Whatever we may think of Trump and the MAGA fans, the voters of America gave a startling wake-up call against woke politics earlier this month. It wasn’t just the economy or immigration that won it for “the Donald”. There is clear evidence that what tipped the balance of an election forecast to be finely balanced was the identity politics with which Kamala Harris was so strongly associated. In the first of two related blogs, today I will examine the implications for future MAP strategy, not that I will be saying much about that today. Instead, I will focus on how the wheels have come off the transgender political bandwagon, with particular reference to the damage done by activist extremism.
Trans women are men. Get over it.
Not my words, but those of trans woman Debbie Hayton.
Blunt language.
So, she must be a self-hating transphobe, right? Wrong! What science teacher Hayton hates after years of being subjected to the bogus “transphobia” slur, which wrecked her opportunity to lead the teachers’ union NASUWT after she had been elected president, is the untold harm done to trans kids by unhinged activists who have lost all touch with reality.
Truths about transness have been swept under the carpet for years now, the inevitable outcome being that “woke” ideology on the topic has been utterly discredited – so much so that it could well have been the tipping factor that has given Trump another term. A single campaign ad on this theme shifted viewer opinion 2.7 percentage points towards him according to data gathered for Kamela Harris’s side.
Prodigious HTOC commentator “Prue” gave us a hefty steer on the idiocy of the ideologues by posting a link the other day to a YouTube video by Sophia Narwitz – another trans woman with her head screwed on properly, unlike the swivel-headed ranters. We learn that, according to the sort of activists who are “their own worst enemy”, straight guys are transphobic if they prefer to date actual women rather than trans ones, who may well still have a penis. These woke whingers seem to have forgotten that for relationships to work they need to be based on mutual attraction and consent. You can’t just demand that someone else should find you sexy. With the best will in the world, that’s not how sexual attraction works.
What the extremists have managed to get away with very successfully, though, is their argumentum ad baculum. In plain English, “Agree with me, or there will be… consequences” – a word freighted with all the understated menace of a gentle word in your ear from the mafia. These are no empty threats. The “consequences” might include anything from getting someone fired from their job for alleged transphobic speech, to making hostile moves involving their children, as happened to psychology professor Mike Bailey, to launching police investigations over so-called “hate incidents”.
We have been under a tsunami of the latter lately, haven’t we? As The Times reported recently, “13,200 hate incidents had been logged in the past year, including against schoolchildren, vicars and doctors”. Some look superficially quite amusing, too bonkers to be taken seriously, such as a front-page lead story in The Sun a couple of days ago, about a hate complaint based on someone being given “a dodgy haircut”. Another complaint was literally batty: someone was reported for asking whether a Chinese meal came “with bats”. Another was a Welsh so-called victim upset over being called a “sheep shagger”, which everyone knows is something all rural Welsh males get up to, starting from about age five, as soon as they are strong enough to hold the sheep steady, with its back legs down their cute little wellies.
Sticking with the trans-themed ones, ex-police officer Harry Miller won a legal challenge at the Court of Appeal after Humberside police logged alleged transphobic tweets from him as “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs). His posts on X included, “l was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.” A NCHI was logged in Cumbria after a victim complained they had been misgendered, and in Northumbria a caller reported “incorrect pronouns” were used when addressing them. These, bear in mind, were complaints to the police – in other words, complaints which would inevitably have consequences, tying up Miller and so many others in lengthy legal procedures aimed at the difficult but vitally needed task of clearing their names of any wrong-doing.
To appreciate exactly why even a clearly tough and combative ex-cop like Miller should not be subjected to the chilling effect of such possible consequences, it will help if we come back to Debbie Hayton, with whom we might feel a lot more in common and who plainly knows what she is talking about – unlike Miller, whose forte is the law and free speech rights rather than trans issues, although he has made clear he is not anti-trans. “Don’t mis-species me” is a clever line, but if he’d totally mastered his satirical brief he’d have said “but I identify as fish”. We can perfectly well identify as fish, after all, but have an orientation towards mammals.
Pedantic? Trust me, in the confusing world of sex/gender semantics it is impossible to be too pedantic. There are times when conceptual exactitude is imperative. The deliberately disruptive queer strategy of challenging hegemonic, heteronormative concepts through such means as contesting established binaries has its uses, but it is also capable of marooning us in a meaningless verbal morass, leaving us vulnerable to stupid policy making that harms kids.
So, back to Hayton. I described her as a trans woman, but that is a term we need to unpack if we are to understand why she is so utterly at odds with all those other trans women who insist that “Trans women are women” and there should be no debate about it. In particular, we need to get our heads around the clunky term “autogynephilia”. It’s a safe bet that few of the many celebrities from showbiz, sport, etc., who have been quick to jump aboard the fashionable trans bandwagon, lecturing us on how we just need to be kind and understanding, have even heard the word. They may be genuinely kind. But understanding? Not so much.
The trouble is that the public at large, including the celebs, have a poor understanding of what it means to be transgender. Even worse, they mistakenly believe they do know plenty, especially on the liberal side. Which is why the gung ho libs and radicals cannot see any reason for discussing trans rights when, as they think, all that is needed is to uphold them. Specifically, they appear to be largely unaware that there are significantly different types of trans psychology, which have major (and differing) political implications.
One of these types is autogynephilia. Psychologist Ray Blanchard worked out back in the 1980s that trans women fall into one of two very different psychologies. First were “homosexual transsexuals”: gay men whose boyhood effeminacy can make living as a woman seem an almost “natural” next step. The second are “autogynephiles”: heterosexual men who mainly transition later, often after fathering children. Not only are they sexually attracted to women, just like regular straight guys, they often have very masculine interests and jobs. As a young newspaper reporter back in the 1970s, I encountered Roberta Cowell, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2 and later became a racing driver. These males (Roberta had started life as Robert and will not mind me “deadnaming” her now she has been actually dead for many years) are sexually turned on not only by cross-dressing but by the idea of being a woman.
Blanchard’s theory was adapted by doctor and psychologist Anne Lawrence, to whom I was introduced at a conference in Paris many years ago. Anne is herself an autogynephilic trans woman, who argues autogynephilia is both a sexual and romantic attraction. She and I had what I felt was an interesting, pleasant, mutually respectful encounter, discussing both transgender and paedophilia.
One reason we hear so little about autogynephilia, apart from the less than catchy name, is sheer fear. There are militant activists who hate this now well substantiated concept, are in denial about its reality, and who do their damnedest to make sure there are serious “consequences” for those who publicly give it credence – the most prominent among them, perhaps, being Mike Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen, which goes into the evidence for autogynephilia. He is a leading professor who has courageously championed my pro-MAP writing. They call him a transphobe. I know he is not. But why the controversy? Why the denial?
“First”, said Hayton in a recent Times story, “what man wants to admit fancying himself? Second, the ‘the wrong body’ theory posits being trans as a terrible misfortune, so everybody needs to be kind to us and give us rights. Whereas if you’re having an affair with yourself you’re obliged to take responsibility for your own actions and the damage you cause.” Damage? What damage? She continues:
Moreover, it’s harder to demand access to intimate female spaces if that need is erotically motivated. For decades, transsexual women have relied upon female goodwill to use their bathrooms and changing rooms, but self-ID destroyed that precious trust. Women were happy to take in the odd refugee from masculinity. But in the past five years it’s become a wave of colonisers, and that is very different.
As her interlocutor in The Times says:
These days, Hayton’s classic “persistent, consistent and insistent” childhood [gender] dysphoria may have led to doctors prescribing puberty blockers and hormones. Does she wish she’d transitioned earlier? Hayton points to a photograph of her adult children on the wall. “There’s three people who wouldn’t be here if I had – and not being able to have your own kids is huge. … Second, try finding a life partner as a post-operative 22-year-old trans woman attracted to females. Your dating pool is tiny. Basically, you’re looking at bisexual women and many of them end up with men.”
What we are hearing from Hayton, I suggest, is a perfectly reasonable plea for caution over early surgical transition, from someone with unimpeachable personal experience. She has her own recent book Transsexual Apostate: My Journey Back to Reality. Of course, her story is not the whole story of transness. Social transition is much more common and much less drastic than the full-on physical kind, which relatively few trans kids will undergo. But the numbers are not trivial. More than 14,000 American children had gender-related medical interventions between 2019 and 2023, of which 5,747 minors received gender-transition surgeries. That is boys having their dicks cut off and girls losing their tits. Serious, heavy stuff. Not something to be chosen on a whim like getting your ears pierced or having a tattoo done.
And don’t be deceived by the counter-argument that trans kids are at even greater risk, from suicide, if they are denied the puberty blockers that could start them happily on their way towards cross-sex hormones and full surgical transition. You know the activist slogan, “Better a live daughter than a dead son”. It’s bullshit. The figures do not stack up. Trans kids often have mental health problems that sadly means they have a higher level of suicidal feelings than average; but the balance of research evidence does not point to an elevated suicide rate in the absence of gender-confirming treatment. The loony militants are also deep in denial of de-transitioning, falsely claiming hardly anyone ever regrets undergoing trans medical procedures. They have to keep up this pretence because the truth would prick their propaganda bubble.
Prue rightly pointed out in the comments space here recently that there is no conspiracy of “trans groomers coming for your kids”. That expression implies a sexual motive for which there is no evidence. Some militant trans activists are shamelessly devious, but there is no reason to suppose they are “deviant” in the implied way. In this respect, the “groomer” allegation is the sort of baseless fearmongering one might often see in the right-wing social media.
But Prue has also shrewdly drawn attention to the role of capitalism in our affairs. What’s that got to do with it? Plenty. Just follow the money. It is no accident that it is in the US, where medicine is a business like any other, that the bad stuff has been most rife. Not grooming for sex but pushing for profit. Much like the Big Pharma drug pushers behind the American opiate epidemic, hormone treatments and cosmetic surgery (that’s what trans operations are, medically unnecessary just like nose jobs and butt lifts but far more drastic) have been pushed on kids in the US just because there is profit in them.
It is also no accident that it is in Europe, where medicine is largely a not-for-profit public service, that patient’s interests come first, and where the transgender treatment scam has been most effectively exposed and demolished. Remember the UK’s landmark Cass Review earlier this year? It has been widely hailed for its calm, careful, thorough, trawl through the issues and the research evidence, along with smaller reviews from other European countries that have come to similar conclusions. America, by contrast, has seen high-profile attempts to trash its findings, with a series of feeble, distorted, false “rebuttals” emanating from outfits that have fallen to profit-driven regulatory capture (in the guise of championing trans rights) including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the staggeringly super woke magazine Scientific American – which long ago sacrificed science to liberal politics.
Let’s support adults in their choices, and also minors, but only once we can be sure they truly know what they are doing. This must be not only after proving themselves “persistent, consistent and insistent” but also after being properly counselled on the downside of any choices as well as the benefits.
Trans treatment options are not the main point of this two-part blog, though, just a necessary step on the way. The even bigger issue I want to get across next time concerns how we need to get back to reality in progressive political activism, whether it be of the trans variety, or MAP, or whatever. The big question is how we can generate credible, truthful messages rather than peddling fantasies such as “trans women are women” when plainly they are not, in anything but a courtesy sense. I have no problem with using someone’s preferred pronouns, respecting trans people’s legitimate employment rights, etc., but there are compelling reasons why we should not allow our language to be hijacked.
It is a deep subject, taking us into the philosophy of language and the different ways in which culture and biology influence our thinking on gender, sex, and the often confusing relationship between them. While the massive legal implications of all this will not be my primary concern, it is worth just briefly noting that the UK Supreme Court has spent the last two days pondering the “What is a woman?” question, in a case brought by For Women Scotland. With any luck, by the time the second part of this blog comes out the ruling in this case will have been given and I’ll be able to say a few words about it, including any policy implications.
IT’S NOT THE SEX, IT’S THE VIOLENCE
They say it is unprecedented. No Archbishop of Canterbury has ever been forced to resign over a “sin of omission”, or possibly anything else (although a couple have been martyred), in more than one and a half thousand years since the top church job in England was created by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. Until now.
So, even after decades of decline in active membership of the country’s “established” church, the resignation of Archbishop Justin Welby this month following a child abuse scandal is a big deal.
And no wonder he had to go, because this time there can be no dispute as to the abuse in question really being grotesquely abusive, with very little excuse for Welby being unaware of it or for failing to act more decisively against the abuser.
As readers in Britain will probably be aware, I am referring to John Smyth, a barrister whose sadistic beatings of teenage boys and young men over a period of decades in a context of church-related activities was documented in the recent Makin Review. He ran the influential conservative evangelical Iwerne camps, and had acted as a lawyer for Mary Whitehouse, a notoriously censorious Christian morality campaigner in her day. The Iwerne Trust organised Christian holiday camps to instruct boys from public school in “muscular Christianity” and, with a conservative evangelical theology, to become future Christian leaders, especially within the Church of England.
A book documenting Smyth’s dark deeds came out in 2021. Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the Cult of the Iwerne Camps was written by Andrew Graystone, a journalist and theologian who had been involved in Smyth’s exposure. Graystone described how Smyth involved himself with boys in the Christian Forum at Winchester College, one of Britain’s most prestigious fee-paying schools.
He would regularly drive two or three boys from this group to his home just outside Winchester, to share Sunday lunch with him and his family. “Those boys whom he had successfully groomed”, as his Wikipedia entry puts it, would individually be taken to a shed in his garden and subjected to canings, “initially equating to the severity of their supposed spiritual infringement” or specific “sin”. Knowing teenage boys, masturbation was doubtless the top “sin” on the list: Smyth often preached against it.
These canings were so prolonged and ferocious that the boys were given adult nappies to prevent them from bleeding on the Smyth family furniture. Smyth had a special garden shed designed, soundproofed and equipped with a variety of canes. When he was carrying out a beating a white yachting pennant would be planted on the lawn so that his wife Anne and members of his family knew that he should not be disturbed.
Hideous, or what?
But the most disturbing thing is that no one at the time appears to have been disturbed. The church hierarchy, as well as Smyth’s family, must have known what was going on, according to a number of investigations; but all of them, including Welby, decided for far too long that Smyth “should not be disturbed”.
The Makin Review describes a focus on personal sinfulness in the church, “a default sense of guilt, defectiveness, submission”, often focused on young men’s masturbation. But as high-profile vicar Giles Fraser noted, “Christ died for our sins, he was whipped for our transgressions”. So, it is not very surprising that earnest Christian young men could easily be persuaded that their religion required their own, Christ-like personal suffering.
