, not like those sourpussed tight-crotched conservatives! The trans groomers are taking advantage of woke uncritical thinking and sowing the cognitive confusion noted by my commenter (who I've asked to turn it into a guest post for my GSL).
Two of the greatest psychological weaknesses in the female brain are the desire to be 'nice' and to be liked. This is why you find so many women on the liberal end of the spectrum, and where the lowest numbers for mental health lie, especially with young liberal, progressive women.
"I think the main issue here is the luxury of viewing these...."
And there you have it, the crux of where we are today. If you burn all of this down to brass tacks, I think you'll find that we are living in a time where "luxury beliefs", to coin the phrase from Rob Henderson, have taken ahold of society, and we're seeing it's destructive consequences. Luxury beliefs are defined as the beliefs that privileged members of society hold that exact little to no consequence in their lives, but create huge problems for the non elite and lower classes. When I say elite, I mean intellectual, monied, and tech.
"Trans women are women" could put the female population in danger from potential "bad actors" in female spaces. What about doctors visits and medical industry redefining its meaning of "woman"? What about the danger that puts lesbians in and the push to medicalize them because "they're just trans men at heart"? The women that rely on sports to get ahead in life: through scholarships, potential endorsements, coaching gigs...that could all be upended.
"Abolish the police" already does put folks in danger. We have some American cities that are in states of horrible crime. And if there are less funds going into law enforcement, don't you think that the criminals are just loving that?
"The nuclear family is so outdated" this one is a beauty. Two parents in the household is a greater predictor of success for their children almost over anything else. Even a poor but intact family has a better chance than a family in upheaval with more money.
"Marriage is an outdated vestige of the patriarchy" It's amazing this gets thrown around when levels of loneliness are spiking, for both men and women.
But it's not all progressive voices. Throughout the years, conservatives have set out to, and in many ways succeeded, to destroy unions. In South Carolina, Nikki Haley's backyard, they have the lowest number of union members in the whole country. Just about all of the southern states have dismal union membership. Republicans have done an absolutely fabulous job at getting poor and working class whites to bet and vote against their best interests. All for money...
The interesting thing about the examples I gave, and there are more, is that the elites themselves would NEVER apply any of these beliefs to their own lives, no way! Most of them don't need the sport scholarships, they live in bubbles that shield them from having their spaces disrupted and endangered by those that are not invited, many of them come from nuclear families and have every desire to continue that tradition, they are actively looking for spouses, and they live in great areas where the police are at their beck and call, not to mention houses with great security.
And the tech bros have no problem pushing digital devices on us, but severely limit them when it comes to their own children. And conservatives continue to bust unions, one of the greatest pathways to middle class. But they're fine, they usually have enough money to keep them floating lovely...
Elites are not showing off their luxury goods so much anymore, that's just gouache, but instead are showing off their luxury beliefs. And who pays dearly?
“Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them.” 😂😂😂😂 I think Sowell quote this Orwell quote in "Intellectuals and Society." It's a good one.
You're in top form here, with a great pull-out quote:
"After all, the only men we need to worry about when women say, “Please stay out of our spaces,” are the ones who reply, “How are you going to stop me?”
The only aspect of this "debate" that is new, is that it takes place at all. The notion of gender identity didn't suddenly appear in 20th C America, and it didn't appear merely among "effete intellectuals." It's been around since complex human societies formed.
I don't know why you went on this bender of antagonism toward transgender people - but really, what exactly is damaged by giving them the freedom to be who they want to be? How is your life impinged?
As for the talking heads - spin up King Crimson's "Elephant Talk" on your music platform of choice and put this issue in perspective.
A thing that recently occurred to me pertains to female identifying males participating in women's sports. I think it is an effort to normalize the idea that trans-women are women and they are purposefully willing to throw women under the bus to active that goal. It's an effort to change societal norms and thinking.
As a father of daughters who participated in sports, my initial objections was fairness to girls and women. Now I see it as something much larger.
