This is another in a series of posts examining statements made by top gender specialists at the inaugural USPATH conference in Los Angeles in February 2017. (See here and here for more.)
Not so long ago, unremitting distress about one’s gender was the one and only reason for medical transition. Those days are over. With activists clamoring for a change from “gender dysphoria” to “gender incongruence” in the next revision to the international register of diagnosis codes, the ICD-11, the push is on for insurance-paid hormones and surgeries for anyone who believes their body is in any way “incongruent” with their “gender identity.” And this effort includes medical intervention for children and adolescents.
In this clip, excerpted from a USPATH symposium entitled “OUTSIDE OF THE BINARY – CARE FOR NON-BINARY ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS,” pediatric gender specialist Johanna Olson-Kennedy MD, discusses her views on medical interventions for “nonbinary” youth.
As always, we recommend that you listen to the recorded excerpt yourself, as well as reading the transcript included in this post. Time stamps are indicated by square brackets. []
According to Dr. Olson-Kennedy,
There are still people who want to embark on phenotypic gender transition—hormones and surgeries—who don’t meet this criterion [for gender dysphoria]. Well, what are we to do?
…And it’s great. I love this. I don’t like the word “pass” at all. Passing as a member of the other sex is not a criterion for treatment, whereas achievement of personal comfort and well being are. And that is really the crux of what should guide our care, as medical providers, as professionals in the mental health role.
How is this any different from elective cosmetic surgery? Trans activists will say it’s “medically necessary” because it is a guaranteed suicide preventative, a dubious claim at best. But how about a teen girl who hates herself and is self-harming because her breasts are (to her) too large or too small? What about her “comfort and well being”?
[:52] So, there are a lot of medical intervention possibilities for folks who have nonbinary identities. And again, this is really not for me to determine. It’s really for me to work with a person to determine what it is they’re interested in.
As we all know by now, the idea that a medical or psych provider should use diagnostic skills to determine whether a young person ought to undergo permanent drug or surgical treatments is so 20th century.
[1:06] Some people are like, oh! no menses, no mustache. You know, assigned female at birth, “I really don’t want facial hair, I don’t want [inaudible], I’m super dysphoric about bleeding.”
So, there’s lots of options, certainly for menstrual suppression. I love—I was so excited to be in one of the first sessions that I went to, which was gynecologic care for trans-masculine folks, this “leave a gonad” thing.
So, it was this idea of, you know, maybe you don’t wanna have bleeding but you still want estrogen, and you want that support from a medical perspective. Or you just don’t want to go on testosterone.
It’s 2017, and designer endocrine systems are all the rage. Human beings should tinker and tamper with their delicate hormonal balance, because it’s what they want right here, right now. Mix and match–why not?
[1:48] There’s lots of these different things. Maybe a central blocker and low dose testosterone. I had a young person who went on testosterone for a year, and it was like, that’s enough, I’m fine with it. I’m masculinized enough, and that’s good for me. Or no medical intervention at all. That’s absolutely possible.
The slide below, from a different talk at the same USPATH conference, pretty well encapsulates this “treatment” approach:
So we see the mindset of “affirm-only gender doctors here; why so many of them don’t acknowledge there might be permanent harm done to young people who eventually detransition. There are no mistakes. It’s all part of the gender journey.
[2:06] So, for nonbinary assigned males, maybe just Spironolactone [an androgen blocker] or using a peripheral blocker only. That might be something that people opt for. I had a young person who really [inaudible] nonbinary identity, but kind of, very very huge fear of a large nipple areola complex. Like, “I just can’t even deal with that.”
All you women with large nipple areolas that you just can’t even deal with, maybe you can get Medicaid to cover that in your state? Worth a try.
It would be one thing if these people were arguing for elective, cosmetic treatments on demand, for adults. But activists and gender specialists not only want to retain a medical diagnosis, gender incongruence in the next version of the ICD-11; they want insurance to cover all trans-related treatments, for nonbinaries and anyone else who wants them. In fact, some public and private insurance policies (such as that of the San Francisco Department of Public Health) already provide such coverage.
