Perhaps your last comment was harsh, but nothing you said prior to that point was untrue. There is something deeply wrong and narcissistic about this culture. I can't begin to explain it really, especially the parents who don't seem to understand that kids change on a daily basis--particularly teenagers. Do they not have another older adult to speak with or have they completely forgotten their own stop and start adolescent passage? Are they simply sheep believing propaganda at the risk of their children? I can understand how a young teenager could be seduced by promises of a solution to their problems, but how can their parents buy that crap? These studies you mentioned can't be published soon enough. I'm fairly certain they'll be labeled misinformation once they hit the streets, but serious medical studies have a way of getting around the gatekeepers. Sooner is better!
I understand most of your ire is directed to the trans children question, but I do respectfully disagree with how you ended the article, and as such I would like to pose the question -- if the service offered by the government were 'for any adult, we provide the best health care and social services we can, so that they can have the strongest mind body connection" would you support that? I think this general, abstract framing allows for both the kind of state we have today, which provides medical services so trans people can change sex, but also would allow for a kind of state where gender is socially deconstructed, where women and men are granted greater freedoms and more outlet for gender based envy, where romance has many different scripts (not just the 'marriage plot'), and where jobs valued individual capabilities over assumptions of group characteristics.
Would you support that? Gratitude is good. But spoken to either trans people, or disabled people, is condescending. Using your logic in this article, would you say to a paraplegic he should stop complaining because he's not as bad off as a quadriplegic? You could, but it's cold, and it suggests a refusal to believe things can change for the better.
Hi Ylx, thanks for reading and commenting. My parting line might be a little harsh. It's interesting that you ask about whether I'd support anything that provides the strongest mind body connection and that would be an unequivocal yes - but what, exactly, promotes that? I'm not at all convinced gender transition does, not in the slightest. I think it applies to a very small fraction of people, and that 98%+ are doing it for reasons other than gender dysphoria, and may not even understand why themselves.
The growing number of detranisitioners - 1,000 families of TG kids suiing the Tavistock Clinic in England, for instance - strongly indicates that 'trans' is more of a dangerous mental illness fad whose time may be coming to an end. I favour what Europe is doing - pulling back on immediate GAC for *everyone* and banning at least the medicalized parts for children (until they're adults). The red states are doing this too, probably for the wrong reasons, but they're still getting it right, unlike the left which pushes a fast-track system for the wrong reasons.
Why do we need to deconstruct sex anyway? It's working fine the way it has been. Where the trans movement has gone off the rails is in trying to erase sex, thinking all you need to do is change the bodies and everything will be fine. Except it's not. Men still act like men because you can't change what's between the ears. Women still think and act like women even when they identify and pass pretty damn well as men. Trying to erase sex is a multi-generational experiment that's failed every single time. We are a sexually dimorphic species. I'm all behind smashing silly-ass gender constructs. But 'deconstructing' sex? You might as well try to deconstruct our need to breathe oxygen. It can't be separated.
I've known far more disabled people than transpeople and they didn't choose the lives they've led. I was thinking the other day of what it must be like to grow up physically unable to live in the world the way 'the average' does, and how screwed one must, maybe at least at one time or another, feel. Transitioners, OTOH, made a conscious decision and it's very very clear they made it for reasons other than gender dysphoria. Some are clearly doing it for political (and gynophobic/misogynist reasons). So I have very little sympathy for someone like Lia Thomas, who was hoping to qualify for the Olympics since he's not very good competing with men, or men who don't know where to pee and won't hear of third bathrooms - their reasons for transitioning are clearly political, not dysphoric.
The trans movement is the most disingenuous that I've ever seen. I don't care how they want to live, may they all live in peace - but they MUST live with the rest of us in peace, and they can't value themselves and their desires over biological women's concerns, in the manner that men have indulged in since time immemorial.
I appreciate your thoughts though. I'm curious as to why you think we need to 'deconstruct' sex.
I think you're right the word 'deconstruct' is a faddish term that's slipped into my vocabulary. And maybe has some connotations on the internet that I am not too aware of. I think there are real biological differences between men and women, but the productive capacity of earth (at least...baring global warming sending us back into the stone ages or extinction) grants many of us the potential to exceed our biological limitations. Machines or democracy or something means men can choose to stay at home and raise the kids, and women can choose to become politicians or leaders of society. I can see why society formed around patriarchy, because reproductive labor limited the vast majority of women to working at home, but that's no longer the case. We in western society really do have the ability to grant certain wishes that were not possible at earlier points in society. To me deconstructing sex is just about that. Changing society so people can do what they wish to do because there's enough productive capacity for it. The analogy with disability is building ramps, making accessible software, reducing stigma for 'handicaps'.
