I have several aims with the conversations I have online. And one of them is to model a more productive style of discourse. I definitely don’t always succeed at this. I get irritated, just like everybody else, I get defensive, just like everybody else, I get sarcastic, possibly a little more than everybody else. But the sheer volume of people I talk to reminds me how unproductive this is. And even, occasionally, helps me to cut through the noise.
I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape. I know trans people *do* get assaulted, and sometimes a lot, but Stephanie's acting so much like an entitled man that I don't find it hard to believe she's lying about that. It's not that I think women regularly lie a lot about rape; this just seems to be appropriated grievance.
I don't trust many social media women anymore who claim rape and sexual assault; mostly because the words have been stretched so out of shape by sexual assault activists and extremist feminists that I'm not sure they even understand any more what *is* a rape. In fact, when some #MeToo personal story orgy breaks out over the cancelled celebrity du jour, I suspect a *lot* of women, esp the anonymous ones, are making up their alleged rape stories for the attention and the sisterhood. They're not naming some guy who supposedly did it; they're never going to get busted lying because they're @IHateTrump231 or whatever and there's nothing on their profile to identify them. Since toxic transwomen like Stephanie ape the very worst of toxic femininity & feminism, I wonder if she's making up the rape story. Who's going to challenge her? That's verboten.
She very much sounds like she's in this for the victimhood. She's everything wrong with the left, the trans movement, and exactly the sort of person JK Rowling speaks out against.
"I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape"
Yeah, I don't know. I take a lot of what people say online to be hyperbole to be honest. But in the end, one person's experience doesn't make a difference to the wider issues, so I don't worry myself too much about whether what they're saying is true.
Whether or not Stephanie has been raped or "hunted like a dog in the night," it doesn't change, at all, the fact that biological sex is important in some cases, or that children aren't in a position to consent to life-changing, irreversible surgery and hormones that might make them infertile. I'm not going to change my mind about that because of one person's sad story.
This kind of emotional manipulation is standard protocol for a lot of trans people online. Unfortunately, I've seen it tried so many times that I'm immune to it.
You're very good at this, Steve. "Self-unaware" is a splendid turn of phrase that I will plagiarize at earliest opportunity.
But here is where you and I differ:
"I truly hate the toxicity that surrounds trans discourse. Which is why I think it’s so important to try to understand it."
I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger. Years of online combat now feel like wasted time for me and even if I had once had your patience, seeing the odometer of age roll from 59 to 60 would have ended it. I don't know why you focus on the most hopeless and least reachable.
Because it was clear very early in the exchange that Stephen/anie is a virulently hostile person whose claims of "trans joy" and of belonging to a "community" are not exaggerations but lies. Nobody as hostile as he is could ever experience a moment of joy except maybe after getting someone banned, and he is far too self-centered to be a reciprocal part of any community.
This interlocutor supports the point of your article very well; why would anyone whose only exposure to this fad community* want to get closer to it? This person is repellent. And the backlash is growing.
*That Stephen/anie is not actually dysphoric is not proven but it is a statistically defensible presumption and his defensiveness is wholly at odds with self-acceptance. He's jumping aboard whatever bandwagon affording opportunities to play the victim.
Edit: I almost never continue engagement with people who use "lol" or "lmao" or any of those. That's just immature. I respond with "teenybopper" and answer no more.
"I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger."
I wound't mind ignoring it. In fact, I'd be absolutely delighted if reasonable, good-faith discourse were common enough that the crackpots could be dismissed as just that. But, at least from what I'm seeing (and I'm not just talking about my experience here, but trans discourse in general), reasonable voices on this issue are hard to find.
Emotions run high on both sides of this issue. And, as I mentioned, both sides have many people operating with a caricature of the other side in their head. The toxicity can't go away until more people start thinking about this issue in a more broad spectrum way.
I have the advantage over you in the reasonable voices department: all my communications with transgender people were with *real* ones and they preceded the fad with its grotesque denials of reality.
My conversations on these matters were candid, calm, and free of the rage that always comes with them online. I was never called "incredibly transphobic," and the dumb word hadn't been invented yet.
