For all his virtues, Socrates opened the door to a lot of the nonsense we have to deal with today. His “priority of definition,” allowed critical theorists to dismiss anything that couldn’t be perfectly defined as a “social construct.” The Socratic method convinced people they could appear wise just by mindlessly asking questions. And perhaps most irritatingly, Socrates credited his wisdom to the fact that
I got some high Twitter stats last week for tweeting that there's nearly no such thing as transphobia; that women don't fear men in dresses (drag queens and transvestites have never posed a problem for most) but what we fear is the male body and mind underneath. We need to keep the focus on the male and his maleness. You can only change the body so much, you can't change the mind at all, it's steeped in privilege, patriarchy, and the lack of fear women have (not a complete lack of fear, men are a threat to other men, plenty) but most men don't worry about being raped by men unless they're in prison (or the Catholic Church).
I wonder, is Lois actually a woman, or just another man with appropriated marginalization?
"what we fear is the male body and mind underneath. We need to keep the focus on the male and his maleness. "
Yeah, it's also been surprising (or maybe just depressing) to see how many men fail to acknowledge that violence, and especially violence against women, is an overwhelmingly male crime.
But I have to say, I think the focus on maleness is already becoming counterproductive. Not because males aren't the perpetrators of the overwhelming majority of violence, but because that violence isn't "maleness."
I see more and more women talking about this issue who are so determined to frame trans people as nothing but 40-year-old perverted men who want to sneak into women's bathrooms, they've lost all capacity to talk about it intelligently (and, of course, they have to completely ignore the existence of trans men).
They also refuse to acknowledge the huge number of women firmly on the TRA side of this argument. Because that too conflicts with the "it's just maleness that's the problem" narrative.
We can talk all day about the fragility of the #notallmen crowd. But the above approach veers pretty close to the #allwhitepeopleberacist playbook. Whether white people, trans people, men or women, careless generalisations of an entire class of people, for the sins of a few of them, doesn't solve problems.
As has been stated many times before, most of us know it's 'not all men', although with strangers we never know who. I have to admit, I was never hyper-sensitive about strange males before, but after a couple of years on Medium reading about other women's experiences (and then being dumb enough to set myself up at the headstrong young age of 51 to potentially get raped if the guy hadn't backed off) made me think maybe I needed to be a little more circumspect about men. In fact, it was that incident, and me asking myself *why* I allowed myself to put myself into what I knew wasn't an ideal situation, is what impelled me to come up with my Grow Some Labia message and website & talk about reclaiming female (and other) power.
Not all males are violent, and transfolk (particularly TWs) aren't any more violent as a group but as I'm pretty sure you've acknowledged before, they have the *same level of violence* as men...not women, not TMs. And the reason why there's so much drama in the trans movement is almost entirely the doing of TWs (ie., bio males, most of whom have their original junk), their male allies, and, as you note, female allies (who I think are fairly easily manipulated - they seem to be on the far left rather than the level left). So it's men, at the core, driving the violence associated with the trans movement (not just rapists in prisons, not just pervs parading their ladydick in women's only spaces) but also the violent protests to shut women's speech down that we're seeing here and abroad, most recently in AU & NZ.
I say we want to keep the focus on the males underneath the appropriated marginalization because it's male bodies and male minds women fear, not their choice of costume. As I've noted before, if a guy in a Barney suit raped a woman, we'd say a guy in a Barney suit raped a woman, we wouldn't worry about tarring dinosaurs with a perv brush, even if Barney rapes became a thing.
Violence may not be 'maleness' but maleness is associated with violence, for a good reason.
However, you do make me think of something i haven't really thought of before: Are TMs more violent than we know? Are they not getting the press for it? And if they are more violent, why? Is it the testosterone they're taking?
Thank you, I always need something to Google when I'm exercising on my break ;)
"As has been stated many times before, most of us know it's 'not all men', although with strangers we never know who."
Right, I've used this exact argument myself in a couple of articles. And yes, the TRAs telling women to "choke on their girldicks" or sending rape threats are, obviously, males. I'm not for a second arguing that this shouldn't be vigorously called out.
But a) the people saying "white people are racist" make this exact argument and it doesn't really hold water there either. And b) it's the caveats about women being manipulated when they support any men who claim to be women in female spaces that bother me. Because, as far as I can see, the motivation behind this is to shift the focus onto the "big bad men" instead of taking a serious look at how these insane ideas spread.
This idea that if a woman is behaving unreasonably, it must be because some man has manipulated her, is both infantilising and inaccurate. And this benefit of the doubt is never extended to the many, many non-violent men who agree with those women. Why doesn't anybody claim those men have been manipulated too? Again, that's why some women are so reluctant to acknowledge that trans men exist. Or that young, often gay, men are also deeply harmed by the gender industry. Or that opinion polls consistently show men objecting more strongly to males in female spaces than women.
Yep, I've pointed out a few times that male patterns of sexual violence don't change post transition. I fact, trans women are slightly *more* likely to be sex offenders than men. But I've also pointed out that the overwhelming majority of men don't commit sexual offences. As in somewhere around 99% don't. That's still more than enough reason for sex-segregation to exist in my book. Especially when sexual assault is far from the only reason single-sex spaces exist. But letting a site like Medium colour your perception of pretty much any social issue or group is going to mislead you. That place is an availability bias factory.
p.s. I don't think there's been much research into increased aggression in trans men, but I suspect the effect isn't too dramatic. As I was discussing with somebody else, male/female gaps in aggression aren't that big anyway, and trans men aren't socialised to be aggressive, nor do they usually have the physical stature where physical aggression would be a workable strategy. Small men are less likely to exhibit aggression too (at least towards other men) for similar reasons.
During one phase of the feminist movement on college campuses the radicals were putting up posters of randomly-chosen male students reading "all men rape." None of these students had raped anyone and of course the great majority of men never would. It was an absolutely vile way to make a dishonest point.
I've always sneered at the use of "phobia" to mean bigotry. Acrophobia is fear of heights; ailurophobia is fear of cats; agoraphobia is fear of open spaces. Fear, fear, fear.
Morons may say that the root of bigotry is fear, but they're morons.
The suffix for hatred is no challenge; -misia. Homomisia, transmisia. More familiar as a prefix; misanthropy, misogyny.
I don't hate the transgendered, but they are at best 0.1% of the "trans," whom the activists have now declared need not be dysphoric to join the club.
They get a lot more Likes that way, and the Surgery Kings make a lot more cash.
It's all about language and, like Humpty Dumpty, making them mean whatever you say they mean. A month or so back I had people on Twitter telling me that 'defund the police' didn't mean, you know *defunding the police*, it referred 'reallocating' money away from the police elsewhere. Well okay, but how do you pay for the police? Because people don't put their lives on the line for free. No one had an answer for that. It was just people playing around with word meanings again. Because 'de-' is a prefix meaning to undo a specific action, and 'fund' means 'A sum of money or other resources set aside for a specific purpose,' so to say 'defund the police' means anything other than re-allocating money but not abolishing the police or expecting them to work for free sounds like linguistic dishonesty to me.
And 'transgender' is simply a fad at this point. Not necessarily because everyone is dishonest (only some are) but because I think they think they're dysphoric when they're not. In the end, biology will win out. You can't change your gender no matter how much you think you want to. But, before that happens I expect we'll be hearing from the 'otherkin' shortly demanding we accept them as mermaids, unicorns, elves, dragons, whatever BS they 'identify' with.
When that day comes, they shall all be required to address me by my full title at all times (no nicknames or other shortened versions) "Her Majesty Fluffybunny Startwinkles, Magical Empress of the Universe." Because that is how I shall identify ;)
Don't forget that beneath all this fake "trans" horseshit there really is an actual ailment albeit, by the best numbers available to me, about 0.1% of those making the claim.