Did I say the church’s silence was the most disturbing thing? Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that these young males appeared to have submitted to the beatings of their own free will. These were not little kids. They were committed Christians who had long enjoyed the benefits of a sophisticated, expensive education. They included those who were well over the age of consent and might be thought to have known their own minds and had the right to decide such matters for themselves. After all, few now dispute the right of adults to take part in BDSM practices.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I am not at all comfortable with that thought. It complicates the question of consent, doesn’t it?
THE PENNY DROPS AT LAST
Would you Adam and Eve it, just as I dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s of my main article above, into my inbox drops news from America that supports my case against trans activist extremism more convincingly than anything I could possibly write myself.
It’s a cough. A confession. Trans activists in America have started to admit that their tactics have backfired, with electoral consequences. A report in The New York Times sets it out all very clearly, so I hardly need add a thing. The following is taken, unadorned, from the first few paragraphs of a substantial report:
After a Democratic congressman defended parents who expressed concern about transgender athletes competing against their young daughters, a local party official and ally compared him to a Nazi “cooperator” and a group called “Neighbors Against Hate” organized a protest outside his office.
When J.K. Rowling said that denying any relationship between sex and biology was “deeply misogynistic and regressive,” a prominent L.G.B.T.Q. group accused her of betraying “real feminism.” A few angry critics posted videos of themselves burning her books.
When the Biden administration convened a call with L.G.B.T.Q. allies last year to discuss new limits on the participation of transgender student athletes, one activist fumed on the call that the administration would be complicit in “genocide” of transgender youth, according to two people with knowledge of the incident.
Now, some activists say it is time to rethink and recalibrate their confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more all-or-nothing voices in their coalition.
“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Transgender Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”
Precisely, Rodrigo! Just such a shame it took y’all so long for the penny to drop.
To Tom and others (I am especially thinking of Tom and Prue) – I really appreciate the safety and freedom of this forum as a place to discuss ideas, and I love the high quality of intellectual debate. I think I speak for many people, Tom, when I say thank you so much for making this possible, and for your tireless dedication to a cause that you believe in.
I am inspired and energised by such comments, ZT. I cannot think of another forum where there is so much courtesy and mutual respect between people with sometimes very different views. I try to set the tone, but it wouldn’t work without so many contributors getting into the spirit of things. Thank you for this latest, and for your many splendid posts.
Current F.B:
Mickey Morrissey
Men and women can be more or less feminine or masculine. There’s nothing controversial about that. It’s the part where a masculine woman can now be considered a man or vice versa. That’s the part of the spectrum most people have a problem with.
1dReplyNicholas Harland
Mickey Morrissey there are many millions who still believe homosexuality is a mental illness. But you would say that they’re wrong and ignorant wouldn’t you? And with a little education, they could be turned around to accept it. Many millions of people are still being oppressed just for trying to be what comes natural to them. No matter how much you try to force left-handers to be right handed, they’re still going to try present themselves to the world the way they want. Nobody is trying to persuade children to get surgery. You cannot persuade someone to be gay/straight/trans – they just are, and our laws should be inclusive of every minority.
Long History of Left-Handed Persecution.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-long-history-of-left-handed-persecution-7e1f493266f2
On a deeper level, it would be really tough for me to decide about my vote if I were a US citizen. I define myself as a radqueer and progressist, kind of lefty. Let’s take a look:
Democrats: Barely different from Republicans, in many aspects. Although there are some reasons that could potentially incline my vote towards them (their position on the climate change issue is one of them). However, on the radqueer issue, they are really bad. Kamala is obviously not going to support child sexual freedom. On the contrary, since she has been a prosecutor and has never said anything in favour of child sexuality, I feel like she will be much more tough on that than the Reps. She will definitely exploit her public figure and her longstanding career of being strict with offenders (of course, for them, ‘offenders’ includes any kind of sex with minors). And the recent pardon for Hunter Biden doesn’t speak in favor of that party, either. Not to speak about their unconditional support to Israel, as if they didn’t see any masacre of civils going on.
Republicans: On the sexuality issues, they are on the side of religious groups that defend sexual purity and the protection of children from being exposed to the sins of sex (what they do in private is another story, though, of course). And on economics, they defend the interest of big techs in front of labor rights. They are pro-rifle. They are in denial of climate change, with all what that implies for the rest of the world. Trump seems eager to initiate a world war (he has an easy finger to push whatever button, call it the Send button of Twitter, call it the nuclear button), which is bad. In terms of the exquisite use of the language by Trump himself, I’d rather leave that for another day…
Of course, all this is my impression as a non-US person.
To sum up, in case I did not make it clear enough:
Dems: bad
Reps: bad
Bottom line, don’t expect too much from a two-party system.
democrats at least wont jail you FOR LIFE for ASKING for a photo of a minor. !! yes they are bad but jesus republicun on another level of evil
What about Amos Yee ? What about the many women teachers who were sent to prison for 20 years for having voluntary sex with 16-17 students ?
On the transgender issue, I agree that the trans movement has traditionally focused too much on the surgery and hormonation of kids, when I think that there were other more important things, like promoting sex education. But it is also true that the US is full of parents who do not accept trans children, and this is a huge problem. Likewise, the gay movement has focused too much on the gay marriage thing, and has forgotten more important things such as… well… sex education.
Having said that, the surgery issue has been inflated a lot. I mean, a lot. As Prue noted, we are speaking about a tiny fraction of the population, who has undergone that kind of surgery. Rejecting or criticizing the idea of trans surgery because “after surgery trans people tend to be lonely” is absurd. It is just a personal decision; everones’ life is different. Instead, people who consider surgery should be given all the information, explaining the pros and cons, and the risks involved; and the process should be consistent and long enough to make sure that everybody who takes the path is well-informed.
I, myself, have never felt the need to change my genitals and have never had any doubts gender-wise. I even feel that my genitals are a precious thing and I suffer at the idea that anything could ever happen to them. However, when I see that there are a number of people who take the brave step of the surgery and insistenly ask for legal changes and acceptance, I think that it is probably very important for them.
I don’t agree that trans women (born with male genitals but who identify as women) should not be called ‘women’. As much as I don’t agree that gay marriage should not called marriage. You see, language organizes the reality, and how we organize the words is important. Calling trans women ‘women’, in practical terms, makes total sense to me. After all, the reality will be exactly the same regardless of how we name things. There is no particular reason that prevents us from calling trans women ‘women. So let’s use language to shape the world that we want to live. Yet, I don’t think that deadnaming or misgendering a person in the language is a terrible offense (not even an offense, perhaps). But it is kind to treat someone as how they identify. Calling a trans woman a ‘woman’ is a nice way to tell them that you accept them. As much as calling a gay spouse as a ‘spouse’ is a way to tell that you accept the gay reality (not as a separate thing as an annex, but as something integrated within the structures of the society). There’s nothing more than that. We could have used different words? Yes, sure. But it is nice to use language as you want the world to be perceived.
Thank you, Marco. I’ll be going much further into the language question in part two of this two-part blog.
Anyone heard about the Dr. Ally Louks drama?
Her Twitter post at having completed her PhD got 40+million views by yesterday, and has reached over 70 million today! That’s not because people are happy for her; she’s getting swamped in death threats, rape threats, offensive and hateful comments of all kinds.
Seems to me that anti-intellectualism has found its home after the ideological capture of Twitter by the political Right-wing… I wonder where all their “anti cancel culture,” “free speech” values have gone now? I’m sure that any day now, you’ll see Right-wing pundits defending MAPs, queer academics, and LGBTQ+ advocates from being “cancelled,” defending tooth and nail their freedom of speech?… Any day now…
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dr-ally-louks-olfactory-ethics-the-politics-of-smell-in-modern-and-contemporary-prose-phd-study
Exactly. Funny how so many people on the right consider themselves free speech advocates, but are able to call for banning ideas they don’t like, often in one single sentence. I think most often they don’t even realize it… which I am not sure whether it makes it better or worse.
Call yourself a free speech advocate only when you fight for the free speech rights of your opponent, please.
I have a question for Tom, in the past he has said that if we advocate in the the same way the pnvd and Marthijn Uittenbogaard did, then we would be mad for dong so due to the horrific situation that him and his team find themselves in but then again didn’t the suffragettes along with various other equal rights members like the Black Panthers do the same and suffer the same in order to be recognised as equals and because of this Black People and Women are now able to live as free beings because of this, so were they mad or were they doing the right thing just like Uittenboggaard ect?
Daniel, do you not know your MAP history? What do you think radical MAPs were doing in the 1970s and 80s? Do you think we were just watching telly on the sofa all day then drifting off down to the pub?
Some of us were very much doing high-profile protest and politics not that different to the suffragettes, etc., and still have the scars to prove it.
In my case, I fought the law and the law won, as the song has it. I did prison time for the essentially political offence of “conspiracy to corrupt public morals”. Others in PIE were later jailed on bogus incitement charges.
As we found out the hard way, tactics need to be suited to the times.
Tom
>As we found out the hard way, tactics need to be suited to the times.
Does that mean more people need to be on board for the cause before public activism like in the 1970s to 80s can take place again and if so do you have any personal predictions of when that is and how it is likely to happen (by more young people of course)?
To me, it seems that the current time cannot be worse for MAP activism. People are tired of woke, identity politics, LGBT and basically everything related to marginalized minorities or progressive ideas. Personally I think the best we can do now is to learn from our and others mistakes, build communities, and start preparing for the next progressive wave, which will come eventually, but not anytime soon.
>Does that mean more people need to be on board
Yes, but in order to be successful it’s not just a matter of numbers. As a small minority, with preferential and exclusive MAPs amounting to no more than about 5% of the population, MAP activism can always be crushed easily unless allies can be found.
The trans movement has been very successful at this. Only around 1% identify as trans but support from the LGBT+ alliance and others has leveraged their collective strength massively.
All credit to them, in the last five or 10 years, the trans movement has successfully surfed the crest of a mighty wave known as the gender revolution, which has been rolling ever more powerfully for 50 years.
Where, you might ask, is the wave that we could surf? I don’t know, if I’m honest. I feel as if I’ve been hanging around on the beach trying to spot it for half my life, but the tide has always been out. Tell me if you spot it coming in, Daniel!
Alternatively, take a look at some of the thoughts that were put forward here, by me in 2021 (“What do we see, through a glass darkly?”) and in two guest blogs by Jim Burton, Strategic Lead for Newgon, more recently: “Paraphiles and the Far Right” and “Towards an alliance of the invalidated”. Jim’s blogs focus on the pitfalls and potential of making alliances with other outcast groups. See here:
heretictoc.com/2021/10/13/what-do-we-see-through-a-glass-darkly/
heretictoc.com/2023/10/21/paraphiles-and-the-far-right/
heretictoc.com/2024/06/12/towards-an-alliance-of-the-invalidated/
Interesting bit of info; Paris Lees, an an English author, journalist, presenter and campaigner – the first trans columnist at Vogue and the first trans woman to present shows on BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4 – “began having sex with men in exchange for money aged 14. Lees has stated that she recognises the experience as statutory rape, although she did not at the time.”
Evidence of reconceptualization (a la Susan Clancy) from Wikipedia itself. The reference Wiki sites is here.
Did he say if he intends to return the money?
Of course, at that time she was not yet a well-known journalist. Is there any way she could say that it was a voluntary and mutual sexual experience and which should not be prosecuted, without destroying her career? No
Statutory rape is a purely legal concept, so it does not make sense to say “recognises the experience as statutory rape”. Had she said “recognises the experience as rape”, then it would have been her legitimate opinion which we may or may not have agreed with, but saying “recognise as statutory rape” i just nonsense.
Maybe she meant that back then she did not know that what they did could be considered statutory rape, in which case the formulation above would be the result of “journalistic creativity”.
Your article raises several questions.
First, Trump’s election results from a disillusionment with Democrats rather than a support for Republicans. Although the number of registered voters increased by more than 6 million, participation to the election dropped from 66.9% to 59.82%; Democratic vote significantly dropped from 81.3 million to 70.99 million while Republican vote raised from 74.2 million to 74.71 million. The reasons behind the fall of Democratic vote are multiple: inflation, poverty, loss of Labour Union backing, Biden’s support for the Israeli war against Palestine, etc. The problem of “woke extremism” seems marginal.
The examples you give of extremist trans activism (with support within the Democratic party) are essentially a US phenomenon. One does not see the same elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, the UK is reputed to be a haven for TERF activism, with support in the media, in some fringes of the Labour movement, and even in the radical wing of Scottish nationalism. In both countries academics are influenced by the prevailing ideology, so the US ones are in favour of “gender affirming care” (helping transition), while the UK ones turn against it.
In continental Europe, grass-root feminism is generally inclusive of trans, TERFs are rejected, but one does not witness campaigns of denunciation or harassment of those who deny that “trans-women are women”. Trans activism focuses on the fight against transphobic violence, and against administrative and legal obstacles to social transitioning.
One should perhaps take heed of the wisdom of ancient cultures that recognised gender variance and trasgenderism: the Hijra in south Asia, Fa’afafine in Independent Samoa, Two-spirit among Native Americans were considered as a third gender. One could thus conclude that there are more than the two genders of man and woman: cis-man, cis-woman, trans-man, trans-woman,other (“non-binary”), …, so “a trans-woman is a trans-woman, not a cis-woman, not a cis-man”.
Non-binary logic has been studied in mathematics and in quantum physics, it could also be introduced in gender studies.
I still can’t understand why the term “non-binary” was invented.
Those people who say that there are two genders, it seems to me, mean that there are only two poles (Male and Female). Cisgender people do not separate their identity from their biological sex.
The three options left: Тrans-man, Trans-woman, and “Bigender person”, by analogy with the term Bisexual. All other artificial terms like “Demigender”, “Genderfluid” and “Pangender” actually already fit the definition of Bigender, because they are all still linked with the two poles (Male and Female)
The term “Agender” is complete nonsense because it is impossible for a human to not have an identity at all. One way or another, a person will have an identity with either one of the poles or both.
What other options could there be to justify the existence of the term “non-binary” ? If it included Trans-agе people or something like that, then there would be no questions. But they exclude that from the definition.