The difference between the people I had just had sex with and the shrieking harpies like Stephanie could not be greater, one reason I doubt the absolute hell out of the "trans" phenomenon.
"My conversations on these matters were candid, calm, and free of the rage that always comes with them online. I was never called "incredibly transphobic," and the dumb word hadn't been invented yet."
Ah, the halcyon days! Yep, I know this used to be the case, but we're a long way from that today. Most of the trans people I've met in real life are also more reasonable. As everybody is in real life I suppose. I'm quite sure Stephane wouldn't dare shout and swear at me in person.
But the reality denialism has become foundational. And is embraced not just by extremists, but many well-meaning people who aren't trans, but who think lying is kind. I regularly see trans women refer to themselves as female, not just as women, but as *female*. I didn't see that at all even a year or two ago. And the social contagion means that we suddenly have huge numbers of people, particularly young people, who we have to figure out how to accommodate in society.
I don't share your certainty that this is a passing trend because there's no factual basis for that certainty. Only time will tell on that front. But the degree of institutional and cultural capture I see makes me think it'll be extremely hard for society to return to its previous delineations of sex and gender. Even if the more extreme stuff fades away.
"I have 30x the followers you do because I am at least 30x more reasonable and articulate than you are (not to mention intelligent it seems)."
LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters.. Relatable. It's a rare occurrence but it always makes me smile. You are usually so even-tempered.
Loved the final response to her. And it wasn't remotely petty - it was really resonant for me. It reminded me of what I've dealt with with some commenters (on Goodreads, not here). Except, unlike you, I can often be extremely petty. After I get a bizarre, hateful comment, I sometimes just delete their comment & block them, but more often respond with as diminishing a response as I can imagine at the time, and then block. The last word. Of course, I then have to deal with the occasional sock puppet account created so that they can continue the conversation by direct messaging me pictures of dead bodies or anime gifs of rapes (literally true). Sad LOL! People can be so crazy.
ANYWAY, I really loved this part: "But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated. And they use their “oppression” as justification to say all the things they wish they could say to their bullies."
This is so true and I need to remember this! It's a challenge trying to understand let alone empathize with people who act so over the top. But that energy is coming from somewhere and if I want to truly see myself as a humanist, I need to consider that. Online and elsewhere.
"LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters."
😁 My inate pettiness usually gets filtered out by the extra time writing gives me to think about what I want to say, but sometimes I get annoyed enough that I can't keep it in. It's always kind of amusing too that no matter how nasty or abusive the other person has been, if I'm even a little bit sarcastic in response, the victim card comes out *immediately.* To paraphrase Mike Tyson, some people really don't seem to realise that their behaviour might have consequences.
But I'm genuinely glad we didn't stay on that tack. Trading insult with strangers online has become such a hobby for some people, and I can't think of many worse ways to spend my time. It literally only makes matters worse.
It's hard to remember that there's a human behind the screen a lot of the time, especially when talking about those sensitive topics. I try to talk to people online as I would if they were sat in front of me, and it does tend to lead to more productive conversations.
I'm learning a way of having different conversations face-to-face or in zoom called "warm data" & also investigating the use of "deep canvassing", which seems to be broadly the same thing.
The idea is to listen rather than criticize & respond with personal stories rather than sticking to a familiar script that you hope will make you sound impressive. It's the absolute opposite of those watercooler conversations where you're trying to win respect by knowing more than the other guy.
It's hard to do - even harder when you try to do it in writing rather than via the spoken word - but it does seem to disarm some of the antagonism & burst some of those bubbles.
Committed (or paid) trolls block me almost immediately, too, which is an added bonus.
Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?
"Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?"
Yeah, absolutely. I tend not to be too moved by personal stories to be honest, just because they're rarely relevant to wider social issues, and most of us have a horrible story or two we could share, but I think any reminder that there's a human being on the other side of the screen is a good thing.
Having seen the way Stephanie talks to many other people online (I stumbled across a few conversations with other people), it seems she thrives on as much antagonism as possible, and, predictably, then gets the same in return.
I'm really glad we got the opportunity to humanise the conversation again, but I don't think it's a coincidence that that's the point Stephanie most interest in talking. Some people (not most people thankfully) are just looking for an opportunity to vent.
