It’s so weird to think that there is someone who decided to spend their days going around lecturing kids that being a boy is all about killing people and being a girl is all about being a Barbie. And that this is the “virtuous” thing to do in “progressive” circles.
When you remove biological sex from your definition of gender then gender becomes nothing but stereotypes. I’ve never seen it put more vividly then that mermaid diagram.
Yeah. If physical attributes can't decide gender, then only interests and behavior can. Thus, gender ideologists are forced to resort to stereotypes. The entire ideology is self-contradicting.
I have said elsewhere - the moment progressives got the whip hand, they morphed into self-righteous moralists so dour and priggish, they make The Church Lady look like G. G. Allin by comparison.
Meanwhile, subversives, the pranksters, the tellers of forbidden truths and the breakers of taboos are on the Alt-Right, and to some extent, on the Dirtbag Left.
This is not because of any inherent subversiveness in the Alt-Right, or any natural censoriousness on the left, but is the result of their respective relationships to power.
Indeed. All the counterculturalism 1960s leftists had completely reversed. No more Mario Salvo shouting about how they needed to throw themselves on the gears of the machinery. Instead, they are now the gears of the machinery.
I've seen Dirtbag Left people switch Right over time... Red Scare Podcast being the biggest example.
I was an independent feminist, voting R, D and I, but now full on "anything but a democrat." There's no way I will vote for a democrat in any race, whether local, state or national. It's the kids and the schools. What the dem trans cult has done to children, women, schools and parental rights has destroyed their party. I support legal 1st trimester abortion, as many men and women do, but no amount of screeching about the far right trying to outlaw all abortion will get me to vote for a dem until they stop attacking children and families, stop destroying education and stop telling me and other women to shut up and let the dudes swing in the bathroom. They also need to get a grip on the far left that wants adults to be able to kill live babies coming down the birth canal. I will not shut up.
They will tell you that their views never changed. And they are right, it is the rest of the "progressive" left that moved away from their roots, as Sheluyang describes. See:
“If gender isn’t about genitals, then why do kids need genital surgery as “gender affirmation”?”
One of many inconvenient questions that will go unanswered. Worse, if this question were actually posed in a public forum, the questioner would likely be attacked.
I can only hope that your views are shared by increasing numbers in American society (and abroad) who have not lost the ability to change their mind. Or, to simply think rationally and see how we have encouraged and enabled adolescents (who are normally adrift during that complicated stage of life) to leap headfirst into irreparable physical and mental harm.
Great post and please keep sharing your perspective.
The vast majority of Americans still oppose giving kids puberty blockers and letting them get surgery. However, the question still stands, and trans activists usually say "well it's about how they feel." They cannot explain the massive contradiction of claiming that gender is not about physical traits, while also claiming that people who feel transgender should "affirm" gender via altering their physical traits.
I do not want to monopolize your time; but, I would be interested in your thoughts on the motivations behind the minority who do support puberty blockers and other irreversible medicinal or surgical procedures.
Are they wealthy, white liberals? And, if so, do they truly believe that their children have sufficient knowledge and foresight in a still developing brain to choose to undergo such procedures? Or are they sacrificing their children at the altar of virtue signaling? And taking what you have argued at the micro level (i.e., regarding those in the Asian community arguing for college admissions policies that hurt their community’s educational opportunities) to a dangerous new degree (i.e., harming their children by encouraging them to transition) all to signal how woke, inclusive, and progressive they are.
They are mostly wealthy, mostly White, mostly liberal. Some of them are true believers, and do in fact believe that their kids are suffering being "born in the wrong body" and that they need blockers/surgery to fix their kids, and that Republicans are evil for trying to stop kids from getting this care.
Others, though, believe it because it's their new dogma. They may not want it for their own kids, but they need to signal to others that they are true believers as well, even if they're not.
There is significant overlap between this crowd and other movements like the "prison abolition movement". There will always be true believers and hangers-on.
One explanation I've considered – and I don't know that I believe it, but let's humor it as a possibility – is that the "born this way" framing of gay rights is incorrect and many/most people kind of know it's incorrect – or, they're afraid it was incorrect regardless of it is is or not – and now we're at the cognitive dissonance portion of the LGBTC++ rights campaign. The liberal types who support childhood translation have a choice: either continue with the idea that people are 'born this way" and descend into madness, or face up to admitting that they think they were wrong about the causes of homosexuality and/or were wrong to support the gay rights campaigns of the early 2000s. Kind of a social sunk cost fallacy.
Like I said, I don't know if I believe it, but it's a hypothesis.
But understand that our institutions of highest education now have entire departments who are effectively devoted to topics like gender ideology and feminism. You can't fire bureaucrats like that once they're in power, and they explicitly instruct the leaders of tomorrow what they're allowed to believe if they're going to graduate and get hired.