But this fad isn't a clothing or hair style. This fad involves health-destroying hormones and mutilating surgery. It actively seeks to destroy lives and careers. And it comes with more lies than Trump or Santos.
And Biden is on board with enabling this transition shit. Parents can have their kids taken away if the kids get on TikTok and decide they're "trans" and the parents don't want them to go nder the knife.
The one that irks me most is the suicide threat. Anyone could reason through its falsehood. History should be riddled with teen suicides and it isn't.
And once again, as with AGW and guns, America's warped notions of freedom prevent us from doing anything about it.
If I have a fear, it is that extremism and irrationality could actually lead to (real) violent conflict. I've never allowed myself to give much credence to the possibility, mostly because I've seen firsthand what that does to the people living on the soil where it takes place and it is something I dread.
Thank you for this. In Australia and New Zealand this past week, women have been subjected to violence and extraordinary levels of hatred for trying to talk about same sex rights. Unfortunately nazis turned up in Melbourne where Posie Parker gathered women to have their say ("let Women Speak") and so ensued an almost masturbatory dishonesty by left wing men, who jumped on the opportunity to dishonestly associate these women with angry nazi men who'd turned up, head to toe in black. No matter the nazis were open about their hatred of feminists as well as trans people.
Most unedifying is the left wing premier of the state, Dan Andrews, joining in on social media and legacy media denouncing women as nazis for speaking up about being a woman. The hatred towards women is palpable. Things were worse in New Zealand where gleeful men resorted to violence and as such women didn't get to say anything, they were silenced.
There are always going to be thugs, I get that, but watching left wing male commentators with considerable platforms pile on and celebrate this violence and shutting down of women with opinions they don't agree with, has been shocking. I've been left wing all my life and have come to the conclusion left wing men are more misogynistic than any, probably because up until now, they've had to hide it, and pretend to go along with MeToo. They certainly aren't hiding it any longer and the zeal with which they are currently celebrating violence against the women they disagree with has to be seen to be believed. After the events of this weekend no one will ever convince me that trans ideology isn't a place holder for deep seated misogyny.
"Thank you for this. In Australia and New Zealand this past week, women have been subjected to violence and extraordinary levels of hatred for trying to talk about same sex rights"
Yep, I've been following that story in the news. The idea that Nazis turned up at a rally in support of a women's rights event is absolutely hilarious. But sadly, the people claiming it have never cared much about the truth.
And lest it be forgotten, when men have previously turned up at these events dressed head to toe in black, they were TRAs.
We're witnessing the takeover of the political left. Just as, to be fair, the LGBT community has been taken over by a group of ideologue extremists.
"The idea that Nazis turned up at a rally in support of a women's rights event is absolutely hilarious. But sadly, the people claiming it have never cared much about the truth".
Exactly. But when you have the state premier, Dan Andrews, a leader and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, generally regarded as having integrity, and tweeting the lie to his 439.5K followers (link below), it's somewhat less hilarious. I agree there is a takeover of the left by extremists, I just didn't realise it was happening at the very highest levels of power.
Thank you for the link to Germaine Greer. A little research sent me to [Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference and “insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.”]
I didn't know that that was a thing. I wish my reading queue was not so long or I'd read her book.
Her thoughts on "femininity" being learned vs. "womanhood" being innate is interesting. My raised in America daughters didn't understand some of the behaviors that my wife insisted upon that their friends didn't deal with. Now that I think about it, it was an Asian cultural femininity behavior training thing. By wife once told me that kathoeys were easy to spot because they overdid femininity. I thought the difference was completely innate, but Ms. Greer supports the idea that there is also a learned process starting in childhood.
That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image. I assume there is some non-monolithic ratio. Since gay men range from hyper-masculine to flaming femes it might be answerable from that perspective in contrast to the perspective of biological women. That short video and life experience sent me off on an unexpected tangent from the denial of reality theme.
[edit addition] I do understand that masculine/feminine attributes have an overlap and I do think that some of that is innate. However <comma> some is learned as I do see differences culturally which either are genetic or adaption to local cultural norms. We've thrashed that out a bit here in the Commentary.
Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult.
At its beginning the inequality of women in society was stark. For a woman to have a job was regarded as emasculation of her husband and she was paid barely over half what a man was paid for the same work. Feminism's original goals were focused on equality. Women should be able to have careers if they wanted (though many who preferred a more traditional role were looked down upon) and wages should be the same irrespective of gender. Feminism was anger. It was anger at the inequality.
What happened? Wages converged. Not all the way; instead of 50% women started getting 75% or so. Not ideal, but progress, and progress is good. It didn't mean to stop fighting for equality, but it was satisfying, and this led to the rage softening.
Catastrophe.
Maybe lecture attendance dropped off, maybe the rhetoric got a little milder, but the reaction in feminist circles was uniform: SHIFT THE FOCUS. Wages are measurable, progress could be quantified. This was intolerable. Without maximum rage there would not be maximum lecture fees nor maximum book sales.
Almost overnight feminism turned from an equality movement to a hate cult. This is when we started getting "womon" and "womyn" and "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." This is when women were encouraged to leave their boyfriends and husbands and become lesbians. Wages are measurable; "patriarchal attitudes" are not. Strident feminists could always say that The Patriarchy was becoming ever more oppressive, and they did, and they still do.
And for some, decades later, the bitterness has never died down. These feminists don't want male allies; men "can't possibly understand" and in making an attempt we are regarded as ppressive and condescending.
And this is when Greer and MacKinnon and the rest went from equality to liberation. They have done all they can to make men and women into enemies.
"Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult."
I'll admit to only having read a small selection of her work, as well as a number of interviews, but I feel broadly the same way. But she absolutely nailed the sex vs gender issue in the clip.
But as I've said before, an element always seems to arise in social justice movements that becomes more concerned with tearing down members the oppressor group than lifting up the members of the oppressed group. And therefore, they have to insist that all members of the oppressor group are the same and complicit in the oppression. Otherwise this position makes no sense.
Sadly, I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. Anger and weariness take over unless you're paying very close attention.
"I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. "
I think this is what happens to cops.
And it's obvious that people who think about gender issues too much, any of them, lose contact with reality because it's hard to accept a lot of what they claim to believe.
I could name more. A lot of chess players go insane in a particular way.
And, most interesting to me given my love of number theory ... mathematicians who deal with infinity almost always go nuts.
There was one idea that I think I got from PK Dick's Valis, first book of the trilogy, that I could not think long about without feeling I was losing my marbles. It was not a pleasant feeling. And, despite a memory like a steel trap, I've forgotten it. Something to do with the duality of Parmenides, but it's gone. Probably to my benefit.
Thanks for this. Since I grew up in a household with my mother as the head of the family in the 50s/early 60s, I understand the harm caused by underpaying women. That should make me a natural feminist, and with regard fair treatment of people regardless of sex or race I am fully on board with feminism and anti-racism in that realm.
But I don't call myself that and you just provided clarity as to why. I see them as people with a chip on their shoulder who promote divisiveness and demonization. Things that I oppose. I don't discard friends over differences of opinion, but I definitely discard venomous ideologies and organizations.
For much of my life I have been relatively apolitical and quite honestly gave little thought to it. My attitude towards feminists was more of a feel than something based in serious analysis. I've always been someone who easily made friends because I am inclined to like people. Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways.
It's hard to wrap my mind around now but I was an *ardent* feminist of the equality variant. I tried to be a part of it. But by this time the "womon" thing was in vogue and the glares of smoldering hatred sorta turned me off. I volunteered as a cashier at a food bank and a lot of the lesbians with their chin beards would not look me in the eye, just glared at the counter and I had to put their change on it so our hands would not touch.