Interesting. I often share them, mostly so people can understand why I have an opinion that they disagree with. Not that it confirms that my opinion is correct, but the events that influenced. It often doesn't help. There's even a "See, nobody cares" meme, so I suspect your thought on the matter is standard.
"I often share them, mostly so people can understand why I have an opinion that they disagree with"
Yeah, don't get me wrong, it might help me empathise with why somebody holds a position, but it won't convince me that their position is right.
I mean, when talking about social issues, it's very rare that there *is* a "right." What you're trying to do is balance a whole bunch of individual perspectives and arrive at the solution that works best for the most people. So the story of one person doesn't move the needle for me too much one way or another.
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset"
Hi Dan! Thanks for this. Haha, the above quote is kind of true. But I've taken a deeper understanding of all kinds of issues away from many conversations where the person I was talking to was immature or nasty. These conversations aren't just a collision of different facts and statistics, they're a collision of different life experiences, different world views. It's one in a million that one somebody's worldview will flip 180 degrees because of a well-phrased argument on the internet. Especially from a stranger.
I have these conversations because they help me understand where people are coming from better, because other people read them on Medium, and because I get to share them here and have further conversions about them. The people reading can figure that out for themselves, but can also see why certain arguments, maybe arguments they'd also believed, don't quite work. That's all much more important to me than whether a single person admits they might have missed something.
By this point, I'm quite confident that I have a deeper understanding of trans issues in general than most of the individual trans people I speak to. Because, unlike almost all of them, I've spent years reading things that are pro-trans *and* things that highlight the negatives of gender ideology. But even with (or perhaps because of) all the research I've done, there's huge amounts of complexity to how to resolve these issues that requires understanding where everybody is coming from. From the most reasonable to the Stephanies of the world.
It's quite easy to capture the rational arguments in articles. I can be clear and dispassionate and evidence-based. But the more emotional points of view only appear in the comments. And to really figure this mess out, we need to understand those perspectives too. Because, sadly, people spend more time being emotional than rational.
"But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated."
I think you have the causal relationship here reversed. 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.
In the past people would relocate and change their names, "starting over," escaping a life that wasn't working. Of course this failed because they brought the source of their dissatisfaction with them.
I've said it many times; the number laying claim to "trans" is so far in excess of those who would medically qualify as dysphoric that it would be facile to ignore that "trans" is a fad. Or to ignore how many "detransition" back to "cis" (ugh) and come out as gay or just go back to who they were before (maybe missing a few body parts).
I think Stephanie was a bitter and unhappy person before .. whatever pronoun .. decided to join the latest Justin Bieber Fan Club.
"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
An astonishing bit from a Medium "trans" person (who routinely capitalizes it but leaves "cis" lowercase):
"And "medical criteria"... gender is not a "medical" issue by default... you're thinking of gender dysphoria, which isn't a requirement to be Trans..."
Just ... wow. This is an admission that, as gay people have fought for centuries, the "trans" thing *is* in most cases a choice.
the header image shows her flipping off the reader and the title promises that what follows will "piss you off." A list of the writer's other articles shows them to be uniformly belligerent and confrontational.
This article is mostly about lowering expectations for transitioning, that it doesn't go as well for older men as for younger, but it winds up noting that "trans" people are a vilified minority and that life hereafter is going to be grim.
Isn't that, frankly, the whole point?
I know, I know, it's only the activists who are spreading this hate and rage (I discovered this article after I reported one of her attacks on Steve, saying he was spreading "transphobia"), but the more I see, the more I am convinced of the raw inauthenticity of the entire movement. This writer is devoted, at least n Medium, to being a complete nuisance and I can only imagine what problems she and the many like her bring to the workplace; all the sensitivity training and pronoun indoctrination in the world can't compensate for someone determined to stir up conflict.
I got kicked off there again and this time I have no idea what it was for. Certainly not for anything I wrote, therefore from someone like the above writer complaining of "transphobia."
I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape. I know trans people *do* get assaulted, and sometimes a lot, but Stephanie's acting so much like an entitled man that I don't find it hard to believe she's lying about that. It's not that I think women regularly lie a lot about rape; this just seems to be appropriated grievance.