Back to Olson-Kennedy and her areola-avoidant patient:
[2:33] So, we put them on Spironolactone for a while, and then eventually she came back and said I wanna go on estrogen. So there’s selective estrogen receptor modulators for people who do not want breast development. That could be a possibility. Maybe hormones, no surgery. No medical intervention, another possibility.
No medical intervention: Just one of many dishes in the smorgasbord of options for nonbinary, gender fluid youth. Who’s to say (certainly not a medical doctor), which is the least harmful of those possibilities in the long run?
[2:51] My observations: Sometimes nonbinary identities are strategic…to protect themselves, to protect their parents. What I can tell you for certain about trans kids, youth, is they do a lot of taking care of the people around them.
Here we see a theme we’ve heard from other affirm-only genderists: Trans youth are more mature than “cis” kids. They are extraordinarily prescient about their future; they know for certain what they will want at age 20, 30, 40.
Prominent gender therapist Diane Ehrensaft lauds her tween clients for having the wisdom and foresight to opt for adoption in the future—unlike their balking parents, whose only reason for objecting to sterilizing a 12-year-old is a selfish desire for grandchildren.
But there’s something else crucial to note about Olson-Kennedy’s comments: After initially lauding her young enbies for pursuing smaller nipple areolas, or choosing to halt their menstrual periods without sprouting a beard, she is now implying to her audience that nonbinary is only a stopover for many of these kids. They are only claiming this identity to “take care of” their parents, when what they really want is to go whole hog to a binary transition.
[3:18] “I will sacrifice my own comfort for the comfort of the people around me, who I know I’m making very uncomfortable with my gender.”
What an extraordinary assertion. Trans kids aren’t just mature beyond their years when it comes to making irreversible decisions about their bodily integrity and fertility. They also emanate Buddha-like concern for the feelings of others, especially their woefully ignorant parents. How long before we have religious sects led by trans kid gurus, like Tibetan child lamas on steroids?
And how does the claim that trans kids are precociously mature square with the accumulating evidence of a strong correlation between gender dysphoria and autism? Young people with autism are not exactly known for their self-sacrificing nature or their ability to reflect upon the feelings of others.
[3:33] And so, marking that out is really important. Because again, because expressing that [they are nonbinary] is often used as evidence that they are not trans. “No, well they don’t want to do this. Clearly, they’re not trans.” And having that conversation, and making sure that someone isn’t taking care of someone else at their own sacrifice.
Are they “taking care of someone else” or perhaps listening to a family member who just might have the best interests of the child at heart, more than a gender doctor who hasn’t known the kid their entire lives?
So, on the one hand, we hear that nonbinaries need treatments “to feel more comfortable,” and at the same time, we’re told that a significant number of martyr-like trans kids are “sacrificing” themselves by feigning a nonbinary identity for the comfort of their parents. Which is it?
The Guardian recently produced a mini-documentary on nonbinary milennials and their quest for comfort. Meghan Murphy dissected this bit of puffery, and took on the living nightmare of feeling uncomfortable in this article.
Well worth a look.
This is my 2nd “Peak Trans” of the day. How can anyone take this seriously?!
Women who don’t want their periods have skipped their periods w birth control pills for as long as the pill has been around. They’re prescribed for healthy girls as well as for different gynecological conditions. There’s one designed for 4 periods a year. I don’t know if olson Kennedy is stupid or has some kind of relationship with relevant pharmaceutical companies, but bc pills are the obvious choice for supressing periods. Blockers are ridiculously expensive and much riskier. That was the first WTF i had while reading this from a medical perspective. I think insurance companies are drooling over that DSM update, they can safely deny coverage and will have the backing of the overwhelmingly republican government in doing so.
