On Monday I published an article in my intermittent "Doofus Of The Day" series, highlighting a trans woman (i.e. a man "transitioning" to "become" a woman) who complained of period pains, despite having none of the plumbing, body parts or nerves necessary to experience them. I also made it clear that in general, I don't regard "trans" as a genuine phenomenon.
That said, I've mentioned before in these pages that I know several people who've "transitioned" from one sex to another who appear to be very genuine in their desire to switch, and who've demonstrated for many years that their decision was positive for them. I don't think the vast majority of those following the current trans fad can say that, but nevertheless, the phenomenon is real for some, and always has been. Among my friends and acquaintances right now, I number several such people, and I think they're as genuine as it's possible to get. I appreciate them as such. I don't feel contempt for them, or reject them; rather, I'm saddened to think about the very difficult lives they've had to lead and how it led to their decisions, and the burdens that those decisions have imposed upon them.
Another person in that position took the time and trouble to write to me at length about that "Doofus Of The Day" article. I'm grateful for their feedback. Here's the e-mail in full, so you can read it for yourself and think about it.
This commentary is on the Doofus Of The Day #1,090 post that I already made a short comment on.
BobNC suggested it was to get attention and affirmation ‘anyone who is mentally ill enough to undergo the surgery’. I underwent surgery 29 years ago. I have had a long and successful life post surgically. My partner and I have raised an outstanding, successful young woman. (My partner passed away 11 yrs ago). Let me deal with Bob’s comment first.
Maybe the person did need attention – attention that was not happening at home, or in their life from family, friends, or community while dealing with a significant psychological issue. Maybe they needed affirmation to deal with the abuse commonly meted out by parents, family members or community members that drives many in the trans community to commit suicide. It isn’t their ‘trans-ness’ that is usually the cause, but the significant abuse by others, the loss of family, jobs, friends, and community that drives them into isolation. I recommend this post I did on Trans Suicide:
http://moderatemainstream.blogspot.com/2021/03/trans-suicide-not-whole-story-this-is.html
Bullying is endemic amongst trans kids. Often even before they understand what ‘trans’ means. I was first beat up at 6 years old. And spent most of 7th and 8th grade getting beat up weekly. My home life was a refuge from the abuse, which other parents and teachers suggested would ‘make a man of me’ or give me a thicker skin. When it started again in my sophomore year of high school, I ended up going to summer school for two years for ‘fighting back’. My tormentors got no punishment. Most of us dealt with bullying in school, but it often followed us into adulthood. I am sure you know of many ‘good ole boys’ that worked over weaker kids… make a man out of them. Or worse. “Can’t have those f….ts around here” or “need to protect the women from those perverts". Yea, we do this for fun. Not.
“It would be interesting to see some data on how many of these poor loonies regret their surgery. Funny how we don’t hear anything about that in the media; though given the level of their trustworthiness, I wouldn’t believe any “data” they had anyway.”I participated in a study, part of a dissertation I believe, that followed up with patients five years after surgery that was done by the University of Chicago Medical Center Gender Clinic back in the late 1990s. I didn’t receive the results so do don’t know the conclusions. Six of us were on an in-person panel held before graduate students of the Psychiatry Department, the Department with overall responsibility of the Clinic. I knew one other participant. I am sure there were difficulties getting participants. The vast majority of us, once we have completed our transition, prefer to blend back into “normal” society and get on with our lives. What is called, passing, or stealth. Most of us accomplish that. Do others fail to do so? Yes. I knew two.
In the last 30 years I have met, in person, more than 50 others that have transitioned and have talked online or via phone with more than 100 others. Most of us know someone that failed, or detransitioned. The failures almost without exception fall into one category: they did not follow the Standards of Care (SoC) that existed in the Medical Community for decades.
If you wanted surgery, “sex reassignment” or what is now titled “Gender Confirmation Surgery”, you needed to follow the SoC. You needed to spend at least one year living in your target gender. That means appearing as a woman (male-to-female) or as a man (female-to-male) basically 24/7. Working, going to school, involved in social circles, successfully for a year. During which time you need to be meeting with a psychologist or psychiatrist with specific skills in gender issues. Back in the 70s and into the 80s, this needed to be done before you were given hormones. So, you had to ‘pass’, and survive without any medical (surgical or hormonal) assistance for that year. In the late 80s, hormones were given to help during the ‘real life test’. My surgery didn’t happen until 5 YEARS after I started transition because of the cost. That was common, for those that could work and support themselves. For those that couldn’t find work, well, the street was the end for most of them. There was no insurance, no programs to pay for anything. Hormones, therapy, and surgery were all out of pocket expenses. Any wonder there were fewer of ‘us’ back then? And why there are many people in their 40s, 50s and even 60s transitioning now?