I don't trust many social media women anymore who claim rape and sexual assault; mostly because the words have been stretched so out of shape by sexual assault activists and extremist feminists that I'm not sure they even understand any more what *is* a rape. In fact, when some #MeToo personal story orgy breaks out over the cancelled celebrity du jour, I suspect a *lot* of women, esp the anonymous ones, are making up their alleged rape stories for the attention and the sisterhood. They're not naming some guy who supposedly did it; they're never going to get busted lying because they're @IHateTrump231 or whatever and there's nothing on their profile to identify them. Since toxic transwomen like Stephanie ape the very worst of toxic femininity & feminism, I wonder if she's making up the rape story. Who's going to challenge her? That's verboten.
She very much sounds like she's in this for the victimhood. She's everything wrong with the left, the trans movement, and exactly the sort of person JK Rowling speaks out against.
"I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape"
Yeah, I don't know. I take a lot of what people say online to be hyperbole to be honest. But in the end, one person's experience doesn't make a difference to the wider issues, so I don't worry myself too much about whether what they're saying is true.
Whether or not Stephanie has been raped or "hunted like a dog in the night," it doesn't change, at all, the fact that biological sex is important in some cases, or that children aren't in a position to consent to life-changing, irreversible surgery and hormones that might make them infertile. I'm not going to change my mind about that because of one person's sad story.
This kind of emotional manipulation is standard protocol for a lot of trans people online. Unfortunately, I've seen it tried so many times that I'm immune to it.
Please don't lump mentally ill people like Stephen/anie in with the political left.
Nor with gay people, please.
I would venture that Stephanie's "rape" was more like a man asking her out. And was answered with a firehose spray of hostile trans tropes.
You're very good at this, Steve. "Self-unaware" is a splendid turn of phrase that I will plagiarize at earliest opportunity.
But here is where you and I differ:
"I truly hate the toxicity that surrounds trans discourse. Which is why I think it’s so important to try to understand it."
I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger. Years of online combat now feel like wasted time for me and even if I had once had your patience, seeing the odometer of age roll from 59 to 60 would have ended it. I don't know why you focus on the most hopeless and least reachable.
Because it was clear very early in the exchange that Stephen/anie is a virulently hostile person whose claims of "trans joy" and of belonging to a "community" are not exaggerations but lies. Nobody as hostile as he is could ever experience a moment of joy except maybe after getting someone banned, and he is far too self-centered to be a reciprocal part of any community.
This interlocutor supports the point of your article very well; why would anyone whose only exposure to this fad community* want to get closer to it? This person is repellent. And the backlash is growing.
*That Stephen/anie is not actually dysphoric is not proven but it is a statistically defensible presumption and his defensiveness is wholly at odds with self-acceptance. He's jumping aboard whatever bandwagon affording opportunities to play the victim.
Edit: I almost never continue engagement with people who use "lol" or "lmao" or any of those. That's just immature. I respond with "teenybopper" and answer no more.
"I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger."
I wound't mind ignoring it. In fact, I'd be absolutely delighted if reasonable, good-faith discourse were common enough that the crackpots could be dismissed as just that. But, at least from what I'm seeing (and I'm not just talking about my experience here, but trans discourse in general), reasonable voices on this issue are hard to find.
Emotions run high on both sides of this issue. And, as I mentioned, both sides have many people operating with a caricature of the other side in their head. The toxicity can't go away until more people start thinking about this issue in a more broad spectrum way.
I have the advantage over you in the reasonable voices department: all my communications with transgender people were with *real* ones and they preceded the fad with its grotesque denials of reality.
My conversations on these matters were candid, calm, and free of the rage that always comes with them online. I was never called "incredibly transphobic," and the dumb word hadn't been invented yet.
The difference between the people I had just had sex with and the shrieking harpies like Stephanie could not be greater, one reason I doubt the absolute hell out of the "trans" phenomenon.
"My conversations on these matters were candid, calm, and free of the rage that always comes with them online. I was never called "incredibly transphobic," and the dumb word hadn't been invented yet."
Ah, the halcyon days! Yep, I know this used to be the case, but we're a long way from that today. Most of the trans people I've met in real life are also more reasonable. As everybody is in real life I suppose. I'm quite sure Stephane wouldn't dare shout and swear at me in person.