There could exist “agender” people, in the same way as some people are asexual, or some people deny having an ethnicity/nationality.
The denial of ethnicity/nationality is associated with the denial of cultural attachment to one ethnic group/nation (cosmopolitanism), but biologically a person still has the corresponding phenotype and characteristics.
Yes, an asexual person may not have sexual desire/preferences, but (imo) a person cannot identify himself as “noone”. If he cannot identify with one specific gender (male or female), then (s)he has both (bigender) with the manifestation of behavior inherent in both.
you are aware that this monstrous party want to jail people for life for ASKING for a photo of a underage teen?? even if its a mild one. yes i read this in 2017 and it made me cry
One for the WOKE in plain-sight, not asleep at the wheel of foreplay; WANK…er Wake-Up HHP!
A private ‘members’ bill, Tom ‘dick’ or Harry.
This house-mouse, er pup, proposes a lawfare change to make LEGAL WORLDWIDE (much like SeXy ’70s Nether-lands) ILLEGAL FUN JOINTS in the school bogs or anywhere, and ILLEGAL FUN SEX in the school gym or anywhere with MAPS, like fit teachers Tom & Zen.
Any (unlikely) terrific-scientific objections from Anglo Oiks desperate Dan & anti-assholes pleeze post here and to Tom’s Top Scholar Mike at SexNet.
Bonus F.B. FUN, “Mommy why are my girl cousins named Diamond and Jewel?”
“Cos your Aunty likes Diamonds & Jewels.”
“And what about my name?”
“That’s enough questions for now Dick.”
Mucky Pup, guaranteed to raise the tone! 🙂
>make LEGAL WORLDWIDE (much like SeXy ’70s Nether-lands) ILLEGAL FUN JOINTS in the school bogs or anywhere, and ILLEGAL FUN SEX in the school gym or anywhere.
Followed by an all-farty/Party ‘AAM Assisted Wanking Bill’ with Top MAP Tom made ‘Minister for Minor Masturbation’.
.
I will also add that, there can be complications in surgery which make it very understandable why doctors and professionals would want to interview you many, many times and make sure you understand the risks involved. To my knowledge (and feel free to prove me wrong), a reconstructed / artifical penis on a cisgender woman is not typically very well functioning.
We should also be careful, though, to not inflate the perception of surgery in our minds: the vast majority of people will not have gential surgery; chest surgery at most to remove or introduce breasts. For most people, “social transition” will be the most common occurrence, perhaps combined with HRT as legal adults above 16 or 18 for those who don’t feel themselves / aren’t particularly androgynous.
You can easily find clips of Matt Walsh on Joe Rogan, where he estimates “we’re into the millions” when it comes to kids on puberty blockers. He gets fact checked and it turns out to be less that 5,000 adolescents in the last 5 years who in the U.S., have received puberty blockers via a medical diagnosis. 1,000 young people a year is a fair amount, but compared to a country of millions it’s nothing. Even accounting for the likely reality that most people are taking drugs they bought online or received without a medical diagnosis, it’s still unlikely that millions of children are on a medical pathway or anywhere near surgery. Most people will surely be legal adults by the time HRT or surgical intervention becomes a realistic option for them, either because of money, lack of knowledge / discourse, or inclination/agency.
Social media may well inflate the sense of prevalence and omnipresence. We do need to keep a sense of proportion. Trans are still a minority, and the majority of Trans people will be ordinary, working class people, just like MAPs. Some will make it to positions of power, probably many more Trans than MAPs since at least the T’s presence on social media is not in itself bannable; they can hope for sizeable public support. But many Trans people will not see positions of power…
I don’t think anyone here seriously thinks social transition and adult HRT shouldn’t be allowed, just that you should understand the potential risks and consequences before you begin, similar to arguments about smoking or unprotected sex. It’s children and wider debates that get people confused and/or riled up…
Michael Bailey is amazing. I just love him – you will hardly find a scholar so kind, tolerant and driven by science, willing to change his opinions as new knowledge becomes available. Calling this person a “transphob” just shows the ignorance of the person doing so.
When I hear scientists, who are brave enough to be publicly sympathetic to paedophiles, and who seem to understand paedophilic condition so well, to explain the complexities of trans issues, I naturally have the tendency to trust them. I know they are smart, driven by data and brave enough to talk their minds.
Michael Bailey is like that. And so is James Cantor (which is not exactly favorited by some). I recommend everyone to find some interviews with them, if you haven’t done so yet.
Well said, David. I totally agree with you about Mike.
As for James, he is a good scientist and, yes, like Mike he speaks his mind fearlessly on controversial matters. So far, so good. He is also an arrogant showboater who can be very rude and has at times made overconfident claims about his findings. But, hey, it isn’t that important. Isaac Newton was a complete arsehole, but it’s mostly his physics we remember.
I’ve noticed in Trans discussions that there’s sometimes a talking past each other, either because of irreconcilable viewpoints or from a seeming slight of hand.
The first argument I ever heard, from a liberal, not hyper-political woman, was that:
A). Gender and sex are different.
B). Gender is your relationship to norms of masculinity or feminity; whether you present yourself in a dress or suit, etc. Sex is biology, whether you’re male or female.
So, C.) “Trans”-gender people are those who identify with and present themselves as the opposite gender/sex.
Notice here that the argument is not that Trans people “are” the opposite sex. It’s about gender as a social construct which, if you accept the construct of gender itself, is cogent. If you only claim a la Judith Butler that gender is performative, most people will accept that in itself. That’s basically drag with extra steps and whilst some will find that icky and weird, the masses won’t care if it doesn’t involve children and doesn’t make masses of women feel unsafe or threatened.
What people find confusing is the argument that “sex is bimodal.” Sex is a “bimodal distribution,” not a clear cut “male/female” binary, more of a spectrum or gradient. There’s sometimes confusion as to whether we’re arguing about sex, gender, or both. I suggest this can come across as a slight of hand, when statements which are reasonable and understandable from an advocacy perspective (“Trans women are women”), appear to straddle the difference between sex and gender. It is left vague and unclear whether you’re arguing that Trans women are the same sex, or present their gendered characteristics the same as women.
Trans advocates will argue that there’s no characteristic you can find that ultimately excludes Trans women from the category of woman; i.e. “Trans women can’t get pregnant (barring rare exceptions)”; “some women have barren wombs.” “Women don’t have penises”; “with advances in medical intervention, now they can!” And so it goes on and on… Philosophically, people come to conclude that “what you identify as” is the simplest, least problematic definition of “man” or “woman,” since the observable characteristics we ascribe to them can be present in anybody (albeit with perhaps years of effort, medical intervention, or medical abnormalities in the case of pregnancy).
You could even go from this to arguing that “sex” as a category is eclipsed in its utility by gender, and is therefore redundant/should be abandoned.
People get around that by saying “chromosomes!”. And whilst the binary then becomes sharp and irreconcilable, isn’t that also straying from the “gender” aspect? The performative, the things we can externally see? You can see a vagina/penis, a pregnant woman, and hear male/female-sounding speech. You can’t see chromosomes.
So again, are we arguing gender, sex, or both? Are we talking at cross-purposes / talking past each other?
I am not at all confused by the definition of Transgender as “identifying as a gender other than that which you were assigned at birth.” Fine, that’s self-ID, internal to you, and other people will just have to take your word for it or laugh in your face (depending on what you identify as and how convincingly you pass – again I’m sorry but we do live in an often cruel, judgmental world…) Conceptually, that definition is fine; it doesn’t say anything about sex, leaves it totally untouched, and doesn’t tell us how to respond once we accept said definition.
That last part is the problem, and I suggest is the real thing people have a problem with: people they view as men being placed in women’s prisons, wanting access to spaces reserved or intended for “females” only, and wanting children to be able to receive medical intervention early on to make their transition easier. These are some of the steps taken after accepting self-ID that people are upset by.
The fear of men and male sexuality remains strong in Western societies, and whilst you can claim you’re a woman with a penis all you want, those who don’t see you as such view you as a female presenting man and therefore a risk. It is after all true that the majority of reported sex crime implicates men as the instigators. Women’s fears may be overblown and unrealistic much of the time – there aren’t roving bands of rapey men just waiting for the opportunity to kidnap you and take you back to their sex dungeon – this is not a hentai!
But fear doesn’t have to be rational or realistic; only plausible and possible. Indeed, Trans women may also often fear cis men, since you believe that to them, you appear just as woman as any other. But that doesn’t mean cisgender women don’t see you as fundamentally different to them, often as men in all but appearance. Ironic, since Trans women often fancy and want to be desired by cisgender men…
It seems that unless we challenge fear of men and the male sex, you’re tarred with the brush too. God help you if you transition to being a man; you can find videos online of Trans men crying about how lonely life is as a man, how hard it is to build friendships and how you’re always viewed with suspicion.
I’m all here for gender nonconformity. It’s a beautiful and wonderful thing. But that doesn’t mean other’s share the same philosophy as you, or don’t have strong disgust responses thinking of “men.” I recently watched Helen Joyce on Andrew Gold’s YT channel, where she can’t hide her disgust in a discussion of “Hucows” – a sexual fetish where women dress or act as cows, often using milking machines on their breasts. She’s horrified at this in general, but specifically that Trans women (who she regards as men) would want to do it. I really couldn’t care less that people get up to such things, including Trans women trying their damdest to lactate – more power to you! – but it did remind me that disgust plays a major, often unacknowledged role in these debates.
(I do not believe disgust is a primary or relevant motivation of Tom’s blog or thinking here; just pointing out it’s a factor especially when discussing “Trans women” who are viewed as “men”).
Hope this provides some food for thought/jumping off points! :p
>Hope this provides some food for thought/jumping off points!
Indeed it does, in spades! I am not going to say anything right now, though, because quite a lot of what you have covered here, Prue, takes us towards the heavily mined terrain through which I will be treading cautiously in the second part of my two-parter.
Well, not too cautiously to be interesting, I hope, although my main aim will be clarity rather than controversy.
Additionally, the term “Non-binary person” seems illogical to me. We have two poles, Male and Female, and if a person identify himself with both, then (s)he is “Bigender” by analogy with “Bisexual”. At the same time, if bisexuals are attracted to both men and women, then their biological nature should not matter.
However, we have two, in my opinion, redundant terms “Non-binary” instead of “Bigender”, and “Pansexual” instead of “Bisexual” who is also attracted to transgender men/women. The left dislike the idea that pansexuality should include all types of attraction, including minor attraction.
Well, if you hold that sex and gender are 2 different things, and gender refers to the social construction of masculine / feminine characteristics, then “non-binary” makes sense. Nothing about the above, or about Transness, denies gender as a concept. Quite the opposite. In fact, that’s something that Gender Abolitionists can get frustrated about, seeing Transness as a retrenchment of gender stereotypes and the importance of gender which they seek to get away from…
Be that as it may, “Non-binary” just refers to someone who doesn’t identify with the binary. It’s a matter of self-identification, and in itself tells you very little about a person except for the fact that they know a term. Someone may be very androgynous in their presentation, or look / be seen as more masculine of feminine than they’d like or perceive themselves; it doesn’t mean “non-binary” is illogical.
It’s just starting from different premises, focusing on gender and not sex. If gender is a social construct with no essential characteristics (i.e. it is not fixed and can always change), then the view that there can be potentially infinite gender identifications makes sense. It’s just that in reality, most people tend to identify with what they’ve been surrounded by and exposed to their whole lives; the masculine or feminine.
Very few people sincerely, consistently and persistently identify, as wolves (for example). Though, there are few, ridiculously few, hilarious and cool people who do: living their lives as congruent with their identity as they can. Insanely difficult to do compared to identifying as a Trans woman or man, so it’s no surprise people stick to those. Tons easier and doesn’t impede your social functioning in society very much.
So, I don’t find “non-binary” particularly complicated, personally. Nor do I find “pansexual” complicated, or particularly relevant to gender identity when gender identification doesn’t in itself tell you who or what someone is sexually attracted to. “Pansexual” is typically used by people to indicate they can find anyone of any gender or sex attractive.
I once refered to Norman Douglas as a “pansexual pederast”, because he described himself with an early use of the term “pan-sexual,” whilst most of his sexual relationships that historians have written about concern young males.
Throughout his life he had erotic experiences with males and females; his preference was more concerned with age / youth. He liked the company of the young – to be a tutor / helper to them – including sexually. It seems likely to me that his actual experiences tended to be with young males because 1.) He was male and felt more comfortable in the company of other males (“men are simple; you know where you stand with them” is my thinking here).
And 2.) Females tend to be more choosey, more guarded both by their own hand and others, and have their sex lives more heavily scrutinized. Even more so in Douglas’s Victorian era…
It also may be that his attraction changed throughout the life course; perhaps he started off very attracted to the male form and this eased off and became more “pan-sexual” over time…
David Reimer’s story showed that gender is more than a social construct, there is something biological at its core that makes people uncomfortable with their bodies.
I would accept the term “non-binary” if the community itself accepted other types of identities beyond the two poles Male-Female. For example, people who identify himself as young person, like the woman Tom was talking about. (I also identify myself as a teenager, and this is also reflected in appearance and behavior )
The term should apply to the entire spectrum of sexual preferences, but people get furious at the suggestion of inclusion Minor attraction and more
I think that things are much more clear if we distinguish between gender roles and gender identity. Gender roles refer to the cultural values traditionally associated with men (strength, blue color) and women (skirts, beauty accessories). Gender identity has a biological link and refers to the gender to which you identify with, mentally. Without that distinction it is difficult for me to understand the transgender phenomenon. Putting everything under the same concept of “gender” doesn’t help much.
And when I say “biological link” I refer to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ
Hi Tom! I am russian trans woman. And I have been reading your blog since it’s inception (year 2012). I have great sympathy to you and to all “sexual” heretics, but I never wrote comments, it is my policy, I intervene only when it is necessary :). I have learned a lot from your posts. You are great educator! I was involved in the affairs in my country, and I supported not only people from my kin (trans people), but also pedophiles, because I can understand that it is difficult to live with such vilified feelings. I have been writing articles in russian segment of the internet and edit texts in the russian wiki in order to humanize the image of pedophiles.
In the first stage of my personal journey on the land of sexual and gender anomalies I was leaning towards “virtuous pedophiles” , I thought that the best bet for all people with sexual and gender peculiarities is to adopt medical model, that we are ill, our brain is damaged, and society should tolerate us as disabled people and alleviate our suffering. In the case of trans people there is no cure, so the best therapy is medical and social transition. In the case of pedophiles I thought that society should tolerate them, but only when the are “virtuous”.
