A world with
This is an odd question.
Meaning, do I want a world without people who are so unhappy in their own bodies that they wreck them in an attempt to be the other kind of body? Of course.
On the other hand if he means do I want a world where everyone conforms to gender rules, of course not. He’s apparently not bright enough to frame the question carefully.
And then he goes on to pretend he asked something different altogether.
Ah ah ah no you don’t, that’s not what you asked. You didn’t include the bit about being forced back into the closet.
He’s such a sleaze.
Here’s another question: do I want a word without gender ideology in it? Again: of course.
This reminds me of an episode where Richard Dawkins talked/wrote about wanting to eradicate religion and people claiming he wanted to kill religious people or words to that effect.
Would I want a world without trans people in it?
There are trans ppl who accept that they haven’t changed sex, don’t want to enter single-sex spaces, and don’t believe TWAW or TMAM. I would be okay with that.
Though in an ideal world these people would have gone through the therapy which allowed them to accept that they were GNC, or dealt with trauma, or otherwise resolved any painful feelings of dysphoria without the need for drastic reconstruction.
What do i think of people who say “no?”
I think they’re mistaken, and don’t appreciate the issue or the problems.
What makes them “trans”, then?
GW, I think Sastra is referring to those that have physically transitioned, presumably in order to alleviate distress linked to their sexed anatomy, yet recognise that they are not literally the other sex.
Yes, Debbie Hayton and Buck Angel come to mind.
This is similar to people who insist when I talk about population issues that I want to kill people – usually people of color. Uh, what?
@4: Ah, so the old, 1980s /1990s meaning of “transsexual”.
And of course by “physically transitioned” you mean “underwent some surgeries to make their bodies superficially resemble the other sex.”
@5: Though as far as I know Debbie Hayton uses women’s toilets and other private spaces.
@GW;
I don’t think so. At any rate he (think he’s okay with either pronoun) just tweeted approvingly of British “ female politicians launching a biology policy unit to stop gender ideology compromising women’s & children’s rights.”
Do you want a world without trans people?
No. Trans people have always existed and will probably always exist and the world I wish is a world where nobody really cares.
We do not object to trans people or any gender-non-conforming people, everyone should be free to do what they want, provided it is not infringing on the rights and liberties of other people.
We object to enforcing your fantasies onto others, just like religion usually does. Atheists usually do not wish to kill religious people, only to limit the power of religion over politics and citizen life.
We object to the consequences of current trans dogma on the rights of women, their erasure at multiple levels and the risks it is posing to them in public areas and matters.
We object to the abject blackmailing of current trans dogma, the projection of misogyny and violence against women in general and feminists in particular. (See below if you don’t see what I mean). Trans activism is filled with abuse and is very dirty. Consider laundry, because it smells of rot.
I’m not asking if you want to put us in death camps,
If you’re not asking this, why putting it up as if gender critical people would? Of course, your point is tarnishing the debate in bad faith, it’s all what you want. Did you miss my point about blackmail, this is the place you should consider introspection, though I’m unsure if you can.
I’m asking if we exist in your utopian future
The use of utopian is mere projection here. It’s much more than simply being self-conscious, it’s purely delusional about your sense of victory, and completely at stake with your self-victimizing grandiloquent attitude.
Trans people will exist in my utopian future, they may not be as abusive as you are though, hopefully.
If yes, what do you think of people who say no? If no, how do you justify that?
I think many of them are mistaken, just like people who have very different political opinions than mines. I don’t have to justify this, because hell I’m not here to police what people think.
I think many others, just like you, are just unfortunately idiots and they still have a right to exist.
Dear KM, I am a non-native speaker, and I never thought I have to ever use such a word, but really you’re just a jerk (edited for a weaker word). In my utopian future, you would certainly not exist, but that’s not because of transness.
Laurent, I can’t tell if he doesn’t understand what gender skeptics think. Or if he deliberately tweets these things even though he knows better. I used to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I am starting to see that such generosity is wasted on such a jerk.
Mike, I can’t tell neither for sure.
But Hanlon’s razor would imply stupidity levels beyond my own credulity. It’s simply not possible.
