Thank you so much for the clear arguments and righteous indignation in this article! I HATE the dehumanizing language some elements of the trans movement are trying to force on women. I am so proud to have given birth twice and breastfed both my kids. The strength, sacrifice, and nurturing love in those acts were an expression of my womanhood, and lying, dismissive terms like “birthing parent” and “chest feeding” degrade that. I’m sorry. They just do.
Also, I loved this line, which really gets at the heart of the matter: “When calling yourself a man results in a death, perhaps it’s time to reconsider whether changing the meaning of an entire set of medically relevant words, as commonly understood for millennia, is a beneficial idea.” Ba BAM!
For example, calling someone a "birthing parent" or "lactating parent" instead of a mother is reducing motherhood to its bare physical functions, when most people (especially mothers!) associate motherhood with much more, such as (as Mari alluded to above) "strength, sacrifice, and nurturing love."
The words, "mother", "wife", "sister" mean so more than descriptions of immutable physical traits. Men hold these traits the words represent dear, and they can never be replaced. A "person with a vagina" didn't teach me about unconditional love, kindness and respect; mom did. A "person with a vagina" didn't watch over her kid brother at a new school; my sister did. A "person with a vagina" didn't (in an act of great mercy) marry me and raise our amazing daughters with principles and values; my wife did that. I don't bond and create incredible life experiences with "two people with vaginas"; I do that with my daughters
I find it offensive on a very deep level (and I don't offend easily). Reducing such poinient, powerful words to physical characteristics (not even accurate ones at that) strips them of any value. It's the definition of dehumanizing. Discussion of political tribes in this context seems trivial. Because the most basic tribe subscription available is "man" and "woman". How disorienting is it to have, for centuries, a sacred kinship with one's own sex, and in a span of less than 10 years, have it redefined altogether? Is it any wonder so many are lost and confused? People need moorings
The third Reich did this very thing. They dehumanized Jews to the point where their fellow countrymen participated in unimaginable atrocities. No, I'm not referring to anyone as nazis. The analogy teaches a valuable lesson- dehumanizing others never results in good outcomes. In extreme cases, it leads to what we saw in WW II
Maybe that's the point. Remember, all this flies under the flag of a tiny portion of the population. That community deserves love and care, like the rest of us. But they don't get to redefine terms that have been civilized society's glue for thousands of years. Our betters, who apparently do nothing but dream up ideas intended to tear society apart, know that a "people divided" mean increased power and control for them. Lives and consequences be damned
I loved the Rosie Greer thing. I vividly remember talking about that round about 7th grade. No one mocked him. We thought it was funny he was doing what our grandmas did. Everyone knew he was a man. That's the mooring point
A couple other things from back then- the boundary-pushing feminists started a movement to spell woma(e)n with a "y", so womyn. It was another thing that caused chuckling. It was intended to recognize differences between sexes and foster greater kinship among women. Even if not everyone liked the messengers or the tactics, the premise broadly made sense. Now all you need is a dress and a pair of earrings. Every guy in the school would have needed to change clothes, idk, right about when the cheerleaders were done with practice
The other thing is race. I grew up in Racine, WI. With a large black population, the desegregation wasn't easy for anyone. Racine experienced some bad race riots that kept us out of school a few times. Most of it was not necessarily due to skin color. It was out of the blue, getting bussed to schools where you didn't know anyone. It's unsettling to change schools every year (by semester in some cases), make new friends, etc. As hard as it was, I learned valuable lessons about race and culture.
I bring this up because race is another immutable characteristic. There are very few traits we just can't really change. While sex is binary, we have many races. Sex is the most basic I can think of. Two choices. So we are to believe a man can turn into a woman, while race offers no such option? One scenario you're a hero, the other, you're the worst person on planet earth. It seems society values race characteristic more than sexual characteristics. Given that sex creates life, the very building block of human existence, seems to me they got the order wrong. Without sex, there is no race issue. As a practical matter, wouldn't it be easier to darken or lighten your skin tone than trying to put a vagina where a dick used to reside? Not to mention the functionality inside
I think it's because as a society we've decided that appropriating another's culture and skin tone devalues their experience (unless you are justinT, Warren, or notham) . Heck, people get called out for even cooking a different ethnicity's food. OK. But then why is it a-ok, even heroic, to appropriate another's sex.
You've once again led me down an interesting path. I'm interested in your thoughts if you have time
"[O]ur confusion of sex and gender, the repurposing of sex-based words for gender-based meanings, is preventing us from having those important conversations in any meaningful way."
By now, cynical as it may be, I genuinely believe that's a primary point and intended effect.
I agree. I see direct efforts to prevent conversations, in language like “no debate” -- the message being, the only person who would disagree with this is a bad person, not a decent person who’s struggling with a complex issue and had good-faith concerns.
I also see efforts to stop conversations -- to stop thought entirely -- in simple slogans like “Trans women are women.”
Anyone who attempts to inject nuance or thought into such a slogan -- “What exactly does that slogan mean? There’s a difference between being socially polite to someone at a party and housing a violent, rapist in a women’s prison, never mind calling him ‘she’” -- gets shouted down “BUT TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.”
There’s even a name for that phenomenon, because it’s a technique used in cults: thought-stopping slogan.
If we’re ever asked not to think, if we’re asked to agree that a matter is completely simple and devoid of nuance, a simple matter of right and wrong, red flags should be waving. It’s always OK to think. It’s always OK to have a conversation. If someone wants to shut that down, in my experience they don’t have good motives (or sometimes they do have good motives but they’re literally brainwashed by an idea and can’t entertain another point of view).
Playing on faulty assumptions is a particularly insidious form of manipulation which trans activism has mastered. For example, a majority of people (especially younger people) don't know the precise definition of a social construct and will make the faulty assumption that it means self-construct.
The reality goes a bit beyond the sex/gender split described in thie essay; although we have a rather high degree of behavioral flexibility, our behavior is actually influenced by our sex.
We're sexually dimorphic primates. The size difference matters with respect to behavior, and it's not just the size difference, it's the hormones as well. This is why the vast and overwhelming majority of humans in prison for violent crime are men. Men are better equipped both physically and psychologically for aggressive competition. This does not mean all men are aggressive, nor that no women are capable of aggression. And yet, at large scale, the pattern persists. Human males are not as aggressive as gorillas, but we're not the hippies that bonobo chimpanzees are. By the way, male gorillas are about twice the size of females, humans males are about 15-20% larger, and bonobos are equal in size. The size differential matters, as do the bio-chemical and neurological differences.
While we're on the subject, human females come pre-adapted for dealing with the needs of infants; that has emotional and psychological as well as physical implications. This is not terribly surprising from an evolutionary perspective (although I'm sure it's absolute heresy in gender studies departments).
These are not the only sex-related behavioral differences, but they're among the most salient. Again, humans have substantial behavioral flexibility, and there is significant variation in human behavior with respect to sex. Nonetheless, gendered behavior is not entirely detached from sex. Here's a radical concept: people bring their essential natures to the project of constructing culture. Culture is not constructed in a biological vacuum.