I know that you have a lot of debates with James Cantor. He represents Kurt Freund’s sexological school with it’s empathize on biology. Such approach was typical for soviet psychiatry and sexology. In the UK and US, on the other hand behaviorism was dominated and it was assumed that gender identity and sexual orientation were a product of learning (Pavlovian conditioning, operant conditioning, imprinting), therefore the treatment was based on these models (aversion therapy, orgasmic reconditioning). I myself was in conversion therapy and I tried different therapeutic modalities before my medical transition, at one stage I was even misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and treated by antipsychotics. I think that Kurt Freund’s emphasizing on biology in the sexology was a step forward, at least such approach deprived conversion therapy of scientific basis. Indeed, if behaviorism can’t explain sexuality then behavioral therapy can’t change it. We can’t escape biology in explaining sexuality. Nevertheless, some Cantor’ assumptions is problematic. I agree with you that is better to talk about biological correlates of pedophilia in term of neuroanatomical and neurophysiological variations not in terms of “deficiency” and disorder.
It is also interesting that Cantor argues (I have few personal conversations with him through the internet) that agp has similar mechanisms to pedophilia. In the case of pedophilia the brain is wired in such way that nurture system is intertwined with sexual system, and it can explain sexual phenomenology of pedophilia, the mixture of nurturing feeling toward kids and erotic feeling. In the case of agp according to Cantor problems with white matter (deficiency) can lead to such connectivity of the brain which causes amalgamation of sexual system with mirror neurons which lead no to the desire to “f*ck” sexual target, but to imitate erotic target. It is interesting insight for me. It can somehow explain my feeling. In my cases I wanted to be like girls since early childhood, I wanted to imitate them in behaviors, mannerism and appearance and since my teen I had some vague erotic fantasies where I was in the role of girl. Yeah, Cantor approach may make sense. Nevertheless, I think it is important to listen pedophiles about their pedophilia, also it is important to listen trans people about their feelings and sexuality. I think that gender identity (sense of deep belonging to manhood and womanhood and emotional affiliation with femininity or masculinity or with neither of them) is real, and it can manifest before puberty, but gender identity can modulate sexuality. I perceive trans women like Anne Lawrence as virtuous pedophiles. She also has similar narrative to virtuous pedophiles. She claims that we are not women, we suffer from erotic target location error which according to Cantor can be also caused by “white matter deficiency”, that our gender identity isn’t real, that it is only epiphenomenon of paraphilia, and because there is nor cure of such deficiency/paraphilia medical and social transition should be available. I can understand where does Anne Lawrence and virtuous pedophiles come from, I also thought similar, but I changed my mind. I believe Tom to you that pedophiles can genuinely love child, and it is more than sexuality, it is more than paraphilia. Also we should study sexuality and gender identity more, how they are developed, what are the cognitive structures of sexuality, how do people (even ordinary straight people) process their erotic target, and how we are different. It would be interesting to study sexuality of trans women , study their autoeroticism, how they like to be beautiful and sexy and be object of desire and how their cognitive processes are different from cognitive processes of typical women.
Anyway, Tom, I feel great sympathy to you, I have learned a lot from your blog, also I think that we (sexual and gender heretics) should support and understand each other. I described in Cantor’s terms what trans women can feel, it can be very confusing and painful. When I was a teenager my peers talked about how they want to “f*ck” beautiful girls, but I wanted to be like girls, to belong to the girly world. I also understand that pedophiles want to live in the world where they are accepted, where they can love kids, be friends with them. I hope that it would be possible in the future, where more people can find fulfillment. I try to find my fulfillment in the current world. For me my transwomanhood isn’t only about hormones, dresses, stockings, but also about kindness, compassion, empathy, especially empathy to people who are misunderstood. I know that some people in the MAP community can call me tranny and make fun from me, but I still will support you guys.
Best wishes!
Wonderful to have a comment from you, Veronica, especially as you have been following HTOC from the start, in 2012.
And what a comment! Such a treat! For me this is a feast of informed intelligence, understanding, and goodwill. How fitting as the “season of goodwill to all men” (and women, children, trans and non-binary people, although I wouldn’t want to be too speciesist about it! 🙂 ) comes upon us.
I aim to respond in more detail later to some of your specific points, on Cantor, etc., but I need to look at other posts first.
Cheers!
I said I might respond to some specific points, so here goes. Veronica, you wrote:
>I have been writing articles in russian segment of the internet and edit texts in the russian wiki in order to humanize the image of pedophiles.
That’s great work! Thank you so much for working in this way as well as dealing with the difficult task (especially, perhaps, in Russia) of working out your best life as a trans person.
>I know that you have a lot of debates with James Cantor.
Yes, James and I clashed quite a lot on Mike Bailey’s Sexnet forum. “Clashed” in the right word, I think. He disliked me from the very start, for reasons that remain unclear to me. He gave reasons, but to me they made no sense. Several times he tried to get me “cancelled” (kicked off the forum) but fortunately Mike is the boss there and he disagreed.
Eventually, after seven years of battles, matters came to a head in 2017. James made a particularly virulent personal attack, and I replied at length, reviewing the long history between us. When he couldn’t get rid of me, James announced that he would be withdrawing from active participation in the forum himself. He has largely stuck to that since, and there have been no further exchanges between the two of us.
I won’t go into further details, tempting as it is to do so, except you might be interested to learn that a trans woman was among my defenders: Anne Lawrence. She kindly wrote, “If Sexnet gave an award for clear, eloquent, well reasoned analysis, Tom O’Carroll would get my vote.”
Moving on, I’d rather respond to points about James’s science. He is a respected scientist, so this is worth talking about.
>I think that Kurt Freund’s emphasizing on biology in the sexology was a step forward, at least such approach deprived conversion therapy of scientific basis.
Yes, indeed.
>It is also interesting that Cantor argues (I have few personal conversations with him through the internet) that agp has similar mechanisms to pedophilia. In the case of pedophilia the brain is wired in such way that nurture system is intertwined with sexual system, and it can explain sexual phenomenology of pedophilia
Taking paedophilia first, I am pleased that James believes there is a brain connection between paedophilia and the nurture system. It is something I have always felt, based on my personal experience, and it found some confirmation in a paper a few years ago by Ponseti et al. (Decoding Pedophilia: Increased Anterior Insula Response to Infant Animal Pictures, 2028).
>In the case of agp according to Cantor problems with white matter (deficiency) can lead to such connectivity of the brain which causes amalgamation of sexual system with mirror neurons which lead no to the desire to “f*ck” sexual target, but to imitate erotic target.
Neuroscientists were getting very excited over mirror neurons a few years ago. Interesting idea, with intuitive appeal and explanatory value. Has there been corroborating research? I don’t know.
On the imitation point, though, I would add that this definitely makes sense as regards a small sub-set of paedophiles as well as AGP trans women. I refer to autopaedophilic men (a term Bailey has used), who want to imitate, or re-live, their own boyhood state. In their minds they never stopped being a child, so they continue to dress in shorts, and their sexual fantasies are based on their child selves. I have known several such guys, and even (though this may be very rare) one autopaedophilic woman who was still insisting she was a girl, not a woman, at least until her late twenties, when I last saw her. She did actually look young for her years, but, of course, sadly, that child-like appearance could not last much longer.
I haven’t kept up with the white matter findings in connection with paedophilia since James and I “debated” the implications a long time ago. Maybe I should revisit that research area.
>Anne Lawrence… claims that we [trans women] are not women, we suffer from erotic target location error which according to Cantor can be also caused by “white matter deficiency”, that our gender identity isn’t real, that it is only epiphenomenon of paraphilia, and because there is nor cure of such deficiency/paraphilia medical and social transition should be available.
I wouldn’t say this gender ID “isn’t real”. Even if it is “only an epiphenomenon of paraphilia” I am sure it is completely real to those of you who experience it. However, I agree with those who say that allowing this personal reality to bring about a re-definition of the word “woman” in our language (whether in English or the Russian equivalent) is bound to lead to a lot of confusion, with serious public health implications.
Your thoughts about future research look good to me, especially as regards the sexuality of trans women, which I find very difficult to understand. After all, for an anatomically male person to lose their penis – which is the source of sexual pleasure – seems likely to lead to a loss of sexual satisfaction, not a gain. It is a conundrum.
>I also understand that pedophiles want to live in the world where they are accepted, where they can love kids, be friends with them. I hope that it would be possible in the future, where more people can find fulfillment.
The breadth of your compassion and understanding is impressive, Veronica.
He disliked me from the very start, for reasons that remain unclear to me
My guess is that he has a congenital aversion to any MAP activist who is doing well without being approved by him.
It is not for me to say whether I am “doing well”, but you may have a point. Here are a couple of gems from his Sexnet posts:
>I believe O’Carroll’s inability/unwillingness to collaborate with those who most support civil rights for pedophiles reflect his genuine agenda. Although he claims his motivation to be civil rights, I do not believe that is actually it. Rather, he is interested in basking in credit and praise for saving ‘his’ people. He opposes you and me and others who add to the civil rights for pedo’s because they/we detract from the credit that is his actual goal.
>Mike already knows my opinion that O’Carroll does not belong on SexNet. I (and you and others) are simply unable to say anything about the topic without the conversation being about O’Carroll and his demanding that we justify why we said what we think instead of what he thinks. Although every few months I try to find out if things have changed, and they have not. O’Carroll does not deepen our discussions of pedophilia, he prevents them.
Imagine Cantor complaining that someone asked him to justify what he thinks! XD Bro are you a scientist or what!?? XD
Seriously though, I do have some respect for Cantor and think he’s done important work. It’s just different camps for similar struggles. You both want “civil rights for pedos”, you (Tom) just aren’t willing to compromise on the fact that not all instances of age-gap sex contact are psychologically or physically harmful in-themselves. That’s been demonstrated in a ton of research, so it’s strange that Cantor can’t just accept he’s part of the VirPedders whilst you’re not and leave it at that.
He obviously thinks that people who are willing to argue the above point, empirically from research data or from their own or other’s experiences, make people like him look bad. The problem is that while Virped and the like have been great for highlighting the stigma that MAPs face just for existing, if you look online you’ll find that many people think you’re just as bad regardless of your fantasies, actual sexual history, or criminal record. VirPed and the kind of politics that H-TOC represents are both valuable, and at least with TOC people believe you’re not being disingenuous when you argue a point.
Very few people will seriously believe that MAPs just want to be accepted and not vilified for their sexual feelings with no further discussion required. People think that, if they were campaigning for their rights, they wouldn’t stop there, so why would you? And in fairness, their skepticism is probably justified! That’s one reason why opposition rhetoric gets so conspiracy-brained: people know that sensitive public discussions are severely constrained; they know you’re likely holding back, and want to know (or project/imagine) what you “really think.”
you (Tom) just aren’t willing to compromise on the fact that not all instances of age-gap sex contact are psychologically or physically harmful in-themselves. That’s been demonstrated in a ton of research, so it’s strange that Cantor can’t just accept he’s part of the VirPedders whilst you’re not and leave it at that.
Cantor himself stated the above, so his position is even more contradictory:
https://www.boychat.org/messages/1336087.htm
Hi Tom. I think that our environment and our countries have profound influence on us in terms of understanding the world and ourselves. I am impressed by your adherence to science and to modernism, that our language should be coherent, rational. I have different point of view. I am learning towards postmodernism. You know, I am russian and I am influenced by the history of Russia. You know that Russia is a peripheral civilization, it is a periphery of the Europe, periphery of the Muslim world and periphery of the the Asia and Buddhist culture, and peripheral civilizations without strong cultural and religious centers aren’t stable and they can rely only power in order to persevere themselves, but even power sometimes isn’t enough. Only in the 20 century Russia statehood was totally destroyed from the inside two times. Due to such history russian people usually don’t trust to the government, state and science, especially to human science like sociology, psychology, and no one doesn’t trust to medicine, especially to psychiatry, many people here think that psychiatry is about power and social control. If you say in Russia that psychiatry is about helping people, about helping trans kids then people will assume that you are crazy 🙂 . It is vey unusual for me to see rational serious discussion in order to understand what to do with trans kids, trans people. It is cool for me! But I was born in Russia, and my country taught me not to be too serious and it taught me not to value even rationality too much, everything can be changed in one moment, the whole statehood with it’s ideology and social science can be turned into ashes. And it isn’t the coincidence that the most famous modern russian philosopher is Dugin, and he is antiscientist, antirationalist, he even claimed that russian person shouldn’t have will and reason. I am not so radical like Dugin, nevertheless I value more intuition, emotions and feelings, despite the fact that I do science myself (I am phd student in the field of physics). Also there is the difference between postmodernism and antimodernism, Dugin is antimodernist, and the current russian policy with it’s destructive warfare is antimodernist, I am not so antimodernist, there is the difference between antimodernism and postmodernism, also I don’t think that everything is about force, ideology and power like Foucault. I think there is something outside, but no one knows what it is 🙂 .
Returning to our affairs, If a person feels inside that she is a woman and she has feminine sexuality I tend to believe her due to compassion. Russian sexologists aren’t so comprehensive like Blanchard, they don’t know anything about agp, and my sexologist, therapist and even my friends and mother think that I have feminine sexuality.It isn’t too important personally for me. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to study sexuality from the point of view of cognitive science, I like mathematical models, it will be interesting to compose something like Lagrangian of sexuality and gender. You know that physicists in order to describe any particles or fields write their Lagrangian, if we have Lagrangian then we can describe almost anything about field and particles. I think that gender identity can be understood as generative model, and the purpose of it’s model is decreasing free energy/surprise. In physics everything is about Lagrangian and minimization of action, in biology everything can be about minimization of free energy, even gender identity, but without sexological data it will be not possible to verify any model. I plan to write scientific article about possible models of sexuality, but there is no data on childhood sexuality, the development of sexual orientation and gender identity in childhood, so we can’t test any model. Such sexological concepts like “erotic target location error”, “courtship disorder” should be considered seriously but not literally. What is erotic target? What it is the error? Targets aren’t simple stimuli, there are only complex composite stimuli which exist in the context (historical context, linguistic context), gender also exists in the rich cultural and historical structure and context\text, there is no outside context\text. Sexuality is too messy subject, it is too difficult to study scientifically. Some current sexological concepts can be used as canes for blinds, but we can’t see what is going on, so in my case and my life I used to rely on intuition. Sometimes absence of any map is better than wrong map for orientation in the world.