I have PCOS and when I was in college I used to skip periods regularly 72 day cycles. The doctor prescribed me birth control pills because he wanted to make sure I was having a period once a month to reduce my risk of uterine cancer. All this hormone chemical hodge-podge being handed out like candy to transitioners sounds like a cancer cocktail to me. In 20 years there’s going to be so very much litigation going on.
If I was a therapist and a patient came to me hating their areolas, I’d tell them to stop watching porn. I would not recommend cosmetic surgery for this.
Every post I see with Olsen-Kennedy’s “expertise” on display makes me think she is flat out crazy.
for all the talk about “ambulance chaser” lawyers, malpractice insurance being too expensive, etc it actually takes a lot of malpractice and many years before doctors are sued into oblivion for dangerous practices. They can typically settle many times before someone decides to go through the pain of a trial. That was part of why the dr crane phalloplasty lawsuits numbering 8 was such a shock to me. I like to go to doctor review websites and sort the results by worst ratings just to read the stories, there is always someone who is serially incompetent in any city, and they are virtually always still practicing when I go to check up. People don’t know they are being wronged, and if they do, they aren’t sure what to do about it.
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What kills me about this is the notion of being “comfortable.” Surgeries and treatments exist to make these people “comfortable,” but what about the millions of kids who have real medical conditions for which there is no magic surgery. What about Type 1 diabetic kids “uncomfortable” with their non-functioning pancreases? No silver bullet for them. What about kids with cerebral palsy who cannot be made more “comfortable” with any surgery or hormone. Why do we celebrate and worship these kids who can treat their “discomfort” while not saying anything about the kids who go on living their lives with incurable conditions? What does a kid with “uncomfortable” cystic fibrosis think when she fights so hard to get life-saving treatment while insurance automatically covers hormone treatment for people claiming to be non-binary?
Being human is not being ‘comfortable’. You could not be ‘comfortable’ unless you closed your eyes to all the suffering and injustice in the world and lived a purely selfish, narcissistic life. And if you did you would end up unhappy
So true, our society seems to have lost the insight that giving someone everything they want won’t make that person happy, as well as the fact that the best treatment for unhappiness is not navel-gazing, but going out and doing something for someone else.
Comfortable is not exactly the right word to use. It’s “comforting” in a similar way that insulin makes diabetic people’s lives different even though it’s not a cure. And just because we don’t have the cure for diabetic kids, kids with cerebral palsy, etc. does that mean we shouldn’t give treatment to people who we can help with a specific treatment? To be clear, hormones and surgery are not silver bullets either, difficulties of being trans continue far after these treatments. Not because of the “condition” though, because of the way society functions in relation to gender and sex.
Also, do you really think it’s true that cystic fibrosis is harder to get medical coverage for than hormones? You’ve got to be kidding.
I do not have twitter and didn’t know how to contact you directly, but I definitely think you should share around and on your Twitter that Rhode Island College is launching a course called ‘Transracial Bodies, Transracial Selves’ in accordance and same logic of the entire transgender premises: this is the logical conclusion and equivalency of the entire transgender brain melting, big pharma and nature rejecting nonsense. It is astounding how the transgender community can possibly say that it is any different, not simply with Julia Serrano endorsing it, and the sense used in Rebecca Tuvel’s work, but there is now even a bloody college course for it, even Michael Jackson in the picture.
Here is the course description from it’s website, scroll down and click the course title (http://www.risd.edu/academics/literary-arts-studies/courses/) :
”Thanks to the work and lives of transgender people, we now have room to understand our bodies in radically unbounded ways. Technological advances in surgery, hormonal therapy, psychiatry, cultural warfare, are catching up to the transgender presence: the gendered body is not necessarily that with which we were born, but one that can be crafted to match the real body of our psyche, our dreams. However, one’s racial self remains tethered to biology. Blackness, Whiteness, Asianness, Latinness, the whole rainbow of racial identification, is still construed as biologically inescapable and inevitable. To speak of “transracialism” is to evoke self-delusion and community betrayal. But this cultural reaction is contrary to the everyday experience that actually finds racial identification as a process that is always transracial: declaring ourselves racially, we all cross restricted zones in becoming ourselves. In this course, we will use the discourse of transgenderism to build an alternate vocabulary of race.”
