Debunk first, then mock
A very profound and serious point.
See also: an irregular verb in the “Yes Minister” sense.
That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it. I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist.
We see a lot of that these days.
Shades of “lesbians in pubs” from a few years back. “How dare dare the people we dislike do. . .things.
(For some reason I read that abstract in a mock David Attenborough voice which seems a bit unfair to David Attenborough but completely fair to the abstract.)
The paper’s abstract says it “compared the identified categories, belief systems, and group dynamics” of TERFs. But TERFism is really pretty simple, isn’t it? The belief that men don’t belong in women’s spaces. What we really need is an equivalent analysis of genderism.
I’d really like to see a peer-reviewed phylogeny of trans categories, etc.! Transgenderism isn’t a single thing, and it hasn’t been adequately studied (since doing so would be “literal violence”…). Is “gender dysphoria” affecting males and females actually two distinct phenomena with separate causes? What about age at onset, and its prevalence among homosexuals? How frequently is “transgenderism” a misdiagnosis of autism or depression, and how can we correct this? What about social contagion, parental influence, sexual fetishism? That would be an interesting and valuable study. It seems to me that at this point, “gender dysphoria” is a wastebasket_diagnosis.
Terfism is even simpler than men don’t belong in women’s spaces. It’s just: men are not women. Four short words.
Peter N, not to mention the rapidly multiplying and mutating genders. What is the difference, for instance, between asexual and aromantic? Between non-binary and everyone else? And so forth…
This sort of study would dismantle transgenderism altogether, undoing all the institutional capture work that the forced-teaming of the LGBTQetc “community”/Trans Umbrella has let them get away with. Examination is anathema. Even setting aside the basic dishonesty of the foundational claims that humans can a) be born into the “wrong” body, and b) change sex, any scrutiny of “gender identity” or “transness” is a threat to the entire gender confection. Not only does it whittle away the numbers of the “community” sub-demographic by sub-demographic, it dissipates the obscuring smokescreen of “transness” that is supposed to unify and solidify this congeries of disparate and irreconcilable conditions and behaviours.
Let’s look at Peter N’s research proposal questions in more detail:
Is “gender dysphoria” affecting males and females actually two distinct phenomena with separate causes? I’ve come to believe that they are. Males seem to want to break into “womanhood” and take it over. Females are trying to escape it. If they’re not the same thing, you shouldn’t call them the same thing.
What about age at onset, and its prevalence among homosexuals?
I don’t believe there are any “trans kids.” They are made, not born. I think it’s parents trying to “trans away the gay”. If that wasn’t happening, how many “trans kids” would grow out of it? My understanding is that it would be most of them. Desistance is something that trans activists should be able to explain. The same with detransitionong?
How frequently is “transgenderism” a misdiagnosis of autism or depression, and how can we correct this? Handwaving away comorbidities doesn’t solve them; transing them doesn’t treat them, or make them go away. Imposing transness on these people does not make them trans.
What about social contagion, parental influence, sexual fetishism? Each of these is a separate “gateway” into transness. Why lump them into together? What does any of them have to do with the supposed “born in the wrong body” explanation? If it can be “induced”, how can it be innate?
Any one of these questions threatens to bring down the whole house of cards. But we’re not allowed to ask them. We’re not supposed to poke and prod. We’re supposed to just accept the soundness of all of this and use these ideas as a foundation upon which base medical practice and legal structures, among other things. Who in their right mind would just take their word for it, and build anything on top of this miasmic swamp of delusional bullshit? And once cracks started to appear, who wouldn’t start looking a little more carefully at the soundness of the building site and the quality of construction?
“It seems to me that at this point, “gender dysphoria” is a wastebasket_diagnosis.”
Well, you know what they say; garbage in, garbage out.
iknklst #4
On the WebMD page on genders, they were listed alphabetically and it was like they were all long-winded ways to say the same thing. Yes, there were 72 if them, but they were weighted towards the beginning of the alphabet and sparse towards the end as if they got tired of the game after a while. (citations none.)
I dare say one could do a study of the online group dynamics of the gender critical movement, the trans rights movement, the skeptic movement, the gaming movement, the environmental movement, the Never-Trump movement, or just about any movement whatsoever. There’s bound to be rich data in there concerning schisms and focuses and how many people forward articles without actually reading them. It’s simple enough to avoid using insulting exonyms like “TERF” or “Tree-Huggers” and making what are probably spurious comparisons to “other authoritarian movements” while implying Hitler would have joined this one. You could do a legitimate study.
But the study’s authors tip their hand: this is not that kind of study.
I have less problems with trans activists doing pointless data-gathering about feminist literature and its relation to internet communities than I do with their writing those nasty little psychological analyses about what horrible mental disorders the people who disagree with them must have. Those remind me of the treatises theists used to churn out “explaining” the twisted mindset of the atheist. In both cases the assumption isn’t only that the TERFs/atheists are wrong, but that the truth is so bleeding obvious that nonbelief is painfully perverse. The dissenters are in rebellion against themselves, really.
Nothing comes out of that approach but propaganda.
Plenty of non-TERFs believe men are not women. Matt Walsh is not a TERF. Right wing conservatives are not TERFs, they are not GC or gender critical. TERFs are radical feminists, the word doesn’t belong to anyone else.
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Ah, of course, it is a “conservative and right-wing ideology.” Yes, Julie Bindel is a well-known right-wing conservative.
Of course, it’s not very clear from the abstract and introduction (which might be longer than what’s shown) how exactly they decide what constitutes “TERF” ideology and what does not, so there may well be a significant bias in the social media posts that were examined.