This is all linguistic kung fu, with which opportunistic “scientists” try to maintain the myth of innocence and limit the sexual spectrum in accordance with current prejudices, bringing Chronophilia (Minor attraction) into the realm of pathology
IMHO Even in the conditions of restraint of sexual research, we can say that there are three key aspects of the sexual spectrum: sexuality, chronophility and gender pattern, which are formed in the brain of the fetus and together form the identity of the person.
To measure sexuality, Alfred Kinsey came up with a scale known as the “Kinsey Scale” and implying that sexuality is distributed on a spectrum. And this is logical, because any genetic trait has a spectrum of expression depending on the influence of other genes. This idea led me to the hypothesis that Bisexuality, like Bigenderness, can be fluid, which could probably mean that there are significantly more Bisexual people than is believed, and people who call themselves “non-binary”, “demigender”, “genderfluid”, etc. can simply be called Bigenders, and all these countless terms just are redundant. (I apologize for writing about this in my third message.)
>(I apologize for writing about this in my third message.)
No problem for me as moderator. Some things are sufficiently interesting and important to bear a degree of repetition.
Ah, yes, Aleksandr Dugin! In the western media he is often referred to as “Putin’s brain”. As you say, the antimodernism he has espoused has taken Russia in a regrettable direction.
I agree there is certainly a distinction to be made between antimodernism and postmodernism. The leading lights of the Sexnet forum to which James and I belong may have heard of Dugin but I don’t think any of them are in any danger of reading him and becoming antimodernists. Antimodernism is something that does not cross their minds unless they happen to be reading about Russian politics in the news. They see postmodernism, by sharp contrast, as a serious threat, a heresy that threatens to undermine their methods and their epistemological security.
This is unfortunate. Like you, I see merit in Foucault’s power/knowledge equation, if we can call it that, or nexus. But the sexnetters are right to be suspicious. Postmodernism has been usefully sceptical but is intrinsically nihilistic. As you say, not everything is “about force, ideology and power… there is something outside…”
I am not surprised to hear you are a PhD student, and it is great to learn that you have ideas for modelling sexuality and gender in a Lagrangian way. This is very exciting! But, as you say, there are no data (or at best only very poor data) “on childhood sexuality, the development of sexual orientation and gender identity in childhood, so we can’t test any model”.
You conclude by saying, “Sometimes absence of any map is better than wrong map for orientation in the world.
I agree. But there is one map currently being developed that might prove somewhat more useful than the dominant research paradigm (present-day map) favoured by sexnetters such as Cantor, Bailey, et al.
Have you heard of Richard O Prum? His recent book Performance All The Way Down: Genes, Development and Sexual Difference came as a revelation to me. Unusually for a “male, pale and stale” biology professor, he sees (and has copious evidence for) highly complex, interactive, “performative” forces at work throughout the living world at all levels of biology, from individual organisms in their social situation (in line with Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performance), through to specific organs, cells and molecules, each of which can operate in effect as free agents within their own domain. This freedom, complexity and performativity together make predictions and experiments based on traditional, deterministic biological research methods look crude and inadequate. As a transgender physicist, you may be interested to know that Prum draws not only on insights from feminism (Butler and others) but also on thinking within quantum physics, notably as presented by physicist and feminist philosopher Karen Barad.
Prum has written an article for Aeon that gives a good overview of his thinking: https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-time-to-replace-the-genetic-blueprint-idea
Could this approach point the way to a different, more inclusive, comprehensive, less reductive, style of relevant data selection/collection than the life sciences have offered so far? Could it, notably, make possible a Langrangian approach, which you describe as “generative”. If so, I imagine it would work best with very big data, as with weather forecasting, and might be a fruitful application for generative AI.
I have been reading Dugin’s book few years. And I like Dugin and his books. I like his ontology, epistemology. They are based on Heidegger’s philosophy, the concept of “dasein”. And he thinks there are different kinds of daseins with different existential modes of being and relation to death. There is western dasein with extreme opposition between death and life, good and evil, and he claims that russian dasein is different, it is without strong binaries of oppositions. Different daseins can form different logos, and logoi is a basis for philosophy and science, it means it is a bases for creation of knowledge. Dugin’s logos is like Foucault’s episteme, but with mystical connotations. Also Dugin believes there are 3 main logos (white, dark and black) and they are at the state of constant war. Politics and warfare according to Dugin is only of shadow of wars between logos which are created by different gods. The main war is theological (wars between gods), secondary war is philosophical (wars between different philosophical concepts) and peripheral was is ordinary (war between different states, unions, etc). It is interesting that in Dugin’s ontology exists tremendous diversity. I have even found ontological space for me in such world. In his book he mentioned trans people in the ancient time as priests of black logoi and goddess Cybele. Black logoi is characterized by denying of hierarchy, platonic ideas, such logoi tries to destroy and deconstruct them. And there are different philosophical schools which represents such logoi. The most famous example of such philosophical school is Buddhist Madhyamaka. White logoi on the other hand is more platonic, hierarchical. Also it is important to mention that Dugin isn’t humanist like Foucault. He think that “human” should be a subject of history, politics and philosophy. Foucault also thought that “human” is a product of modernity, it is amalgamation of body (biology), language (linguistics) and work (economy). Such constitutes aren’t stable, therefore there is no ontological stability of “human”. Indeed, humanism and modernity created the concept like human rights, but it also created a lot of categories of subhumans, including sexual monsters, predators. Even if person can’t work or speak (non verbal autism) he is considered less than human. That’s why I am not humanist and am I am not westerner, I don’t support western concept of human rights. Western LGBT movement is based on the concept of human rights, but the latest election in the US showed how such concept is unstable, new president can erase rights of the whole social group. Therefore I always tried to find something more ontological stable than “human rights”, I understand I will go nowhere with humanism due to it’s shaky philosophical foundation.Dugin also hates humanism and modernist concept of “human” and “human rights” that’s why he even urged Putin to erase the notion of human rights from the russian constitution and russian laws. Postmodernist Deleuze suggested better concept than “human” , it is “body without organs”, ethics based on the “body without organs” will be better suited for the 21 century with transhumanism and genetic modification of the body, creation of cyborgs, blending human and artificial intelligence or maybe even blending human and other species. Dugin isn’t postmodernist, he doesn’t want to create ethics, epistemology and ontology for posthumans, nevertheless, Dugin’s logoi or Haidegger’s dasein is still better for me than “human” or cartesian subject. We need to carve stable ontological space for ourselves and modernistic concepts can’t server our purpose. Trans woman Susan Stryker, the founder of trans studies, was right in her abandoning of humanism and adopting monstrosity. She claimed that trans people should appropriate the notion of “monster”, the being outside social order, it should be the source of our power, not our weakness or shame. And such ontological foundation of new being, new flesh, trans flesh can create new epistemology, can create new knowledge. That’s why I like to read this blog, I see how Tom tries to accumulate here new knowledge. I like to see how suppressed knowledge come up to the surface.
Regarding science of sexuality. I mentioned the Lagrangian and the principal of least action because it is central in physics. Similar principal should be in cognitive science. And I don’t think that biology is the main science which will clarify our sexuality, I think that cognitive science (cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, cybernetics) is more important in this endeavor. Chomsky mentioned that the main principle of cognitive neuroscience should be a principal of minimal computational complexity. I like more the principal of minimization of free energy which was suggested by Karl Friston. It means that any generative model which is created by the brain should obey the principle of free energy minimization. If new generative model doesn’t optimally decrease the free energy then such model will be unstable. I think that free energy minimization is related to the minimization of computational complexity, but if it is the case, I don’t understand why majority of people are heterosexual and not fetishist, because I think that heterosexuality and related copulatory patterns is more complex than fetishism, it is much simpler to recognize some feature of a target (foot) then process the whole target as gestalt. We should test different models. There are different models of language which are based on neuronal nets and connectionist frameworks, although Chomsky claimed that neuronal nets are bullshit, it is resurrection of behaviorism, and he hates behaviorism, I also hate behaviorism. Randy Gallistel claimed that any model based on association including neuronal nets is wrong. We should have more discussions of this in the field of sexology. We should suggest different models including neuronal nets with different parameters and test them. Some models will be more prone to paraphilias, fetishes, but other models are more prone to heterosexuality. Also it is possible to consider each sexual interest as different species of organisms and different brains as different environments, after that it will be possible to model evolution of sexual interests as evolution of organisms in the environment through genetic algorithm, some sexual interests will become strong according to modeling, other sexual interests will perish. Anyway any model of sexual interest should obey to the principle of minimization of free energy. I plan to write scientific articles on this matter.
No, I haven’t read the book
“Performance All The Way Down: Genes, Development and Sexual Difference” yet. I suffer from the deficit of time. I should read articles and books about physics. Also I have been writing a book about magical girl (it is me) who traverse the magical universe and visits different islands in the ocean of chaos, such islands represent different epistemes, different ontologies, also I want to make computer game with such plot. I will have more time at Christmas , maybe I will read new books.
Really interesting stuff, Veronica. You’re clearly very educated!
Felt like I was transported back to university, reading that!
I’m not sure the identity of “monster” will or should ever be taken up by Trans people. It would only give their enemies / detractors more ammunition, since many of them are chomping at the bit for anything they can make fun of or fearmonger about.
If TikTok is to be believed, there are a tiny amount of people who identify as “demon gender.” I find that funny, cool, freaky and slightly concerning all at the same time: but if they’re not hurting anyone what do I care? Sadly, others do. Very much so.
The West is firmly wedded to male/female masculine/feminine, and whilst that may be changing and have liberalized a bit socially, people’s disgust, fear, and anxiety responses remain easy to trigger at the sight of unconventional / jarring or strange “new” things.
You may be right that “Bodies without Organs” and thinking around Transhumanism, the cyborg, and humanity as becoming increasingly entwined with the cybernetic / digital, will be a better framework for thinking in the future. I’m not sure Deleuze’s concepts will translate all that well into public policy and discourse, though. Compared to Foucault, his writings are far more dense and difficult, his concepts are longer, wordier, and more abstract. His popularity is far less and he was not seized upon by a generation of academic sex radicals who’ve built careers on interpreting and debating his thinking. Foucault can be easily seen as a figure of sexual revolution; he died a martyr (from AIDS) while Deleuze lived a squarely heterosexual hum-drum life for the most part and eventually killed himself. “Power”, which Foucault thankfully devoted a lot of time to thinking critically about, has become a watchword of the 21st century. “Bodies without Organs,” not so much…
In my admittedly Western mindset, “human rights” seems like a good framework if actually applied to all humans. My retort would simply be that human rights apply to all, no matter who or what you’re attracted to, your actions, etc. But, as you say, rights are often applied selectively and some people are demonized and rendered as “monsters,” or less than human. There are critiques of human rights from Left-wing and liberal perspectives. A dry-sounding philosophy channel I used to like, particularly before he went “professional” (boring mode) and changed his channel name from the brilliant “Cuck Philosophy,” made a lengthy critique. Perhaps you’ll like it: https://youtu.be/AhRBsJYWR8Q?feature=shared
Hamlet said, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
As a reflection on the limited nature of human imagination this is, one might say, unfalsifiable. But reading your post Veronica, I find myself impressed by what it reveals about the amazing range and depth of thinking that humanity has brought to its own existential situation, and how best to live.
Thanks for educating us about Dugin!
>I always tried to find something more ontological stable than “human rights”, I understand I will go nowhere with humanism due to it’s shaky philosophical foundation.
Can we believe any ontology is truly stable, or any philosophical foundation secure? Every proposition, it seems to me can be of only limited validity and application. All our thinking is historically and culturally contingent.
>I don’t think that biology is the main science which will clarify our sexuality, I think that cognitive science (cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, cybernetics) is more important in this endeavor.
You could well be right. When I first read your post, I thought this was a strange, unlikely idea. But then I read a bit about Karl Friston’s work. Amazing! I see that it was his group that developed voxel-based morphometry (VBM), which detects differences in neuroanatomy. This leapt out at me because I know James Cantor’s team used VBM in his “white matter” research. I have my reservations about the findings, but this sort of work is still in the early pioneering phase.
>it is much simpler to recognize some feature of a target (foot) then process the whole target as gestalt.
Good point; but, if we start from biology, we can perhaps conclude that basic sexual desire and orientation do not require a gestalt recognition of a big, complex, whole-body target. A simple, single-cell organism, yeast, will invariably be heterosexual and will experience no difficulty in recognising its opposite sex partner. All a male yeast needs to do is “smell” (i.e. chemically detect, no nose required) the presence of a pheromone that gives the information “same as me” or “not same as me”. The algorithm then is, “If not same as me, this is partner.”
Humans, of course, are massively more complicated, and pheromones have no part to play in human attraction (although not everyone agrees, as products on the market for perfumes attest). But evolution has conserved pheromonal communication as a key mammalian reproductive hormone. (Loumaye et al., 1985: “Yeast Mating Pheromone Activates Mammalian Gonadotrophs: Evolutionary Conservation of a Reproductive Hormone?”)
In other words, it is possible (quite likely, I would say) that originally very simple chemical mechanisms have been conserved and developed within ever more complex sexual species, building in a bias towards heterosexuality, albeit one that may be perturbed and altered in the developmental process, mostly in utero.
Complex visual pattern recognition, in this account, is much more likely to be needed for fetishes (developed well into life, in a complex social context) than for basic sexual orientation.
Anyway, I make this point because, even though computational neuroscience may become very important, it makes sense to me that our knowledge of biological evolution should remain our primary investigative starting point.
Thanks Tom. It is great pleasure to be here and read your posts and comments of other members of this amazing community. Also I have been reading your book “Pedophilia: the radical case” with great pleasure, also I plan to read your book about Michael Jackson. 🙂
I need to leave, but I can reappear in the next year, and if I have interesting insight about sexuality I will write you about this with your permission.
Do you plan to write academic article about sexuality or even a book? I have a plan to write article for some russian journal about some mathematical models which can be used for sexology. Also it would be awesome if someone could write self help book for people with different sexualities. There is a lack of psychological and medical services in the world for people with unusual sexualities, therefore self help is sometimes the only option for many people. You are great educator, it will be amazing if you will write such book, such work can save a lot of lives.
