You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Trans’ tag.
Call your political representatives, find out if they can define what a woman is. If they cannot, consider moving your vote to someone who can.
When one takes time to examine the arguments put forward by the gender religious it quickly becomes obvious that past verbal intimidation and name calling, not many debatable points exist.
“That’s the way feminists have used the terms since the 1970s, as they challenged patriarchal claims that men’s domination and exploitation of women is “natural” because of biology. Patriarchy turns biological difference into social dominance. Feminists have long argued that gender is connected to our sex differences but is “socially constructed” in a way that reflects the unequal distribution of power between men and women over the past few thousand years. Anything socially constructed could be constructed differently through politics.
The trans movement flips that understanding, routinely asserting that gender is not the product of social forces but is a private internal state of being, which may be innate and immutable (opinions in the trans movement vary). In other words, transgender ideology asserts that gender is something one feels and has no necessary connection to one’s body and reproductive system. Trans activists routinely assert that “sex is a social construction,” that the biological distinctions of male and female are not objectively real but are created by societies. Stock painstakingly explains why this—again I’ll use the phrase, though it sounds harsh—doesn’t make sense.
In the preceding paragraph, I wrote “routinely assert” not only because there are differences of opinion within the transgender movement (which is to be expected in any movement) but because I have heard trans activists shift arguments when asked to defend a position (which is an indication of a weak argument in any movement). I once asked a trans activist, “If sex is socially constructed, that implies that it could be constructed in some other way. Do you know of any other way for humans to reproduce other than with an egg (produced by a female) and sperm (produced by a male)? By what means would human reproduction be socially constructed differently?” The activist offered no rebuttal to that, but simply dropped the claim, moving on to assert that trans people know what sex they “really” are and that any challenge to this idea was hateful and bigoted.”
This paucity of argumentative integrity has not stopped the gender-faithful from pushing their agenda and colonizing female spaces in society.
Stock also explains why allowing transwomen—again, males who identify as women—to participate in women’s sports will undermine and potentially eliminate sex-segregated activities that create opportunities for girls and women to thrive. Separate athletic competitions for males and females exist because of the physiological advantage males have over females, and those advantages don’t disappear by identifying as a woman.
Does any of this really matter? Well, it matters to teenage girls who may not want to change clothes in a locker room next to a boy who identifies as a girl. It matters to women at a health club that allows transwomen in a “women only” space. It matters to clients in a women’s homeless shelter that refuses to restrain sexually aggressive behavior of transwomen in order to be “inclusive.” It matters to the woman who is bumped from a country’s Olympic weightlifting team when a transwoman is allowed to compete as a woman. It matters to the women who were sexually assaulted by a transwoman who was housed in a women’s prison. It matters to the lesbians who choose not to date transwomen—because their sexual orientation is toward female humans and not male humans who identify as women—and are then called bigots and ostracized. And it matters to the woman who had to fight to get her job back after being fired for publicly stating that she believes “that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity.”
Trans activists’ responses to these challenges vary, but they can be reduced to a trans slogan so popular that an LGBT organization in the UKput it on a t-shirt: “Transwomen are women. Get over it!”
To say the least, the meaning of the statement “transwomen are women” is not obvious, either intuitively or logically. It’s a claim that many people find hard to understand, not because they are bigots but because it seems at odds with material reality. It would be more accurate to say: “Transwomen are transwomen, which raises many complex intellectual, political, and moral questions. Let’s work out solutions that respect everyone’s rights and interests!”
Not the catchiest slogan, but accurate and honest. It’s a t-shirt that I think Stock would endorse. She doesn’t condemn or mock trans people but rather seeks deeper understanding to make public policy choices as fair as possible for all.
The problem is that there has never been a public debate or a reasonable discussion of how we are in include the gender religious into society. It has always been ‘accept every demand, otherwise you are bigot!’. It has gotten them far, but at the expense of female rights, boundaries, and safety, which is clearly unacceptable in a society that values individuals rights and freedom.
No idea is sacred in a society that values freedom of speech and expression. Yet, if one questions the tenets of trans-ideology then seemingly all bets are off. Disrupting one’s professional career, receiving threats, losing opportunities to speak are all possible consequences of questioning trans-ideology. That fact in itself should give pause to anyone who fancies calling themself progressive. Robert Jensen writing for commondreams.org writes eloquently on this topic.
“To be clear: Humans do create cultural meaning about sex differences. Humans who have a genetic makeup to produce sperm (males) and humans who have a genetic makeup to produce eggs (females) are treated differently in a variety of ways that go beyond roles in reproduction.
In the struggle for women’s liberation, feminists in the 1970s began to use the term “gender” to describe the social construction of meaning around the differences in biological sex. When men would say, “Women are just not suited for political leadership,” for example, feminists would point out that this was not a biological fact to be accepted but a cultural norm to be resisted.
To state the obvious: Biological sex categories exist outside of human action. Social gender categories are a product of human action.
This observation leads to reasonable questions, which aren’t bigoted or transphobic: When those in the transgender movement assert that “trans women are women,” what do they mean? If they mean that a male human can somehow transform into a female human, the claim is incoherent because humans cannot change biological sex categories. If they mean that a male human can feel uncomfortable in the social gender category of “man” and prefer to live in a society’s gender category of “woman,” that is easy to understand. But it begs a question: Is the problem that one is assigned to the wrong category? Or is the problem that society has imposed gender categories that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary on everyone? And if the problem is in society’s gender categories, then is not the solution to analyze the system of patriarchy—institutionalized male dominance—that generates those rigid categories? Should we not seek to dismantle that system? Radical feminists argue for such a radical change in society.
