On the sidebar to the right of my blog posts, you will find the following:
COMMENT POLICY:
The purpose of this blog is to give voice to an alternative to the dominant trans-activist and medical paradigm currently being touted by the media. I give preference to commenters who are also gender-critical, though respectful questions and comments countering this view will be considered. Please feel free to comment on older posts. This will often stimulate new discussion.
Some bloggers see their sites as a place for brawling, free-for-all commenting with no holds barred.
This blog is not that sort of place.
The Internet is bristling with cat fights about transgenderism (and yeah, I do consider it an “ism), about feminism, and increasingly, about the growing trend to medicalize “gender nonconformity” in children, teens, and young adults. If what you’re after is a place to castigate and shame the people who’ve found a voice here, look elsewhere. I moderate all comments. My primary goal is to provide a place where left-leaning people who are critical of the dominant transgender paradigm–especially as it pertains to young people–can have their say.
Does that mean I won’t consider publishing views counter to my own? No, but it does mean I’m not interested in hateful vitriol aimed at parents and family members who are supporting each other, and their kids, in finding an alternative to the trans narrative.
If you want to see your comment published here and join the discussion, be constructive. You don’t have to agree with everything you read here, but I’m not interested in providing a platform for finger wagging, holier-than-thou transactivists. Nor will I put out the welcome mat for the tiresome scolds who have nothing better to do than try to convince us they know our kids better than the intelligent and caring parents who form a community in these pages.
I make no guarantees to anyone that a particular comment will be posted. But if you’re a parent, family member, ally, or friend looking for an alternative to the galloping trans-kid meme, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome.
Thank you for your blog which makes me feel sane again. It’s so hard to escape from a world policed along very narrow, and in my view, very dangerous lines. I am the mother of a young adult who decided two years ago, in the wake of a series of traumatic events, that he is female. He is being supported by two gender doctors who, he says, have ‘diagnosed him as transsexual’. This ‘diagnosis’ is merely an echo of his own interpretation of his own narrative. They say that he is transsexual because he says that he is transsexual. Yet, he hears this diagnosis as confirmation of his own belief that he must transition to survive.
HIs belief in the absolute necessity of transitioning is based, I believe, on the trans narratives that he has encountered on the internet.
By contrast, when his adolescent sister developed an eating disorder and then self-harmed, or developed she was supported to challenge her beliefs, support which allowed her – after a long two years – to recover. Only a belief that you are the sex that you were not born to is unchallengeable without charges of bigotry.
For my part, I have become increasingly convinced that gender dysphoria is a maladaptive coping strategy, prompted by very real distress, but not necessarily stress focused around gender. Yet our culture, which for the last century, has been obsessed with gender, cannot see the distress underlying these claims.
I think that the supposed parallel between gender transitioning and homosexuality is particularly unhelpful and misleading. Both narratives share a story of coming out, and of liberation from prejudice. But both are not necessarily the same. Gay culture – despite – or because of the suffering and persecution homosexuals have often faced – revels in humour which which rests on lifting taboos and telling the truth. But trans culture is humour aversive, maybe because humour threatens to crack the fragile identities, uncovering a truth which cannot be spoken, a truth which threatens to launch the self into terrifying chaos. I think it is for this reason that trans culture cannot countenance questioning or debate.
Mary1792, you’ll find that many others here share your experience. Please contribute here as often as you like. I will be posting your comment more prominently in a guest post. Thank you.