Best wishes!
It would be lovely to hear from you again whenever you are ready, Veronica. You must be very busy with your PhD and with thinking about those mathematical models. What exciting work to be doing!
Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts and plans with us. I’m sure I am not alone in feeling very honoured by this and it is great that you feel this is an “amazing community”.
I agree there is a need for a self-help book. Maybe that is something “Finlay” could think about following their well received blog in August: https://heretictoc.com/2024/08/05/a-young-map-discovers-practical-self-care/ I don’t think I would be the best person to do that. It needs to be written by someone who has someone who has suffered mental health and social difficulties in the fairly recent past and managed to overcome them. The world in which I encountered my own problems of that sort was very long ago and very different. I could not advise anyone, for instance on how to cope with hostile social media.
There are one or two other books I’d like to have a go at, though, and further academic articles. But I won’t go into any details as I don’t know how much I’ll find time for.
For now, then, I’ll just say I hope you enjoy the Jackson book, if you can manage to fit it in. At 624 pages, it’s a bit long. Sorry about that! 🙂
Great post. I love the comment about the Welsh and sheep though 🙂
>the Welsh and sheep
Well, of course, writing that bit was fun! 🙂
Good to hear from you again, John.
For me, I will tell you what is especially frustrating. We have trans extremism which has arguably gained a broad swathe of left wing cultural acceptance. We have assisted dying, which no doubt in ten years’ time will develop to a Logan’s Run scenario where we are all terminated on our seventieth birthday. But where is MAP recognition amidst all this shitshow? Why is MAP recognition the very last penny to drop? Seems grossly unfair.
To fancy a child is hardly a revolutionary act – it is evident throughout history. And yet we have existentially prioritised cutting off children’s dicks and cutting off children’s tits, over and above any solid recognition that adults can fancy children and children can fancy adults?? Am I missing something?
Our culture is sick. And yet the sickest thing is that the innocent appreciation of a child’s beauty is – perversely – the ‘last taboo’ in Western civilisation.
The paradox of human society.
People are ready to justify/hide real violence and murders, but prohibit and punish for free and mutual love/sex.
We do. It’s led by the likes of GB News and JK Rowling. It seems TOC and you have fallen for their myths and lies that trans children are not even real.
One thing that is definitely not real is that I ever said or believed that trans children are “not even real”. Please do not make stuff up. I do not recall ZT saying that either, but he can speak for himself if he wants.
Despite J.K. Rowling not accepting MAP , I don’t consider her transphobic because of her twitter posts. It seemed to me that she was saying the same thing as Debbie Hayton, that physiologically trans women remain men.
You don’t consider her transphobic? Seriously? She is obsessed with hating trans people. From Vox (Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself.):
>Rowling has made her antagonistic position on trans issues clear
It may be clear to you but apparently not to Leonerd or to me. Rowling is often said to be anti-trans but that is not what she says, and I have no reason to believe she is.
Airlane, you have been quick to misrepresent my position repeatedly in the last couple of days. Accordingly, why should we be confident that you are not misrepresenting Rowling?
All her messages boil down to one thing: her conservative position on the issue of biological nature. She didn’t say that trans people do not deserve acceptance and rights.
The left media is simply exacerbating this conflict, but you have to be tolerant of the conservative position on the transgenderism. Despite the difference of views, we are always happy to read your comments.
>Despite the difference of views, we are always happy to read your comments.
Seconded! 🙂
In my previous post, I mislinked the article that points out that 52% of young people voted for Kamala Harris. Here’s the correct link:
https://now.tufts.edu/2024/11/12/young-voters-shifted-toward-trump-still-favored-harris-overall
Regardless of her intentions, J.K Rowling has been sharing negligent statements, including but not limited to the biological sex of Olympic Boxer Imane Khelif, disputing the fact that the Nazis persecuted transgenders, and implying that transgenders are not being discriminated against:
These negligent statements will only normalize discriminatory treatment towards transgender individuals, as J.K Rowling, in her success, has a gigantic platform of people who don’t support even the idea of being transgender.
It’s also interesting how J.K Rowling associates the trans movement with some kind of misogynistic men’s movement, when in reality they’re about as outcast from anything like patriarchy as it can possibly be. She conveniently ignores all the female-to-males who feel similar to the males and who are in the same “men’s movement” as them.
Rowling often singles out men for being misogynists for supporting trans ideology, even though research shows that women are much more likely to support that ideology than men.
Wokism has declined in popularity over the past few years, but given the fact that 52% of young people still voted for the Woke candidate in the last US election, it’s probably a bit premature to say that it is dead. More young women voted for Kamala Harris than young men voted for Trump.
Time will tell whether Thomas O’Carroll is right that Woke is dead, or whether Nathan Cofnas is right that it is just beginning.
>These negligent statements
Yes, that’s a fair point. I am inclined to cut her some slack, though, bearing in mind that the speed of debate on the big platforms is so quick contributors need to post fast to stay ahead of the game. Not always time for thorough checking when you are being assailed by big numbers making multiple statements/claims.
>She conveniently ignores all the female-to-males who feel similar to the males and who are in the same “men’s movement” as them.
I’ll be saying more about FtMs in part two.
>Nathan Cofkas
Haven’t had time to read the article yet, but love the photo at the top!
>Time will tell whether Thomas O’Carroll is right
Would you be talking about me by any chance? I am here, you know. I am in the room. I do academic articles as Thomas, but no frosty formality here, please. So let me introduce myself. My name is Tom, and thank you for your interesting comment.
The Left accepted Trans bc liberals can get behind it too bc it doesn’t challenge a capitalist economic structure. It’s “progressive” politics, feel-good, and gets us away from the nitty-gritty of economics and sexual politics, towards the then new frontier of gender which was until recently fertile ground for theory and research, obscure enough and untainted by the sexual.
Understandably, that obscurity didn’t last forever, and once you open your non-normativity up to public scrutiny you’d better expect the norm to fight tooth and nail to keep you in your place. That’s one reason that more extreme BDSM culture where whipping draws blood, for example, stays on the down-low. A sanitized image is presented on TV, of softies who find it exotic to be tied up or pull out a riding crop; you won’t see discussions of “consensual non-consent” (CNC), otherwise known as rape play, very often…
Some Feminists, who may well identify with and hold Left-wing economic positions, oppose Transness for what they see as the retrenchment of gender stereotypes that their brand of feminism has sought to undo and free people from. Trans people who attempt to reproduce and embody “feminity” in all its stereotypical forms – thin/buxom, long hair, coquettish/seductive, neotenous etc. – are thus regressing the progress feminists have made in getting way from these stereotypes of what makes a woman.
That’s one view. And whether that’s desirable or progress is debatable. I am personally convinced that there’s a rough beauty standard the majority adhere to which basically translates as “not fat,” “have decent teeth” and “don’t smell bad.” Even amongst the few MAPs who have told me what kind of young people they find most attractive, they just seem to be smaller versions of what your standard hetero/homo Teilio find attractive: well-put together, healthy looking, non-fat people. Though perhaps there are some “chubby chasers” amongst the MAPs!!! (Maybe that can be a topic for research!) :p
As an older, now hopefully wiser Tom O’Carroll once said, “What people get upset about in one generation is not the same as another.”
There are societies in history which accepted gender nonconformity, but they often did so with reference to spiritual beliefs that we do not have. U.S., UK, and other Western cultures do not share these spiritual views. The West is a society of positivist science combined with holdovers from the legacy of Christianity. It has a view of sex as binary and rooted in biology, making it hard to accept Transgender people if they claim their biology is no different to that of a cis woman’s (which is unlikely in most cases of social transition). Trans people are fighting a culture war and
Taking a long view of history, the age taboo is extremely recent and historically aberrant. As Rachel Hope Cleves put it at the end of her now award winning (2020) book on Norman Douglas, “the first decades of the 21st century will not be the final word.”
>the age taboo is extremely recent and historically aberrant
My understanding is that twelve years old was the general rule of thumb in the Middle Ages, but that was for within marriage and sex outside marriage had harsh legal punishments.
Similarly, in Ancient Rome it wasn’t uncommon for an elderly Senator to marry a twelve year old girl.
This is presented neutrally and without any value judgement.
Appreciate the thrust of yr comment there for sure, but until we face right up to the reality that the taboo itself is a hugely integral part of what makes a child so insanely attractive and beautiful to begin with, i fear we will continue to piss up a rope..
This is an incredibly important psychological point. Forbidden things become fascinating and more psychologically attractive. Although I find it to be an ugly expression, proscription of minor attraction ‘fetishises’ the child and makes them a greater object of desire.
However you are talking solely in terms of ‘desire’ here which is quite a restrictive metric for any human relationship. Surely a full human social bond can involve, depending on the context, friendship, love, affection, trust, kindness, and shared interests, and desire is only one component part of that.
A psychological point, you say? The only psychology as such here would have to be a wholly interdependent one, whereby the proscription at large confers a terriying wealth of value upon “children”, forcing every one of us mimetic/interdependent creatures to make an internal decision as to where we shall place ourselves in relation to this pre-eminent, central object-of-desire.
Desire as “metric”? No way! If desire were at all ‘extractable’ and therefore measurable, it would then be controllable, and we’d be well on the way to fulfilling the oft-conceived dystopian nightmares of literature!
I think you are misguided trying to place ‘mere’ desire in some sort of opposition to the forging of mutually valued relationships. A “full human social bond” you say? As things stand and look likely to stand for some time, we will be lucky to achieve a clandestine romance on the fly! But what could be more gloriously human than thatt?
Just pray for a getaway car like no other!
Intelligently argued. However desire is obviously only one component part of the human heart and mind – unless you believe like Freud that the basis of all conscious phenomena is a subconscious sex impulse – which I happen to think is highly reductionist and constrictive of the capacities and nobility of the human mind.
If therefore, human consciousness comprises the intellect, the memory and the will – the will is ours to control, rein in or sublimate according to the rational faculty; or indeed we can choose to use the will to satisfy our desire for food and drink and our sexuality. But desire is never this nebulous, all-encompassing necessity that haunts our lives with an adamantine force. Desire is highly malleable, can be directed into different mental channels, and can transform and transmogrify itself.
Desire is not placed in opposition to a ‘full human social bond’ – instead it has its rightful place within that bond, and guides our motive force – but restricting desire to sexual satisfactions is a very odd and topsy turvy way of looking at the full scope of human will, our volition and motive action, and the role of different faculties like the intellect as it combines with emotional needs and wants. The heart and mind work in combination! Of course, Freud was fundamentally flawed and had a lot of strange psychological attitudes and obsessions which fatally flawed his thinking.
Furthermore, just think of the (for want of a better.word) phenomenon that reaches far beyond any “psychology” – ie how the whole W E I R D world can not avoid seeing any representation.of a child through the eyes of the paedophile! Scrutinized like nothing else to make quite sure it does.not arouse us! And what’s more all of this.no longer restricted to mediatic representations – in big city Japan today i’m seeing it more and more – the moment a female kid grows beyond toddlerhood her public bottom if in skirt.is also encased by mama in latex shorts and the like…aiiyeee ….
The child in a bikini is not represented neutrally but as a mimetic model of adult fashions and mores – and those adult fashions are intended to reveal the body and potentially, if not actually, accentuate the body as an object of desire. Can we therefore say that just because a “minor” wears the same fashion, all its representations of mimetic desire and objectification are removed? Of course not. At this point the distinction between “minor” and “adult” loses its tangibility and the child’s body is seen as a smaller echo of adult desirability.
Anyone who believes a child in a bikini is entirely neutral and not – at least naively or unknowingly – intended to enhance female desirability, is either a fool or a knave, as the saying goes.
I don’t think we should build a comparison here. The fact that there has been attraction to children throughout history does not tell me much about whether this should be accepted or not. And the fact that transgender people are a smaller community compared to MAPs is not a reason to leave transgender people as a secondary thing. Otherwise, we are facilitating the discrimination of minorities (by implicitly accepting the message that “the smaller the minority, the less important the cause is”).
There is no particular reason to believe that recognising sexual freedom (to all extent) is more transcendental than recognising one’s own mental gender (to all extent). Both things are deeply attached to our sense of dignity. Those comparisons don’t work.
I respect your argument, but for me, this is full of unpalatable (post)modernisms.
In conclusion, attraction to children should in my view be a protected characteristic a priori, before we even consider what should be the precise legal status of any sex act. But numbers of those attracted to children have been artificially suppressed through intense and harsh social stigma. But ultimately, I have no personal stake or interest in the legality of adult-minor sex acts, because I never have any wish for a contact relationship.
Stay WOKE – not asleep at the wheel!
In plain-sight unseen in the boring decades ongoing Anglo P.C./Pure Cowards’ drama queens’ agenda is TOLERANCE.
Still alive and well in non-Anglo modern EU where all-age unisex toilets cause NO BIG DRAMA.
Don’t people usually criticize the Cass report for having “thrown out” studies which didn’t align with her conclusions? What do you make of this claim?
I don’t know about “usually”, but I am aware this criticism has been made and I have seen (somewhere) what appeared to me to be a robust academic rebuttal. In meta-analyses and the like, studies are often “thrown out” because they do not meet perfectly reasonable selection criteria. Nothing unsound about that. If I can lay hands on the details, I’ll let you know.
On the church abuse scandal:
How normal was corporeal punishment during the time this was happening? This feels like a case of punishing the past by the morals of the present. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” was apparently a thing. And it sounds like this guy took it to heart…
Is there any hint he derived sexual pleasure from whipping these young guys? In our secular societies it will be assumed he did, but at the time, this discourse and idea would’ve been eclipsed by the emphasis and dominance of religion. Quite apart from the guy, his wife, and the young people’s feelings (did they find it arousing?!)…
In the BDSM scene I’ve seen people who enjoy being whipped and beaten black and blue, till blood is drawn. Stuff that is quite extreme to me but also fascinating. A woman who likes being punched in the face, people who like to stick needles through themselves, and others who like to show off the deep lacerations all over their bodies. So I know it does happen and people lead normal, functional lives whilst doing it and enjoying it.