Goodness Christ… In all ironies, race is so much less biologically based and supported than gender: the basic anchoring of our existence and reproduction of our species.
More media attention to it:
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/rhode-island-college-offers-transracial-course-claims-race-can-transcend-tether-biology
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/rhode-island-college-offers-transracial-course-claims-race-can-transcend-tether-biology
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9492
Viciera, thanks for the information…I’ll do some tweeting with what you’ve provided.
This is the page for the professor who is teaching the course: http://www.risd.edu/people/joon-lee/
This is his CV: http://cdn.risd.systems/webhook-uploads/1497456106364_lee_joon_oluchi_web_correct_cv_3_9_15.pdf
This is his self-description on Blogger:
“I’m a girl who loves red lipstick… oh, sorry…I sometimes forget…I’m a boy who loves red lipstick, a boy who also loves to love boys. But I’m also a Korea-born, Midwest-bred, Virginia-groomed, Bay Area-harvested faggotte who is above all a black feminist.”
https://www.blogger.com/profile/11119576251295877389
He also says ‘I’ve always felt myself to be a black girl trapped in an Asian gay male’s body’. But he also says he’s ‘a transsexual who doesn’t believe transsexual surgery can solve my problems’. As far as I can tell he presents himself as a man, just a very effeminate one.
I saw this the other day. It’s insane. Also, just a quick correction, this course will be offered at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), not Rhode Island College.
“Young people with autism are not exactly known for their self-sacrificing nature or their ability to reflect upon the feelings of others.”
This statement is inaccurate and unfair, at least when it comes to high-functioning females. We are often *highly* self-sacrificing, and have been forced by society’s expectations of girls to make *huge* efforts to consider the feelings of others.
The condition previously known as ‘Aspergers’ has recently been subsumed into ‘autism’ in the DSM. I suspect that this is what’s causing your confusion. But please don’t slander Aspergers women as inconsiderate and unfeeling.
It makes perfect sense that a proportion of Asperger girls would go down the non-binary or trans routes – very early, we internalize the idea that society’s problems with us are *our fault*, and we try as hard as we can to fix that, however we can.
Happily, I’ve also found a high number of Asperger women in the radical feminist community.
I usually find this blog to be insightful and important – please update your ideas about autism in women, as that understanding is going to be very important in our efforts to keep girls safe from the trans-juggernaut.
It’s not talking about women, it’s referencing kids and teens. It’s an accurate statement about the social difficulties associated with autism spectrum disorders. The experts are saying that trans kids are amazingly empathetic and socially intelligent, but also a population that has a high rate of autism, a social disability. It does not add up. It could be phrased differently, but reality is there.
I think can see how someone could get both of these interpretations. I think 4thwave might want to clarify to avoid offense.
I am a gay man and I also have Asperger’s syndrome, and I also do not appreciate being lumped in that way, either. What makes it difficult is all the self-diagnosed types who take resources away from those of us who actually got diagnoses from doctors.
“Young people with autism are not exactly known for their self-sacrificing nature or their ability to reflect upon the feelings of others.”
The diagnosis of females with Asperger’s is, as I’m sure you know, an inexact science, and many females get missed. Many females presenting to gender clinics are said to have Asperger traits but have never gone thru any diagnostic process. So how many transgender people actually have Asperger’s is unknown.
One thing that goes along with ASD is anxiety, and pseudo-narcissism is a coping mechanism for anxiety….which makes sense. Self-preservation.
I think this pseudo-narcissism coping mechanism factors in and it makes it look like they care nothing for the feelings of their family members. They have no time to think about others…they are desperate to fit in and feel comfortable to address their own anxiety.
