Weekend open thread time, and as usual, if this is inappropriate please delete and I’ll never do it again.
I’m going to break down the four main categories of transgenderism. What’s fascinating about it is that they are all wrong, but for very different reasons. I also want to say ahead of time that the second wave feminists and British TERFs are lightyears ahead of conservatives on this issue, and I’m primarily leaning on them. Also I used reality-based pronouns but am happy to use preferred names as names are social constructs.
Category 1: Feminine gay boys
This type emerges early in childhood. These are boys who reject the textbook markers of masculine identity at a young age: toy preference (dolls over trucks), lack rough-and-tumble play preference, and sex of playmate preference (girls over boys). Boys are not accepting of gender nonconformance and tend to isolate and ostracize these boys, so they very quickly identify as girls.
The tragedy is that most of these boys overwhelmingly desist and grow up to be happily feminine gay men. Puberty is not the enemy of gender dysphoria, but the cure. “Oh I’m not a girl, I’m a gay man!” This was the conventional wisdom in the early youth gender clinics like the famous Dutch clinic and Ken Zucker’s clinic in Toronto. Multiple research studies by James Cantor, Baer Karrington and others also back this up.
What about the 20% or so that don’t desist? Shouldn’t they be allowed to transition? Transition before puberty does allow these boys to pass better, but the price is very high. Males have to go through male puberty for their genitalia and sexual functioning to develop. Marci Bowers, the president of WPATH and leading gender surgeon, says that he is unaware of a single case of a boy who had puberty blocked before tanner stage 2 who ever had an orgasm. So these boys will never have a sexually fulfilling relationship.
These individuals do want to pass as closely as possible as women, which means they usually get bottom surgery to turn their penis into a neovagina. That is a form of butchery that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It requires creating what is essentially a permanent open wound in the groin and a lifelong process of dilation to keep it from closing. If it does close, it can easily turn septic. And because they have puberty blocked, they cannot use the “turn penis inside out” technique. Their penis has not grown yet. Instead they use part of the colon, which brings bacteria that typically colonize the colon to their neovagina. This surgery has extremely high rates of complications. Jazz Jennings, of the TV show “I am Jazz” is literally the poster child of gender affirming care and he has had four revisions to this surgery. Most trans-identified males with this surgery cannot have penetrative sex because their neovagina lacks depth and is painful. A study in Sweden found that the suicide rate goes up 30x after about a dozen years. I suspect that’s when people accept the reality that another revision isn’t going to help them.
A final problem is that these men are now in competition with straight women to find straight male partners. Is this really better than mental health treatments for gender dysphoria?
Category 2: Adolescent girls
Apologies to all the ladies for mansplaining womanhood! (Ha! This is a safe space, right?) Girls do not punish their peers for gender-nonconforming behavior. So girls who are tomboys can freely move between male and female spaces as pre-adolescents without much shame or censure. At least in most cases. But puberty does a number on pretty much all girls. These girls who could once run and jump and wrestle with the boys as equals find that puberty created an uncrossable wall between them. Boys that they used to athletically dominate now tower over them and can effortlessly outrun them. To add insult to injury, their previously lithe and athletic bodies are now weighed down by subcutaneous fat and breasts designed to feed and nourish babies. They used to be invisible, and could play sports shirtless, but now men older than their fathers are leering at their now-sexualized bodies.
Lesbians are one of the main categories of children getting “gender affirming care [sic]”. Hannah Barnes wrote “Time to Think” about why England closed their only youth gender clinic and she explains that the clinicians there used to make dark jokes that when they were done, there would be no gay kids left. You might think that they were infiltrated by religious conservatives, but no, they were super-woke leftists. You have to appreciate that in postmodern leftism, transgenderism is Gay 2.0. It’s the upgrade.
Somewhat ironically, liberals have created the most widespread and medically harmful form of gay conversion therapy ever invented.
However, not all adolescent girls seeking gender affirming care are lesbians. Many are straight and they all have major comorbidities like autism, bipolar disorder, depression, and so on. They are girls who are on the receiving end of relational aggression and struggle the manage the complex ephemeral dynamics of female hierarchies. So they drop out of real life and into online culture. It doesn’t take long to discover the queer community and they quickly “retcon” their social isolation and loneliness as proof that they weren’t girls after all, but boys.
The most heartbreaking case is girls who were sexually abused. A heterosexual girls goes through puberty, which initially excites her, but then her changing body attracts the attention of a soccer coach, or an uncle, or a stepdad. She’s filled with shame and trauma and develops a sense of horror about her own body. Her changing body wasn’t a sign of impending womanhood, but something that marked her as a victim. As Hannah Barnes points out, although not quite this bluntly, when these girls go to gender clinics the clinicians have a choice. Option A: report the abusers to the police. Option B: put her on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and chop off her breasts. Clinicians have overwhelmingly chosen option B and victimized these girls a second time.