Some people make arguments similar to drugs / substance use advocates: people should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies, sometimes with the caveat “provided they understand the risks.” I’m sympathetic to that, since we are deathbound creatures and I’d prefer people have experiences than not (if it’s not going to ruin their lives)…
On consent: consent isn’t complicated if you understand it to mean mutual agreement. It gets complicated because people start agreeing to things that other’s have a problem with, BDSM being a case in-point. Mutually willing age-gap sex being another.
The previous blog by Max Woolf, cited Avgi Saketopolou, who writes about consent from a psychoanalytic point of view. She’s pretty good at explaining why consent is complicated; because we can’t predict the precise outcomes of our assent, and because the consent discourse presumes a subject who knows what they want beforehand, rather than discovering that they did in fact want or enjoy something they weren’t sure about, after the fact.
Consent is after all a legal term and eminates from legal discourse, which tries to speak in absolutes and draw rigid distinction. “Consent” can be a way to protect oneself and others, as with people who have herpes or other STDs/STIs and do not want to spread it to the uninformed. “Consent” can also be used to deny the legitimacy of people’s sexual activity, claiming it was non-consensual in spite of what participants say. This is sometimes the case with drunk sex, chemsex (sex on drugs), and waking up to sexual activity even if you’d previously asked for it (the case of the sleeping “rape” blowjob…)
“Consent” in this sense has been used to try and clean up the messiness of sex, to straighten out people’s activities and force them to alway be in a particular state of consciousness (not intoxicated or high), and to take the uncertainty out of sex. It is also an attempt to stop and in some cases legislate against regret, the thinking being that if you know what you’re getting into and have discussed it beforehand, you won’t regret it. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. You can regret anything despite having agreed to it beforehand, and can even regret experiences you enjoyed at the time…
In his 2010 article on Onanism and CSA, Agustin Malon very wisely stated that we’ve moved from a society where the validity of sex was based on honor, to one based on the presence or absence of meaningful agreement.
It’s people debating what counts as meaningful, that has overcomplicated sex. So no, consent isn’t complicated, it has become complicated…
From my limited information and understanding, I would say that under the prevailing norms of the time, the cultural context in which the acts occurred, and the age of the young people involved, that these young people did in fact consent to their spanking. As uneasy as that makes me, if you’re a legal adult I will not pretend you have no capacity for decision making, even though I know that people of all ages can make poor decisions or be woefully naive.
What should be criticized is not their capacity for agreement, but the fact that religious corporeal punishment was ever a reasonable thing to do. Nowadays, this would never happen. Virtually impossible. Self-flaggetation is a thing and if it continues many will not care. The only reason people care about this is because it was someone whipping other people, added with tales of diapers, a dedicated shed, and drawing blood which makes for a sensationalist story.
You could argue he went too far. Drawing blood was not necessary. You could also, reasonably I think, argue that this case be held up as an example of ways the Church should not treat people in future. Thankfully, I don’t think it’ll be returning to its whipping and spanking days anytime soon. That’s now the remit of pornography :p and us “consenting adults,” protected by the profit motive and women’s own agency and desires, despite what some Radfems tell themselves…
Lawyers have locked consent in shackles with weights. Consent does not require being fully informed. People consent to try something for the first time having a basic understanding to find out whether it is pleasant or not. If they liked it, they will continue to want it, but if it was unpleasant, painful and frightening, they will not want it and forcing it will be abuse. It’s that simple and isn’t tied only to sex.
Considering that he did this regularly, it can be argued that he received sexual-sadistic pleasure from it.
One guy told me he liked to be whipped with a belt since he was a kid, but that’s rare and it saddens me to think that those boys had no choice.
We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds
Absolutely. How else can you hope to convince people? No one starts out fully supportive, it takes time and education.
I’m extremely supportive of gender and sexual nonconformity but retain a skepticism over claims that puberty blockers are “fully reversible” (maybe physically but the potential confusion and mental anguish is something you’ll have to deal with), and particular skepticism when people act like infertility is no big deal. I accept that it’s heteronormative to impose the idea of “maybe you’ll want to have kids in future?” on others, but it doesn’t make the worry/concern any less valid. Particularly in the case of young people who have decades of life ahead of them.
That’s why vetting needs to be in place to ensure you’ve really understood and accept the likely consequences of your decisions. It already is in the UK and much of Europe, I believe, and I’m sure there’s reasonable conversations to be had about whether waiting times are too long or not. Atm, it’s the US’s for-profit healthcare system that needs to catch up with the rest of the world…
Wow. This was a really good blog. Your skills as a journalist really shine through. So clear and easy to read. To the point and tackling pressing cultural issues.
Hate to be the first one commenting here – don’t want to appear as dominating the comments and don’t want others to feel put off by proxy – but here’s some thoughts:
Trans stuff: Yes the militant trans discourse that downplayed, discounted or ignored detransitioners had that as a chink in its armor. You can now find lots of detransiton accounts on YouTube and elsewhere, and after the prominence of the Kira Bell trial it couldn’t be denied that some people have serious regrets, feeling they were accepted on to a medical pathway without enough scrutiny or “safeguards” in place.
Sticking militantly to the “born this way” discourse, while totally understandable, also wasn’t a good idea. It has allowed for another gap to be filled in by opponents. It is obvious that with proliferation of positive and affirming Trans content on TikTok and elsewhere, telling you how wonderful your life will be as the opposite of what you currently are, combined with easy access to pornography showing you the hottest examples of transition known to humankind; there’s an argument to be had for social learning theory. Whilst “born this way” and social learning could be bouncing off each other in many people’s cases, it’s also the case that repeated exposure to positive Trans messaging could lead people towards medical services that aren’t right for them and are too readily affirming to screen out what will become a deeply regretful individual. Attempting to become the opposite gender resolves the anxiety, struggle and burden of being a man or woman; if you didn’t live up to masculine or feminine standards/ideals you adopted, then perhaps you’ll do better as the opposite. It’s not hateful of Trans people to acknowledge this; after all, thinking what your life would be like if you were the opposite sex / gender is common amongst men and women. Who hasn’t wondered if their life would’ve been so much easier if they could be a man/woman? The reality is that you’ll have struggles no matter your gender identity or sex, there’ll just be different struggles…
Referring to a mythic “Trans Genocide” was also a bad tactic allowing you to be easily mocked. It is not “genocidal” to deny someone’s identity claim; unless you hold that Trans people are so fragile that they kill themselves when their identity isn’t affirmed. That’s hotly debated and contested, but even so, it’s not genocide on the deniers part; it doesn’t wipe out your culture because you can still self-ID as Trans and dress how you want. Granted, no one should be nasty to you for how you look, but we live in the real world and an increasingly visual digital landscape where people are heavily scrutinized for their appearance. It sucks but it’s also a struggle everyone deals with on some level…
The only way Trans people will be ever sent to the camps is if they are successfully connected with “pedophiles” as a group, and demonized in official state reports as dangerous “sexual predators.” To be fair, there are websites pushing this narrative, Reduxx being a prominent and decided example. Teiliophilic Trans peoole thus have a legitimate fear of their demonization.
The beauty and more subtle radicalism of research like Allyn Walker’s, is that they asked the gender identity of their participants and were thus willing to publish nonchalantly that some MAPs were trans-identifying. It is probably too much to ask of hysterical and sensational social media pundits, to simply recognize that some MAPs are Trans. If that fact had been acknowledged instead of ignored, it would’ve required acknowledging that MAPs (as with Trans people) aren’t inherently sex criminals.
All the ingredients are there to make it much harder for opponents to attack you. But because people aren’t willing to drop the MAP phobia, it again leaves another gap for opponents to come at you, one I feel conservative media has very successfully exploited. You can scream “Trans people aren’t pedos” all you want, but in the face of verified cases including arrests and convictions, your argument falls flat. Better to acknowledge reality and deflate the hysteria. Some Trans people are MAPs, it’s not a big deal… Some MAPs are Trans, it’s not a big deal…
Scholars have been making great strides in deflating the hysteria; every qualitative report they do where MAPs are given a voice to speak about how they feel love and romance just like everyone else: these are powerful ammunition going forward…
In fact, I actually agree with Jim, the Newgon/Yesmap strategic lead: he was right all along. MAPs need the right-wing hysteria to continue because it’s only then, when everyone is called a “pedophile” for any old vacuous shit, that not only does the term start to lose its power and be seen as ridiculous and passe, but Trans and other sexual minorities will have to get behind a more realistic and humanizing portrayal of MAPs. If they don’t and dig their heels in (which they almost certainly will because they’ll get banned off Twitter otherwise!), they’ll too go down with the ship and be thought off as nothing more than delusional perverts. The scholars are offering the way out: it’s getting high time that liberals and all thinking, reasonable people accept and start acknowledging reality. Just this time, because of your own MAP phobia, you’ve helped create a lot more hurdles to cross..
The gender revolution has been so successful in part because it could claim to not be about sex. Sex is the icky, the messy, the complicated; some people (like me) have a very positive attitude and think we should all be at it as much as we can before we leave this mortal coil, even if the emotional weight of sexual experiences can be grating. Many, probably many more people, are the opposite: sex is disgusting to them unless it’s between what they personally find attractive and acceptable. Now that gender nonconformity has gone mainstream and has been very successfully dragged back into the realm of the sexual, it’s open to ridicule, disgust, social and legal opposition. It is obvious that sexual arousal plays a part in Transness; who the hell would want to transition if they didn’t find the idea or image attractive, or thought they were going to be ugly? Denying the connection between gender and the sexual (“gender isn’t sexual”) is also a massive gap that’s now been exploited by opponents.
Canceling people who are supportive of your gender nonconformity but point out the nuance of how other people didn’t feel “born this way,” didn’t feel that transition was a good decision, and didn’t feel no sexual component to their gender identity or transition, hasn’t been helpful. The “holier than thou” hasn’t worked and now decidedly won’t work. The political Right has used you, mocking you into oblivion to gain cultural capital and ultimately political power for itself. Please, dear God, focus on arguments in future. Optics and arguments. Less purity culture gatekeeping because guess what, most people can’t live up to your standards. Support the most charismatic, conventionally attractive, and skilled rhetoricans you have, and get them to crush your political opponents in live debate. You need your left-wing versions of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and so on. Hell, even Slavoj Zizek, arguably the Left’s version of Peterson, has been supportive of Trans people but labeled Transphobic for not giving totally unqualified and uncritical support.
At best as things stand, Trans adults can make it out of the gender wars just fine (for now), but only if they drop anything to do with “children” (under 16/18s). That might be their version of the Faustian bargain that gays took in the 1980s/1990s. Disavow and cut out the MAPs, leave whoever the state deems “children” alone whilst praying the age of consent doesn’t rise to 21 or 25 because “muh brain development”, and you can have your “consenting adults in private” boring version of freedom. If you don’t pass, just don’t leave the house; you wouldn’t want people thinking your a “creep,” “pervert,” “weirdo” or even “pedophile,” would you?
That’s the world you’ll live in. Would you take that bargain?
All good stuff.
>Hate to be the first one commenting here
Don’t worry, you weren’t first!
>Some Trans people are MAPs, it’s not a big deal…
Surprisingly, I haven’t reflected much on this. Airlane described theirself as both MAP and trans recently and I have encountered a few other such individuals online, so it’s not as though I have been completely unaware. But the thought that this might be a common gender/orientation intersection, and the potential political implications thereof, have so far eluded my attention.
I am guessing your perception is based on wide-ranging social media exposure, Prue. Do you know of any published data on this? From Walker, perhaps? If not, I could ask Sexnet.
Meanwhile, I must get around to responding to Airlane’s critique.
What a disappointingly poor piece about transgender people. It seems informed by fanatical trans-denying ideologues whose massively well-funded campaigns are clearly convincing at least one MAP, sadly. Trans people are not pushing it on anyone; it’s the other way around, with trans kids being unable to access help even for socially transitioning, let alone the healthcare they desperately need. Cheaper, of course, for our semi-privatized health service to ignore trans people entirely. You didn’t mention that your reference to “More than 14,000 American children had gender-related medical interventions between 2019 and 2023” is linked to another wealthy anti-trans organisation which opposes any substantial support for trans kids at all.
You’ve made your position clear, and it is a radical, extreme one of denying the reality of transgender people. The unscientific, widely-discredited Cass Review proceeded from the same starting point, refusing to permit any experts on transgender healthcare to participate. Your view puts you in the same boat as RFK, Jr.’s disingenuous attacks on Big Pharma as an excuse to peddle unscientific, deeply harmful so-called alternatives to medicine. Trans people, like all of us, need good quality health care and, right now, pharmaceutical corporations provide it. Are you in the clutches of Big Pharma if you are on a chemotherapy programme? Should you instead (as my late mother did) use unproven, largely useless complementary therapies instead? That is what you are insisting that trans people do.
Trans rights are, no matter what you might claim, human rights and are not posing the slightest danger to children’s rights. Indeed, trans rights are synonymous with child liberation and it’s a shame you have been convinced otherwise.
>What a disappointingly poor piece about transgender people.
Sorry you think so, Airlane, but not at all surprised. I wondered, even as I was writing, how you would react, especially to some of my more judgemental adjectives: “swivel-headed ranters”, “woke whingers” and so on. I would have preferred, by temperament, to be polite and mild. Unfortunately, though, sometimes what is needed is blunt frankness, and I felt this was a point we have reached in the trans debate.
>It seems informed by fanatical trans-denying ideologues whose massively well-funded campaigns are clearly convincing at least one MAP, sadly.
I am far from alone among MAPs in my views (which are not “trans-denying”). But, quite reasonably, opinion varies. We are all influenced by our sources of information, aren’t we? And, as my article demonstrated, trans opinion is by no means monolithic either. All of us will be coming to these different views having experienced different parenting styles and school lives, in different locations and social classes, all of which will inevitably feed into the kind of places from which we get our information, none of which are without bias. You can say my sources of information are crap, I can say the same about yours; but that gets us nowhere unless we can find some common factual and logical grounding.
So, let’s see if there is anything we can agree on in what you say.
I’ll start by making an admission. There has been well-funded campaigning on both sides of the argument over “gender affirming care”. I have already made my point that we should “follow the money”. The biggest money (I notice you have not rebutted my claim with any information, only with denial) comes from Big Pharma and private medicine.
However – and here is my admission – I have spent many years in the online company of Mike Bailey, Ray Blanchard and Ken Zucker, all of whom are detested by the people I have called extremists. So, I will admit they have been a big influence on me. All of them are vastly experienced, though, and expert in their fields, and their views are grounded in relatively well conducted (none of it is perfect) research, quite a lot of which I have read myself. I do not form my opinions based on media campaigns, whether “massively well-funded” or not.