And you are probably familiar with the online forum phenomenon, present company excepted, of women who treat even the most polite disagreement as personal attack. I think this attitude came out of misandric feminism.
I wrote before about how the law must lead. Pay women the same as men.
"Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways."
The "trans" writers on Medium, TaraElla excepted, are violently sick people. A lot of the "queer" men are likewise. To point out that a "trans" woman is biologically male means a full ban, not a warning, not a temporary, you are off the platform and lose any money you had coming. They've swallowed the whole fishing pole.
"That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image."
I think, fundamentally, all behaviour is learned. All we're really talking about is the amount of external pressure. Start influencing somebody early enough, or apply a strong enough hand, and you can make people behave any way you want. Human behaviour is, above all else, adaptive.
The variances in innate behaviour in humans are quite small. For example, men are more aggressive than women. But it's only at the ends of the bell curves where that differences is notable. For the most part, differences in aggressive behaviour are better explained by socialisation and the fact that real world aggression is likely to lead to real world violence which women, for obvious reasons, are more motivated to avoid. Studies done on online behaviour show an even smaller difference between male and female aggression.
I used to be baffled by the exaggerated feminine behaviour seen in some gay men, but I think it's more accurately framed as codified *gay* behaviour. I think it's a learned behaviour that acts as a signal to other gay men as well as a signifier of group membership. See also: "talking black" or sagging pants for some black people, the defensive "no-homo" masculinity of some straight men or the banal, "everything happens for a reason" enlightenment of pseudo spiritual people.
There's nothing innate about these behaviours (as Chris points out below, the "flaming" gay behaviour seems to be giving way to the "gym bro" gay stereotype). At least not in any significant sense. But they're widespread within certain sub-sub cultures.
"For example, men are more aggressive than women. "
Not true. And women are not more social than men.
Actual double-blind testing shows both of these to be stereotypes.
The only sex difference that survives testing is reaction to competition. Men will outperform themselves under competitive circumstances; women will perform the same in both.
"Not true. And women are not more social than men."
I mean, there's pretty extensive research that says it is true. Just not to the degree most people think. In fact, I've never seen a paper that claims it's not true. But I guess there's a paper for everything nowadays. All that said, it would be pretty remarkable if humans were pretty much the only mammal special that didn't display heightened aggression in males due to testosterone.
I can't back this up with references because I got it from a university class that I took four times (I was a professional notetaker) and the professor was not the kind who would say things for shock value. Others were.
Obviously, women don't use their fists as much as men; any actuary can tell you that where men use guns, women use poison. So I don't know if the studies he was citing included verbal as well as physical aggression but in the decades since I have seen little in my life to doubt it. Women can be vicious. Certainly I've seen a lot of feminists who were shockingly aggressive.
I think the flaming femme fashion is going out of. I haven't been to a gay public territory since 1996 but even then I had seen a sharp drop in the femme gays who were so common in the 70s.
In American gyms a lot of weightlifting guys are gay, it's not uncommon to see blowjobs in progress in the steam room.
I read your Trouble with Trans on Medium. Not a lot there I haven't already read here; obviously the use of one term for such dissimilar people is part of that compulsive "inclusive" shit, the rationale for which has never been explained to me. Give me a richly-colored mosaic over brown mud any day.
But one thing leapt out at me: I did not realize that gender dysphoria had been declared as "optional" to qualitfy as "trans"; this is outrageous to the point of kicking holes in walls. This is identity theft. I've said for a long time now that the goal of "trans" activists is to increase their audience and they do so with wanton irresponsibility, up to and including encouraging children to undergo treatments that will forever affect their lives. And with McGender and Surgery King franchises springing up all over, this is big business.
I didn't know this "optional dysphoria" was out in the open. That is absolutely outrageous.
'Gender incongruence' is the new term, which completes the notion that a person is whatever they say they are.No dysphoria required anymore, just a desire to appropriate marginalization.
Validation by marginalization. Some people like to think they're important enough to be hated, when in real life the people they believe are hating them are people who don't care if they live or die.
People who say that male and female are open for discussion are not worth our time. This is postmodernist crap, mindlessly tearing down distinctions for its own sake.
After all is said and done, I am opposed to gender neutrality. Make and female are objectively real, and as long as they are equally treated and neither is regarded as inferior to the other then we have all we need.
Let's take it as an opportunity to point out how this is science denial on a level with the right's denial of climate change. The left fancies its self the 'pro-science' side, which many are (as are many conservatives), but the Loony Left is just as prone to science denial as the Radical and Religious Reich.
I've started a whole new substack whose pinned introductory post is on this very issue. The link is beside my name. Please consider signing up. For now it's free. I'm keeping it epistemologically generic for now but as you might expect I intend to drill into both issues as well as the more general deprecation of truth.
I think history has shown us time and time again the point of inclusivity. People asked the same question about gay people and black people and Muslims and women and basically everybody who wasn't straight, white, male, Christian and right-handed.
I think our concept of "normal," or of who should be "included" in society, should be as broad as possible. But that's never meant it should be limitless or in opposition to reality. And certainly not that we should be in such a blind rush to "include" one group that we steamroll the rights of another.
I think the vast majority of people agree that trans people should be included in public life to the same extent as everybody else. But just like everybody else, that doesn't mean they get to bend the fabric of society to their will so they feel more validated.
I am not saying the opposite. I am not saying we should form up into tribes and hate everyone outside them.
But when people dutifully say "he or she" or, worse, "they," then it's no longer inclusion, it's compulsion. I don't see anything amiss in having gendered nouns like actor/actress, waiiter/waitress; calling for their elimination quickly becomes a fad, not a social advance.
Sure, let the pretenders have a place at the table, until they monopolize every conversation talking about their gender hobby. I have a friend in the US with a coworker who takes over every meeting talking about "their" gender identity, is in HR every day sobbing about being "misgendered." They can't fire her because they know she'll sue so they are taking months to lay the requisite paper trail to fire her for not doing any work. She'll still sue, but with the stack of emails, the employer will win.
"Including" a person like that is going too far.
I don't see any point in gender-neutral language or any defiance of that which is unambiguously real.
I think it's more important to try not to be rude than to try to be "inclusive."
Right. But you didn't ask what the point of compulsion was. You asked what the point of inclusion was.
Inclusion might require adaptation of behaviour. And that adaptation might even need to be compelled. For example, white people were compelled to "include" black people post Civil Rights Act. Some required more compulsion than others in this regard.
The point is that compulsion should only ever be applied for clear, logical, intellectually defensible reasons. It shouldn't compel people to deny reality or put them in harm's way. It shouldn't create a sacred caste who can't be criticised or questioned no matter how unreasonable their demands are.
I see some value in gender-neutral language. For example, I do my best not to use words like "mankind" or default to "man/he/him" when I'm referring to a generic person. But again, I think I (and everybody else) should be free to choose the degree to which I use that language. It's the mindless compulsion that's the issue.
p.s. A friend of mine is in exactly the same position at work with a trans subordinate. Constant mental health days, lowest performer in the team, a long history of suing employers who got tired of pandering. She's having to build exactly the same paper trail. The refusal to talk about the wildly disproportionate levels of mental illness in the trans community is preposterous.
No disagreement. Except I am accustomed to thinking ahead and never have to use nor circumvent gender-specific construction. People are always challenging me with examples:
Challenge: "Someone left their wallet here. I hope they come back and get it"
My response: "I hope whoever left that wallet here comes back for it."
Mine is shorter, clearer, and doesn't mix singular and plural.
I noticed 30 years ago how self-obsessed transwomen were, minus the narcissism. Lovely people, and probably genuinely dysphoric, but with one notable exception they were one-track-minded. They didn't make demands on others and they didn't trample women's rights; but with the exception of the one with a job and a life, they were really dull.
