Hmmm…. So how exactly is it Ok to draw a parallel between transubstantiation and transgenderism. As a Catholic parent of a son sucked into the gender cult, you cannot imagine how offensive that is. Mr. Kay, I am quite disappointed in you.
Please don’t use the name of a feminine hygiene product (douche bag) as a term of abuse for men you want to insult. There is nothing repulsive in a woman using a douche bag to rinse her vagina after sex or at the end of her period, except in the mind of men who find women’s genitals and female bodily functions repulsive.
"Rather, they’re coming from feminists and LGB activists who are tired of seeing their movements get hijacked by male narcissists demanding sexual access to lesbians, ghoulish clinicians eager to convince gay autistic girls that they’re actually 'straight' trans boys, and cynical progressives who dumped their feminist convictions in favour of what is effectively a men’s rights movement in 'intersectional' fishnet cosplay."
As a gay man in my late 60s who was a sissy boy in the late 50s and early 60s, I fear that many of today's sissies will not be permitted to develop normally into gay men if they happen to be born into a family of trans "allies" in a progressive state where public and private institutions promote gender identity ideology.
Gender fluidity may be admired in queer circles, but in many parts of the trans world traditional sexual stereotypes (in trans speak, gender stereotypes) serve as makers of a child's sex or, in the trans lexicon, gender. From an early age I was clearly gender nonconfoming. No snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails for me. I was sugar and spice and everything nice. I detested horseplay and had no interest in chasing balls around like a frenzied pup. Thought I never thought of myself as anything other than a boy, I threw away my cap guns and loved playing with my Barbie doll.
Today that would be enough to get an unfortunate proto-gay sissy classified as a girl, put into a dress and set on the path to social transition. In blue states most public schools make a conspicuous show of their support for "LGBT" kids, but I fear that schools and other "affirming" institutions have been so thoroughly captured by gender identity ideology that they haven't developed separate policies, procedures and materials specifically for same-sex attracted youth.
Yes, very well put. The sanctimonious progressive douchebags are with us. I want to say "again", because I suspect they are somewhat like the 17-year cicadas, emerging when conditions are just right. This year we have Brood Beardsplainer. Before that there was....Brood Metrosexual? Brood Hipster? Sons of Brood LoveGuru and Brood BeatPoet?
"Genderwang channels the magical thinking of Christian transubstantiation"
Another example of Ray's Law of the Conservation of Irrationality. See, we used to think that all the magic and silliness attached to religion was a bug. NO! It is a feature. Monkeys simply must believe something silly, somehow their rationality requires this counterpoint. Sorta the same way that very well behaved Britons feel the need to become animals when soccer games happen -- they need the outlet and the better behaved they are most of the time, the worse behaved they'll be at the stadium.
So, religion used to give the monkeys a 'safe space' for their irrationality. They could believe that Jesus walked on water, for example, and be perfectly rational otherwise. Many exemplary scientists have been and are Catholic. But the 'rationalists' have killed Christianity, and the result is not a more rational world, but rather conserved irrationality has bubbled up in a much more dangerous way -- genderwang and wokeness in general. SO much better when we knew men couldn't get pregnant even if Jesus was born of a virgin, eh? Now it's the converse and ... well, here we are.
Some comments here, unlike the article itself, show that the barrier is flimsy and weak between opposition to the "Genderwang" cult (which is sanity and which I fully share) and an outgushing of pent-up homophobia and transphobia. As Genderwankers are capitalizing on the "last shall be first" predispositions of progressives, homophobes and transphobes are capitalizing on the backlash as an opening to, e.g., roll back gay marriage, that most sane and normalizing of new tolerances. Thus do extremes benefit only each other, and not the rest of us.
You write: "No system of beliefs built on this kind of tortured thinking and wilful rejection of reality can survive." I disagree.
Over the last several decades, male homosexual advocates have successfully conflated civil rights will biological fantasies.
No sane and civil person would now challenge the proposition that homosexual men and women should be fully protected by the laws of the land. However, along with this political revolution, homosexual men have successfully enforced two absurd myths: 1) the rectum is a sex organ; 2) persistent homosexuality is common in many other animal species.
I believe that these truly deranged claims have laid the groundwork for today's Genderwang madness.
Until homosexuality is recognized as a kind of birth defect - a misalignment of sexual anatomy and reproductive targeting behaviors - the engine of myth-making will power on at full throttle.
It's a great shame the Danish study missed the opportunity to tell us what we need to know: does transition reduce psychiatric morbidity and suicide? Their raw data could be re-analyzed if it were made available, but there seems to be a certain reluctance to even examine this question. One interesting tidbit has been published though—out of 15,000 kids referred to the Tavistock Clinic over a ten year period, there were four suicides. Rather suggests the "dead daughter or live son" dichotomy is hyperbole, doesn't it?
Jon, what I still have trouble with is that you and so many others (ex: Andrew Doyle, and so many others) expose credible evidence of this whackaloonery, when I share yet another example to others in conversation, they are in disbelief that this is a thing!
