If I’ve learned anything over the past few years of writing about social issues, it’s that the people who get the most attention rarely speak for those who deserve the most attention. So in my article, Trans Men: The Great Clarifiers Of The “Trans Debate”, I shone a light on a segment of the trans community we don’t often hear from: trans men. I pointed out that while most of the controversy about trans inclusion focuses on trans women, trans men effortlessly clarify several aspects of the “sex vs gender” debate.
I gave that one max claps on Medium but did not comment. I noticed the lack of activity on that article or any thoughtful articles about trans on Medium. I'm close to unsubscribing it has become such a clown show.
From a news article about a pride flag burning in Phoenix: "Since June 2022, there have been an average of 39 anti-LGBTQ protests nationwide each month, compared with just three per month from January 2017 through May 2022, according to a recent report by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a research group that tracks the size of political protests."
Every time they add a letter or symbol to the pride thing (it is now a suitable wifi password) the anti-pride activity gets louder.
The trans-radials should give some thought to this article, but they won't. It's not what they want get to hear and they are the most close minded tribe there is.
I am astonished that Steve hasn’t been banned for this article, if not for his backlash article months ago.
I was banned for a brief and non-hostile response, and I’ve read if others who were summarily banned for any writing about “trans” that fails to rage about “transphobia,” seeing it everywhere.
I’m guessing they’ve banned hundreds of paying customers, maybe thousands.
I actually have no idea. I've always just put it down to the fact that my articles are well sourced and don't say anything even remotely hateful, but after reading the email that accompanied Rogue's account ban, I'm really not sure that makes a difference.
"Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights."
I mean, holy crap! This on a platform where the n-word can be written with impunity, where misandry is de rigueur, and pseudoscience about the "sex spectrum" is commonplace. But god forbid you "misgender" (read: correctly gender) someone.
As I've said many times, I've never seen such cult-like fervour around a social issue before. It's scary. I'll need to seriously rethink my use of Medium if this is the level of indoctrination in their "Trust & Safety" team. It just seems reckless to rely on a platform that could delete my account, unilaterally, over such minor and subjective slights.
Yep, the Medium Woke Reign of Error continues, clearly. I say to you seriously: You may well be flirting with an eventual suspension or ban.
I'll share this one. I can't clap on Medium, I tried to do that a few weeks ago and the Red Banner of Doom, which disappeared after I messaged with Tony Stubblefield, reappeared. So I apparently am still banned after all. Or something.
Yeah, this demonstrates pretty clearly that it's the biology, stupid. And the movement is, as every movement always is unless you kick the men out, all about the men and their 'rights' (which somehow always seem to be sexual!) I've noticed that transmen don't seem nearly as eager to join male sports teams or change in male changing rooms and they NEVER seem to want to compete with biological men. And they are strangely silent as biological men in dresses dominate the conversation...as always. Funny how women have to do this every single time because men will, every single time, no matter who they are and how they 'identify', dominate the conversation and the movement and shut women down consciously or unconsciously. It happened in the civil rights movement and New Left in the '60s and '70s, it happened with the lesbian movement in the LGB movement, and now it's happening in the trans movement.
"You may well be flirting with an eventual suspension or ban."
Yep, I just read Rogue's suspension email and I'm absolutely furious. It seems inevitable that I'll lose all my hard work if I continue to write about trans issues on Medium. "Trust & Safety" is just getting more and more authoritarian and censorious. I'll need to have serious think about what to do over the next few weeks.
I do, perhaps inevitably, think you're being a little unfair on men here though. Or, at least, painting in too broad strokes. The most unreasonable, entitled and aggressive people in any movement are likely be men. No argument there. But I don't think it's right to conflate all men with the worst of us. Nor to ignore the women who full-throatedly support the insanity we're currently seeing.
This is often portrayed as a battle of women against men in dresses. But "cis" women are consistently the group that most strongly supports this latest assault on women's rights. I've had many, many conversations with women, both in real life and online, where I was the one arguing for women's sex-based rights.
If there were ever an issue where we'd be better off setting aside our presumptive battle lines around sex, I think this is it.
"It seems inevitable that I'll lose all my hard work if I continue to write about trans issues on Medium." Yes, you will. Backup your account NOW. I did as soon as I put up my last Dave Chappelle because I *knew* i was going down like Trump at Mar-A-Lago :)
I'm quite certain you're referring to Roger he/him, the wokiest woke dude on the woke-addled Medium so-woke-you'd-swear-they're-on-cocaine staff. And Elle Beau is the wokiest pseudo-feminist dimbulb who claimed (at least at the time) that transwomen were women. I don't know if she's changed since then. I only had one interaction with her last year, when I complained about a newsletter they kept sending me I'd unsubscribed from. Elle was the one who responded (thank Goddess it wasn't Roger he/him). I'll change my opinion of her if someone can claim that in the last two years she's stopped being a cheerleader for transvestites who take themselves too seriously.
So yeah, you are quickly becoming too insufficiently woke for the Medium Wokenazis. The good news is Substack does its level best not to censor anyone unless they engage in genuine hate speech. But ultimately, if you want full control over your articles, you'll want to have a website or a blog that is *yours*. Even with a hoster, you could get taken down but it's extremely unlikely that will happen until AOC is elected president and anyone to the right of Roger he/him are declared Executables.
The bad news is many of the alternatives are right-wing shitholes, since they were the first to get deplatformed. The good news is I can't find any right-wing platforms that deplatform lefties for being insufficiently MAGA. They may chase them off with abuse, but that's not censorship.
The better news is that some of them are being infiltrated by lefties who are now getting deplatformed by the wokenazis. And a few are trying to be multipartisan AND keep the platform from becoming a right-wing shithole. Tribel, a Twitter alternative, I call tongue-in-cheek a 'left-wing shithole' because it was started by Democratic activists. Keep an eye on this one: They're raising funds to become more of a competitor to Big Tech. It's a lefty platform with a lot of MAGA stuff on it although not, AFAIK, extreme let's-bomb-the-Capitol crap. From the email I got the other day:
"We are equally excited to announce that our market valuation has also experienced remarkable growth. From $19 million, we have now reached a market valuation of $21 million. This progress is a testament to the potential and value of Tribel in the market.
But we're not stopping there! Our sights are set on further growth and expansion. As we cross the $1,000,000 mark on Wefunder, we anticipate reaching a market valuation of $25 million. This ambitious goal reflects our commitment to pushing the boundaries and unlocking the full potential of Tribel."
There are a few other platforms you might want to check out. Other blogging platforms exist too, but I can't find any that commit to not censoring. The ugly truth is that once you're kicked off Medium you will be starting over from scratch, and AFAIK there isn't another platform out there with Medium's lengthy audience reach. OTOH, few will have to pay to read your work like they do at Medium if you want more than three articles a month.
I've got an article coming out in a couple of weeks on which platforms aren't censoring. I'll send you an early draft if you want it now.
As for being hard on men, I re-read what I wrote and yes, you're right that a lot of idiot women are supporting this, and I've written about what's wrong with the left and my article last week was on how we need to reclaim liberalism and progressivism from the Regressive Left (more commonly called the 'woke' now). However my focus is on how much men dominate this movement, and sadly, it's the history of social justice. I've often said revolutions come in pairs, even if the second one is less noticeable. The first one is ALWAYS for men no matter what they say. Later, the women get fed up with them dominating the work and getting marginalized and the second revolution comes into play.
Like it or not, men as a whole dominate, consciously or unconsciously. I've seen it with some of my friends, and I'm not hanging out with the MAGAs. I think there are even more men involved in this than we know because sometimes they do a really, really good job of looking and sounding like women - at least until their male brain takes over and they say something that immediately tips off a bio woman they're not who they say they are.
Maybe I was being a bit blanket-y, point taken...but if you look at the flame wars on social media, and the videos of female protesters being assaulted and beaten by people in dresses, or indeterminate clothing and hairstyles, you will see it's mostly bio men engaging in this. I'm sure some bio females are taking part too, but a bio female never knows whether she'll best another woman in battle, whereas a man can be almost-certain (or at least not pick an Amazon to fight with).
In fact, your entire article pretty much highlighted just how male this 'social justice' movement is. And how transmen, for some reason, aren't nearly as public or outspoken as, well, transvestites who take themselves too seriously.
I hear your point that trans activism _by trans people_ is dominated by biological males. This is numerically a tiny portion of the population, as trans is a small minority and only a fraction of trans folks are trans activists of the sort we are discussing (the trans folks I've personally known have mostly been trying to live their lives, not overturn the cisheteropatriarchy).
Steve may also be right that the majority of trans activism/support/allyship by non-trans people - which is a far larger portion of the population, and give the TRA the power which it has - has a higher proportion of biological females.
I'm not writing women out of this. I hold them fully accountable for this crap, and yes, like you, the ones I've known have all been perfectly fine people. There's a Hidden Tribes research study on political groups in the US that found that the MAGAs and the woke...together...comprise about 8% of US political opinion. Like dogs, the littlest groups make the most noise. I'm quite certain the rest of us - conservative, liberal, disaffected, etc...don't agree much with either side.
Yes, I read that a while back and it's a good report. It was enlightening.
---
I happened to just read this article in the Atlantic. Have a quick glance at the first graph. In the just the last few years, there has been an astonishing shift to the left among women, but not so much among men.
