Well defined. Thanks. The critique that they are dismissing the soul makes sense. This echoes a discussion of the German words ““Leib and Körper” in Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. The Nazi’s did the same thing: treating people as “korper” — the body-and not “leib” —the soul.
Bingo! I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone would connect critics of gender ideology to the Nazis.
By narrowing his critique to the Heritage Foundation view of gender ideology, the author is failing to address the most powerful critiques of gender ideology which actually come from the left, from feminists including Kara Dansky, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock and Holly Lawford-Smith.
As Andrea Dworkin wrote “To right wing men, we are private property. To left wing men, we are public property." The current trans movement appropriates the left’s social justice language as a toxic veneer to negotiate consent away from women, children, gay men, lesbians, and the mentally ill. If the Nazis have anything to do with this conversation, it is that misogyny, exploitation, and homophobia are always under the surface, and together will seek new ways to assert themselves in human societies. Will the leftwing listen to leftist gay and lesbian whistleblowers from the gender clinics themselves? Or will they also be called Nazis for not going along with insurance covered child mutilation? https://youtu.be/F8jdea-LXG8?si=Or_P0MTiRriYtMxp
Gender expression is culture bound. However no one can change sex. People with Differences of Sexual Development have nothing to do with the modern trans movement in the West. They are one sex or the other, not “intersex,” and many of these people will need medical help. The gender ideology movement has created a zeitgeist of social media contagion and unsound educational policies and curriculum in which we teachers tell kids that they may have been “born in the wrong body,” starting as young as kindergarten in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live and teach. There is nothing more abusive than telling kids that their body is wrong, their puberty is wrong, and that they will need everyone to pretend that they are the opposite sex, need radical double mastectomies, block their natural cognitive and physical development through puberty blockers, and take cross sex hormones in order to not to commit suicide. Gender ideology is bad for women, bad for young people, bad for gender non-conforming people, and particularly bad for pre gay youth who often pretend to be the opposite sex when they are young. Gender ideology depends on regressive sex stereotypes, the ones I fought against my whole life. It is a money making medical scandal that convinces well intentioned adults to teach children that one must radically alter their bodies in order to live as their “authentic selves”. As more and more detransitioners speak out and sue the medical doctors that harmed them, I expect that many more will sue their schools and teachers. Listen to the gender critical feminists on the left. We know this is a huge setback for human rights that appropriates third gender, two spirits, and the LGB community as it pushes gender medicalization and “affirmation” on vulnerable members of society who cannot knowingly consent. Read Kara Dansky, Magdalene Berns, Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, and many other women fighting against the new patriarchal possession of our sex based rights. Read our declaration at Women’s Declaration International, follow Women’s Liberation Front, read the LGB Courage Coalition. We are politically left and know that those who call us “rightwing” need to read a lot more, against the media ties with Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex. https://womensdeclarationusa.com/the-declaration/
Live, dress, talk, act, present however you want in life. You should -- and do -- have the freedom to do that. But that doesn't mean you can magically morph into the opposite sex.
Female is a fact, not a feeling. It's not a costume you can put on. There is no such thing as "trans" or "non-binary." There are two sexes: male and female.
You're a man and wanna wear a skirt and lipstick? Have at it. I don't care. But that doesn't make you a woman. And you have no right to invade women's single-sex spaces, such as locker rooms, toilets, sports teams, women's prisons, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters.
Those of us on the left who are lifelong feminists and have been fighting for human rights all our lives aren't going to put up with men invading our spaces and endangering us because they say they "feel" like women.
If you "feel" like the opposite sex, then please get mental health help. Just as you wouldn't tell an anorexic that because she says she "feels" fat therefore she is, you shouldn't be telling men they can magically morph into women. Biology isn't bigotry!
1- eyeballs have been studied, tested, researched, and procedures proven to improve health and sight in humans. "Gender care?" Nope, pure experimentation, with "studies" simply ignoring those who have dropped off the radar for any reason whatsoever, including desistence, failing mental and physical health, or simply changing their mind.