Never quite understand the scare stories about Trans people in toilets. As far as I know, as a man, that women's toilets are all private stalls, so it's highly unlikely you'll be exposed to the nuts and bolts. It's not as if women are lining up to squat in front of a urinal.
Excellent summary of this misogynistic shit-show. Thank you a hundred times for your meaningful support of women and our ongoing fight not to be defined by men.
Great fun - neat and pithy. Will share if I can. Your 'male' brain pleases me!
This reminded me of two cases where activists try so hard to prove their point that they throw their own definitions out the window, and expose the flaws in their reasoning.
Back in 2022 a local publication, in an attempt to prove that trans people have Always Been With Us, profiled some woman from the 19th century who disguised herself as a man so she could get a good job and marry the woman she loved. It was perfectly clear from the context that this was nothing more than a disguise, intended to fool people into believing she was a man, but she was nevertheless hailed as a trans hero.
Another example is when people are called "transphobic" if they object to drag performances for children.
Do these presumably intelligent people actually believe these absurdities or are they merely pusillanimous and submitting to tribal dictates?
Excellent.
I have lost a lot of respect for NdT. He was fine as an astronomy popularizer, but since his sex scandal he seems to be strongly hewing to the CSJ lines and giving their arguments an unearned patina of respect.
I recently saw a cartoon with a bunch of zombies surrounding a house with only one person inside, with the text saying that it was NdT so there would be plenty of brain for everybody. That's his public image - a massively intelligent guy, who understands things at a level we mortal cannot. So now he's throwing that, um, popular credibility, on the side of some very unscientific ideologies.
I am happy to see you getting angry about this. It's overdue.
It's disheartening that clarity like logic and scientific literacy mean so little to most people. It's frightening that so people educated and intelligent people still believe that
* "gender dysphoria" has strict diagnostic criteria. It doesn't. An impromptu declaration of self-identity is all it takes
* gender transition "therapy" requires a year living as the opposite sex. That has not been true since the replacement of gender identity disorder with "gender dysphoria" in 2013.
* puberty blockers do no harm and are completely reversible, based on a deeply flawed study financed by a pharmaceutical corporation that manufactures them, https://open.substack.com/pub/genderclinicnews/p/cognitive-challenge
* a newborn's sex is "assigned" by something like a coin toss, while the child's true sex awaits a decision made while the brain is immature enough to believe in Santa Claus.
I *get* why men outside the transnuts support this; on some level, many men want to 'help out a bro' in supporting a sexual fetish he himself probably doesn't share; because who knows what those feminazis will come after next??? What if they go after porn and prostitution? Droning on about sex trafficking, which NEVER happens? What I don't understand is why *women* go along with this, although someone in my comments section this weekend came up with a damned good theory: That this is another way for bad actors to prey upon women (and I would add, children) sexually. They create the woke cognitive confusion that what they do isn't sex ("gender dysphoria"), that the less woke groomed a woman is, the less cognitive confusion she has, and the more instantaneous the recognition of unwanted sex is, and that they groom adults to accept the fictional trans children is non-sexual in nature when it is frankly so.
I wrote an article a few months ago arguing that 'trans grooming' also includes the grooming of adults to accept, eventually, pedophilia, I talked about 'MAPs', and said I didn't think the woke would offer any barriers when the pedos came to them and said, "If your child is old enough to know what they are [gender-wise], they're old enough to know who they want to have sex with and your child says they want to have sex with me. Children know what's best for them, as you're fond of saying. Butt out!"
I really do believe this is where it's going, because the woke have been grooming themselves with its 'inclusivity' obsession and desire to be sexually open - you know, not like those sourpussed tight-crotched conservatives! The trans groomers are taking advantage of woke uncritical thinking and sowing the cognitive confusion noted by my commenter (who I've asked to turn it into a guest post for my GSL).
Two of the greatest psychological weaknesses in the female brain are the desire to be 'nice' and to be liked. This is why you find so many women on the liberal end of the spectrum, and where the lowest numbers for mental health lie, especially with young liberal, progressive women.
