cis male is a slur

[Lexi Darling]

I personally have never been in a situation like Lia's, but I still think there can be more nuance to those situations. I'm sure seeing my shriveled up and barely visible wiener would make some people uncomfortable, but by that same token I would feel extremely unsafe in a locker room full of jacked, probably transphobic men. We've also been through this discussion before. I don't claim to know the answer, but I don't think a law that forces trans women into male locker rooms would be a great solution.

[Marie Monday]

@jadis Yeah just to be clear I objected to some things you said here but I never considered you a raging transphobe or something like that.
Do keep in mind though that using a biological basis (as in, biological sex) for such laws is not always as straightforward and suitable a solution as it seems. A trans woman is not safe in a biological men's locker room, for instance.

Edit: oh nvm I didn't see lexis post yet when I wrote the above

[jadis]

@jadis Yeah just to be clear I objected to some things you said here but I never considered you a raging transphobe or something like that.

On a personal level I'm always happy to hear you have a positive opinion of me.

But I also don't mind those labels all that much cause I know my position and what's behind it, and if someone thinks it makes me a bigot I can live with that.

Do keep in mind though that using a biological basis (as in, biological sex) for such laws is not always as straightforward and suitable a solution as it seems. A trans woman is not safe in a biological men's locker room, for instance.

You never get a perfect solution that pleases everyone in the realm of politics. There's a price to everything.

The price of tolerance for ID-based definitions was paid by, for example, the indigenous woman in Canada locked up with a "trans woman" whose affect and body language reminded her of her abuser, dredging up years of horror. Here I can only restate my position that it's imperative there be no loopholes in the legal categorization of the sexes.

Once that is in place, I'm all for logistical solutions that would reduce risks for trans women.   

[Jwb]

I don't think gender identity is a "soul-like" quality. And I also didn't say that people with that type of brain scan are the only legitimate trans people. If the science of it is correct, it might just be an potential explanation for some of us as to why our brains develop gender dysphoria, nothing more, nothing less.

Believe it or not, my ideas on transgender identity are actually fairly conservative and rooted in a more "old school" trans experience compared to the people on "the left" that you refer to. I'm not necessarily even saying there's no cause for concern with regards to some of what you've talked about. At the end of the day I think adults should have the right to undergo gender-affirming care, and to say the only things the right is attacking are blockers and sports is blatantly untrue. I am literally experiencing this firsthand; my clinic, which is affiliated with a Catholic hospital, has already banned gender surgery for all ages with the intent of banning hormone therapy.

It would be nice if we could focus on the issues that are legitimate concerns. But the right is not doing that. They're coming for all of us.

i agree with the bolded. I just think that is ultimately inconsequential in terms of determining whether trans people deserve access xyz care.  Even if they don't have different brain structures, the arguments would be and are the same. So its an irrelevant sort of appeal to nature in my book and doesn't actually change the conversation behind it.

The way that i see it, there is a broader ideology concerning gender which a lot of the activists adhere to which ranges from just being deeply critical of gender roles to full on gender abolition.  And so the more complicated configurations of gender identities that are currently emerging in the modern context are coming from this ideological decoupling of gender from sex and critical analysis of gender roles.  It's at the very least partially ideological.  It makes sense that waves of AFAB teens would identify as non binary rather than us see an explosion in people actually going full on ftm or mtf. Because it's more ambiguous and requires less actual dedication but you still get the label of being trans, which has become trendy among wanting to feel marginialized white people.

[Lexi Darling]

Yeah the more I discuss this stuff the more I realize I'm definitely coming at it from my own ingrained paradigm, or as I've described it, a more "old school" trans experience, which I feel is distinct from the stuff that is closer to gender abolition and gender anarchy and such. That stuff did exist in my day too but it felt to me at the time like most trans people were either MTF or FTM and generally more concerned with blending in than a lot of gen z trans culture.

