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These are the things I want to say to you. The things I want you to truly hear. When I decided to conceive you, I changed my life. I studied. I gave up alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sugar, processed foods, etc. I exercised, drank lots of water, attended to getting good sleep. You see, I wanted to give you the healthiest foundation possible. And you were born this perfect, achingly beautiful little being. A girl. My girl. I’ve tried to think of ways to refer to my children that don’t use possessive language, but now I realize that’s not helpful. You are my child. And Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, aka ROGD, doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
For the first two years of your life, we co-slept and you nursed. We cuddled through the night in a mother/baby dance that bonded us forever. I rejected all the advice to put you in a crib, to let you “cry it out”, to give you formula. Instead, when you were upset and needed comfort, I put you to my breast. I always came to you when you cried. I knew through instinct that I was your lifeline and you wouldn’t learn to trust if I didn’t respond to your cries. Child development experts would say we became “attached.”
It was hard. I convinced myself I wasn’t cut out to be a stay-at-home-mom. It was easier to think about a career and live the typical lifestyle that those around me had embraced. Dad got laid off, and I went back to work. In my tendency to get absorbed by my career, I became distracted from our bond. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the influences in your life. I saw you spending time on the internet teaching yourself artistic skills, to play instruments, to develop imaginative characters. I saw you and your friends bonding over shared interests like Anime, and…well, Anime. And your preteen angst seemed normal. When you told me you were anxious and depressed, I offered alternative framing and solutions instead of truly listening.
And now here we are. It guts me to know you’re binding the once healthy breasts needed to nurture your own future babies. My heart aches to think you want to have them removed and to take medicine that will sterilize you. I feel deep rage when I think of a culture that has groomed you to believe that your perfect, female form is somehow wrong, and that the self-harm you’re engaged in is somehow manifesting your “authentic self.” I am stunned by how our government, schools, media, and other institutions are fully captured by these misogynistic lies.
But, I have to also say that I am so very grateful. I had no idea our culture was being transformed by these poisonous ideas. That the safeguarding of women and children would be so easily sacrificed for the whims of a few powerful men. You brought this insidious movement into my awareness and now I feel compelled to be a soldier in the fight to stop it.
I also have to say that I understand. Since you opened up this world to me, I see the misogyny I truly didn’t realize existed. I see how scary it must be to imagine inhabiting womanhood. It makes perfect sense that, when given the opportunity, you would choose to opt out of the perceived horrors of being an adult human female in the fucked up world the internet has shown you. I also appreciate the allure of having full control over how you present yourself to the world, to be able to recreate yourself as a less vulnerable being, an avatar to shield your heart. I get it. I still see you. You can’t hide from me, but if you need to keep hiding from everyone else, I understand.
I also think you recognize and are intimidated by, even terrified of, the incredible power of the blossoming woman inside you. These entitled men see that power too. They recognize an elusive and beautiful state of being that their insatiable greed demands they conquer for themselves. It must be intolerable to know that a weak impersonation of womanhood is all they can ever accomplish. And so they’ve convinced themselves and others that they are victims and appeal to the generous nature of the hearts of women. They paint themselves as the “oppressed” because it gets them just a little closer to the experience they covet. These billionaires who throw their might around. They aggressively threaten to rape and kill us because they want us to shut up and stop reminding them they will never be women. Their testosterone shows. We see it. Some of us. Others are trying so hard to be virtuous. To be inclusive. To be good. And they’re so deep in it now, they can’t allow themselves to see what’s really happening. They’ll have to double-down because it will be too painful to realize the devastation that has spread because they allowed themselves to be groomed. Too painful to realize that they’ve participated in the grooming. She/her/hers. He/him/his. Beep/boop/bop.
I will be a soldier in this army. This is what I want to model for you. That womanhood is SO precious that I will fight for it. I will fight for your birthright to it even as you reject it. I will stand against this movement that is calling for the mutilation and sterilization of our children for the lie of “transgender.” I will not be shut up. I will not surrender women’s sports or safe places. I will not rest until the surgeons profiting from cutting healthy breasts off of teenage girls are held accountable. I will call for the dismantling of professional organizations that have shut down scientific inquiry that would illuminate their complicity in this monstrous movement.
