Do you remember the mass hysteria of the girls in the Salem witch trials.? This is very similar to that. I don’t think there is such a thing as gender dysphoria. I think it is a made up thing that they see on social media. It’s all a big lie. girls in particular fall for such things. We need to get them out of this unreal thinking
"My point in writing this was to ask why we believe the kind and decent thing to do in response to emotional and psychological pain associated with discomfort with primary and/or secondary sex characteristics, whether organic or induced by society, is to lie to these vulnerable people and alter their sex characteristics."
Very good point indeed; really don't think we're doing those suffering from "gender dysphoria" any favours at all in pandering to their delusions. Or society either for that matter -- a case-in-point being the situation with Scotland's Nicola Sturgeon putting male rapists who "self-identify" as women into women's prisons. What tangled webs we weave ...
But a profoundly puzzling situation, the roots of which undergird how we all develop our senses of self. Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in this Substack which speaks to Sturgeon's ship of state foundering on the rocks of the "trans women are women" mantra:
Something somewhat more important therein -- and which speaks more specifically to your concerns about dysphoric children -- are some quotes from a review of Joyce's "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" by a transwoman. This passage seems to cut to the heart of the matter:
"From my perspective, being trans is…not a deep self-knowledge of some secret non-physical element of reality. It is just a base desire to be like the opposite sex. It’s not even much of an identity. It’s more like a body image problem."
One might reasonably wonder why so many dysphoric children wind up with a "body image" that is so at odds with "objective reality".
However, somewhat parenthetically, while I appreciate your concerns about gender ideology, many of which I share, I kind of think you're barking up the wrong tree in entirely rejecting the concept of "gender identity". No doubt there are some problematic, poisonous, or unscientific aspects to it, but I think it might help if you "steelmanned" the concept, if you considered that, at best, it's just a synonym for our personalities, our senses of self.
Fairly decent Substack post here which suggests that commonality or equivalence even if it doesn't explicitly equate them:
"A person’s personality, in everyday language, is who they are - what makes them unique and distinct from other people. We speak of people having particular traits, but also of being of a certain type ...."
I thank you for your thoughtful comments. Agreed about how this fictional thinking has led to absurdities like men in women's prisons. As to your critique, I can indeed see a possible way for the term "gender identity" to be useful. I suspect that it started out as a way of describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that). Those tendencies seem to be, more or less, ingrained. Thus, if, for example, a woman has never been comfortable with make-up, dresses, etc., and prefers more typically (as of modern society) masculine attire, this could be part of her "gender identity." However, that use of the term - which can be helpful in expressing part of someone's personality - could never justify, at least in absolute terms, the need to pretend one is the opposite sex and chemically and surgically alter one's appearance to that of the opposite sex. (It could explain why an extremely feminine male or extremely masculine woman might want to do those things to better fit into society, but would not, in and of itself, justify medical interventions or fictional notions such as "transwomen are women" etc.) The quote in the comments to Helen Joyce's book seem to support that idea. I also think we do need to consider why kids and teens are so body image obsessed -but that is the subject of another potential essay, with social media as but one element of the epidemic we are seeing. (I think this has been a problem for a long time though, and there are many pieces to the puzzle, from too much time on our hands, to shallow values., etc.)
"... describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that)."
Exactly! 👍🙂 Largely the idea behind my argument of gender as a multidimensional spectrum:
"But the foregoing emphasizes that anyone can be more masculine on some traits, on some axes of that multi-dimensional gender spectrum, while being more feminine on other traits. For example, a person, of either sex, who is very agreeable and 6 ft. 1 in. tall (185. cm) is therefore hyper-feminine AND hyper-masculine, although on entirely different axes."
Not quite sure whether that's an entirely workable idea or not, that there aren't a number of very large "flies in the ointment" there, but it seems like a worthwhile avenue to pursue. And, as I've suggested there, I'm not the only one doing so.
"... could never justify, at least in absolute terms, the need to pretend one is the opposite sex ..."
Agree entirely. Part of the reason for my use of "poisonous", the proximate cause of which is transgender ideologues using "male" and "female" as "gender identities". Matt Walsh had recently tweeted a screenshot of Merriam-Webster defining "female" as both a sex and as a gender identity:
Many words have contradictory definitions so that isn't necessarily a problem in itself. The problem arises because of equivocation -- intentional or inadvertent, because of not recognizing the very different meanings ascribed to the terms:
"male" and "female" as gender identities are entirely subjective, there are no objective criteria that have to be met to qualify anyone as having those identities (personalities). In addition to which they're circular: female gender identity is opposite to male gender identity -- which is opposite to female gender identity ... 🙄 Part of the "unscientific" charge.
Which is, of course, entirely different from "male" and "female" as sexes where there are, in fact, specific objective criteria that must be met to qualify as such. Even if there is some dispute over which definitions and criteria thereof should qualify as trump -- as I've recently argued and as you and I, and others, have discussed at some length ... 🙂
Completely agree. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty involved in the argument for "gender identity" as a basis for medical treatments and as an excuse for biological males' intrusion into spaces designated for biological females.
right....and I don't want my 25 year old son to ever say, " why didn't you help me/tell me how to heal correctly ?"
so we are are " not being nice" !