I’m convinced that the “angel of mercy” nurses archetype is quite common among therapists, and the therapists never get caught or prosecuted.
This is another eminently predictable fallout of gender self-identification. If a male prisoner has the choice between a male prison and a female prison (which is essentially a male fantasy), it's an easy one to make. The fact that relatively few prisoners take this option shows that there is honor among thieves, but alas, not all. Virtually every blue state has self-identification written into the law.
Keep in mind that the policy is self-ID. “Transwomen do not owe you feminity. They are not minstrel show performers for your entertainment and approval.” The left has been very consistent in applying self-ID, which means men who switch prisons are not even required to take female hormones. Female California prisoners have reported sharing showers with six foot tall men with facial tattoos. And when female prisoners complain, they get retaliated against, and sent to solitary. A study of Scottish prisoners found that about half desisted after being released from prison.
I’ve posted this before, but here is Ted Cruz confronting a leftist judge who let a serial rapist share a cell with women.
Historically the only people to be diagnosed and given permission to transition were the men who had a lifetime history of being feminine and attracted to men. They were called Homosexual Transexuals, or HSTS. But there is also a category of heterosexual men who want to transition - the autogynephiles (AGP). If you’ve done a rewatch of “The Silence of the Lambs” you may recall when Hannibal Lecter said, “Our Billy is not a real transexual, but he thinks he is.” And it's what Clarise meant when she said, “Transexuals are not violent, they are usually very passive.” Buffalo Bill in the movie was based on a cross-dressing serial killer named Ed Gein, and until the rise of gender ideology, the FBI had a published database of cross-dressing serial killers, but then they took it down.
I do not want to apply that all AGPs are killers or even violent. Rather, what seems to be going on is that men with one sexual fetish (feminization) are also more prone to other fetishes, some of which may not be as benign. I have no doubt that there are many wonderful and gentle men who are autogynephiles. I’m just talking about a statistical pattern.
But it is important to appreciate link between sex, porn, and transgenderism. Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a biological male who identifies as female. He writes openly in his book “Females” about the role that sissy porn played in making him transgender. In fact, Chu identifies the essence of being female with sexual passivity: “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.” The Rolling Stone had a fascinating article about one of the Wachowski brothers became trans after entering into a relationship with a famous dominatrix. They pulled it but you can still dig it up:
AGPs raise a very interesting puzzle because they typically male their entire childhood, and many AGPs are in fact hyper-masculine. Think of Caitlyn Jenner, who won an Olympic gold in decathlon. And for all the talk of Lia Thomas being a “mediocre male”, I wouldn’t commit murder for money, but I might be tempted if I could somehow gain the athleticism of a division 1 college athlete. Other examples are the reporter Zoe Tur, who famously threatened to send Ben Shapiro home in an ambulance if he “misgendered [sic]” him again. Also Jennifer Pritzker, a billionaire who has bankrolled JB Prizker and the trans movement in general.
I’d like to close with an olive branch to the AGPs. The standard explanation for why such accomplished and seemingly dominant men would become trans comes from leftists with no common sense or social epistemology. It’s based on the idea that masculinity is this terrifying burden and the more masculine you are, the greater the burden. So CEOs or athletes may become submissive or AGPs as a way to take a break from the burden of masculinity. That has always rung false to me.
Most traits are polygenic so I don’t think there’s an AGP allele, but let's imagine that there is. To a first approximation, men form a hierarchy with the most masculine “alpha males” at the top and less masculine at the bottom. That’s why being feminine is a slur among men - it connotes low status. See also: P Diddy’s treatment of up-and-coming rappers who signed to his label. Men who fight their way to the top will relish in their dominant role and power, and men who slip to the bottom will internalize their low status and perhaps even signal it through willing feminization.
Part of the social epistemology of men is to understand this invisible hierarchy, so a man with the AGP gene is going to feel enormous shame. He’s going to want to prove - to himself, if no one else - that he’s not a sissy. So he’s going to fight and struggle extra hard to prove he belongs at the top and maybe even make his shameful desires go away. Of course they never do away. Instead he’s become a successful athlete or businessmen and passed this seemingly-shameful gene down to his children. However, the AGP gene is like the beak of the finish. It’s fitness-enhancing in one world (where feminine men are shamed) but its fitness-lowering in another world (where feminine men are stunning and brave). These men will never fight their way up the corporate ladder or to Olympic or professional athlete success. Instead they’ll watch a lot of porn, transition, and enter into female spaces.
I have no idea if this theory is true or not, but it makes way more sense to me than the vacation theory.
Regarding “ what the Democrats need today is a general approach to politics that is similar to that of the New Deal liberals.”
Say it preacher!