At least this is how I’ve interpreted what my daughter has done.
I’ve also found it useful to distinguish between empathy (as ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person) and compassion (when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help). Again, I think anxiety can get in the way of a compassionate act of empathy.
Asperger’s can also get stuck and not know how to get out. So there can certainly be compassion but they don’t know how to get unstuck….which of course can happen to anyone, not just Aspergers.
This is actually a new tack from the pro-trans crowd, or at least more strategic thinking on their part.
So… now Olsen and her comrades are making permanent surgeries and drug regimens available to people who are calling themselves “non-binary” as opposed to transgender. I can understand from a marketing perspective why they’d want to do so, of course (and as I’ve commented before, it seems that the end game involves pretty darn near every human being swapping sexes.) Is the trans lobby hypothesizing the existence of a “non-binary” brain? Are there supposed “non-binary” “hormone washes” that affected someone in utero? It’s so odd … will we see people “coming out” and saying “a-ha! That’s been the problem all along! I don’t have a sex! I knew it since I was a baby, when I refused to wear any clothes or play with any toys at all!” Ummm don’t think so.
“Non-binary” looks even more faddish and trans-trending than does transgender, doesn’t it? I mean, nobody is even bothering to put up even a psuedo-scientific explanation for it. So, what about that? If even the trans lobby isn’t really invested in non-binary identities, how then do they justify permanent medical procedures?
It seems to me that positing that young people who claim a non-binary identity are only doing so to protect the bigots around them from the truth (of their true transgender nature) fits the bill. If we assume that non-binary is actually just a station stop on the trans train, and the trans train only goes on one line, to one station, then it doesn’t really matter how you got on the train in the first place, or what kind of ticket you bought. It’s also so interesting that Olsen believes – contrary to many people’s experiences with adolescents – that this is due to teenagers’ care and concern for those around them. An alternative, and to my mind much more likely explanation, is that such a teenager wants what they want, when they want it, and is willing to say whatever they have to say to their parents that they think might get it for them.
I also don’t understand how, in the end, it would be any more palatable to a parent to have their minor child undergo surgery and hormones in the name of being non-binary. I don’t even get the logic here – how is a parent any less likely to be upset or worried about a child’s push to undergo transition, if it’s called by a different name? The Gender Gibberish just keeps getting more and more convoluted and byzantine, and this is a perfect example.
So, a lot of this makes sense if you investigate transhumanism and discover that a lot of the main supporters are rich men who transitioned who believe in this philosophy of taking people beyond biology.
This is just the start. And, of course, going for kids, who are immature and easier to influence and, at the same time, pushing out the parents — the people who are supposed to be looking out for the immature, easily-influenced kids makes it easier to start implementing this transition from the biological truth of “sex” to the more fluid and changeable “gender” and on to turning a biological human into an immortal machine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
If they were merely trying to cure mental and physical disability, that would be one thing. But a lot of it seems to be operating on the assumption that any non-heterosexual sexuality is abnormal.
That was a very good comment worriedmom on the lack of scientific rigor of Olson’s presentation
If the brain is “nonbinary” then how could a MTT have a “female brain” in a male body?
The continuous spewing of new claims that are logically inconsistent with other claims going unquestioned is astonishing.
This detransition video was really good, talks about alot of the psychology behind identifying as trans or non-binary, especially in women
https://youtu.be/rJp8_098xVY
I found listening to this really painful for a few reasons. As someone who struggled with serious body image issues, there have been many times in my life that I felt a body modification could have been necessarily for my “comfort” and well being. Additionally, as a woman who had final stage pre-cervical cancer cells in my cervix, and I had to have two surgeries to prevent potential cancer from infesting my organs, I’m very insulted that I have bills up to my eyeballs from those procedures (even WITH insurance) and these pick and chose items (which are largely cosmetic) are being framed as medically necessary. Is she kidding, “i’d like to menses but no mustache”? tell that to my best friend who has been having EXCRUCIATING periods since she was a child, vomiting and being so sick, she can’t go to work. Where was her medically necessarily intervention covered by insurance? This makes me more and more mad the more I think about it.
