Before the Media went Mad
Here are ten articles about trans that appeared in mainstream publications between 1979 and 2016. None of them would be published in today’s age of unhinged gender extremism.
NEW YORK TIMES
“Male and Female Created He Them”
Thomas Szasz
June 1979
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/archives/male-and-female-created-he-them-transexual.html
The claim that males can be transformed, by means of hormones and surgery, into females, and vice versa, is, of course, a lie.
Chromosomal sex is fixed. And so are one's historical experiences of growing up and living as boy or girl, man or woman.
The transsexual propagandists claim to transform ‘women trapped in men's bodies’ into ‘real’ women and want them to be accepted socially as females (say, in professional tennis).
[Janice] Raymond quotes a Casablanca surgeon, who has operated on more than 700 American men, characterizing the transsexual transformation as follows: ‘I don't change men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient's mind.’
Miss Raymond has rightly seized on transsexualism as an emblem of modern society's unremitting — though increasingly concealed — antifeminism.
THE ATLANTIC
“Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses”
Amy Bloom
April 2002
https://catholicintelligenceblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/consmenconsdresses.pdf
(This article has since been scrubbed from The Atlantic, but copies of it can be found across the internet.)
Engineers and accountants, truck drivers and computer programmers, disproportionately represented among the retired military, predominantly Christian and predominantly conservative (far more moderate Republicans than liberal Democrats), ...these men, driven by loneliness, by unmet narcissistic needs (all dressed up and nowhere to go), by risk-taking impulses (it's not hard to grasp that a forty-five-year-old 240-pound former Marine strolling through the Mall of America in full drag is consciously courting risk), want to cross-dress outside their bedrooms.
This article about straight male crossdressers simply had to go, because it acknowledged what has since become taboo: that these men are motivated by autogynephelia — being sexually turned on by enacting the fiction of becoming a woman. It also explored the differences between feminine gay men who crossdress and/or trans-identify, and otherwise very masculine straight men who do so, and the prevalence of crossdressing among conservatives, and especially military veterans. In today’s “gender identity” landscape, 20 years after this piece was published, it’s not unlikely that every one of the crossdressing men in this article would identify as a transgender woman, and that well-intentioned but gullible “allies” would scramble to their social media megaphones and loudly profess to believe that they’re literally female.
THE GUARDIAN
“Sex changes are not effective, say researchers”
David Batty
July 2004
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/30/health.mentalhealth
There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation.
In 2004, The Guardian commissioned a massive scientific review of over 100 studies, and reported that the results flatly contradict the rosy prognostications of transgender activists. Today, they wouldn’t dare commission anything that had the slightest chance of alienating their woke American readership with bad news about their latest cause, and they would work to bury the findings of such a study. But back then they reported that negative outcomes following sexchange surgeries appear to be common, and that as many as half of all sexchange patients vanish from the radar of follow-up within a few years for reasons no one has properly looked into. The piece quotes researchers who speculate that dissatisfaction and even suicide may sometimes be the cause. Even back then, when care was taken by psychiatric professionals to gatekeep sexchange surgeries and only allow thoroughly vetted candidates to go through with them (or this was at least ostensibly the case), there remained major questions about patients’ long-term outcomes and mounting evidence that negative outcomes were going unreported or ignored. You can imagine that today, now that the very idea of thorough psychiatric vetting is taboo, and children as young as 11 are starting medical sexchange treatment, this problem has surely become astronomically worse.
ROLLING STONE
“The Mystery of Larry Wachowski”
Peter Wilkinson
January 2006
(This article has since been thoroughly scrubbed from the internet, but Graham Linehan found a copy and posted it.)
When this piece came out it got a lot of criticism, but not for the same reasons it would today. Back then, critics argued that it was tacky and un-newsworthy to report that a famous Hollywood director had left his wife for a dominatrix and then taken up his crossdressing fetish full-time, possibly having adopted a transgender identity and had a sexchange operation as well. The thinking at the time was: a man’s transgender proclivities are part of his kinky sex-life, and such things are private matters until he chooses to make them public. Looking back now, it’s exactly that angle that makes the article newsworthy: in today’s environment, critics would assail as “literal violence” the suggestion that male-to-female transgender identities often have roots in sexual paraphilias such as BDSM, a connection that this article makes explicit, and one that at the time was so obvious it barely raised an eyebrow.
THE HUFFINGTON POST
“Rolling Stone Slanders The Transgender S&M Community”
Stephen Elliott
January 2006
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rolling-stone-slanders-th_b_13776
...Larry ran off with his dominatrix to live in gender-fucky bliss.