So the democracy doesn't matter. They control the money and the airwaves, and they will tell the people what to believe.
Hilariously, the professional music scene (and likely other art scenes that are outside my wheelhouse) has historically been dominated or - in some cases - exclusively populated by white men, at least in the Eurowestern tradition (in lack of better terms for being in a comment section).
Centuries ago it was seen as unbecoming of women to even engage in musical performance, lest it “tarnish their femininity”, cultural context depending. Now the arts and humanities are seen as being more feminine than masculine in America, even though women have increasingly taken up industrial labor roles since WWII, while arts-humanities departments at universities are still predominantly populated by the men that have historically held down practically every prominent pro gig scene for decades?
Meanwhile, people with “racially diverse” backgrounds have continued to break into the Eurowestern classical cultural scene for the same number of centuries as women, with the same notable increase in the past century, despite being faced with the juxtaposition of either rejecting and betraying their “own” so-called cultural traditions vs not being welcomed within new cultural conditions as outsiders, or being pedestaled as the “wonder-kid” of their race vs being outcast by their peers for rejecting racial stereotypes. All at the same time.
Double the egregiousness if your a “racially diverse” woman for just trying to enjoy doing something you like without being thrust into the cauldron of expectation for how you should be stereotyped and beholden to a racial or gender identity.
Stereotyping is something I don't think humans will ever get rid of. The modern world simply has too much information for our brains to handle, forcing us to stereotype others based on gender, race, etc. The way people are perceived when they break stereotypes (and thus force others' brains into cognitive dissonance) is definitely a huge source of tension. There will always be people in one's own community either seeing the act as a betrayal or as an accomplishment, and people inside the scene that will see it either as an encroachment or will welcome the new person.
People are complex creatures, yet we think so simply.
So bizzarre to me that proponents of rigid race and gender reductionism can't see for themselves how fundamentally conservative their doctrines are. They seem to think they're still carrying on the 'Good Fight' for proper leftist values. To borrow an oldie from the 80's: gag me with a spoon, man.
On both the right and the left, there are those with authoritarian and those with libertarian personalities. So the far right and the far left, who tend to be more authoritarian in the way they think, end up both developing more rigid doctrines, while the center for both sides tends to be more libertarian "live-and-let-live" types.
You have pointed out exactly the sheer hypocrisy of the Gender Ideology. You can be any gender you want as long as you conform to that gender-WTF does that mean? If gender is fluid, then why do I need to detach my male parts just because I cry during a sad movie, or I feel like shopping with my wife instead of going to a ball game? Tomorrow I might feel like stalking a deer, or changing out my car engine. We have gone from a society which accepts that while men and women are inherently different physiologically, genetically and emotionally, but there can be some crossover which is completely acceptable -to a point where if you are a little boy and play with dolls or a little girl and like baseball, you need some type of major transformation- which amounts to a mutilation. This is really f-ed up.
Allow me to say, I hope not. The progressive movement began in the early 1900's and was most eloquently expressed by Woodrow Wilson, who believed the people were too stupid to govern themselves and must be compelled to rely on experts. A progressive is not a free thinking liberty lover. Progressives are more than anything else totalitarian in their impulses. Avoid it at all costs.
I am not a “progressive” in the modern usage of the word, of course. It’s just that modern-day people that call themselves progressives aren’t really progressing anything (except American decline). Many of their ideas are regressive.
> For almost all of human existence, gender roles were simple: men did traditionally masculine things and women did traditionally feminine things. Any deviation from standard gender norms was punished.
If you mean *For almost all of recorded history* gender roles were simple and deviation was punished, that may be. But for almost all of human existence, our ancestors lived in loose bands as foragers. In foraging societies, if anyone gives you a hard time and you are older than about 13, you have the skills you need to just leave. Strict punishments are the parlance of settled society, and Agrarian civilizations like those in Babylon or Egypt were notorious for this. Civilization isn't always everything that it's cracked up to be!
I agree 100% with the second paragraph, and it's a shame many people can't realize it. Whoever has more control over the discourse will usually try to limit the rights of the people with less control. When Democrats control the Senate, they hate it when Republicans filibuster them... but when Republicans control the Senate, Democrats suddenly love the filibuster, and vice versa. That's why it's always important for there to be checks and balances so that ideological opponents are allowed to speak, because you never know which side could fall out of power.
It’s so weird to think that there is someone who decided to spend their days going around lecturing kids that being a boy is all about killing people and being a girl is all about being a Barbie. And that this is the “virtuous” thing to do in “progressive” circles.
When you remove biological sex from your definition of gender then gender becomes nothing but stereotypes. I’ve never seen it put more vividly then that mermaid diagram.