2- it is developmentally and iatrogenically irresponsible to suggest "gender ideology" to young kids, even up to the understood mental maturity of the mid-20s in age. Confusing humans about this has caused a huge number of them to medicalize healthy bodies. This is a human rights abuse that has sterilizes children before they can possibly consent.
3- sometimes, there IS only one answer. Yes, there are only 2 sexes. Telling confused humans that they can change sex, invent their own "gender", etc, is the biggest red flag of our generation, and the repurcussions will be long-standing.
Listen to women, listen to detransitioners. Listen to yourself and realize how foolish and dangerous "gender ideology" is.
The idea that there are only 2 genders is just wrong. In many ways, gender is a cultural concept, not a biological one. Many cultures recognize more than 2 genders. Are these people dangerous? This link looks at different cultures though out the world that identify more than 2 genders.
All "intersex" people are either male or female. They have chromosomal anamolies that sometimes need medical treatment. They have nothing to do with the "gender" and "trans" craze, which is caused by pushing narratives about "gender."
Think back... remember when things were normal? No one was indoctrinating kids in schools, popular culture was what it was, but everyone knew "gender" non-conforming artists like David Bowie and Grace Jones were still male and female.
I don't know. I have worked in public schools for quite awhile. My kids went through public school. I have not witnessed what you are describing. Not saying it doesn't exist, but I have not seen it. On the other hand, I have a good friend whose young child was born male but identifies as female. She started telling her parents she was a girl when she was in kindergarten. She was not indoctrinated. She has older siblings of both sexes. She is now 8 and continues to say she is a girl. She sees a therapist. She is a happy child who has friends and is accepted by her peers. She is expressing who she is. Her mother is an endocrinologist and when she hits puberty, she, along with her parents, her doctors, her therapist will decide the best steps forward. I see absolutely no benefit to forcing her to behave as a male simply because she was born with a penis. Both parents do not know what she will want to do when she hits puberty, but the decisions will be made with love and care.
Why would this male child not be allowed to express himself without the introduction of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries. When this is done to young boys, they will never be able to experience sexual orgasm. Most gay men I know went through a period of being “effeminate” as children. This is a human rights abuse pushing regressive stereotypes against gender non-conforming children, many of whom will end up gay. Listen to gay effeminate men like “Pear” discuss the medical and societal harm being done to young people like them. https://substack.com/home/post/p-160932573
Many, many children explore and experiment with different expressions at very young ages. Your friends child is no different nor special. When allowed to do so, without affirmation that children CAN BE ANYTHING they choose (male, female, giraffe, space alien), they grow out of it. That is called developmentally appropriate play and response to that play.
The affirmation part is what is new. Schools absolutely affirm different pronouns, bathroom use, etc. It is REQUIRED by law and policy in California. This is confusing children, and not just the ones being affirmed into a different identity (they remain a boy or a girl... identity IS gender.) The children around that child, and adults who still understand material and biological reality, are compelled to lie, ignore their instincts, and further the delusion. This is causing harm to society, and especially to females who deserve protected spaces and sports. Females are different than males. We fought for those protections and now they are erased so that "special" identities can thrive, to the detriment of society and it's norms, the ones that safeguarded the actual vulnerable.
Agreed it is cultural. But OMG that PBS article is mostly fictional! The common thread across these idealized third gender cultures is that they are very homophobic, or were very homophobic until recently. Guessing PBS didn’t bother to look into the illuminating work of Professor Paul Vasey. He gave two excellent interviews on Gender A Wider Lens. See episodes 57 and 68.
Those episodes are a must listen to anyone that claims that these cultures allow men to literally “live” as women or vice versa. They do not. They allow for gender expressions that we, until recently in the West, also ascribed to. Now, our overwhelming cultural imperialism is being launched into these cultures to tell them that must also prescribe medical procedures to radically alter the natural diversity of human personalities and necessary pubertal development. The west must learn from our past mistakes and not use our vast influence to now tell gay effeminate men or tomboy type women that there is a “procedure” for that.