But the reality denialism has become foundational. And is embraced not just by extremists, but many well-meaning people who aren't trans, but who think lying is kind. I regularly see trans women refer to themselves as female, not just as women, but as *female*. I didn't see that at all even a year or two ago. And the social contagion means that we suddenly have huge numbers of people, particularly young people, who we have to figure out how to accommodate in society.
I don't share your certainty that this is a passing trend because there's no factual basis for that certainty. Only time will tell on that front. But the degree of institutional and cultural capture I see makes me think it'll be extremely hard for society to return to its previous delineations of sex and gender. Even if the more extreme stuff fades away.
"I have 30x the followers you do because I am at least 30x more reasonable and articulate than you are (not to mention intelligent it seems)."
LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters.. Relatable. It's a rare occurrence but it always makes me smile. You are usually so even-tempered.
Loved the final response to her. And it wasn't remotely petty - it was really resonant for me. It reminded me of what I've dealt with with some commenters (on Goodreads, not here). Except, unlike you, I can often be extremely petty. After I get a bizarre, hateful comment, I sometimes just delete their comment & block them, but more often respond with as diminishing a response as I can imagine at the time, and then block. The last word. Of course, I then have to deal with the occasional sock puppet account created so that they can continue the conversation by direct messaging me pictures of dead bodies or anime gifs of rapes (literally true). Sad LOL! People can be so crazy.
ANYWAY, I really loved this part: "But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated. And they use their “oppression” as justification to say all the things they wish they could say to their bullies."
This is so true and I need to remember this! It's a challenge trying to understand let alone empathize with people who act so over the top. But that energy is coming from somewhere and if I want to truly see myself as a humanist, I need to consider that. Online and elsewhere.
"LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters."
😁 My inate pettiness usually gets filtered out by the extra time writing gives me to think about what I want to say, but sometimes I get annoyed enough that I can't keep it in. It's always kind of amusing too that no matter how nasty or abusive the other person has been, if I'm even a little bit sarcastic in response, the victim card comes out *immediately.* To paraphrase Mike Tyson, some people really don't seem to realise that their behaviour might have consequences.
But I'm genuinely glad we didn't stay on that tack. Trading insult with strangers online has become such a hobby for some people, and I can't think of many worse ways to spend my time. It literally only makes matters worse.
It's hard to remember that there's a human behind the screen a lot of the time, especially when talking about those sensitive topics. I try to talk to people online as I would if they were sat in front of me, and it does tend to lead to more productive conversations.
This is fantastic.
https://medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-activists-a-story-in-screenshots-78e01dca68d
Very moving. It’s ‘transference’ …the problem is people aren’t even aware it’s happening.
Certainly proved your premise.
I really laud your patience and the humanity you show when having these conversations.
I'm learning a way of having different conversations face-to-face or in zoom called "warm data" & also investigating the use of "deep canvassing", which seems to be broadly the same thing.
The idea is to listen rather than criticize & respond with personal stories rather than sticking to a familiar script that you hope will make you sound impressive. It's the absolute opposite of those watercooler conversations where you're trying to win respect by knowing more than the other guy.
It's hard to do - even harder when you try to do it in writing rather than via the spoken word - but it does seem to disarm some of the antagonism & burst some of those bubbles.
Committed (or paid) trolls block me almost immediately, too, which is an added bonus.
Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?
"Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?"
Yeah, absolutely. I tend not to be too moved by personal stories to be honest, just because they're rarely relevant to wider social issues, and most of us have a horrible story or two we could share, but I think any reminder that there's a human being on the other side of the screen is a good thing.
Having seen the way Stephanie talks to many other people online (I stumbled across a few conversations with other people), it seems she thrives on as much antagonism as possible, and, predictably, then gets the same in return.
I'm really glad we got the opportunity to humanise the conversation again, but I don't think it's a coincidence that that's the point Stephanie most interest in talking. Some people (not most people thankfully) are just looking for an opportunity to vent.
