In today’s hyper-polarised world, a sure sign that you’re onto something is that everybody at the extremes is mad at you. One extreme thinks you’re “woke” or unpatriotic or a “snowflake.” The other thinks you’re “far-right” or a white supremacist or some kind of “-phobe.”
My progressive friends often accuse me of "both-sides-ism" (is that a word?). It's true that I strain to understand all arguments and try to land at the right place.
But on the exhausting and absurd trans debates, allow me to stake out a position based on 5 years on Medium reading hundreds of articles on the debate by trans ideologues, trans people, feminists, liberals et al.
There are a fair number of really reasonable, decent, reality-based trans writers--Tara Ella, Lady K, and Ann Williams to name several. But as a group, there is a level of hostility, of ad hominem attacks, of disrespect, of complete delusion and of unreasonable entitlement among trans writers that really sets them apart.
If they want fairness, they have to be fair in return. If they want respect, they have to respect in return. If they want recognition, they have to recognize reality.
I've had it. The trans activists can grow up or go to hell. They are turning me into someone I don't want to be.
"They are turning me into someone I don't want to be."
God, I feel this so much. It's a battle, every type I put fingers to keyboard on this issue, to temper my frustration into something compassionate and hopefully useful. I've seen so many people who are paying attention to this issue turn into angry, unreasonable versions of themselves. And it's really hard not to when you see the depths of the misogyny, bullying and reality denial that are endemic to the activism.
What (mostly) keeps me sane is remembering how utterly many prominent "anti-racists" fails to speak for me or anything I believe. I was lucky enough to have a platform to push back against it. But many trans people don't. And frankly, the viscousness that trans people face if they challenge the orthodoxy is brutal.
This article on Medium criticizes a straw man position attributed to you. Trans woman activists just can’t seem to understand that when .06% of the population demands that the other 99.4% completely change how humanity is organized for delusional reasons and without any sense of reciprocity or fairness that resistance might be based on something other than hate. That no discrimination does not require that humanity surrender its grip on objective reality.
Wondering whether responding is a total waste of time
I’m thinking more like prison than hell. People who promote surgery to psychologically disordered children should be arrested for predation.
I’ve read Tara Ella and I agree, I never ran across those other two and never will, Medium keeps kicking me off even if I stay away from the “trans” creeps. In fact it seems to me that clicking “I don’t want to be referred to this topic” on the “trans” stuff gets you banned now.
And most of the “trans” writers on there are just vile. One was really striking, “her” article’s very title was something like “this is going to piss you off,” and “her” picture above it was giving a middle finger to the reader. And needless to say, the article was incoherent rage from the first sentence to the last.
Medium prints this garbage, sends emails recommending it. And then bans anyone who writes anything less than fully onboard with “gender ideology.” I remember medium as a good place. This “trans” shit has ruined it.
I remember the “give the finger” article. Written by Queer Kari. Why Medium blocks you and not this vile tempered harridan is a real indictment of the so called “progressive” mindset these days. How did we fall so far so fast????
Did we fall? I don’t know many people who buy into “trans.” The CEO of Medium says “there’s no room for transphobia on Medium.” Actually there’s no room for debate. It’s 100% gender ideology and not the tiniest piece of discussion. People like “Queer Kari” can put their sickness on full display and get *recommended* for it.
There’s nothing progressive about that.
But even outside the “trans” stuff, they’ve lost their way. I wrote about software development, mostly opposition to the many dum fads like agile and test-driven development, and while I mostly had hostile responses from fad-followers, I also developed a loyal readership.
There were some good articles. Not anymore. Now it’s the same few worn out topics over and over. Dumb Indians with a few months of experience trying to tell 20 year people how to be good developers.
There are a few articles I’d like to write on there, but as soon as I show up I am somehow recognized and banned again.
I checked, my earliest account still says "your account is under investigation." That's some investigation, it's been years.
I peeked at "Queer Kari" and it was a deluge of hateful titles. I didn't actually open any articles, I don't want that malignant person in my head.
One caught my eye, "she" said "Cis women are women too." Duh. I detest "cis," I think distinguishing gender congruence is about as useful as distinguishing one-headedness, the only reason for it is the pretense that "trans" is a thousand times more commonplace than it actually is.
