"The pain doesn't come from electively joining a marginalized group (and then striving to increase the marginalization); the joining of the group is a reaction to pain, to dissatisfaction, to emptiness"
No, I'm saying that the pain, at least in part, comes from the treatment that people who aren't members of the "normal" group experience.…
"The pain doesn't come from electively joining a marginalized group (and then striving to increase the marginalization); the joining of the group is a reaction to pain, to dissatisfaction, to emptiness"
No, I'm saying that the pain, at least in part, comes from the treatment that people who aren't members of the "normal" group experience. Just everyday meanness from people because of skin colour or sex or sexuality or a slightly atypical gender presentation, is real. And can be debilitating.
I think you've been here long enough to remember my conversations with Ray (https://steveqj.substack.com/p/why-are-you-so-rude-steve). Now, Ray was a miserable old curmudgeon, and maybe he'd have been that way regardless of whether he'd grown up as a black man in the 60s. But the fact that he went through that experience can't have helped.
I don't think identifying as trans, at least in the majority of cases, is elective.
That's not to say that everybody who says they're trans really has gender dysphoria (I don't believe they do), but to say that a lot of young people today, especially young girls, are deeply confused about gender identity because it's seeped in to so many aspects of their lives. For a 10-11 year old hitting puberty today, there's a huge chance that the normal discomfort they feel with their changing bodies will be "diagnosed" by somebody around them as them being trans.
And they're young and hormonal and underdeveloped enough that they don't have the faculties to see through the dogma.
In a roundabout way you are agreeing with me. We are both saying that the choice (yes) of trans is in response to pain more than the origin of pain. And since these are terrible times the pressures on adolescents experiencing the hormone storms of adolescence are worse than they were for us.
Unhappy people grasp for escapes. A gender change is a pretty big one.
"there's a huge chance that the normal discomfort they feel with their changing bodies will be "diagnosed" by somebody around them as them being trans."
How is this different from what I said about it being a trend? A fad? Diagnosed by somebody around them isn't a reference to a qualified counselor, it's a reference to a peer.
We can politely disagree on the degree to which going "trans" is elective; we will be quibbling over percentages, not a productive conversation without data. Certainly it is elective for some. And given the intensity of affirmation pressure, this is dangerous. From "maybe I'm trans" to surgery in a few scant months.
"In a roundabout way you are agreeing with me. We are both saying that the choice (yes) of trans is in response to pain more than the origin of pain"
No, I don't agree with this. First, I don't think being trans is a choice. Especially in the case of people with gender dysphoria, but even, as I explained, in the case of some people who *don't* have gender dysphoria.
And while, yes, unhappy people grasp for escapes, being confused about yourself is not the same as choosing to join a trend. Because you haven't chosen to join it, you have, at a point in your life when you're particularly vulnerable, been indoctrinated into it.
The people who were drawn into gender ideology as teenagers and then detransitioned for example, often after causing irreparable damage to their bodies, all talk about how deeply convinced they were that they were trans. They explain how they mistook their confusion and mental health issues for gender dysphoria, because medical professionals are too afraid or stupid to do their jobs properly.
The children who said "I'm a boy/girl" at a very young age, and then were ushered down a path of reality denial and medication by the adults who were supposed to protect them. If you're six years old and are told that you are literally a girl because you like "girl things" that becomes "reality" for you. Even though, as you know, most such children desist if allowed to go through puberty normally.
These people are victims of what could broadly be called brainwashing, not people jumping on a bandwagon. You're describing a slice of the trans community with your position, but there are many others, I suspect a majority, who are completely different.
I am perplexed at the sudden mention of young children brainwashed into seeing themselves as the wrong gender. We have not been talking about this, and it plays no visible part in the sudden explosion of affirmation pressure.
Medical professionals have been cowed by the activists; if a young girl wants to believe she's trans and that going under the knife will give her fulfillment, a counselor has to reaffirm her delusion or he will *lose his job.* You know this.
