Jan 24, 2023·edited Jan 24, 2023Liked by Unyielding Bicyclist
I think the too-onlineness of many people in the L+ community has led a lot of them (us?) to put too much faith in the power of discourse--specifically, its power to affect human IRL behavior, and change social norms.
Can the discourse affect what you *can or can't say* in IRL, at least in polite society? Yes, it can.
Can the discourse make people attracted to bodies they're not inclined toward? No, it can't--and believe me, as a homosexual man who spent years in denial, I've already tried. (Adding motivated heterosexuality to MY dictionary, btw!)
The gay men I know are complete apes. They are into guys, they are openly intolerant of any attempt to get them in bed with a woman, and trans men are not on their sexual radar. But these gay men I'm talking about? They aren't online, unless we count Grindr. They don't contribute to, or participate in, the discourse. They socialize, and shag, in the real world.
Someone who receives their promises about the L+ wonderland from the internet will barely know these guys exist until they get out there. And that's one of the disadvantages of all the etiquette that's clamping down on the web: no one has any idea what they're getting into anymore.
This isn't to say that the landscape is barren for trans folk--literally *all* the trans people I know are partnered! But the web doesn't reflect *that* accurately either, if you ask me.
The web is like a funhouse mirror now. The dictionaries are just playing catchup.
"The word is formally “used in technical or scientific writing to refer to a woman or girl,” it says, with an addendum: “Except in scientific writing, most people find this usage of female offensive.” "
Possibly the cursed and unrepresentative planet of the Very Online (TM). That is, online [Western] discourse in incel communities, groups hostile to feminists and feminism, and places with a misogynistic bent tend to call women and girls "females" in a pointedly derogatory manner. So a lot of Millennials and Gen Z who have spent far too much time on social media -I am guilty as charged of this- will have a kneejerk reaction to the word and assume it was used to be deliberately offensive.
That's just a hypothesis, though. Whether it's the true reason for the updated definition or not, I'm sad to find this sentiment essentially being codified by Cambridge.
Is it that, or is it that “female” is referring to sex, not gender, and is therefore exclusionary and offensive to those who consider themselves women but are not female? I kind of suspect these are the “most” people who have pushed for this change, because presenting their views as majority views is the MO of that activist group.
"exclusionary and offensive" seems to be right on the money.
ICYMI, one "Rhea Liang" got her knickers in a twist over ABC-Australia giving "adult human female" as the clue in a crossword puzzle, the answer to which was presumably "woman":
Conversation subsequently went off the rails -- as those on Twitter often do ... -- from there into whether "adult human female" or "adult female human" was more accurate -- on which molecular biologist Emma Hilton had the more sensible and illuminating observations.
But what was particularly noteworthy was Rhea's claim that "adult human female" was "a siren call for hatred" -- clear and manifest evidence of a call for the genocide of the transgendered ... 🙄
Sadly, our dictionaries, even the better ones, are becoming battlefields over gender ideology. Jonathan Haidt had a more general but quite interesting observation in an article in The Atlantic some months ago -- "Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" -- where he used an apt analogy with the Tower of Babel:
"The text does not say that God destroyed the tower [of Babel], but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension."
That's the final "endpoint" in the general corruption of language -- a "crime" which many dictionaries are "aiding and abetting". But a great deal of it is driven by the desperation, if not outright thuggery, of the transgendered, transwomen in particular, to be seen and accepted as members of the sex categories for which they clearly don't meet the membership requirements.
Thanks to your friend and to you for sharing this great essay. The truth and needs of lesbians are at the center of this conversation for me for personal as well as conceptual reasons, so I want to see more of this. I agree with the 1% number, which has been inflated to as much as 10%. I believe that very few people are homosexuals, a class of people with an immutable characteristic of same-sex attraction. These people need clear definition and specific protection. The dictionary definition sliding away and being queered is very concerning.
