It's real, but like the left's other cliches, the real deal's not nearly as pervasive as advertised. Underneath the resistance is a more comprehensible fear: Sexual violence.
Thank you for this sane examination of transphobia. There is not enough nuanced thinking on this topic.
Transgenderism is such a sudden cultural change. As a teacher in Canada, I remember when all of this started. One day we were teaching boys and girls and the next, it was not so clear. There was a student council president at the high school where I taught. He was elected as a male, and then announced that he identified as female. He spent the rest of the year dressed as a girl fulfilling his/her duties of office. He became a kind of local celebrity. Articles about him were framed and hung in a school hallway. He graduated wearing a dress and wig. He came back to visit his former teachers telling them he had decided to be male again, because trying to live as a woman was “too difficult.”
Maybe he was just ahead of his time.
Fast forward ten years and the school board jumps on the equity bandwagon. Sessions in gender identity became mandatory for all students in grade nine. The sessions were conducted in English classes, so, as an English teacher, I got to witness this indoctrination first hand.
It was bizarre. A group of four young women came into my class and explained to the students that there were actually 109 different genders ( or some such outrageous number). The students were asked to comment on their own gender identities. The girls absolutely loved it; they were happy to share. In a class of 30 students, close to a third of them claimed to be either gay or gender nonconforming. The boys just sat there saying nothing and looking uncomfortable. It was outrageously unscientific and manipulative. The board was clearly trying to virtue-signal with its over-the-top efforts to create “equity.” A gender-neutral bathroom soon appeared.
Any number of girls in the next few years demanded new pronouns. Some of them claimed to be male in grade nine, and then went back to being female in grade twelve. Social contagion?
Being transgender became fashionable. It made some kids feel special and important.
The whole issue is so complicated. I’m sure identifying as trans truly helps some people. These people continue to identify as trans and live their lives authentically.
Others might just be a little confused. Still others are sociopaths and should not be allowed to endanger women.
This whole new phenomenon needs to be studied much more carefully. And people who question the trans orthodoxy should not be labeled transphobic.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Stephanie. For sure social contagion has plenty (but not all) to do with it. The countless labels began on Tumbler, around 2010-2011 or so. I noticed that 'coming out' about being trans became cool just as everyone kind of yawned and fell asleep whenever someone 'came out' about being gay. Gay is no longer cool; it's just pedestrian.
Late last week I was reading about how much the transgender craze has come to resemble a moral panic - of what, I'm not sure yet, but I suspect male panic over women's rights as males seem to be more 'left behind' for reasons I can't quite figure out. Or maybe just being fed up with males made the scapegoat for everything wrong with the world. I'm quite sure at least some of them are doing it for that reason. But one of the articles compared it to the Satanic Panic of the '80s and '90s, which I remember well as I followed it closely. Living in Ohio, many of our fundamentalists were just obsessed with this shit. What I don't remember, which the article alleged, was that some feminists bought into it too - with the whole dogmatic Believe The Children thing they'd taken from demanding belief for incest/rape/sexual assault female victims. Problem is, kids can be led easily astray and many were, as were many adults with 'Repressed Memory Syndrome' which turned out to be False Memory Syndrome and a lot of therapists got sued. And, as we saw in the McMartin Day Care case, kids could be led by irresponsible adults to allege all kinds of crazy abuse that never happened.
I see that SAME dynamic with the whole 'trans kids' craze. So-called responsible adults leading kids to believe in over 100 genders and telling them they may be born in the wrong body. Funny how that wasn't a problem for 99.99999999% of kids we knew growing up, including the gay kids who simply grew up to be...well, gay!
I think you are onto something. I also remember the satanic abuse scandal. There was a notable case in Hamilton, Ontario that was all over the news involving two young girls. I didn’t know what to think of it at the time (maybe 1990?) but it was disturbing and it seemed to me that the horrific abuse the children reported seemed made up. Yet they clearly had been traumatized by something because the language they use was inappropriate for their ages ( I think they were under five).
Anyway, as you may know, I think most people are largely living in a fantasy world created in their own minds. It seems every generation creates a new fantasy (or enemy) to deal with their uncomfortable emotions.
The Salem Witch Trials bear strong resemblance to the Satanic Panic, and while we recognize those girls were likely either lying or hysterical (I lean towards the former), we didn't learn anything during the more modern Satanic Panic and the lesson we keep *not* learning no matter how often it happens is that children's words cannot be taken on face value. We especially know they don't 'know what's best for them,', or we'd let them vote, drink, have sex with whomever they wanted (which would almost certainly be opportunistic predators).
Yet here we are again with clueless parents saying, "Listen to the children, they know what's best for them," despite many centuries of easily-manipulated children proving otherwise.
I don't know that I agree with that very short history of feminism and gender ideology, but yeah, there's some truth there. I think GI is more about *attempting* to make the sexes equal by erasing sex, which is impossible to do and overlooks mountains of biology about the sexes. But yeah, everything in 'wokeness' now is about conflict theory and power differentials. The Oppression Olympics, however, have been around for a very long time! Thanks for reading.
Very good question, Maci. My writer friends and I just published together an article about how blogging content platform Medium censors damn near anything critical of the transgender movement. Never mind that the cat is out of the bag now that there's no science behind medical/surgical gender-affirming care for kids. Never mind that biologists say one's birth gamete is ultimately what defines sex and what one truly is. Never mind that we're sometimes *demanded* to lie about science in order to keep our jobs or keep a platform account. The trans narrative and cultiness is as utterly deluded as the Trump cult's belief in his innocence and stolen election. I seriously believe they will deify him next.
