In a recent comment to “What Do I Mean by ‘Trans Is Something We Made Up’?”, salon guest PeterM asked: It doesn't seem to me that before the trans phenomenon exploded that our culture was particularly uncomfortable or hostile to gender non-conforming behaviour. Since the 1960s we've seen acceptance of cross-gender behaviour and expression grow, so why such an extreme reaction now? Some have suggested there is a socio-political agenda involved, that is, the "queering" of society. How do the two fit together, or can you explain this differently?
Dolly, this was so smart, keenly observed, and humane. I’m not sure if what I have to add is an additional cultural trend, or whether it falls into one--or several--of your categories, but here goes. In my experience, we Americans have almost an allergy to things just being tough, unfair, and sad. We want to rush in and fix things (my most recent Happy Wanderer is about this), and we also don’t want to allow people to feel their feelings, just as they are, and for as long as it takes.
When my son was first diagnosed as autistic, and later when my daughter was diagnosed with congenital muscular dystrophy, everyone I knew tried to minimize what I was feeling. They did it out of love, because it made them sad to see my sadness, and to think that my kids, whom they loved very much, would suffer. So they’d predict bright futures for my kids, fail to notice when things were hard or went badly for them, point out every tiny success (when, say, my daughter managed to walk up some steps, which were 4” high and she had to haul herself up with the handrail); they would say, “See? It will all be ok.” And the irony is, it basically has been ok, but it has also been hard. Finally I said to the people in my life, “Can you let me be sad about this, at least for now?”
My point is that being a teenager is really tough for everyone, but especially when you don’t fit in for some reason, be it gender expression, autism, or something else. Our culture very badly wants to turn those feelings into a happy story of triumphing against the odds with the help of science, of finding a new and supportive community, of kids living their best lives. One reason that the minute an awkward, socially isolated kid comes out as trans s/he is celebrated by everyone is that we prefer the triumphalist story to the sadder, but realer one. It can be really rotten to feel excluded, especially as a middle-schooler or teenager, and we don’t want to think about that. We’d much rather tell the happy story.
By the way, I used to be an editor at a journal that published a lot of Derrida, Butler, Foucault, and the other authors you cite. I agree: the vast majority of it was just empty gibberish, but everyone was too scared to say so because they were worried about what other people would think. Hmmm. Sound like any other phenomenon in our culture these days?
Also, AMEN AMEN AMEN, all day long. My gosh, how I loathed my critical theory classes, for exactly the reasons you describe:
"Because I’m convinced they said nothing. The sentences didn’t make sense, the paragraphs didn’t make sense, and I suspect it wasn’t because I was stupid and couldn’t comprehend the lofty ideas. My perception was these books were some kind of academic version of the Emperor’s New Clothes, a 'blah blah blah Foucault' refuge for people who could neither think nor write anything of value."
Oct 17, 2022·edited Oct 17, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
What's especially odd are that some of these ideas don't seem to work together.
On one hand, you have the Foucault bio-power, science is fake, everything is a social construct, nothing is real blah blah blah stuff
On the other hand, you the seemingly concrete claim of "people have a certain immutable identity at birth that cannot be changed and all the medical orgs agree with me on this"
It's as if I saw people claiming to be both Marxists and Hayekian libertarian capitalists. Or a group of people claimed to be New Atheists and Muslim Salafists. It's just so strange to see them together. I think the whole thing went mainstream before everyone got the talking points straight.
We've seen a similar idea with respect to gay marriage. There's the bio-power/it's all social construct stuff, and there's the "born this way" claim that it's genetic or immutable. However, the gay marriage movement didn't oscillate between them, it stayed firmly in the latter camp. I'm not going to debate which one is right, but that's the rhetoric gay marriage advocates chose and it worked pretty well.
Dolly, this piece is really outstanding! A fine digest of the current thinking. I need to spend some time thinking before I can comment further, and I would imagine that provoking thought was exactly the purpose. Well done.
A first, to be quoted in a Substack! You tie various cultural threads together in a convincing fashion and out we come with trans positivity. I've seen the power of social media with my daughter who was essentially groomed into an eating disorder back when that was all the rage and agree with you that the trans phenomenon is intimately tied to social media use by our kids. Jonathan Haidt believes we should keep phones away from our kids till they're 16. This sounds like an impossibility but I've read of a number of families that have done this and reclaimed their children as a result.