Define “gender.” I have to see a coherent definition. I don’t have a “gender identity” and suspect that the majority of Americans have a similar view. If you believe in “gender” or “gender identity” that’s fine. But there are only two sexes, men don’t belong in women’s single sex spaces and confused kids don’t need wrong sex hormones and surgeries. Not complicated.
Excellent post, Sasha. It’s rich irony that the very people who said “follow the science” (liberal dems) during Covid are so rabidly anti science when it comes to basic biology — the immutable differences between male and female. “The party of women” as the Dems are still known continues to sell out women and girls on this issue.
Hi Peter. I’m a lefty who’s been listening to detransitioners and aware AGPs. What I started to realize is that things I’d once accepted as *facts* were actually *beliefs*—ideas that are very much contested, actually. These beliefs add up to what I think of as “gender identity dogma” (aka “gender ideology”). Those of us on the Left need to have rational dialogue & course-correction re: “gender identity” & sex, while staking out a principled, liberal position about expression and nonconformity. The message needs to be, “Girls and boys can look and act in all kinds of ways; nonconformity with sex-based norms/expectations is fine. Some people are attracted to the same sex, which is also fine.”
Garbage analysis.Contrary to what you seem to think, this isn’t a “right v. left” issue. Indeed, some of the sharpest criticism of “gender ideology,” on Substack and elsewhere, comes from feminists. “Gender identity” is pure bullshit. It lacks a coherent definition.
Trumphappens to right on this issue, but you are beyond delusional if think that the only opposition to gender ideology comes from MAGA world.
Sex is real. Men are not women. Humans can’t change sex. Women’s single sex spaces exist for good reasons. It’s dangerous to teach children to dissociate from their bodies. “Gender-affirming care” is not medicine.
The trans movement is dangerous, regressive, misogynistic and rotten to the core.
Well defined. Thanks. The critique that they are dismissing the soul makes sense. This echoes a discussion of the German words ““Leib and Körper” in Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. The Nazi’s did the same thing: treating people as “korper” — the body-and not “leib” —the soul.
Bingo! I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone would connect critics of gender ideology to the Nazis.
By narrowing his critique to the Heritage Foundation view of gender ideology, the author is failing to address the most powerful critiques of gender ideology which actually come from the left, from feminists including Kara Dansky, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock and Holly Lawford-Smith.
As Andrea Dworkin wrote “To right wing men, we are private property. To left wing men, we are public property." The current trans movement appropriates the left’s social justice language as a toxic veneer to negotiate consent away from women, children, gay men, lesbians, and the mentally ill. If the Nazis have anything to do with this conversation, it is that misogyny, exploitation, and homophobia are always under the surface, and together will seek new ways to assert themselves in human societies. Will the leftwing listen to leftist gay and lesbian whistleblowers from the gender clinics themselves? Or will they also be called Nazis for not going along with insurance covered child mutilation? https://youtu.be/F8jdea-LXG8?si=Or_P0MTiRriYtMxp
Gender expression is culture bound. However no one can change sex. People with Differences of Sexual Development have nothing to do with the modern trans movement in the West. They are one sex or the other, not “intersex,” and many of these people will need medical help. The gender ideology movement has created a zeitgeist of social media contagion and unsound educational policies and curriculum in which we teachers tell kids that they may have been “born in the wrong body,” starting as young as kindergarten in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live and teach. There is nothing more abusive than telling kids that their body is wrong, their puberty is wrong, and that they will need everyone to pretend that they are the opposite sex, need radical double mastectomies, block their natural cognitive and physical development through puberty blockers, and take cross sex hormones in order to not to commit suicide. Gender ideology is bad for women, bad for young people, bad for gender non-conforming people, and particularly bad for pre gay youth who often pretend to be the opposite sex when they are young. Gender ideology depends on regressive sex stereotypes, the ones I fought against my whole life. It is a money making medical scandal that convinces well intentioned adults to teach children that one must radically alter their bodies in order to live as their “authentic selves”. As more and more detransitioners speak out and sue the medical doctors that harmed them, I expect that many more will sue their schools and teachers. Listen to the gender critical feminists on the left. We know this is a huge setback for human rights that appropriates third gender, two spirits, and the LGB community as it pushes gender medicalization and “affirmation” on vulnerable members of society who cannot knowingly consent. Read Kara Dansky, Magdalene Berns, Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, and many other women fighting against the new patriarchal possession of our sex based rights. Read our declaration at Women’s Declaration International, follow Women’s Liberation Front, read the LGB Courage Coalition. We are politically left and know that those who call us “rightwing” need to read a lot more, against the media ties with Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex. https://womensdeclarationusa.com/the-declaration/
Sing it, Sasha!