We need to turn anger into action. We need a return to the “gatekeeper” days and allow therapists to be unmuzzled to actually counsel youth instead of affirm their self absorptions.
Very true. Where is the insurance covered (or government covered as in my country) surgery for everyone else who aren’t satisfied with their bodies? Why are they all of a sudden allowed to pick and choose what kind of body they want when the rest of us are stuck with the one we got? This is starting to become ridiculous. Best of luck to you and everyone else struggling with real diseases or the aftermath of one!
Faye makes some very good points. She has really thought about all this a lot. This is a video that should be shown in schools, and especially to all girls who feel they are transgender. She is taking a brave stand!
“Maybe a central blocker and low dose testosterone.”
Wow! Ovarian cancer, here we come! I hope all the young women being led to believe that they can just fine tune their endocrine system however they want, and that’s perfectly fine, will later have a chance to sue. Milo Stewart got her testosterone from a informed consent clinic and recently made a video about being uncomfortable with the physical changes happening too fast.
But will they win a lawsuit? The kids who’ve had blockers/hormones basically forced on them by their parents, e.g. Jazz Jennings, sure, or people who starting transitioning decades ago before the risks were known. But adults who chose hormones right now and then dislike the known effects of the drug later, I don’t know. And the whole point of informed consent clinics is that the doctor isn’t keeping people from hormones.
I don’t know too much about medical malpractice law, but in most cases so far as I’ve heard, the question is whether the physician complied with the “standard of care” for a certain treatment or surgery or procedure. I’m not sure of it, and I could well be wrong, but I believe that WPATH, or perhaps USPATH, would be the body that sets forth the standard of care for transgender procedures. With that said, though, I don’t at all think that even WPATH provides a comprehensive definition of what constitutes, for instance, a phalloplasty that is the benchmark or uniform standard of care. Typical legal concepts like negligence would still seem to apply.
As to drug safety, again, it seems to be a fairly complicated area. Every drug comes with a slew of warnings and contra-indications, but drug-makers are consistently and successfully sued for bad consequences nonetheless. I’m not sure having someone sign off on a laundry list of potential bad side effects is enough to get the drug company “all the way there” in terms of completely avoiding liability for injury.
That’s a good point.
The thing is though, with testosterone, obviously cancer is bad for everyone. But having facial hair and a deep voice is a positive for a trans man, yet it would be negative for someone who detransitions. Could such a person sue and win? Maybe not.
I recently saw a video discussing nonbinary in which a woman revealed that she cut off one of her fingers because she thought it was “cute”. Not even that she felt it wasn’t part of her body (as some “trans abled” – or is it “trans disabled”) people have claimed, some of whom have engaged in DIY amputations, just that it was “cute”.
It seems that the justifications for permanently harming one’s own body are becoming increasingly trivial.
This can’t be good.
Can you please link?
Justine,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I never managed to find the video I mentioned above, although after searching weeks of my video-viewing history, as well as many key word searches trying to find that particular video (a multiple-minute video of which the key scene is only about 5 seconds), I did find an entire video about her, but I warn you the first couple of seconds was all the gross I could handle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dXOwmaaTI
I also found some even more extreme body modifications that might also be of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKAk39TWGn0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK9IrWXyKxA
and this kid (and his family)
My first thought was ‘fake news’, but regrettably it is true. There have been a number of articles about her in the UK press: just put the name she goes by, ‘Torz Reynolds’, into Google News. She is a qualified body-piercer who works out of a London tattoo studio. This is the latest and possibly the most serious in a succession of well-publicised self-harming activities.