I've seen other statistics indicating that liberal women are very much leading the mass charge towards CSJ. (Mass charge as in providing the tens of millions of supporters, vs a few activists). I see CSJ ideology (Critical Social Justice ideology) as a mind virus which uses compassion and the need to be seen as virtuous as its entry point to infect a large number of decent people just trying to do the right thing, care for the needy and make the world a better place; and statistically there are more women who are susceptible because of that entry point to the psyche.
Some of the people I've known who have succumbed were quite nice people, at least until they felt they had the moral high ground because they were defending the helpless and thus didn't need to treat opponents as they would wish to be treated. It's like a drug and it hijacks the reward centers. Those infect often start out from a very caring place, but after a few years more than a tiny portion of them appear to get off as much on morally demonizing anybody who dissents, as they do on actually helping anybody on the ground.
I can't read the article since I don't subscribe, but the first two 'graphs sound like what I've read elsewhere - politics being just one reason why people won't marry certain others. A few years ago, Trump supporters had a much harder time getting a date.
Jonathan Haidt is working on a new book about social media's impact on young people (I subscribe to his Substack) and he notes that liberal kids have higher rates of mental illness than conservative kids, and liberal young girls & women have the highest rates of all. He never mentions transgender issues but he does cover suicide as a social contagion and it points very strongly to the theory (in my mind anyway) that it's entirely possible suicidal kids are drawn to the transgender movement, marketed as the latest 'drug' to cure whatever ails you, rather than that transgender kids are at higher risk for suicide.
Fact is, spiralling suicide rates came several years before the trans craze so 'underlying pathologies' strike me as far more likely than 'so many people born in the wrong body'.
Excuse me, Nicole, but this just sounds like yet another example of women refusing to accept men as allies in any way. And we read altogether too much of that.
I'm male, I care about women, I am passionate about equality in matter related to the workplace and wages, but I have encountered nothing but hostility and had to withdraw from feminism altogether in the fish/bicycle days because the smoldering glares of hatred wore me out.
Thank you for lifting the lid on this hypocrisy. I’d like to build on your idea of transmen being the ‘great clarifiers’ as you put it, by adding another aspect of denialism: have you ever noticed how Transwomen are predisposed to power. They are famous for being politicians, film directors, sports stars, billionaires and even physician generals in the US Army. Whilst Transmen are famous for... well, being pregnant. So after all this so-called progress and gender-veneering, we’ve merely clarified what we already knew, that biology is determining.
"have you ever noticed how Transwomen are predisposed to power. They are famous for being politicians, film directors, sports stars, billionaires and even physician generals in the US Army. Whilst Transmen are famous for...well, being pregnant."
Good God, this is an excellent point. Thank you so much for pointing this out.
Other than Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who seems to have a lot of power within that organization. The ACLU lawyer who made it a major goal to try to keep **Irreversible Damage** (by Abigail Shrier) from ever getting to the bookshelves.
Not disagreeing with your overall point, just noting one of the larger exceptions.
I have gotten suspended from Medium. Attached is their email on why I got suspended. They didn't site any specific comment. I am always very respectful but direct on my comments. I have been on Medium since 2017 and only started receiving warnings in the last year. I believe what's happening is that the vocal trans community is reporting on comments that they do not agree with as "harassment or hateful". Medium as a result is becoming a vocal left echo chamber on trans issues and racial issues. Not surprising given how little content from independent or conservative authors there exists on Medium. I only read Medium to get a perspective on where the vocal left is on issues.
At this point I have deleted my Medium account. They state that everything is deleted. Interesting twist on that. They are in violation of their own statements. If I click on a link to one of my old articles, they state "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium rules. That should not happen given I have no account on Medium.
They are doing what other social media companies are doing. They are creating an echo chamber that ideally gets more paid subscribers. What's needed is a concept like Medium that is owned by authors. Authors can not block comments. Any reports of "harassment or hate" would be public and judged by readers and/or authors as whether its inappropriate. Might be controversial but Medium needs an "Elon Musk" like rework to push back on the vocal left. Would not be hard to create.
The relevant parts of the Medium email
---------------------------------------
Hello,
We are writing to notify you that your Medium.com account is in violation of our rules on harassment and hateful content, and your profile and posts will no longer be publicly available on Medium.
Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience.
"Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience."
Holy crap! Thanks for posting this Rogue. I'm going to urgently re-think posting on Medium in light of this.
I mean, first of all, where is this energy when it comes to literally any other group of people on Medium. Even during the height of the racial reckoning, I received tons of racist abuse in my comments with not a peep from "Trust & Safety."
Secondly, what exactly does "undermining the dignity" of trans people even mean"? Can I tell the truth about biological sex? Can I point out that simple, uncontroversial fact that trans women are male? Or that a wound in your crotch where your penis used to be is not, in fact, a vagina? Can I question the legitimacy of confusing and medicalising children? Is the bar simply at any truth that hurts some trans person's feelings? As you say, we'll never know because they don't tell you.
And lastly, what do they hope to achieve by creating this climate of silence? All it does is penalise people who want to talk honestly about the conflicts between women's rights and trans women's inclusion. People who want to protect children from a lifetime of medicalisation. It's never been about removing hateful content directed at trans people. I don't think I've ever seen *anything* hateful about trans people on Medium. It's about demonising people who dare to care about trans people AND women.
"Or that a wound in your crotch where your penis used to be is not, in fact, a vagina? "
Oh, that is very good.
But a phalloplasty is considerably more grotesque, a lump of arm or thigh skin shaped as a cylinder and grafted between the legs, its appearance enough to make strong men vomit.
The only thing that frustrates me is the same thing that inspired JK Rowling to engage on Twitter. I have been listening to the podcast "The Witch Trials of JK Rowling". Its presents the concepts of how the vocal left emerge on Tumbler and the vocal right emerged on 4chan. Its discusses these platforms as the original echo chambers that started the culture war.
I fully support trans people's right to exist. I also fully understand why people like JK Rowling and Riley Gaines have issues with a trans-woman being allowed into traditional women's only spaces and activities. The vocal trans community has shut down the conservation on this. I don't know if upper levels in Medium are suspending people like me because they believe my comments are harassment or hate or they are just trying to stay out of a backlash by the vocal trans community. Regardless, from my perspective, Medium has now become what Tumbler was. Its an echo chamber for the vocal left.
What is most frustrating is that Medium suspends people like me with no details on what specific comment or article violated their rules. That makes me believe they are scared to publish the details.
There is a reason why many in the LGB community no longer want the T to be associated with LGB. That reason is because the vocal T community refuses to allow a rationale discussion on the complexity of the issues surrounding being trans.
I listened to that as well. Very interesting. And I'm pretty much with you on everything else. I am an old school liberal who is right-coded now because of my positions. I am anti-dehumanization of all people but I'm not about to let other people do my thinking for me.
It's a bald-faced lie that "Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization." I looked into the murders ("trans genocide") for an article recently. In both Canada & the US, it's <50 a year murdered. Which is <50 too many, but to put things in perspective, women are killed by the THOUSANDS in both countries every year. And I wouldn't even call *that* genocide, since genocide is an organized group persecution and the majority of bio women & transpeople murdered every year is pretty similar - male partners. So, domestic homicides rather than random transpanicking strangers homicide.
And since they demand that you LIE and claim trans women are something they're not, it's all for the best, really. Maybe you should create the blogging platform you suggest...maybe Elon Musk will even contribute, LOL!
It's about gaining and retaining power over others. A good part of their power, and what puts them at the top of the oppression olympics, is fostering the belief that their very survival is continually threatened and are dying in huge numbers. This might be sincere delusion, or it might be cynical manipulation, or some mixture, depending on the person and context.
I vary by the day (and sometimes more often) in how much optimism / pessimism I'm feeling about this.
I see a major pushback developing. The long march through the institutions has met some stumbling blocks, and no longer can count on each next conquest just quietly rolling over.
But the institutions and the educational, cultural and economic elites are already deeply pervaded by the ideology, and that's not going to change easily.
What I see is:
* affective polarization getting ever stronger
* an increasing culture-war divide between the elites and the masses
* increasing geographic assortment creating ever more extreme legislation
* a different set of dysfunctions growing on the right
So I see a growing pushback, but I'm not sure it's going to result in a more humane rational society.
"Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming,
>>>>claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”)<<<<"
And there you have it, plainly and openly stated: there is no place for scientific fact on Medium, lest some deranged and delusional "trans" activist chooses to take offense.
I snuck back on there just to read ("Khym Mahn" if anyone cares) and I am getting daily emails groveling for the monthly fee that would give me unlimited reading.
I am going to use your quote above to tell them why I am not giving them a dime.
I just engineered y "suspension" with my first and presumably last post:
==
Why I am Not Becoming a Member of Medium
There is no place for scientific truth on Medium
A friend was recently banned from Medium and in the email he received he was told:
"We are writing to notify you that your Medium.com account is in violation of our rules on harassment and hateful content, and your profile and posts will no longer be publicly available on Medium.
Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience."
Medium will never receive a dime from me if this rubbish is enforced.
That “trans women are men” is an uncontroversial biological fact. Surgically modifying a man’s body to create an appearance of the feminine does not create a woman. A “trans woman” is a man impersonating a woman, and a wound where his penis used to be is not a vagina.