I’m only left with bad faith and sociopathic personality, and in his case he’s attempting a guilt trip with his reference to death camp (and he should be ashamed for that). That’s enough to settle the case for me.
The only remaining hypothesis if I were to grant him a last chance would be he be brainwashed like hell, but even so I would need an explanation as to why he does not realise what is happening to him. It just does not make any more sense.
I don’t believe this is true, at least not in the sense in which the current “trans” movement defines it. I believe that there have always been people who chafe at the gendered restrictions forced upon them by reason of their sex. They resist and fight the arbitrary limitations their cultures place on them because of “traditional” sex-based, stereotypical roles. I doubt any of them would have seen themselves as being the opposite sex. I would call these people “gender non-conforming,” not “trans.”
I also believe that many cultures, both present and past, make, or have made, allowances and accomodations for some people to play within and between their society’s particular gender roles, whatever they are. I don’t imagine anyone in any of those cultures would ever dream of trying to have children with males who are playing within the traditionally “female” roles. None of these cultures would accept the equivalent of “TWAW.”
I think that to project our current, faddish (and incoherent) concept of “transness” into the past is presumptively anachronistic. I, Joan, anyone? It is equally dishonest to apply this very recent, peculiar, and Western concept onto, and over, the completely different understandings of the structures and workings of gender roles as they have been invented, developed and practiced in these other cultures. Nor is it legitimate to claim these cultures’ practices as identical to or antecedent to Euro-American concepts of “transness.” It’s as colonial, imperialistic, and appropriative as gender ideologues accuse “Western, cisheteronormative” bigots of being. The combination of the two tendencies, shameless anachronism and Imperial transing, is the Genderist version of an unholy mash-up Whig History, von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods?” and any number of New Age pop-bastardizations of the traditions of other cultures.
Again, it’s roughly equivalent to arguing that scientists working to cure cancer are engaged in a genocidal project since their end goal is a world without cancer patients – exactly like Hitler’s end goal was a world without jews!!! /s
For some reason you don’t hear many cancer patients saying*:
Sometimes (quite often in fact) it really does matter how you get there…
Laurent #9
It depends on what you mean by “trans”, though. As Helen Joyce has pointed out, one major source of confusion in these debates is that we keep using the word “trans” as if it meant one thing, when in fact there is very little that unites:
• A “girly” boy, likely to grow up gay.
• A teenage girl who comes to see herself as a boy (or non-binary) through social contagion from friends and online influencers.
• A porn-crazed straight male fetishist who gets aroused at the thought of being his own jerk-off fantasy.
As I have previously put it, if “sissies” and “tomboys” were in charge of contemporary “trans” activism, it would probably rank very low on my list of concerns but that’s not the trans rights movement we have now.
I don’t have a “Utopia” (human brain wiring effectively rules out any utopian human society – or even a good one), but if I had my way, there would be no gender stereotypes, and hence no gender dysphoria caused by failure to live up to them. If no male perv “gets off” ever again, the world is none the worse for it…
* Probably just a matter of time, though. This is where this whole idiotic obsession with “identities” leads you.
(And, of course, saying that “trans people…will always exist” implies that people will always exist, which seems increasingly unlikely, and not just because of the inevitable heat death of the universe. If I had to guess, I’d say the last generation of Homo sapiens to die of old age is already here. If there are still people hundred years from now, they will be too busy with their moment-to-moment survival to worry about pronouns)
Since the implication is obviously omfg genocide, how about we just turn the question around: For all the trans rights activists, do you want a world without gender skeptics, transphobes, or TERFs? For all the anti-racism activists, do you want a world without racists?
It’s a funny thing how reflecting someone’s bullshit back at them often puts them in a bind. If they say yes, they subject themselves to their own gotcha; if they say no, they destroy their own activism.