This is the weak spot of the left. Its drive to be 'inclusive' and 'nonjudgemental' lead it to being unwilling to draw boundaries, and ergo to excuse a mind-spinning array of human rights abuses. And it's *always* considered acceptable to throw women under the bus. Especially for women. Many of those raging the loudest against 'patriarchy' are the ones who unconsciously support it the most.
Or those people who spin off half a page of bigotries: "racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, blah blah blah" instead of just "bigot," which covers them all.
As for nonjudgmental, that is morally crippling. To be unable to make a value judgment means going through life without ever learning a thing.
On another Substack I was talking to a guy who says that male and female have been redefined to those who can currently produce gametes. He was quite adamant about it and has done a lot of tiresomely long writing about it over years.
So a boy not yet pubescent is sexless. A woman past menopause is sexless.
I don’t care how authoritative are the scientists writing this, I regard this as absurd. We aren’t the people of "Left Hand of Darkness" (Ursula K. LeGuin); an infant with XY chromosomes, a putz and nuts, has 0% chance of ending up female. He’s male. He will be male all his life, even if he's castrated or neutered by adult measles and never produces a single spermatozoan.
The guy took the potion that we must uncritically adopt the latest and shiniest, which is something I regard as shallow. I managed to stay polite but he got condescending and I ended it.
But this was not a postmodern position. He thought he was being scientific.
After a lot of eye-glazing discussion of categories and definitions he concluded that it was absurd to not base definitions of male and female on current fertility and that my own position, that these are lifelong rather than ephemeral, was ill-thought-out. He had no answer to what we call prepubescents and post-menopause; they were all "sexless."
This was not the usual postmodernist twaddle. He is apparently one of those people who feels strongly that we must all keep up with the latest of everything, an outlook I have rejected since middle school. That which is "current" is more often stupid than not; I liked psytrance but I don't listen to acid house or drum and bass because they sound empty and formulary and they make me twitchy.
But. He was not a moron, his writing was formidably nuanced except he had talked himself into accepting definitions that to me are unreservedly absurd.
"I was talking to a guy who says that male and female have been redefined to those who can currently produce gametes"
No idea where that "redefinition" came from except, perhaps, his imagination. I've yet to hear anybody, even the gender ideologues, claim that a prepubescent child is neither male nor female.
No, it's in several recent biology tomes by respected scientists. Not respected by me, I hasten to add; anyone who would say that a prepubescent child is sexless is simply fucked in the head. I recommend a heroin addiction to get his mind onto some other topic.
As for the gender ideologues, they're worse; they're willing to get that prepubescent child under the Mengele knife at a Surgery King just to get themselves one more future click.
"No, it's in several recent biology tomes by respected scientists"
Yeah, we're in the tragic position of being unable to feel confident about "recent statements by respected scientists" when it comes to biology. The gender wars have driven a lot of people on both sides a bit mad.
Until doctors start writing "unknown" on birth certificates when they deliver babies, I'm going to continue to say that sex is still known long before birth (never mind puberty) and remains immutable.
Hi! Yep, as others have said, you get three free articles a month on Medium. Alternatively, if you're a subscriber here, you get paywall free access to all my articles.
You get a few free reads every month. I just read the article and I do not pay Medim because the moment I write anything I get banned. No matter how mild or reasonable.
Try reaching out to Tony Stubblebine on Medium if you can (If you're a Premier member you can) and make a brief case for how you'd like to come back to Medium but you were tired of getting banned for X and Y and Z. I did, late last year, asking if Medium was less censoring now as I was critical of the transgender movement which is why I got banned. He replied back with a brainless 'transphobia has no place on Medium' response he must have cut and pasted from Pink News. Later, I clicked on a Medium link and realized the big red banner announcing my account was 'under investigation' (what, after a year and a half? :) was gone, so I am merely a free member now. I assume I could come back but since Tony is apparently a Trans Pod Person I won't return, since I will not be censored by children. It's worth a shot. If nothing else it'll send a message about what Medium is doing to hurt its own bottom line. Not sure how they're doing financially but before Ev Williams left it was really in the crapper.
Yeah "transphobia has no place on Medium," and nothing could possibly be more transphobic than biological fact.
But it's not just the "trans" shit; I wrote mostly about software and those articles are mud now. Horseshit about holding more effective meetings (I want no more than a half hour a week), idiotic junior programmers proferring advice on what it means to be a senior developer ("think outside the box").
It bewilders me how many people buy into this "trans" shit. People smart enough to know better actually believe the mass suicide nonsense, they believe the numbers, I think "pod person" nails it.
that's why I suggested telling him what you got banned for suspended or whatever for. "Some idiot claimed that my hack for a MySQL database error was racist; that hierarchized subroutines are inherently colonial and a 'dog whistle' to white supremacist software engineers; and that 'Agile methodology is blatantly ableist." Maybe Stubby will decide there *is*, after all, a place on Medium for coders who prefer fewer time-wasting meetings. You could test him with a quick piece on the efficiencies of ten-minute standup meetings, and if anyone complains about your endless coding ableism, you can argue you were talking about meetings that started with jokes, but none about trans people :)
As fate would have it, a Facebook status by me from 2017 before I retired just appeared. "Face to face collaboration at work. Disrupts the work I'm doing because others think their issues more important than mine. Causes me to remove the music in my ears and replace it with my hearing aids. Ram it where the sun don't shine."
Today I saw this astonishing article on Medium. I couldn't bring myself to read it to completion. Is there a clear definition of transphobia which is not [You disagree with the statement that "a transwoman is a woman PERIOD" and a qualifier for women of "a cis woman is a cis woman"]?
OMG. I couldn't get through it either. It's like reading a MAGA article about the BS of climate change or explaining in great detail how the election was 'stolen' from You Know Who.
Notice she didn't address *whether* sexual predators in the trans movement are pressuring lesbians to have sex, she complains they're being painted as sexual predators. This is exactly what I ran into on Twitter awhile back when I challenged the 'transwomen are sexually pure little angels' set. Instead they tried to divert my attention to the Catholic Church. So I said, "I'm glad you mentioned them, because the trans movement is shaping up to become the sexual predator SJ movement just as the Church has agreed to become the pedophile religion. Because they earned and deserved their reputation, and so, too, will the trans movement." Deal with it or truly become as marginalized as they fantasize themselves to be.
I pay it $5/month so if I grow weary of it, I can bail. I have started collecting enough pay per read subscriptions that I will ultimately have to rank their value to me and drop some. I foolishly paid for a one-year subscription on a Patron which turned out to be low value. I am no longer enticed by cheaper by the year except for my wife's SeeSanTV subscription which is of high value to her.
Logic is rarely part of the equation anymore. Your insistence on logic makes you "hateful". Logic is old school Western Scientific racism according to the antilogic crowd. They will choose new standards of truth. That will be ...BECAUSE WE SAY SO. Very Stalinesque.
"I love what Deborah Soh says in her book about the silly insistence that women can only be equal to men if they are the same as men: this assumption makes men the Gold Standard for humanity."
So true. So much social justice activism makes this mistake.
I got some high Twitter stats last week for tweeting that there's nearly no such thing as transphobia; that women don't fear men in dresses (drag queens and transvestites have never posed a problem for most) but what we fear is the male body and mind underneath. We need to keep the focus on the male and his maleness. You can only change the body so much, you can't change the mind at all, it's steeped in privilege, patriarchy, and the lack of fear women have (not a complete lack of fear, men are a threat to other men, plenty) but most men don't worry about being raped by men unless they're in prison (or the Catholic Church).
I wonder, is Lois actually a woman, or just another man with appropriated marginalization?