I am also grateful for the call back to intentional motherhood. Your pain and your rejection of your female form has reflected back to me the work I still need to do. Nurturing our connection and being an example of a powerful woman who flows through Life’s exhilarating highs and tragic lows with as much grace as possible while also finding pleasure in the mundane. These are my priorities now. It’s a tall order, one that I know I fall far short of. But that’s it too, isn’t it? Modeling being an imperfect human with her own feelings and needs. You inspire me to continue to learn, and practice, and make mistakes, and ask for feedback and get defensive, and then come to believe that I failed you again, and feel the feelings that go with all of that because that’s what life is. It’s ALL OF THAT and so much joy and so much pain, and it’s the most amazing experience when you embrace the richness of it all instead of avoiding life’s intensity. I found ways to hide when I was your age too. Adolescence is precarious for the divergent thinkers; disintegration is inevitable.
Yet, I believe in the foundation I gave you. My therapist reminded me once, “She’s your daughter.” We are enmeshed whether you like it or not. When you harm your otherwise healthy body, it strikes me at such a deep level, it cannot be explained to someone who has not known what it’s like to nurture another human in her womb. I know you need to individuate. I also know our connection is deeper and stronger than the messages coming at you from a broken civilization. I know the intensity of your determination. I recognize strength and courage in you and I trust in your intellect. Will you break free of the cognitive dissonance that’s exhausting you before you “consent” to further harm your body? God, I hope so, but I don’t know. I know you will one day look back and see through all the bullshit and I hope you will not be too hard on yourself. You were a vulnerable teenage girl trying to shield your heart. I’m sorry I didn’t see it coming. I’m sorry I didn’t know you’d need me to teach you and keep reminding you what was always just obvious, basic knowledge throughout time. The difference between a boy and a girl. I’m sorry I didn’t know to protect you from the lies. There’s part of me that is sorry I can’t lie now.
We will both be forged in this fire.
I’d just like to take a small bite of one of the problems that occurs when having discussions with people who believe in the current gender fad. Let’s start with the biggest fish on the plate – what is the definition of being ‘Transgendred’. This from Wikipedia:
“Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth.[1][2][3] Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual.[4][5]Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are non-binary or genderqueer, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender).[2][6][7] Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender.[8][9] The term transgender may be defined very broadly to include cross-dressers.[10]
I stopped because I have no idea what a ‘gender identity’ is. So let’s define that.
“Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with a person’s assigned sex at birth or can differ from it.[2]Gender expression typically reflects a person’s gender identity, but this is not always the case.[3][4] While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. “All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of a person’s self-identity in relation to other members of society.[6] In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[7] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[8] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;[9] some of those people are transgender, non-binary, or genderqueer. Some societies have third gender categories.”
The first (of many) problems with these definitions is that they do not correspond to the reality we inhabit:
“Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth”
This most basic premise is wrong. Sex is not “assigned” at birth. Sex observed at birth as obstetricians in the vast majority of cases can easily categorize members of the male sex class and members of the female sex class. It is worthwhile at this juncture to note that human beings cannot change the sex that they were born with, simply stated:
Biological sex is immutable.
So we have to note that right from the start, one of the foundational premises of trans-ideology is fundamentally flawed. Any argument based on the premise that sex is assigned at birth will necessarily be false. But, of course, there is just more than one flawed premise in the mix.
“in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are non-binary or genderqueer, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender)“
It’s here that swirling morass of haphazard generalizations and faulty reasoning kick in. Gender identity is the ‘personal sense of one’s own gender’. What the hell does that actually mean? What is it like to experience the personal sense of one’s gender?
To be perfectly honest – I have no idea what it is like to experience my own gender. I know what it is like to be me, and my personality, but I have no intuitive sense of what my supposed gender identity is. Try it for yourself describe your ‘gender identity’ to yourself. Try it with this added challenge – describe your gender identity without using sex stereotypes. Here is a handy list you should avoid.
I’ll wait.
…
It would seem like the personal sense of one’s gender identity rests on the adoption of a particular set of negative sex stereotypes about the class of people you happen to be born into. That is what gender is; an arbitrary societally prescribed set of behaviours/expectations that are imposed on females and males in society. These social norms exist in society and are in no way present in human beings prior to social exposure. How do we know this? For instance we know that social gender norms change over time – the girl pink/boy blue situation was reversed or not present prior to the 1950’s. Thus, gender is something that is outside of us and we are exposed to it once we start interacting with society.