The reason a 13yo girl can be "deeply convinced" that she is trans is because she is not yet capable of thinking for herself. Her attitudes are compulsively conforming and when all of her friends are telling her the same thing, why, it must be so. It isn't until age 15 or so that intellectual independence begins for most people. If it ever does.
I think this fad will pass because fads always do. It may leave some residual damage to our language and may even lead to some minor social progress but it is not going to take too many stories of deprogrammed and mutilated children to trigger some cultural revulsion.
And the more people see of the Stephanies, the faster it will happen.
There is also the inadequacy of reassignment; a lot of "trans women" look, frankly, scary, and "trans men" are sexually nonfunctional, however convincing they may look with thickened facial bones and beards. If we survive the next few decades, which I doubt, it may be possible to literally convert between the sexes easily and reliably, but what we have not reached that point and what we call reassignment is little better than surgical caricaturing.
"I am perplexed at the sudden mention of young children brainwashed into seeing themselves as the wrong gender. We have not been talking about this, and it plays no visible part in the sudden explosion of affirmation pressure."
😅No, *you* have not been talking about this, which I think is the problem. So many people, when they talk about trans people are only really talking about trans women. And when they're talking about trans women, they're only *really* talking about the fifty-year-old men with AGP trying to bully their way into female spaces.
These people are out there, of course, I've pointed them out repeatedly. But they only represent a segment of the trans "community".
Just as important to consider are trans men. Because any policies designed for trans women will apply equally to trans men, who represent a larger slice of the community than any other group, especially amongst young people.
So, for example, if you want trans women to use men's bathrooms, you have to also make trans men use women's bathrooms. And given that trans men, in many cases, look, as you say indistinguishable from men, you now have people with beards, presenting completely as men, walking into women's bathrooms. This is the entire reasons why I think bathrooms (and bathrooms alone) should be (and already are) segregated by gender rather than sex.
It's important to consider people who genuinely have gender dysphoria. Who felt this incongruence from an early age. I'm told over and over again that these people represent a tiny proportion of trans people, but never with even a tiny bit of evidence. And regardless of their proportion, in the total human population, there are likely millions of them out there. People who have undergone complete gender reassignment surgery, people who are visually indistinguishable from the sex they've transitioned into, what do we do with these people? Are they just attention seekers? Perverts who were so committed to getting into women's spaces that they had their penises cut off in their teens?
When I'm talking about trans people, I'm trying to talk about *all* of these groups, not just the weird old men in dresses. I don't know Stephanie's story. I don't know what she's like away from her nasty little internet persona. But I'm not going to let her nastiness become the lens through which I view all trans issues. And my concern is, the more people see of the Stephanies, the less willing they'll be to nuance their views to include the many other people who are nothing like her.
Yes, I'm just as concerned as you are about the perverts and the surgeons preforming mastectomies on children. I'm just as eager for psychologists to spend time diagnosing they patients and trying to find solutions that don't involve life-long hormones and irreversible surgery and to not have this mislabelled as "conversion therapy." I'm just as certain that regardless of any of this, there are instances where single-sex spaces need to be for single sexes, not genders.
But none of this has anything to do with the inadequacy of reassignment surgery. That's just personal distaste for what these people are doing. Adults can do whatever they want to their bodies. As long as they're mentally competent to make the decision. And the decision on whether they *are* mentally competent can't be based on, "well I think it's weird/gross" or "'normal' people don't do that."
Being trans USED to not be a choice. Today, in most cases, it's a fad, driven by social contagion. 15 years ago most trans were biological men (adults). Today the community is mostly young (or very young, between 9 and 15) girls. Of course something serious is underneath all this. This kids are in some kind of pain, if there is no autism or a mental illness in the equation. But looking at the sheer number of detranstioners, it is definitely a "choice", as in "socially induced". I truly recommend you look into detransitioners' stories, you might understand better why Chris calls it a choice.
"I truly recommend you look into detransitioners' stories, you might understand better why Chris calls it a choice."
"Socially induced" and "choice" mean two completely different things. Especially when talking about children who are already vulnerable. If a child is inducted into a cult, did that child make a choice? If a child is groomed by an adult and thought they gave consent, did they really give consent? These children re already vulnerable in almost all cases. they have comorbidities like depression or repressed homosexuality or sexual trauma, I think it's extremely simplistic to label their actions as simply a choice.