"what we fear is the male body and mind underneath. We need to keep the focus on the male and his maleness. "
Yeah, it's also been surprising (or maybe just depressing) to see how many men fail to acknowledge that violence, and especially violence against women, is an overwhelmingly male crime.
But I have to say, I think the focus on maleness is already becoming counterproductive. Not because males aren't the perpetrators of the overwhelming majority of violence, but because that violence isn't "maleness."
I see more and more women talking about this issue who are so determined to frame trans people as nothing but 40-year-old perverted men who want to sneak into women's bathrooms, they've lost all capacity to talk about it intelligently (and, of course, they have to completely ignore the existence of trans men).
They also refuse to acknowledge the huge number of women firmly on the TRA side of this argument. Because that too conflicts with the "it's just maleness that's the problem" narrative.
We can talk all day about the fragility of the #notallmen crowd. But the above approach veers pretty close to the #allwhitepeopleberacist playbook. Whether white people, trans people, men or women, careless generalisations of an entire class of people, for the sins of a few of them, doesn't solve problems.
As has been stated many times before, most of us know it's 'not all men', although with strangers we never know who. I have to admit, I was never hyper-sensitive about strange males before, but after a couple of years on Medium reading about other women's experiences (and then being dumb enough to set myself up at the headstrong young age of 51 to potentially get raped if the guy hadn't backed off) made me think maybe I needed to be a little more circumspect about men. In fact, it was that incident, and me asking myself *why* I allowed myself to put myself into what I knew wasn't an ideal situation, is what impelled me to come up with my Grow Some Labia message and website & talk about reclaiming female (and other) power.
Not all males are violent, and transfolk (particularly TWs) aren't any more violent as a group but as I'm pretty sure you've acknowledged before, they have the *same level of violence* as men...not women, not TMs. And the reason why there's so much drama in the trans movement is almost entirely the doing of TWs (ie., bio males, most of whom have their original junk), their male allies, and, as you note, female allies (who I think are fairly easily manipulated - they seem to be on the far left rather than the level left). So it's men, at the core, driving the violence associated with the trans movement (not just rapists in prisons, not just pervs parading their ladydick in women's only spaces) but also the violent protests to shut women's speech down that we're seeing here and abroad, most recently in AU & NZ.
I say we want to keep the focus on the males underneath the appropriated marginalization because it's male bodies and male minds women fear, not their choice of costume. As I've noted before, if a guy in a Barney suit raped a woman, we'd say a guy in a Barney suit raped a woman, we wouldn't worry about tarring dinosaurs with a perv brush, even if Barney rapes became a thing.
Violence may not be 'maleness' but maleness is associated with violence, for a good reason.
However, you do make me think of something i haven't really thought of before: Are TMs more violent than we know? Are they not getting the press for it? And if they are more violent, why? Is it the testosterone they're taking?
Thank you, I always need something to Google when I'm exercising on my break ;)
"As has been stated many times before, most of us know it's 'not all men', although with strangers we never know who."
Right, I've used this exact argument myself in a couple of articles. And yes, the TRAs telling women to "choke on their girldicks" or sending rape threats are, obviously, males. I'm not for a second arguing that this shouldn't be vigorously called out.
But a) the people saying "white people are racist" make this exact argument and it doesn't really hold water there either. And b) it's the caveats about women being manipulated when they support any men who claim to be women in female spaces that bother me. Because, as far as I can see, the motivation behind this is to shift the focus onto the "big bad men" instead of taking a serious look at how these insane ideas spread.
This idea that if a woman is behaving unreasonably, it must be because some man has manipulated her, is both infantilising and inaccurate. And this benefit of the doubt is never extended to the many, many non-violent men who agree with those women. Why doesn't anybody claim those men have been manipulated too? Again, that's why some women are so reluctant to acknowledge that trans men exist. Or that young, often gay, men are also deeply harmed by the gender industry. Or that opinion polls consistently show men objecting more strongly to males in female spaces than women.
Yep, I've pointed out a few times that male patterns of sexual violence don't change post transition. I fact, trans women are slightly *more* likely to be sex offenders than men. But I've also pointed out that the overwhelming majority of men don't commit sexual offences. As in somewhere around 99% don't. That's still more than enough reason for sex-segregation to exist in my book. Especially when sexual assault is far from the only reason single-sex spaces exist. But letting a site like Medium colour your perception of pretty much any social issue or group is going to mislead you. That place is an availability bias factory.
p.s. I don't think there's been much research into increased aggression in trans men, but I suspect the effect isn't too dramatic. As I was discussing with somebody else, male/female gaps in aggression aren't that big anyway, and trans men aren't socialised to be aggressive, nor do they usually have the physical stature where physical aggression would be a workable strategy. Small men are less likely to exhibit aggression too (at least towards other men) for similar reasons.
During one phase of the feminist movement on college campuses the radicals were putting up posters of randomly-chosen male students reading "all men rape." None of these students had raped anyone and of course the great majority of men never would. It was an absolutely vile way to make a dishonest point.
I've always sneered at the use of "phobia" to mean bigotry. Acrophobia is fear of heights; ailurophobia is fear of cats; agoraphobia is fear of open spaces. Fear, fear, fear.
Morons may say that the root of bigotry is fear, but they're morons.
The suffix for hatred is no challenge; -misia. Homomisia, transmisia. More familiar as a prefix; misanthropy, misogyny.
I don't hate the transgendered, but they are at best 0.1% of the "trans," whom the activists have now declared need not be dysphoric to join the club.
They get a lot more Likes that way, and the Surgery Kings make a lot more cash.
It's all about language and, like Humpty Dumpty, making them mean whatever you say they mean. A month or so back I had people on Twitter telling me that 'defund the police' didn't mean, you know *defunding the police*, it referred 'reallocating' money away from the police elsewhere. Well okay, but how do you pay for the police? Because people don't put their lives on the line for free. No one had an answer for that. It was just people playing around with word meanings again. Because 'de-' is a prefix meaning to undo a specific action, and 'fund' means 'A sum of money or other resources set aside for a specific purpose,' so to say 'defund the police' means anything other than re-allocating money but not abolishing the police or expecting them to work for free sounds like linguistic dishonesty to me.
And 'transgender' is simply a fad at this point. Not necessarily because everyone is dishonest (only some are) but because I think they think they're dysphoric when they're not. In the end, biology will win out. You can't change your gender no matter how much you think you want to. But, before that happens I expect we'll be hearing from the 'otherkin' shortly demanding we accept them as mermaids, unicorns, elves, dragons, whatever BS they 'identify' with.
When that day comes, they shall all be required to address me by my full title at all times (no nicknames or other shortened versions) "Her Majesty Fluffybunny Startwinkles, Magical Empress of the Universe." Because that is how I shall identify ;)
Don't forget that beneath all this fake "trans" horseshit there really is an actual ailment albeit, by the best numbers available to me, about 0.1% of those making the claim.
But this fad isn't a clothing or hair style. This fad involves health-destroying hormones and mutilating surgery. It actively seeks to destroy lives and careers. And it comes with more lies than Trump or Santos.
And Biden is on board with enabling this transition shit. Parents can have their kids taken away if the kids get on TikTok and decide they're "trans" and the parents don't want them to go nder the knife.
The one that irks me most is the suicide threat. Anyone could reason through its falsehood. History should be riddled with teen suicides and it isn't.
And once again, as with AGW and guns, America's warped notions of freedom prevent us from doing anything about it.
If I have a fear, it is that extremism and irrationality could actually lead to (real) violent conflict. I've never allowed myself to give much credence to the possibility, mostly because I've seen firsthand what that does to the people living on the soil where it takes place and it is something I dread.