The mere fact that trans people take cross-sex hormones puts the lie to this whole social construction fantasy. The hormones produce both physical AND psychological effects. And, surprise, surprise, when you're your born into a sex and experience the whole shebang right through puberty, you're a very different creature than some johnny-come-lately who's had some injections and plastic surgeries.
Here's the thing: you can put a shoe in an oven, but that doesn't make it a biscuit. Now, it's a free country, believe whatever rubbish you please. Expecting people to join you in your delusions is just ridiculous. Bullying them over it is monstrous.
I generally agree with what you say -- although this is another topic and injecting too many topics into one post (as I’m prone to do) makes things a bit long.
“Where do cultural gender stereotypes and expectations come from?” could easily be a book-length exploration. Women stereotypically “take care of the kids” because they give birth and for an extended period of time the infant is dependent on the mom as a source of food. Women who were not nurturing and who left their babies on a rock would quickly see those traits be eliminated from the gene pool. Men stereotypically go to war because they are -- on AVERAGE (and people struggle with this part) -- stronger, bigger, and behaviorally wired to be more aggressive than women.
But this wasn’t an exploration of where the stereotypes come from or whether some behavior is biologically based, and whether there are trends by sex. Those are all good topics that deserve consideration and discussion too, and I thank you for bringing them in.
Nevertheless, suppose there are biological trends by sex (e.g., the average man is bigger, stronger, and behaviorally more aggressive than the average woman) we’re still going to have people who don’t fit with those trends -- and how should our culture treat them?
Most women have no interest in going to war, but if you have a Joan of Arc, does your culture make room for her or ascribe her rigid roles that don’t fit with her personality and interests?
Since this is a post about language, my answer would be that our culture has been making more and more room for outliers (whatever the reason is for them being outliers), and being very gender-nonconforming doesn’t make Joan of Arc a “man.”
EB's point also struck me as I read your (delightful!) essay, especially since you seem to take for granted a strong gender-sex split.
Since you mentioned "book-length exploration," something that may be a lot of fun is to do a review of Frans de Waal's / Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist / . It is quite delightful.
It's incredible how quickly the "trans" discussion has become a major part of every cultural institution.
I suspect this isn't really about the very small percentage of the population that might truly experience some kind of gender dysphoria. As you, I hope they can find happiness in life. But the attention is disproportionate to any real cultural impact. Why? Because it's not really about "trans" at all. It 's about conditioning people to reject reality in favor of the pronouncements of those in charge. It's the real world equivalent of Winston finally agreeing that 2 + 2 = 5. And thus Winston came to love Big Brother.
I do think there is encouragement, on all sides, from people who create narratives -- say, people in government, media and the intelligence community -- not to think critically.
So to that end, getting people to uncritically accept "trans women are women" and then all the nonsense actions that flow from uncritical acceptance of that as if it were a literal fact, is useful to the ruling class.
Great essay, yes non-binary is just the frame we most of us occupy on moment to moment experience. The sense of self occurs in a space much bigger -than our sex and gendered experience. Perhaps where we've failed young people is not helping them understand that first-person phenomenological experience can be quite strange, and becoming an adult engaging in the world can take some getting used to. Anxiety, for example, could be thought of as a kind of existential dysphoria, not something we would just jump to surgery on, though of course it's heavily medicalised.
I love this: “ Perhaps where we've failed young people is not helping them understand that first-person phenomenological experience can be quite strange, and becoming an adult engaging in the world can take some getting used to. ”
Thank you for writing this. I stumbled upon this via link from another stack and am so glad I clicked on it - wow. It articulated so well something that I have been trying to put into words for myself and in conversation with others and with my daughters, with only moderate success. This is such important stuff. You treat it with kindness but also keep it grounded in principle and reality and I appreciate that delicate tight rope you walked. Saving this Substack -- only a few reads get this distinction. Just subscribed too! ❤️
That said, I have to concede your point in your last section about attributing examples of real-life confusion to these ever-shifting definitions. I can claim to be above that kind of simplistic thinking all I want, but I can't deny that it is having material impact. The most optimistic take I can offer is that I don't believe this is a stable equilibrium that can last forever. I note for example, how quickly the term "biological woman" came to be used, including by judges in court opinions. If you dull a word enough, people will (eventually) look for a sharper implement.
I should point out that way back when there was no formal distinction between sex and gender. Gender was more skewed towards non-biological realities. For example, your French teacher would ask you the gender of the noun Maison, but conversely, people talked about sex roles, interchangeably with gender roles. it’s only later that people opportunistically began to drive a wedge between the two.
Meaning that our non-recognition of gender as a separate thing is perhaps even more deeply founded than you suggest.
Oh yes! I guess I'm not going back too far with the gender thing -- only as far as it relates to discussion of gender roles, stereotypes and expectations. Second wave feminism, I suppose!
This doesn't at all contradict the main point you're making, but the use of "father" is a bit less constant across cultures than it might seem - some traditional cultures in South America believe in partible paternity, an idea that every man who has had sex with a woman while she is pregnant shares in the fatherhood of the child. Biologically, of course, this is not correct. I believe the theory among anthropologists is that partible paternity has prosocial effects - see e.g. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1002598107 for academic work on the matter. It seems like all the traditional societies mentioned would agree with you on the use of "man" and "woman" though.
That is super interesting, Spruce — thanks!! I’ll definitely read that link.
I think I’ve heard of a culture that doesn’t use sexed pronouns either (?) but in general, even if some things vary in some places, everyone has the concept of man and woman.
The majority of languages don't have sexed pronouns (https://wals.info/chapter/44) (also note that chapter is using "gender" in the linguistic sense, and while most gendered pronouns will have at least a masc/fem divide, there are cases where the split is different, for example using one pronoun for people and another for animals).
I don't believe any language is free from sexed language altogether though, for obvious reasons.
As far as I can tell, every human language has sexed words (man/woman) because that's kind of an important topic for humans! But sexed pronouns, as far as I'm aware, are far less common - which makes me cringe every time someone on the pro-trans side claims that "being pronouned correctly" is a fundamental and universal human right and need!
For example, Mandarin Chinese (that has more speakers globally than English!) just uses "taa" for he/she/it/singular-they, and also for the object case (him/her/them), without any sex or gender signifier in speech. (There is a small difference in writing though.) That is why, as any good "cultural understanding of Chinese students" course will tell you, they will occasionally mess up whether "he" takes an s in front because the concept that it does for some people but not others based on sex makes no sense in their native language!
Finnish just uses "hän" with no sex/gender distinctions; Turkish has the absolute minimalist approach - the pronoun is simply "o". Turks are even generally ok to give their children non-sexed/gendered names with meanings such as "smart" (yes, this is non-gendered) or "happy".
Native American languages did all kinds of things with pronouns - I believe one of them has a different pronoun for "slimy or wet" objects - but more often than not, they don't have separate pronouns for male/female people.
The ideas of Julia Serano + Judith Butler --> Tumblr --> Twitter --> Journalism --> Professional Organisations
Personally, I'm deeply ambivalent on the issue. I see the moral panic hurting trans friends and acquaintances I have who I know to be very much not dangerous predators and I feel angry. I speak to second wave feminist friends with experiences of shelters and abortion related organisations and I feel disquieted.