Again, I'm about four years deep on seriously researching trans issues at this point. I'm very well aware of detrans stories. But if you read those stories, in each case, the people affected didn't think they were making a choice. They weren't faking. In fact, they felt they had no choice but to transition. They were convinced enough to do irreparable damage to their bodies, and only when they became more mature, or saw that they would never truly be the sex they wanted to be, did they realise that they'd made a mistake. Note that almost no detranstitioners advocate a ban on transition for adults.
I keep seeing this language of "in most cases." No, in most cases people who transition don't detransition. This is borne out in every single piece of research done on the topic. Detransition stories are tragic. And they're the reason why we need to do a much better job of distinguishing between genuine gender dysphoria and, especially in the case of girls, sexual trauma and anxiety. But even the study that found the highest rate of detransition (imperfect though it was) found that 87% of people don't detransition.
Trans ideology is doing huge, measurable harm at the moment. You don't have to convince me. I waded into this issue, despite all the flack I knew I'd get, because I see that very clearly. But it's the ideology that's at fault. Not the people, and especially not the children, who are caught up by it.
"First, I don't think being trans is a choice. Especially in the case of people with gender dysphoria, but even, as I explained, in the case of some people who *don't* have gender dysphoria."
You'll need to explain this a lot more convincingly.
I take pains, regularly, to distinguish the authentically dysphoric from those who are just in it for attention. You are now saying that there are people who are not dysphoric, something that is usually established early in adolescence, yet who ... and sorry, but this makes NO sense to me ... are helpless to resist and who are as compelled as a genuinely dysphoric person to become "trans," that choice does not play a role.
Remember, the argument that being gay was a choice was pivotal in denying us equal rights, and it was the final nail in the coffin of this lie that made denial of equality insupportable.
If it isn't choice, then what the hell is it? Given the intense role of conformity (I keep comparing this to other teen fads like listening to a Korean smile vocal group) in teen lives, what is this other factor? And why should anyone give it the same respect as we give to those who actually have no choice?
A lot of people do things for attention. Lookit me, lookit me. Senators Liebermann on ACA and Manchin on AGW. Grinning from ear to ear because reporters are hovering on their every word. It is VERY obvious to me that a lot of people in the "trans" and "nonbinary" fads are 100% in it for attention. Being someone who did the same in childhood with my intelligence and overcame the urge I, yes, resent people who still do it. Why should anyone dignify this? Why should anyone take time to give them special attention, to honor their demands? I would scrupulously honor those with unsummoned afflictions, I feel no obligation to respect people who just enjoy being nuisances.
You tend to gloss over the distinction between the real and the fake here. I am asking you to explain why you think the latter are NOT fake.
"You'll need to explain this a lot more convincingly."
Think about it this way.
Megan Phelps-Roper attended her first protest with the Westboro Baptist Church when she was five years old. She was holding a sign that read "Gays are worthy of death." She spent years campaigning against gay rights, abortion rights, pretty much every bigoted view you can name. She left the church 22 years later, renouncing her previous views in the process, after speaking to people online over many years who helped her see that she was wrong.
Now, did Megan *choose* to join the cult? Was she insincere in her beliefs while she held them even though they eventually changed? Did the environment she grew up in make it incredibly likely she'd take on and believe these ideas?
Megan is still responsible for her actions during that time, and you can argue that she might have been motivated, in part, by a desire to fit in or be praised by her peers, but I think it's wildly unreasonable to describe them as a choice. She was a child who was susceptible to an ideology that surrounded her and made bad decisions because of it.
A lot of these kids are in a similar situation. And they're also deeply unhappy. They're going through a notoriously difficult period of their lives. The idea that transition is some kind of a magic bullet for their problems is everywhere around them. And while I don't think a lot of these kids have the medically recognised condition of gender dysphoria, there's a kind of gender dysphoria-by-proxy being foisted on them from multiple directions. I think it's equally unreasonable as Megan's case to describe kids in that situation as attention seekers or fakers.
