The dog that didn’t bark
You know, it’s just occurred to me to wonder something. I don’t know why it took me so long. What I wonder is: if the trans ideology is based on truth – if it really is true that people can be born in the wrong body – why are there not whole bookshelves full of accounts of the experience? Why has this truth been hidden from us for so long? Why didn’t we already know about it, before 2010 or whatever it was? Why aren’t there memoirs and autobiographies and biographies and histories telling us about it?
There are of course memoirs and novels and so on that express discontent with the rules of gender, including some with a wish one could be the other gender. There’s Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. There are gripes and thought experiments; there are Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Eyre and Nancy Blackett. But are there rows and rows of books about people adamantly insisting that they literally are the sex that’s the opposite of their bodies? Not that I know of.
Well if the core claim of the ideology were true, there would be. We would already know all about it, because we would have been told, for centuries. It wouldn’t have just popped up in the last ten or twenty or fifty years.
Well, of course, that just shows how thoroughly and completely the trans are oppressed! All mention of people identifying as a sex other than their birth–a thing that clearly happened all the time–has been eradicated by the Cispiracy, generation after generation. Only the most current generation of trans, Special as they are, have been able to overcome this oppression to make themselves known!
*Ahem* Sorry, must’ve had Kool-aid for breakfast.
Oh, and of course, to give it a further patina of progressiveness, there will be the usual Two-Soul bullshit, where non-Western, non-modern societies are assumed to have had a totally accepting approach to sex-swapping, and thus it’s only them evil colonialists* that kept white people from learning all this, until now.
*: Don’t get me wrong: for the most part, colonialists were evil by any definition of the word. They just weren’t that competent, even when they were TRYING to be evil and genocidal. Native Americans and the African Diaspora both managed to hold on despite literal centuries of oppression and extermination tactics. Also, if the various oppressed tribal societies had been openly accepting of men-as-women and vice-versa, and the Europeans had discovered that fact, then they wouldn’t have suppressed awareness of it, they would’ve lauded it as another reason why these heathens needed Jesus.
The one I always wonder about is, if children and teens will necessarily resort to suicide if their gender identities are not immediately and enthusiastically acknowledged, and if there have always been roughly the same percentage of ‘trans’ people in the population (they were just so discriminated against, like left-handed people, that we were just not aware of them until the stigma started to be lifted), and if the whole gender-affirming thing has only been happening to such a great extent for the past few years, where’s the epidemic of child and teen suicide? We should be able to track this in the records, and clearly we as a society would have been much more, and much sooner, aware of a mysterious malady that was taking the lives of a regular percentage of children and young people.
You missed a trick in not flagging Arthur Ransome’s introducing us to Dick Calum significantly before Hans Asperger had even published, much less been laundered into the contemporary jargon of neurodiversity.
I don’t remember Dick and Dorothea as clearly as I do the Blacketts, I admit it.
Found this. Good stuff.
https://dogearedreader.home.blog/2020/11/28/winter-holiday-arthur-ransome/
Back when I first began discussing this issue with trans activists, I was regularly assured that trans ppl knew they were trans from an early age, spontaneously announced it, and were persistent, consistent, and insistent. This was strong evidence that the condition was innate and based in the brain (similar to being gay.) Gender clinics weren’t rubber stamping casual claims, but diligently affirming only these patients. Commenters who identified as trans all claimed to fit this profile.
Then I noticed something strange. I started seeing stories of trans people who only realized they were trans when they heard about other people being trans. It wasn’t contagion — far from it. And this could happen at any age. “I didn’t know that was a possibility.” Some of the same people who were feeding me the fact that it’s persistent, consistent, and insistent right out of the womb were now talking about how education was important because realizing you’re transgender can be a slow process which requires role models in order to overcome cisnormative indoctrination.
So Genderists could pull out this excuse for the lack of historical and literary record: back then, it might not have occurred to trans people that they were trans. They needn’t get rid of the core claim of innate gender identity which cannot be denied. The ideology and its adherents can easily stretch to include both.
The truth recently crystallized for me when I realized all the “explanations” offered by people claiming to Be the opposite sex boil down to some combination of varying degrees of homophobia, misogyny, and narcissism. So yeah, people who are homophobic, misogynist narcissists have always been there. People somehow born into a body that’s not their own? Hogwash.
Well quite. It might indeed not have occurred to people that they were trans…so it might be that they weren’t trans. They might have had a profound longing to be the other sex, without being “trans,” because there was no “trans” to be. It all turns on that. I’ve said all along, even as PZ’s thugs hurled rocks in my direction, that I get the profound longing part. I get not wanting to be the sex one is. It’s that last step, to “longing to be=is”, that I can’t make.
It’s a bit like thinking that longing to be immortal=being immortal. It doesn’t work that way.
