Great article! One thing I’ve noticed in public conversations and mainstream media is that the existence of an unchangeable internal gender identity is spoken of as if it’s a fact. This is intentional, because if you question that premise the whole house of cards come tumbling down. One way to think about it is that I have many physical characteristics. Let’s take height, for example. I’m short. I’ve always wished I was taller, and frankly if I got to choose my body I’d be taller. So I have two choices. I can make peace with being short, shop in the petite section, and use step stools when I need them, and maybe even be proud of being short or find some benefits to it. Or I can fixate on my wish to be taller. I can wear shoes and clothes to try to hide my true height. demand that everyone call me tall, demand that the big and tall store carry clothes in my size, insist that tall and short no longer refer to physical height but my internal perception of how tall I am, have a fit if anyone tries to come up with new words to describe actual physical height because they’d be excluding me. I could have surgery to lengthen my legs. If I do all of that, will I start to feel I was born in the wrong body? Will I be more or less dissatisfied with my body than if I’d just accepted the fact that I’m short and gotten on with my life? Have I done harm to the world when it’s now harder to find clothes that fit or effective safety equipment because I’ve eliminated the language for talking about physical height when it’s relevant? It’s no different. People who fixate on disliking their sex truly believe that they have an internal “gender identity”, but really it’s just wishful thinking.
All so very interesting. I just tried to comment on the PITT Substack; my comments were removed and I have a 24-hour-ban. So much for different points of view, especially if they come from an affirming and loving parent of a transgender child versus someone spouting off rage, denial, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.
There are some good points here. There are also assumptions made for thousands of people, past and present, who have been two-spirits. What is lacking here? The voices of those with actual lived experiences as transgender or non-binary individuals. You can’t dictate their inner life or journey. The science is incomplete. In the current atmosphere in which I fear for the actual safety of a beloved child, I wish more people not
in the LGBTQIA community would, with all due respect, just shut up and listen.
Good point! Usually, I offer my clients a tree metaphor to explain sex and gender. Where roots represent biological sex and fruits represent gender - a system of beliefs of what is man and woman. You can get different apples - red, yellow, and white, and can artificially change their colour by injecting purple or black. We are all different men and women. But it's absurd and impossible to expect oranges from the apple tree.
Firstly: Thank you for this truly excellent thesis! I hope it is okay to share it far and wide and/or refer to it! Secondly: No, I don't have a "gender identity". Such a thing doesn't exist, I have been saying this for years, albeit less eloquently than this article. To me, the idea of a gender identity more and more is to be placed in the same psychological box as "HSP" and "INFJ" and even newspaper astrology, etc: attempts to describe and compartmentalize and thus oppress billions of individuals on very fishy and shallow grounds. A lot of these confused and insecure children and teenagers and even adults are: 1) homosexual; 2) neurodiverse; 3) mentally ill as a result of early childhood trauma (typically sexual trauma); and often all of these together. The medicalisation of these children, teenagers and adults goes hand in hand with the medical device industry & practise, and all forms of organ trade, we're seeing the same scandalous malpractice there. And possibly there is, among some (rich) members of (probably predominantly Western) society a science-fiction-like idea about modifying the human race. There are authors who are investigating this. Personally, all I know for sure: human tissue, organ(s), whatever piece that is removed from a human body not always is thrown away.
Great article! One thing I’ve noticed in public conversations and mainstream media is that the existence of an unchangeable internal gender identity is spoken of as if it’s a fact. This is intentional, because if you question that premise the whole house of cards come tumbling down. One way to think about it is that I have many physical characteristics. Let’s take height, for example. I’m short. I’ve always wished I was taller, and frankly if I got to choose my body I’d be taller. So I have two choices. I can make peace with being short, shop in the petite section, and use step stools when I need them, and maybe even be proud of being short or find some benefits to it. Or I can fixate on my wish to be taller. I can wear shoes and clothes to try to hide my true height. demand that everyone call me tall, demand that the big and tall store carry clothes in my size, insist that tall and short no longer refer to physical height but my internal perception of how tall I am, have a fit if anyone tries to come up with new words to describe actual physical height because they’d be excluding me. I could have surgery to lengthen my legs. If I do all of that, will I start to feel I was born in the wrong body? Will I be more or less dissatisfied with my body than if I’d just accepted the fact that I’m short and gotten on with my life? Have I done harm to the world when it’s now harder to find clothes that fit or effective safety equipment because I’ve eliminated the language for talking about physical height when it’s relevant? It’s no different. People who fixate on disliking their sex truly believe that they have an internal “gender identity”, but really it’s just wishful thinking.
All so very interesting. I just tried to comment on the PITT Substack; my comments were removed and I have a 24-hour-ban. So much for different points of view, especially if they come from an affirming and loving parent of a transgender child versus someone spouting off rage, denial, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.
There are some good points here. There are also assumptions made for thousands of people, past and present, who have been two-spirits. What is lacking here? The voices of those with actual lived experiences as transgender or non-binary individuals. You can’t dictate their inner life or journey. The science is incomplete. In the current atmosphere in which I fear for the actual safety of a beloved child, I wish more people not
in the LGBTQIA community would, with all due respect, just shut up and listen.
Good point! Usually, I offer my clients a tree metaphor to explain sex and gender. Where roots represent biological sex and fruits represent gender - a system of beliefs of what is man and woman. You can get different apples - red, yellow, and white, and can artificially change their colour by injecting purple or black. We are all different men and women. But it's absurd and impossible to expect oranges from the apple tree.
Firstly: Thank you for this truly excellent thesis! I hope it is okay to share it far and wide and/or refer to it! Secondly: No, I don't have a "gender identity". Such a thing doesn't exist, I have been saying this for years, albeit less eloquently than this article. To me, the idea of a gender identity more and more is to be placed in the same psychological box as "HSP" and "INFJ" and even newspaper astrology, etc: attempts to describe and compartmentalize and thus oppress billions of individuals on very fishy and shallow grounds. A lot of these confused and insecure children and teenagers and even adults are: 1) homosexual; 2) neurodiverse; 3) mentally ill as a result of early childhood trauma (typically sexual trauma); and often all of these together. The medicalisation of these children, teenagers and adults goes hand in hand with the medical device industry & practise, and all forms of organ trade, we're seeing the same scandalous malpractice there. And possibly there is, among some (rich) members of (probably predominantly Western) society a science-fiction-like idea about modifying the human race. There are authors who are investigating this. Personally, all I know for sure: human tissue, organ(s), whatever piece that is removed from a human body not always is thrown away.
FYI https://substack.com/@planetfubar/note/c-17359961