Here is how you ‘prove’ medically that transsexualism is a real thing: take 50 million women in pregnancy and take blood tests of her and her fetus at 12, 24, 34 weeks and post-partum, and bloodwork of the child at 5, 10 and the beginning of puberty. Of course, such blood tests on the fetus are VERY risky, but you need the number of pregnancies to get a sample of sufficient size to get good results. After all, we are only 1 of between 10,000 and 35,000 depending on the ‘best guess’. Yea, such a study isn’t going to happen. The risk to such a large population to find such a small population will not be allowed. So, we are left with smaller studies and here is a short 6 minutes of a longer 90 minute lecture given by a Stanford neurobiologist:
Back to the two I knew that ‘failed’, and most of the others the rest knew of: they didn’t follow the SoC and despite being told by therapists they were NOT good candidates for transition and surgery, they went overseas and got the surgery. And came back with gender dysphoria because NOW they were really trapped in the ‘wrong body’. Both committed suicide within six months. SoC kept many from failing, but it did happen. The ‘trans suicide’ situation makes the effort to transition difficult. I call the first year of transition Hell Year because of the stress and difficulties. For people already dealing with physical abuse, addiction caused by abuse or other mental issues, and financial difficulties, Hell Year is just too much. The turning out onto the streets, by ‘good Christian fathers’ that don’t want perverts or f*gs in their house…even when their child is 16 or 17 (I have three I know personally right now), is disgusting.
The attitude of people on the Right plays into the needs of the activist Left (people cast adrift by their families, friends and communities because of their “perversions” are accepted by different kinds of abusers).
What has changed in the last decade? Historically, 70-80% of those transitioning were male-to-female. In the last decade that has flipped to female-to-male. Abigail Shearer was right to point out the problem, but her conclusions were/are the usual tropes found amongst the Right but limited by the sample set of teen female-to-males. SoC has been replaced by ‘informed consent’ and the risk to people transitioning has grown exponentially. Detransitioners, largely female-to-males, are almost always the recipients of the “benefits” of just getting what they want, as long as they, or their parents, are INFORMED of the risks. The medical community has abdicated its responsibilities. The recent ‘authority’ promulgated by the Texas Attorney General blows right past the ‘informed consent’ problem and demands intrusion into the medical choices of patients and their parents and their doctors. Killing the child while tossing out the bathwater.
I am of the Right. I believe in individual rights, AND responsibilities. But this issue seems to be used by the Left to destroy our dimorphic society and the Right to destroy trans people.
Anyway, if you got to here, thanks for reading. Feel free to publish this or not, with my real name if you do. I am not ‘out’ in my day-to-day life, but most people that know me, know my history. My partner and my daughter included. Yes, we adopted from China. A little girl thrown away by her ‘mother’ (and father?). Imagine that.
Respectfully,
Tracy Coyle
PS: Many of us 'long-timers' do not consider ourselves, or any transsexuals, part of the transgender community. Our gender is immutable, we were born with it, it just wasn't congruent with our physical sex. So, we transitioned from one sex to another, always retaining the gender we were born with. Transgender now encompasses such a broad category of gender non-conforming that it threatens transsexuals (called transphobic because we believe you need gender dysphoria to be trans and because you need medical transitioning to deal with the issue) and natal women. Don't even get us started on 'neopronouns'. Why are we not more outspoken? Because the Left cancels us as fast as we can voice an opinion.
Food for thought, and well presented. It hasn't changed my fundamental opinions any, and I still regard the vast majority of "trans" people as mentally rather than physically ill or challenged or . . . whatever. However, let me say once again that there are some people who appear to be anything but. I guess they're the exceptions that prove the rule. As for the implications of religious faith and/or teachings for the subject . . . all I can say is, I'm not God, and I'm very glad I'm not, and you should be even more grateful that I'm not! I guess we'll find out the eternal truth of the matter when we stand before the Creator and give account for our own lives, with all their sins, faults and failings. I have more than enough of the latter to worry about, and I'm going to need God's mercy at least as much (if not more than) anyone else; so I'm certainly not going to condemn others out of hand. May God have mercy on all of us, whatever our shortcomings.