I have read on SubStack that Medium has banned thousands of paying customers and good writers for even infinitesimal denials of “trans” ideology; I will never give money to your publication even if years ago it was a great place to write.
It’s the “trans” ideology that is the pseudoscience.
“Trans” and “nonbinary” people are less persecuted than actual women and they do harm to gay people, to real women, and, worst, to children, promoting experimental medical treatments including enthusiastic neutering of children in what is grotesquely called “enabling their true selves.”
This post will be hastily removed and my account “suspended,” which is fine, but I will never pay for this. And I hope the surgeons, therapists, pill-mills and McGender clinics’ staff are all soon in jail.
Maybe your Trust and Safety staff belong with them.
==
Apologies to Steve for not crediting the wound part but it would just get him banned.
Yea I remain on Medium only to take the pulse of the “succesor ideology” to use Wesley Yang’s apt phrase. Can you imagine if the moderators on Medium and their ilk ran the country? They already mostly run the culture. Goodbye freedom. Trump and MAGA or this crap--pick your poison.
Glenn Loury, the conservative black intellectual here, had an episode removed on YouTube recently because he had a guest on who speculated that transfolk may actually be suffering from a mental illness, something similar to schizophrenia. Whether you agree or not, it's an *opinion*, and was clearly that, and yet the trans-nazis got his ep taken down with a 'first strike'.
He did a podcast with his Creative Director who reached out to Substack to get their take on censorship and to make sure Glenn didn't run afoul of them again.
Should have added before I sent...Substack is pretty committed to non-censorship. NO platform is censorship-free but we want the platforms that only engaged in pre-woke censorship, which is only those miscreants who get REALLY out of hand.
Just checked him out, briefly, esp the exchange where he called you asinine and without evidence & you said you'd never make the mistake of reading/responding to him again. Checking out his profile (briefly) it looks like he actually does produce his own work and engage actively on SS. He sure does look like a mega-putz but I don't know, is he truly a troll? There are intellectual wankers everywhere who dispute everything, demand ridiculous amounts of evidence, make crazy claims etc. but I don't count them as trolls, customarily, if they're actually contributing with original material. Of course, he could be both, I don't know. I didn't look too closely. But mega-putz, for sure. Yeah, SS needs blocks. I don't consider blocking others censorship. Sometimes you do it for your mental health, and some do it because they're intellectual p**sies. I blocked India Willoughby, some big-name TA from England the other day on Twitter, because she got snarky with me over something or other but didn't allow me to respond. So I retweeted the exchange and tagged her saying I was blocking this person because she was a coward for not letting people respond. She's not a troll IMO but I don't engage with cowards.
He’s a troll. Read more than one of his posts. He has this nutty position that male and female only apply after puberty and that prepubescent children and postmenopausal women have no sex. The host of that SS has a doctorate in biology; Steersman has a two year vocational degree and zero biology.
But. He writes the same words, phrases, sentences and whole paragraphs over and over. He is not only repetitive, but condescends to everyone since everyone thinks his hobbyhorse is absurd. He works in little bits of Latin and endless links to create an intellectual impression which is then demolishes with his ridiculous biology. If you actually read his links you'll see that he has misrepresented and rewritten them, and they do not support his thesis.
And he's been doing this for six years.
The repetition is trolling; the condescension is trolling; posting the same two links to some journal literally hundreds of times is trolling. Calling his bizarre idea “standard biological definitions” in every single post is trolling.
Let's add one more datapoint. In the news when Lia Thomas was competing in women's sports, sometimes it was also mentioned that trans man Iszac Henig was at the same swim meet - also competing in the women's division. (There was some note about the two sharing a hug in the pool).
Henig could have competed in the men's league, but chose to compete in the women's league, wearing a women's bathing suit (which would have been very difficult for some with acute gender dysphoria).
Why? I never heard about any trans activists pushing to use gender identity to make Henig compete with the men.
At that time, Henig had socially transitioned, and had had a double mastectomy, but had delayed testosterone treatment until after the championships so as to abide by the doping rules for women.
"which would have been very difficult for some with acute gender dysphoria."
Yep, this story very effectively puts the lie to the idea that trans people simply can't compete with athletes of the same sex or their dysphoria will overwhelm them. It's a ridiculous notion to begin with. Trans activists' insistence on prioritising gender identity over sex disappears almost entirely when trans men are involved. I wonder why that could be...
There is a very interesting episode of the Transparency podcast where the 2 (transmen) hosts and 2 transmen guests discuss exactly this, that in the trans community, it is the voices of transwomen which dominate.
Episode 3 from August 2021. It’s titled Autogynephilia but also covers a letter published a little while before the episode was recorded about the power disparity within the community.
I just found out that my account at Medium has been suspended/canceled for something I said about trans people. I don't know what it was because they don't tell you. Apart from some disappointment that I can't start writing there regularly (maybe Substack is a better place to try), I am not greatly put out by this. I read fewer and fewer people on Medium - and I can keep reading you on Substack. And if they are that reactionary and anti-free speech, they would be a dangerous place to start a writing career. Actually, I do regret losing all the followers and the smart people I have interacted with.
Ps. I was told that riddle about the doctor by the boy next door when I was six years old (in 1975) and to my great shame, I was stumped by it. I was being raised by a Second Wave
Feminist, so I felt like I had failed a pretty important test.
"And if they are that reactionary and anti-free speech, they would be a dangerous place to start a writing career"
That's exactly how I'm feeling right now. I'm so angry and disappointed. I've put a lot of time and effort into medium and the thought that it could all be wiped away by some indoctrinated puritan is infuriating.
And yeah, a few of my female friends were equally horrified that they didn't get it. It's amazing how subtle bias can be and how pervasive the societal influence is. What I find most frustrating is the ideologues who, when confronted with evidence of their anti-woman bias, don't care. And, in fact, just double down.
I put a lot of effort into writing there too. I had about a thousand followers, nothing like yours but there was a lot of mutual respect there, a lot of people who shared my frustration with the mediocrity and fads of the software industry, and the banning really shocked me. I had never paid attention to "trans" outside my disgust with the pronouns.
But from all evidence they are getting steadily worse. While they ban people for polite and inconsequential pushback on the most absurd parts of the ideology, they do nothing about writers like Queer Kari whose articles are raw and murderous hate from one end to the other.
Medium now makes Quora look good.
I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do but unless you want to start ranting about TERFs and "transphobia," I'd be ready to bail.
Steve, you've had lots of fair warning. Chris Fox & I have talked about how we got taken down and I told y'all about my convo with Tony Stubblefield a few months ago...I wrote him a polite email asking if they're allowing conversation about trans (I forget how exactly I put it) and he replied that transphobia had no place on Medium. So you should know by now that they're cracking down on free speech, unless it's woke enough. This should only be a semi-surprise. I saw the handwriting on the way when my second article got suspended which was when I moved to Substack, and also copied over what I thought were my best Medium articles (maybe half of what I published) on my Wix blog. Wix won't take me down unless I threaten to shoot someone or something. They, Wordpress and others are just hosters. I'm sure they have their limits. Not sure what would happen if NAMBLA tried to up a Wordpress website....
Actually, WordPress.com accounts are the WordPress CMS combined with hosting. Very limited customizations and plugins - compared to installing it yourself on an independent hosting account. Most WordPress sites are hosted on independent hosting providers. Content rules vary among hosting providers.
My hosting provider of choice for my clients (I'm a graphic designer, web dev) is Scala Hosting. They don't allow porn, torrents, proxies, download oriented sites, irc, hacking tools. I couldn't find anything on what types of content they allow. I don't think they have a content policy, per se. It's pretty simple to go independent if you are technical.
I don't think they do either, although I never tested it. Transgenderism is the real litmus test for woke censorship - you can get deplatformed & censored for other anti-woke sentiments but AFAIK it's by far mostly common for gender ideology critics. I was on WordPress for ten years and transgenderism wasn't even on my radar. I left because it's a pain in the ass to use, I've been on Wix for the last 2-3 years and it's much easier. So far, no problems with my gender-critical articles.
Many call WordPress a community, I don't know if I would call it that. Maybe I missed the community part. I consider it more of a content hosting platform and my experience with them for about 25 years is that they don't do censorship. Wix & WordPress & others don't get caught up in woke censorship scandals AFAIK. You pay them to host your website/blog and it's to their best interests to not bump you off until you offer kiddie porn, hack, express virulent racist opinions (probably beyond your typical MAGA crap) or threaten to kill the President. I remember NAMBLA was challenged back in the '90s finding someone to host them when they got kicked off whatever platform they were on due to community pressure.
Anyway, hosting sites are one thing, being able to promote your content is quite another, which is why we may find online neighbours we don't have much in common with politically if we join them. Still looking to explore Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube now being infiltrated by non-woke lefties kicked off by fanatics.
Never really understood why Medium kicked off paying members for expressing seriously non-phobic opinions they don't like, when at the time Ev Williams was allegedly paying for Medium out of pocket.
Vocal kicking me off I get - I'd recently gone back to a free subscription so it was no skin off either of our noses for them to do it. I was already on the verge of leaving it anyway, it wasn't a great platform for me, so it was probably no-brainer for them.
Except they get a mention in my article. I'm sure they'll change the policy after it goes viral, lol
Like I keep saying. The narrative is god. They act more like a hive mind, than individuals. Like a cult.