But it was candor I did not expect from Queer Kari.
Well thanks for trying. Not the biggest deal if you can't find the therapist. (Don't care about King Kari a whit). Yeah, I've been under investigation for years too. Apparently a Medium investigation takes longer than OJ's.
I went over there and tried to read one of Queer Kari's pieces. I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs. Lazy writing always pisses me off. Thanks to the internet, everyone with a bone to pick now has the opportunity to share their bad writing with the public at large.
Distribution is a popularity contest at Medium, always has been. I know I'm not the greatest writer ever and I certainly wasn't there; but I also wasn't their worst, by far, and they had their favorites who always got distributed regardless of what they wrote. Even their best, most popular writers aren't capable of hitting it out of the ballpark every single article but they got fairly robotically distributed. It was a couple of years before they distributed anything of mine, and probably because it got published in The Ascent. Later, another distributed article got taken down, because it apparently offended some when I argued that white people who hate white people are racist. No mention of trans anywhere.
Unfortunately, many platforms have become woke shitholes. Free speech my ass. The woke love censorship every bit as much as Ronald DeSantis.
I've never written anything remotely antagonistic on Medium, even about "trans." But something as uncontroversial as "trans women are biologically male" is treated like "trans people all deserve Zyklon-B."
I had one guy react to that simple assertion by telling me he was going to summon all his Medium cadre and have them pound on the Report button until I was banned. I just deleted the response and blocked him (if only substack had block). His Medium profile was nothing but a recitation of his "queer" credentials and like so many "trans" writers on there his avatar was himself wearing an angry snarl.
On another substack I read a therapist was saying that she can usually make progress with depressed and angry patients, but never with the "trans" ones.
I feel the same about Twitter. A few minutes of reading and I am sickened. No more.
I don’t know what happened to Medium. It was a great place to read and write, then very suddenly it wasn’t. I made enough from their partner program to buy a dozen synthesizers. Then I did a polite response to a “trans” rage case and got the red box.
I'v been blown away by the trans discourse on disabled women like Henrietta. Disabled people have sat quietly by for a number of years now, as the trans community (wrongly) claim to be the most marginalised, most excluded, most powerless people on the planet. It's been galling, but whatever. Disabled people know who they are and aren't looking for public validation for their 'identities'., and have just shrugged along with the whole thing. I did think however that the trans community would have some general respect that other communities may, no matter how quietly they go about it, have some claims of their own to make. But no, TRAs are merciless. No one's needs come before theirs. Not even a women paralysed from the chest down, who requires care for the most basic and intimate of needs The violent misogynist attacks on Henrietta for standing up for her right to same sex care have left me dumbfounded. How did we get here?
"I did think however that the trans community would have some general respect that other communities may, no matter how quietly they go about it, have some claims of their own to make."
Wishful thinking when it comes to trans activism unfortunately. As you say, nobody's needs come before the activists'. It's the purest expression of narcissism I've ever known.
I desperately want more reasonable trans people to speak up. I know they're out there. I see them on Twitter from time to time, and even chat to them in my comments sometimes. And in person I'v never met a trans peon even a tenth as unreasonable as many are online. But they're terrified of the backlash if they pspeak up. And I've seen first hadn't how nasty it can be.
I've written before about my disdaine of demonization and dehumanization of "the enemy." That's how you prepare people to go to war with a rifle in their hand. I think that some of the radical fringe would be quite happy to see the "others" dead. That is very disturbing.
“it’s the purest expression of the reality denial and dehumanisation and hypocrisy that’s poisoning all of our discourse”
Excellently put. It’s as if you want to assert ‘the sky is blue’ and if you state this you are attacked with all-in brute force to deny your claim.
Kurtis is a hypocritical thug trolling for affirmation of a twisted viewpoint that woman - particularly a disabled woman - has NO RIGHT to her personal privacy and desire for same-sex care.
How much more of the hard won rights of women have to be sacrificed for delusional XY people who want to inhabit those spaces?
It’s pretty much making me sick and yes, eroding my tolerance.
If I may, I'd like to suggest that one probably has a legitimate and reasonable argument or proposition or observation, if other people respond by attacking the writer (or speaker) instead of attacking the argument.