While I find staggering though (quite apart from the rightness or wrongness) is that academic ideas which were pretty niche some 15 years ago are now having such a massive cultural impact.
Serano's refutation to all of your points in the article is largely here:
Because her PhD is in biology her arguments are more interesting and nuanced than simply "sex is a social construct", but I still think her arguments rely on using intersex people as a rhetorical device in a way that muddies rather than illuminates. But then again, most scientific fields /are/ muddier than non-experts understand - and common-sensical arguments do not often best reflect what is happening on micro rather than macro levels.
P.S. I don't really want to get drawn into an argument where I'm positioning into defending Serano's ideas since I find them more interesting than wholly convincing. However, I think they (plus Butler's Lacanian-Foucaudianism) are at the root of this shift.
Thanks for these comments. I’ve read this piece (granted a while ago—but I recognized it when I started to scan it just now) and I’m afraid there’s absolutely nothing I find compelling or accurate, whether that person has the label “biologist” or not.
It’s simply not true, for example, that woman is a “gender category” — no it’s always referred to sex.
It’s simply not true that human sex “is multifaceted, variable, and somewhat malleable” as “human sex” has been understood for…well, forever until now.
When Serrano says, referring to someone’s external appearance, “many times these traits do not all align (ie all male, or all female) within the same person, as is the case for intersex and many transgender people” — Serrano is misrepresenting and misidentifying sex. That is the very complaint of this piece.
It is not a person’s external appearance that makes someone male or female. It’s not whether they’ve had their breasts removed or their penis inverted. Those are cosmetic things. Were they born with the type of body that produces eggs or the type of body that produces sperm? Even intersex people have a sex. It doesn’t matter what someone looks like.
Basically Serrano has written this article on the basis of appropriating and redefining the words that I’m complaining have been appropriated and redefined, and is thereby creating a very muddled essay, which contributes to the very muddled thinking that has arisen in the last ten years or so.
The same could be said about the article in Nature that Serrano references. If you redefine male to mean someone’s degree of masculinity, or preference for a masculine appearance, then of course that’s “on a spectrum” — but that’s not what male means and it’s not what sex is.
I know you didn’t come to have me take this apart point by point, so I won’t, but it would be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel when the author is doing exactly what I’m complaining about — change what the words mean — in order to try to sway opinions, muddy people’s thinking, and win support for total nonsense.
If Serrano finds happiness and fulfillment dressing in a stereotypical feminine manner and believing himself to be a woman — good: may he live a long and fulfilled life, and I mean that with all sincerity. I wish a happy and fulfilled life for everyone, and life is hard.
But his essays and thinking are redefining words with established meanings with the goal of changing the way people think, and I object to that. It’s people like Serrano with his muddled thinking who have appropriated the word woman for their own purposes and trained the PMC to call women “bodies with vaginas” — and I’m not here for it.
I think Serrano's central point is that there's chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, genital sex, hormonal sex and many secondary sex characteristics. Sometimes these don't align... but using the rare cases of intersex individuals to argue a much broader point seems like a rhetorical move to me that does obscure rather than illuminate.
Ultimately both Serrano and Butler are arguing for the concept of a 'subscious sex' (but then, why not gender?)... Serrano does it through the appeal to diversity above; Butler does it through the kind of post-structuralism that I'm personally very resistant to [I think Lacan was a fraud and that Foucault's legacy has been largely disastrous for the Left]. I am more sympathetic to Serrano's position because there's truth to the fact that scientific discourses tend to advance replicatable norms... scientists are also humans and humans seek patterns and from there make narratives... But ultimately Serrano has to dismiss the fact that the vast majority of humans have chromosomes which align with whether they produce eggs or sperm. We can quibble (and quibble usefully) about the meanings we have ascribed to that fact, but it's also a material reality massively meaningful for the vast, vast majority of women (including infertile women). That cannot and should not be hand waved away.
So... I think ultimately one has to make a metaphysical leap regarding people's experiences of gender. I'm personally happy to do that since I believe in experiential reality - especially since none of us have unmediated access to reality, not even the most rigorous of scientists. How that should that impact policy... I really don't know - and feel especially unqualified to comment when it comes to US policy and the older I get the more I appreciate how different UK and US culture is.
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments and reply. I support people directing their own lives, and I do indeed believe people can (and do) sincerely experience themselves as the opposite sex (or "gender" -- although they behave as if their experiences of "gender" mean they are the opposite sex -- a problem I think we could avoid if we kept the two concepts separate, and which would remove almost completely people's wish to "transition"--if your personality, likes/dislikes, and so on are not considered _tied_ to the type of body you have -- if you can be a man who wears pink and sparkly things -- then there's no need to chop up your body, create a permanent wound, and ruin your sexual response and future romantic prospects).
In large part I believe these sincere beliefs and experiences, of themselves as being "really" the opposite sex "on the inside" are literally caused and created by the fact that there's a current cultural belief in the West that this is possible.
To use a different example: No one believes in angels (say) unless there is already an agreed-upon concept of angels. No one believes in the existence of the chupacabra unless they've heard about the chupacabra.
In a culture like Samoa's, for centuries their fa'afafine people didn't traditionally believe themselves to be "really" women "on the inside" -- nor did they have a wrong-body belief or a sense of something wrong with them that needed to be fixed. They simply filled their cultural niche.
So on one hand, I have no objection (I guess?) to people having what seems to me to be a completely unfounded belief, one which results in their extreme unhappiness. But I detest all the unhappiness I see created by the belief. Naturally if an unfounded belief causes misery (similar to the belief in Hell in the afterlife) I would like to see that belief go out of fashion!
On the other hand, when it affects women's own ability to talk about themselves, when it results in demeaning language, and when it results in wacky behavior like putting violent male-bodied rapists in women's prisons instead of in men's, I must object!
So...for me it's not a problem with the individual and his beliefs, or what he likes to do with his own body, and the life he likes best to live. Live and let live. But there are all these negative effects of the beliefs. They are not...beneficial beliefs, to anyone, as far as I can see.
A more beneficial belief might similar to the traditional fa'afafine belief that "I'm a really feminine man, and I can live that out in an approved cultural niche without disrupting my hormones or having unnecessary surgeries, and I'm accepted and happy in this role."
Excuse me for using your comment as an opportunity to express some related ideas I've been exploring but I think the trouble with the metaphysical leap is the danger of decadent romanticism, and failing to appreciate we are 'finite transcenders', once one leaps, then what? Metaphorically trans feels like a solution to the same base desire for spiritual transcendence but we have to be wary of how we go about this gnosticism.
And thanks for the thanks! Being off Twitter (for the last three years now - gosh - since the start of the first lockdown) has helped me sit with doubt and not-knowing-ness on several fiercely debated socio-political issues a lot more easily.
"I see the moral panic hurting trans friends and acquaintances I have who I know to be very much not dangerous predators and I feel angry."
Do you feel angry about the ongoing mutilation and sterilization of children, based on a diagnosis with a false-positive rate of 85%?