I don’t think most people, particularly those under age 60, realize how much the Democratic party has changed in the last 60 years.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-the-democrats-have-changed-since
Weekend open thread time, and as usual, if this is inappropriate please delete and I’ll never do it again.
I’m going to break down the four main categories of transgenderism. What’s fascinating about it is that they are all wrong, but for very different reasons. I also want to say ahead of time that the second wave feminists and British TERFs are lightyears ahead of conservatives on this issue, and I’m primarily leaning on them. Also I used reality-based pronouns but am happy to use preferred names as names are social constructs.
Category 1: Feminine gay boys
This type emerges early in childhood. These are boys who reject the textbook markers of masculine identity at a young age: toy preference (dolls over trucks), lack rough-and-tumble play preference, and sex of playmate preference (girls over boys). Boys are not accepting of gender nonconformance and tend to isolate and ostracize these boys, so they very quickly identify as girls.
The tragedy is that most of these boys overwhelmingly desist and grow up to be happily feminine gay men. Puberty is not the enemy of gender dysphoria, but the cure. “Oh I’m not a girl, I’m a gay man!” This was the conventional wisdom in the early youth gender clinics like the famous Dutch clinic and Ken Zucker’s clinic in Toronto. Multiple research studies by James Cantor, Baer Karrington and others also back this up.
What about the 20% or so that don’t desist? Shouldn’t they be allowed to transition? Transition before puberty does allow these boys to pass better, but the price is very high. Males have to go through male puberty for their genitalia and sexual functioning to develop. Marci Bowers, the president of WPATH and leading gender surgeon, says that he is unaware of a single case of a boy who had puberty blocked before tanner stage 2 who ever had an orgasm. So these boys will never have a sexually fulfilling relationship.
These individuals do want to pass as closely as possible as women, which means they usually get bottom surgery to turn their penis into a neovagina. That is a form of butchery that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It requires creating what is essentially a permanent open wound in the groin and a lifelong process of dilation to keep it from closing. If it does close, it can easily turn septic. And because they have puberty blocked, they cannot use the “turn penis inside out” technique. Their penis has not grown yet. Instead they use part of the colon, which brings bacteria that typically colonize the colon to their neovagina. This surgery has extremely high rates of complications. Jazz Jennings, of the TV show “I am Jazz” is literally the poster child of gender affirming care and he has had four revisions to this surgery. Most trans-identified males with this surgery cannot have penetrative sex because their neovagina lacks depth and is painful. A study in Sweden found that the suicide rate goes up 30x after about a dozen years. I suspect that’s when people accept the reality that another revision isn’t going to help them.
A final problem is that these men are now in competition with straight women to find straight male partners. Is this really better than mental health treatments for gender dysphoria?
Category 2: Adolescent girls
Apologies to all the ladies for mansplaining womanhood! (Ha! This is a safe space, right?) Girls do not punish their peers for gender-nonconforming behavior. So girls who are tomboys can freely move between male and female spaces as pre-adolescents without much shame or censure. At least in most cases. But puberty does a number on pretty much all girls. These girls who could once run and jump and wrestle with the boys as equals find that puberty created an uncrossable wall between them. Boys that they used to athletically dominate now tower over them and can effortlessly outrun them. To add insult to injury, their previously lithe and athletic bodies are now weighed down by subcutaneous fat and breasts designed to feed and nourish babies. They used to be invisible, and could play sports shirtless, but now men older than their fathers are leering at their now-sexualized bodies.
Lesbians are one of the main categories of children getting “gender affirming care [sic]”. Hannah Barnes wrote “Time to Think” about why England closed their only youth gender clinic and she explains that the clinicians there used to make dark jokes that when they were done, there would be no gay kids left. You might think that they were infiltrated by religious conservatives, but no, they were super-woke leftists. You have to appreciate that in postmodern leftism, transgenderism is Gay 2.0. It’s the upgrade.
Somewhat ironically, liberals have created the most widespread and medically harmful form of gay conversion therapy ever invented.
However, not all adolescent girls seeking gender affirming care are lesbians. Many are straight and they all have major comorbidities like autism, bipolar disorder, depression, and so on. They are girls who are on the receiving end of relational aggression and struggle the manage the complex ephemeral dynamics of female hierarchies. So they drop out of real life and into online culture. It doesn’t take long to discover the queer community and they quickly “retcon” their social isolation and loneliness as proof that they weren’t girls after all, but boys.
The most heartbreaking case is girls who were sexually abused. A heterosexual girls goes through puberty, which initially excites her, but then her changing body attracts the attention of a soccer coach, or an uncle, or a stepdad. She’s filled with shame and trauma and develops a sense of horror about her own body. Her changing body wasn’t a sign of impending womanhood, but something that marked her as a victim. As Hannah Barnes points out, although not quite this bluntly, when these girls go to gender clinics the clinicians have a choice. Option A: report the abusers to the police. Option B: put her on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and chop off her breasts. Clinicians have overwhelmingly chosen option B and victimized these girls a second time.