A British women’s cycling competition just limited participation to biological women. One “trans woman,” which is to say, a man, said thls was, you ready? Not “exclusionary,” not just “transphobia,” but, and I am not making this up, “genocide.”
Being excluded for not being female isn’t injurious in any physical way. He calls it mass murder.
I am so happy to see the backlash at these uh people growing.
"If I may, I'd like to suggest that one probably has a legitimate and reasonable argument or proposition or observation, if other people respond by attacking the writer (or speaker) instead of attacking the argument."
Exactly. Attacking people is the only option when you know you can't defeat their argument.
The one thing I oppose in social relations is this obsession with LABELS. Everyone doesn't NEED to be slotted into a particular group. To me we are all persons first. No labels required.
I learned about the existence of transgender people nearly 50 years ago in a youth group whose conference I participated in annually. I also learned, backed up by solid evidence, that heterosexual people of either biological structure (male or female) make up only about 40% of human beings. So let's knock it off with the labelling and look at everyone as a person first, and all their other characteristics as necessary so their needs can be met.
And what the heck is a TERF anyway? Doesn't sound like anyone I want to be. See "labels" above.
Yeah, as Dave says, TERF originally stood for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. But more recently has become a slur for anybody, whether they're radical or feminist or even trans exclusionary, who thinks that sometimes women's rights, based on their biological sex, are important.
I"d love it if we could evolve past the need to label everything. But that's not quite the same as arguing we shouldn't label anything. Whether somebody loves men or women in't important in any context I can think of. But whether somebody *is* a man or a woman is important in a few.
Well I learned something new this morning. What a 'troon' is. Seen it around but never bothered to Google it until now, and Urban Dictionary gave me a great introduction to it.
BTW, I don't think there's anything particularly mindless about the middle as long as you're not afraid to take a stand. Yeah, no resolution is going to land *squarely* in the middle. But often the truth, and the resolution lies on both sides.
"BTW, I don't think there's anything particularly mindless about the middle as long as you're not afraid to take a stand."
Yeah, I specified mindless centrism to differentiate it from...let's call it principled centrism. People who are too fond of the "fine people on both sides" way of thinking don't take a stand. Which is the problem.
I'm a firm believer in trying to understand people who I disagree with, I just can't stand the people who treat issues that are actually important as philosophical thought exercises. It's why I'd rather somebody took a stance I disagreed with and explained why they felt that way, than the pasty bothsidesism that some centrists are guilty of.
You inspired me to do a web search "troon urban dictionary" and it gave more than one definition. One pertaining to trans and another that did not. These made-up words seem purposefully confusing.
Troon apparently is from Something Awful and dates back about twenty years, before the loony left started fiddling with language so much. I think men pretending to be lesbians need their own word, and 'troon' sounds good, although I think I prefer plain old 'fake lesbian'.
Just hateful, sick and disgusting on every level. Kurtis in your post is mild by comparison. Makes even Trumpers look half civilized, if that is even possible.
Yet another example of my comment above. Why does this get a pass????
My progressive friends often accuse me of "both-sides-ism" (is that a word?). It's true that I strain to understand all arguments and try to land at the right place.
But on the exhausting and absurd trans debates, allow me to stake out a position based on 5 years on Medium reading hundreds of articles on the debate by trans ideologues, trans people, feminists, liberals et al.
There are a fair number of really reasonable, decent, reality-based trans writers--Tara Ella, Lady K, and Ann Williams to name several. But as a group, there is a level of hostility, of ad hominem attacks, of disrespect, of complete delusion and of unreasonable entitlement among trans writers that really sets them apart.
If they want fairness, they have to be fair in return. If they want respect, they have to respect in return. If they want recognition, they have to recognize reality.
I've had it. The trans activists can grow up or go to hell. They are turning me into someone I don't want to be.
"They are turning me into someone I don't want to be."
God, I feel this so much. It's a battle, every type I put fingers to keyboard on this issue, to temper my frustration into something compassionate and hopefully useful. I've seen so many people who are paying attention to this issue turn into angry, unreasonable versions of themselves. And it's really hard not to when you see the depths of the misogyny, bullying and reality denial that are endemic to the activism.