Also, I'm sorry about Medium but I'm glad you wrote there. That's where I found you. After reading just one of your articles, I went "OMG. I'm sane!" It was like a breath of fresh air - someone using calm rationality to think through these claims and hyperbole. I was so grateful for your writing. Still am! ;-)
Yes, indeed. You have already created a fantastic body of work on both Medium and Substack. Although you have been careful and will likely be able to continue on there indefinitely, it must be unnerving to know there is this irrational factor hanging over you like the sword of Damocles. What percentage of your work is now on Substack? Are you able to republish your Medium articles there? Would that mean not getting as many reads and exposure? I really hope your work takes off and your audience grows on Substack as much as you deserve it to. When I start writing in earnest I am hoping I will gain access to an audience commensurate with Medium's, but without the outsize influence of the Puritan Fringe.
I've been trying to think what I said that they banned me for. Today I remembered that I commented on an anti-JK Rowling article. They were saying that JK Rowling promised to march with trans people three years ago and wondering why she hadn't done it yet. They were challenging her to finally show up to a march. I commented that with all the death and rape threats JKR had received, there wasn't enough security in the world to keep her safe at a march.
I also got suspended from medium for according to them not following their “rules” related some comment I made on what they call trans articles. Medium does not provide details.
Most platforms that take you down won't. They don't want to tell you what you said 'wrong' because they know their reasons are really lame and indefensible.
Haha, thanks for letting me know. Yeah, they have a little dig every now and again. They absolutely never have anything if substance to say. Just lies and claims that I “hate” them (still waiting for the slightest evidence of that “hate.”).
I might reply to Stephanie’s comment where she claims that she tried to open a reasoned dialogue with me though. That’s a pretty egregious lie even for the extremists on medium.
I posted the conversations here. “You’re always so full of shit” was her opener if memory serves. Reasoned indeed…
From the author (in the comments): “There is an argument to be made that there is effectively no difference between moderates and conservatives.” This is extremist talk. When you toss out nuance, you are nothing but an ideologue. You don't have the right to force people to believe anything. But these people are so convicted of their own rightness, that they believe they do.
No one is arguing against human or civil rights for trans folk. No one. It's a canard they use to amplify their victimhood and win brownie points from the soft minded. I am so sick of their tantrums. The lunatic children are now definitely running the asylum.
Thanks for a comprehensible clarification of the needs and rights of trans men. I have always known that heterosexual people like myself have an easy life compared to those of less-precisely determined gender and biological sex markers, but I now understand much more just how complex daily life is for transgender people.
That is a sad and bad thing. The radical trans-women (toxic males) are doing a great deal of damage to trans-men, women in general and gay people. In my other comment I gave an interesting statistic. When pride was gay it got a lot less hate than now that the trans-radicals have become the face of pride.
As reading them on Medium illustrates, a lot of “trans” are supremely annoying people.
I’ve known a number of pre-fad transgender people; not a one of them ever brought up his “gender identity”; not a one of them ever lectured me about pronouns, “misgendering,” or “deadnaming.”
They were real. The “trans” cult is comprised of fakes. And people are getting sick of them.
Watch any of these transwhiners' videos and they *always* end up crying.
I saw one with a boy in a state that had banned gender affirmation for minors. He said he would have to detransition and "lose all my dreams," then started crying.
These people need a couple of hearty slaps in the face.
I added a comment too. Holy shit, yanno we're going to be supporting these losers with our tax dollars for the rest of their lives. Well maybe not you and me 'coz we don't live there anymore (I don't pay taxes to the US, I don't make enough in Canada) but everyone else is. The idiot is unemployable.
Employers are learning that anyone so fixated on this ideology as to put its "preferred pronouns" on a CV, or to list "trans" groups somewhere, is dead certain to not only be a lousy worker but to be trouble every week, with its own personal chair in Human Resources for the regular whines about pronouns, "misgendering," and "transphobia."
I work from home, I was already doing so a lot long before COVID and moving abroad, but was I in an office and there were "trans" coworkers I would have a real problem. I'd have to email them and CC HR that I am not required to discuss their personal lives in the workplace, since they would never talk about anything else.
I couldn't find your comment on the YouTube. As for the video itself. Stuff like that is hardening my views on the cultural suicide of forsaking reality that is talking place. I'm not speaking of so called left/right but about reality vs lies.
I wrote that maybe the pharmacist;'s daughter has cancer or MS and here's this spoiled brat with green hair expecting to be treated as royalty because of her "gender identity," as she picks up her taxpayer-funded "trans" medications
Just started Mark Goldblatt's new book I Feel, Therefore I am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism which I ordered as soon as I heard him speak on Glenn Loury's how (and be the reason that that ep got taken down on YouTube). He speaks of the difference between correspondence-to-reality vs correspondence-to-power and starts off using the truth discussion (or not much of one) between Pontius Pilate and Jesus.
It takes the position, of course, of what the Republicans used to disparagingly call the 'reality-based community' back during the Bush years, and makes me think that this (plus just having finished The Republican War On Science, mostly also about the Bush years) that this sort of laid the groundwork for woke denial of reality and science as well.
I'm somewhat over the rainbow, that's for sure. The trans radicals are definitely messing with my attitude. Here in Washington State, they just passed a law that if a child comes to school and wants to use new pronouns and start to transition, the school gets them the "gender affirming" care they wish and nobody contacts the parents. Knowing that gender dysphoria in youth is likely a transient condition, this whole "affirming" care concept that rushes kids to blockers, hormones and surgeries rather than psychotherapy is truly tragic. Every single Democrat voted for this law. It horrifies me. Kind of like kidnapping in a way. I've always been inclusive when it comes to lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals. Now I'm finding that I'm less accepting of trans overall. What worries me is that in my own family, my former niece, now nephew was shown hormones and blockers when all she was was a lesbian. She lives in a relationship with a lesbian, but now she's David and has a beard. It seems so superficial. Had the medical community (this was 10 years ago) just discussed the possibility of lesbianism to her and some psychotherapy it would have helped her out of her situation which involved homophobic parents. I believe there was also some sexual abuse occurring. One of the recipes for gender dysphoria amongst girls. Yikes.
Steve, I suggest that you plan your exit from Medium asap, but do not take down what you have already written, because it will continue to be found and to influence people if you don't get it suspended. You may want to be sure there are references to your new home embedded in the texts, or in comments, so that people who discover you through your old writing on Medium will know where to follow you (besides here?).
In other words, my suggestion is that you not push the envelope until your existing writing is blocked, but make a graceful exit with your existing writing serving as a breadcrumb trail.
This is great. And it's not fearmongering that is decreasing support. It's trans women snarfing up all of the trophies. Everyone knows this isn't fair. Perhaps there is a chance to turn the tide on this issue. I would love to see that. Not trans people removed from sports, but some type of system that allows them to compete without erasing women athletes.
I gave that one max claps on Medium but did not comment. I noticed the lack of activity on that article or any thoughtful articles about trans on Medium. I'm close to unsubscribing it has become such a clown show.
From a news article about a pride flag burning in Phoenix: "Since June 2022, there have been an average of 39 anti-LGBTQ protests nationwide each month, compared with just three per month from January 2017 through May 2022, according to a recent report by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a research group that tracks the size of political protests."
Every time they add a letter or symbol to the pride thing (it is now a suitable wifi password) the anti-pride activity gets louder.
The trans-radials should give some thought to this article, but they won't. It's not what they want get to hear and they are the most close minded tribe there is.
You are dead on, as is Steve, about Medium’s cynical and ideologically motivated attempt to bury Steve’s article.
I have considered unsubscribing, but I stay on because it gives me a window into the very ideological trends that we need to be aware of.
But the algorithm they have developed is a dark and foreboding hint of a dystopian future. Steve is a witness to that.
I am astonished that Steve hasn’t been banned for this article, if not for his backlash article months ago.
I was banned for a brief and non-hostile response, and I’ve read if others who were summarily banned for any writing about “trans” that fails to rage about “transphobia,” seeing it everywhere.
I’m guessing they’ve banned hundreds of paying customers, maybe thousands.
Any guesses why you get a pass, Steve?
"Any guesses why you get a pass, Steve?"
I actually have no idea. I've always just put it down to the fact that my articles are well sourced and don't say anything even remotely hateful, but after reading the email that accompanied Rogue's account ban, I'm really not sure that makes a difference.
"Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights."
I mean, holy crap! This on a platform where the n-word can be written with impunity, where misandry is de rigueur, and pseudoscience about the "sex spectrum" is commonplace. But god forbid you "misgender" (read: correctly gender) someone.
As I've said many times, I've never seen such cult-like fervour around a social issue before. It's scary. I'll need to seriously rethink my use of Medium if this is the level of indoctrination in their "Trust & Safety" team. It just seems reckless to rely on a platform that could delete my account, unilaterally, over such minor and subjective slights.
Almost all the "trans" writing I ever read on there was raw murderous hate from the first sentence to the last.
But even hint that "trans" women are biologically male and you'll have a red box within a day.
"it is now a suitable wifi password"
I let out a harsh, cold bray of laughter.
You should go wardriving around and see how many routers you can connect to using that as your password.
Yep, the Medium Woke Reign of Error continues, clearly. I say to you seriously: You may well be flirting with an eventual suspension or ban.
