I've been writing about this for some time, trying to lessen my own confusion. Heck, I can't even make proper sense of what "gender" is - and certainly the definitions of the word all rely on the existence of the natural sex binary.
You've really crystallised a few things for me with this piece.
"Stereotypically feminine-acting boys and stereotypically masculine-acting girls are perfectly normal, and it’s a common phase for such children to experience some degree of confusion or distress about the concept of sex as they grow up, because their first awareness of it comes via distinguishing behavioural patterns — stereotypes — between the sexes. The deeper meanings of male and female are a lesson that comes later. As these naturally stereotype-defying kids integrate into society, they face a challenging decision: to try to fit in, or to try to take pride in having maverick personality traits that might put them at odds with traditionalists."
Yes, it is hard for parents to have kids like that. It makes it infinitely worse that gender ideology has become part of the bullying they experience. When I was a kid, the swishes got a real hard time, but the tomboys got left alone. Today, it's _worse_: people won't just say the boy is gay, they'll say he isn't a boy at all. Try going through middle school with the jocks telling you you're a girl, and then going online and asking "am I really a girl" and getting groomed into transgenderism by the internet, your teachers, and your doctors. You bet they're angry if they escape the cult.
Thank you for this, dear man. I’m tempted to write paragraphs of effusive praise—if there’s an award out there for brilliant explainers, goodness, ***YOU*** deserve it—but rather than spend time on that, I’m off to share this latest masterpiece of yours with others who need to read it. And I trust you’ll approve of my priorities!
I am starting to think using the word “transition” was a mistake. It implies that there is a final destination (transit, transiting, transition). The more accurate word is simulation. A trans person that successfully “passes” as the other sex is in a deep simulation, since one cannot change sex (at least not yet).
None "pass" to those of us who know the "tells" because there's a metallic voice, shoulder/hip ratio, shifty side to side gaze for "affirmation, for males a fake mimicry of flexibility in the joints, as well as sizes of head, hands, feet, Adam's apple, angle of legs from hips down. Use of wigs, make up when everyone else at the event is very casual. There's more, but . . .
Transies and their hooters are very adamant about this. I say trans means in motion. They refer to the chemical states of cis and trans -- before and after the reaction.
As for the iatrogenic harms: here's the list of the dead we know of so far. I predict a wave coming, due to cumulative effects of T for females and E for males and complications of sex trait modification surgeries to the urinary tract--sepsis. The vulnerability of the transplanted tissue ("vaginoplasty, phalloplasty") to cancers stimulated by hormones represents another factor. First, those deaths listed in studies, but names unknown. 1. Unknown Name, Mayo Clinic study, natal male, 62, end of life hospice care, treatment no longer working for liver and gall bladder cancer, d. 2024 (Dr. Tyler, researcher, found fault with the hospice for not "grooming her [sic] hair or applying makeup after patient was unresponsive) 2. Unknown Name, natal male, Dutch Study, DeVries, Steensma, 2014, death approx 2013. Sepsis immediately after "vaginoplasty" using colon tissue.
3. Griffin Sean Sivret (Makayla) natal female, 24, sepsis post "phalloplasty & repair surgeries d. July, 2024 4. Yarden Seveira, natal male, 24, sepsis post "vaginoplasty" & repair surgeries for blocked colon d. 2021 (he committed suicide as sepsis set in) 5. Liam Johns, natal female, 35, liver failure, 1 month on dialysis failed, doctors did not consider Type 1, poorly controlled diabetes as a factor.
May their memories be for a caution to the medical profession, to candidates for political office claiming this is safe and reversible. Shame on those who will not stop claiming this is safe and prevents deaths.
In a long-ago episode of the podcast "Gender: A Wider Lens," the hosts had a guest who was a lesbian who transitioned to a trans male in order to go along with a trend in her lesbian peer group. As I recall, she had detransitioned.
In any case, what stuck with me the most was the way that she and her peers thought about "T," (testosterone). To them it had properties of a mood-enhancing drug. The guest spoke about how the T calmed her mental state when she first began taking it and increased her libido. Later on, she would go on to experience vaginal atrophy, but that was all in the future when she was enjoying the intitial feeling of well being from the testosterone.
This is the best reasoned and most comprehensive critique of gender identity ideology and the transgendered movement I have read so far. Kudos!