Yeah. If physical attributes can't decide gender, then only interests and behavior can. Thus, gender ideologists are forced to resort to stereotypes. The entire ideology is self-contradicting.
I have said elsewhere - the moment progressives got the whip hand, they morphed into self-righteous moralists so dour and priggish, they make The Church Lady look like G. G. Allin by comparison.
Meanwhile, subversives, the pranksters, the tellers of forbidden truths and the breakers of taboos are on the Alt-Right, and to some extent, on the Dirtbag Left.
This is not because of any inherent subversiveness in the Alt-Right, or any natural censoriousness on the left, but is the result of their respective relationships to power.
Indeed. All the counterculturalism 1960s leftists had completely reversed. No more Mario Salvo shouting about how they needed to throw themselves on the gears of the machinery. Instead, they are now the gears of the machinery.
I've seen Dirtbag Left people switch Right over time... Red Scare Podcast being the biggest example.
I have seen hard-left feminists go full-on Trumper.
I was an independent feminist, voting R, D and I, but now full on "anything but a democrat." There's no way I will vote for a democrat in any race, whether local, state or national. It's the kids and the schools. What the dem trans cult has done to children, women, schools and parental rights has destroyed their party. I support legal 1st trimester abortion, as many men and women do, but no amount of screeching about the far right trying to outlaw all abortion will get me to vote for a dem until they stop attacking children and families, stop destroying education and stop telling me and other women to shut up and let the dudes swing in the bathroom. They also need to get a grip on the far left that wants adults to be able to kill live babies coming down the birth canal. I will not shut up.
Amen! Well said, thank you!
What led them to change their views?
They will tell you that their views never changed. And they are right, it is the rest of the "progressive" left that moved away from their roots, as Sheluyang describes. See:
https://karadansky.substack.com
https://womensliberationfront.org
https://womensdeclarationusa.com
https://www.iwv.org
Hating Team D is my guess.
Because Dems started supporting gender ideology?
More like because they cheated Sanders.
Edit: thinking about it, some were the result of gender ideology.
Yeah, Dasha went from sailor socialist to full trad Cat in just a couple years
“If gender isn’t about genitals, then why do kids need genital surgery as “gender affirmation”?”
One of many inconvenient questions that will go unanswered. Worse, if this question were actually posed in a public forum, the questioner would likely be attacked.
I can only hope that your views are shared by increasing numbers in American society (and abroad) who have not lost the ability to change their mind. Or, to simply think rationally and see how we have encouraged and enabled adolescents (who are normally adrift during that complicated stage of life) to leap headfirst into irreparable physical and mental harm.
Great post and please keep sharing your perspective.
The vast majority of Americans still oppose giving kids puberty blockers and letting them get surgery. However, the question still stands, and trans activists usually say "well it's about how they feel." They cannot explain the massive contradiction of claiming that gender is not about physical traits, while also claiming that people who feel transgender should "affirm" gender via altering their physical traits.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I do not want to monopolize your time; but, I would be interested in your thoughts on the motivations behind the minority who do support puberty blockers and other irreversible medicinal or surgical procedures.
Are they wealthy, white liberals? And, if so, do they truly believe that their children have sufficient knowledge and foresight in a still developing brain to choose to undergo such procedures? Or are they sacrificing their children at the altar of virtue signaling? And taking what you have argued at the micro level (i.e., regarding those in the Asian community arguing for college admissions policies that hurt their community’s educational opportunities) to a dangerous new degree (i.e., harming their children by encouraging them to transition) all to signal how woke, inclusive, and progressive they are.
They are mostly wealthy, mostly White, mostly liberal. Some of them are true believers, and do in fact believe that their kids are suffering being "born in the wrong body" and that they need blockers/surgery to fix their kids, and that Republicans are evil for trying to stop kids from getting this care.
Others, though, believe it because it's their new dogma. They may not want it for their own kids, but they need to signal to others that they are true believers as well, even if they're not.
There is significant overlap between this crowd and other movements like the "prison abolition movement". There will always be true believers and hangers-on.
One explanation I've considered – and I don't know that I believe it, but let's humor it as a possibility – is that the "born this way" framing of gay rights is incorrect and many/most people kind of know it's incorrect – or, they're afraid it was incorrect regardless of it is is or not – and now we're at the cognitive dissonance portion of the LGBTC++ rights campaign. The liberal types who support childhood translation have a choice: either continue with the idea that people are 'born this way" and descend into madness, or face up to admitting that they think they were wrong about the causes of homosexuality and/or were wrong to support the gay rights campaigns of the early 2000s. Kind of a social sunk cost fallacy.
Like I said, I don't know if I believe it, but it's a hypothesis.