"I think the main issue here is the luxury of viewing these...."
And there you have it, the crux of where we are today. If you burn all of this down to brass tacks, I think you'll find that we are living in a time where "luxury beliefs", to coin the phrase from Rob Henderson, have taken ahold of society, and we're seeing it's destructive consequences. Luxury beliefs are defined as the beliefs that privileged members of society hold that exact little to no consequence in their lives, but create huge problems for the non elite and lower classes. When I say elite, I mean intellectual, monied, and tech.
"Trans women are women" could put the female population in danger from potential "bad actors" in female spaces. What about doctors visits and medical industry redefining its meaning of "woman"? What about the danger that puts lesbians in and the push to medicalize them because "they're just trans men at heart"? The women that rely on sports to get ahead in life: through scholarships, potential endorsements, coaching gigs...that could all be upended.
"Abolish the police" already does put folks in danger. We have some American cities that are in states of horrible crime. And if there are less funds going into law enforcement, don't you think that the criminals are just loving that?
"The nuclear family is so outdated" this one is a beauty. Two parents in the household is a greater predictor of success for their children almost over anything else. Even a poor but intact family has a better chance than a family in upheaval with more money.
"Marriage is an outdated vestige of the patriarchy" It's amazing this gets thrown around when levels of loneliness are spiking, for both men and women.
But it's not all progressive voices. Throughout the years, conservatives have set out to, and in many ways succeeded, to destroy unions. In South Carolina, Nikki Haley's backyard, they have the lowest number of union members in the whole country. Just about all of the southern states have dismal union membership. Republicans have done an absolutely fabulous job at getting poor and working class whites to bet and vote against their best interests. All for money...
The interesting thing about the examples I gave, and there are more, is that the elites themselves would NEVER apply any of these beliefs to their own lives, no way! Most of them don't need the sport scholarships, they live in bubbles that shield them from having their spaces disrupted and endangered by those that are not invited, many of them come from nuclear families and have every desire to continue that tradition, they are actively looking for spouses, and they live in great areas where the police are at their beck and call, not to mention houses with great security.
And the tech bros have no problem pushing digital devices on us, but severely limit them when it comes to their own children. And conservatives continue to bust unions, one of the greatest pathways to middle class. But they're fine, they usually have enough money to keep them floating lovely...
Elites are not showing off their luxury goods so much anymore, that's just gouache, but instead are showing off their luxury beliefs. And who pays dearly?
We do, the rest of us.
And sadly, we've become useful idiots for them...
“Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them.” 😂😂😂😂 I think Sowell quote this Orwell quote in "Intellectuals and Society." It's a good one.
You're in top form here, with a great pull-out quote:
"After all, the only men we need to worry about when women say, “Please stay out of our spaces,” are the ones who reply, “How are you going to stop me?”
Or, perhaps you just need to look out the window.
https://www.gq.com/story/burrnesha-albanian-women-living-as-men
The only aspect of this "debate" that is new, is that it takes place at all. The notion of gender identity didn't suddenly appear in 20th C America, and it didn't appear merely among "effete intellectuals." It's been around since complex human societies formed.
I don't know why you went on this bender of antagonism toward transgender people - but really, what exactly is damaged by giving them the freedom to be who they want to be? How is your life impinged?
As for the talking heads - spin up King Crimson's "Elephant Talk" on your music platform of choice and put this issue in perspective.
A thing that recently occurred to me pertains to female identifying males participating in women's sports. I think it is an effort to normalize the idea that trans-women are women and they are purposefully willing to throw women under the bus to active that goal. It's an effort to change societal norms and thinking.
As a father of daughters who participated in sports, my initial objections was fairness to girls and women. Now I see it as something much larger.
Never quite understand the scare stories about Trans people in toilets. As far as I know, as a man, that women's toilets are all private stalls, so it's highly unlikely you'll be exposed to the nuts and bolts. It's not as if women are lining up to squat in front of a urinal.