Because I sure do.
You can call my anger part of a "moral panic" if you like, but even as we speak, the Tik-Tok surgeon in Miami is happily "yeeting the teets" of yet more teenage girls.
I personally think the age for surgery should be 18. It's currently 17 here in the UK and I don't think that's right. However, a 17-year-old child in this country can also drive a car and consent to sex, other things that I'm sure many of us would say should be shifted upwards in law to 18. It angers me that some surgeons may be cynically rushing ahead, though that is grimly unsurprising in a for profit medical industry. In terms of how I emotionally feel about children being given surgery per se... I can't find any realiable figures on the numbers - I don't think its useful to conflate all forms of transition, including hormones with surgery. Any trans people I've know who have eventually opted for surgery have taken literally //years// to get it after many mental health checks and waiting lists.
In terms of the other side of the near constant press attention around the perceived threat of transgender individuals and transgenderism, just a couple of days ago here in the UK (as I imagine you already know as it's made the news in the States) Brianna Ghey, a trans girl, has been murdered. The Colorado Springs massacre wasn't that long ago either. I can only see these numbers grimly increasing with what is pretty relentless pathologisation in some quarters, much as how the number of hates crimes against diabled people in this country shot up in the 2000s when there was relentless focus on benefits cheats as the perceived main moral threat.
In the US a lot of teen girls are having “top surgery” and it’s in no small part because they and their parents are confused about the difference between sex and gender. It also doesn’t hurt that in the US the surgeries are highly profitable and we live in a profit-based system. The UK is coming to its senses a bit, as are Sweden and Finland, but I doubt any of those places had teen girls on a conveyor belt to breast amputation quite the way we do here in the good ol’ US of A.
A lot of the heat would be taken out of this if it was absolutely clear that medical transitioning - puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, surgery - was only taking place after years of therapy.
Not on largely gay, autistic and otherwise troubled kids.
In the UK, girls identifying as trans went up 4400% in 8 years. We know teenage girls are susceptible to social contagion, and often hate their bodies to an obsessive degree - and this is the 8 years after the smart phone and social media became widespread.
A recent study on the Tavistock gender clinic in England showed that only 2.5 % of patients had no confounding factors: not gay, not autistic, no mood disorders or eating disorders, no time in care, no history of sexual abuse.
It is absolutely imperative that we are certain that we're not perpetuating a new medical scandal on confused kids.
Adults are a separate matter, of course, different critiques can be made here balanced with a person's autonomy.
You're aware that the shooter in Colorado Springs identifies as nonbinary, right? "Aldrich's attorneys have said in court documents that their client identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, preferring to be addressed as Mx. Aldrich." And that he had frequently made "homophobic slurs" before the shooting.
Someone being non-binary or identifying as such doesn't stop them from getting caught up in beliefs up drag queens being pedophiles. Likewise, there are Jewish believers in QAnon.
Really seems like the Colorado shooter was a self-hating gay man. Pretty hard to paint that tragic event as due to "anti trans" bigotry IMO.
As for Drag Queens, the ones who were paid $207,000 by New York City to go into public schools have a "Dragitivy Book" that pushes pronouns on little kids:
>The Dragtivity Book is an educational tool for engaging kids in conversation about gender and identity. Kids often have questions after attending DSH events, and sometimes parents and educators don’t have all the answers. ... Featuring 20 pages of fun and educational activities such as “find your own drag name,” “circle your pronouns,”
Sure - while I don't much care about a Dragtivity Book myself, I understand why it would bother some people. I honestly think growing up in a country where pantomime in a norm, the idea of drag/ cross-dressing doesn't seem inherently dangerous for kids, frankly... indeed, I suspect that children get exposed to worse innuendo in pantomime.
But the term "grooming" is used by politicians and the media very deliberately because everyone knows that this implies drag queens are, on mass, sexually molesting children. It's the exact same playbook as with the santanic panic in the 1980s. If people really cared about that, they would focus more immediately upon incest within families or - if they're concerned about media and influences - on straight male YouTubers grooming fans. Which is why I think it's largely a reactive attitude of "ew but it's weird". All humans have reactive attitudes and I don't think they should all be immediately dismissed (the reactive attitude against not eating humans seems sensible to me!) but they are not a sensible basis for policy decision - surely especially in a country that is meant to value freedom of expression.
Personally the sight of guys kissing doesn't bother me in the slightest, but Adam Cadre once wrote that it makes him feel queasy. He also recognised this issue was in him and that he knew there wasn't anything morally wrong with homosexuality. As such, he wouldn't support legislature against homosexuality.
Likewise, I understand some people will be squicked out by Drag Story Hour. Fair enough. They presumably aren't going to take their kids to see it. If kids' gender identities really are so fragile that they are going to be changed or transformed by going to one of these events, then maybe it is all a construct! But, more realistically, most kids are going to go and be faintly entertained or bored - waiting to go home and play RoBlox or watch YouTube where they'll be exposed to loads of toilet jokes and edgy memes.
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
I personally think that the law should be 18 for surgeries - considering the population of the US, the numbers are not staggeringly high, but I very much hope that the kids remain happy with the decision later. It is a significant decision - and while I don't think teenagers would take it lightly, it also makes sense as an overall social good that we generally put restrictions on the life-changing decisions children are able to make. However, condemning other trans kids to despair is significant, especially if there are high risks of self-harm. On balance, I do think 18 is right when it comes to surgery.
Gender dysphoric kids are who treated with "watchful waiting" have a desistance rate of ~85%.
And there is no diagnostic for distinguishing the 85% from the 15%. Absolutely no one has the slightest idea how to tell these two groups apart at the start.
Given these facts (which are not in significant dispute), I think both blockers and hormones are not appropriate for children. Yes, there is likely a small cohort that would have benefitted from such medically drastic early intervention, but we need to be able to identify this cohort with FAR greater accuracy than we can at present.
Also Dolly, kudos for being well ahead of the pack on this. You’ve been writing on this topic for a couple of years now. Others are just now catching up.
Thank you so much for the clear arguments and righteous indignation in this article! I HATE the dehumanizing language some elements of the trans movement are trying to force on women. I am so proud to have given birth twice and breastfed both my kids. The strength, sacrifice, and nurturing love in those acts were an expression of my womanhood, and lying, dismissive terms like “birthing parent” and “chest feeding” degrade that. I’m sorry. They just do.
Also, I loved this line, which really gets at the heart of the matter: “When calling yourself a man results in a death, perhaps it’s time to reconsider whether changing the meaning of an entire set of medically relevant words, as commonly understood for millennia, is a beneficial idea.” Ba BAM!
Thanks, Mari! I agree completely that these changes to the language degrade things that are meaningful and important about being a woman.
could you explain how they degrade that?
For example, calling someone a "birthing parent" or "lactating parent" instead of a mother is reducing motherhood to its bare physical functions, when most people (especially mothers!) associate motherhood with much more, such as (as Mari alluded to above) "strength, sacrifice, and nurturing love."
