It does help! Thank you so much. Today I picked up my daughter from school and she told me she encountered a boy in the girls' bathroom, after coming out of a stall where she changed her clothes. It shocked her and made her uncomfortable. She debated whether she should yell at him. She did not. She told her teacher. He asked if it was "boy's name." My daughter said yes, and the teacher said, "he is transitioning now," meaning there was nothing to do to follow up with my daughter's experience of being startled by a boy in the girls' restroom.
Women shave the hair off their adult bodies because men’s sexual preference is for very young women. They want us to look like pubescent girls, vulnerable, innocent, pliable, not like women who might have ideas, preferences and boundaries of her own.
I just want them to be themselves, safely. You're so smug in your self-righteousness. It's very disturbing. Just saying. Y'all better check yourselves.
While I think gender identity is a nonsensical notion (no one can be "born into the wrong body" or "have a gender identity"), I've come to think that gender dysphoria might be a real (but exceptionally rare) thing. The problem, I think, is when the TRAs (trans radical activists) reason like this: 1) Some people have a mental illness in which they feel radical, crippling emotional pain at the way their bodies are sexed. 2) When those (again, very few) people take cross-sex hormones/have surgeries, their suffering is lessened. Therefore, 3) everyone has a gender identity that can be different from their sexed bodies. I would argue that 1 and 2 can be true while 3 can still be false, which is the definition of an invalid argument.
I think that we, on the gender critical side, can go too far in the direction of skepticism. The analogy I've arrived at is like religion. It's possible to not think that God exists because the case for an individual, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent creator deity has not been sufficiently proved. But to be absolutely certain that no god exists requires more proof than merely thinking the case for God hasn't been proved. It's the same with gender identity. I don't think the trans radical activists have proved that gender identity exists and, that if it exists, it should be more important than sex. However, to say that no one, therefore, suffers from gender dysphoria, exceeds the evidence that we are given (in my opinion). For that reason, I'm willing to give people the freedom to manage their mental health any way they want as long as they don't actually claim to *be* the opposite sex. A person who says, "I know I'm not a woman, but I have severe dysphoria when I look at myself in the mirror and see my sexed body. I've tried everything to relieve this distress, but it hasn't worked; therefore, I take cross-sex hormones and get surgery to manage my dysphoria. However, I don't claim the right to use women's facilities, compete in women's sports, etc., because gender dysphoria doesn't make me a woman".
The QED here, for me, is that gender ideology is the problem, not people with gender dysphoria. The incidence of bona fide gender dysphoria is like 1 in 22000 and skews massively male to female. The gender identity craze has nothing to do with gender dysphoria, I don't think.
This may all be true (and you make a good case), but how much does it matter? I really don’t care what a guy wants to call himself or wear, but I care a great deal that because of these people women are losing the right to exist as a political and social class of people who can gather and organise alone without the other sex, who are proven to include people who beat, rape and kill us, in pretty large numbers.
Men are the aggressive half of humans and their victims are largely the non aggressive half - women. (Men commit 95% of violent crime and 99% of sexual crime). Women are the ones who have the bodies that are designed to grow babies and it is very easy indeed to tell which are which.
Call yourself what you like, wear what you want. Stay out of our political and social groups, stay out of our safe (from men) spaces, stay out of our sports, and leave our children alone.
I agree entirely, which is a point I've made at length on my Substack (see: https://uncommondiscourses.substack.com/p/defending-buck-angel-a-liberalpragmatic). We have to allow people to do what they want *until they begin encroaching on others' freedoms*. Before gender ideology, trans/transexual people were not a problem because a) there were so few of them and b) they didn't press rights claims based on being in the common class with women.
I find that a lot of people start this discussion in the wrong place. They argue about the pragmatics of *how* we integrate "trans" people into various social spaces. This is often even true of gender critical feminists: they base their arguments on the harms/potential harms of having men in private female spaces. spaces and institutions. I think you need to start before that. Why are we talking about *how* when we haven't determined the "why?"
Pro-"trans" people will argue that it's because "trans women are women." The primary way they talk themselves into this is by the concept of "gender identity," a sexed inner soul that is somehow more *real* than the body. When asked why they believe this, they will likely say that because some people have a sense of gender dysphoria, that they *feel* there is a mismatch between their inner sense of their sex and their bodies, that this must mean that everyone has a "gender identity." My argument is that gender dysphoria implies no such thing. Gender dysphoria is just a phenomenon; it's a mental discomfort with the way one's body is sexed. But this no more implies the existence of a universal gender identity than anorexic's distorted perception of their body implies a universal "thinness identity." It's just a mental illness of adaptation, not a clue to some deeper ontological truth.
Thus, if gender identity isn't a valid concept, there is no way to claim that trans women are women. And if trans women aren't women, then we don't have to even enter into a discussion about having them in women's spaces, QED. The important thing is that we can believe gender dysphoria is real for a vanishingly small number of people (about 1 in 25K-30K people) and allow that very small number of people to dress as they like, call themselves what they like, even allow them to undergo body modification as adults after all other therapeutic interventions have failed. But because the position is "You are not a woman, you are a sick man," they can't press rights claims to female spaces and institutions. We therefore can give trans people the freedom to do what makes them happy without allowing them to argue that they are actually women. And to the degree that doesn't satisfy them, we know that they are not genuinely mentally ill but just deluded and can be safely ignored.