Thanks, Tracy, particularly for your courage in being willing to expose yourself to possible (probable?) criticism by standing up for your beliefs and lifestyle. You have my respect for that.
Peter
38 comments:
I believe that transgenderism is first and foremost a mental health problem that should be treated psychologically and not through surgery. It certainly places no obligation on the rest of us to play into their psychosis. It is however wrong of others to beat them up, provided that they don't push that stuff onto our children.
Tracy sounds sincere and lucid, but a good portion of the trends-genders today are sexually confused kids who want to identify with a victim group to earn oppression points.
"Our gender is immutable, we were born with it, it just wasn't congruent with our physical sex"
And there you have it. A disjoint between the mental and the physical.
The attempt to normalize a mental illness and, worse, by mutilating the human body to accommodate the mental illness.
"Our gender is immutable, we were born with it, it just wasn't congruent with our physical sex. So, we transitioned from one sex to another, always retaining the gender we were born with."
No, you are still the same biological sex you were born with, because it is determined by your chromosomes. What you did was transition your gender, which is a social construct, from the one you began with (and was probably assumed for you at birth based upon your sex) to the one you are more psychologically comfortable with. It's just that your sex and gender no longer match up the way nature intended. Then you surgically altered your body so that its secondary sexual characteristics did not match its true biological sex. You can alter your social construct, but not your biological sex.
Which is fine. Nobody should be demeaned for something they had no control over.
I have four children. As far as I know, they are all normal and their genders match up with their sex. If that were not true, I would still want the family to be a safe place for them, and they would be accepted for who and what they are. But I hope that is never the case, but only because life is hard enough without having that kind of added burden to bear. I want my children to be as happy and successful as possible, and the odds of that being true if they are gay or trans or anything other than heteronormal are not as good. That may be because they are suffering from mental abnormalities, or because society doesn't accept them. It really doesn't matter which. They are my children and I love them pretty much unconditionally. But I know the world doesn't.
The standards of care seem to have gone right out the window of late, especially when we're talking about "trans" kids.
And: the explosion of trans-ness, especially among the young would seem to point to most of those being the result of social pressure and not actually having been wrongborn.
Some years ago, when "sexual identity disorder" first came to my attention, I was kind of worried because basically anyone who didn't strictly conform to a 1950s-sterotype gender role could be diagnosed with this newfangled "mental illness", and who knew where that could lead?
Well, now the ubiquitous SID is being conflated with quite rare gender dysphoria, and the quacktivist "doctors" are all to eager to apply pharmaceutical and surgical non-solutions to what is, in nearly all cases, a non-problem.
(Seriously, guys: SID isn't a thing. Normal, well-adjusted people don't need to conform rigidly to a prescribed gender role.)
Now for the tinfoil: the transnational ruling class is firmly of the opinion that There Are Too Many People On This Planet. And now we seem to be seeing a push to denormalize heterosexuality (wasn't this a plot element in The Forever War?) and to sterilize children. Funny how that works out.
(My reaction to actual transgender people who are just trying to get on with their lives is: yeah, whatever, go along with it; there's no need to add to their troubles. Activists, on the other hand, are a social and political problem, and if they're evangelizing in schools then they need to be rooted out and handed over to J.Kb for processing.)
I have a theory about the sudden increase in young people deciding they're transgender and parents "supporting" them in that: I think it's partly due to people having fewer children. I was the 5th of 6 children and I'm pretty sure I announced to my parents that I was "really a boy" at some point, just as I thought I was Pippi Longstocking for a while. Since my parents had already raised 4 children, they had heard it all before, and probably just said "Yes, dear, of course you are - just like your older brother thought he was Batman for a while, and your other older brother thought he was the Green Hornet, and..." Young people try on different identities; it's called being a kid. But when parents aren't used to children, they take that too seriously and too literally.
What's really disturbing about all this is (as Colin Wright and others have pointed out), a lot of this is based on gender stereotypes. Your son likes to sew? He's really a girl! (No, maybe he just likes to sew and he'll grow up to be a good tailor.) Your daughter prefers playing chess, or building things, to playing with dolls? She's really a boy! (No, she'll just grow up to be the kind of woman who relates well to men because she understands them.)
your other older brother thought he was the Green Hornet
Now that kid had something wrong with him... :D
I know language evolves but the use of gender in the context of a person's sex mental illness is another issue.
Concede the language, concede the argument.