Amen!!!!
Live, dress, talk, act, present however you want in life. You should -- and do -- have the freedom to do that. But that doesn't mean you can magically morph into the opposite sex.
Female is a fact, not a feeling. It's not a costume you can put on. There is no such thing as "trans" or "non-binary." There are two sexes: male and female.
You're a man and wanna wear a skirt and lipstick? Have at it. I don't care. But that doesn't make you a woman. And you have no right to invade women's single-sex spaces, such as locker rooms, toilets, sports teams, women's prisons, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters.
Those of us on the left who are lifelong feminists and have been fighting for human rights all our lives aren't going to put up with men invading our spaces and endangering us because they say they "feel" like women.
If you "feel" like the opposite sex, then please get mental health help. Just as you wouldn't tell an anorexic that because she says she "feels" fat therefore she is, you shouldn't be telling men they can magically morph into women. Biology isn't bigotry!
1- eyeballs have been studied, tested, researched, and procedures proven to improve health and sight in humans. "Gender care?" Nope, pure experimentation, with "studies" simply ignoring those who have dropped off the radar for any reason whatsoever, including desistence, failing mental and physical health, or simply changing their mind.
2- it is developmentally and iatrogenically irresponsible to suggest "gender ideology" to young kids, even up to the understood mental maturity of the mid-20s in age. Confusing humans about this has caused a huge number of them to medicalize healthy bodies. This is a human rights abuse that has sterilizes children before they can possibly consent.
3- sometimes, there IS only one answer. Yes, there are only 2 sexes. Telling confused humans that they can change sex, invent their own "gender", etc, is the biggest red flag of our generation, and the repurcussions will be long-standing.
Listen to women, listen to detransitioners. Listen to yourself and realize how foolish and dangerous "gender ideology" is.
The idea that there are only 2 genders is just wrong. In many ways, gender is a cultural concept, not a biological one. Many cultures recognize more than 2 genders. Are these people dangerous? This link looks at different cultures though out the world that identify more than 2 genders.
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/
There are only 2 sexes. "Gender" is a construct, and that should not be used to mess with kids minds and bodies.
Sex is not gender.
So what are intersex people? Are they male or are they female? Do they have to choose?
All "intersex" people are either male or female. They have chromosomal anamolies that sometimes need medical treatment. They have nothing to do with the "gender" and "trans" craze, which is caused by pushing narratives about "gender."
Think back... remember when things were normal? No one was indoctrinating kids in schools, popular culture was what it was, but everyone knew "gender" non-conforming artists like David Bowie and Grace Jones were still male and female.
I don't know. I have worked in public schools for quite awhile. My kids went through public school. I have not witnessed what you are describing. Not saying it doesn't exist, but I have not seen it. On the other hand, I have a good friend whose young child was born male but identifies as female. She started telling her parents she was a girl when she was in kindergarten. She was not indoctrinated. She has older siblings of both sexes. She is now 8 and continues to say she is a girl. She sees a therapist. She is a happy child who has friends and is accepted by her peers. She is expressing who she is. Her mother is an endocrinologist and when she hits puberty, she, along with her parents, her doctors, her therapist will decide the best steps forward. I see absolutely no benefit to forcing her to behave as a male simply because she was born with a penis. Both parents do not know what she will want to do when she hits puberty, but the decisions will be made with love and care.