What (mostly) keeps me sane is remembering how utterly many prominent "anti-racists" fails to speak for me or anything I believe. I was lucky enough to have a platform to push back against it. But many trans people don't. And frankly, the viscousness that trans people face if they challenge the orthodoxy is brutal.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/i-support-queer-rights-but-7eda17fae1e0
This article on Medium criticizes a straw man position attributed to you. Trans woman activists just can’t seem to understand that when .06% of the population demands that the other 99.4% completely change how humanity is organized for delusional reasons and without any sense of reciprocity or fairness that resistance might be based on something other than hate. That no discrimination does not require that humanity surrender its grip on objective reality.
Wondering whether responding is a total waste of time
I’m thinking more like prison than hell. People who promote surgery to psychologically disordered children should be arrested for predation.
I’ve read Tara Ella and I agree, I never ran across those other two and never will, Medium keeps kicking me off even if I stay away from the “trans” creeps. In fact it seems to me that clicking “I don’t want to be referred to this topic” on the “trans” stuff gets you banned now.
And most of the “trans” writers on there are just vile. One was really striking, “her” article’s very title was something like “this is going to piss you off,” and “her” picture above it was giving a middle finger to the reader. And needless to say, the article was incoherent rage from the first sentence to the last.
Medium prints this garbage, sends emails recommending it. And then bans anyone who writes anything less than fully onboard with “gender ideology.” I remember medium as a good place. This “trans” shit has ruined it.
I remember the “give the finger” article. Written by Queer Kari. Why Medium blocks you and not this vile tempered harridan is a real indictment of the so called “progressive” mindset these days. How did we fall so far so fast????
Did we fall? I don’t know many people who buy into “trans.” The CEO of Medium says “there’s no room for transphobia on Medium.” Actually there’s no room for debate. It’s 100% gender ideology and not the tiniest piece of discussion. People like “Queer Kari” can put their sickness on full display and get *recommended* for it.
There’s nothing progressive about that.
But even outside the “trans” stuff, they’ve lost their way. I wrote about software development, mostly opposition to the many dum fads like agile and test-driven development, and while I mostly had hostile responses from fad-followers, I also developed a loyal readership.
There were some good articles. Not anymore. Now it’s the same few worn out topics over and over. Dumb Indians with a few months of experience trying to tell 20 year people how to be good developers.
There are a few articles I’d like to write on there, but as soon as I show up I am somehow recognized and banned again.
"The CEO of Medium says “there’s no room for transphobia on Medium.” Actually there’s no room for debate. "
Nailed it. In many people's minds debate (or reality) and transphobia are the same thing. It's frightening to see.
Yeah, I lost the red BANNEDer after my LinkedIn exchange with Tony and then a week or so ago I tried to clap or comment or something and it came back.
I checked, my earliest account still says "your account is under investigation." That's some investigation, it's been years.
I peeked at "Queer Kari" and it was a deluge of hateful titles. I didn't actually open any articles, I don't want that malignant person in my head.
One caught my eye, "she" said "Cis women are women too." Duh. I detest "cis," I think distinguishing gender congruence is about as useful as distinguishing one-headedness, the only reason for it is the pretense that "trans" is a thousand times more commonplace than it actually is.
But it was candor I did not expect from Queer Kari.
Well thanks for trying. Not the biggest deal if you can't find the therapist. (Don't care about King Kari a whit). Yeah, I've been under investigation for years too. Apparently a Medium investigation takes longer than OJ's.
I went over there and tried to read one of Queer Kari's pieces. I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs. Lazy writing always pisses me off. Thanks to the internet, everyone with a bone to pick now has the opportunity to share their bad writing with the public at large.
Distribution is a popularity contest at Medium, always has been. I know I'm not the greatest writer ever and I certainly wasn't there; but I also wasn't their worst, by far, and they had their favorites who always got distributed regardless of what they wrote. Even their best, most popular writers aren't capable of hitting it out of the ballpark every single article but they got fairly robotically distributed. It was a couple of years before they distributed anything of mine, and probably because it got published in The Ascent. Later, another distributed article got taken down, because it apparently offended some when I argued that white people who hate white people are racist. No mention of trans anywhere.