Again, the problem is the ideology. Not the people, and especially not the kids, who are captured by it
"The pain doesn't come from electively joining a marginalized group (and then striving to increase the marginalization); the joining of the group is a reaction to pain, to dissatisfaction, to emptiness"
No, I'm saying that the pain, at least in part, comes from the treatment that people who aren't members of the "normal" group experience. Just everyday meanness from people because of skin colour or sex or sexuality or a slightly atypical gender presentation, is real. And can be debilitating.
I think you've been here long enough to remember my conversations with Ray (https://steveqj.substack.com/p/why-are-you-so-rude-steve). Now, Ray was a miserable old curmudgeon, and maybe he'd have been that way regardless of whether he'd grown up as a black man in the 60s. But the fact that he went through that experience can't have helped.
I don't think identifying as trans, at least in the majority of cases, is elective.
That's not to say that everybody who says they're trans really has gender dysphoria (I don't believe they do), but to say that a lot of young people today, especially young girls, are deeply confused about gender identity because it's seeped in to so many aspects of their lives. For a 10-11 year old hitting puberty today, there's a huge chance that the normal discomfort they feel with their changing bodies will be "diagnosed" by somebody around them as them being trans.
And they're young and hormonal and underdeveloped enough that they don't have the faculties to see through the dogma.
In a roundabout way you are agreeing with me. We are both saying that the choice (yes) of trans is in response to pain more than the origin of pain. And since these are terrible times the pressures on adolescents experiencing the hormone storms of adolescence are worse than they were for us.
Unhappy people grasp for escapes. A gender change is a pretty big one.
"there's a huge chance that the normal discomfort they feel with their changing bodies will be "diagnosed" by somebody around them as them being trans."
How is this different from what I said about it being a trend? A fad? Diagnosed by somebody around them isn't a reference to a qualified counselor, it's a reference to a peer.
We can politely disagree on the degree to which going "trans" is elective; we will be quibbling over percentages, not a productive conversation without data. Certainly it is elective for some. And given the intensity of affirmation pressure, this is dangerous. From "maybe I'm trans" to surgery in a few scant months.
"In a roundabout way you are agreeing with me. We are both saying that the choice (yes) of trans is in response to pain more than the origin of pain"
No, I don't agree with this. First, I don't think being trans is a choice. Especially in the case of people with gender dysphoria, but even, as I explained, in the case of some people who *don't* have gender dysphoria.
And while, yes, unhappy people grasp for escapes, being confused about yourself is not the same as choosing to join a trend. Because you haven't chosen to join it, you have, at a point in your life when you're particularly vulnerable, been indoctrinated into it.
The people who were drawn into gender ideology as teenagers and then detransitioned for example, often after causing irreparable damage to their bodies, all talk about how deeply convinced they were that they were trans. They explain how they mistook their confusion and mental health issues for gender dysphoria, because medical professionals are too afraid or stupid to do their jobs properly.
The children who said "I'm a boy/girl" at a very young age, and then were ushered down a path of reality denial and medication by the adults who were supposed to protect them. If you're six years old and are told that you are literally a girl because you like "girl things" that becomes "reality" for you. Even though, as you know, most such children desist if allowed to go through puberty normally.
These people are victims of what could broadly be called brainwashing, not people jumping on a bandwagon. You're describing a slice of the trans community with your position, but there are many others, I suspect a majority, who are completely different.
I am perplexed at the sudden mention of young children brainwashed into seeing themselves as the wrong gender. We have not been talking about this, and it plays no visible part in the sudden explosion of affirmation pressure.
Medical professionals have been cowed by the activists; if a young girl wants to believe she's trans and that going under the knife will give her fulfillment, a counselor has to reaffirm her delusion or he will *lose his job.* You know this.
The reason a 13yo girl can be "deeply convinced" that she is trans is because she is not yet capable of thinking for herself. Her attitudes are compulsively conforming and when all of her friends are telling her the same thing, why, it must be so. It isn't until age 15 or so that intellectual independence begins for most people. If it ever does.