I feel like this rhetoric runs in parallel to that of some disability rights activists, deaf activists who oppose cochlear implants as destroying deaf culture, autism advocates who oppose therapies to help reduce or eliminate autistic behaviors, that instead we need to embrace “neurodiversity” just like gender diversity/gender expansiveness, etc. There is research being done on treatments for children with Down Syndrome that can improve their cognitive abilities, it would not be a “cure” but it would help them live fuller, independent lives, but this leads to similar claims of, if not genocide, eliminationism. Which is so ironic because if there were treatments for Down Syndrome that could help those children become functionally independent, I would bet more women would opt to continue a pregnancy vs have an abortion if they got a prenantal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.
The idea that we’re all perfect how we are born gets twisted by TRAs and disability rights advocates to make any attempts to cure or repair disabilities “genocidal”. Of course, the irony is overwhelming where a surgery to restore a child’s ability to hear is verboten, but surgeries to remove or create body parts, leading to sterility and lack of sexual function, is “life saving health care”.
I think the other big sleight of hand at work here is equating being trans with being gender nonconforming. This rhetorical tactic is trying to say Gender Critical feminists not only want to eliminate trans people, but they want to eliminate people who don’t conform to the societal stereotypes for their sex. It completely misses the point that GC feminists don’t believe we have a “gender identity” and nothing about how we dress, how we behave, or who we sleep with changes that.
I want a world where no one feels they have to physically alter their bodies to be happy, where a gay boy and lesbian girl are free of the homophobia that makes them feel the only way they can live the life they want is to alter their bodies and claim to be the opposite sex. Where a heterosexual girl does not feel targeted, devalued, and unsafe in her female body, so worthless because of misogyny (familial or societal) that the only way out she sees is to make her body appear male and claim a male identity. And a society where pubescent boys can find treatment for AGP behaviors before it becomes their identity and way of life.
I do think there will be people who can’t get to the point where they make peace with their body and natal sex. There are people for whom no treatment, psychological, medical, etc. helps them achieve peace. I believe we can make space in society for people who can’t find relief any other way than transition. But that number is incredibly small and doesn’t require rewriting laws and language to accommodate them.
[…] a comment by Eava on A world […]
Re #13
Given the “around forever” aspect, I might add to your excellent list:
• Women in the past who have pretended to be men in order to escape the misogynist cultural restraints imposed on them;
• People of either sex who cross-dressed without actually claiming to be the other sex.
Both of those categories have been used to boost “trans” examples past and present.
Re #15
I would expect a disturbing number of respondents might say, “Yes, I want a world without TERFs and racists, and I’m fully behind lining them up against the wall in front of a firing squad.” That they might expect gender-critical people to want the same for “trans” people is not a big stretch.
Quite possibly true. At least they’d be saying it aloud (or tweeting), which would put their hypocrisy, bloodlust, and projection on record.
Incidentally, this tweet is rumoured to be a trap; supposedly trans activists are ganging up on small accounts that reply and trying to goad them into saying something reportable. No idea whether that’s true, though.
The question itself is a trap, of course. Hatey is surely referring in a dog-whistly way to the widely and deliberately misinterpreted conversation between Helens Joyce and Staniland, in which the former says the goal should be to reduce the number of people transitioning because it so rarely addresses a person’s underlying issues and the outcomes are so often suboptimal for long term physical or mental health. Helen, of course, was arguing for a world where everyone is happier and gets the help they need to keep them that way, but it has been cast as her wanting to round trans people up into concentration camps and exterminate them. This isn’t an exaggeration, I’ve been told this by trans activists a dozen times.
So I think Monty is just using that as fuel for likes and retweets. it’s clickbait.
I’d like to live in a world where children are not transitioned – medically or socially – and in which medical transition for adults happens in a very sedate and considered fashion. I have some good friends who are MtF transexuals. They don’t buy into gender nonsense although one very much did in his youth. They now consider themselves to be male and couldn’t care less about pronouns. They transitioned because of gender dysphoria and feel decades later that it was the right decision for them. They feel that superficially resembling females – as they put it – makes them more comfortable and far less stressed than they’d otherwise be. There’s no way of telling whether that’s true, of course, but the point is that they don’t regret what they did….. but don’t encourage others to do it without a great deal of thought, research and counselling. They are some of the most mentally healthy and self-aware people I know, despite the extreme measures they’ve taken with their own bodies.