It all feels very “Gilead”. What a perfect rabbit hole, to keep the young and oppressed totally sidetracked. We need to cut through these layers of oppression and confusion. Imo
It does help! Thank you so much. Today I picked up my daughter from school and she told me she encountered a boy in the girls' bathroom, after coming out of a stall where she changed her clothes. It shocked her and made her uncomfortable. She debated whether she should yell at him. She did not. She told her teacher. He asked if it was "boy's name." My daughter said yes, and the teacher said, "he is transitioning now," meaning there was nothing to do to follow up with my daughter's experience of being startled by a boy in the girls' restroom.
Totally! Is assbackwards!
Women shave the hair off their adult bodies because men’s sexual preference is for very young women. They want us to look like pubescent girls, vulnerable, innocent, pliable, not like women who might have ideas, preferences and boundaries of her own.
Love your substack. You have it all so right. ❤️
I just want them to be themselves, safely. You're so smug in your self-righteousness. It's very disturbing. Just saying. Y'all better check yourselves.
While I think gender identity is a nonsensical notion (no one can be "born into the wrong body" or "have a gender identity"), I've come to think that gender dysphoria might be a real (but exceptionally rare) thing. The problem, I think, is when the TRAs (trans radical activists) reason like this: 1) Some people have a mental illness in which they feel radical, crippling emotional pain at the way their bodies are sexed. 2) When those (again, very few) people take cross-sex hormones/have surgeries, their suffering is lessened. Therefore, 3) everyone has a gender identity that can be different from their sexed bodies. I would argue that 1 and 2 can be true while 3 can still be false, which is the definition of an invalid argument.
I think that we, on the gender critical side, can go too far in the direction of skepticism. The analogy I've arrived at is like religion. It's possible to not think that God exists because the case for an individual, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent creator deity has not been sufficiently proved. But to be absolutely certain that no god exists requires more proof than merely thinking the case for God hasn't been proved. It's the same with gender identity. I don't think the trans radical activists have proved that gender identity exists and, that if it exists, it should be more important than sex. However, to say that no one, therefore, suffers from gender dysphoria, exceeds the evidence that we are given (in my opinion). For that reason, I'm willing to give people the freedom to manage their mental health any way they want as long as they don't actually claim to *be* the opposite sex. A person who says, "I know I'm not a woman, but I have severe dysphoria when I look at myself in the mirror and see my sexed body. I've tried everything to relieve this distress, but it hasn't worked; therefore, I take cross-sex hormones and get surgery to manage my dysphoria. However, I don't claim the right to use women's facilities, compete in women's sports, etc., because gender dysphoria doesn't make me a woman".
The QED here, for me, is that gender ideology is the problem, not people with gender dysphoria. The incidence of bona fide gender dysphoria is like 1 in 22000 and skews massively male to female. The gender identity craze has nothing to do with gender dysphoria, I don't think.
This may all be true (and you make a good case), but how much does it matter? I really don’t care what a guy wants to call himself or wear, but I care a great deal that because of these people women are losing the right to exist as a political and social class of people who can gather and organise alone without the other sex, who are proven to include people who beat, rape and kill us, in pretty large numbers.
Men are the aggressive half of humans and their victims are largely the non aggressive half - women. (Men commit 95% of violent crime and 99% of sexual crime). Women are the ones who have the bodies that are designed to grow babies and it is very easy indeed to tell which are which.
Call yourself what you like, wear what you want. Stay out of our political and social groups, stay out of our safe (from men) spaces, stay out of our sports, and leave our children alone.
I agree entirely, which is a point I've made at length on my Substack (see: https://uncommondiscourses.substack.com/p/defending-buck-angel-a-liberalpragmatic). We have to allow people to do what they want *until they begin encroaching on others' freedoms*. Before gender ideology, trans/transexual people were not a problem because a) there were so few of them and b) they didn't press rights claims based on being in the common class with women.
I find that a lot of people start this discussion in the wrong place. They argue about the pragmatics of *how* we integrate "trans" people into various social spaces. This is often even true of gender critical feminists: they base their arguments on the harms/potential harms of having men in private female spaces. spaces and institutions. I think you need to start before that. Why are we talking about *how* when we haven't determined the "why?"
Pro-"trans" people will argue that it's because "trans women are women." The primary way they talk themselves into this is by the concept of "gender identity," a sexed inner soul that is somehow more *real* than the body. When asked why they believe this, they will likely say that because some people have a sense of gender dysphoria, that they *feel* there is a mismatch between their inner sense of their sex and their bodies, that this must mean that everyone has a "gender identity." My argument is that gender dysphoria implies no such thing. Gender dysphoria is just a phenomenon; it's a mental discomfort with the way one's body is sexed. But this no more implies the existence of a universal gender identity than anorexic's distorted perception of their body implies a universal "thinness identity." It's just a mental illness of adaptation, not a clue to some deeper ontological truth.
Thus, if gender identity isn't a valid concept, there is no way to claim that trans women are women. And if trans women aren't women, then we don't have to even enter into a discussion about having them in women's spaces, QED. The important thing is that we can believe gender dysphoria is real for a vanishingly small number of people (about 1 in 25K-30K people) and allow that very small number of people to dress as they like, call themselves what they like, even allow them to undergo body modification as adults after all other therapeutic interventions have failed. But because the position is "You are not a woman, you are a sick man," they can't press rights claims to female spaces and institutions. We therefore can give trans people the freedom to do what makes them happy without allowing them to argue that they are actually women. And to the degree that doesn't satisfy them, we know that they are not genuinely mentally ill but just deluded and can be safely ignored.
It all feels very “Gilead”. What a perfect rabbit hole, to keep the young and oppressed totally sidetracked. We need to cut through these layers of oppression and confusion. Imo
Quack
No.