I’m convinced that the “angel of mercy” nurses archetype is quite common among therapists, and the therapists never get caught or prosecuted.
Haha, two long. Here is the second half:
Category 3: Opportunistic men
This is another eminently predictable fallout of gender self-identification. If a male prisoner has the choice between a male prison and a female prison (which is essentially a male fantasy), it's an easy one to make. The fact that relatively few prisoners take this option shows that there is honor among thieves, but alas, not all. Virtually every blue state has self-identification written into the law.
Keep in mind that the policy is self-ID. “Transwomen do not owe you feminity. They are not minstrel show performers for your entertainment and approval.” The left has been very consistent in applying self-ID, which means men who switch prisons are not even required to take female hormones. Female California prisoners have reported sharing showers with six foot tall men with facial tattoos. And when female prisoners complain, they get retaliated against, and sent to solitary. A study of Scottish prisoners found that about half desisted after being released from prison.
I’ve posted this before, but here is Ted Cruz confronting a leftist judge who let a serial rapist share a cell with women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5dv4GKAUOI
Category 4: Autogynephelia.
Historically the only people to be diagnosed and given permission to transition were the men who had a lifetime history of being feminine and attracted to men. They were called Homosexual Transexuals, or HSTS. But there is also a category of heterosexual men who want to transition - the autogynephiles (AGP). If you’ve done a rewatch of “The Silence of the Lambs” you may recall when Hannibal Lecter said, “Our Billy is not a real transexual, but he thinks he is.” And it's what Clarise meant when she said, “Transexuals are not violent, they are usually very passive.” Buffalo Bill in the movie was based on a cross-dressing serial killer named Ed Gein, and until the rise of gender ideology, the FBI had a published database of cross-dressing serial killers, but then they took it down.
I do not want to apply that all AGPs are killers or even violent. Rather, what seems to be going on is that men with one sexual fetish (feminization) are also more prone to other fetishes, some of which may not be as benign. I have no doubt that there are many wonderful and gentle men who are autogynephiles. I’m just talking about a statistical pattern.
But it is important to appreciate link between sex, porn, and transgenderism. Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a biological male who identifies as female. He writes openly in his book “Females” about the role that sissy porn played in making him transgender. In fact, Chu identifies the essence of being female with sexual passivity: “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.” The Rolling Stone had a fascinating article about one of the Wachowski brothers became trans after entering into a relationship with a famous dominatrix. They pulled it but you can still dig it up:
https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/5082839.html
AGPs raise a very interesting puzzle because they typically male their entire childhood, and many AGPs are in fact hyper-masculine. Think of Caitlyn Jenner, who won an Olympic gold in decathlon. And for all the talk of Lia Thomas being a “mediocre male”, I wouldn’t commit murder for money, but I might be tempted if I could somehow gain the athleticism of a division 1 college athlete. Other examples are the reporter Zoe Tur, who famously threatened to send Ben Shapiro home in an ambulance if he “misgendered [sic]” him again. Also Jennifer Pritzker, a billionaire who has bankrolled JB Prizker and the trans movement in general.
I’d like to close with an olive branch to the AGPs. The standard explanation for why such accomplished and seemingly dominant men would become trans comes from leftists with no common sense or social epistemology. It’s based on the idea that masculinity is this terrifying burden and the more masculine you are, the greater the burden. So CEOs or athletes may become submissive or AGPs as a way to take a break from the burden of masculinity. That has always rung false to me.
Most traits are polygenic so I don’t think there’s an AGP allele, but let's imagine that there is. To a first approximation, men form a hierarchy with the most masculine “alpha males” at the top and less masculine at the bottom. That’s why being feminine is a slur among men - it connotes low status. See also: P Diddy’s treatment of up-and-coming rappers who signed to his label. Men who fight their way to the top will relish in their dominant role and power, and men who slip to the bottom will internalize their low status and perhaps even signal it through willing feminization.
Part of the social epistemology of men is to understand this invisible hierarchy, so a man with the AGP gene is going to feel enormous shame. He’s going to want to prove - to himself, if no one else - that he’s not a sissy. So he’s going to fight and struggle extra hard to prove he belongs at the top and maybe even make his shameful desires go away. Of course they never do away. Instead he’s become a successful athlete or businessmen and passed this seemingly-shameful gene down to his children. However, the AGP gene is like the beak of the finish. It’s fitness-enhancing in one world (where feminine men are shamed) but its fitness-lowering in another world (where feminine men are stunning and brave). These men will never fight their way up the corporate ladder or to Olympic or professional athlete success. Instead they’ll watch a lot of porn, transition, and enter into female spaces.
I have no idea if this theory is true or not, but it makes way more sense to me than the vacation theory.