I can certainly get behind smashing gender stereotypes, and letting people live to their full capacity as authentically as they can. I don't see why they have to change sex to do it. The 'non-binary' folks seem to have the best idea, I think, although I understand the doctors are now beginning to offer 'non-binary' surgery which makes my skin crawl the way suddenly women were told, several years ago, to get rid of their 'cankles' (wrinkled ankles), which was a whole new beauty problem women never knew they had, entirely made up by the medical profession to sell more surgery. Who the fuck needs 'non-binary' surgery?
I get that; I am not sure about this, but I can see changing sex as a short cut in the historical present. A recent historical example of this is represented by Nella Larsen's "passing," which has been popular in brooklyn bookstores in the past few years. Not a ton of black people passing as white now, because American society, at least in the liberal cities has been pretty open to blacks in terms of jobs and social spaces for the last 30 or 40 years, but 'passing' as white was something people seriously considered and acted upon and lived back in the 1920s. (or maybe 1910s? not sure of the date of the book)
I like trans-anything as 'shortcuts' as long as they're more easily reversible than they are now. To my knowledge, that's the case for transracialism although I can't say for sure. What happens when you stop taking vitiligo treatment (which can both lighten as well as darken skin). But...overall I suspect transracialism is easier to reverse than we transgenderism.
The thing that bothers me is this: There was a lot of regret even *before* it became 'a thing - and it was primarily gay men and sexual fetishists then, too. Sex identity may be more fluid than we realized, but sexual preference certainly is. I've known gay people to suddenly be attracted to the opposite sex and for some not to know they're gay until they're adults. I had one friend do what I knew to be a 'gay phase' after years of claiming bisexuality but being exclusively into dick. (She switched back again a few years later and is now married to a man - her second husband). People change throughout their lives (I used to be ridiculously hetero, now I'm asexual). I don't like the idea of making all these lifelong-altering changes to one's body. People should be allowed to do it, of course, but with full disclosure of all the risks, which they're not getting now.
I actually have made a sincere appeal for embracing both transracialism and transgenderism. But I'd like to see the latter not mess people up for life.
I don't think passing was so easy to reverse, in the sense that many social relationships probably wouldn't survive a reversal...
I generally agree about rachel dolozal. I think the unspoken element in many of these cases is envy. Rachel Dolozal had a high position in the NAACP (maybe she ran it?); I am sure as many people (if not more) cancelled her out of jealousy as out of genuine indignation over cultural appropriation.
Perhaps your last comment was harsh, but nothing you said prior to that point was untrue. There is something deeply wrong and narcissistic about this culture. I can't begin to explain it really, especially the parents who don't seem to understand that kids change on a daily basis--particularly teenagers. Do they not have another older adult to speak with or have they completely forgotten their own stop and start adolescent passage? Are they simply sheep believing propaganda at the risk of their children? I can understand how a young teenager could be seduced by promises of a solution to their problems, but how can their parents buy that crap? These studies you mentioned can't be published soon enough. I'm fairly certain they'll be labeled misinformation once they hit the streets, but serious medical studies have a way of getting around the gatekeepers. Sooner is better!
I understand most of your ire is directed to the trans children question, but I do respectfully disagree with how you ended the article, and as such I would like to pose the question -- if the service offered by the government were 'for any adult, we provide the best health care and social services we can, so that they can have the strongest mind body connection" would you support that? I think this general, abstract framing allows for both the kind of state we have today, which provides medical services so trans people can change sex, but also would allow for a kind of state where gender is socially deconstructed, where women and men are granted greater freedoms and more outlet for gender based envy, where romance has many different scripts (not just the 'marriage plot'), and where jobs valued individual capabilities over assumptions of group characteristics.
Would you support that? Gratitude is good. But spoken to either trans people, or disabled people, is condescending. Using your logic in this article, would you say to a paraplegic he should stop complaining because he's not as bad off as a quadriplegic? You could, but it's cold, and it suggests a refusal to believe things can change for the better.
Hi Ylx, thanks for reading and commenting. My parting line might be a little harsh. It's interesting that you ask about whether I'd support anything that provides the strongest mind body connection and that would be an unequivocal yes - but what, exactly, promotes that? I'm not at all convinced gender transition does, not in the slightest. I think it applies to a very small fraction of people, and that 98%+ are doing it for reasons other than gender dysphoria, and may not even understand why themselves.
The growing number of detranisitioners - 1,000 families of TG kids suiing the Tavistock Clinic in England, for instance - strongly indicates that 'trans' is more of a dangerous mental illness fad whose time may be coming to an end. I favour what Europe is doing - pulling back on immediate GAC for *everyone* and banning at least the medicalized parts for children (until they're adults). The red states are doing this too, probably for the wrong reasons, but they're still getting it right, unlike the left which pushes a fast-track system for the wrong reasons.