I think this fad will pass because fads always do. It may leave some residual damage to our language and may even lead to some minor social progress but it is not going to take too many stories of deprogrammed and mutilated children to trigger some cultural revulsion.
And the more people see of the Stephanies, the faster it will happen.
There is also the inadequacy of reassignment; a lot of "trans women" look, frankly, scary, and "trans men" are sexually nonfunctional, however convincing they may look with thickened facial bones and beards. If we survive the next few decades, which I doubt, it may be possible to literally convert between the sexes easily and reliably, but what we have not reached that point and what we call reassignment is little better than surgical caricaturing.
"I am perplexed at the sudden mention of young children brainwashed into seeing themselves as the wrong gender. We have not been talking about this, and it plays no visible part in the sudden explosion of affirmation pressure."
😅No, *you* have not been talking about this, which I think is the problem. So many people, when they talk about trans people are only really talking about trans women. And when they're talking about trans women, they're only *really* talking about the fifty-year-old men with AGP trying to bully their way into female spaces.
These people are out there, of course, I've pointed them out repeatedly. But they only represent a segment of the trans "community".
Just as important to consider are trans men. Because any policies designed for trans women will apply equally to trans men, who represent a larger slice of the community than any other group, especially amongst young people.
So, for example, if you want trans women to use men's bathrooms, you have to also make trans men use women's bathrooms. And given that trans men, in many cases, look, as you say indistinguishable from men, you now have people with beards, presenting completely as men, walking into women's bathrooms. This is the entire reasons why I think bathrooms (and bathrooms alone) should be (and already are) segregated by gender rather than sex.
It's important to consider people who genuinely have gender dysphoria. Who felt this incongruence from an early age. I'm told over and over again that these people represent a tiny proportion of trans people, but never with even a tiny bit of evidence. And regardless of their proportion, in the total human population, there are likely millions of them out there. People who have undergone complete gender reassignment surgery, people who are visually indistinguishable from the sex they've transitioned into, what do we do with these people? Are they just attention seekers? Perverts who were so committed to getting into women's spaces that they had their penises cut off in their teens?
When I'm talking about trans people, I'm trying to talk about *all* of these groups, not just the weird old men in dresses. I don't know Stephanie's story. I don't know what she's like away from her nasty little internet persona. But I'm not going to let her nastiness become the lens through which I view all trans issues. And my concern is, the more people see of the Stephanies, the less willing they'll be to nuance their views to include the many other people who are nothing like her.
Yes, I'm just as concerned as you are about the perverts and the surgeons preforming mastectomies on children. I'm just as eager for psychologists to spend time diagnosing they patients and trying to find solutions that don't involve life-long hormones and irreversible surgery and to not have this mislabelled as "conversion therapy." I'm just as certain that regardless of any of this, there are instances where single-sex spaces need to be for single sexes, not genders.
But none of this has anything to do with the inadequacy of reassignment surgery. That's just personal distaste for what these people are doing. Adults can do whatever they want to their bodies. As long as they're mentally competent to make the decision. And the decision on whether they *are* mentally competent can't be based on, "well I think it's weird/gross" or "'normal' people don't do that."
Being trans USED to not be a choice. Today, in most cases, it's a fad, driven by social contagion. 15 years ago most trans were biological men (adults). Today the community is mostly young (or very young, between 9 and 15) girls. Of course something serious is underneath all this. This kids are in some kind of pain, if there is no autism or a mental illness in the equation. But looking at the sheer number of detranstioners, it is definitely a "choice", as in "socially induced". I truly recommend you look into detransitioners' stories, you might understand better why Chris calls it a choice.
"I truly recommend you look into detransitioners' stories, you might understand better why Chris calls it a choice."
"Socially induced" and "choice" mean two completely different things. Especially when talking about children who are already vulnerable. If a child is inducted into a cult, did that child make a choice? If a child is groomed by an adult and thought they gave consent, did they really give consent? These children re already vulnerable in almost all cases. they have comorbidities like depression or repressed homosexuality or sexual trauma, I think it's extremely simplistic to label their actions as simply a choice.