"𝘐 𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵, 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦,"
Interesting. I often share them, mostly so people can understand why I have an opinion that they disagree with. Not that it confirms that my opinion is correct, but the events that influenced. It often doesn't help. There's even a "See, nobody cares" meme, so I suspect your thought on the matter is standard.
"I often share them, mostly so people can understand why I have an opinion that they disagree with"
Yeah, don't get me wrong, it might help me empathise with why somebody holds a position, but it won't convince me that their position is right.
I mean, when talking about social issues, it's very rare that there *is* a "right." What you're trying to do is balance a whole bunch of individual perspectives and arrive at the solution that works best for the most people. So the story of one person doesn't move the needle for me too much one way or another.
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset"
Hi Dan! Thanks for this. Haha, the above quote is kind of true. But I've taken a deeper understanding of all kinds of issues away from many conversations where the person I was talking to was immature or nasty. These conversations aren't just a collision of different facts and statistics, they're a collision of different life experiences, different world views. It's one in a million that one somebody's worldview will flip 180 degrees because of a well-phrased argument on the internet. Especially from a stranger.
I have these conversations because they help me understand where people are coming from better, because other people read them on Medium, and because I get to share them here and have further conversions about them. The people reading can figure that out for themselves, but can also see why certain arguments, maybe arguments they'd also believed, don't quite work. That's all much more important to me than whether a single person admits they might have missed something.
By this point, I'm quite confident that I have a deeper understanding of trans issues in general than most of the individual trans people I speak to. Because, unlike almost all of them, I've spent years reading things that are pro-trans *and* things that highlight the negatives of gender ideology. But even with (or perhaps because of) all the research I've done, there's huge amounts of complexity to how to resolve these issues that requires understanding where everybody is coming from. From the most reasonable to the Stephanies of the world.
It's quite easy to capture the rational arguments in articles. I can be clear and dispassionate and evidence-based. But the more emotional points of view only appear in the comments. And to really figure this mess out, we need to understand those perspectives too. Because, sadly, people spend more time being emotional than rational.
"But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated."
I think you have the causal relationship here reversed. 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.
In the past people would relocate and change their names, "starting over," escaping a life that wasn't working. Of course this failed because they brought the source of their dissatisfaction with them.
I've said it many times; the number laying claim to "trans" is so far in excess of those who would medically qualify as dysphoric that it would be facile to ignore that "trans" is a fad. Or to ignore how many "detransition" back to "cis" (ugh) and come out as gay or just go back to who they were before (maybe missing a few body parts).
I think Stephanie was a bitter and unhappy person before .. whatever pronoun .. decided to join the latest Justin Bieber Fan Club.
"𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴, "𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳," 𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘖𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮."
Yep, as the saying goes, "wherever you go, there you are."
"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
An astonishing bit from a Medium "trans" person (who routinely capitalizes it but leaves "cis" lowercase):
"And "medical criteria"... gender is not a "medical" issue by default... you're thinking of gender dysphoria, which isn't a requirement to be Trans..."
Just ... wow. This is an admission that, as gay people have fought for centuries, the "trans" thing *is* in most cases a choice.
Like ... listening to BTS.
An example of the toxicity of the online "trans community."
https://medium.com/prismnpen/trans-reality-this-will-piss-you-off-5e45cad585ad
the header image shows her flipping off the reader and the title promises that what follows will "piss you off." A list of the writer's other articles shows them to be uniformly belligerent and confrontational.
This article is mostly about lowering expectations for transitioning, that it doesn't go as well for older men as for younger, but it winds up noting that "trans" people are a vilified minority and that life hereafter is going to be grim.
Isn't that, frankly, the whole point?
I know, I know, it's only the activists who are spreading this hate and rage (I discovered this article after I reported one of her attacks on Steve, saying he was spreading "transphobia"), but the more I see, the more I am convinced of the raw inauthenticity of the entire movement. This writer is devoted, at least n Medium, to being a complete nuisance and I can only imagine what problems she and the many like her bring to the workplace; all the sensitivity training and pronoun indoctrination in the world can't compensate for someone determined to stir up conflict.
I got kicked off there again and this time I have no idea what it was for. Certainly not for anything I wrote, therefore from someone like the above writer complaining of "transphobia."
The email from Medium was signed by
Roger (he/him)