Thanks for finding-Shiver
As far as the 8 yr old drag queen, I wrote a blog post about that and how I don’t think it’s appropriate for any children to be paraded around in make up in public. But I’d rather see that than effeminate male children being transitioned and put on hormone blockers and paraded out in public. Conservatives were all up in arms about the child drag queen and how the LGBT community are pedophiles but Christian southerners have been parading little girls around dressed extremely inappropriately in child pageants with little commentary from them for a long time http://www.thehomoarchy.com/matt-walsh-conservative-blogger-says-the-lgbt-agenda-is-an-active-threat-to-our-children-because-of-a-child-drag-queen-meanwhile-straight-southern-women-have-been-dressing-their-girls-up-as-pros/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/#article-comments
There is a story on the Atlantic about how we have entered an era of “post-truth.” I had the temerity to post a comment suggesting that transgenderism exemplifies “post-truth” since it seems to reject biological reality (DNA does not matter). The response was so vicious I deleted the post. Someone may want to follow up on this idea–is transgenderism post-truth? Is all of reality in our heads, or is there some biological reality?
I haven’t read the Atlantic article yet, but (not being a philosophy major) one thing really jumps out at me about this. Which is… regardless of whether there “is such a thing” as reality, don’t we as people living together in the world have to mutually agree to at least pretend that there is? If you are out driving your car on the street, don’t you have to accept as a postulate that red means stop and green means go, and that if you attempt to transcend these things, there will be a physical result (whether “real” or not) to you and your car that you won’t like?
Okay maybe that’s a bit of a glib example, but there are many, many good reasons that people grouped together have decided that certain things constitute facts. Agreeing on what constitutes reality serves a function and I would submit that if we were all wandering around all day long, not sure of what words meant what, or whether words were “even a thing,” we’d be pretty messed up in a hurry. Specifically, there is a myriad of consequences to the idea that there are these beings called “men” and “women.” Now it might be in the future that these categories will shift around a little bit. The category of “human” has changed a lot over the past 300 years, for instance. But that strikes me as a very different thing than saying these categories simply do not exist in any meaningful sense.
Worriedmom,
There’s a concept in science called “convergence”. Basically, a hypothesis is accepted with results of experimentation and/or observation consistent with the hypothesis (and no incompatible results or hypothesis that better explains the evidence). But, when people working in unrelated disciplines, exploring different phenomena, independently come up with evidence that supports a hypothesis, that is the evidence converging, and that can elevate a hypothesis to a Theory. The best example is evolution by natural selection, with evidence from population genetics, biochemistry, paleontology, animal behavior, molecular biology, embryology, and more.
The evidence is staggering that there are two biological sexes, male and female, and that for over 3 billion years this biological mechanism has passed the genes from one generation to the next in virtually every animal/plant species (and many micro-organisms) and that the genetic flip of the XX/XY coin influences the role each individual lives out within its social group/ecosystem. This is another extremely impressive example of convergence.
While different cultures and civilizations have different ways of doing things, there’s a lot of overlap. We speak different languages, but we all have language. In1950s America, girls didn’t shave their heads, but that was normal for girls in that era in subsaharan Africa. In both cultures, girls like to do/wear the things that other girls around them are doing/wearing.
For decades, our culture has been ever more flexible about which roles, garments, hair styles and occupations an individual may choose. But it is this culture that is being accused of enforcing rigid M & F stereotypes in behavior, occupation and clothing.
Sorry this is so long….
Scientific evidence increasingly supports the apparent sex binary being more of a double bell curve than a black-and-white categorization.
It’s entirely possible and documented for humans to have different chromosomal sex than phenotypical sex; there are even other chromosomal configurations such as XXY that don’t play well with the assumption of a strict binary. Sociology has the concept of a lot of things we take for granted being “social constructs” which means that we assume it to be the case because everyone else does, whether or not that’s borne out by scientific evidence. There’s a lot of research out there about binary trans people having existed for centuries, and something a lot of people don’t know is that the Nazis destroyed a ton of research into gender and sexuality; the famous book-burning photo is of this occurrence. Also, many non-western cultures have or had more genders than the western binary system.