I don't think my trans experience is more correct or superior of course, but my posts on this subject are definitely more informed by the kind of trans experience I had as a young transitioner.

I honestly feel very out of touch with a lot of younger trans people and modern trans culture.

[Jwb]

I think that the way it is connected is  transgender people a few decades were obviously more conventional on average in terms of presentation, but the general idea that sex and gender are distinct identity categories that don't have to correspond is something that has relatively recently emerged as a sort of mainstream opinion. 

And it was introduced basically to be inclusive towards trans people, which at that time were overwhelmingly  associated with mtf. So i understand the motive behind that.  But from that you almost naturally will construct the current model which does rest more or less exclusively on self id, for better or worse. 

Meaning the only metric by which you can determine someone's gender identity is based on what they themselves conceptualize their gender as. Which is essentially boundless. There's no emphasis on clear categorization. If anything the emphasis seems to be more so on seeing exactly how obscure and self indulgent one can get when categorizing their own gender.  Which is the exact opposite vibe i get from trans women who, at the very least, are very clear about what they want to be. But i do think this type of thinking flows fairly naturally from decoupling sex and gender.  Which is what makes it a complicated dynamic.

I can relate to feeling out of touch with it though. Obviously i am also pretty out of touch with the non binary squad. I only ever hear about this shit online tbh. I used to be what you might consider transphobic in that i basically regarded it as a mass delusion that society was indulging out of some sense of misguided politeness.

But what has shifted my thinking is coming to terms with the fact that there isn't an obvious better answer than transitioning.  It seems like such a drastic step that i had a hard time coming to terms with it. But if there's not a better answer I'm not going to sit here and be stubborn about it.

I think that's a big part of what people say about you get more conservative as you get older.  It's not even that.  You stay the same and society just keeps evolving without you until you no longer recognize it and people are chastizing you for not getting on board with something to you that seems literally  insane and completely alien.

I can only imagine the kind of fucked up cyber punk dystopian future these little demons have in store for me if i ever have the honor of living long enough to no longer be able to wipe my own ass. Shit is going suck lol.

[Lexi Darling]

I think that's a big part of what people say about you get more conservative as you get older.  It's not even that.  You stay the same and society just keeps evolving without you until you no longer recognize it and people are chastizing you for not getting on board with something to you that seems literally  insane and completely alien.

Yup. I always still treat the younger generation of trans people with respect and try to meet them with support and understanding, I'm not nearly qualified to speak on their experiences after all, but sometimes I can't help but feel like my community has expanded to encompass so many more different experiences and attitudes in the past 20 years that I feel like I'm expected to be able to keep up with, but I just can't keep up with all of them.

But I also feel a bit detached from a lot of IRL and online LGBT communities in general for other reasons than generational; I grew up hanging in a lot of very queer punk circles, and as I've gotten older I've felt less and less like I identify with a lot of the adjacent culture to that. I guess these days I kinda just want to be a suburban normie, have my heteronormative-ass marriage and embrace my uncool mom energy.

People also assume that because I'm trans I undoubtedly agree with every "leftist" position and talking point, which is very much not true.

[jadis]

[jadis]

Lots of stunning revelations in this interview with the author of Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children about the medical malpractice at that London clinic.

The author is an investigative journalist at the BBC, impressively impartial and I would say rather politically correct. Very much treading on eggshells around the language to let the facts she uncovered speak for themselves all the better. Overall, she shows impeccable professional ethics and each time when there isn't enough data to support a conclusion she says so explicitly. But part of the malpractice scandal is precisely the lack of data from the clinic.

Timecode for "the part of the story that people in big metropolitan cities are finding the hardest to accept", namely the undercurrent of homophobia, esp as internalized by children: https://youtu.be/X2Ix_-1LkdY?si=o2gobRhE4bnTDNOb&t=3197  "I was a lesbian... and all that was ignored"

Wish that I had the time to read the book right now, since I'm quite taken by the issue. Except I'll be very busy in the coming week and then it's off to Nice, where I want to be rereading something like Nietzsche or Baudelaire instead of disturbing facts about puberty blockers and medical conferences sponsored by the firms producing them.