I agree that sexual orientation provides the basis for the natural kinds we call gay and straight. After all, same-sex attraction has been documented in the human species at least as far back as OId Testament times.
The authors of Leviticus 18:22 knew that some men were naturally sexually attracted to other men. Otherwise, they wouldn't chosen the following wording to condemn it: "“Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin." (New Living Translation.) The operative word here is "practice." It means "to do habitually or customarily." The reaction would have been: "They're at it again!" not "Why on earth is Abiasath wearing his wife's frock?"
Even the Roman Catholic Church's vile and slanderous Catechism on Chastity and Homosexuality acknowledges that same-sex attracted people (I avoid the term "homosexual" whenever possible) are a natural kind: "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive of predominant sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures." (Chapter 2, Article 6, Section II, Paragraph 2537.)
Given the Christian propensity to want to police humankind's expressions of sexuality and the extremely narrow range of permissible behavior, if people who identified as the opposite sex were a natural kind it is certain they would have been condemned as explicitly in Christian scripture as gays. So, shame on the archaeologists who have so little respect for science that they claim to have identified the remains of a "nonbinary" individual in a medieval cemetery in Scandinavia.
As a gay man, I view the type Ray Blanchard classified as the "homosexual transsexual" with the greatest pity and distress. Wikipedia (sorry, I'm short on time) defines them as male trans people "who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance." They are not "autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body."
What sort of nightmarish circumstances cause a man-loving man to murder his own masculinity and identify as a woman in order to be with men romantically and sexually? Is this what happens when a highly effeminate boy grows up in a repressive homophobic home and community? Can internalized homophobia ever be so severe as to lead to such an outcome? How could such an identity lead to anything but a demimondaine existence?
The existence of homosexual transsexuals shows that society is obviously not doing enough to mentor gay youth in general and effeminate kids in particular or provide them with healthy role models. That help is unlikely to come from K-12 schools, since their "LGBTQIA+2S" programming is really just a trans and queer cheering section. Solving the problem at its roots would probably require the intervention of social services and child welfare personnel, but only if they were first deprogrammed to undo the impulse to make matters worse by providing gender affirming care.
"The Matrix" was not identified as a transgender fable right away. In fact, the first analyses of the film focused on thematic Gnosticism. The splitting of body and soul in transgender ideology is inherently Gnostic, implying secret knowledge ("kids know who they are") and gets mirrored in the splitting of the world into good and evil ("transphobia"). Gnostic splitting is what gives "trans" that "quasi-religious," culty character.
The entirety of the digital realm creates "trans." McLuhan pointed this out 50 years ago: on the telephone, on the radio, on TV and online, you have no gender; because you have no body. Digital technology disembodies people. Then we become like our tools. We have never, ever been so soaked in a technology as digital, which consumes every facet of our lives, every relationship, and nearly every creative and social act.
The genderless quality of the electrical/digital field then spills back into the physical because we become like our tools. The "trans" issue has not been a real situation until the digital age. It's a wholly predictable result.
Additionally, we are under the influence of gender-bending chemicals (endocrine disruptors, or xenoestrogenic compounds) which can flip the sex of fish multiple times in their lives. All of this is affecting all of us from the deep background.
Then through the filter of digital, it polarizes into a political issue of "sides" and yes good and evil and all that — though I can see nothing healthy, wholesome or productive in castrating young men and calling it cool. However, McLuhan had it right when he said that a response to any overwhelming technology is to amputate. And trans sure does a lot of that.
Gnisticism emerged in "ecumenical empires," to use Eric Vogelin's phrase. The digital metropole is the ultimate ecumenical empire. "Trans" could not exist at all without advanced medical technologies and service systems -- it is a First World problem.
I pose that the pain medication, oxycodone played a part in making the brutal sex trait modification surgeries to the urinary tract bearable for the identity-confused patient.
yes a big castle in the sky...remember that trans exists as a state of mind first. once you're shocked out of your body, it's easy to fall of the idea that you're "not in the right body" because no body is the right body, and no operation can fix that.
Your piece has it all - most importantly, (extremely well researched and referenced) substance, but also one delivered so eloquently; it truly is something to behold! Everyone should read it…
You should write a book or grace a publication of import with your obvious talent as an investigative journalist! Thank you! I am such a fan! Hugs from 🇮🇪!