For me, the most insidious aspect of all of this is how big business has joined our institutions, governments and schools to promote queer society. In the 60s and 70s, the establishment mostly frowned on self-expression, personal freedom and subjective realities; now, they promote them to make more money. You probably know of Jennifer Bilek's work on this issue. You've really got to wonder about the authenticity of a movement when it promotes itself as revolutionary but is supported wholeheartedly by those whose main purpose in life is to make money. Trans as the newest frontier in capitalism where possibilities for constant growth is running up against planetary limits.
Finally, I take some small bit of responsibility for all of this evil because as an English teacher, in my early years, and as a child of the 60s and 70s, I often talked to students about "finding themselves". I can see now where this prompt has led. Too much talk about the self and its priorities, and too little about how we came up with a fairly enlightened society and our responsibility to maintain it. All with good intentions that still persist but distorted by disengagement from physical reality. It's a brave new world, don't you know.
You're not wrong about postmodern books. I have a theory that believing unintuitive things makes people feel smart. That may be because occasionally an unintuitive thing is revolutionary. Or it may be because people assume if something's hard to grasp, it's important and wise.
Postmodernism is a fount of nonsense that unsophisticated thinkers can cite, giving them some cred behind their lazy thinking. And it always works, as the Sokal affair proved.
First up I wanted to add, that the act of breast feeding doesn't make your breast sag - please keep breastfeeding mothers!
It's a common misconception.
Breast changes from pregnancy related growth (size, milk ducts etc.) are the reason, yet smoking for example is a bigger risk factor.
An interesting question about this is, if induced lactation leads to breast sagging.
Also I wanted to add that the correct binding of breast for a limited time isn't harmful (as far as we know). But how many really do that?
I assume though, that you meant this.
Your blog entries about trans issues are my most favorite on the internet, although this one was a bit more harsh and I can guarantee you many people from "the other side" will view parts very condenscendingly written, especially the latter parts with a sarcastic undertone.
Certainly one should be able to read posts like this without fuming or becoming emotionally invested, but I fear, that the people you want to reach / get listening, will be much more likely to feel attacked, offended or any kind of aggression one can imagine.
So one has to keep neutrality as much as possible in such energy laden debates, even if one is biased - like you stated.
If trans is a solution that more people are choosing, part of the phenomenon is its increased visibility AS a solution. Countless times I have heard and read the stories of internet acquaintances who identify under the less well known (ie trans, asexual, nonbinary) parts of the LGBT+ umbrella who describe the feeling of relief from having discovered "there's a WORD for it/me/my experiences!"
So related to the Civil Rights / Progressivism thread, I see a sort of 'civil rights/feminism marches on' where the obvious low-hanging fruit of formal equality was picked (we've got the vote! we can have jobs! we as a society generally recognize that all people are equal, and we've outlawed discrimination based on race and sex and disability. So what's an activist to do, when big picture level data still shows significant inequality on outcomes?
They can go after the higher-hanging fruit of identifying and addressing root causes, and/or they can find a group that's still being discriminated against and rerun the civil rights playbook*. Now we've got trans, and the neurodivergent and people with mental illnesses (sometimes these overlap), and queer folks, and people with alternative lifestyles. You're a person, maybe a young person; you're not happy in your skin, you don't connect with your peers, you feel like an outsider in society, and all you have to do is get on the internet and look around a bit, and now there's all this information out there, for better or worse.
*I originally had a thing here about how current-day 'civil rights' fights differ from the civil rights struggles of the past, but realized I was haring off on a tangent. To summarize, the fight against racism and sex discrimination really were fights against oppression; the fight for acceptance of the groups mentioned above are fights against bias and closemindedness. The latter is a problem of a very different order and rerunning the civil rights playbook was the wrong move.
This sociological work makes me feel lucky to have come across it. One thought I never dared express is we have gone to far in this elevation of the underdog. But in reality it is an elevation driven by indifference, which otherwise I don't think many would bother persevering into for its own sake. And the victims of this illusory pedestal, the kids who are being affirmed, might be deeply conscious of what is truly society 's cheap self indulgence, within which carelessness and neglect are shamelessly rooted.
The Scientific Revolution thread: science has proven itself as an engine for improving life. Any thinking person can see that. But we have vested far too much power and authority in the idea of “following the science”, to the point where we have one scientist claiming that he is the representative of all science. Anyone who disagrees is a “science denier”.
How many times have we heard “if we can land a man on the moon, we should be able to do ‘x’”? We have accorded the biological and social sciences the same level of certainty as physics. Biology and social sciences (not to mention climate science) involve levels of complexity far beyond Newtonian physics. Modern biology and medicine have made great strides. But they are nowhere near the level of Newtonian physics. We want to believe they are, while at the same time we see ads every day listing possible side effects to the myriad new drugs. Yet somehow we have put aside all common sense and choose to believe that medicine can make a man into a woman, and further, we are causing harm if we doubt it.