I'll share this one. I can't clap on Medium, I tried to do that a few weeks ago and the Red Banner of Doom, which disappeared after I messaged with Tony Stubblefield, reappeared. So I apparently am still banned after all. Or something.
Yeah, this demonstrates pretty clearly that it's the biology, stupid. And the movement is, as every movement always is unless you kick the men out, all about the men and their 'rights' (which somehow always seem to be sexual!) I've noticed that transmen don't seem nearly as eager to join male sports teams or change in male changing rooms and they NEVER seem to want to compete with biological men. And they are strangely silent as biological men in dresses dominate the conversation...as always. Funny how women have to do this every single time because men will, every single time, no matter who they are and how they 'identify', dominate the conversation and the movement and shut women down consciously or unconsciously. It happened in the civil rights movement and New Left in the '60s and '70s, it happened with the lesbian movement in the LGB movement, and now it's happening in the trans movement.
"You may well be flirting with an eventual suspension or ban."
Yep, I just read Rogue's suspension email and I'm absolutely furious. It seems inevitable that I'll lose all my hard work if I continue to write about trans issues on Medium. "Trust & Safety" is just getting more and more authoritarian and censorious. I'll need to have serious think about what to do over the next few weeks.
I do, perhaps inevitably, think you're being a little unfair on men here though. Or, at least, painting in too broad strokes. The most unreasonable, entitled and aggressive people in any movement are likely be men. No argument there. But I don't think it's right to conflate all men with the worst of us. Nor to ignore the women who full-throatedly support the insanity we're currently seeing.
This is often portrayed as a battle of women against men in dresses. But "cis" women are consistently the group that most strongly supports this latest assault on women's rights. I've had many, many conversations with women, both in real life and online, where I was the one arguing for women's sex-based rights.
If there were ever an issue where we'd be better off setting aside our presumptive battle lines around sex, I think this is it.
"It seems inevitable that I'll lose all my hard work if I continue to write about trans issues on Medium." Yes, you will. Backup your account NOW. I did as soon as I put up my last Dave Chappelle because I *knew* i was going down like Trump at Mar-A-Lago :)
I'm quite certain you're referring to Roger he/him, the wokiest woke dude on the woke-addled Medium so-woke-you'd-swear-they're-on-cocaine staff. And Elle Beau is the wokiest pseudo-feminist dimbulb who claimed (at least at the time) that transwomen were women. I don't know if she's changed since then. I only had one interaction with her last year, when I complained about a newsletter they kept sending me I'd unsubscribed from. Elle was the one who responded (thank Goddess it wasn't Roger he/him). I'll change my opinion of her if someone can claim that in the last two years she's stopped being a cheerleader for transvestites who take themselves too seriously.
So yeah, you are quickly becoming too insufficiently woke for the Medium Wokenazis. The good news is Substack does its level best not to censor anyone unless they engage in genuine hate speech. But ultimately, if you want full control over your articles, you'll want to have a website or a blog that is *yours*. Even with a hoster, you could get taken down but it's extremely unlikely that will happen until AOC is elected president and anyone to the right of Roger he/him are declared Executables.
The bad news is many of the alternatives are right-wing shitholes, since they were the first to get deplatformed. The good news is I can't find any right-wing platforms that deplatform lefties for being insufficiently MAGA. They may chase them off with abuse, but that's not censorship.
The better news is that some of them are being infiltrated by lefties who are now getting deplatformed by the wokenazis. And a few are trying to be multipartisan AND keep the platform from becoming a right-wing shithole. Tribel, a Twitter alternative, I call tongue-in-cheek a 'left-wing shithole' because it was started by Democratic activists. Keep an eye on this one: They're raising funds to become more of a competitor to Big Tech. It's a lefty platform with a lot of MAGA stuff on it although not, AFAIK, extreme let's-bomb-the-Capitol crap. From the email I got the other day:
"We are equally excited to announce that our market valuation has also experienced remarkable growth. From $19 million, we have now reached a market valuation of $21 million. This progress is a testament to the potential and value of Tribel in the market.
But we're not stopping there! Our sights are set on further growth and expansion. As we cross the $1,000,000 mark on Wefunder, we anticipate reaching a market valuation of $25 million. This ambitious goal reflects our commitment to pushing the boundaries and unlocking the full potential of Tribel."
There are a few other platforms you might want to check out. Other blogging platforms exist too, but I can't find any that commit to not censoring. The ugly truth is that once you're kicked off Medium you will be starting over from scratch, and AFAIK there isn't another platform out there with Medium's lengthy audience reach. OTOH, few will have to pay to read your work like they do at Medium if you want more than three articles a month.
I've got an article coming out in a couple of weeks on which platforms aren't censoring. I'll send you an early draft if you want it now.
As for being hard on men, I re-read what I wrote and yes, you're right that a lot of idiot women are supporting this, and I've written about what's wrong with the left and my article last week was on how we need to reclaim liberalism and progressivism from the Regressive Left (more commonly called the 'woke' now). However my focus is on how much men dominate this movement, and sadly, it's the history of social justice. I've often said revolutions come in pairs, even if the second one is less noticeable. The first one is ALWAYS for men no matter what they say. Later, the women get fed up with them dominating the work and getting marginalized and the second revolution comes into play.
Like it or not, men as a whole dominate, consciously or unconsciously. I've seen it with some of my friends, and I'm not hanging out with the MAGAs. I think there are even more men involved in this than we know because sometimes they do a really, really good job of looking and sounding like women - at least until their male brain takes over and they say something that immediately tips off a bio woman they're not who they say they are.
Maybe I was being a bit blanket-y, point taken...but if you look at the flame wars on social media, and the videos of female protesters being assaulted and beaten by people in dresses, or indeterminate clothing and hairstyles, you will see it's mostly bio men engaging in this. I'm sure some bio females are taking part too, but a bio female never knows whether she'll best another woman in battle, whereas a man can be almost-certain (or at least not pick an Amazon to fight with).
In fact, your entire article pretty much highlighted just how male this 'social justice' movement is. And how transmen, for some reason, aren't nearly as public or outspoken as, well, transvestites who take themselves too seriously.
I hear your point that trans activism _by trans people_ is dominated by biological males. This is numerically a tiny portion of the population, as trans is a small minority and only a fraction of trans folks are trans activists of the sort we are discussing (the trans folks I've personally known have mostly been trying to live their lives, not overturn the cisheteropatriarchy).
Steve may also be right that the majority of trans activism/support/allyship by non-trans people - which is a far larger portion of the population, and give the TRA the power which it has - has a higher proportion of biological females.
So it depends on which facet is being described.
I'm not writing women out of this. I hold them fully accountable for this crap, and yes, like you, the ones I've known have all been perfectly fine people. There's a Hidden Tribes research study on political groups in the US that found that the MAGAs and the woke...together...comprise about 8% of US political opinion. Like dogs, the littlest groups make the most noise. I'm quite certain the rest of us - conservative, liberal, disaffected, etc...don't agree much with either side.
https://hiddentribes.us/
Yes, I read that a while back and it's a good report. It was enlightening.
---
I happened to just read this article in the Atlantic. Have a quick glance at the first graph. In the just the last few years, there has been an astonishing shift to the left among women, but not so much among men.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-marriage-rate-different-political-views/674358/
I've seen other statistics indicating that liberal women are very much leading the mass charge towards CSJ. (Mass charge as in providing the tens of millions of supporters, vs a few activists). I see CSJ ideology (Critical Social Justice ideology) as a mind virus which uses compassion and the need to be seen as virtuous as its entry point to infect a large number of decent people just trying to do the right thing, care for the needy and make the world a better place; and statistically there are more women who are susceptible because of that entry point to the psyche.
Some of the people I've known who have succumbed were quite nice people, at least until they felt they had the moral high ground because they were defending the helpless and thus didn't need to treat opponents as they would wish to be treated. It's like a drug and it hijacks the reward centers. Those infect often start out from a very caring place, but after a few years more than a tiny portion of them appear to get off as much on morally demonizing anybody who dissents, as they do on actually helping anybody on the ground.
I can't read the article since I don't subscribe, but the first two 'graphs sound like what I've read elsewhere - politics being just one reason why people won't marry certain others. A few years ago, Trump supporters had a much harder time getting a date.
Jonathan Haidt is working on a new book about social media's impact on young people (I subscribe to his Substack) and he notes that liberal kids have higher rates of mental illness than conservative kids, and liberal young girls & women have the highest rates of all. He never mentions transgender issues but he does cover suicide as a social contagion and it points very strongly to the theory (in my mind anyway) that it's entirely possible suicidal kids are drawn to the transgender movement, marketed as the latest 'drug' to cure whatever ails you, rather than that transgender kids are at higher risk for suicide.
Fact is, spiralling suicide rates came several years before the trans craze so 'underlying pathologies' strike me as far more likely than 'so many people born in the wrong body'.
Hi Nicole, would you mind also sending me a copy of your article about platforms that don't censor? Or just reply to me here when it's ready?
Sure, Clemence. I'll forget who wanted to know in a few weeks ;) Email me at nchardenet@gmail.com and I'll PDF the draft for you.
Thanks!
It'll be out at 10am this morning on Substack. So just go to my profile & you should see it. Which Platforms Don't Censor or something.