Yes, came here to applaud this article. I know so many people who should read this. Whether they will is another story. Some people seem so closed off and unwilling to hear new, challenging thoughts. I’ve been disappointed recently by a couple longtime radical labor comrades who have shown disdain and disinterest in this topic. Often with the “I know a transperson” argument.
I also remember being fascinated by the concept of kayfabe you wrote about, with the pro wrestlers. Used the idea in a song.
Arty, I’m back to ask for help. I sent this to a family member. One part he’s dubious about is where you write “Extremists within the trans movement…claim that homosexuality is a mere social construct…” He wishes there were a citation. I tried searching on my own, without success. Can you point me to anything? Thanks in advance.
Peter Tatchell has argued that everyone will eventually be bisexual (or "pansexual") as social norms change, which is an argument that sexual orientation is not inborn but socialized. Veronica Ivy/Rachel McKinnon/Rhys McKinnon says that all sexualities except pansexuality are "immoral" or something, which is again an argument that sexual orientation is a choice/social construct. All those trans "lesbians" are arguing that we need to "unlearn our genital preferences" which is an argument that homosexuality and heterosexuality were socialized into us by oppressive society. Many people who take these arguments to their logical end argue that homosexuality is an "invention" that came with the word, rather than a thing that exists independently of the word (which was coined in the 1800s).
In short, google "unlearn your genital preferences" or something along those lines and you'll find a bounty of hostility to the idea of innate, biological sexual orientations and all the rest from there.
If you can help once more…he followed the link you provided for “Police have arrested scores of women…” and thinks that “scores” is an exaggeration. I did my own searching, to no avail. What were you referring to?
There's a woman in Scotland over a ribbon tied to a fence; a woman in Brazil facing an outrageous sentence for calling a trans politician a man... Police take women in for questioning regularly for stating "gender critical" beliefs.
Bravo, Sir!
That was an utterly magnificent piece.
I've been writing about this for some time, trying to lessen my own confusion. Heck, I can't even make proper sense of what "gender" is - and certainly the definitions of the word all rely on the existence of the natural sex binary.
You've really crystallised a few things for me with this piece.
Once again, simply magnificent.
"Stereotypically feminine-acting boys and stereotypically masculine-acting girls are perfectly normal, and it’s a common phase for such children to experience some degree of confusion or distress about the concept of sex as they grow up, because their first awareness of it comes via distinguishing behavioural patterns — stereotypes — between the sexes. The deeper meanings of male and female are a lesson that comes later. As these naturally stereotype-defying kids integrate into society, they face a challenging decision: to try to fit in, or to try to take pride in having maverick personality traits that might put them at odds with traditionalists."
Yes, it is hard for parents to have kids like that. It makes it infinitely worse that gender ideology has become part of the bullying they experience. When I was a kid, the swishes got a real hard time, but the tomboys got left alone. Today, it's _worse_: people won't just say the boy is gay, they'll say he isn't a boy at all. Try going through middle school with the jocks telling you you're a girl, and then going online and asking "am I really a girl" and getting groomed into transgenderism by the internet, your teachers, and your doctors. You bet they're angry if they escape the cult.
Thank you for this, dear man. I’m tempted to write paragraphs of effusive praise—if there’s an award out there for brilliant explainers, goodness, ***YOU*** deserve it—but rather than spend time on that, I’m off to share this latest masterpiece of yours with others who need to read it. And I trust you’ll approve of my priorities!
THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU. THANK YOU.
thank you so much!!!!! this means the world to me. thank you.
I am starting to think using the word “transition” was a mistake. It implies that there is a final destination (transit, transiting, transition). The more accurate word is simulation. A trans person that successfully “passes” as the other sex is in a deep simulation, since one cannot change sex (at least not yet).
None "pass" to those of us who know the "tells" because there's a metallic voice, shoulder/hip ratio, shifty side to side gaze for "affirmation, for males a fake mimicry of flexibility in the joints, as well as sizes of head, hands, feet, Adam's apple, angle of legs from hips down. Use of wigs, make up when everyone else at the event is very casual. There's more, but . . .
Transies and their hooters are very adamant about this. I say trans means in motion. They refer to the chemical states of cis and trans -- before and after the reaction.