Over the years I have often wondered if including the "B" back in the day was a misguided act of generosity from gays and lesbians, another strand of "inclusivity" leading to the mess we are in today. I'm older than the writer (64) but I have known so many (I'm talking dozens) of "bisexual" women in my life, that is, women who have at times fallen in love with women or had sexual relationships with women. Some of them are now proudly "queer," with their husband and their three kids and their human resource/academic jobs. Over the years, I have seen that each of these women turn out to be what in my (admittedly unscientific) opinion is simply a fairly common variant of a heterosexual woman. I include myself in this list, though because of my skepticism from the beginning I have never comfortably defined myself as bisexual. I never felt like I needed protection or to be part of a flag.
Lesbian feminist leaders of the second wave expanded possibilities in sexual expression for all women, as they did in so many other ways. Women my age in certain demographics (college educated and white for sure) stepped into this exploration. Maybe all the "bisexual" women I have known end up with men because of societal pressure to be straight, but I truly don't think that explains it. Many women don't like fellatio, but that doesn't make them lesbians, even if some lesbians wish that was the case. Not that there are not "true" bisexuals too who really could go either way, some of whom end up partnering long-term with someone of their own sex. Those women would also need definition and protection, such as same-sex marriage laws. But they aren't the people I have known anyway. The author states that men ALWAYS left her cold. That is something that can be measured physiologically, which makes it an immutable characteristic. Defining homosexuality clearly and unequivocally as exclusively same-sex attraction must be part of the project of getting to a healthier place in our society regarding gender and sex.
I think it's more likely that the "B" was included because lots of Ls and Gs are long-term partnered with Bs. It's difficult, and pointless, to exclude them from gay culture/events.
Very good point. I wasn’t really trying to criticize anything that happened with the understandable inclusion of the B. Just noting that in someways it helped to muddy the definition of gays and lesbians that really is necessary to advocate for rights.
Yeah, I totally understand--I didn't think you were criticizing. I've just given it some thought. There's also the issue that many L&G had hetero experiences before coming out, sometimes for years, and it can be difficult to tease out when that was compulsory heterosexuality/late self-acceptance versus when it was bisexuality of some kind.
I know what you're saying--while I think many Bs have a great deal in common with the L&G, too much to separate, there is also the fact that many "queer" sorts who really don't share the experiences or challenges of the L&G in any significant way are now slipping under the umbrella, and that's a problem for activism and even focused spaces for the core group in question.
Thanks Shannon, very well put. I have a few lesbian friends my age who if I asked them might call themselves bi, because they had kids with men 20 or 30 years ago. They are much happier being out and being partnered with a woman. They know they have overcome much to be true to themselves as lesbians-- but they were with men who fathered their kids and were ok with it at the time, still are ok with it. Some are still friends with the men. They're complicated and beautiful older women who just want to be who they are.
It's always hard fitting political fights and activism to reality as it actually IS with actual people! Compromises are always made and it's easy to judge later when there is fallout. I just felt like I wanted to bring it up because in all the discussions about gender and feminism and homosexuality, I have not seen this whole issue discussed very much. I'm a big fan of lesbians, both those in my life and those who I never knew but who have made my life better by caring about rights for all women. And I am irritated as hell at those "queer" essentially straight people who have been the first to cut me off as I have stood up for women and against the excesses of gender ideology.
Thank you so much for the post on this topic, which hits my home directly! I will come back to it, but wanted right now to alert all to this Michelle Goldberg NY Times op-ed, "Trans Kids Deserve Private Lives Too," which, as I read it, is essentially endorsing parental abolition in school settings. Here is her flabbergastingly wrong conclusion: "I would be flabbergasted and, frankly, hurt if one of my kids took such a big step without my knowledge. Nevertheless, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the school did the right thing. Teenagers deserve a measure of privacy and autonomy to work out their identities, gender or otherwise, even if some of their choices and decisions seem like bad ideas to the adults in their lives." Really? She has clearly not done the most basic homework on this issue before weighing in. I've submitted a comment noting the Cass Report section on social transitioning (and will pass it on, if accepted), but I know Lisa and folks here can offer chapter and verse on why her op-ed is not only poorly researched and facile, but also just plain wrong. I'd recommend that anyone who can write a comment and/or letter to the editor in response. rehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/trans-kids-privacy-gender-identity.html
As promised, I’m updating my comment re the Michelle Goldberg op-Ed to include the comment I submitted, which has been published:
Susan S | Billings, NY
I have to say I am more than a little surprised and disappointed in Ms. Goldberg’s facile reasoning and conclusion, particularly given the stakes here for children and their families. An enormous amount of high-quality research and analysis has been done on social transitioning and its consequences, and it is not something schools are qualified to address. I recommend to anyone trying to understand this very fraught issue to read the Cass Report, which examined treatment of gender-questioning children at London’s renowned Tavistock clinic. The interim report, out for public comment, is available here: https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf On p. 62-63, you will find discussion of social transitioning. The report states in part “it is important to view it as an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning.” Parental involvement is therefore not only appropriate, but essential.