I don’t think it’s ending. I see no end in sight. Whatever, because I am really done having my reality stolen by .5% of the population and I’m done having everyone casually shrug this Sex Denialism cult. And as for kindness blah blah-I don’t want to feel obliged to appease people who hate their bodies. Particularly when everyone has basically dropped women on our heads. Life is hard everyone can carry their flipping bags. I’m done with this crap. I’m not gonna be nice anymore. I have nothing anyone can take so I’m gonna go for it. NoFear.
There are two key characteristics of this cult that stand out: 1) they came after children with the unapologetic intent to physically mutilate them; 2) they viciously attacked the livelihoods of those who dared question their insane delusions. That transformed this cult from an oddity to a danger to society.
Thanks Mr Kay for your pertinent and informative article. I have personal experience with gender dysphoria, and it is very disconcerting, to say the least.
Jonathan Kay: "For the most part, trans people are like everyone else, except that they have gender dysphoria, and have decided that the best way to deal with it is to indulge the fiction that they are members of the opposite sex."
Not sure that it is particularly wise for society to be indulging people's delusions, and I doubt that it is doing them any favours. Michele Goldberg's Slate article of several years ago interviewed transwoman "Helen Highwater" who had these cogent observations on that specific topic:
Goldberg: "Though 'trans women are women' has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a 'vicious lie.' ...."
And, in the same vein, Philip Wylie in his Generation of Vipers:
Wylie: "[Man] would learn that when he kids himself, or believes a lie, or deceives another man, he commits a crime as real and as destructive as the crime of deliberately running down a person with an automobile."
To make it three of a kind, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
AS: “We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: ‘But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.’ .... And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! “
Moot of course how we might actually define "male" and "female" -- and it IS a matter of definition. Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z so there are no definitions that qualify as gospel truth. A fact which has turned defining those categories into something of a political football to the detriment of both biology and society in general.
But by standard biological definitions -- i.e., to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless -- no transwoman is ever going to qualify as a female:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
In any case, quite a thorough delineation of the rot that transgenderism has wrought, so to speak. Though I think your depiction is something of strawman -- "gender identity" is not far removed from the maybe more philosophically and scientifically sound concept of personal identity:
Hmmm…. So how exactly is it Ok to draw a parallel between transubstantiation and transgenderism. As a Catholic parent of a son sucked into the gender cult, you cannot imagine how offensive that is. Mr. Kay, I am quite disappointed in you.
Please don’t use the name of a feminine hygiene product (douche bag) as a term of abuse for men you want to insult. There is nothing repulsive in a woman using a douche bag to rinse her vagina after sex or at the end of her period, except in the mind of men who find women’s genitals and female bodily functions repulsive.
"Rather, they’re coming from feminists and LGB activists who are tired of seeing their movements get hijacked by male narcissists demanding sexual access to lesbians, ghoulish clinicians eager to convince gay autistic girls that they’re actually 'straight' trans boys, and cynical progressives who dumped their feminist convictions in favour of what is effectively a men’s rights movement in 'intersectional' fishnet cosplay."
As a gay man in my late 60s who was a sissy boy in the late 50s and early 60s, I fear that many of today's sissies will not be permitted to develop normally into gay men if they happen to be born into a family of trans "allies" in a progressive state where public and private institutions promote gender identity ideology.
Gender fluidity may be admired in queer circles, but in many parts of the trans world traditional sexual stereotypes (in trans speak, gender stereotypes) serve as makers of a child's sex or, in the trans lexicon, gender. From an early age I was clearly gender nonconfoming. No snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails for me. I was sugar and spice and everything nice. I detested horseplay and had no interest in chasing balls around like a frenzied pup. Thought I never thought of myself as anything other than a boy, I threw away my cap guns and loved playing with my Barbie doll.
Today that would be enough to get an unfortunate proto-gay sissy classified as a girl, put into a dress and set on the path to social transition. In blue states most public schools make a conspicuous show of their support for "LGBT" kids, but I fear that schools and other "affirming" institutions have been so thoroughly captured by gender identity ideology that they haven't developed separate policies, procedures and materials specifically for same-sex attracted youth.
Yes, very well put. The sanctimonious progressive douchebags are with us. I want to say "again", because I suspect they are somewhat like the 17-year cicadas, emerging when conditions are just right. This year we have Brood Beardsplainer. Before that there was....Brood Metrosexual? Brood Hipster? Sons of Brood LoveGuru and Brood BeatPoet?
Pardon! 😂
"Genderwang channels the magical thinking of Christian transubstantiation"
Another example of Ray's Law of the Conservation of Irrationality. See, we used to think that all the magic and silliness attached to religion was a bug. NO! It is a feature. Monkeys simply must believe something silly, somehow their rationality requires this counterpoint. Sorta the same way that very well behaved Britons feel the need to become animals when soccer games happen -- they need the outlet and the better behaved they are most of the time, the worse behaved they'll be at the stadium.