As for the iatrogenic harms: here's the list of the dead we know of so far. I predict a wave coming, due to cumulative effects of T for females and E for males and complications of sex trait modification surgeries to the urinary tract--sepsis. The vulnerability of the transplanted tissue ("vaginoplasty, phalloplasty") to cancers stimulated by hormones represents another factor. First, those deaths listed in studies, but names unknown. 1. Unknown Name, Mayo Clinic study, natal male, 62, end of life hospice care, treatment no longer working for liver and gall bladder cancer, d. 2024 (Dr. Tyler, researcher, found fault with the hospice for not "grooming her [sic] hair or applying makeup after patient was unresponsive) 2. Unknown Name, natal male, Dutch Study, DeVries, Steensma, 2014, death approx 2013. Sepsis immediately after "vaginoplasty" using colon tissue.
3. Griffin Sean Sivret (Makayla) natal female, 24, sepsis post "phalloplasty & repair surgeries d. July, 2024 4. Yarden Seveira, natal male, 24, sepsis post "vaginoplasty" & repair surgeries for blocked colon d. 2021 (he committed suicide as sepsis set in) 5. Liam Johns, natal female, 35, liver failure, 1 month on dialysis failed, doctors did not consider Type 1, poorly controlled diabetes as a factor.
May their memories be for a caution to the medical profession, to candidates for political office claiming this is safe and reversible. Shame on those who will not stop claiming this is safe and prevents deaths.
In a long-ago episode of the podcast "Gender: A Wider Lens," the hosts had a guest who was a lesbian who transitioned to a trans male in order to go along with a trend in her lesbian peer group. As I recall, she had detransitioned.
In any case, what stuck with me the most was the way that she and her peers thought about "T," (testosterone). To them it had properties of a mood-enhancing drug. The guest spoke about how the T calmed her mental state when she first began taking it and increased her libido. Later on, she would go on to experience vaginal atrophy, but that was all in the future when she was enjoying the intitial feeling of well being from the testosterone.
I do not recall the episode number.
This is the best reasoned and most comprehensive critique of gender identity ideology and the transgendered movement I have read so far. Kudos!
I agree that sexual orientation provides the basis for the natural kinds we call gay and straight. After all, same-sex attraction has been documented in the human species at least as far back as OId Testament times.
The authors of Leviticus 18:22 knew that some men were naturally sexually attracted to other men. Otherwise, they wouldn't chosen the following wording to condemn it: "“Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin." (New Living Translation.) The operative word here is "practice." It means "to do habitually or customarily." The reaction would have been: "They're at it again!" not "Why on earth is Abiasath wearing his wife's frock?"
Even the Roman Catholic Church's vile and slanderous Catechism on Chastity and Homosexuality acknowledges that same-sex attracted people (I avoid the term "homosexual" whenever possible) are a natural kind: "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive of predominant sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures." (Chapter 2, Article 6, Section II, Paragraph 2537.)
Given the Christian propensity to want to police humankind's expressions of sexuality and the extremely narrow range of permissible behavior, if people who identified as the opposite sex were a natural kind it is certain they would have been condemned as explicitly in Christian scripture as gays. So, shame on the archaeologists who have so little respect for science that they claim to have identified the remains of a "nonbinary" individual in a medieval cemetery in Scandinavia.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/09/1026183914/new-dna-analysis-finds-1-000-year-old-warrior-remains-may-be-non-binary
As a gay man, I view the type Ray Blanchard classified as the "homosexual transsexual" with the greatest pity and distress. Wikipedia (sorry, I'm short on time) defines them as male trans people "who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance." They are not "autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body."
What sort of nightmarish circumstances cause a man-loving man to murder his own masculinity and identify as a woman in order to be with men romantically and sexually? Is this what happens when a highly effeminate boy grows up in a repressive homophobic home and community? Can internalized homophobia ever be so severe as to lead to such an outcome? How could such an identity lead to anything but a demimondaine existence?
The existence of homosexual transsexuals shows that society is obviously not doing enough to mentor gay youth in general and effeminate kids in particular or provide them with healthy role models. That help is unlikely to come from K-12 schools, since their "LGBTQIA+2S" programming is really just a trans and queer cheering section. Solving the problem at its roots would probably require the intervention of social services and child welfare personnel, but only if they were first deprogrammed to undo the impulse to make matters worse by providing gender affirming care.
"The Matrix" was not identified as a transgender fable right away. In fact, the first analyses of the film focused on thematic Gnosticism. The splitting of body and soul in transgender ideology is inherently Gnostic, implying secret knowledge ("kids know who they are") and gets mirrored in the splitting of the world into good and evil ("transphobia"). Gnostic splitting is what gives "trans" that "quasi-religious," culty character.