Gender is a grammatical term. Mammals are either male or female - that is, sex. Words have no sex but are symbols to represent something/concepts. Hence, a word that is used to represent the sex of its object has a gender.
Words have gender. Words have no sex.
People have no gender. People have sex.
Lucie: I sometimes refer to this as the War on Tomboys. In normal times, a girl who likes doing some "boy stuff" would be labeled a tomboy and allowed to grow up into a strong, independent, relatable woman. Now, she's labeled a trans-boy and urged (perhaps before she's even clear on what the differences are) to submit to medical transmogrification into a confused, unhappy pseudo-boy.
As for me, I've been into cooking and sewing for a great many years, and have no interest in any flavor of sportsball, but I certainly don't identify as a woman.
BTW, people have been misgendering my wife since she was a little girl. She doesn't let it ruin her day, let alone her life.
One possibility is that the gender dysphoria that drives male to female transition is real and that the recent trend of female to male is purely driven by leftist politics. That's how I look at it.
Do you guys really want to force Blair White to become a guy again?
As a society we can surely allow adults, and I stress adults, to make such choices for themselves. While I believe the trans are delusional, there are many delusions afoot in society that don't prevent people from living useful lives. Everything from Furries to Flat Earthers are personal beliefs that individuals can hold and still have jobs, raise children, and function in daily life. An old boss was a superb and caring nurse but believed with all his heart that Sasquatch was real, as long as you didn't discuss that subject with him there was no problem.
My issue is when these people get in my face and demand that I accept their reality in place of my own under threat of state sanction.
James: important point about adults. Allowing kids their fantasies is good, up to a point, but when Calvin heads for the roof wearing a pterodactyl costume it's time to have a talk with him. ("Cape does not enable wearer to fly.")
Encouraging kids to pursue their fantasies to the point of irreversible body modifications is doubleplusungood.
(I need to write up a triple-tinfoil essay on how the guy really pulling the strings isn't Soros, nor Gates, but the guy who founded the Church of Collective Solipsism back in the 80s. I think what we're seeing now is a massive outbreak of third-generation collective solipsism and complete denial that there is such a thing as reality. See also: the increasingly popular belief that we're living in a computer simulation.)
My 21-year-old daughter has watched several friends/co-workers go through phases of non-binary, trans and back again- usually accompanied by drug use, suicidal ideation and a general aimlessness. I think part of this goes well beyond any orientation issues and has more to do with societal pressure, lowering of standards and lack of decent role models or parenting. Social media also has an oversized influence.
In other words I think it’s a reflection of the state of our society in general. We’re talking every day about the state of the world and our worries regarding supply chains, inflation, government corruption, war etc., Imagine being a kid trying to put all of that into context while also ingesting the insanity pushed on Twitter, Instagram, our colleges and the entertainment industry. No wonder they’re confused.
VERY appreciative of Tracy's comments and insight.
Maybe both perspectives are true?
There are a very small (but more than historically apparent) number of people who are transgendered.
AS WELL AS
The current climate and advocacy is way over the top and actually has a different agenda.
Her points about the prior standards of care really ought to be re-instituted as appropriate practice.
One of the most interesting takes I've heard of late on the trans issue is that of James Corbett, who argued somewhat convincingly that the push to normalize trans-sexualism is one front of the globalist push for trans-humanism. See https://odysee.com/qfc082-trans-humanism-720p:023ad9444484c1b2f66f841427e3b3dbb2ed601f
My daughter had a friend who had transitioned back in the late 1980's. He was 6'3" former college quarterback and had been married for 13 years. Decided at 33 to transition but wanted to remain married. Wife said no and divorced him. When he announced his decision his mother had him confined to Austin's mental hospital for 3 months. Texas had a law at that time that if you wanted to do that you had to undergo 2 years of seeing a Physiologist. After he had the surgery he "married" a woman and when I met them in their late 40's they had been together for over 10 years. Nice person and I liked her. But I later asked my daughter why he transition when she still wanted the same sex wife as the first. So was she a lesbian or still male oriented but without the equipment. Is this common? Never seen this ever mentioned.
I have on several occasions listened to Blaire White, a trans public speaker and pundit who is very sharp and interesting, offering a reality-based common sense on trans issues and often enough offering a reasonable perspective. Blaire refers to herself (being physically attractive, it's certainly easier to think of her as a 'her' despite the knowledge of her being trans, which has other, deeper implications) as a simulcra of what a feminine woman looks like, and treats transitioning as a means to only modestly attenuate the degree of severity of the mental illness of dysphoria. Certainly one of the more honest trans activists and speakers.