The words, "mother", "wife", "sister" mean so more than descriptions of immutable physical traits. Men hold these traits the words represent dear, and they can never be replaced. A "person with a vagina" didn't teach me about unconditional love, kindness and respect; mom did. A "person with a vagina" didn't watch over her kid brother at a new school; my sister did. A "person with a vagina" didn't (in an act of great mercy) marry me and raise our amazing daughters with principles and values; my wife did that. I don't bond and create incredible life experiences with "two people with vaginas"; I do that with my daughters
I find it offensive on a very deep level (and I don't offend easily). Reducing such poinient, powerful words to physical characteristics (not even accurate ones at that) strips them of any value. It's the definition of dehumanizing. Discussion of political tribes in this context seems trivial. Because the most basic tribe subscription available is "man" and "woman". How disorienting is it to have, for centuries, a sacred kinship with one's own sex, and in a span of less than 10 years, have it redefined altogether? Is it any wonder so many are lost and confused? People need moorings
The third Reich did this very thing. They dehumanized Jews to the point where their fellow countrymen participated in unimaginable atrocities. No, I'm not referring to anyone as nazis. The analogy teaches a valuable lesson- dehumanizing others never results in good outcomes. In extreme cases, it leads to what we saw in WW II
Maybe that's the point. Remember, all this flies under the flag of a tiny portion of the population. That community deserves love and care, like the rest of us. But they don't get to redefine terms that have been civilized society's glue for thousands of years. Our betters, who apparently do nothing but dream up ideas intended to tear society apart, know that a "people divided" mean increased power and control for them. Lives and consequences be damned
I loved the Rosie Greer thing. I vividly remember talking about that round about 7th grade. No one mocked him. We thought it was funny he was doing what our grandmas did. Everyone knew he was a man. That's the mooring point
A couple other things from back then- the boundary-pushing feminists started a movement to spell woma(e)n with a "y", so womyn. It was another thing that caused chuckling. It was intended to recognize differences between sexes and foster greater kinship among women. Even if not everyone liked the messengers or the tactics, the premise broadly made sense. Now all you need is a dress and a pair of earrings. Every guy in the school would have needed to change clothes, idk, right about when the cheerleaders were done with practice
The other thing is race. I grew up in Racine, WI. With a large black population, the desegregation wasn't easy for anyone. Racine experienced some bad race riots that kept us out of school a few times. Most of it was not necessarily due to skin color. It was out of the blue, getting bussed to schools where you didn't know anyone. It's unsettling to change schools every year (by semester in some cases), make new friends, etc. As hard as it was, I learned valuable lessons about race and culture.
I bring this up because race is another immutable characteristic. There are very few traits we just can't really change. While sex is binary, we have many races. Sex is the most basic I can think of. Two choices. So we are to believe a man can turn into a woman, while race offers no such option? One scenario you're a hero, the other, you're the worst person on planet earth. It seems society values race characteristic more than sexual characteristics. Given that sex creates life, the very building block of human existence, seems to me they got the order wrong. Without sex, there is no race issue. As a practical matter, wouldn't it be easier to darken or lighten your skin tone than trying to put a vagina where a dick used to reside? Not to mention the functionality inside
I think it's because as a society we've decided that appropriating another's culture and skin tone devalues their experience (unless you are justinT, Warren, or notham) . Heck, people get called out for even cooking a different ethnicity's food. OK. But then why is it a-ok, even heroic, to appropriate another's sex.
You've once again led me down an interesting path. I'm interested in your thoughts if you have time
Jd
"[O]ur confusion of sex and gender, the repurposing of sex-based words for gender-based meanings, is preventing us from having those important conversations in any meaningful way."
By now, cynical as it may be, I genuinely believe that's a primary point and intended effect.
I agree. I see direct efforts to prevent conversations, in language like “no debate” -- the message being, the only person who would disagree with this is a bad person, not a decent person who’s struggling with a complex issue and had good-faith concerns.
I also see efforts to stop conversations -- to stop thought entirely -- in simple slogans like “Trans women are women.”
Anyone who attempts to inject nuance or thought into such a slogan -- “What exactly does that slogan mean? There’s a difference between being socially polite to someone at a party and housing a violent, rapist in a women’s prison, never mind calling him ‘she’” -- gets shouted down “BUT TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.”
There’s even a name for that phenomenon, because it’s a technique used in cults: thought-stopping slogan.
If we’re ever asked not to think, if we’re asked to agree that a matter is completely simple and devoid of nuance, a simple matter of right and wrong, red flags should be waving. It’s always OK to think. It’s always OK to have a conversation. If someone wants to shut that down, in my experience they don’t have good motives (or sometimes they do have good motives but they’re literally brainwashed by an idea and can’t entertain another point of view).
Indeed.
Playing on faulty assumptions is a particularly insidious form of manipulation which trans activism has mastered. For example, a majority of people (especially younger people) don't know the precise definition of a social construct and will make the faulty assumption that it means self-construct.
Yes -- the younger people are, the more they can be influenced by new terms, new language, and muddy thinking, because they haven't learned different.
The reality goes a bit beyond the sex/gender split described in thie essay; although we have a rather high degree of behavioral flexibility, our behavior is actually influenced by our sex.
We're sexually dimorphic primates. The size difference matters with respect to behavior, and it's not just the size difference, it's the hormones as well. This is why the vast and overwhelming majority of humans in prison for violent crime are men. Men are better equipped both physically and psychologically for aggressive competition. This does not mean all men are aggressive, nor that no women are capable of aggression. And yet, at large scale, the pattern persists. Human males are not as aggressive as gorillas, but we're not the hippies that bonobo chimpanzees are. By the way, male gorillas are about twice the size of females, humans males are about 15-20% larger, and bonobos are equal in size. The size differential matters, as do the bio-chemical and neurological differences.
While we're on the subject, human females come pre-adapted for dealing with the needs of infants; that has emotional and psychological as well as physical implications. This is not terribly surprising from an evolutionary perspective (although I'm sure it's absolute heresy in gender studies departments).
These are not the only sex-related behavioral differences, but they're among the most salient. Again, humans have substantial behavioral flexibility, and there is significant variation in human behavior with respect to sex. Nonetheless, gendered behavior is not entirely detached from sex. Here's a radical concept: people bring their essential natures to the project of constructing culture. Culture is not constructed in a biological vacuum.
The mere fact that trans people take cross-sex hormones puts the lie to this whole social construction fantasy. The hormones produce both physical AND psychological effects. And, surprise, surprise, when you're your born into a sex and experience the whole shebang right through puberty, you're a very different creature than some johnny-come-lately who's had some injections and plastic surgeries.
Here's the thing: you can put a shoe in an oven, but that doesn't make it a biscuit. Now, it's a free country, believe whatever rubbish you please. Expecting people to join you in your delusions is just ridiculous. Bullying them over it is monstrous.
I generally agree with what you say -- although this is another topic and injecting too many topics into one post (as I’m prone to do) makes things a bit long.