The entirety of the digital realm creates "trans." McLuhan pointed this out 50 years ago: on the telephone, on the radio, on TV and online, you have no gender; because you have no body. Digital technology disembodies people. Then we become like our tools. We have never, ever been so soaked in a technology as digital, which consumes every facet of our lives, every relationship, and nearly every creative and social act.
The genderless quality of the electrical/digital field then spills back into the physical because we become like our tools. The "trans" issue has not been a real situation until the digital age. It's a wholly predictable result.
Additionally, we are under the influence of gender-bending chemicals (endocrine disruptors, or xenoestrogenic compounds) which can flip the sex of fish multiple times in their lives. All of this is affecting all of us from the deep background.
Then through the filter of digital, it polarizes into a political issue of "sides" and yes good and evil and all that — though I can see nothing healthy, wholesome or productive in castrating young men and calling it cool. However, McLuhan had it right when he said that a response to any overwhelming technology is to amputate. And trans sure does a lot of that.
Gnisticism emerged in "ecumenical empires," to use Eric Vogelin's phrase. The digital metropole is the ultimate ecumenical empire. "Trans" could not exist at all without advanced medical technologies and service systems -- it is a First World problem.
I pose that the pain medication, oxycodone played a part in making the brutal sex trait modification surgeries to the urinary tract bearable for the identity-confused patient.
yes a big castle in the sky...remember that trans exists as a state of mind first. once you're shocked out of your body, it's easy to fall of the idea that you're "not in the right body" because no body is the right body, and no operation can fix that.
Great article Arty. Thank you for what you do.
When Bowie said, “you’ve got your mother in a whirl / not sure if you’re a boy or a girl,” it was one thing.
This is another thing. There is no fun, no play, no art, no pleasure and it sure ain’t sexy.
this is new -- commentary on bisexuality.
https://planetwaves.net/pdf/bisexual.pdf
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, Arty!
Your piece has it all - most importantly, (extremely well researched and referenced) substance, but also one delivered so eloquently; it truly is something to behold! Everyone should read it…
You should write a book or grace a publication of import with your obvious talent as an investigative journalist! Thank you! I am such a fan! Hugs from 🇮🇪!
Yes, came here to applaud this article. I know so many people who should read this. Whether they will is another story. Some people seem so closed off and unwilling to hear new, challenging thoughts. I’ve been disappointed recently by a couple longtime radical labor comrades who have shown disdain and disinterest in this topic. Often with the “I know a transperson” argument.
I also remember being fascinated by the concept of kayfabe you wrote about, with the pro wrestlers. Used the idea in a song.
Carry on!
❤️❤️❤️
Marvellous and utterly comprehensive dissection of the gender madness, Arty.
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/sleeping-with-the-enemy
Dusty
Thanks again, Dusty! Really appreciate your support. Cheers.
Arty, I’m back to ask for help. I sent this to a family member. One part he’s dubious about is where you write “Extremists within the trans movement…claim that homosexuality is a mere social construct…” He wishes there were a citation. I tried searching on my own, without success. Can you point me to anything? Thanks in advance.
Peter Tatchell has argued that everyone will eventually be bisexual (or "pansexual") as social norms change, which is an argument that sexual orientation is not inborn but socialized. Veronica Ivy/Rachel McKinnon/Rhys McKinnon says that all sexualities except pansexuality are "immoral" or something, which is again an argument that sexual orientation is a choice/social construct. All those trans "lesbians" are arguing that we need to "unlearn our genital preferences" which is an argument that homosexuality and heterosexuality were socialized into us by oppressive society. Many people who take these arguments to their logical end argue that homosexuality is an "invention" that came with the word, rather than a thing that exists independently of the word (which was coined in the 1800s).
In short, google "unlearn your genital preferences" or something along those lines and you'll find a bounty of hostility to the idea of innate, biological sexual orientations and all the rest from there.
Hope that helps!
Thank you so much!!
If you can help once more…he followed the link you provided for “Police have arrested scores of women…” and thinks that “scores” is an exaggeration. I did my own searching, to no avail. What were you referring to?
There's a woman in Scotland over a ribbon tied to a fence; a woman in Brazil facing an outrageous sentence for calling a trans politician a man... Police take women in for questioning regularly for stating "gender critical" beliefs.