Thank you! Looking forward to it
Excuse me, Nicole, but this just sounds like yet another example of women refusing to accept men as allies in any way. And we read altogether too much of that.
I'm male, I care about women, I am passionate about equality in matter related to the workplace and wages, but I have encountered nothing but hostility and had to withdraw from feminism altogether in the fish/bicycle days because the smoldering glares of hatred wore me out.
Not everyone who has a dick is one.
Not clear on how you think that sounds like refusing male allies. Can you elaborate, please?
Thank you for lifting the lid on this hypocrisy. I’d like to build on your idea of transmen being the ‘great clarifiers’ as you put it, by adding another aspect of denialism: have you ever noticed how Transwomen are predisposed to power. They are famous for being politicians, film directors, sports stars, billionaires and even physician generals in the US Army. Whilst Transmen are famous for... well, being pregnant. So after all this so-called progress and gender-veneering, we’ve merely clarified what we already knew, that biology is determining.
"have you ever noticed how Transwomen are predisposed to power. They are famous for being politicians, film directors, sports stars, billionaires and even physician generals in the US Army. Whilst Transmen are famous for...well, being pregnant."
Good God, this is an excellent point. Thank you so much for pointing this out.
I can’t take credit for it, but I’m passing on.
Great point and well put.
Other than Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who seems to have a lot of power within that organization. The ACLU lawyer who made it a major goal to try to keep **Irreversible Damage** (by Abigail Shrier) from ever getting to the bookshelves.
Not disagreeing with your overall point, just noting one of the larger exceptions.
I have gotten suspended from Medium. Attached is their email on why I got suspended. They didn't site any specific comment. I am always very respectful but direct on my comments. I have been on Medium since 2017 and only started receiving warnings in the last year. I believe what's happening is that the vocal trans community is reporting on comments that they do not agree with as "harassment or hateful". Medium as a result is becoming a vocal left echo chamber on trans issues and racial issues. Not surprising given how little content from independent or conservative authors there exists on Medium. I only read Medium to get a perspective on where the vocal left is on issues.
At this point I have deleted my Medium account. They state that everything is deleted. Interesting twist on that. They are in violation of their own statements. If I click on a link to one of my old articles, they state "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium rules. That should not happen given I have no account on Medium.
They are doing what other social media companies are doing. They are creating an echo chamber that ideally gets more paid subscribers. What's needed is a concept like Medium that is owned by authors. Authors can not block comments. Any reports of "harassment or hate" would be public and judged by readers and/or authors as whether its inappropriate. Might be controversial but Medium needs an "Elon Musk" like rework to push back on the vocal left. Would not be hard to create.
The relevant parts of the Medium email
---------------------------------------
Hello,
We are writing to notify you that your Medium.com account is in violation of our rules on harassment and hateful content, and your profile and posts will no longer be publicly available on Medium.
Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience.
Thanks,
Trust & Safety
"Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience."
Holy crap! Thanks for posting this Rogue. I'm going to urgently re-think posting on Medium in light of this.
I mean, first of all, where is this energy when it comes to literally any other group of people on Medium. Even during the height of the racial reckoning, I received tons of racist abuse in my comments with not a peep from "Trust & Safety."
Secondly, what exactly does "undermining the dignity" of trans people even mean"? Can I tell the truth about biological sex? Can I point out that simple, uncontroversial fact that trans women are male? Or that a wound in your crotch where your penis used to be is not, in fact, a vagina? Can I question the legitimacy of confusing and medicalising children? Is the bar simply at any truth that hurts some trans person's feelings? As you say, we'll never know because they don't tell you.
And lastly, what do they hope to achieve by creating this climate of silence? All it does is penalise people who want to talk honestly about the conflicts between women's rights and trans women's inclusion. People who want to protect children from a lifetime of medicalisation. It's never been about removing hateful content directed at trans people. I don't think I've ever seen *anything* hateful about trans people on Medium. It's about demonising people who dare to care about trans people AND women.
God, I'm furious about this!
"Or that a wound in your crotch where your penis used to be is not, in fact, a vagina? "
Oh, that is very good.
But a phalloplasty is considerably more grotesque, a lump of arm or thigh skin shaped as a cylinder and grafted between the legs, its appearance enough to make strong men vomit.
The only thing that frustrates me is the same thing that inspired JK Rowling to engage on Twitter. I have been listening to the podcast "The Witch Trials of JK Rowling". Its presents the concepts of how the vocal left emerge on Tumbler and the vocal right emerged on 4chan. Its discusses these platforms as the original echo chambers that started the culture war.
I fully support trans people's right to exist. I also fully understand why people like JK Rowling and Riley Gaines have issues with a trans-woman being allowed into traditional women's only spaces and activities. The vocal trans community has shut down the conservation on this. I don't know if upper levels in Medium are suspending people like me because they believe my comments are harassment or hate or they are just trying to stay out of a backlash by the vocal trans community. Regardless, from my perspective, Medium has now become what Tumbler was. Its an echo chamber for the vocal left.
What is most frustrating is that Medium suspends people like me with no details on what specific comment or article violated their rules. That makes me believe they are scared to publish the details.
There is a reason why many in the LGB community no longer want the T to be associated with LGB. That reason is because the vocal T community refuses to allow a rationale discussion on the complexity of the issues surrounding being trans.
I listened to that as well. Very interesting. And I'm pretty much with you on everything else. I am an old school liberal who is right-coded now because of my positions. I am anti-dehumanization of all people but I'm not about to let other people do my thinking for me.
It only takes one report of "transphobia" to get your account banned.
It's a bald-faced lie that "Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization." I looked into the murders ("trans genocide") for an article recently. In both Canada & the US, it's <50 a year murdered. Which is <50 too many, but to put things in perspective, women are killed by the THOUSANDS in both countries every year. And I wouldn't even call *that* genocide, since genocide is an organized group persecution and the majority of bio women & transpeople murdered every year is pretty similar - male partners. So, domestic homicides rather than random transpanicking strangers homicide.
And since they demand that you LIE and claim trans women are something they're not, it's all for the best, really. Maybe you should create the blogging platform you suggest...maybe Elon Musk will even contribute, LOL!
There have always been people who get some perverse validation out of feeling persecuted. The "trans" creeps are merely the latest.
I remember gay men whose lives were devoted to being as offensive as they could manage and who never stopped whining about "homophobia."
It's a sickness.
Victimhood allows you to emotionally blackmail everyone around you. For someone who feels powerless, it can be heady stuff.
It's not just about validation today, Chris.
It's about gaining and retaining power over others. A good part of their power, and what puts them at the top of the oppression olympics, is fostering the belief that their very survival is continually threatened and are dying in huge numbers. This might be sincere delusion, or it might be cynical manipulation, or some mixture, depending on the person and context.
Standard hyperbole serving self interest.
Persecution validation. Genocide. The “trans teen suicide plague.”
This is their moral foundation and thus is their weakness, because it isn’t true.
This is what we need to dismantle.
The worm is turning. People are getting sick of them. LGB no T is on the front lines.
Walsh’s film has had a hundred million views. Walsh is a putz but his film is very powerful.
I vary by the day (and sometimes more often) in how much optimism / pessimism I'm feeling about this.
I see a major pushback developing. The long march through the institutions has met some stumbling blocks, and no longer can count on each next conquest just quietly rolling over.
But the institutions and the educational, cultural and economic elites are already deeply pervaded by the ideology, and that's not going to change easily.
What I see is:
* affective polarization getting ever stronger
* an increasing culture-war divide between the elites and the masses
* increasing geographic assortment creating ever more extreme legislation
* a different set of dysfunctions growing on the right
So I see a growing pushback, but I'm not sure it's going to result in a more humane rational society.
I SERIOUSLY don’t like finding myself agreeing with the right. But it’s the red states that are banning gender affirmation.
I have to face the fact that my faction is promoting this “trans” shit. I send a lot of emails.
But we have the moral high ground. Castrating little boys, mutilating little girls, these are not cool.
"Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming,
>>>>claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”)<<<<"
And there you have it, plainly and openly stated: there is no place for scientific fact on Medium, lest some deranged and delusional "trans" activist chooses to take offense.
I snuck back on there just to read ("Khym Mahn" if anyone cares) and I am getting daily emails groveling for the monthly fee that would give me unlimited reading.
I am going to use your quote above to tell them why I am not giving them a dime.
Trust and Safety? How Orwellian.
I just engineered y "suspension" with my first and presumably last post:
==
Why I am Not Becoming a Member of Medium
There is no place for scientific truth on Medium
A friend was recently banned from Medium and in the email he received he was told:
"We are writing to notify you that your Medium.com account is in violation of our rules on harassment and hateful content, and your profile and posts will no longer be publicly available on Medium.
Transgender and nonbinary individuals currently face unprecedented levels of social persecution and marginalization. Therefore, we do not allow content that may undermine their dignity and rights. This may include misgendering, dead-naming, claims that transgender individuals are not their gender identity (“trans women are men”), or erroneous claims based on disinformation or pseudoscience."
Medium will never receive a dime from me if this rubbish is enforced.
That “trans women are men” is an uncontroversial biological fact. Surgically modifying a man’s body to create an appearance of the feminine does not create a woman. A “trans woman” is a man impersonating a woman, and a wound where his penis used to be is not a vagina.