Thanks to Peter for posting my comments. I didn't want to abuse his site with a long comment (so preferred to abuse his email!)
Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove a medical reason for transsexualism, though there is some evidence to support the incongruity. It isn't a mental illness, but a disorder. In other words, something went wrong with the development of the fetus, specifically during the final phases of brain development. That is the medical thinking at this point.
The current trends are very disturbing amongst teens, and especially teen girls. And much of the 'online' and detransitioner movements are being driven by teen girls. I am concerned by the lack of parental and medical community push back. My concern is shared amongst many transsexuals.
Therapists have learned over the last 50 years that 'talking about it' doesn't change anything. Medical transitioning has been found to be very helpful for those well vetted for it.
Sexual orientation is a VERY different subject. I will note that for many, orientation changes after a year or two on hormones.
Finally, to ruralcounsel: No, just, absolutely no. Gender is NOT a social construct. It finds its roots in biology. Gender is comprised of 'gender identity', how someone views their internal self; 'gender presentation', how that gender is presented to the outside world; and 'gender role', how that gender is expressed within society's expectations. Role is the only 'construct'. Your statement is EXACTLY the argument the Left makes to demand that ALL gendered roles and expectations be removed from society to make 'males and females' equal. We are NOT equal. We have different abilities and skills. We want equality before the law, not equality of outcome - which is at the heart of 'gender is a social construct'.
My gender is structurally hard-wired. Biologically. And chromosomes have only a SMALL part of that. 1 in every 330 children are born with a birth defect, and only a small part of them have an abnormality in their chromosomes. Demanding that people 'live with' their chromosomes abnormalities, or birth defects, because 'that is how they were born' is cruel.
Thank you Tracy,
I particularly thank you for the blog link which surprised me in the way that you describe knowing you were in the wrong body at an early age. That seems different to the handful of (M->F) trans people I know who all (but one*) seem to have only felt gender dysphoria significantly later in life - in one case after some 20 years of marriage.
I like the SOC idea of spending a significant time as the desired gender. Although I can see this being problematic for children in that their schoolmates etc. will likely fail to be sympathetic, I do think that it will very much help weed out the ones who are not actually suffering from gender dysphoria as opposed to a desire to not mature or perhaps to fit in with the crowd or some other reason. My very strong feeling is that the vast majority of teenage who claim to be trans are not in fact trans but rather are glomming on to a popular trend that they think explains their version of the universal teenage angst. Said angst being caused by puberty and related changes as they mature.
I work in a field where we need to avoid both false positives and false negatives and have to balance the relative risk of one over the other. It seems to me that this is a key requirement for society with respect to transpeople. In the case of pre-adult trans it seems to me that false positives (children thinking they are trans when they aren't) are massively more common than the genuine article but that the impact (either way) of getting the decision wrong is extremely high. If the teen transitions (or starts to) and regrets it, it is unlikely they can get back to their original state. They may get close but they would certainly have been better off not have started the process. OTOH as you say, if they are legitimately trans then the sooner they start the process the better because the hormonal changes of puberty are also hard to reverse.
We therefore badly need a way to accurately filter between the genuine trans teens/pre-teens and the ones who are false positives. I don't know what the answer is but my fear is that the current environment where it seems like there is very little discouragement is going to hurt significantly more people than the prior one where you had to be very very sure you were trans and effectively suffer for it for years first
* The one is the son of a friend who is now 18. I haven't talked to him/her in some years but he seemed a pretty happy normal teenager at 14/15. My suspicion is that (s)he's going to be one of the teens who should not have been encouraged, will regret it and likely seek to detransition in a decade or less.
Francis Turner: "I like the SOC idea of spending a significant time as the desired gender."
Ditto.
I was (back in my former life) slightly acquainted with three women (adults all) who decided, at various times, to transition.
One of those dropped out of view for several months and then an unfamiliar man turned up in her place - seemed she'd had a fully-developed masculine persona all ready to step into, and on meeting him I had no clue that he used to be her.
The other two, well, it seemed like they got physically transmogrified without much understanding of the "man" thing - and they hadn't gotten man lessons. One gradually grew into the new role; the other I last encountered a couple of years post-transition, and he still wasn't so much masculinized as defeminized.
Spending time trying out a re-gendered persona is easier for some than others. I'd think it would be relatively easy (in much of America) for a woman to try out a masculine role, and more difficult for a man trying a feminine role.