Again, I'm about four years deep on seriously researching trans issues at this point. I'm very well aware of detrans stories. But if you read those stories, in each case, the people affected didn't think they were making a choice. They weren't faking. In fact, they felt they had no choice but to transition. They were convinced enough to do irreparable damage to their bodies, and only when they became more mature, or saw that they would never truly be the sex they wanted to be, did they realise that they'd made a mistake. Note that almost no detranstitioners advocate a ban on transition for adults.
I keep seeing this language of "in most cases." No, in most cases people who transition don't detransition. This is borne out in every single piece of research done on the topic. Detransition stories are tragic. And they're the reason why we need to do a much better job of distinguishing between genuine gender dysphoria and, especially in the case of girls, sexual trauma and anxiety. But even the study that found the highest rate of detransition (imperfect though it was) found that 87% of people don't detransition.
Trans ideology is doing huge, measurable harm at the moment. You don't have to convince me. I waded into this issue, despite all the flack I knew I'd get, because I see that very clearly. But it's the ideology that's at fault. Not the people, and especially not the children, who are caught up by it.
"First, I don't think being trans is a choice. Especially in the case of people with gender dysphoria, but even, as I explained, in the case of some people who *don't* have gender dysphoria."
You'll need to explain this a lot more convincingly.
I take pains, regularly, to distinguish the authentically dysphoric from those who are just in it for attention. You are now saying that there are people who are not dysphoric, something that is usually established early in adolescence, yet who ... and sorry, but this makes NO sense to me ... are helpless to resist and who are as compelled as a genuinely dysphoric person to become "trans," that choice does not play a role.
Remember, the argument that being gay was a choice was pivotal in denying us equal rights, and it was the final nail in the coffin of this lie that made denial of equality insupportable.
If it isn't choice, then what the hell is it? Given the intense role of conformity (I keep comparing this to other teen fads like listening to a Korean smile vocal group) in teen lives, what is this other factor? And why should anyone give it the same respect as we give to those who actually have no choice?
A lot of people do things for attention. Lookit me, lookit me. Senators Liebermann on ACA and Manchin on AGW. Grinning from ear to ear because reporters are hovering on their every word. It is VERY obvious to me that a lot of people in the "trans" and "nonbinary" fads are 100% in it for attention. Being someone who did the same in childhood with my intelligence and overcame the urge I, yes, resent people who still do it. Why should anyone dignify this? Why should anyone take time to give them special attention, to honor their demands? I would scrupulously honor those with unsummoned afflictions, I feel no obligation to respect people who just enjoy being nuisances.
You tend to gloss over the distinction between the real and the fake here. I am asking you to explain why you think the latter are NOT fake.
"You'll need to explain this a lot more convincingly."
Think about it this way.
Megan Phelps-Roper attended her first protest with the Westboro Baptist Church when she was five years old. She was holding a sign that read "Gays are worthy of death." She spent years campaigning against gay rights, abortion rights, pretty much every bigoted view you can name. She left the church 22 years later, renouncing her previous views in the process, after speaking to people online over many years who helped her see that she was wrong.
Now, did Megan *choose* to join the cult? Was she insincere in her beliefs while she held them even though they eventually changed? Did the environment she grew up in make it incredibly likely she'd take on and believe these ideas?
Megan is still responsible for her actions during that time, and you can argue that she might have been motivated, in part, by a desire to fit in or be praised by her peers, but I think it's wildly unreasonable to describe them as a choice. She was a child who was susceptible to an ideology that surrounded her and made bad decisions because of it.
A lot of these kids are in a similar situation. And they're also deeply unhappy. They're going through a notoriously difficult period of their lives. The idea that transition is some kind of a magic bullet for their problems is everywhere around them. And while I don't think a lot of these kids have the medically recognised condition of gender dysphoria, there's a kind of gender dysphoria-by-proxy being foisted on them from multiple directions. I think it's equally unreasonable as Megan's case to describe kids in that situation as attention seekers or fakers.
Again, the problem is the ideology. Not the people, and especially not the kids, who are captured by it