Thank you for this. In Australia and New Zealand this past week, women have been subjected to violence and extraordinary levels of hatred for trying to talk about same sex rights. Unfortunately nazis turned up in Melbourne where Posie Parker gathered women to have their say ("let Women Speak") and so ensued an almost masturbatory dishonesty by left wing men, who jumped on the opportunity to dishonestly associate these women with angry nazi men who'd turned up, head to toe in black. No matter the nazis were open about their hatred of feminists as well as trans people.
Most unedifying is the left wing premier of the state, Dan Andrews, joining in on social media and legacy media denouncing women as nazis for speaking up about being a woman. The hatred towards women is palpable. Things were worse in New Zealand where gleeful men resorted to violence and as such women didn't get to say anything, they were silenced.
There are always going to be thugs, I get that, but watching left wing male commentators with considerable platforms pile on and celebrate this violence and shutting down of women with opinions they don't agree with, has been shocking. I've been left wing all my life and have come to the conclusion left wing men are more misogynistic than any, probably because up until now, they've had to hide it, and pretend to go along with MeToo. They certainly aren't hiding it any longer and the zeal with which they are currently celebrating violence against the women they disagree with has to be seen to be believed. After the events of this weekend no one will ever convince me that trans ideology isn't a place holder for deep seated misogyny.
"Thank you for this. In Australia and New Zealand this past week, women have been subjected to violence and extraordinary levels of hatred for trying to talk about same sex rights"
Yep, I've been following that story in the news. The idea that Nazis turned up at a rally in support of a women's rights event is absolutely hilarious. But sadly, the people claiming it have never cared much about the truth.
And lest it be forgotten, when men have previously turned up at these events dressed head to toe in black, they were TRAs.
We're witnessing the takeover of the political left. Just as, to be fair, the LGBT community has been taken over by a group of ideologue extremists.
"The idea that Nazis turned up at a rally in support of a women's rights event is absolutely hilarious. But sadly, the people claiming it have never cared much about the truth".
Exactly. But when you have the state premier, Dan Andrews, a leader and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, generally regarded as having integrity, and tweeting the lie to his 439.5K followers (link below), it's somewhat less hilarious. I agree there is a takeover of the left by extremists, I just didn't realise it was happening at the very highest levels of power.
https://twitter.com/DanielAndrewsMP/status/1637245307569438720
I think too many people are watching these new movies with women beating up every man they see, and believing it's true.
Ha, I think there may well be some truth to this. A surprising number of people are truly clueless about the realities of fighting.
They even have women head butting men in these movies. Do you know what would happen if a woman did that? She would split her own skull.
Really good point.
Thank you for the link to Germaine Greer. A little research sent me to [Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference and “insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.”]
I didn't know that that was a thing. I wish my reading queue was not so long or I'd read her book.
Her thoughts on "femininity" being learned vs. "womanhood" being innate is interesting. My raised in America daughters didn't understand some of the behaviors that my wife insisted upon that their friends didn't deal with. Now that I think about it, it was an Asian cultural femininity behavior training thing. By wife once told me that kathoeys were easy to spot because they overdid femininity. I thought the difference was completely innate, but Ms. Greer supports the idea that there is also a learned process starting in childhood.
That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image. I assume there is some non-monolithic ratio. Since gay men range from hyper-masculine to flaming femes it might be answerable from that perspective in contrast to the perspective of biological women. That short video and life experience sent me off on an unexpected tangent from the denial of reality theme.
[edit addition] I do understand that masculine/feminine attributes have an overlap and I do think that some of that is innate. However <comma> some is learned as I do see differences culturally which either are genetic or adaption to local cultural norms. We've thrashed that out a bit here in the Commentary.
Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult.
At its beginning the inequality of women in society was stark. For a woman to have a job was regarded as emasculation of her husband and she was paid barely over half what a man was paid for the same work. Feminism's original goals were focused on equality. Women should be able to have careers if they wanted (though many who preferred a more traditional role were looked down upon) and wages should be the same irrespective of gender. Feminism was anger. It was anger at the inequality.
What happened? Wages converged. Not all the way; instead of 50% women started getting 75% or so. Not ideal, but progress, and progress is good. It didn't mean to stop fighting for equality, but it was satisfying, and this led to the rage softening.
Catastrophe.
Maybe lecture attendance dropped off, maybe the rhetoric got a little milder, but the reaction in feminist circles was uniform: SHIFT THE FOCUS. Wages are measurable, progress could be quantified. This was intolerable. Without maximum rage there would not be maximum lecture fees nor maximum book sales.
Almost overnight feminism turned from an equality movement to a hate cult. This is when we started getting "womon" and "womyn" and "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." This is when women were encouraged to leave their boyfriends and husbands and become lesbians. Wages are measurable; "patriarchal attitudes" are not. Strident feminists could always say that The Patriarchy was becoming ever more oppressive, and they did, and they still do.
And for some, decades later, the bitterness has never died down. These feminists don't want male allies; men "can't possibly understand" and in making an attempt we are regarded as ppressive and condescending.
And this is when Greer and MacKinnon and the rest went from equality to liberation. They have done all they can to make men and women into enemies.
To hell with them.
"Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult."
I'll admit to only having read a small selection of her work, as well as a number of interviews, but I feel broadly the same way. But she absolutely nailed the sex vs gender issue in the clip.
But as I've said before, an element always seems to arise in social justice movements that becomes more concerned with tearing down members the oppressor group than lifting up the members of the oppressed group. And therefore, they have to insist that all members of the oppressor group are the same and complicit in the oppression. Otherwise this position makes no sense.
Sadly, I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. Anger and weariness take over unless you're paying very close attention.
"I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. "
I think this is what happens to cops.
And it's obvious that people who think about gender issues too much, any of them, lose contact with reality because it's hard to accept a lot of what they claim to believe.
I could name more. A lot of chess players go insane in a particular way.
And, most interesting to me given my love of number theory ... mathematicians who deal with infinity almost always go nuts.
There was one idea that I think I got from PK Dick's Valis, first book of the trilogy, that I could not think long about without feeling I was losing my marbles. It was not a pleasant feeling. And, despite a memory like a steel trap, I've forgotten it. Something to do with the duality of Parmenides, but it's gone. Probably to my benefit.
Thanks for this. Since I grew up in a household with my mother as the head of the family in the 50s/early 60s, I understand the harm caused by underpaying women. That should make me a natural feminist, and with regard fair treatment of people regardless of sex or race I am fully on board with feminism and anti-racism in that realm.
But I don't call myself that and you just provided clarity as to why. I see them as people with a chip on their shoulder who promote divisiveness and demonization. Things that I oppose. I don't discard friends over differences of opinion, but I definitely discard venomous ideologies and organizations.
For much of my life I have been relatively apolitical and quite honestly gave little thought to it. My attitude towards feminists was more of a feel than something based in serious analysis. I've always been someone who easily made friends because I am inclined to like people. Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways.
I don't know if you must be a subscriber to read this, but it is a generally thoughtful article on "woke" and how it matters. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/upshot/woke-meaning-democrats-republicans.html
It's hard to wrap my mind around now but I was an *ardent* feminist of the equality variant. I tried to be a part of it. But by this time the "womon" thing was in vogue and the glares of smoldering hatred sorta turned me off. I volunteered as a cashier at a food bank and a lot of the lesbians with their chin beards would not look me in the eye, just glared at the counter and I had to put their change on it so our hands would not touch.
And you are probably familiar with the online forum phenomenon, present company excepted, of women who treat even the most polite disagreement as personal attack. I think this attitude came out of misandric feminism.
I wrote before about how the law must lead. Pay women the same as men.
"Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways."
The "trans" writers on Medium, TaraElla excepted, are violently sick people. A lot of the "queer" men are likewise. To point out that a "trans" woman is biologically male means a full ban, not a warning, not a temporary, you are off the platform and lose any money you had coming. They've swallowed the whole fishing pole.
