27 Comments
Apr 3Liked by Grow Some Labia

Children can no more "consent" to have their healthy breasts and genitalia removed or take puberty blockers than they can

"consent" to have sex with an adult.

Similarly, parents and doctors can no more approve such permanent mutilation simply because a minor child desires it than they can approve pedophilia.

Ultimately society will see the truth and ban the practice as we have banned female genital mutilation. Do people support that practice if the parents consent? I truly hope not

It is monstrous to believe otherwise and those who do will ultimately be held to account for their actions.

Expand full comment
author

While most of us agree that a kid can't consent to pedophilia, I don't trust the 'progressive' left to know when to say no. They've demonstrated over and over they can't.

And still the liberal media keeps ignoring the WPATH Files.

Expand full comment
Apr 3Liked by Grow Some Labia

To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer. Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned. However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as actual harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (especially women). Finally, others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.

Expand full comment
author

Much agreed.

Expand full comment

I was in my local bookstore recently, and I saw a copy of New York Magazine with the Andrew Chu's article taking up the entire front cover. I was shocked, mainly because I misread the masthead and thought it said The New Yorker, and I didn't want to have to stop reading one of my favorite magazines!

Well, now I know I which magazine to never subscribe to. But I digress.

This article beautifully, (if sarcastically-but that's why I love Grow Some Labia) critiques a certain toxic mentality that has become dominant in Western society: the idea that all self-identified groups who claim oppression must be accommodated, even if the basis of their putative oppression is arguably nonsensical and open to dispute. And also that anyone who disagrees with the concept is an oppressor. I'm not saying there is no such thing as transphobia or gender dysphoria, but the "remedy" for these issues (surgical and hormonal therapy) is often unproblematically accepted and is potentially dangerous. The WPATH files clearly show that more study is needed before society decides willy-nilly to cave into the aggressive demands of trans activists.

This article is one of the most comprehensive critiques that I have read on this issue.

There is a wonderful article in Quintette that came out in February. The author, a trans man, writes about how he stopped living in a fantasy world and learned to accept his male biology. I encourage everyone to read it: https://quillette.com/2020/02/02/i-may-have-gender-dysphoria-but-i-still-prefer-to-base-my-life-on-biology-not-fantasy/.

Expand full comment
Mar 29Liked by Grow Some Labia

Frankly, I’ve had it with the trans cult..anything they say is a lie ..they are so convinced of their own lies that they can’t see the truth and don’t want to see reality if it hit them in the face!I’m so fed up with them that I won’t waste my time reading anything they say.. they are a cult, and cults lie ! That anyone can take them seriously is unbelievable!,

Expand full comment
Mar 28Liked by Grow Some Labia

This article identifies an actual major argument, even legally, as in: "Hey, providing blockers followed by T is just the same as precocious puberty, etc. And I agree this is absurd, not just because there exists an underlying physical condition in one case but also that kids are not mini-adults.

Expand full comment

What could have been a great article is reduced to a mediocre one by its obsessive framing into women oppressed by men. This muddles the otherwise impressive clarity of what is so desperately sick about everything “trans.”

I really don’t care that Andrew Chu is too tall to fear rape, I care a lot more about children railroaded into destructive “therapies,” but the constant refrain of male oppression keeps shorting the circuit of the argument.

Expand full comment
author

This particular article really underlined just how male and misogynist the trans movement is. Chu is the kind of guy who, even if he could 'pass' as a woman (he can't and never will), he would out himself the moment he began opening his mouth.

The reason why I beat the drum so much on the trans movement is *because* of the threat to women. I think it's pretty clear I'm not damning all men with this article, just the ones who demonstrate no thought to anyone but themselves and, in Chu's case anyway, a near-psychopathic lack of concern for the young lives destroyed by legal genital mutilation and associated 'therapies', and real women who he dares to sneer at for fearing rape from strange men in places they don't belong. I've written plenty already about WPATH files and the harm it's done children - and I was beating the anti-GAC drum long before early March.