Thank you for this sane examination of transphobia. There is not enough nuanced thinking on this topic.
Transgenderism is such a sudden cultural change. As a teacher in Canada, I remember when all of this started. One day we were teaching boys and girls and the next, it was not so clear. There was a student council president at the high school where I taught. He was elected as a male, and then announced that he identified as female. He spent the rest of the year dressed as a girl fulfilling his/her duties of office. He became a kind of local celebrity. Articles about him were framed and hung in a school hallway. He graduated wearing a dress and wig. He came back to visit his former teachers telling them he had decided to be male again, because trying to live as a woman was “too difficult.”
Maybe he was just ahead of his time.
Fast forward ten years and the school board jumps on the equity bandwagon. Sessions in gender identity became mandatory for all students in grade nine. The sessions were conducted in English classes, so, as an English teacher, I got to witness this indoctrination first hand.
It was bizarre. A group of four young women came into my class and explained to the students that there were actually 109 different genders ( or some such outrageous number). The students were asked to comment on their own gender identities. The girls absolutely loved it; they were happy to share. In a class of 30 students, close to a third of them claimed to be either gay or gender nonconforming. The boys just sat there saying nothing and looking uncomfortable. It was outrageously unscientific and manipulative. The board was clearly trying to virtue-signal with its over-the-top efforts to create “equity.” A gender-neutral bathroom soon appeared.
Any number of girls in the next few years demanded new pronouns. Some of them claimed to be male in grade nine, and then went back to being female in grade twelve. Social contagion?
Being transgender became fashionable. It made some kids feel special and important.
The whole issue is so complicated. I’m sure identifying as trans truly helps some people. These people continue to identify as trans and live their lives authentically.
Others might just be a little confused. Still others are sociopaths and should not be allowed to endanger women.
This whole new phenomenon needs to be studied much more carefully. And people who question the trans orthodoxy should not be labeled transphobic.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Stephanie. For sure social contagion has plenty (but not all) to do with it. The countless labels began on Tumbler, around 2010-2011 or so. I noticed that 'coming out' about being trans became cool just as everyone kind of yawned and fell asleep whenever someone 'came out' about being gay. Gay is no longer cool; it's just pedestrian.
Late last week I was reading about how much the transgender craze has come to resemble a moral panic - of what, I'm not sure yet, but I suspect male panic over women's rights as males seem to be more 'left behind' for reasons I can't quite figure out. Or maybe just being fed up with males made the scapegoat for everything wrong with the world. I'm quite sure at least some of them are doing it for that reason. But one of the articles compared it to the Satanic Panic of the '80s and '90s, which I remember well as I followed it closely. Living in Ohio, many of our fundamentalists were just obsessed with this shit. What I don't remember, which the article alleged, was that some feminists bought into it too - with the whole dogmatic Believe The Children thing they'd taken from demanding belief for incest/rape/sexual assault female victims. Problem is, kids can be led easily astray and many were, as were many adults with 'Repressed Memory Syndrome' which turned out to be False Memory Syndrome and a lot of therapists got sued. And, as we saw in the McMartin Day Care case, kids could be led by irresponsible adults to allege all kinds of crazy abuse that never happened.
I see that SAME dynamic with the whole 'trans kids' craze. So-called responsible adults leading kids to believe in over 100 genders and telling them they may be born in the wrong body. Funny how that wasn't a problem for 99.99999999% of kids we knew growing up, including the gay kids who simply grew up to be...well, gay!
I think you are onto something. I also remember the satanic abuse scandal. There was a notable case in Hamilton, Ontario that was all over the news involving two young girls. I didn’t know what to think of it at the time (maybe 1990?) but it was disturbing and it seemed to me that the horrific abuse the children reported seemed made up. Yet they clearly had been traumatized by something because the language they use was inappropriate for their ages ( I think they were under five).
Anyway, as you may know, I think most people are largely living in a fantasy world created in their own minds. It seems every generation creates a new fantasy (or enemy) to deal with their uncomfortable emotions.
The Salem Witch Trials bear strong resemblance to the Satanic Panic, and while we recognize those girls were likely either lying or hysterical (I lean towards the former), we didn't learn anything during the more modern Satanic Panic and the lesson we keep *not* learning no matter how often it happens is that children's words cannot be taken on face value. We especially know they don't 'know what's best for them,', or we'd let them vote, drink, have sex with whomever they wanted (which would almost certainly be opportunistic predators).
Yet here we are again with clueless parents saying, "Listen to the children, they know what's best for them," despite many centuries of easily-manipulated children proving otherwise.
Yup. Another hysterical episode that will fade into history and cause people of the future to shake their heads and wonder exactly what was going on.
...Until the next uncritical 'Believe the Children' moral crusade...
I don't know that I agree with that very short history of feminism and gender ideology, but yeah, there's some truth there. I think GI is more about *attempting* to make the sexes equal by erasing sex, which is impossible to do and overlooks mountains of biology about the sexes. But yeah, everything in 'wokeness' now is about conflict theory and power differentials. The Oppression Olympics, however, have been around for a very long time! Thanks for reading.
Very good question, Maci. My writer friends and I just published together an article about how blogging content platform Medium censors damn near anything critical of the transgender movement. Never mind that the cat is out of the bag now that there's no science behind medical/surgical gender-affirming care for kids. Never mind that biologists say one's birth gamete is ultimately what defines sex and what one truly is. Never mind that we're sometimes *demanded* to lie about science in order to keep our jobs or keep a platform account. The trans narrative and cultiness is as utterly deluded as the Trump cult's belief in his innocence and stolen election. I seriously believe they will deify him next.