[jadis]

What I've Learned About Women and Men in Sports

[jadis]

A feminist perspective on MTF transgenderism: 

Gender ideology represents the literal embodiment of male entitlement to women, and the sexualized power hierarchy that feminists once described as gender, or sex role stereotypes. This eroticization of power and powerlessness has the effect of naturalizing women's subordinate role in society. When men perform a parody of femininity and claim this farce is what women truly are, they are fundamentally deconstructing women's humanity, reducing half the human population to a demeaning and objectified fantasy; but crucially, they are redirecting women back to the restrictive roles that afforded them power over the female sex in the first place.

The belief that womanhood can be attained through a combination of desire reframed as devout suffering, alongside the purchasing of products — clothing, cosmetics, surgeries — is, at its core, a belief that women are commodities which men are entitled to possess. It is a belief system that attempts to define women as fetish objects and reduces women to the Freudian castrated male.

https://odysee.com/@Skirt_Go_Spinny:7/Wrong-Ans-Only-1:b

[Queen Boo]

Anyone who uses the phrase "gender ideology" unironically should be mocked relentlessly for the rest of their life.

[Guybrush]

A feminist perspective on MTF transgenderism: 

https://odysee.com/@Skirt_Go_Spinny:7/Wrong-Ans-Only-1:b

One of the reasons I have been reluctant to join in these discussions before is I don't really know what's going on.

Like this citation: "When men perform a parody of femininity and claim this farce is what women truly are."

Is that a good description of what's happening?

I would think a trans woman and a bio female are different. If they weren't, there wouldn't be any need for hormone treatment.

If they are merely asking to be treated the same, the above citation wouldn't be a good fit.

I assume both of those things are probably happening at once. Or does the "trans movement" have a unified goal and it is to erase any distinction between gender identity and biology?

[Lexi Darling]

Yeah that article assumes the absolute worst of trans women, as if anything it talks about applies to all of us.

As far as the "parody of femininity" line goes, the author does realize that not every trans woman is Dylan Mulvaney, right? Most of us are not even close to exaggerated performative feminine stereotypes, and while I don't doubt that there are some people who that applies to, it's so ironic that the author claims we're dehumanizing and stereotyping women because that's exactly what the author is doing to us. Surely everything we do is part of some sinister plot to debase and demean women and force them into gender roles, this makes complete sense and is in no way projecting.

Speaking for myself, I dress hyperfeminine now, but for the first 17-18 years of being out as trans I dressed like a pretty androgynous punk, most of what I wore was band t-shirts and skinny jeans and the occasional *gasp* skirt. Imagine spewing such utter vitriol at people who committed the heinous unforgivable crime of... wearing certain articles of clothing and referring to themselves with different pronouns. The unmitigated gall of us trans women, right?

Does this author have the same problem with drag queens? They perform exaggerated hyperfemininity and cartoon stereotypes of womanliness way more than any trans women. Just interested to know their take on that.

At the end of the day they can read whatever they want into the trans experience, but this is the opposite of unbiased and logical. Do I think there are no trans women who this applies to? Of course not, but even then, is this really a productive argument? What does the author want to do to solve this supposed pressing issue? Again, they're perfectly entitled to their reductive and presumptuous opinions on us, but I think there's a point where I just have to say "I'm sorry you feel that way" and live my own life alongside the many supportive cis friends in my life who love and embrace me as I am. Can't please everyone after all.

[jadis]

The link is not to an article. It's to a compilation, over 30 minutes long, of videos uploaded by MTFs to various social media platforms. I would strongly recommend to watch it all the way through even if it's challenging and at certain points you want to look away.

The sparse voiceover commentary comes mostly from an article by Geneviève Gluck. The bit I quoted appears in the video at some point.