A more realistic view of the progress and limitations of biology and medicine would be in order.
Dolly, this was so smart, keenly observed, and humane. I’m not sure if what I have to add is an additional cultural trend, or whether it falls into one--or several--of your categories, but here goes. In my experience, we Americans have almost an allergy to things just being tough, unfair, and sad. We want to rush in and fix things (my most recent Happy Wanderer is about this), and we also don’t want to allow people to feel their feelings, just as they are, and for as long as it takes.
When my son was first diagnosed as autistic, and later when my daughter was diagnosed with congenital muscular dystrophy, everyone I knew tried to minimize what I was feeling. They did it out of love, because it made them sad to see my sadness, and to think that my kids, whom they loved very much, would suffer. So they’d predict bright futures for my kids, fail to notice when things were hard or went badly for them, point out every tiny success (when, say, my daughter managed to walk up some steps, which were 4” high and she had to haul herself up with the handrail); they would say, “See? It will all be ok.” And the irony is, it basically has been ok, but it has also been hard. Finally I said to the people in my life, “Can you let me be sad about this, at least for now?”
My point is that being a teenager is really tough for everyone, but especially when you don’t fit in for some reason, be it gender expression, autism, or something else. Our culture very badly wants to turn those feelings into a happy story of triumphing against the odds with the help of science, of finding a new and supportive community, of kids living their best lives. One reason that the minute an awkward, socially isolated kid comes out as trans s/he is celebrated by everyone is that we prefer the triumphalist story to the sadder, but realer one. It can be really rotten to feel excluded, especially as a middle-schooler or teenager, and we don’t want to think about that. We’d much rather tell the happy story.
By the way, I used to be an editor at a journal that published a lot of Derrida, Butler, Foucault, and the other authors you cite. I agree: the vast majority of it was just empty gibberish, but everyone was too scared to say so because they were worried about what other people would think. Hmmm. Sound like any other phenomenon in our culture these days?
This was a banger of a piece, Dolly. Nice job!
Also, AMEN AMEN AMEN, all day long. My gosh, how I loathed my critical theory classes, for exactly the reasons you describe:
"Because I’m convinced they said nothing. The sentences didn’t make sense, the paragraphs didn’t make sense, and I suspect it wasn’t because I was stupid and couldn’t comprehend the lofty ideas. My perception was these books were some kind of academic version of the Emperor’s New Clothes, a 'blah blah blah Foucault' refuge for people who could neither think nor write anything of value."
What's especially odd are that some of these ideas don't seem to work together.
On one hand, you have the Foucault bio-power, science is fake, everything is a social construct, nothing is real blah blah blah stuff
On the other hand, you the seemingly concrete claim of "people have a certain immutable identity at birth that cannot be changed and all the medical orgs agree with me on this"
It's as if I saw people claiming to be both Marxists and Hayekian libertarian capitalists. Or a group of people claimed to be New Atheists and Muslim Salafists. It's just so strange to see them together. I think the whole thing went mainstream before everyone got the talking points straight.
We've seen a similar idea with respect to gay marriage. There's the bio-power/it's all social construct stuff, and there's the "born this way" claim that it's genetic or immutable. However, the gay marriage movement didn't oscillate between them, it stayed firmly in the latter camp. I'm not going to debate which one is right, but that's the rhetoric gay marriage advocates chose and it worked pretty well.
Dolly, this piece is really outstanding! A fine digest of the current thinking. I need to spend some time thinking before I can comment further, and I would imagine that provoking thought was exactly the purpose. Well done.
A first, to be quoted in a Substack! You tie various cultural threads together in a convincing fashion and out we come with trans positivity. I've seen the power of social media with my daughter who was essentially groomed into an eating disorder back when that was all the rage and agree with you that the trans phenomenon is intimately tied to social media use by our kids. Jonathan Haidt believes we should keep phones away from our kids till they're 16. This sounds like an impossibility but I've read of a number of families that have done this and reclaimed their children as a result.
For me, the most insidious aspect of all of this is how big business has joined our institutions, governments and schools to promote queer society. In the 60s and 70s, the establishment mostly frowned on self-expression, personal freedom and subjective realities; now, they promote them to make more money. You probably know of Jennifer Bilek's work on this issue. You've really got to wonder about the authenticity of a movement when it promotes itself as revolutionary but is supported wholeheartedly by those whose main purpose in life is to make money. Trans as the newest frontier in capitalism where possibilities for constant growth is running up against planetary limits.