Expand full comment

Your response doesn't address my critique, instead you amplify it.

First of all, the "trans" movement is probably mostly driven by men, but its adherents are mostly female, in contrast to pre-"trans" transsexualism, which was 3/4 in boys. Ther fact that most "trans women" wouldn't pass to someone blind and deaf is tangential, even if it is crudely comical.

And, no, sorry, but it is not at all clear that you are not damning all men. We're not all monsters, you know; some of us were at one time passionate about equality for women but the smoldering glares of hatred we got from feminists drove us out.

Conspicuously missing in your writing is any role for the young girls who are so lacking in self-respect or independent thought as to be able to resist the allure of joining the club. Just as advertisers have no shortage of women willing to stick out their tongues and cross their eyes at a camera, and pimps have no shortage of women willing to be exploited for sex, the "trans activists," whichever their birth gender, have no shortage of miserable young girls willing to destroy their health to give the activist a Like and Subscribe.

Ah, but all these are all 𝑛𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑡 the fault of (the envelope, please!) 𝐦𝐞𝐧 who inculcate women with helplessness and vapidity. Yes, it's turtles all the way down, and all the turtles are male. At no point do women bear any responsibility for going along with "trans" activists, pimps, or advertisers. To retort that I'm "blaming the victim" is to say that women cannot be expected to think for themselves. Teaching them to do so is the most effective advocacy you could make.

I'm a man, I make no claim to understand what women go through, but I can grasp that rushing to her car in a parking garage and hearing the scrape of a footstep is raw terror and what circumstances like this do to one's outlook.

Frankly, you go too far. The most strident proponents of the "trans" cult are biological women. Michelle Forcier ("does a chicken cry? (smile)") is a woman. The surgeon who recited the "live son or dead daughter" extortion was a woman. The woman who answered that she wasn't one ... and so on.

Frankly, blaming men is a copout. Why don't teen girls tell the activists to go to hell?

I blame money. "Trans" is big business, last I heard $3.7 trillion; it's being pushed by violently unscrupulous people of both sexes, and I think you could make your case a lot better without the misandric distractions.

Expand full comment

I understand your sensitivity about being blamed for everything as a man; I don't like male bashing either. I also agree with you that women are largely responsible for this trans transition craze. But I don't think the author goes too far- she is merely criticizing one particular man and men like him who are clueless about the lives and needs of natal women. She has written before about the narcissism of certain trans men whose voices are overly loud and aggressive. I think that the complicity of women (often mothers of gender-dysphoric children) is a worthy topic. Perhaps she will address this aspect of the issue in a future article.

Expand full comment
author

That's a good idea.

Expand full comment

It was fairly obvious from your first comment that you are a man: no need to clarify.

Expand full comment
Mar 29Liked by Grow Some Labia

Money is the biggest driver..and stupidity is another one…as well as mental illness. I can’t for the life of me understand any woman who goes for this crap..and you’re right, there are a lot of women who promote it ..why.? Beats me!

Expand full comment
Apr 1·edited Apr 1Liked by Grow Some Labia

Women are much more likely to care about other people's feelings. So women are much more likely to honor trans requests re: pronouns, and much less likely to raise a stink about how idiotic this all is because women are trained to be polite and not hurt people's feelings even when those people are clinically insane, or just jerks.

Expand full comment
author

If I figure it out, I will surely write about it!