So how does one ‘identify’ with being female or male then, without resorting to the (mostly) negative sex stereotypes (a.k.a gender) that society imposes on people? Said another way, what does ‘feeling like’ a man or women feel like?
Sounds like nebulous bullshit to me.
“While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. “All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of a person’s self-identity in relation to other members of society.“
We need to approach the idea of ‘identity’ with a great deal of caution because ‘identity’ is inherently subjective and thus unreliable as an indicator of correspondence to reality.
“In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[7] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[8] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;“
This sentence conflates the personalities we all have with gender identity and gender stereotypes. You as an individual in society are not a gatekeeper for the gendered expectations that are rightly or wrongly, imposed on you. Most certainly you can defy them, a man wearing pink for instance or a woman being aggressive, but your personal identification is irrelevant to societal expectations. Nor does adopting the stereotypes of the other class of people make you a member of that class of people. A man wearing a dress is still a man.
Should it be okay if a man wants to wear a dress? Absolutely. It should be encouraged as gender non compliant behaviour illustrates the coercive and arbitrary nature of the system we know as ‘gender’.
What wearing a dress for a man does not do is make him a woman.
This is tip of the iceberg level of what is going on in the faux-progressive areas of society. Feelings and the subjectivity inherent within them are being lauded over the empirical reality we all share. The implications for females in our society are quite foreboding, but that is another post.
Gender ideology is totalitarian in nature. There can be no debate, no compromise, and especially no questioning its tenets. Regular everyday people do not realize the poison pill that they swallow when they are told to ‘be kind’ and comply with the reactionary bullshit that is gender ideology. These are some of the questions that you are not supposed to ask, because the answer is almost always ‘because I say so’. So I’ve found a nice chart that will easily identify those that need attitude readjustments so you, my gentle readers, might not be alarmed when faced with this current batch of misogynistic nonsense that has gained so much traction in society.
Oh, and terf is an acronym – Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist – it is a slur like witch, bitch, c*nt et cetera used on uppity females that will not comply with the reactionary bullshit that is gender ideology.
Wow. The better idea might be to dispense with the toxic notion of gender (sex stereotypes) altogether and let men and women dress however they please. Wouldn’t that be nice?
The mask has been at least partially ripped off in the UK. The use of puberty blockers on children has been stopped and now requires the court approval to prescribe the experimental drugs (with no evidential link to their benefit) to children.
“Now, it may be that there is a genuine unmet medical need among adolescent girls of which clinicians had previously been unaware. It may also be that gender dysphoria and autism are co-morbidities that require an integrated approach to treatment. The problem, however, is no-one has done any research, so whether or not either is the case is simply unknown. It is entirely plausible for Tavistock to return in future litigation with a much stronger argument. For that to happen, however, research simply has to be done. You and I may be able to fly by the seat of our pants, but courts cannot and doctors should not.
Relatedly, the administration of puberty blockers progressed with a grim inevitability to the use of cross-sex-hormones; they did not provide “space to think” but rather seemed designed to ensure that future surgical interventions were more effective. Evidence from the Netherlands indicated, of the adolescents who started puberty suppression, only 1.9% did not proceed to cross-sex-hormones. Tavistock offered no alternative treatment paths, an aspect of the modern (and similarly unevidenced) fashion for “affirmative” treatment of gender dysphoria.
It’s worth making an aside here and noting the general problem of poor record-keeping and cavalier attitudes to evidence and data across a number of British institutions. Over and over again the EHRC, in its report on Labour anti-Semitism, observed a failure to complete the most basic administrative tasks. The same issue emerged in the Home Office during the Windrush scandal, and — as I wrote last year — in the Government’s frankly contemptuous behaviour before the Supreme Court in last year’s prorogation case.
A number of commentators noted that charities Mermaids and Stonewall were refused permission to intervene, and said this looked unfair. They made these observations without realising interveners are there to assist the court, and must provide evidence that is different from that already tendered. If all they do is repeat what Tavistock has already said, they serve no purpose apart from wasting court time, and court time is expensive.