There’s Stephen in The Well of Loneliness. Radclyffe Hall’s protagonist has what reads like a textbook case of gender dysphoria. Of course, Stephen outgrows her dysphoria, and TWOL is known as a novel about a lesbian’s (not a “trans man’s”) life.
Too bad contemporary critics haven’t noticed the connection between the homophobia that ravages young Stephen’s Victorian childhood and her longing to be a boy, or her trajectory from would-be boy to (intact) lesbian. I wonder if contemporary readers even recognize the parallel with current events.
You must be looking in the wrong places, Ophelia.
I give you Horde member, Silentbob (this will be the last quote from that ‘discussion’: I promise).
See? That’s indisputable. Not only ancient but intrinsic, too. An intrinsic characteristic is by definition an essential characteristic: musical instruments are an intrinsic part of an orchestra; they are essential to its existence. No instruments means no orchestra. I’m not sure exactly what characteristics rely on trans, but by now we should know that the TRAs only supply the abstracts; filling in the blanks is our job.
Maybe he meant ‘innate’. Or maybe not. The Humpty Dumpty rules of language don’t make for clear communication.
Saying ‘we have evidence’ or ‘there is evidence’ is not the same as presenting evidence. There are a lot of people who claim to have evidence for bigfoot; sure. Show us the evidence. Subject it to rigorous review and repetition to see if the claims hold up. Then you’ll have evidence.
By the way, how do they know infants know they are trans from birth? There are still a lot of limits to what we can learn about infants and what they think/feel. I always claim I was born wanting to go to college, but clearly that is ridiculous. To claim a child knows it is the opposite sex/gender before there is any concept of sex/gender in their little infant mind is a stretch. (Same with gay, though I have no problem believing gay people are born that way. I just think claims to know what an infant is feeling or thinking are ridiculous.)
By the time we are able to get reliable information on thoughts/feelings about gender or other things, the child has already been subjected to socialization, and in many ways we don’t even know what socialization they’ve gone through. Oh, we can watch the child in the home, sure. Or maybe in the school. But there are so many ways of imparting socialization, and most of us in the adult world don’t even know we’re doing it.
I remember the recent thread in which the BBC was trying to “explain” to parents the nuts and bolts of this confusing Brave New World of Gender. I remember commenting then that it was all new to parents because it all new period. If being born into the wrong body was a real thing, then at least some parents would have experienced it themselves. But no. It’s all so new because it’s impossible bullshit that was invented five minutes ago, but claims to have been around since always.
This is the beauty of the “trans umbrella’s” nebulous definitions, forced teaming, and insidious mission creep. By laying claim to anyone who felt uncomfortable in their assigned “gender role,” anyone who was ever gender non-conforming is magically, retroactively transed, in the genderist version of Mormon “baptism” of people long dead. A woman trying to pass as a man in order to escape the societal restrictions on her sex and live a more fulfilling life in a profession barred to women? Trans. Hatshepsut taking the title of Pharoah and portrayed with the traditional false beard worn to make the connection between the ruler and the god Osiris? Trans. Female skeletal remains unearthed in archaeological digs surrounded by traditionally “male-coded” grave goods? Trans. See, trans people have always existed. /s
I believe it was a link left here in a recent thread B&W to bring a poster who wasn’t familiar with the (trans-appropriated First Nations) concept of “two spirit” people up to speed, in which it was pointed out that the two spirit concept was not universal to the cultures inhabiting North America. Ironically, it was found in those nations which tended to have more rigid, sexed gender roles than in those, like the Iroguois/Haudenosaunee, which were more egalitarian, and in which women held much more power.
As an interesting side note: I’ve noticed in Canadian usage a relatively recent trend to use “2S” as a prefix in the LGBT ect. alphabet soup forced teaming label rather than as a suffix, where it had been until the past few months, tacked on as an afterthought. So now I’ll often see it written as 2SLGBT….My guess is that the Two Spirit term has been bolted onto the front to act as a shield or plow, behind which the rest of the acronym (but especially the T) can ride into the conversation, taking advantage of the genuine feelings of regret and contrition that much of Canadian society is now showing for the continuing, deliberate human disaster that has been and is the relationship between First Nations peoples and the invading European settler society that claimed the continent as a matter of right.
One of the things that alerted me to the power of social contagion predates my exposure to and awareness of any concept of “gender identity.” In the 1980s and 1990s (not certain of the exact time frame), a number of isolated, remote, and impoverished First Nations communities suffered incidents of teen suicide. This was a consequence of the (continuing) intergenerational trauma that still plagues First Nations peoples still trying to recover from centuries of government policy aimed at eradicating their cultures, of which residential schools were one of the main weapons. These deaths often involved substance abuse (alcohol, glue). But one of the things these communities had to contend with was the potential for copycat teen suicides that sometimes followed an intial death. Maybe they weren’t all actually suicide attempts; some might have been accidental overdoses, unheeded cries or help, or dangerous behaviour that resulted in unintentional deaths. But the fact that killing yourself could, to put it crudely, catch on as a fad was eye-opening and mind blowing. Risky behavior is one thing. But fatal behaviour? Wow. If suicide can spread through social contagion, then I’m guessing pretty much anything less drastic could as well.