Do you remember the mass hysteria of the girls in the Salem witch trials.? This is very similar to that. I don’t think there is such a thing as gender dysphoria. I think it is a made up thing that they see on social media. It’s all a big lie. girls in particular fall for such things. We need to get them out of this unreal thinking
"My point in writing this was to ask why we believe the kind and decent thing to do in response to emotional and psychological pain associated with discomfort with primary and/or secondary sex characteristics, whether organic or induced by society, is to lie to these vulnerable people and alter their sex characteristics."
Very good point indeed; really don't think we're doing those suffering from "gender dysphoria" any favours at all in pandering to their delusions. Or society either for that matter -- a case-in-point being the situation with Scotland's Nicola Sturgeon putting male rapists who "self-identify" as women into women's prisons. What tangled webs we weave ...
But a profoundly puzzling situation, the roots of which undergird how we all develop our senses of self. Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in this Substack which speaks to Sturgeon's ship of state foundering on the rocks of the "trans women are women" mantra:
https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/death-of-a-slogan
Something somewhat more important therein -- and which speaks more specifically to your concerns about dysphoric children -- are some quotes from a review of Joyce's "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" by a transwoman. This passage seems to cut to the heart of the matter:
"From my perspective, being trans is…not a deep self-knowledge of some secret non-physical element of reality. It is just a base desire to be like the opposite sex. It’s not even much of an identity. It’s more like a body image problem."
One might reasonably wonder why so many dysphoric children wind up with a "body image" that is so at odds with "objective reality".
However, somewhat parenthetically, while I appreciate your concerns about gender ideology, many of which I share, I kind of think you're barking up the wrong tree in entirely rejecting the concept of "gender identity". No doubt there are some problematic, poisonous, or unscientific aspects to it, but I think it might help if you "steelmanned" the concept, if you considered that, at best, it's just a synonym for our personalities, our senses of self.
Fairly decent Substack post here which suggests that commonality or equivalence even if it doesn't explicitly equate them:
"A person’s personality, in everyday language, is who they are - what makes them unique and distinct from other people. We speak of people having particular traits, but also of being of a certain type ...."
https://mindandmythos.substack.com/p/on-personality-and-psychopathology
I thank you for your thoughtful comments. Agreed about how this fictional thinking has led to absurdities like men in women's prisons. As to your critique, I can indeed see a possible way for the term "gender identity" to be useful. I suspect that it started out as a way of describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that). Those tendencies seem to be, more or less, ingrained. Thus, if, for example, a woman has never been comfortable with make-up, dresses, etc., and prefers more typically (as of modern society) masculine attire, this could be part of her "gender identity." However, that use of the term - which can be helpful in expressing part of someone's personality - could never justify, at least in absolute terms, the need to pretend one is the opposite sex and chemically and surgically alter one's appearance to that of the opposite sex. (It could explain why an extremely feminine male or extremely masculine woman might want to do those things to better fit into society, but would not, in and of itself, justify medical interventions or fictional notions such as "transwomen are women" etc.) The quote in the comments to Helen Joyce's book seem to support that idea. I also think we do need to consider why kids and teens are so body image obsessed -but that is the subject of another potential essay, with social media as but one element of the epidemic we are seeing. (I think this has been a problem for a long time though, and there are many pieces to the puzzle, from too much time on our hands, to shallow values., etc.)
"... describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that)."
Exactly! 👍🙂 Largely the idea behind my argument of gender as a multidimensional spectrum:
"But the foregoing emphasizes that anyone can be more masculine on some traits, on some axes of that multi-dimensional gender spectrum, while being more feminine on other traits. For example, a person, of either sex, who is very agreeable and 6 ft. 1 in. tall (185. cm) is therefore hyper-feminine AND hyper-masculine, although on entirely different axes."
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/i/64264079/rationalized-gender
Not quite sure whether that's an entirely workable idea or not, that there aren't a number of very large "flies in the ointment" there, but it seems like a worthwhile avenue to pursue. And, as I've suggested there, I'm not the only one doing so.
"... could never justify, at least in absolute terms, the need to pretend one is the opposite sex ..."
Agree entirely. Part of the reason for my use of "poisonous", the proximate cause of which is transgender ideologues using "male" and "female" as "gender identities". Matt Walsh had recently tweeted a screenshot of Merriam-Webster defining "female" as both a sex and as a gender identity:
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1549382790952656899
Many words have contradictory definitions so that isn't necessarily a problem in itself. The problem arises because of equivocation -- intentional or inadvertent, because of not recognizing the very different meanings ascribed to the terms:
"A feather is light [not heavy].
What is light [bright] cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
"male" and "female" as gender identities are entirely subjective, there are no objective criteria that have to be met to qualify anyone as having those identities (personalities). In addition to which they're circular: female gender identity is opposite to male gender identity -- which is opposite to female gender identity ... 🙄 Part of the "unscientific" charge.
Which is, of course, entirely different from "male" and "female" as sexes where there are, in fact, specific objective criteria that must be met to qualify as such. Even if there is some dispute over which definitions and criteria thereof should qualify as trump -- as I've recently argued and as you and I, and others, have discussed at some length ... 🙂
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/new-paper-argues-for-multimodal-model/comment/12615098
Completely agree. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty involved in the argument for "gender identity" as a basis for medical treatments and as an excuse for biological males' intrusion into spaces designated for biological females.