I have read on SubStack that Medium has banned thousands of paying customers and good writers for even infinitesimal denials of “trans” ideology; I will never give money to your publication even if years ago it was a great place to write.
It’s the “trans” ideology that is the pseudoscience.
“Trans” and “nonbinary” people are less persecuted than actual women and they do harm to gay people, to real women, and, worst, to children, promoting experimental medical treatments including enthusiastic neutering of children in what is grotesquely called “enabling their true selves.”
This post will be hastily removed and my account “suspended,” which is fine, but I will never pay for this. And I hope the surgeons, therapists, pill-mills and McGender clinics’ staff are all soon in jail.
Maybe your Trust and Safety staff belong with them.
==
Apologies to Steve for not crediting the wound part but it would just get him banned.
Yea I remain on Medium only to take the pulse of the “succesor ideology” to use Wesley Yang’s apt phrase. Can you imagine if the moderators on Medium and their ilk ran the country? They already mostly run the culture. Goodbye freedom. Trump and MAGA or this crap--pick your poison.
Substack please don’t go there!!!!
Glenn Loury, the conservative black intellectual here, had an episode removed on YouTube recently because he had a guest on who speculated that transfolk may actually be suffering from a mental illness, something similar to schizophrenia. Whether you agree or not, it's an *opinion*, and was clearly that, and yet the trans-nazis got his ep taken down with a 'first strike'.
He did a podcast with his Creative Director who reached out to Substack to get their take on censorship and to make sure Glenn didn't run afoul of them again.
I Feel, Therefore I Am - The interview with Mark Goldblatt that got Loury his ‘first strike’ with YouTube - https://glennloury.substack.com/p/i-feel-therefore-i-am-repost
I Was Censored By YouTube - Glenn Loury, speaking with is creative director on what happened, and how Substack is committed to free speech - https://glennloury.substack.com/p/i-was-censored-by-youtube?lli=1&utm_source=%2Fsearch%2FYouTube&utm_medium=reader2
I'm with you. Nazi Germany or the North Korea? MAGA or woke? I'll take the bullet, please.
Should have added before I sent...Substack is pretty committed to non-censorship. NO platform is censorship-free but we want the platforms that only engaged in pre-woke censorship, which is only those miscreants who get REALLY out of hand.
It does need a block feature. It has trolls.
Read Reality’s Last Stand. Look for one “Steersman.” Classic stalker troll.
Just checked him out, briefly, esp the exchange where he called you asinine and without evidence & you said you'd never make the mistake of reading/responding to him again. Checking out his profile (briefly) it looks like he actually does produce his own work and engage actively on SS. He sure does look like a mega-putz but I don't know, is he truly a troll? There are intellectual wankers everywhere who dispute everything, demand ridiculous amounts of evidence, make crazy claims etc. but I don't count them as trolls, customarily, if they're actually contributing with original material. Of course, he could be both, I don't know. I didn't look too closely. But mega-putz, for sure. Yeah, SS needs blocks. I don't consider blocking others censorship. Sometimes you do it for your mental health, and some do it because they're intellectual p**sies. I blocked India Willoughby, some big-name TA from England the other day on Twitter, because she got snarky with me over something or other but didn't allow me to respond. So I retweeted the exchange and tagged her saying I was blocking this person because she was a coward for not letting people respond. She's not a troll IMO but I don't engage with cowards.
He’s a troll. Read more than one of his posts. He has this nutty position that male and female only apply after puberty and that prepubescent children and postmenopausal women have no sex. The host of that SS has a doctorate in biology; Steersman has a two year vocational degree and zero biology.
But. He writes the same words, phrases, sentences and whole paragraphs over and over. He is not only repetitive, but condescends to everyone since everyone thinks his hobbyhorse is absurd. He works in little bits of Latin and endless links to create an intellectual impression which is then demolishes with his ridiculous biology. If you actually read his links you'll see that he has misrepresented and rewritten them, and they do not support his thesis.
And he's been doing this for six years.
The repetition is trolling; the condescension is trolling; posting the same two links to some journal literally hundreds of times is trolling. Calling his bizarre idea “standard biological definitions” in every single post is trolling.
Colin won’t ban anyone. SS needs a block feature.
Another clarifying article, Steve, thanks.
Let's add one more datapoint. In the news when Lia Thomas was competing in women's sports, sometimes it was also mentioned that trans man Iszac Henig was at the same swim meet - also competing in the women's division. (There was some note about the two sharing a hug in the pool).
Henig could have competed in the men's league, but chose to compete in the women's league, wearing a women's bathing suit (which would have been very difficult for some with acute gender dysphoria).
Why? I never heard about any trans activists pushing to use gender identity to make Henig compete with the men.
At that time, Henig had socially transitioned, and had had a double mastectomy, but had delayed testosterone treatment until after the championships so as to abide by the doping rules for women.
"which would have been very difficult for some with acute gender dysphoria."
Yep, this story very effectively puts the lie to the idea that trans people simply can't compete with athletes of the same sex or their dysphoria will overwhelm them. It's a ridiculous notion to begin with. Trans activists' insistence on prioritising gender identity over sex disappears almost entirely when trans men are involved. I wonder why that could be...
There is a very interesting episode of the Transparency podcast where the 2 (transmen) hosts and 2 transmen guests discuss exactly this, that in the trans community, it is the voices of transwomen which dominate.
I'll have to check that out! Do you happen to remember the title of the episode?
Episode 3 from August 2021. It’s titled Autogynephilia but also covers a letter published a little while before the episode was recorded about the power disparity within the community.
I get tired of needing to perform this little mental flip, that "trans women" are actually men and "trans men" are actually women.
Tag me too, please. I'd like to hear this one as well.
Hi Nicole, it’s episode 3 (from 2021, though I only listened this year).
Thank you!!! Much appreciated!
La plus ca change.
I just found out that my account at Medium has been suspended/canceled for something I said about trans people. I don't know what it was because they don't tell you. Apart from some disappointment that I can't start writing there regularly (maybe Substack is a better place to try), I am not greatly put out by this. I read fewer and fewer people on Medium - and I can keep reading you on Substack. And if they are that reactionary and anti-free speech, they would be a dangerous place to start a writing career. Actually, I do regret losing all the followers and the smart people I have interacted with.
Ps. I was told that riddle about the doctor by the boy next door when I was six years old (in 1975) and to my great shame, I was stumped by it. I was being raised by a Second Wave
Feminist, so I felt like I had failed a pretty important test.
"And if they are that reactionary and anti-free speech, they would be a dangerous place to start a writing career"
That's exactly how I'm feeling right now. I'm so angry and disappointed. I've put a lot of time and effort into medium and the thought that it could all be wiped away by some indoctrinated puritan is infuriating.
And yeah, a few of my female friends were equally horrified that they didn't get it. It's amazing how subtle bias can be and how pervasive the societal influence is. What I find most frustrating is the ideologues who, when confronted with evidence of their anti-woman bias, don't care. And, in fact, just double down.
Download your writing.
I put a lot of effort into writing there too. I had about a thousand followers, nothing like yours but there was a lot of mutual respect there, a lot of people who shared my frustration with the mediocrity and fads of the software industry, and the banning really shocked me. I had never paid attention to "trans" outside my disgust with the pronouns.
But from all evidence they are getting steadily worse. While they ban people for polite and inconsequential pushback on the most absurd parts of the ideology, they do nothing about writers like Queer Kari whose articles are raw and murderous hate from one end to the other.
Medium now makes Quora look good.
I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do but unless you want to start ranting about TERFs and "transphobia," I'd be ready to bail.
Steve, you've had lots of fair warning. Chris Fox & I have talked about how we got taken down and I told y'all about my convo with Tony Stubblefield a few months ago...I wrote him a polite email asking if they're allowing conversation about trans (I forget how exactly I put it) and he replied that transphobia had no place on Medium. So you should know by now that they're cracking down on free speech, unless it's woke enough. This should only be a semi-surprise. I saw the handwriting on the way when my second article got suspended which was when I moved to Substack, and also copied over what I thought were my best Medium articles (maybe half of what I published) on my Wix blog. Wix won't take me down unless I threaten to shoot someone or something. They, Wordpress and others are just hosters. I'm sure they have their limits. Not sure what would happen if NAMBLA tried to up a Wordpress website....
Actually, WordPress.com accounts are the WordPress CMS combined with hosting. Very limited customizations and plugins - compared to installing it yourself on an independent hosting account. Most WordPress sites are hosted on independent hosting providers. Content rules vary among hosting providers.
My hosting provider of choice for my clients (I'm a graphic designer, web dev) is Scala Hosting. They don't allow porn, torrents, proxies, download oriented sites, irc, hacking tools. I couldn't find anything on what types of content they allow. I don't think they have a content policy, per se. It's pretty simple to go independent if you are technical.
I don't think they do either, although I never tested it. Transgenderism is the real litmus test for woke censorship - you can get deplatformed & censored for other anti-woke sentiments but AFAIK it's by far mostly common for gender ideology critics. I was on WordPress for ten years and transgenderism wasn't even on my radar. I left because it's a pain in the ass to use, I've been on Wix for the last 2-3 years and it's much easier. So far, no problems with my gender-critical articles.
That's a relief. WordPress is definitely geared toward developers like myself and it's logic is non-intuitive.