The word is sex. Gender is for grammatical use.
"My sex is structurally hard-wired. " Fixed for you.
Chromosomal abnormalities? Maybe if you were hermaphrodite, even then, there is a dominant characteritic. What percentage of the population belong to this true anomaly?
Accepting the trans fad as normal is to make finding a cure unfundable and take such medicine such a personally impossible especially when it involves the breaking of emotional bonds.
Tracy, If gender is biological then you are opening the door for medical science to find ways to detect it, and then use abortions to eliminate it by preventing those births, much the way people are offered the choice of ending pregnancies where mongolism is detected.
"Gender is comprised of 'gender identity', how someone views their internal self; 'gender presentation', how that gender is presented to the outside world; and 'gender role', how that gender is expressed within society's expectations."
That sounds like a social construct to me. It certainly doesn't sound like biology.
It ought to be treated psychologically, but psychology is centuries behind other branches of medicine as a science. For the next few decades at least, it’ll be far easier to perform surgical & hormonal “patches” on the symptoms than to address the underlying issue.
Ruralcounsel:
So, we should not seek knowledge because some people may use it badly?
We shouldn't find out about Down's Syndrome because some people may abort the babies?
We shouldn't find out about TaSachs because some people may abort the babies?
We shouldn't find out about congenital heart defects because some people may abort the babies?
And of course, don't investigate them so that medicine could be used to treat them.
You are like a fish that is oblivious to the water around you. And when someone suggests there are places with no 'water', you scoff and when they claim to have been there you deride and the whole idea of intentionally going there is not only laughable but a waste of resources.
Gender is as inherent in your biology as your height it. You may never have considered it specifically at 5 or 10, but you probably considered it later, say puberty and KNOWING you were a 6'(or whatever height you are) man isn't because society said you were, but because you recognized the outward expression of that height had a biological basis but whether you could play basketball was a societal expectation of that height. Don't scoff at the 5' guy claiming to be a viable player - it is just a social construct...
I work and run in fairly liberal circles, with friends and acquaintances across the political spectrum. I don't know a single one of them who is trans. While it's foolish to claim fact based on a single point of data, it is true that the actual number of trans people is quite small. You wouldn't know that by the media coverage, but the media distorts everything.
What I do see is a great many more people (mostly younger) who aren't locked into rigid gender roles. I'm old enough to remember emasculating jokes about men who actually helped their wives raise their children beyond just bringing home the bacon. Anyone remember "Mr. Mom"? Now there are more fathers than not who are as available to their children as their mothers are, and I think their children (and themselves) are better for it. I see more experimentation with clothes and makeup, combined with far less pressure to "decide" one way or the other "what they are". They are trying on roles like they are costumes; it's a very teenage thing to do (acknowledging that the teen years now seem to extend into the 20s). Kids do that with professions, religion, and pretty much everything else they were taught.
I'm particularly bewildered by so-called libertarians who cannot treat individuals as such. When I meet people and customers who are transitioning (through clothing or medically), I have a very simple rule: I address them as they present themselves. How are you hurt when you address a man in a dress (as YOU see it) as "Ma'am"? How is it threatening? It isn't. I do not understand it, but I don't need to understand--I just need to not be a dickhead by not forcing someone else into a mold for my own comfort.
Antibubba: Some social circles will have actual transgender folk massively overrepresented; sci-fi fandom is an obvious one.
People not being locked into gender roles? That's very much a good thing. But the proper "treatment" for, e.g., a boy who doesn't like baseball or a girl who does like baseball is along the lines of "It's OK to be yourself", not "ZOMG! You were born in the WRONG BODY! You need to MEDICALLY ALTERED to correct this!"
"I address them as they present themselves." Likewise, assuming said presentation is reasonably unambiguous. Trouble is, there are the crazy activists who insist that a man with a full beard is literally a woman if he's wearing a dress, that a man can get pregnant, that there are no physiological differences between the sexes, or that the existence of some fraction of a percent of ambiguous individuals means that all the long-established rules must be thrown out. Oh, and (in a famous case in San Jose some years back) that a 300 pound transvestite is a vulnerable little-bitty woman. And, such assertions having been made, these activists insist that anyone who disagrees (or just hasn't kept up with The Rules) must be hounded from society.
The threat is not the one mixed-up individual trying to get on with life as best he/she/catself can, but the activist movement (for which this is but the Holy Cause of the moment; the Cause is infinitely mutable, but the Movement goes on).