But, sorry, America itself has changed.
"That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image."
I think, fundamentally, all behaviour is learned. All we're really talking about is the amount of external pressure. Start influencing somebody early enough, or apply a strong enough hand, and you can make people behave any way you want. Human behaviour is, above all else, adaptive.
The variances in innate behaviour in humans are quite small. For example, men are more aggressive than women. But it's only at the ends of the bell curves where that differences is notable. For the most part, differences in aggressive behaviour are better explained by socialisation and the fact that real world aggression is likely to lead to real world violence which women, for obvious reasons, are more motivated to avoid. Studies done on online behaviour show an even smaller difference between male and female aggression.
I used to be baffled by the exaggerated feminine behaviour seen in some gay men, but I think it's more accurately framed as codified *gay* behaviour. I think it's a learned behaviour that acts as a signal to other gay men as well as a signifier of group membership. See also: "talking black" or sagging pants for some black people, the defensive "no-homo" masculinity of some straight men or the banal, "everything happens for a reason" enlightenment of pseudo spiritual people.
There's nothing innate about these behaviours (as Chris points out below, the "flaming" gay behaviour seems to be giving way to the "gym bro" gay stereotype). At least not in any significant sense. But they're widespread within certain sub-sub cultures.
Common experience: walking down the sidewalk with a gay friend. He is speaking at normal volume and with no "gay accent."
Pass some people walking the other way and he gets louder and puts on the "queer" voice.
That always made me mad.
"For example, men are more aggressive than women. "
Not true. And women are not more social than men.
Actual double-blind testing shows both of these to be stereotypes.
The only sex difference that survives testing is reaction to competition. Men will outperform themselves under competitive circumstances; women will perform the same in both.
That's it.
"Not true. And women are not more social than men."
I mean, there's pretty extensive research that says it is true. Just not to the degree most people think. In fact, I've never seen a paper that claims it's not true. But I guess there's a paper for everything nowadays. All that said, it would be pretty remarkable if humans were pretty much the only mammal special that didn't display heightened aggression in males due to testosterone.
I can't back this up with references because I got it from a university class that I took four times (I was a professional notetaker) and the professor was not the kind who would say things for shock value. Others were.
Obviously, women don't use their fists as much as men; any actuary can tell you that where men use guns, women use poison. So I don't know if the studies he was citing included verbal as well as physical aggression but in the decades since I have seen little in my life to doubt it. Women can be vicious. Certainly I've seen a lot of feminists who were shockingly aggressive.
I think the flaming femme fashion is going out of. I haven't been to a gay public territory since 1996 but even then I had seen a sharp drop in the femme gays who were so common in the 70s.
In American gyms a lot of weightlifting guys are gay, it's not uncommon to see blowjobs in progress in the steam room.
I read your Trouble with Trans on Medium. Not a lot there I haven't already read here; obviously the use of one term for such dissimilar people is part of that compulsive "inclusive" shit, the rationale for which has never been explained to me. Give me a richly-colored mosaic over brown mud any day.
But one thing leapt out at me: I did not realize that gender dysphoria had been declared as "optional" to qualitfy as "trans"; this is outrageous to the point of kicking holes in walls. This is identity theft. I've said for a long time now that the goal of "trans" activists is to increase their audience and they do so with wanton irresponsibility, up to and including encouraging children to undergo treatments that will forever affect their lives. And with McGender and Surgery King franchises springing up all over, this is big business.
I didn't know this "optional dysphoria" was out in the open. That is absolutely outrageous.
'Gender incongruence' is the new term, which completes the notion that a person is whatever they say they are.No dysphoria required anymore, just a desire to appropriate marginalization.
Validation by marginalization. Some people like to think they're important enough to be hated, when in real life the people they believe are hating them are people who don't care if they live or die.
People who say that male and female are open for discussion are not worth our time. This is postmodernist crap, mindlessly tearing down distinctions for its own sake.
After all is said and done, I am opposed to gender neutrality. Make and female are objectively real, and as long as they are equally treated and neither is regarded as inferior to the other then we have all we need.
Let's take it as an opportunity to point out how this is science denial on a level with the right's denial of climate change. The left fancies its self the 'pro-science' side, which many are (as are many conservatives), but the Loony Left is just as prone to science denial as the Radical and Religious Reich.
I've started a whole new substack whose pinned introductory post is on this very issue. The link is beside my name. Please consider signing up. For now it's free. I'm keeping it epistemologically generic for now but as you might expect I intend to drill into both issues as well as the more general deprecation of truth.
Done.
“I’m just trying to be inclusive”
To which I ask:
Why?
What is the point?
"What is the point?"
I think history has shown us time and time again the point of inclusivity. People asked the same question about gay people and black people and Muslims and women and basically everybody who wasn't straight, white, male, Christian and right-handed.
I think our concept of "normal," or of who should be "included" in society, should be as broad as possible. But that's never meant it should be limitless or in opposition to reality. And certainly not that we should be in such a blind rush to "include" one group that we steamroll the rights of another.
I think the vast majority of people agree that trans people should be included in public life to the same extent as everybody else. But just like everybody else, that doesn't mean they get to bend the fabric of society to their will so they feel more validated.
I am not saying the opposite. I am not saying we should form up into tribes and hate everyone outside them.
But when people dutifully say "he or she" or, worse, "they," then it's no longer inclusion, it's compulsion. I don't see anything amiss in having gendered nouns like actor/actress, waiiter/waitress; calling for their elimination quickly becomes a fad, not a social advance.
Sure, let the pretenders have a place at the table, until they monopolize every conversation talking about their gender hobby. I have a friend in the US with a coworker who takes over every meeting talking about "their" gender identity, is in HR every day sobbing about being "misgendered." They can't fire her because they know she'll sue so they are taking months to lay the requisite paper trail to fire her for not doing any work. She'll still sue, but with the stack of emails, the employer will win.
"Including" a person like that is going too far.
I don't see any point in gender-neutral language or any defiance of that which is unambiguously real.
I think it's more important to try not to be rude than to try to be "inclusive."
"it's no longer inclusion, it's compulsion"
Right. But you didn't ask what the point of compulsion was. You asked what the point of inclusion was.
Inclusion might require adaptation of behaviour. And that adaptation might even need to be compelled. For example, white people were compelled to "include" black people post Civil Rights Act. Some required more compulsion than others in this regard.
The point is that compulsion should only ever be applied for clear, logical, intellectually defensible reasons. It shouldn't compel people to deny reality or put them in harm's way. It shouldn't create a sacred caste who can't be criticised or questioned no matter how unreasonable their demands are.
I see some value in gender-neutral language. For example, I do my best not to use words like "mankind" or default to "man/he/him" when I'm referring to a generic person. But again, I think I (and everybody else) should be free to choose the degree to which I use that language. It's the mindless compulsion that's the issue.
p.s. A friend of mine is in exactly the same position at work with a trans subordinate. Constant mental health days, lowest performer in the team, a long history of suing employers who got tired of pandering. She's having to build exactly the same paper trail. The refusal to talk about the wildly disproportionate levels of mental illness in the trans community is preposterous.
No disagreement. Except I am accustomed to thinking ahead and never have to use nor circumvent gender-specific construction. People are always challenging me with examples:
Challenge: "Someone left their wallet here. I hope they come back and get it"
My response: "I hope whoever left that wallet here comes back for it."
Mine is shorter, clearer, and doesn't mix singular and plural.
I noticed 30 years ago how self-obsessed transwomen were, minus the narcissism. Lovely people, and probably genuinely dysphoric, but with one notable exception they were one-track-minded. They didn't make demands on others and they didn't trample women's rights; but with the exception of the one with a job and a life, they were really dull.