Expand full comment
author

"First of all, the "trans" movement is probably mostly driven by men, but its adherents are mostly female, in contrast to pre-"trans" transsexualism, which was 3/4 in boys. Ther fact that most "trans women" wouldn't pass to someone blind and deaf is tangential, even if it is crudely comical." Understood. And no, I don't mention transmen much at all. The reason being that a *small* subset of men choose to identify as women for a lot of different reasons, almost none of them being true gender dysphoria (I'm beginning to believe it doesn't even exist). The reason why I don't focus on transmen at all is because they're no threat to biological women. I'm sure someone could pull out an example or two - like the 'transman' mass shooter last year - but they'd be a very small percentage of violence committed *by* transpeople - that distinction goes to bio men in dresses. Now, some of those transmen *can* actually pass as men...there was a talk by four TMs last year on Youtube (I can't find it anymore) discussing autogynephilia and its impact on transgenderism. Three of them were VERY passably men...the fourth was more of a gayish type man. But, they did, later on, demonstrate their womanhood when they thought and talked about others the way a woman would. I have to admit, if those 'guys' used the bathroom while I was in it and I didn't know they were TMs, which I wouldn't, I would be very unhappy. But if I knew I wouldn't care (rather a lot like how I don't worry about lesbians in the changing room, but I def don't want bio men there).

It really is a tragedy that so many young girls and women are choosing fake manhood over what they are and it's a horrifying mystery to me why their parents let them do this. WTF is wrong with the world if we don't teach girls/women how to defend themselves? This is a result, I believe, of a few generations of 'Gender Studies' teaching young women to think of themselves as perma-victims. I guess it seems easier to go through life as a man than to learn to stand up for yourself like a grown-ass woman. Yay feminism. Not.

"And, no, sorry, but it is not at all clear that you are not damning all men. We're not all monsters, you know; some of us were at one time passionate about equality for women but the smoldering glares of hatred we got from feminists drove us out." The vast majority of men I knew, misogynist or not, aren't cross-dressers and I was pretty specifically damning the misogynist transactivists here - one in particular, the focus of the story. I can understand why you're upset with feminists, they've driven away a lot of really good male allies and I hope to persuade some of them to not join the Andrew Tate MRA brigades or whatever, but I can understand why they're angry, anyway. I don't like victim feminism. I prefer power feminism msyelf, which is power over one's self, using your power for good rather than evil. Victim feminists are little girls playing feminist who run screaming to Mommy's lap when challenged by...well, anyone or anything.

"V=these are all 𝑛𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑡 the fault of (the envelope, please!) 𝐦𝐞𝐧 who inculcate women with helplessness and vapidity...." I don't blame all men, not by a long shot. This trans crap responsibility is shared by many. If I was going to damn a group of people it would more likely be progressive parents...but I know not all of them are this stupid, crazy, or easily indoctrinated themselves.

"Why don't teen girls tell the activists to go to hell?" Good question. I'd like to know that myself. Working on a story now a friend sent me about a woman who was raped over thirty years ago and didn't let it define her or turn her into a permanently-traumatized woman; I think it's an awesome story and she blames the feminist nonsense she got in college for not preparing her properly for The REal Thing. Ironically, her boyfriend, whom she wryly comments 'hadn't read the feminist literature' on the futility of reporting a rape, pushed her to report when she didn't want to and she did, and the story has a happy ending.

I'm very much in agreement with her on the pointlessness and sheer nonsense of what passes for 'feminism' in some corners.

"Frankly, you go too far. The most strident proponents of the "trans" cult are biological women. Michelle Forcier ("does a chicken cry? (smile)") is a woman. The surgeon who recited the "live son or dead daughter" extortion was a woman. The woman who answered that she wasn't one ... and so on.". Yes, you're right, and I'm still trying to figure out how so many 'feminists' can become so easily manipulated and gaslit by Da Patriarchy (dun dun DUNNN!!!!) All it needs to do is put on a dress to get the Handmaids to get down on their knees and...uh....do as God or Darwin or St. Paul intended ;(

I *have* spoken out against these dizzy dames but I'm still trying to untangle exactly what the hell is going on with them.

And I agree with you totally about the money. Doctors will do *anything* for it, and the WPATH Files details the history of doctors experimenting on hapless patients because...well...I don't know how they can! But they do. Regularly.