Thank you ALL for your comments. I appreciated the opportunity.
We are more, MUCH more than our chromosomes. As one put it, you can remove much of the human body and still have the person. The person resides in the brain and it is the arbiter of the personality, not the body. Changing the b ody is easy, changing the brain is difficult and dangerous. We, use that have suffered with incongruity between our body and brain, can't PROVE to you with any degree of certainty (yet) that what is going on within us is not a mental aberration, but is in fact a congenital body defect.
The current 'trans' community is all but devoid of reality. It is an out of control teenage delusion writ by the Leftist activists seeking some impossible, irrational utopia of absolute singular conformity. I want no part of it.
Tracy Coyle: "The current 'trans' community is all but devoid of reality."
I think that's true of just about any identity-group "community" that's defined by some (often vague) ostensibly shared characteristic and whose members are expected to hold identical political and social views. The significant difference here is that those wishing to join the latest "cool kids" identity group are expected to undergo major body modifications, far beyond the tats & piercings of a few years ago. (Well, that and the activists being much more aggressive than usual.)
The concept of "granfalloon" may need dusting off; most identity groups make no sense.
Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. To pick only one example:
"After all, we are only 1 of between 10,000 and 35,000 depending on the ‘best guess’."
The trans craze is a huge, huge part of the sickness in the culture. Only one in 10,000 or 35,000? LOL.
Try these figures instead (biased source alert, but the problem is real):
"A February 2022 survey from Gallup shows that, a decade after a 2012 poll showing that 3.5% of Americans identified as LGBTQ, twice as many Americans now identify as LGBTQ. Driven largely by Gen Z, the latest poll shows that 7.1% of America's population now identifies as something other than heterosexual and/or cisgender.
"The change reflects generational comfort levels with regard to stepping out of the closet. More than 1 in 5, or 21 percent, of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup found. That's almost double the proportion of millennials, who are 26 to 41, at 10.5 percent, and nearly five times the proportion of Generation X, who are 42 to 57, at 4.2 percent."
and
"At least 20 million people in the US identify as LGBTQ, according to a report released in Dec 2021 from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
(...)
That survey also suggests that about 2 million people in the country identify as trans (...)"
https://queercafe.net/statistics.htm
And the LGBTQWERTY folks are STILL not satisfied! They demand the right to "groom" kids as young as FIVE YEARS OLD! [insert 100 angry emojis]
While my previous comment awaits approval, here is another thought:
How is it fair for a man to declare himself a woman and proceed to beat the tar out of elite female athletes in their sport, stealing their enjoyment of the fruits of years of dedication and sacrifice?
What's going to be interesting is the backlash that's coming a generation or two from now, once all of these "encouraged" transgenders finally figure out they were played.
I don't think the incidence rate is anywhere near what they have been portraying, and that has played into the increase in people's mindsets.
Look at the media--If you accept what they show, blacks are far more of a percentage than they actually are, just like homosexuals and other "minorities". This leads to people thinking things that simply aren't true, like a lot of the young urban black males that I had under me in the Army--They simply could not accept that they were a minority of around 12%. When out in the hinterland communities that were almost all white or "something else", they were confused and frightened to learn the reality. Most of them have no bloody idea whatsoever that "minority" means "small part of society"--It's just a label to them. The fact that they're outnumbered is something they simply don't understand, because they mostly come from black majority areas, see all the blacks on TV and the movies, and think that it's like that everywhere. Take the average inner-city black kid out into the country, and they're terrified to learn that there aren't any other blacks around--It's a weird phenomenon to observe, and I've seen it multiple times over the years. One of the funnier things I observed was one of my black squad leaders taking a bag of M&M candies out and physically demonstrating for several of our more troublesome "urban youth" just what 12% looks like, physically. It was interesting to see them afterwards, because it went from "arrogant asshole" to "quietly thoughtful" and a hell of a lot more polite to non-black soldiers.
Other interesting transformation I saw was in one of my militant black acquaintances who did a tour in Somalia. Ran into him afterwards, and the attitudinal transformation was... Interesting. After having his sunglasses stolen off of his face, and experiencing the things surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu, he went from "My African brothers..." to "ethnic pejorative assholes...", sounding like some of the white supremacist types--Which he fully acknowledged.
I think it was having people use their kids as human shields that did it for him...