“Where do cultural gender stereotypes and expectations come from?” could easily be a book-length exploration. Women stereotypically “take care of the kids” because they give birth and for an extended period of time the infant is dependent on the mom as a source of food. Women who were not nurturing and who left their babies on a rock would quickly see those traits be eliminated from the gene pool. Men stereotypically go to war because they are -- on AVERAGE (and people struggle with this part) -- stronger, bigger, and behaviorally wired to be more aggressive than women.
But this wasn’t an exploration of where the stereotypes come from or whether some behavior is biologically based, and whether there are trends by sex. Those are all good topics that deserve consideration and discussion too, and I thank you for bringing them in.
Nevertheless, suppose there are biological trends by sex (e.g., the average man is bigger, stronger, and behaviorally more aggressive than the average woman) we’re still going to have people who don’t fit with those trends -- and how should our culture treat them?
Most women have no interest in going to war, but if you have a Joan of Arc, does your culture make room for her or ascribe her rigid roles that don’t fit with her personality and interests?
Since this is a post about language, my answer would be that our culture has been making more and more room for outliers (whatever the reason is for them being outliers), and being very gender-nonconforming doesn’t make Joan of Arc a “man.”
EB's point also struck me as I read your (delightful!) essay, especially since you seem to take for granted a strong gender-sex split.
Since you mentioned "book-length exploration," something that may be a lot of fun is to do a review of Frans de Waal's / Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist / . It is quite delightful.
re drawing the map does not change the land.
This week, on Criminal Minds:
“All right, what are we looking at this time?”
“Bodies, sir. Bodies… with vaginas.”
Eek!
😆😂🤣
Standing on the corner, watching all the bodies with vaginas go by
Oh dear!
Best article on this topic. Thank you.
I was just going to say the same thing.
Thank you (both) for the kind comment and for taking the time to read.
Dehumanising and bullying. Bullies are people who for a reason feel inferior and latch onto coercion to gain power rapidly.
It's incredible how quickly the "trans" discussion has become a major part of every cultural institution.
I suspect this isn't really about the very small percentage of the population that might truly experience some kind of gender dysphoria. As you, I hope they can find happiness in life. But the attention is disproportionate to any real cultural impact. Why? Because it's not really about "trans" at all. It 's about conditioning people to reject reality in favor of the pronouncements of those in charge. It's the real world equivalent of Winston finally agreeing that 2 + 2 = 5. And thus Winston came to love Big Brother.
I do think there is encouragement, on all sides, from people who create narratives -- say, people in government, media and the intelligence community -- not to think critically.
So to that end, getting people to uncritically accept "trans women are women" and then all the nonsense actions that flow from uncritical acceptance of that as if it were a literal fact, is useful to the ruling class.
It’s more than useful. As shown in “1984”, it is the ultimate control. And yes, it’s dangerous from any direction.
Great essay, yes non-binary is just the frame we most of us occupy on moment to moment experience. The sense of self occurs in a space much bigger -than our sex and gendered experience. Perhaps where we've failed young people is not helping them understand that first-person phenomenological experience can be quite strange, and becoming an adult engaging in the world can take some getting used to. Anxiety, for example, could be thought of as a kind of existential dysphoria, not something we would just jump to surgery on, though of course it's heavily medicalised.
I love this: “ Perhaps where we've failed young people is not helping them understand that first-person phenomenological experience can be quite strange, and becoming an adult engaging in the world can take some getting used to. ”
Yes!
Thank you for writing this. I stumbled upon this via link from another stack and am so glad I clicked on it - wow. It articulated so well something that I have been trying to put into words for myself and in conversation with others and with my daughters, with only moderate success. This is such important stuff. You treat it with kindness but also keep it grounded in principle and reality and I appreciate that delicate tight rope you walked. Saving this Substack -- only a few reads get this distinction. Just subscribed too! ❤️
Thank you, L! What kind comments — thank you for taking the time to read and comment! Welcome!
I wrote about the topic of language within this issue. I'm largely much more agnostic than you are about changing definitions, although we reach the same conclusion about "create your own": https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/what-boston-can-teach-us-about-what
That said, I have to concede your point in your last section about attributing examples of real-life confusion to these ever-shifting definitions. I can claim to be above that kind of simplistic thinking all I want, but I can't deny that it is having material impact. The most optimistic take I can offer is that I don't believe this is a stable equilibrium that can last forever. I note for example, how quickly the term "biological woman" came to be used, including by judges in court opinions. If you dull a word enough, people will (eventually) look for a sharper implement.
I should point out that way back when there was no formal distinction between sex and gender. Gender was more skewed towards non-biological realities. For example, your French teacher would ask you the gender of the noun Maison, but conversely, people talked about sex roles, interchangeably with gender roles. it’s only later that people opportunistically began to drive a wedge between the two.
Meaning that our non-recognition of gender as a separate thing is perhaps even more deeply founded than you suggest.
Oh yes! I guess I'm not going back too far with the gender thing -- only as far as it relates to discussion of gender roles, stereotypes and expectations. Second wave feminism, I suppose!
This doesn't at all contradict the main point you're making, but the use of "father" is a bit less constant across cultures than it might seem - some traditional cultures in South America believe in partible paternity, an idea that every man who has had sex with a woman while she is pregnant shares in the fatherhood of the child. Biologically, of course, this is not correct. I believe the theory among anthropologists is that partible paternity has prosocial effects - see e.g. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1002598107 for academic work on the matter. It seems like all the traditional societies mentioned would agree with you on the use of "man" and "woman" though.
Had a chance to read it tonight — that’s really interesting!
That is super interesting, Spruce — thanks!! I’ll definitely read that link.
I think I’ve heard of a culture that doesn’t use sexed pronouns either (?) but in general, even if some things vary in some places, everyone has the concept of man and woman.
The majority of languages don't have sexed pronouns (https://wals.info/chapter/44) (also note that chapter is using "gender" in the linguistic sense, and while most gendered pronouns will have at least a masc/fem divide, there are cases where the split is different, for example using one pronoun for people and another for animals).
I don't believe any language is free from sexed language altogether though, for obvious reasons.
Finally got a few minutes to read that link. Super interesting and thanks for sharing that!!
As far as I can tell, every human language has sexed words (man/woman) because that's kind of an important topic for humans! But sexed pronouns, as far as I'm aware, are far less common - which makes me cringe every time someone on the pro-trans side claims that "being pronouned correctly" is a fundamental and universal human right and need!
For example, Mandarin Chinese (that has more speakers globally than English!) just uses "taa" for he/she/it/singular-they, and also for the object case (him/her/them), without any sex or gender signifier in speech. (There is a small difference in writing though.) That is why, as any good "cultural understanding of Chinese students" course will tell you, they will occasionally mess up whether "he" takes an s in front because the concept that it does for some people but not others based on sex makes no sense in their native language!
Finnish just uses "hän" with no sex/gender distinctions; Turkish has the absolute minimalist approach - the pronoun is simply "o". Turks are even generally ok to give their children non-sexed/gendered names with meanings such as "smart" (yes, this is non-gendered) or "happy".
Native American languages did all kinds of things with pronouns - I believe one of them has a different pronoun for "slimy or wet" objects - but more often than not, they don't have separate pronouns for male/female people.
Very interesting! (Seriously!)