I appreciate your comments. I can see you're very angry at feminists and I can understand why. I share some of your anger. I don't think I was blanket-condemnatory of all men in my article but I'll look it over again and see if I can see it from a different angle. But I'm happy to have heard from you because I'm trying to understand men's perspective better too. Which isn't always evil and misogynist :)

Expand full comment
Apr 1Liked by Grow Some Labia

I couldn't make it through all of that comment, but this obvious falsehood struck me: "The most strident proponents of the "trans" cult are biological women". Um, no, the most strident proponents are the men shrieking about killing TERFS and beheading J.K. Rowling. Men, not women. Biological men, to be clear.

Expand full comment
author

He does make a point: There are rather a lot of women who are promoting this shit including women who otherwise consider themselves 'enemy of the Patriarchy' or whatever. I don't know who wins the prize but if more so-called 'liberals' and 'progressive' women would pull their heads out of their vajayjays and recognize Patriarchy when it's swinging its dick around a changing room or on a women's swim team, we wouldn't be having these debates. It's like these 'progressive' women have drunk the Republic of Gideon Kool-Aid or something. Also, young girls and women are driving a mutliple-thousandfold increase in F2M transitions, something that was very, very rare until the rise of social media. So the men are issuing the death and rape threats, as always, but the good little girlies of the 'woke' movement are cheering them on.

Expand full comment

It's interesting in particular because there is so much grotesque and violent rhetoric on the part of the activist wing, who seem to be mostly MTF or just men dressing as women, and because they have this victim identity, the tendency is for women to rush to their side in support. That is what women do: nurture and care. Especially when someone is a victim of something horrific. So being a woman, today, is no picnic, to put it mildy. Women have not achieved anything remotely like "equality" in society even now. We'd not have had the MeToo movement if women were wielding so much power. Given a choice to opt out, especially if it doesn't require pretending to be a man, but just going the androgynous route (pioneered by lesbians in the 90s, sad to say), I can see why a lot of girls are looking at their potential futures and choosing not to be "women". But opting out back then didn't require lopping off body parts.

Expand full comment

This is sheer Lysenkoism.

Expand full comment

Can you elaborate on that, please.

Expand full comment

Sure.

The early 20th-century Communists in Russia and China rejected the concept of genes due to its perceived alignment with the "bourgeois" values of the elites they had ousted. They believed that genetic inheritance, akin to family ties, echoed the social hierarchy they sought to dismantle. While communism aimed to distribute resources equitably, genetic traits remained immutable, unaffected by willpower or societal struggle. Genes, like sex, were considered fixed at conception, impervious to environmental influence or individual actions.

In response to this perceived threat, the revolutionaries purged those who adhered to genetic realism and embraced an alternative theory, coined Lysenkoism after its Soviet proponent, Trofim Lysenko. Lysenkoism posited that genetic traits could be altered through perseverance and noble effort, aligning more closely with Marxist ideology. This theory was tested in agriculture, where crops were cultivated in adverse conditions to purportedly fortify their genes. Pesticides and fertilizers were eschewed, and seeds were densely planted, symbolizing a sort of botanical "class solidarity."

These agricultural practices were adopted across the Communist world but led to disastrous consequences, including widespread famine. Tens of millions of Soviets and an estimated 30 million Chinese perished due to starvation.

Sound familiar?

Expand full comment

I know what Lysenkoism is, a political expression of Lamarckism, but I was asking where you see its spectre haunting this issue, and specifically this article.

We live in a society where people who couldn't tell you the difference between virus and bacteria are refusing to have their children vaccinated because they read about someone who had a COVID vaccination and got COVID anyway. They have no idea how the immune system works, or how vaccines work. I did an undergraduate minor in microbiology and immunology but even so I knew about the anemnestic response in high school, even if I didn't know the word.

But most people believe the explanation for Manx cats: their mothers bit their tails off and after enough generations they were born without tails. My face is in my palms.

Expand full comment

I would have thought it was obvious where I make that distinction: Andy is the living embodiment of Lysenkoism.

Expand full comment

Lysenkoism is, at core the misapprehension that changes to the phenotype are reflected back to the genotype. Maybe I'm undercaffeinated, maybe I'm just thick, but I don't see how that applies here.

Expand full comment