Finally, I take some small bit of responsibility for all of this evil because as an English teacher, in my early years, and as a child of the 60s and 70s, I often talked to students about "finding themselves". I can see now where this prompt has led. Too much talk about the self and its priorities, and too little about how we came up with a fairly enlightened society and our responsibility to maintain it. All with good intentions that still persist but distorted by disengagement from physical reality. It's a brave new world, don't you know.
You're not wrong about postmodern books. I have a theory that believing unintuitive things makes people feel smart. That may be because occasionally an unintuitive thing is revolutionary. Or it may be because people assume if something's hard to grasp, it's important and wise.
Postmodernism is a fount of nonsense that unsophisticated thinkers can cite, giving them some cred behind their lazy thinking. And it always works, as the Sokal affair proved.
First up I wanted to add, that the act of breast feeding doesn't make your breast sag - please keep breastfeeding mothers!
It's a common misconception.
Breast changes from pregnancy related growth (size, milk ducts etc.) are the reason, yet smoking for example is a bigger risk factor.
An interesting question about this is, if induced lactation leads to breast sagging.
Also I wanted to add that the correct binding of breast for a limited time isn't harmful (as far as we know). But how many really do that?
I assume though, that you meant this.
Your blog entries about trans issues are my most favorite on the internet, although this one was a bit more harsh and I can guarantee you many people from "the other side" will view parts very condenscendingly written, especially the latter parts with a sarcastic undertone.
Certainly one should be able to read posts like this without fuming or becoming emotionally invested, but I fear, that the people you want to reach / get listening, will be much more likely to feel attacked, offended or any kind of aggression one can imagine.
So one has to keep neutrality as much as possible in such energy laden debates, even if one is biased - like you stated.
I'm looking forward to your next post!
Greetings from Germany
If trans is a solution that more people are choosing, part of the phenomenon is its increased visibility AS a solution. Countless times I have heard and read the stories of internet acquaintances who identify under the less well known (ie trans, asexual, nonbinary) parts of the LGBT+ umbrella who describe the feeling of relief from having discovered "there's a WORD for it/me/my experiences!"
So related to the Civil Rights / Progressivism thread, I see a sort of 'civil rights/feminism marches on' where the obvious low-hanging fruit of formal equality was picked (we've got the vote! we can have jobs! we as a society generally recognize that all people are equal, and we've outlawed discrimination based on race and sex and disability. So what's an activist to do, when big picture level data still shows significant inequality on outcomes?
They can go after the higher-hanging fruit of identifying and addressing root causes, and/or they can find a group that's still being discriminated against and rerun the civil rights playbook*. Now we've got trans, and the neurodivergent and people with mental illnesses (sometimes these overlap), and queer folks, and people with alternative lifestyles. You're a person, maybe a young person; you're not happy in your skin, you don't connect with your peers, you feel like an outsider in society, and all you have to do is get on the internet and look around a bit, and now there's all this information out there, for better or worse.
*I originally had a thing here about how current-day 'civil rights' fights differ from the civil rights struggles of the past, but realized I was haring off on a tangent. To summarize, the fight against racism and sex discrimination really were fights against oppression; the fight for acceptance of the groups mentioned above are fights against bias and closemindedness. The latter is a problem of a very different order and rerunning the civil rights playbook was the wrong move.
This sociological work makes me feel lucky to have come across it. One thought I never dared express is we have gone to far in this elevation of the underdog. But in reality it is an elevation driven by indifference, which otherwise I don't think many would bother persevering into for its own sake. And the victims of this illusory pedestal, the kids who are being affirmed, might be deeply conscious of what is truly society 's cheap self indulgence, within which carelessness and neglect are shamelessly rooted.
Is Coddling of the American Mind a good read btw? I feel like a lot of pop non-fiction doesn't offer much more than the Wikipedia summary
The Scientific Revolution thread: science has proven itself as an engine for improving life. Any thinking person can see that. But we have vested far too much power and authority in the idea of “following the science”, to the point where we have one scientist claiming that he is the representative of all science. Anyone who disagrees is a “science denier”.
How many times have we heard “if we can land a man on the moon, we should be able to do ‘x’”? We have accorded the biological and social sciences the same level of certainty as physics. Biology and social sciences (not to mention climate science) involve levels of complexity far beyond Newtonian physics. Modern biology and medicine have made great strides. But they are nowhere near the level of Newtonian physics. We want to believe they are, while at the same time we see ads every day listing possible side effects to the myriad new drugs. Yet somehow we have put aside all common sense and choose to believe that medicine can make a man into a woman, and further, we are causing harm if we doubt it.
A more realistic view of the progress and limitations of biology and medicine would be in order.