I have constantly bothered The Atlantic to cover this issue and uncover the reality of the new transgender craziness. There are many suffering families out there.
I read the article just yesterday and all along I thought the same thing . the trans trend is totally applicable to that discussion.
I read that article and had the same thought but would definitely have been too timid to post it. I appreciate that there is some evidence for the idea that trans people are biologically distinct from most, but the way that very ambiguous and inconclusive evidence has been turned into widespread consensus that bodies don’t matter seems consistent with the trends the article describes.
Thank you for making the attempt with your comment. It is a valid point to be made…especially since now “transgender” is anyone’s reality, all self-proclaimed and shalt-not-be-questioned.
Kristina Caffrey, thank you for making the attempt with your comment on The Atlantic article. It is a valid point to be made…especially since now “transgender” is anyone’s reality, all self-proclaimed and shalt-not-be-questioned.
What really matters: See the program throw to the left of this story:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/seatatthetable/kimberley-manning-mother-of-a-trans-child-kids-and-cellphones-1.4244616/kimberley-manning-on-raising-florence-her-trans-daughter-1.4244618
So fascinating that this woman has found support for her gender ideology in her very own child. That must prove that it can’t possibly be a made-up phenomenon.
And why is it the ones who tell use gender is a social construction seem to be oblivious to the concept of social contagion?
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Facial hair isn’t really an indicator of being a certain sex or gender, although males are more likely to grow it, though some males don’t. I’m natal female and have natural facial hair on my chin that I love and display proudly. I’m fortunate to have it because it’s interesting and different and looks nice. I enjoy feeling it as a sort of stim, as well, as I’m Autistic. I never had to take testosterone to get it, and I don’t have a medical condition such as PCOS and my hormone levels are fine. I think hair is awesome (and gender-neutral). A lot of females grow mustaches naturally as well.
Menses is an indicator of being female, though not all natal females get periods. Some intersex folks get periods, and being intersex is often just part of natural diversity. We know that natal males definitely can’t get periods because they don’t have the proper reproductive organs to get them. Is this something that some transwomen really get dysphoric about — the lack of periods? Do they have brains that prepare themselves for the monthly cycle? Do some transwomen get PMS? A lot of natal females often really dislike getting periods.
And non-binary –well, this often has to do with gender neutral language and certain social dysphoria about wanting things to be neutral. Sometimes this pertains to physical dysphoria involving secondary sex characteristics, as well. It can also just be an internal sort of self-perception. I’m sure the same can be true of trans sometimes, regarding self-perception. I understand that this is complicated. Non-binaries often don’t see themselves as being the same as trans, though some do. Non-binary is not exactly “trans lite.” Non-binary folks are often pushed to be trans, though, and there’s a political motivation to get NB under the trans umbrella. I don’t see anyone really worrying about NBs being shuffled into the trans political ideology, except for some folks who say non-binary isn’t a real gender and use that as a reason to exclude them. Some even refer to non-binary as “genderqueer” even though non-binary is so much less political and controversial. Not all non-binary folks identify as queer. Queer just seems like more of a sexuality thing, anyway, and gender identity is different from sexual orientation, right?
I’m heterosexual and GNC/gender atypical. Sometimes I experience something similar to non-binary. For non-binaries, I like hearing about the hetero NBs. It’s hard to find enough information about this. Like, a hetero NB would be attracted to someone with the opposite plumbing, and most likely preferably cisgender. I’d like to hear more about those. From my experience, it isn’t hard to find a hetero cis partner who is understanding and sympathetic and attracted to you if you’re GNC or non-binary. I have a partner and he loves me for who I am.
I’m afraid the link to the Olsen-Kennedy clip has been porn-bombed. You should change it ASAP.