Unfortunately, many platforms have become woke shitholes. Free speech my ass. The woke love censorship every bit as much as Ronald DeSantis.
I've never written anything remotely antagonistic on Medium, even about "trans." But something as uncontroversial as "trans women are biologically male" is treated like "trans people all deserve Zyklon-B."
I had one guy react to that simple assertion by telling me he was going to summon all his Medium cadre and have them pound on the Report button until I was banned. I just deleted the response and blocked him (if only substack had block). His Medium profile was nothing but a recitation of his "queer" credentials and like so many "trans" writers on there his avatar was himself wearing an angry snarl.
On another substack I read a therapist was saying that she can usually make progress with depressed and angry patients, but never with the "trans" ones.
Can you pass along that therapist article? I'd love to read it!
I could have written that. I know exactly where you are coming from. It is unpleasant.
I feel the same about Twitter. A few minutes of reading and I am sickened. No more.
I don’t know what happened to Medium. It was a great place to read and write, then very suddenly it wasn’t. I made enough from their partner program to buy a dozen synthesizers. Then I did a polite response to a “trans” rage case and got the red box.
They banned you?
For politely pointing out that a “trans” woman is biologically male.
I’ve been back several times but I am somehow recognized and banned every time. Despite staying away from “trans.”
I'v been blown away by the trans discourse on disabled women like Henrietta. Disabled people have sat quietly by for a number of years now, as the trans community (wrongly) claim to be the most marginalised, most excluded, most powerless people on the planet. It's been galling, but whatever. Disabled people know who they are and aren't looking for public validation for their 'identities'., and have just shrugged along with the whole thing. I did think however that the trans community would have some general respect that other communities may, no matter how quietly they go about it, have some claims of their own to make. But no, TRAs are merciless. No one's needs come before theirs. Not even a women paralysed from the chest down, who requires care for the most basic and intimate of needs The violent misogynist attacks on Henrietta for standing up for her right to same sex care have left me dumbfounded. How did we get here?
"I did think however that the trans community would have some general respect that other communities may, no matter how quietly they go about it, have some claims of their own to make."
Wishful thinking when it comes to trans activism unfortunately. As you say, nobody's needs come before the activists'. It's the purest expression of narcissism I've ever known.
I desperately want more reasonable trans people to speak up. I know they're out there. I see them on Twitter from time to time, and even chat to them in my comments sometimes. And in person I'v never met a trans peon even a tenth as unreasonable as many are online. But they're terrified of the backlash if they pspeak up. And I've seen first hadn't how nasty it can be.
"It's the purest expression of narcissism I've ever known".
Yes, and to see these narcissists capturing institutions like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU is just scary.
I've written before about my disdaine of demonization and dehumanization of "the enemy." That's how you prepare people to go to war with a rifle in their hand. I think that some of the radical fringe would be quite happy to see the "others" dead. That is very disturbing.
At least four recent mass shooters have been “trans” or “nonbinary.”
And this kind of rhetoric is becoming increasingly common.
https://bit.ly/3OKcX15
“it’s the purest expression of the reality denial and dehumanisation and hypocrisy that’s poisoning all of our discourse”
Excellently put. It’s as if you want to assert ‘the sky is blue’ and if you state this you are attacked with all-in brute force to deny your claim.
Kurtis is a hypocritical thug trolling for affirmation of a twisted viewpoint that woman - particularly a disabled woman - has NO RIGHT to her personal privacy and desire for same-sex care.
How much more of the hard won rights of women have to be sacrificed for delusional XY people who want to inhabit those spaces?
It’s pretty much making me sick and yes, eroding my tolerance.
My tolerance finally went bye-bye last year, I think.
Steve ---
Thank you for putting this up.
Simple, helpful, important.
If I may, I'd like to suggest that one probably has a legitimate and reasonable argument or proposition or observation, if other people respond by attacking the writer (or speaker) instead of attacking the argument.
A British women’s cycling competition just limited participation to biological women. One “trans woman,” which is to say, a man, said thls was, you ready? Not “exclusionary,” not just “transphobia,” but, and I am not making this up, “genocide.”