This article, which is a criticism of the Rolling Stone Wachowski piece, would itself be considered outrageously transphobic by today’s standards, right on down from the title, because it casually takes for granted the straight line from kink & fetish to full-time transgender identity (as we all did not too long ago), and it makes liberal use of Wachowski’s “deadname” and male pronouns, even though it was widely suspected he was by then identifying full-time as a transgender “woman.”
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
“I will never be able to have sex again. Ever.”
Jill Stark
May 2009
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-will-never-be-able-to-have-sex-again-ever-20090530-br41.html
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Doctors from London's Portman Clinic say they see many patients who feel trapped in ‘no-man's land’ after surgery, finding themselves with a body which is no longer recognisable as male or female. Psychotherapy, the experts believe, may have saved them from such a fate but few gender clinics offer it.
This article covers transition regret, and the total lack of proper care for people struggling with mental health problems who latch onto the idea that they’re transgender in an effort to cope. Transgender treatment is characterized as a “conveyor belt” towards sexchange surgery. The medical industry resists attempts to systematically follow up on patients or to evaluate the long-term outcomes of their work. All of this has only gotten far worse in the 13 years since, but the media has gone silent.
THE AGE (Melbourne)
“Sex-change clinic ‘got it wrong’”
Jill Stark
May 2009
https://www.smh.com.au/national/sexchange-clinic-got-it-wrong-20090530-br3u.html
Dr. Kennedy believes that gender dysphoria is a biological condition that can be cured by surgery. But other experts say childhood abuse and underlying psychiatric conditions often cause gender confusion that can be alleviated with psychotherapy.
This article reports that the Australian government temporarily shut down the nation’s only sexchange clinic following scathing medical reviews and successful lawsuits against the clinic, which found that patients were improperly vetted for psychological problems and fast-tracked onto hormones and surgeries, leading in some cases to suicide attempts. There are many parallels with today’s Tavistock scandal embroiling the UK’s gender clinic for children and youth, which is being shut down. But transition regret among adult patients is surely as prevalent as ever — if not more so — and the media has all but completely lost the will to report on it.
THE OBSERVER
“Will Afghanistan learn that crossdressers are not criminals?”
Nushin Arbabzadah
November 2011
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/cross-dressing-afghanistan-transvestite
Amid such voices of confusion, and at times outright cruelty, it was heartening to read comments expressing anger at the police's humiliation of the victim: ‘The man has committed no crime. Cross-dressing is a psychological condition. What he needs is treatment rather than public humiliation.’
A sympathetic piece by an Afghan journalist about the harassment transvestites face in Afghanistan. She refers to them as cross-dressers and transvestites. Not once does the term or concept of “transgender” come up. She introduces the local term ezak, which, not unlike what “transgender” is becoming in the West, is a catch-all term for gender nonconforming men of any kind, from feminine gays to crossdressers. Ezak, however, is derogatory, and she stresses the importance of psychology in understanding the deeply-felt psychological needs of crossdressers, “from the dusty roads of Kabul to the sparkling clubs of New York.” In today’s world, the media are reluctant to even acknowledge that crossdressing is a thing, let alone to suggest that we should look at it through a psychological lens. These days, one’s style of dress is the primary identifier of their gendered soul, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise.
BBC NEWS
“The gay people pushed to change their gender”
Ali Hamedani
November 2014
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690
The link between societal homophobia and transgender identity among gays & lesbians is covered here. The BBC reports that in Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death but sexchanges are sanctioned by the state, gays and lesbians are sometimes forced to choose between undergoing sexchange surgery & hormone treatment or fleeing the country to avoid certain death. It’s doubtful that editors would greenlight a piece like this today. And even if they did, it would be unwriteable, given the contorted and grovelling language the author would have to use to appease the gender activists.
VICE
“I Cross-Dress. Do You Still Love Me?: The Secret Lives of Sissies”
Jonathan Parks-Ramage
July 2016
For some, the thrill and exuberance comes from being forced—typically by a dominatrix—to wear women's clothing in public. For others, it's just kinky fun.”
"’I don't want to be a part of the gate-keeping of gender. I'm not here to decide who does and doesn't deserve a label… it's not about what operations you're having, what hormones you're on.’
This article lays out the indistinguishability between a man who by night identifies as a fetishistic “sissy” and a man who by day identifies as a “trans woman.” Even as recently as six years ago, that might have been acceptable, but it’s probable this piece would get the author cancelled by a Twitter mob if he tried to publish it today. It comes just a little too close to saying the quiet part loud.
An absolute treasure trove of articles- thank you for compiling these together 👍🏻
Excellent read! The story about the number of transsexuals that suffer after transition reminded me of a recent interview that Blaire White did with ShapeShifter. If you haven't seen it, just be prepared to cry a lot.