But understand that our institutions of highest education now have entire departments who are effectively devoted to topics like gender ideology and feminism. You can't fire bureaucrats like that once they're in power, and they explicitly instruct the leaders of tomorrow what they're allowed to believe if they're going to graduate and get hired.
So the democracy doesn't matter. They control the money and the airwaves, and they will tell the people what to believe.
Hilariously, the professional music scene (and likely other art scenes that are outside my wheelhouse) has historically been dominated or - in some cases - exclusively populated by white men, at least in the Eurowestern tradition (in lack of better terms for being in a comment section).
Centuries ago it was seen as unbecoming of women to even engage in musical performance, lest it “tarnish their femininity”, cultural context depending. Now the arts and humanities are seen as being more feminine than masculine in America, even though women have increasingly taken up industrial labor roles since WWII, while arts-humanities departments at universities are still predominantly populated by the men that have historically held down practically every prominent pro gig scene for decades?
Meanwhile, people with “racially diverse” backgrounds have continued to break into the Eurowestern classical cultural scene for the same number of centuries as women, with the same notable increase in the past century, despite being faced with the juxtaposition of either rejecting and betraying their “own” so-called cultural traditions vs not being welcomed within new cultural conditions as outsiders, or being pedestaled as the “wonder-kid” of their race vs being outcast by their peers for rejecting racial stereotypes. All at the same time.
Double the egregiousness if your a “racially diverse” woman for just trying to enjoy doing something you like without being thrust into the cauldron of expectation for how you should be stereotyped and beholden to a racial or gender identity.
Preposterous.
Stereotyping is something I don't think humans will ever get rid of. The modern world simply has too much information for our brains to handle, forcing us to stereotype others based on gender, race, etc. The way people are perceived when they break stereotypes (and thus force others' brains into cognitive dissonance) is definitely a huge source of tension. There will always be people in one's own community either seeing the act as a betrayal or as an accomplishment, and people inside the scene that will see it either as an encroachment or will welcome the new person.
People are complex creatures, yet we think so simply.
So bizzarre to me that proponents of rigid race and gender reductionism can't see for themselves how fundamentally conservative their doctrines are. They seem to think they're still carrying on the 'Good Fight' for proper leftist values. To borrow an oldie from the 80's: gag me with a spoon, man.
On both the right and the left, there are those with authoritarian and those with libertarian personalities. So the far right and the far left, who tend to be more authoritarian in the way they think, end up both developing more rigid doctrines, while the center for both sides tends to be more libertarian "live-and-let-live" types.
"To borrow an oldie from the 80's: gag me with a spoon"
No one ever said it better than Moon Unit Zappa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7MSGGZyxR4
You have pointed out exactly the sheer hypocrisy of the Gender Ideology. You can be any gender you want as long as you conform to that gender-WTF does that mean? If gender is fluid, then why do I need to detach my male parts just because I cry during a sad movie, or I feel like shopping with my wife instead of going to a ball game? Tomorrow I might feel like stalking a deer, or changing out my car engine. We have gone from a society which accepts that while men and women are inherently different physiologically, genetically and emotionally, but there can be some crossover which is completely acceptable -to a point where if you are a little boy and play with dolls or a little girl and like baseball, you need some type of major transformation- which amounts to a mutilation. This is really f-ed up.
Allow me to say, I hope not. The progressive movement began in the early 1900's and was most eloquently expressed by Woodrow Wilson, who believed the people were too stupid to govern themselves and must be compelled to rely on experts. A progressive is not a free thinking liberty lover. Progressives are more than anything else totalitarian in their impulses. Avoid it at all costs.
I am not a “progressive” in the modern usage of the word, of course. It’s just that modern-day people that call themselves progressives aren’t really progressing anything (except American decline). Many of their ideas are regressive.
> For almost all of human existence, gender roles were simple: men did traditionally masculine things and women did traditionally feminine things. Any deviation from standard gender norms was punished.
If you mean *For almost all of recorded history* gender roles were simple and deviation was punished, that may be. But for almost all of human existence, our ancestors lived in loose bands as foragers. In foraging societies, if anyone gives you a hard time and you are older than about 13, you have the skills you need to just leave. Strict punishments are the parlance of settled society, and Agrarian civilizations like those in Babylon or Egypt were notorious for this. Civilization isn't always everything that it's cracked up to be!
I agree 100% with the second paragraph, and it's a shame many people can't realize it. Whoever has more control over the discourse will usually try to limit the rights of the people with less control. When Democrats control the Senate, they hate it when Republicans filibuster them... but when Republicans control the Senate, Democrats suddenly love the filibuster, and vice versa. That's why it's always important for there to be checks and balances so that ideological opponents are allowed to speak, because you never know which side could fall out of power.