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    Gender Issues, again. Sabine Hossenfelder discusses some of these, particularly related to children. Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on June 22, 2023, 6:11 am





    My response is too long for Youtube, and I copy here.

    Thank you Sabine, your informed and studied opinions are always worth listening to, leavened as they are with your little jokes and asides, though I'm not sure you'd make a career as a stand up comic! 

    I believe the uncritical acceptance of the idea of "assigned gender" at birth is one of the fundamental mis-assumptions causing so much of this argument. Sorry, you are not "assigned" a gender at birth, this is a weasel phrase used by gender activists to muddy the debating waters, it should not be used in any discussion on gender issues. We are all born binary with a sex, either male or female, which you cannot change - sex and gender are two sides of the same conceptual coin and cannot rationally be separated. This so called "assignment" actually happened nine months earlier when your parents enjoyed some hanky-panky in the rear seat of their Ford Escort car and forgot the condom. A very small number of babies are intersex due to chromosomal abnormalities or other pathologies such as adreno-genital syndrome, this is not examined here and is not relevant to this debate. 

    To deny your sex or to somehow feel your body is the "wrong" sex, is tantamount to a delusion. The claim that gender then is somehow totally different from sex and is therefore a conscious “choice" is irrational - that's actually ok with me, as humans are not entirely rational creatures, and we can and do live with our irrationalities all the time, so can transgender people and we should let them. But they and gender activists should not claim that this diametrically opposed and purely emotional gender identification can now be also be conflated with one's claimed underlying sex when it is so obvious that it is not.  

    But it is true, and perhaps sad, that a small minority of people, about 0.5% have this psychological cross to bear. One cannot but help feeling sympathy and wondering what one might do to help them. High suicidal ideation proves the genuine distress and the need for informed and sensitive care. The fact that transgender confusion is three times the adult rate in pubertal teenagers does not seem surprising to me, as it occurs at a time of identity confusion in all of us. But the fact that rates of referral have increased ten to twenty fold especially in girls, or there's a new phenomenon of the sudden occurrence of claimed dysphoria, is not at all understandable, except by assuming a strong and recent cultural driver, which in my book is “gender ideology”. But the consequences of this matter, the raising of this small peripheral issue among the much, much more serious issues that humanity is now facing is, to my mind, bizarre and destructive, and the predictable and unsurprising backlash is now causing harm to transgender people, the very people activists and their extreme movement are supposedly trying to protect. Indeed at times I wonder what the deeper agenda of all this nonsense is.

    It is especially unfortunate that this backlash is visited against so many transgender people who have never ever considered themselves as “women” or “men”, but simply as trans. Many will probably agree with much I’ve written here. A well known person in New Zealand, Georgina Beyer, was elected Mayor of Carterton in 1995, a small town in the rural North Island, later elected as the world’s first trans MP in Parliament for the normally less progressive electorate of Wairarapa, and returned in the next election . This colourful person might have had some interesting things to say about all this, as I believe she never ever claimed she was a “woman” in reality. Unfortunately she died earlier this year. I liked her as apart from her extrovert character and outspokenness she held genuine progressive policies.

    But the bizarreness of gender ideology manifests itself in so many ways. For instance, to have to use the term "cis" to a man who is just an adult boy is ridiculous and as a 76 year old man myself, I seriously object to being required to have a faddish and unnecessary qualifying adjective to identify who I am, I treat it as an insult. It's not that I have any problem at all with trans-gender people, and I know none personally, except as the odd bystander to my life, but I do have a problem with the ridiculous rational and verbal contortions we have to undertake to deal to this new extreme ideology.

    Further, you can no longer use the word "woman", though if you're prepared to accept the "cis" you might be occasionally be able to, the word man still seems acceptable for some reason. There is a striking verbal and cultural misogyny related to this nonsense, and the whole panoply of government, health services, justice etc are going along with the madness. No woman allowed but “owner of a uterus" "a menstruator", "a birther" instead of mother, "a chest feeder" etc etc or lesbians as a "non-male sexually attracted to another non-male" - this is an actual example from a paper. Originally inclusive “gender neutral language” was supposed to be helpful for women, such as chairperson or firefighter etc. But this new “neutral” language is actually misogynist, patently de-feminising and dehumanising, verbally subjecting a sentient human being to a grotesque anatomical and physiological dissection. Politicians tie themselves into ludicrous rhetorical and irrational knots when asked the question, "what is a woman?", in their effort to say anything other than the truth, that a woman is an adult female of the species Homo sapiens. Exactly what are they afraid of? A few years ago, they'd have been laughed out of court, I trust in a few years we'll again be able to laugh at such absurdities and they'll look suitably embarrassed. Gender activists are in the process of eliminating women from our culture, invading their hard-earned space over so many years, and it surprises me how many women seem to be going along with this. You see, if gender activism and cancel culture succeed in stifling debate and informed and free contention, and we on this side are blackmailed into keeping quiet, basically we are being forced or asked to become hypocrites and I tell you this, I am not going to be one, nor should our squirming politicians and commentators. 
    .
    This extreme confusion of "gender assignment" goes along with the idea that a trans woman is, in fact / in reality, a "woman" as mentioned above. Sorry, that is not the case. No male changing their gender identity to what they believe is a woman, is actually a woman, nor should there be any requirement from anyone else to a admit they are. A man, or boy, changing their gender identity only becomes at best a simulacrum of a woman, a facsimile, of what that boy or man thinks or believes a woman is, such as appearance, makeup, voice, gestures, behaviour, dress, gait, social preferences etc. about which they can have no more insight than any other man living on the planet. Additionally their sexuality and behaviour might also change, and could be seen as quite bizarre or confusing in some transgender men or women by outsiders. Medical treatment may make the pretence more realistic, but the underlying fact remains the same. Even the brains of men and women are demonstrably different, in size and function - literally, a man doesn't have the brain to be a woman. 