What Mermaids and Stonewall wished to enter into evidence were accounts of positive experiences from young trans people treated with puberty blockers. However, Tavistock had already provided these; they are quoted at length in the judgment. Much of the would-be interveners’ argument was based on the idea that “the voice of the child” must be heard, repeatedly if necessary.
Bell’s lived experience was a tiny part of her case — and, indeed, by choosing judicial review rather than medical negligence, she made her personal circumstances (and those of other people) even less salient. A tort claim would have put her on the witness stand and investigated her treatment pathway because “pain and suffering” (one of the traditional heads of damage) is assessed subjectively when calculating potential damages in such a case.
It has become fashionable, of late, to valorise ‘lived experience’ from people keen to parade both their victimhood and their virtue. Unfortunately, lived experience by itself is not evidence in a court of law. Nor is the argument made by Mermaids that “every young person has the right to make their own decisions about their body” – something more is needed.
It is the role of medicine to heal the sick and leave the well alone, which is only possible via careful recourse to the scientific method and disinterested research. If this does not happen, it then becomes the law’s duty to ensure each and every litigant gets his or her due.”
This gender bullshit has to stop. The sooner the better. I only hope that Canada wakes the heck up and looks to the court precedent set in the UK before passing any more disastrous legislation (bill C-6).
Twitter usually isn’t the best place to find valuable insights into complex topics and ideas. I do like to be proven wrong though, and that was very much the case when I saw this thread by “H”. This person precisely identifies a several key points where the ideology of transgender has gone markedly afoul. Much has to do with the correspondence between their activism and narcissistic male entitlement.
Common threads do exist between feminism and the trans movement. The current focus though of putting the validation of (usually) men’s gender-delusions ahead of female rights makes progress in this area difficult at best.
One of the axis the transgender debate swirls around is access to washrooms and change-rooms. The argument from the TRA’s is simply this: A person should use the washroom of the gender (sex) they identify as. Please note I put the word sex in parenthesis there as it is one of huge linguistic obstacles in the argumentative form of the the debate, more on this aspect later (as in different post later).
The problems with this argument are multitudinous, but I hope to cover the main points of contention. Firstly the immutability of sex in the human species, secondly the effect of socialization on males and females, and thirdly the sex classes and how they interact in society.
It should go without saying, but yet it must be said – One cannot change their natal sex. Therefore it does not matter how many gendered stereotypical practices and mannerisms a man adopts, his quest to be a woman will never come to fruition. He shall always be male, despite whatever feelings of gender he happens to possess. Now certainly, given enough money and time under the plastic surgeon’s knife, a man can be made to look like a women, but looking like and being a woman reside in two completely different categories. Plus, there are no standards defining what a transwoman actually is and with proposed self-id laws all it takes is a simple declaration by man to say he is a woman. The potential for abusive males to use self-id to gain access to female only spaces is a clear and present danger to females in society.
Secondly from birth, males and females are treated differently by their parents, peers, and people in society. The patriarchal gender norms in which we are inculcated with do not magically get programed on day, but are a result of a constant exposure to a set of normative values, that by default, channel men into dominant positions and roles in society and women into submissive ones.
The life long exposure to this unequal gendered treatment is not forgotten with a simple declaration of gender. Thus, it is fairly common to see TRA’s being quite vocal and aggressive in their activism because as males they are used to their voices being heard the first time and their opinion actually mattering in social situations. So if the male socialization remains intact even after the nebulous transition process – whatever it may be – then the corrosive patriarchal attitudes toward women also remain intact, along with all the male behaviours (objectification, predation, et al). that necessitate female only spaces in the first place.
Thirdly, since we cannot change our sex class the assumptions of females regarding men identifying as women remain the same. Males are responsible for the vast majority of violence perpetrated against women in society, how they ‘identify’ with their gender is irrelevant to the safety of females. This reason alone is enough to preserve single sex spaces in society.
The twitter snip is just one facet of what men will say to justify the invasion of female spaces. The assertion Owen Jones make is risible from the start, because in most cases we can successfully identify members of the opposite sex. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years as it is part of the necessary task of keeping the species going. So no, no Genital Inspection Unit is necessary, men just need to keep out of female spaces.
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