>Trans people are not pushing it on anyone; it’s the other way around, with trans kids being unable to access help even for socially transitioning, let alone the healthcare they desperately need.
I imagine (I have no personal experience) you are right to say trans kids are “unable to access help even for socially transitioning”, in a good many places. To the extent that there is a shortfall it is to be regretted, along with many other shortcomings in medical/social services in the UK’s NHS. Note, though, that GIDS, the main provider of such services in the UK, had to be closed down because of the poor quality of the service offered. Kids were being fast-tracked towards physical sex change without them getting enough information and counselling on less drastic alternatives that would in most cases suit them better. I understand that GIDS is being replaced by “regional hubs” for trans kids.
>You didn’t mention that your reference to “More than 14,000 American children had gender-related medical interventions between 2019 and 2023” is linked to another wealthy anti-trans organisation which opposes any substantial support for trans kids at all.
I suggest the most important point is whether the figures are right or not. If you can tell me they are wrong, and say why, perhaps based on a more authoritative source such as data from an academic or government source, I will be very ready to take that on board.
But you haven’t done that so far. Instead, you have described the source I linked to (an American organisation called Do No Harm, which takes its name from the Hippocratic Oath) is linked to “another wealthy anti-trans organisation”.
What makes you say this organisation is anti-trans? Their view, expressed clearly in their mission statement, is that they are pro-patient and seek to avoid causing harm to any patient, whether trans or not. This is totally in line with standard medical ethics, as per the ancient and much revered Hippocratic Oath. They oppose treatments they feel are likely to be harmful (including penectomy and mastectomy that may later be regretted), but this only means they oppose “gender affirming care”. It does not mean they are against trans people. Nor does it mean they “oppose any substantial support for trans kids at all”. They would say they are absolutely in favour of supporting trans kids. It’s just that they have a different view of what constitutes support.
>You’ve made your position clear, and it is a radical, extreme one of denying the reality of transgender people.
Not at all. Neither I nor Cass take that position. Until his death some years ago I was a friend of Prof. Richard Green, who gave significant support to MAPs (including me) in the later part of his career as an academic psychiatrist. In earlier years, he had been one of the world’s leading pioneers in supporting transgender surgery for adults. I had no disagreement with him over the reality of his patients’ feelings.
I absolutely do not deny there are also children who experience gender dysphoria. The question is, what is the best way forward for them? The answer will vary greatly according to the particular kind of transness in question. I expect to go into that more deeply in my next blog. All I am “denying”, if you want to put it that way, is that one size fits all and that every kid who presents as transgender should be fast-tracked to full transition without due consideration.
>The unscientific, widely-discredited Cass Review proceeded from the same starting point, refusing to permit any experts on transgender healthcare to participate.
As I said, there have been attempts to discredit Cass by organisations such as WPATH which I find to be lacking in credibility for reasons I have given. Now it is your task, if you wish to make headway in this discussion, to come up with information that gives me a good reason to change my mind. By the same token, is there anything I can say that might change your mind? Perhaps not, but let’s see.
Firstly, I would point out that the Cass Review has not been discredited in the estimation of British parliamentarians. Confidence has been expressed in it from across the political spectrum, and by the main professional bodies.
You also claim the report was “unscientific” but then say it refused “to permit any experts on transgender healthcare to participate”. What I suggest you are missing here is that in order to be scientific you have to be as objective as possible. This was achieved by commissioning a series of independent academic reviews of all the available research evidence, which assessed the quality and findings in an objective way using standard assessment tools. Bear in mind that the studies subjected to this scrutiny would have been conducted by “experts on transgender healthcare” in the first place. Most of the work was unfortunately found to be not of high quality, which legitimately and scientifically led to the conclusion that there was too little evidence to reliably conclude that certain treatments (such as puberty blockers) are safe.
>Your view puts you in the same boat as RFK, Jr.’s disingenuous attacks on Big Pharma as an excuse to peddle unscientific, deeply harmful so-called alternatives to medicine.
No, not at all. As will be well known to long-time followers of Heretic TOC, I am a fan of rigorous science. While Big Pharma is money-driven and can behave corruptly on this account, much of the work done when big bucks are thrown at a project, engaging large teams of highly qualified and talented scientists, is hugely impressive. The rapid development of effective vaccines in response to Covid, for instance, was a fantastic triumph for the industry. I am not with RFK on this at all. You won’t find me recommending “so-called alternatives to medicine”.
>Trans rights are, no matter what you might claim, human rights
I agree. Trans people have a right to health care, just like every other human. Unfortunately, when it comes to deciding what sort of health care is best for the patient, dogmatic ideology is not the best place to look for the answer. That is why Cass preferred to put a lot of weight on objective research. That said, the review also took soundings from service users and parents, held meetings with advocacy groups, and gathered documentation on the lived experiences of patients.
Nothing you wrote there would be out of place being broadcast by GB News. It seems that, like 1970s anti-porn feminists allying with religious fundamentalists such as Mary Whitehouse, you have fallen for the myths put about by fanatically anti-trans right-wingers who define trans women as bent on sexually assaulting children. You will find they turn on you once they have finished destroying the lives of young trans people.
is the polar opposite of reality. Trans kids have never been fast-tracked, and pretty much all under-18 gender-affirming healthcare in the UK was limited to closely-supervised puberty blockers and/or hormones. Because of Cass, even those have now been made unlawful, and the last hurdle for the anti-trans kids brigade – socially transitioning – is under attack, pushing trans children firmly back into the closet.
No, the review did not do that. From Feminist Gender Equality Network:
I can only suggest you widen your sources of information. The Mermaids site is a good place to start.
>you have fallen for the myths put about by fanatically anti-trans right-wingers who define trans women as bent on sexually assaulting children.
Calm down, Airlane. You are beginning to lash out wildly in a style all too reminiscent of the extremism that has discredited many activists.
A common tactic is to “straw man”. You are doing that here, misrepresenting what I said in order to denounce it. I never said or believed that transgender isn’t real, as you implied earlier, or that trans women are “bent on sexually assaulting children”.
Against the Cass Review, you cite not well sourced facts but the opinions of an ideology-led activist group called “Feminist Gender Equality Network”.
Not impressed. Ditto x 10 re Mermads.
Despite your long history of being on the side of child liberation, it seems when it comes to trans children, they don’t count (or are ‘not real’ as many contributors to the Cass review believe). Happily, it appears that the rising generation is far more trans-friendly than you or those you admire, so the lives of trans people in the future look to be a lot better than what trans people of my age had to endure. As you clearly have fallen hook, line and sinker for the same myths about trans people put out by anti-trans fanatics such as JK Rowling and the LGB Alliance, I’ll leave it up to you to think further about it. I can only hope that you eventually understand that the anti-transgender position which you have taken, along with religious fundamentalists and one wing of the feminist movement, is not in the interests of children.
>the lives of trans people in the future look to be a lot better than what trans people of my age had to endure.
I hope so.
>the anti-transgender position which you have taken
There you go again, misrepresenting my position!
I regard myself as pro-trans based on wanting to see the best outcomes for trans people, including kids. You keep insisting that my cautionary stance over medical/surgical transition is anti-trans, apparently because I do not see every possible type of transition as in the best interests of trans children/ adolescents.
We appear to be talking at cross-purposes.
I failed to examine your claim about autogynephilia. Here’s what it is in reality, as explained four years ago in Sociological Review:
>autogynephilia. Here’s what it is in reality, as explained…
Ah, “explained”. We’ve had “mansplaining”, now we’re getting “transplaining”!
A better word than “explained” would be “claimed”, and these are claims by a controversial activist. We are under no intellectual obligation to accept these claims and I do not.
The claims are, however, made in an academic journal and deserve a response. Obviously, the author, Julia Serano, will have said a great deal in this multi-page article to which many of us might wish to respond. Fortunately, regarding the quality of Serano’s position regarding AGP we already have a critique by Anne Lawrence (doctor, psychologist and trans person, as mentioned in my blog), also in an academic journal.
I’ll leave you with just one relevant part of her extensive critique:
Nice comments Tom.
From: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-60556060
“Mary Whitehouse was firmly allied with the right wing of the Conservative Party, but pornography brought out the Marxist in her as she astutely diagnosed that big business and exploitation (she used the term “sexploitation”), not freedom of expression, was driving the industry…In November 1974, she wrote to the attorney general suggesting the law be amended to ensure that juries were 50% female.”
Wait a second, I am so surprised! A “right wing conservative Christian moralist woman” instantly becomes a hardcore leftist equity secular Marxist as soon as a feminist power play is at issue. Wow! And then, her male followers like sadist John Smyth get sexual pleasure from the feminist dream of torturing teenage men for daring to climax without the blessing of a woman. It’s almost like “Conservative Christian moralism” and “extreme radical feminism” are the same thing, one done in the name of Jesus and the other done in the name of “power imbalance abuse correction”. The end result is men suffer through sexual oppression.
Regarding trans people – everyone has a different belief about it, but it literally doesn’t matter. This is what matters:
“Women were happy to take in the odd refugee from masculinity. But in the past five years it’s become a wave of colonisers, and that is very different.”
Men who become trans are weak men (refugees from masculinity before the transition), women hate weak men and are happy to see them destroy themselves to “become women”. So, a few trannies here and there were acceptable examples of what could happen if a man doesn’t measure up to women’s standards. Sort of like how “the poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class… keep them showing up at those jobs.”(George Carlin). Men who hate trannies are simply crabs in a bucket, jealous and unhappy to see men weaker than themselves use a “cheat code” to gain power, instead of the rules they followed all their lives (be strong and please women).
However – obviously, trans people are the only thing that actually threatens feminist power, and when they grew too large in number (the wave of colonisers), trannies stopped being an example of what could happen if a man is weak, and started becoming an example of what a man *could do* if he was weak: he could join a growing group that takes power away from women, “and that is very different.”
The tranny agenda was easily blamed for failure by the right and left wing, because both wings are thoroughly feminist and dedicated to the service of women at the expense of men. The growing number of trannies threatens this agenda, as they admit.
So, what now?
Well, we have tens of thousands of young people who underwent permanent physical transition. We also have laws on the books that prevent trans discrimination. Those two things aren’t going away. Therefore, it is appropriate to double down and support the agenda even more thoroughly. Because for our purposes, trannies are a battering ram against feminism, and feminism is the #1 cause of male sexual oppression for both heterosexuals and homosexuals, and the #1 cause of government tyranny in the form of “protect the children” arguments.
I’m open to being wrong, but this seems very clear.
I see your logic, HIG, and I totally share your view that feminism in its worst (female supremacist) strains is oppressive and should be fought.
However, as with trans activism, the most extreme and objectionable manifestations are not the whole story. The worst feminism sees a zero-sum game: for us women to win, you men must lose. The best feminism sees a win-win scenario: fairness and human rights for all.
And that includes fairness and human rights for trans people. Their rights and best interests (an expression I use in connection with gender dysphoric kids who have not yet reached a properly informed, considered view) should be judged on their own merits. “Trannies” should not just be used either as cheaply expendable pawns in a political chess game, nor indeed merely as candidates for useful promotion on the eighth rank.
Although I have not yet seen these feminists who are concerned with fairness and human rights for men (lol), I can certainly agree with this more moderate view that perhaps more artfully states my aforementioned points.
It’s a while back (1980), but I was impressed by Janet Radcliffe Richards’ book, The Sceptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry.
Slightly off topic, I do not blame capitalism per se for the corruption of the American medical establishment. Regulatory capture is, after all, a product of state intervention in a market, not of the free market itself. As “el gato malo”, the feline reincarnation of e. e. cummings, says, “healthcare is not too important to be left to free markets. it’s too important not to be.”
Having said that, I am ready to step off my libertarian soapbox and praise your excellent essay.
Thanks, Brian, for your overall approval.
>I do not blame capitalism per se for the corruption of the American medical establishment.
You are absolutely right that all human institutions are corruptible: church, state, companies, even “watchdog” bodies set up to root out bad practice. I suppose the only answer we have is eternal vigilance, challenge, and renewal. Maybe not permanent revolution but constant reform.
Corruption and in particular contradictory corruption, is the very essence behind the political, medical and social science operatives. At the moment American politics are being once more heralded as everything in a Democratic rights for gender social diversion is labelled pedophilia. In the Democratic case those who are also labelled pedophiles, to serve as a law assisted olive branch. Sacrifices to the cause of denying children rights for sexual and gender choice, as well as controlling families with a persistent bogeyman to keep the moral panic machine for its own uses. Whilst also preventing what is a human rights issue for MAPS, to also live lives in constant persecution, fear, isolation. In truth they are political prisoners without the opportunity to be refugees.
Both Democrat and Republicans are equally corrupt and both equally have sidelined with the feminist oppression of MAPS for literal decades.
As a MAP, I find it hard to find empathy to Trans movements, Gay movements or any social sexual liberation fad of the day… because they too are very vindictive of us, choosing to sideline with these label us with the molesters, rapists and those who have done serious harm to children without a shred of care. This is not what a MAP is !!
Yet those who call people out as bigamists and misogynists, for whoever do not understand them.. it’s very one sided and almost narcissistic. MAPS also do not have this option.
However in the same breath, Trans movements and in particular many who pushed kids into the drag world, also incidentally have a degree of militancy, that is pro the “demasculinization” of male gender by lifestyle choice. Where the lack of a proper male role model was replaces by lesbian couples who also see male gender as either potential rapists or/ and homophobic animals that need social reeducation. They may barrage the debate that children should have the right to choose gender, to choose whatever pronoun they wish to identify but sexual liberation is a long way off. How can one understand gender orientation when they have not had the opportunity of honest feelings, crushes, attractions. All children do this however both political sides forbid these choices down to young people being unready.
The truth is not the children who are unready, but of parents with the fear they would be replaced in affection by a stranger. The feelings of reactionary fear, loss and replacement.
This does not go away, as these feelings are mirrored in fathers scrutinizing their adult daughters boyfriends or Mothers harboring deep seated discomfort in women taking sons affections away from them.
Some may say this is the beginning of child liberation, to me its anything but.
>The truth is not the children who are unready, but of parents with the fear they would be replaced in affection by a stranger.
Yes, I suspect this is a significant factor.