So, religion used to give the monkeys a 'safe space' for their irrationality. They could believe that Jesus walked on water, for example, and be perfectly rational otherwise. Many exemplary scientists have been and are Catholic. But the 'rationalists' have killed Christianity, and the result is not a more rational world, but rather conserved irrationality has bubbled up in a much more dangerous way -- genderwang and wokeness in general. SO much better when we knew men couldn't get pregnant even if Jesus was born of a virgin, eh? Now it's the converse and ... well, here we are.
Some comments here, unlike the article itself, show that the barrier is flimsy and weak between opposition to the "Genderwang" cult (which is sanity and which I fully share) and an outgushing of pent-up homophobia and transphobia. As Genderwankers are capitalizing on the "last shall be first" predispositions of progressives, homophobes and transphobes are capitalizing on the backlash as an opening to, e.g., roll back gay marriage, that most sane and normalizing of new tolerances. Thus do extremes benefit only each other, and not the rest of us.
You write: "No system of beliefs built on this kind of tortured thinking and wilful rejection of reality can survive." I disagree.
Over the last several decades, male homosexual advocates have successfully conflated civil rights will biological fantasies.
No sane and civil person would now challenge the proposition that homosexual men and women should be fully protected by the laws of the land. However, along with this political revolution, homosexual men have successfully enforced two absurd myths: 1) the rectum is a sex organ; 2) persistent homosexuality is common in many other animal species.
I believe that these truly deranged claims have laid the groundwork for today's Genderwang madness.
Until homosexuality is recognized as a kind of birth defect - a misalignment of sexual anatomy and reproductive targeting behaviors - the engine of myth-making will power on at full throttle.
It's a great shame the Danish study missed the opportunity to tell us what we need to know: does transition reduce psychiatric morbidity and suicide? Their raw data could be re-analyzed if it were made available, but there seems to be a certain reluctance to even examine this question. One interesting tidbit has been published though—out of 15,000 kids referred to the Tavistock Clinic over a ten year period, there were four suicides. Rather suggests the "dead daughter or live son" dichotomy is hyperbole, doesn't it?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02287-7
Jon, what I still have trouble with is that you and so many others (ex: Andrew Doyle, and so many others) expose credible evidence of this whackaloonery, when I share yet another example to others in conversation, they are in disbelief that this is a thing!
Guess I’m hanging around the wrong “peoplekind”.
I don’t think it’s ending. I see no end in sight. Whatever, because I am really done having my reality stolen by .5% of the population and I’m done having everyone casually shrug this Sex Denialism cult. And as for kindness blah blah-I don’t want to feel obliged to appease people who hate their bodies. Particularly when everyone has basically dropped women on our heads. Life is hard everyone can carry their flipping bags. I’m done with this crap. I’m not gonna be nice anymore. I have nothing anyone can take so I’m gonna go for it. NoFear.
Fantastic. And more good news yesterday for LGB Alliance's Allison Bailey.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12279791/Gender-critical-barrister-Allison-Bailey-wins-substantial-damages-chambers.html
May i kindly request the links to the Quillette podcasts please. Id like to learn more. 🌳 ( i have a family member transitioning and it’s killing me)
There are two key characteristics of this cult that stand out: 1) they came after children with the unapologetic intent to physically mutilate them; 2) they viciously attacked the livelihoods of those who dared question their insane delusions. That transformed this cult from an oddity to a danger to society.
Thanks Mr Kay for your pertinent and informative article. I have personal experience with gender dysphoria, and it is very disconcerting, to say the least.
Jonathan Kay: "For the most part, trans people are like everyone else, except that they have gender dysphoria, and have decided that the best way to deal with it is to indulge the fiction that they are members of the opposite sex."
Not sure that it is particularly wise for society to be indulging people's delusions, and I doubt that it is doing them any favours. Michele Goldberg's Slate article of several years ago interviewed transwoman "Helen Highwater" who had these cogent observations on that specific topic:
Goldberg: "Though 'trans women are women' has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a 'vicious lie.' ...."
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/gender-critical-trans-women-the-apostates-of-the-trans-rights-movement.html
And, in the same vein, Philip Wylie in his Generation of Vipers:
Wylie: "[Man] would learn that when he kids himself, or believes a lie, or deceives another man, he commits a crime as real and as destructive as the crime of deliberately running down a person with an automobile."
https://vultureofcritique.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/philip-wylie-generation-of-vipers.pdf
To make it three of a kind, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
AS: “We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: ‘But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.’ .... And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! “
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/50709343-live-not-by-lies
Moot of course how we might actually define "male" and "female" -- and it IS a matter of definition. Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z so there are no definitions that qualify as gospel truth. A fact which has turned defining those categories into something of a political football to the detriment of both biology and society in general.
But by standard biological definitions -- i.e., to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless -- no transwoman is ever going to qualify as a female:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
In any case, quite a thorough delineation of the rot that transgenderism has wrought, so to speak. Though I think your depiction is something of strawman -- "gender identity" is not far removed from the maybe more philosophically and scientifically sound concept of personal identity:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/