I hate to tell all the "nice people" this, but the reality is that precisely none of this touchy-feely acceptance crap happened naturally. It came about because of long-term propaganda efforts and conscious brainwashing of the public. That stuff never lasts, over the generations, and once you've recognized that it was done...? Yeah, it's gonna get ugly. Very ugly. I don't know when the pendulum will start the backswing, but I will predict that once it gets moving, you're going to see it go back the other way a lot harder, faster, and further than any of us would believe.
Dismiss the delusional, refuse to bend to their utopian (ridiculous) demands. But don't assume that they represent the core of people that NEED medical transitioning to survive.
And yes, a 6 or 7 yr old can know they are 'wrong/different'. You think that other kids with birth defects can't see their 'difference' compared to their peers?
It should be vetted by skilled therapists-not shills for leftist propaganda. With careful analysis of parents to prevent "their social validation for having a trans kid", and then add blockers at an appropriate time (before puberty) and after their social transitioning and successful integration, add hormones (15-16), with surgery at/after 18. Therapist involvement throughout to make sure things continue ok.
Transitioning often causes 'fakers' to bail. Living 24/7 helps to de-fetish a "lifestyle" choice. I've heard of mtf get freaked out by the change from a 'privileged' position in society. And I've heard ftm get depressed when they have to constantly battle social hierarchies that exist in male spaces.
In closed spaces (universities), people can be non-conforming with fewer consequences. The real world slaps them in the face.
Just, please, don't dismiss EVERYONE...
Again, the naked assertion that there exists a "birth defect" defined as "being a woman trapped in a man's body" is just that: a naked assertion lacking sufficient evidence.
There MAY be some biological problem during gestation, perhaps exacerbated by toxic chemicals, that causes some opposite-sex genetic switches to be turned ON that shouldn't be. Worthy of investigation.
However, subjecting preteens to irreversible medical interventions is simply wrong. If I'm on the jury of a murder trial of a 21-year-old who had this done to him and subsequently killed the medical doctors who mutilated him, I am voting to acquit.
That said, I will stand up for any transvestite who I see being harassed or ridiculed. They have the same right as everyone to dress up and behave the way they want.
Froginblender: It is not a naked assertion. There is SOME medical/scientific evidence that in the dimorphic areas of the brain there are structures consistent with gender identity incongruence - but that is evidence you don't want supported. It isn't "worthy" of investigation because YOUR naked assertion that such claims by patients are WRONG.
Your naked assertion of wrongness and refusal to even allow medical research, are based in ? what ? Your beliefs? That someone "born" that way has to remain that way? That the one in 330 children born with a defect must 'bear their cross'? That you don't believe that chromosomes can be wrong? Your assertion isn't just cruel, it is barbaric.
But at least you are consistent. You support MURDER.
Patients are not involuntarily subject to medical interventions. They must state weekly/bi-weekly for more than a year to a psychiatrist/psychologist that they are suffering from consistent, persistent, gender incongruence that impairs their ability to function in normal life. They must voluntarily, with full knowledge of the medical consequences, take hormones. And they, as adults, must voluntarily demand surgical intervention. No one is dragged off the street and subjected to involuntary procedures. The patients had at LEAST one year of weekly/bi-weekly discussions to change their assertions. In most cases MUCH more than a year. And ALWAYS with parental support and legal assertions.
Pre-teens are not given cross-sex hormones ANYWHERE in the world*. They MIGHT be given blockers to delay puberty. And IF there is no contra-indicators, after two years of evaluation by a psychiatrist/psychologist and blockers, with full support of legal parents, they might get hormones.
* There have been ISOLATED reports of it happening but it is NOT consistent with the guidelines established by the medical community for treatment of minors. In those cases, that I am aware of, there were extreme circumstances. Now, there are teens (16+) that have received cross sex hormones, again, with parental permission. And there are places, almost exclusively here in the US, where places like Planned Parenthood have given hormones to adults WITHOUT the requisite psychiatrist/psychologist interventions. But that is VOLUNTARY choices by patients. Their regret is usually insufficient cause against the medical doctors.
I don't know why you think medical research shouldn't be done. I don't know why you think a naked assertion of wrongness is sufficient to countatance murder. But, gee, thanks for supporting individual rights to the choice of clothing....how big of you.
Sorry, he suggests he would acquit someone of murder....support, acquit....tomato, tamato.
Next, you can explain how you twisted my "worthy of investigation" into "refusal to even allow medical research".
My apologies froginblender. comprehension error. I missed the period:
"....to be turned ON that shouldn't be. Worthy of investigation."
@Tracy: No worries, be well.
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