These are the kinds of questions I have asked and the kinds of arguments I have made in writing and speaking. If I am wrong, then critics should point out mistakes and inaccuracies in my work. But if this radical feminist analysis is a strong one, then how can an accurate description of biological realities be evidence of bigotry or transphobia?
When I challenge the ideology of the transgender movement from a radical feminist perspective—which is sometimes referred to as “gender-critical,” critical of the way our culture socially constructs gender norms—I am not attacking people who identify as transgender. Instead, I am offering an alternative approach, one rooted in a collective struggle against patriarchal ideologies, institutions, and practices rather than a medicalized approach rooted in liberal individualism.
That’s why the label “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) is inaccurate. Radical feminists don’t exclude people who identify as transgender but rather offer what we believe is a more productive way to deal with the distress that people feel about gender norms that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary. That is not bigotry but politics. Our arguments are relevant to the ongoing debate about public policies, such as who is granted access to female-only spaces or who can compete in girls’ and women’s sports. They are relevant to concerns about the safety of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions. And radical feminism is grounded in compassion for those who experience gender dysphoria—instead of turning away from reality, we are suggesting ways to cope that we believe to be more productive for everyone.
Now, a final prediction. I expect that some people in the transgender movement will suggest that my reproduction/respiration analogy mocks people who identify as transgender by suggesting that they are ignorant. Let me state clearly: I do not think that. The analogy is offered to point out that an argument relevant to public policy doesn’t hold up. To critique a political position in good faith is not to mock the people who hold it but rather to take seriously one’s obligation to participate in democratic dialogue.
In a cancel culture, people who disagree with me may find it easy to ignore the argument and simply label me a bigot, on the reasoning that because I think a certain ideology within the transgender movement is open to critique, I obviously am transphobic.“
Obtaining definitional clarity when dealing with the gender religion (ists) is like trying to find the gills on a chicken. But let’s look at what Genevieve Gluck has to say about the straitjacket that is conformity to gender roles and the misogyny that goes along with it.
“Gender ideology represents the literal embodiment of male entitlement to women, and the sexualized power hierarchy that feminists once described as gender, or sex role stereotypes. This eroticization of power and powerlessness has the effect of naturalizing women’s subordinate role in society. When men perform a parody of femininity and claim this farce is what women truly are, they are fundamentally deconstructing women’s humanity, reducing half the human population to a demeaning and objectified fantasy; but crucially, they are redirecting women back to the restrictive roles that afforded them power over the female sex in the first place.
The belief that womanhood can be attained through a combination of desire reframed as devout suffering, alongside the purchasing of products — clothing, cosmetics, surgeries — is, at its core, a belief that women are commodities which men are entitled to possess. It is a belief system that attempts to define women as fetish objects and reduces women to the Freudian castrated male.
As Janice Raymond explained in her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire, the definition of the word “fetish” reveals the connections between religion, objectification, and a sadomasochistic sexuality:
“Webster’s Dictionary defines fetish in several ways: First, as an object believed among a primitive people to have magical power to protect or aid its owner; broadly: a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence; an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion; an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression. Second, as a rite or cult of fetish worshipers. Third, fetish is simply defined as fixation.
From these definitions, it is clear that the process of fetishization has two sides: objectification, and what might be referred to as worship in the widest sense. Objectification is largely accomplished by a process of fragmentation. The fetish is the fragmented part taken away from the whole, or better, the fetish is seen to contain the whole. It represents an attempt to grasp the whole. For example, breasts and legs in our society are fetish objects containing the essence of femaleness. Thus the fetish contains and by containing controls.”
In decades past, the overwhelming majority of those claiming to suffer ‘gender dysphoria’, or a strong wish to inhabit the body of the opposite sex, were adult men with transvestic fetishism. These days, gender dysphoria is used broadly to refer not only to a male preoccupation with his status in society and the size or shape of his own genitalia, but to a discomfort with one’s sexed body in general. In this way, the male sexual practices of feminization and castration — whether surgical, chemical, or metaphorical — have been expanded to include women and children.
Feminists had previously initiated a societal conversation about the ways unrealistic beauty standards and objectification led to body image issues. However, now it is taboo to acknowledge that women and girls account for the vast majority of those diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorders, or to suggest that in women and girls, what is called ‘gender dysphoria’ may be a modern rebranding of the self-loathing and self-harm seen in anorexia and cutting.
The reasons that women and girls experience discomfort with their bodies are profoundly different from the ways adult men express their desires to become “sissy sluts”, to “grow boobs” or get “girl skin”, or to otherwise inhabit female bodies for the purpose of arousal at being treated like, and degraded as, a woman. Therefore, I propose that what is really meant by “inclusivity” is the forced integration of women and children into male fetishistic proclivities in order to normalize them. In this, women and children are being treated as collateral damage.”
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.
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).
Women are a distinct exclusive category of human beings. Simply they are adult human females. This is the sort of shit that results when males think that through magical gender thinking they can be women too.
They are not.
The misogyny always comes through.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…