Being excluded for not being female isn’t injurious in any physical way. He calls it mass murder.
I am so happy to see the backlash at these uh people growing.
"If I may, I'd like to suggest that one probably has a legitimate and reasonable argument or proposition or observation, if other people respond by attacking the writer (or speaker) instead of attacking the argument."
Exactly. Attacking people is the only option when you know you can't defeat their argument.
Steve ---
Have you seen this?
https://themindcollection.com/revisiting-grahams-hierarchy-of-disagreement/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The arguments are completely insupportable. Nothing in “gender ideology” can withstand any examination, it all instantly falls apart.
Beginning with its canon, “trans women are women,” etc.
So they go directly to attack.
It’s very common to try to get anyone pushing back to be banned from forums, fired from their jobs, and in some bizarre states, arrested.
Great article, really makes one think outside of the box.
The one thing I oppose in social relations is this obsession with LABELS. Everyone doesn't NEED to be slotted into a particular group. To me we are all persons first. No labels required.
I learned about the existence of transgender people nearly 50 years ago in a youth group whose conference I participated in annually. I also learned, backed up by solid evidence, that heterosexual people of either biological structure (male or female) make up only about 40% of human beings. So let's knock it off with the labelling and look at everyone as a person first, and all their other characteristics as necessary so their needs can be met.
And what the heck is a TERF anyway? Doesn't sound like anyone I want to be. See "labels" above.
"And what the heck is a TERF anyway"
Yeah, as Dave says, TERF originally stood for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. But more recently has become a slur for anybody, whether they're radical or feminist or even trans exclusionary, who thinks that sometimes women's rights, based on their biological sex, are important.
I"d love it if we could evolve past the need to label everything. But that's not quite the same as arguing we shouldn't label anything. Whether somebody loves men or women in't important in any context I can think of. But whether somebody *is* a man or a woman is important in a few.
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
I'd like to see your solid evidence for only 40% of humanity being heterosexual. That is a far cry from any statistics I've ever seen.
As for knocking off the labeling, tell that to the trans people.
That "no labels" junk is bubbling liquid manure.
People strive HARD to fit into categories. You sound like you're from some other planet where life is not based on carbon.
Forty percent heterosexual. Tell me this is a troll.
Well I learned something new this morning. What a 'troon' is. Seen it around but never bothered to Google it until now, and Urban Dictionary gave me a great introduction to it.
BTW, I don't think there's anything particularly mindless about the middle as long as you're not afraid to take a stand. Yeah, no resolution is going to land *squarely* in the middle. But often the truth, and the resolution lies on both sides.
"BTW, I don't think there's anything particularly mindless about the middle as long as you're not afraid to take a stand."
Yeah, I specified mindless centrism to differentiate it from...let's call it principled centrism. People who are too fond of the "fine people on both sides" way of thinking don't take a stand. Which is the problem.
I'm a firm believer in trying to understand people who I disagree with, I just can't stand the people who treat issues that are actually important as philosophical thought exercises. It's why I'd rather somebody took a stance I disagreed with and explained why they felt that way, than the pasty bothsidesism that some centrists are guilty of.
Yeah but it's hard to do that when your base is white supremacists and you hope to get re-elected ( not my problem obviously) 😁
You inspired me to do a web search "troon urban dictionary" and it gave more than one definition. One pertaining to trans and another that did not. These made-up words seem purposefully confusing.
Troon apparently is from Something Awful and dates back about twenty years, before the loony left started fiddling with language so much. I think men pretending to be lesbians need their own word, and 'troon' sounds good, although I think I prefer plain old 'fake lesbian'.
The rabid Right and the rabid Left have merged. Trans activists in London yesterday at a counter-demonstration at a women's rally with signs proclaiming, "Arm Trans Kids." Yes, with guns!!! https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/transgender-activists-protest-at-women-s-rally-with-arm-trans-kids-poster/ar-AA1bOh8C?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=647e908f9237413ebc08c7815e14cc1a&ei=17
Just hateful, sick and disgusting on every level. Kurtis in your post is mild by comparison. Makes even Trumpers look half civilized, if that is even possible.
Yet another example of my comment above. Why does this get a pass????