    Does that mean that I or anyone should treat such trans-gender people meanly or violently or discriminate in any undeserved way? Of course not, but at the same time you should not be required to accept the idea that this trans-gender person is actually the sex they are claiming to be, nor should you have to tolerate deviant or challenging behaviour in a few. If a transgender person is a good and worthwhile person, they should necessarily be treated as such by all of us, and if, when you interact with them socially, you should use their preferred names and pronouns, if they make sense. However, nor should anyone be required to accept the modifying adjective "cis" to describe who you are. There are women and men, and a very small relative number of trans-women and trans-men, and a few odd balls (literally??) in between. Nor should we remain unable to laugh at those transgender activists and supporters who will wildly and loudly sing out the fulsome praises of this whole minority, in their over the top love for their courage, their worthwhileness, their wonderful qualities as though there is something intrinsically virtuous in being a confused human being, whilst seeming to ignore the worth of the other 99.5% of their fellow population with their own adversities and their courage in facing them.  

    Underlying all this transgender debate and ideology is the simple binary nature of human sex, and the nonsense we are now subject to is related to an inability to accept a biological reality. For instance, how many women do you know that as they get into old age have to worry about getting prostate cancer? Most of the physical characteristics of your sex remain, whatever hormone or surgical procedure you undergo, though the some more recognisable characteristics might well be absent following surgery or hidden. That's why transgender women should not be allowed to compete in women's reserved competitive sports. To allow them to do so is to allow men to cheat in women's space. There are other problematic areas, prisons, institutions, colleges, health facilities, changing room etc. Any rights of transgender people have to be weighed against the rights of women (and generally we’re talking about women and transgender women) who might feel their reserved space has been invaded. Recall, one in five or more women in the Western world has been sexually assaulted, abused or treated with violence by a man or men at some time in their lives.

    These are the practical difficulties of the trans-gender ideologues insisting, in many circles, by intimidation and cancel culture, and threats of violence too, that their ideology is the right one, and any objections are beyond the pale and unacceptable to hear or express - a culture of fear induced by threats and the reality of the loss of one's livelihood. It's the total humbug of a supposedly inclusionary ideology in transgender rights that has, in academic, political and other circles, metamorphosed to an aggressive exclusionary ideology in regards to free speech and opinion. Recently here in New Zealand I've seen attempts to ban the admission of a UK citizen, and a near riot involving the weaponisation of tomato soup to support trans rights. I've never seen a near riot or tomato soup for the benefit of the 100,000 impoverished NZ children who live in want and who, unlike transgender folk, cannot even speak up for themselves . In a democracy this is the unacceptable face of transgender ideology. .

    Then we come to the very serious issue of the "affirmative" care of children who identify as trans-gender. Sabine covers this issue very well with some very useful quoted studies, and non-studies, and I won't say too much about this. I do though give some thanks that the ruination of too many young people's lives by naive and misguided health professionals and counsellors, who follow a simplistic and often unsafe ideology, rather than the science or even, sometimes it seems to me, a moral concern, is at last being seriously challenged, and not before time.

    Expressing such views above I will be described as an "anti- gender ideologue" and you can read long and shrill philosophical diatribes in the Guardian written by Judith Butler (I don't know her) who excels herself by employing every woke insult in the book by suggesting being "anti-gender" is something fascist or racist or reactionary or misogynist or imperialist or xenophobic or religiously bigoted or fascist (again and ad infinitum) - this list of slurs seems inexhaustible. Her article borders on the insane.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash

    But when you read such extreme opinions in such overwrought and absurdist language as this and read the arguments that seem to arise from some supra-rarified academic stratosphere and that fly in the face of everyday reality for the vast majority of the population, you should be able to understand that ordinary human beings of either sex just as much as transgender people don't like being pigeonholed, slurred or dismissed because they have a different opinions, social mores, cultures or ways of life from others. It's exactly because of the extremities of opinions in articles like Judith Butler's that I stand much more secure in my own opinions and I will continue to argue them with conviction and with as much rationality as I can muster to support them. Gender ideology in its extremes is actually a challenge to a sane society and most of all to the girls and women in that society, , so we do ultimately have to win. A dispassionate examination of science and a more informed understanding of human behaviour, such as provided by Sabine, is a good place to start.

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