Anyway, just pointing out there are alternatives for Steve if he wants to leave Medium and set up his own website.
Many call WordPress a community, I don't know if I would call it that. Maybe I missed the community part. I consider it more of a content hosting platform and my experience with them for about 25 years is that they don't do censorship. Wix & WordPress & others don't get caught up in woke censorship scandals AFAIK. You pay them to host your website/blog and it's to their best interests to not bump you off until you offer kiddie porn, hack, express virulent racist opinions (probably beyond your typical MAGA crap) or threaten to kill the President. I remember NAMBLA was challenged back in the '90s finding someone to host them when they got kicked off whatever platform they were on due to community pressure.
Anyway, hosting sites are one thing, being able to promote your content is quite another, which is why we may find online neighbours we don't have much in common with politically if we join them. Still looking to explore Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube now being infiltrated by non-woke lefties kicked off by fanatics.
Never really understood why Medium kicked off paying members for expressing seriously non-phobic opinions they don't like, when at the time Ev Williams was allegedly paying for Medium out of pocket.
Vocal kicking me off I get - I'd recently gone back to a free subscription so it was no skin off either of our noses for them to do it. I was already on the verge of leaving it anyway, it wasn't a great platform for me, so it was probably no-brainer for them.
Except they get a mention in my article. I'm sure they'll change the policy after it goes viral, lol
Like I keep saying. The narrative is god. They act more like a hive mind, than individuals. Like a cult.
Also, I'm sorry about Medium but I'm glad you wrote there. That's where I found you. After reading just one of your articles, I went "OMG. I'm sane!" It was like a breath of fresh air - someone using calm rationality to think through these claims and hyperbole. I was so grateful for your writing. Still am! ;-)
Yes, indeed. You have already created a fantastic body of work on both Medium and Substack. Although you have been careful and will likely be able to continue on there indefinitely, it must be unnerving to know there is this irrational factor hanging over you like the sword of Damocles. What percentage of your work is now on Substack? Are you able to republish your Medium articles there? Would that mean not getting as many reads and exposure? I really hope your work takes off and your audience grows on Substack as much as you deserve it to. When I start writing in earnest I am hoping I will gain access to an audience commensurate with Medium's, but without the outsize influence of the Puritan Fringe.
Mine too, but that was my intent.
The email was signed by some moron with pronouns.
Perfect
I've been trying to think what I said that they banned me for. Today I remembered that I commented on an anti-JK Rowling article. They were saying that JK Rowling promised to march with trans people three years ago and wondering why she hadn't done it yet. They were challenging her to finally show up to a march. I commented that with all the death and rape threats JKR had received, there wasn't enough security in the world to keep her safe at a march.
I also got suspended from medium for according to them not following their “rules” related some comment I made on what they call trans articles. Medium does not provide details.
If they send you a "trans" article recommendation and you respond with "I don't want recommendations on this topic," a checkbox, you will be banned.
You don't even need to write anything.
Most platforms that take you down won't. They don't want to tell you what you said 'wrong' because they know their reasons are really lame and indefensible.
Was it recent?
Just brilliant.
They are coming after you with pitchforks Steve.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/i-support-queer-rights-but-7eda17fae1e0
Haha, thanks for letting me know. Yeah, they have a little dig every now and again. They absolutely never have anything if substance to say. Just lies and claims that I “hate” them (still waiting for the slightest evidence of that “hate.”).
I might reply to Stephanie’s comment where she claims that she tried to open a reasoned dialogue with me though. That’s a pretty egregious lie even for the extremists on medium.
I posted the conversations here. “You’re always so full of shit” was her opener if memory serves. Reasoned indeed…
Remember what that social "scientist" said in Walsh's film: the search for truth is transphobic.
You don't need to express any hate. But most of the "trans" writers do nothing else.
I hope you leave the platform, without getting banned and your writing removed, but leave a polite explanation why you are leaving
From the author (in the comments): “There is an argument to be made that there is effectively no difference between moderates and conservatives.” This is extremist talk. When you toss out nuance, you are nothing but an ideologue. You don't have the right to force people to believe anything. But these people are so convicted of their own rightness, that they believe they do.
No one is arguing against human or civil rights for trans folk. No one. It's a canard they use to amplify their victimhood and win brownie points from the soft minded. I am so sick of their tantrums. The lunatic children are now definitely running the asylum.
Thanks for a comprehensible clarification of the needs and rights of trans men. I have always known that heterosexual people like myself have an easy life compared to those of less-precisely determined gender and biological sex markers, but I now understand much more just how complex daily life is for transgender people.
That is a sad and bad thing. The radical trans-women (toxic males) are doing a great deal of damage to trans-men, women in general and gay people. In my other comment I gave an interesting statistic. When pride was gay it got a lot less hate than now that the trans-radicals have become the face of pride.
As reading them on Medium illustrates, a lot of “trans” are supremely annoying people.
I’ve known a number of pre-fad transgender people; not a one of them ever brought up his “gender identity”; not a one of them ever lectured me about pronouns, “misgendering,” or “deadnaming.”
They were real. The “trans” cult is comprised of fakes. And people are getting sick of them.
An example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BcG2o76xmbE
I added a comment about the pharmacist.
Watch any of these transwhiners' videos and they *always* end up crying.
I saw one with a boy in a state that had banned gender affirmation for minors. He said he would have to detransition and "lose all my dreams," then started crying.
These people need a couple of hearty slaps in the face.
I added a comment too. Holy shit, yanno we're going to be supporting these losers with our tax dollars for the rest of their lives. Well maybe not you and me 'coz we don't live there anymore (I don't pay taxes to the US, I don't make enough in Canada) but everyone else is. The idiot is unemployable.
Employers are learning that anyone so fixated on this ideology as to put its "preferred pronouns" on a CV, or to list "trans" groups somewhere, is dead certain to not only be a lousy worker but to be trouble every week, with its own personal chair in Human Resources for the regular whines about pronouns, "misgendering," and "transphobia."
I work from home, I was already doing so a lot long before COVID and moving abroad, but was I in an office and there were "trans" coworkers I would have a real problem. I'd have to email them and CC HR that I am not required to discuss their personal lives in the workplace, since they would never talk about anything else.
I couldn't find your comment on the YouTube. As for the video itself. Stuff like that is hardening my views on the cultural suicide of forsaking reality that is talking place. I'm not speaking of so called left/right but about reality vs lies.
I wrote that maybe the pharmacist;'s daughter has cancer or MS and here's this spoiled brat with green hair expecting to be treated as royalty because of her "gender identity," as she picks up her taxpayer-funded "trans" medications
Just started Mark Goldblatt's new book I Feel, Therefore I am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism which I ordered as soon as I heard him speak on Glenn Loury's how (and be the reason that that ep got taken down on YouTube). He speaks of the difference between correspondence-to-reality vs correspondence-to-power and starts off using the truth discussion (or not much of one) between Pontius Pilate and Jesus.
It takes the position, of course, of what the Republicans used to disparagingly call the 'reality-based community' back during the Bush years, and makes me think that this (plus just having finished The Republican War On Science, mostly also about the Bush years) that this sort of laid the groundwork for woke denial of reality and science as well.
I'm somewhat over the rainbow, that's for sure. The trans radicals are definitely messing with my attitude. Here in Washington State, they just passed a law that if a child comes to school and wants to use new pronouns and start to transition, the school gets them the "gender affirming" care they wish and nobody contacts the parents. Knowing that gender dysphoria in youth is likely a transient condition, this whole "affirming" care concept that rushes kids to blockers, hormones and surgeries rather than psychotherapy is truly tragic. Every single Democrat voted for this law. It horrifies me. Kind of like kidnapping in a way. I've always been inclusive when it comes to lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals. Now I'm finding that I'm less accepting of trans overall. What worries me is that in my own family, my former niece, now nephew was shown hormones and blockers when all she was was a lesbian. She lives in a relationship with a lesbian, but now she's David and has a beard. It seems so superficial. Had the medical community (this was 10 years ago) just discussed the possibility of lesbianism to her and some psychotherapy it would have helped her out of her situation which involved homophobic parents. I believe there was also some sexual abuse occurring. One of the recipes for gender dysphoria amongst girls. Yikes.
Steve, I suggest that you plan your exit from Medium asap, but do not take down what you have already written, because it will continue to be found and to influence people if you don't get it suspended. You may want to be sure there are references to your new home embedded in the texts, or in comments, so that people who discover you through your old writing on Medium will know where to follow you (besides here?).
In other words, my suggestion is that you not push the envelope until your existing writing is blocked, but make a graceful exit with your existing writing serving as a breadcrumb trail.
And write why you are leaving, emphasizing the stifling of honest debate and the banning of good writers,
“....and trans men are men.” NOT when it comes to locker rooms, bathrooms, sports or prisons!!!! And understandable.
What is not understandable is the double standard. Men are pigs...even when they change genders.
Progress. Slow, but progress.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/12/trans-athletes-us-support-for-allowing-team-choice-falls-poll-finds/70306217007/
This is great. And it's not fearmongering that is decreasing support. It's trans women snarfing up all of the trophies. Everyone knows this isn't fair. Perhaps there is a chance to turn the tide on this issue. I would love to see that. Not trans people removed from sports, but some type of system that allows them to compete without erasing women athletes.