This is the weak spot of the left. Its drive to be 'inclusive' and 'nonjudgemental' lead it to being unwilling to draw boundaries, and ergo to excuse a mind-spinning array of human rights abuses. And it's *always* considered acceptable to throw women under the bus. Especially for women. Many of those raging the loudest against 'patriarchy' are the ones who unconsciously support it the most.
Or those people who spin off half a page of bigotries: "racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, blah blah blah" instead of just "bigot," which covers them all.
As for nonjudgmental, that is morally crippling. To be unable to make a value judgment means going through life without ever learning a thing.
The better I get to know this "left" the more I see of what you say.
I don't think I've ever seen "A trans man is a man."
And feminism has cast aside all political goals in favor of nebulous BS about attitudes, more imagined than real. See my post below about Greer.
I did see it, but I have never read any of her books so I have no opinion on her.
On another Substack I was talking to a guy who says that male and female have been redefined to those who can currently produce gametes. He was quite adamant about it and has done a lot of tiresomely long writing about it over years.
So a boy not yet pubescent is sexless. A woman past menopause is sexless.
I don’t care how authoritative are the scientists writing this, I regard this as absurd. We aren’t the people of "Left Hand of Darkness" (Ursula K. LeGuin); an infant with XY chromosomes, a putz and nuts, has 0% chance of ending up female. He’s male. He will be male all his life, even if he's castrated or neutered by adult measles and never produces a single spermatozoan.
The guy took the potion that we must uncritically adopt the latest and shiniest, which is something I regard as shallow. I managed to stay polite but he got condescending and I ended it.
But this was not a postmodern position. He thought he was being scientific.
After a lot of eye-glazing discussion of categories and definitions he concluded that it was absurd to not base definitions of male and female on current fertility and that my own position, that these are lifelong rather than ephemeral, was ill-thought-out. He had no answer to what we call prepubescents and post-menopause; they were all "sexless."
This was not the usual postmodernist twaddle. He is apparently one of those people who feels strongly that we must all keep up with the latest of everything, an outlook I have rejected since middle school. That which is "current" is more often stupid than not; I liked psytrance but I don't listen to acid house or drum and bass because they sound empty and formulary and they make me twitchy.
But. He was not a moron, his writing was formidably nuanced except he had talked himself into accepting definitions that to me are unreservedly absurd.
"I was talking to a guy who says that male and female have been redefined to those who can currently produce gametes"
No idea where that "redefinition" came from except, perhaps, his imagination. I've yet to hear anybody, even the gender ideologues, claim that a prepubescent child is neither male nor female.
No, it's in several recent biology tomes by respected scientists. Not respected by me, I hasten to add; anyone who would say that a prepubescent child is sexless is simply fucked in the head. I recommend a heroin addiction to get his mind onto some other topic.
As for the gender ideologues, they're worse; they're willing to get that prepubescent child under the Mengele knife at a Surgery King just to get themselves one more future click.
"No, it's in several recent biology tomes by respected scientists"
Yeah, we're in the tragic position of being unable to feel confident about "recent statements by respected scientists" when it comes to biology. The gender wars have driven a lot of people on both sides a bit mad.
Until doctors start writing "unknown" on birth certificates when they deliver babies, I'm going to continue to say that sex is still known long before birth (never mind puberty) and remains immutable.
I wish I could read your article “The Trouble with Trans”, but I don’t want to pay Medium $50. Is it available anywhere else?
Hi! Yep, as others have said, you get three free articles a month on Medium. Alternatively, if you're a subscriber here, you get paywall free access to all my articles.
You get a few free reads every month. I just read the article and I do not pay Medim because the moment I write anything I get banned. No matter how mild or reasonable.
Try reaching out to Tony Stubblebine on Medium if you can (If you're a Premier member you can) and make a brief case for how you'd like to come back to Medium but you were tired of getting banned for X and Y and Z. I did, late last year, asking if Medium was less censoring now as I was critical of the transgender movement which is why I got banned. He replied back with a brainless 'transphobia has no place on Medium' response he must have cut and pasted from Pink News. Later, I clicked on a Medium link and realized the big red banner announcing my account was 'under investigation' (what, after a year and a half? :) was gone, so I am merely a free member now. I assume I could come back but since Tony is apparently a Trans Pod Person I won't return, since I will not be censored by children. It's worth a shot. If nothing else it'll send a message about what Medium is doing to hurt its own bottom line. Not sure how they're doing financially but before Ev Williams left it was really in the crapper.
Yeah "transphobia has no place on Medium," and nothing could possibly be more transphobic than biological fact.
But it's not just the "trans" shit; I wrote mostly about software and those articles are mud now. Horseshit about holding more effective meetings (I want no more than a half hour a week), idiotic junior programmers proferring advice on what it means to be a senior developer ("think outside the box").
It bewilders me how many people buy into this "trans" shit. People smart enough to know better actually believe the mass suicide nonsense, they believe the numbers, I think "pod person" nails it.
that's why I suggested telling him what you got banned for suspended or whatever for. "Some idiot claimed that my hack for a MySQL database error was racist; that hierarchized subroutines are inherently colonial and a 'dog whistle' to white supremacist software engineers; and that 'Agile methodology is blatantly ableist." Maybe Stubby will decide there *is*, after all, a place on Medium for coders who prefer fewer time-wasting meetings. You could test him with a quick piece on the efficiencies of ten-minute standup meetings, and if anyone complains about your endless coding ableism, you can argue you were talking about meetings that started with jokes, but none about trans people :)
As fate would have it, a Facebook status by me from 2017 before I retired just appeared. "Face to face collaboration at work. Disrupts the work I'm doing because others think their issues more important than mine. Causes me to remove the music in my ears and replace it with my hearing aids. Ram it where the sun don't shine."
We are kindred spirits ;0)
Today I saw this astonishing article on Medium. I couldn't bring myself to read it to completion. Is there a clear definition of transphobia which is not [You disagree with the statement that "a transwoman is a woman PERIOD" and a qualifier for women of "a cis woman is a cis woman"]?
https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/is-j-k-rowling-transphobic-4d4639ea8398
OMG. I couldn't get through it either. It's like reading a MAGA article about the BS of climate change or explaining in great detail how the election was 'stolen' from You Know Who.
Notice she didn't address *whether* sexual predators in the trans movement are pressuring lesbians to have sex, she complains they're being painted as sexual predators. This is exactly what I ran into on Twitter awhile back when I challenged the 'transwomen are sexually pure little angels' set. Instead they tried to divert my attention to the Catholic Church. So I said, "I'm glad you mentioned them, because the trans movement is shaping up to become the sexual predator SJ movement just as the Church has agreed to become the pedophile religion. Because they earned and deserved their reputation, and so, too, will the trans movement." Deal with it or truly become as marginalized as they fantasize themselves to be.
These people are insane
I pay it $5/month so if I grow weary of it, I can bail. I have started collecting enough pay per read subscriptions that I will ultimately have to rank their value to me and drop some. I foolishly paid for a one-year subscription on a Patron which turned out to be low value. I am no longer enticed by cheaper by the year except for my wife's SeeSanTV subscription which is of high value to her.
This is wonderful:
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/operation-peak-the-presses-contact
Logic is rarely part of the equation anymore. Your insistence on logic makes you "hateful". Logic is old school Western Scientific racism according to the antilogic crowd. They will choose new standards of truth. That will be ...BECAUSE WE SAY SO. Very Stalinesque.
That Lasarev video is a classic! I remember enjoying it a lot when it came out a while back.
"I love what Deborah Soh says in her book about the silly insistence that women can only be equal to men if they are the same as men: this assumption makes men the Gold Standard for humanity."
So true. So much social justice activism makes this mistake.
You make an uncommon amount of sense, here and in many other posts.