And yet all those places know which people have the babies!
The ideas of Julia Serano + Judith Butler --> Tumblr --> Twitter --> Journalism --> Professional Organisations
Personally, I'm deeply ambivalent on the issue. I see the moral panic hurting trans friends and acquaintances I have who I know to be very much not dangerous predators and I feel angry. I speak to second wave feminist friends with experiences of shelters and abortion related organisations and I feel disquieted.
While I find staggering though (quite apart from the rightness or wrongness) is that academic ideas which were pretty niche some 15 years ago are now having such a massive cultural impact.
Serano's refutation to all of your points in the article is largely here:
https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a
Because her PhD is in biology her arguments are more interesting and nuanced than simply "sex is a social construct", but I still think her arguments rely on using intersex people as a rhetorical device in a way that muddies rather than illuminates. But then again, most scientific fields /are/ muddier than non-experts understand - and common-sensical arguments do not often best reflect what is happening on micro rather than macro levels.
P.S. I don't really want to get drawn into an argument where I'm positioning into defending Serano's ideas since I find them more interesting than wholly convincing. However, I think they (plus Butler's Lacanian-Foucaudianism) are at the root of this shift.
Thanks for these comments. I’ve read this piece (granted a while ago—but I recognized it when I started to scan it just now) and I’m afraid there’s absolutely nothing I find compelling or accurate, whether that person has the label “biologist” or not.
It’s simply not true, for example, that woman is a “gender category” — no it’s always referred to sex.
It’s simply not true that human sex “is multifaceted, variable, and somewhat malleable” as “human sex” has been understood for…well, forever until now.
When Serrano says, referring to someone’s external appearance, “many times these traits do not all align (ie all male, or all female) within the same person, as is the case for intersex and many transgender people” — Serrano is misrepresenting and misidentifying sex. That is the very complaint of this piece.
It is not a person’s external appearance that makes someone male or female. It’s not whether they’ve had their breasts removed or their penis inverted. Those are cosmetic things. Were they born with the type of body that produces eggs or the type of body that produces sperm? Even intersex people have a sex. It doesn’t matter what someone looks like.
Basically Serrano has written this article on the basis of appropriating and redefining the words that I’m complaining have been appropriated and redefined, and is thereby creating a very muddled essay, which contributes to the very muddled thinking that has arisen in the last ten years or so.
The same could be said about the article in Nature that Serrano references. If you redefine male to mean someone’s degree of masculinity, or preference for a masculine appearance, then of course that’s “on a spectrum” — but that’s not what male means and it’s not what sex is.
I know you didn’t come to have me take this apart point by point, so I won’t, but it would be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel when the author is doing exactly what I’m complaining about — change what the words mean — in order to try to sway opinions, muddy people’s thinking, and win support for total nonsense.
If Serrano finds happiness and fulfillment dressing in a stereotypical feminine manner and believing himself to be a woman — good: may he live a long and fulfilled life, and I mean that with all sincerity. I wish a happy and fulfilled life for everyone, and life is hard.
But his essays and thinking are redefining words with established meanings with the goal of changing the way people think, and I object to that. It’s people like Serrano with his muddled thinking who have appropriated the word woman for their own purposes and trained the PMC to call women “bodies with vaginas” — and I’m not here for it.
I think Serrano's central point is that there's chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, genital sex, hormonal sex and many secondary sex characteristics. Sometimes these don't align... but using the rare cases of intersex individuals to argue a much broader point seems like a rhetorical move to me that does obscure rather than illuminate.
Ultimately both Serrano and Butler are arguing for the concept of a 'subscious sex' (but then, why not gender?)... Serrano does it through the appeal to diversity above; Butler does it through the kind of post-structuralism that I'm personally very resistant to [I think Lacan was a fraud and that Foucault's legacy has been largely disastrous for the Left]. I am more sympathetic to Serrano's position because there's truth to the fact that scientific discourses tend to advance replicatable norms... scientists are also humans and humans seek patterns and from there make narratives... But ultimately Serrano has to dismiss the fact that the vast majority of humans have chromosomes which align with whether they produce eggs or sperm. We can quibble (and quibble usefully) about the meanings we have ascribed to that fact, but it's also a material reality massively meaningful for the vast, vast majority of women (including infertile women). That cannot and should not be hand waved away.
So... I think ultimately one has to make a metaphysical leap regarding people's experiences of gender. I'm personally happy to do that since I believe in experiential reality - especially since none of us have unmediated access to reality, not even the most rigorous of scientists. How that should that impact policy... I really don't know - and feel especially unqualified to comment when it comes to US policy and the older I get the more I appreciate how different UK and US culture is.
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments and reply. I support people directing their own lives, and I do indeed believe people can (and do) sincerely experience themselves as the opposite sex (or "gender" -- although they behave as if their experiences of "gender" mean they are the opposite sex -- a problem I think we could avoid if we kept the two concepts separate, and which would remove almost completely people's wish to "transition"--if your personality, likes/dislikes, and so on are not considered _tied_ to the type of body you have -- if you can be a man who wears pink and sparkly things -- then there's no need to chop up your body, create a permanent wound, and ruin your sexual response and future romantic prospects).
In large part I believe these sincere beliefs and experiences, of themselves as being "really" the opposite sex "on the inside" are literally caused and created by the fact that there's a current cultural belief in the West that this is possible.
To use a different example: No one believes in angels (say) unless there is already an agreed-upon concept of angels. No one believes in the existence of the chupacabra unless they've heard about the chupacabra.
In a culture like Samoa's, for centuries their fa'afafine people didn't traditionally believe themselves to be "really" women "on the inside" -- nor did they have a wrong-body belief or a sense of something wrong with them that needed to be fixed. They simply filled their cultural niche.
So on one hand, I have no objection (I guess?) to people having what seems to me to be a completely unfounded belief, one which results in their extreme unhappiness. But I detest all the unhappiness I see created by the belief. Naturally if an unfounded belief causes misery (similar to the belief in Hell in the afterlife) I would like to see that belief go out of fashion!
On the other hand, when it affects women's own ability to talk about themselves, when it results in demeaning language, and when it results in wacky behavior like putting violent male-bodied rapists in women's prisons instead of in men's, I must object!
So...for me it's not a problem with the individual and his beliefs, or what he likes to do with his own body, and the life he likes best to live. Live and let live. But there are all these negative effects of the beliefs. They are not...beneficial beliefs, to anyone, as far as I can see.
A more beneficial belief might similar to the traditional fa'afafine belief that "I'm a really feminine man, and I can live that out in an approved cultural niche without disrupting my hormones or having unnecessary surgeries, and I'm accepted and happy in this role."
Excuse me for using your comment as an opportunity to express some related ideas I've been exploring but I think the trouble with the metaphysical leap is the danger of decadent romanticism, and failing to appreciate we are 'finite transcenders', once one leaps, then what? Metaphorically trans feels like a solution to the same base desire for spiritual transcendence but we have to be wary of how we go about this gnosticism.
And thanks for the thanks! Being off Twitter (for the last three years now - gosh - since the start of the first lockdown) has helped me sit with doubt and not-knowing-ness on several fiercely debated socio-political issues a lot more easily.