Why would this male child not be allowed to express himself without the introduction of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries. When this is done to young boys, they will never be able to experience sexual orgasm. Most gay men I know went through a period of being “effeminate” as children. This is a human rights abuse pushing regressive stereotypes against gender non-conforming children, many of whom will end up gay. Listen to gay effeminate men like “Pear” discuss the medical and societal harm being done to young people like them. https://substack.com/home/post/p-160932573
Many, many children explore and experiment with different expressions at very young ages. Your friends child is no different nor special. When allowed to do so, without affirmation that children CAN BE ANYTHING they choose (male, female, giraffe, space alien), they grow out of it. That is called developmentally appropriate play and response to that play.
The affirmation part is what is new. Schools absolutely affirm different pronouns, bathroom use, etc. It is REQUIRED by law and policy in California. This is confusing children, and not just the ones being affirmed into a different identity (they remain a boy or a girl... identity IS gender.) The children around that child, and adults who still understand material and biological reality, are compelled to lie, ignore their instincts, and further the delusion. This is causing harm to society, and especially to females who deserve protected spaces and sports. Females are different than males. We fought for those protections and now they are erased so that "special" identities can thrive, to the detriment of society and it's norms, the ones that safeguarded the actual vulnerable.
This is sick.
None of those cultures perform body mutilation on children, as far as I know. Gender non-conforming? Totally OK!
Or as PBS would want us to think: “
Agreed it is cultural. But OMG that PBS article is mostly fictional! The common thread across these idealized third gender cultures is that they are very homophobic, or were very homophobic until recently. Guessing PBS didn’t bother to look into the illuminating work of Professor Paul Vasey. He gave two excellent interviews on Gender A Wider Lens. See episodes 57 and 68.
Those episodes are a must listen to anyone that claims that these cultures allow men to literally “live” as women or vice versa. They do not. They allow for gender expressions that we, until recently in the West, also ascribed to. Now, our overwhelming cultural imperialism is being launched into these cultures to tell them that must also prescribe medical procedures to radically alter the natural diversity of human personalities and necessary pubertal development. The west must learn from our past mistakes and not use our vast influence to now tell gay effeminate men or tomboy type women that there is a “procedure” for that.
Define “gender.” I have to see a coherent definition. I don’t have a “gender identity” and suspect that the majority of Americans have a similar view. If you believe in “gender” or “gender identity” that’s fine. But there are only two sexes, men don’t belong in women’s single sex spaces and confused kids don’t need wrong sex hormones and surgeries. Not complicated.
Excellent post, Sasha. It’s rich irony that the very people who said “follow the science” (liberal dems) during Covid are so rabidly anti science when it comes to basic biology — the immutable differences between male and female. “The party of women” as the Dems are still known continues to sell out women and girls on this issue.
Hi Peter. I’m a lefty who’s been listening to detransitioners and aware AGPs. What I started to realize is that things I’d once accepted as *facts* were actually *beliefs*—ideas that are very much contested, actually. These beliefs add up to what I think of as “gender identity dogma” (aka “gender ideology”). Those of us on the Left need to have rational dialogue & course-correction re: “gender identity” & sex, while staking out a principled, liberal position about expression and nonconformity. The message needs to be, “Girls and boys can look and act in all kinds of ways; nonconformity with sex-based norms/expectations is fine. Some people are attracted to the same sex, which is also fine.”
I recommend this 2023 memo as an excellent explainer— https://transpolicy.substack.com/p/trans-memo
Its author has personal experience w/issues of cross-sex identity.
Garbage analysis.Contrary to what you seem to think, this isn’t a “right v. left” issue. Indeed, some of the sharpest criticism of “gender ideology,” on Substack and elsewhere, comes from feminists. “Gender identity” is pure bullshit. It lacks a coherent definition.
Trumphappens to right on this issue, but you are beyond delusional if think that the only opposition to gender ideology comes from MAGA world.
Sex is real. Men are not women. Humans can’t change sex. Women’s single sex spaces exist for good reasons. It’s dangerous to teach children to dissociate from their bodies. “Gender-affirming care” is not medicine.
The trans movement is dangerous, regressive, misogynistic and rotten to the core.