How many fragile, impressionable teens can resist the extra attention, concern, and love-bombing that seem to be part of the package that come with claiming a “trans identity?” Schools fly a flag for you. They have special policies geared to you and your “needs.” They treat you with a respect that verges on the fearful. Teachers will conspire with you against your parents (who just don’t get you, just like they said online). How cool is that?! Any tendencies you might have towards narcissism will be cultivated rather than challenged or corrected. You’re not boring and ordinary. You’re special, sacred even! No more broccoli for you: it’s ice cream all the way! What a thrill it must be to feel oneself included in a “community” that gets adults to wear T-shirts emblazoned with PROTECT TRANS KIDS featuring the motifs of knives or automatic weapons?
#2 guest
Building on that point, where is the reduction in adolescent suicide in those areas that enabled transitioning, starting from when they enabled it? In USA, with its patchwork quilt of enabling or blocking transitioning, where is the trend difference between those states? The response I expect from TRAs is that the trans population is too tiny to be visible in such statistics… in which case, how did they arrive at there being a suicide risk at all?
One of the things that many people who argue for the existence of creatures like bigfoot/sasquatch, Mokele-mbembe, or the Loch Ness Monster don’t seem to realize or appreciate is that their claims entail perforce the continued existence through time of an entire population of their preferred cryptid(s). A population and a history. One means more, perhaps many. Now means yesterday, as well as long before. The secretive, hidden existence of a whole bunch of large creatures over long periods of time in the face of multiple, repeated expeditions actively seeking them is much less likely than supposed, impossible singletons. Unless they’re supernatural, any animal needed parents, grandparents, etc. Specimens would have been seen, hunted, eaten and/or stuffed and mounted in museums long ago.
Like the cryptozoologists saddled with bigger claims than they realize they’re defending (an entire breeding population of large animals with an invisible, unevidenced past, rather than just a single, elusive specimen), transgenderists have their own load of unclaimed baggage that they are in no hurry to pick up, apparently happy to leave it circling endlessly on the luggage carousel, hoping that nobody notices it. They depend upon the existence of some kind of gendered soul, but offer no proof of its reality, no physiological origin, or seat of residence, and no reliable, independent test for its presence or nature, beyond stereotype and affectation. “I slink, therefore I’m Femme.” This smuggling of unacknowledged Cartesian dualism is but one problem that hides within genderist claims. How it is able to accommodate the contradictory and incommensurate states of transgender, gender fluid and nonbinary “identities” within its already ill-defined remit is a question that is left unasked.
At least cryptozoologists go looking for their quarry, they have put their money (or, occasionally, someone else’s) where their mouths are. Genderists are content to leave it all a matter of faith. Vague definitions and verbal slight of hand keep things from getting too real or solid. Mustn’t try dissecting the Mysteries of the Faith. And like the Church of old, they reserve to themselves the right to punish heretics who question that faith.
A serious scientist can risk ruining their career if they admit to believing in cryptids, though the consequences for doing so do not spread much farther than their own livelihood and credibility. There are plenty of serious scientists who seem quite happy to believe in genderist claims; it is often the unbelievers who are at risk of sanction and ostracism.
Eventually, however, reality will win because it persists and endures. It will still be their long after the tweets that don’t age well, and the slanted, dishonest reportage that tries to obscure it. It only has to do nothing but wait. In the meantime their is real harm. Reality can’t win fast enough. The consequences of this belief, and its translation into practice, go far beyond those who espouse it. Yes, their reputations will eventually suffer because Reality (see above). If this were a battle that consisted solely of heated arguments by cloistered devotees hurling incomprehensible arguments at each other within the pages of obscure journals, we could safely ignore them. But the power of gender ideology reaches much farther than academia. It has gained influence in many ofthe fundamental institutions of the state and siciety, and it uses that influence to advance its demands and to punish its perceived enemies. This is academic argument with a body count amongst both prponents and opponents of transgenderism. Those who are seduced, ensnared and say “Yes” to its impossible promises, pay with their flesh and blood and fertility. Those who dare stand up and say “No” to its demands, particularly and especially women, are demonized, villified, slandered, cancelled, fired, bullied, threatened, harassed, and assaulted. In short, agree or disagree with a transgenderism powerful enough to enforce its will, you lose.
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