"I see the moral panic hurting trans friends and acquaintances I have who I know to be very much not dangerous predators and I feel angry."
Do you feel angry about the ongoing mutilation and sterilization of children, based on a diagnosis with a false-positive rate of 85%?
Because I sure do.
You can call my anger part of a "moral panic" if you like, but even as we speak, the Tik-Tok surgeon in Miami is happily "yeeting the teets" of yet more teenage girls.
I personally think the age for surgery should be 18. It's currently 17 here in the UK and I don't think that's right. However, a 17-year-old child in this country can also drive a car and consent to sex, other things that I'm sure many of us would say should be shifted upwards in law to 18. It angers me that some surgeons may be cynically rushing ahead, though that is grimly unsurprising in a for profit medical industry. In terms of how I emotionally feel about children being given surgery per se... I can't find any realiable figures on the numbers - I don't think its useful to conflate all forms of transition, including hormones with surgery. Any trans people I've know who have eventually opted for surgery have taken literally //years// to get it after many mental health checks and waiting lists.
In terms of the other side of the near constant press attention around the perceived threat of transgender individuals and transgenderism, just a couple of days ago here in the UK (as I imagine you already know as it's made the news in the States) Brianna Ghey, a trans girl, has been murdered. The Colorado Springs massacre wasn't that long ago either. I can only see these numbers grimly increasing with what is pretty relentless pathologisation in some quarters, much as how the number of hates crimes against diabled people in this country shot up in the 2000s when there was relentless focus on benefits cheats as the perceived main moral threat.
In the US a lot of teen girls are having “top surgery” and it’s in no small part because they and their parents are confused about the difference between sex and gender. It also doesn’t hurt that in the US the surgeries are highly profitable and we live in a profit-based system. The UK is coming to its senses a bit, as are Sweden and Finland, but I doubt any of those places had teen girls on a conveyor belt to breast amputation quite the way we do here in the good ol’ US of A.
I honestly think that having a profit-based system in health, education and prison always leads to serious ethical issues/ quandaries.
A lot of the heat would be taken out of this if it was absolutely clear that medical transitioning - puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, surgery - was only taking place after years of therapy.
Not on largely gay, autistic and otherwise troubled kids.
In the UK, girls identifying as trans went up 4400% in 8 years. We know teenage girls are susceptible to social contagion, and often hate their bodies to an obsessive degree - and this is the 8 years after the smart phone and social media became widespread.
A recent study on the Tavistock gender clinic in England showed that only 2.5 % of patients had no confounding factors: not gay, not autistic, no mood disorders or eating disorders, no time in care, no history of sexual abuse.
It is absolutely imperative that we are certain that we're not perpetuating a new medical scandal on confused kids.
Adults are a separate matter, of course, different critiques can be made here balanced with a person's autonomy.
"It is absolutely imperative that we are certain that we're not perpetuating a new medical scandal on confused kids."
I completely and absolutely agree, but this medical scandal is full blown and ongoing here in the US.
Here is the latest whistleblower account: https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids
It is almost certain that everything she describes is going on at every single one of the hundreds of "gender clinics" in the US.
I've read that article and she's a brave woman.
Very
You're aware that the shooter in Colorado Springs identifies as nonbinary, right? "Aldrich's attorneys have said in court documents that their client identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, preferring to be addressed as Mx. Aldrich." And that he had frequently made "homophobic slurs" before the shooting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_shooting
Someone being non-binary or identifying as such doesn't stop them from getting caught up in beliefs up drag queens being pedophiles. Likewise, there are Jewish believers in QAnon.
Really seems like the Colorado shooter was a self-hating gay man. Pretty hard to paint that tragic event as due to "anti trans" bigotry IMO.
As for Drag Queens, the ones who were paid $207,000 by New York City to go into public schools have a "Dragitivy Book" that pushes pronouns on little kids:
https://nypost.com/2022/06/11/over-200k-being-spent-on-drag-queen-shows-at-nyc-schools/
https://www.dshnyc.org/dragtivitybook
>The Dragtivity Book is an educational tool for engaging kids in conversation about gender and identity. Kids often have questions after attending DSH events, and sometimes parents and educators don’t have all the answers. ... Featuring 20 pages of fun and educational activities such as “find your own drag name,” “circle your pronouns,”
Yeah, I'm against it.
Sure - while I don't much care about a Dragtivity Book myself, I understand why it would bother some people. I honestly think growing up in a country where pantomime in a norm, the idea of drag/ cross-dressing doesn't seem inherently dangerous for kids, frankly... indeed, I suspect that children get exposed to worse innuendo in pantomime.
But the term "grooming" is used by politicians and the media very deliberately because everyone knows that this implies drag queens are, on mass, sexually molesting children. It's the exact same playbook as with the santanic panic in the 1980s. If people really cared about that, they would focus more immediately upon incest within families or - if they're concerned about media and influences - on straight male YouTubers grooming fans. Which is why I think it's largely a reactive attitude of "ew but it's weird". All humans have reactive attitudes and I don't think they should all be immediately dismissed (the reactive attitude against not eating humans seems sensible to me!) but they are not a sensible basis for policy decision - surely especially in a country that is meant to value freedom of expression.
Personally the sight of guys kissing doesn't bother me in the slightest, but Adam Cadre once wrote that it makes him feel queasy. He also recognised this issue was in him and that he knew there wasn't anything morally wrong with homosexuality. As such, he wouldn't support legislature against homosexuality.
Likewise, I understand some people will be squicked out by Drag Story Hour. Fair enough. They presumably aren't going to take their kids to see it. If kids' gender identities really are so fragile that they are going to be changed or transformed by going to one of these events, then maybe it is all a construct! But, more realistically, most kids are going to go and be faintly entertained or bored - waiting to go home and play RoBlox or watch YouTube where they'll be exposed to loads of toilet jokes and edgy memes.
Numbers from Reuters:
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
I personally think that the law should be 18 for surgeries - considering the population of the US, the numbers are not staggeringly high, but I very much hope that the kids remain happy with the decision later. It is a significant decision - and while I don't think teenagers would take it lightly, it also makes sense as an overall social good that we generally put restrictions on the life-changing decisions children are able to make. However, condemning other trans kids to despair is significant, especially if there are high risks of self-harm. On balance, I do think 18 is right when it comes to surgery.
Gender dysphoric kids are who treated with "watchful waiting" have a desistance rate of ~85%.
And there is no diagnostic for distinguishing the 85% from the 15%. Absolutely no one has the slightest idea how to tell these two groups apart at the start.
Given these facts (which are not in significant dispute), I think both blockers and hormones are not appropriate for children. Yes, there is likely a small cohort that would have benefitted from such medically drastic early intervention, but we need to be able to identify this cohort with FAR greater accuracy than we can at present.
Thank you for writing such an excellent distillation of this topic. I plan to share this widely.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the kind words, Stéban.
Also Dolly, kudos for being well ahead of the pack on this. You’ve been writing on this topic for a couple of years now. Others are just now catching up.