Why do we need to deconstruct sex anyway? It's working fine the way it has been. Where the trans movement has gone off the rails is in trying to erase sex, thinking all you need to do is change the bodies and everything will be fine. Except it's not. Men still act like men because you can't change what's between the ears. Women still think and act like women even when they identify and pass pretty damn well as men. Trying to erase sex is a multi-generational experiment that's failed every single time. We are a sexually dimorphic species. I'm all behind smashing silly-ass gender constructs. But 'deconstructing' sex? You might as well try to deconstruct our need to breathe oxygen. It can't be separated.
I've known far more disabled people than transpeople and they didn't choose the lives they've led. I was thinking the other day of what it must be like to grow up physically unable to live in the world the way 'the average' does, and how screwed one must, maybe at least at one time or another, feel. Transitioners, OTOH, made a conscious decision and it's very very clear they made it for reasons other than gender dysphoria. Some are clearly doing it for political (and gynophobic/misogynist reasons). So I have very little sympathy for someone like Lia Thomas, who was hoping to qualify for the Olympics since he's not very good competing with men, or men who don't know where to pee and won't hear of third bathrooms - their reasons for transitioning are clearly political, not dysphoric.
The trans movement is the most disingenuous that I've ever seen. I don't care how they want to live, may they all live in peace - but they MUST live with the rest of us in peace, and they can't value themselves and their desires over biological women's concerns, in the manner that men have indulged in since time immemorial.
I appreciate your thoughts though. I'm curious as to why you think we need to 'deconstruct' sex.
I think you're right the word 'deconstruct' is a faddish term that's slipped into my vocabulary. And maybe has some connotations on the internet that I am not too aware of. I think there are real biological differences between men and women, but the productive capacity of earth (at least...baring global warming sending us back into the stone ages or extinction) grants many of us the potential to exceed our biological limitations. Machines or democracy or something means men can choose to stay at home and raise the kids, and women can choose to become politicians or leaders of society. I can see why society formed around patriarchy, because reproductive labor limited the vast majority of women to working at home, but that's no longer the case. We in western society really do have the ability to grant certain wishes that were not possible at earlier points in society. To me deconstructing sex is just about that. Changing society so people can do what they wish to do because there's enough productive capacity for it. The analogy with disability is building ramps, making accessible software, reducing stigma for 'handicaps'.
I can certainly get behind smashing gender stereotypes, and letting people live to their full capacity as authentically as they can. I don't see why they have to change sex to do it. The 'non-binary' folks seem to have the best idea, I think, although I understand the doctors are now beginning to offer 'non-binary' surgery which makes my skin crawl the way suddenly women were told, several years ago, to get rid of their 'cankles' (wrinkled ankles), which was a whole new beauty problem women never knew they had, entirely made up by the medical profession to sell more surgery. Who the fuck needs 'non-binary' surgery?
I get that; I am not sure about this, but I can see changing sex as a short cut in the historical present. A recent historical example of this is represented by Nella Larsen's "passing," which has been popular in brooklyn bookstores in the past few years. Not a ton of black people passing as white now, because American society, at least in the liberal cities has been pretty open to blacks in terms of jobs and social spaces for the last 30 or 40 years, but 'passing' as white was something people seriously considered and acted upon and lived back in the 1920s. (or maybe 1910s? not sure of the date of the book)
I like trans-anything as 'shortcuts' as long as they're more easily reversible than they are now. To my knowledge, that's the case for transracialism although I can't say for sure. What happens when you stop taking vitiligo treatment (which can both lighten as well as darken skin). But...overall I suspect transracialism is easier to reverse than we transgenderism.
The thing that bothers me is this: There was a lot of regret even *before* it became 'a thing - and it was primarily gay men and sexual fetishists then, too. Sex identity may be more fluid than we realized, but sexual preference certainly is. I've known gay people to suddenly be attracted to the opposite sex and for some not to know they're gay until they're adults. I had one friend do what I knew to be a 'gay phase' after years of claiming bisexuality but being exclusively into dick. (She switched back again a few years later and is now married to a man - her second husband). People change throughout their lives (I used to be ridiculously hetero, now I'm asexual). I don't like the idea of making all these lifelong-altering changes to one's body. People should be allowed to do it, of course, but with full disclosure of all the risks, which they're not getting now.
I actually have made a sincere appeal for embracing both transracialism and transgenderism. But I'd like to see the latter not mess people up for life.
https://nicolechardenet.substack.com/p/we-accept-transgenderism-are-we-ready
I don't think passing was so easy to reverse, in the sense that many social relationships probably wouldn't survive a reversal...
I generally agree about rachel dolozal. I think the unspoken element in many of these cases is envy. Rachel Dolozal had a high position in the NAACP (maybe she ran it?); I am sure as many people (if not more) cancelled her out of jealousy as out of genuine indignation over cultural appropriation.
But i'll read that post