“Pheromones don’t emanate from gender identity” is a factual scientific statement, and points to something quite a surprise to many people. The author is on the spot about an amazing and little discussed element of the sex binary in humans.
It is impossible to create a steroid “pheromone” signature opposite to one’s own sex through any known scientific method involving surgery, hormones, or chemical alteration of puberty.
Short:
- Human females and males have quite different responses from exposure to AND (AND = androstenedione) and END (END = estratetraenol), odorless steroids produced by the reproductive and adrenal system.
- In Lesbians, bisexuals, and heterosexual males, their brain’s “mating center” turns on to END, produced only by females.
- In Gays, Bisexuals, and heterosexual females, their brain’s “mating center” turns on to AND, produced 5x as much by males as females.
- Only females produce END, in ovaries.
- Only males produce high volumes of AND, in testicles.
- Any claim that a lesbian should respond sexually to a male with a female “gender” is forcing an unnatural response. The same follows for gay men and a woman with a “male gender”.
- Estrogen and Testosterone treatment for trans individuals for cannot create these steroids, and neither can sterilizing “puberty blockers”.
- They will never be innately felt to be the sex opposite to their own sex.
Long
1. Female and Male brains have different structures in the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which regulates sexual response - called a“mating center”
2. While there is no direct wiring to a “pheromone activated mating center” in humans, as opposed to most other animals, certain chemicals are still sensed when inhaled through the nose after diffusing from the body in sweat, semen, urine and other fluids. They still measurably activate the “mating center”, and they turn it on differently for men and women, lesbians and gays.
3. Consider the completely odorless human steroids Androstadienol (AND) and Estratetraenol (END). Both are odorless - humans can’t detect them consciously.
4. AND begins being produced via adrenal glands a few years before puberty in both sexes as the adrenal glands activate. “Puberty blockers” have no effect on this maturation. Both sexes secrete AND in sweat. Beginning with activation of the testicles in males at puberty, they begin to produce 5x the AND than that of females.
5. The mating center of heterosexual females and homosexual males “turns on” from nasal exposure to AND.
6. Only Females synthesize END, in ovaries (possibly other systems), peaking around ovulation. The beginning of this is with puberty and the activation of the ovaries.
7. The mating center of heterosexual males and homosexual females turns on from nasal exposure to END. Bisexual males and females activate with both AND and END.
8. Studies of this sexual response involve zero “thinking” - seeing and interpreting images or words and so forth - which are often used to test sexual orientation response. They involve only brain (PET) scans of research subjects while they are exposed to these odorless steroids. These responses are innate, part of the unchangeable wiring of the human brain.
9. Giving testosterone to females cannot increase the volume of AND - high volume AND is created in the testicles, and is part of the creation of testosterone, not the other way around. Giving estrogen to males will reduce the volume of AND, but not eliminate production of AND.
10. Giving estrogen to males has no effect on END. Having no ovaries they will never create END.
11. For END, “Puberty blockers” in females will possibly irreversibly disrupt the maturation of ovaries and END production, and the maturation of an END “mating center” response in Lesbians. In males it may change response to END, there is no data.
12. “Puberty blockers” in males will not alter the maturation of adrenal AND production, and may not alter the maturation of AND “mating center” response in Gays. It will possibly irreversibly disrupt AND production in testicles. If females it may change responses to AND, there is no data.
(I’ve been interested in this for decades since at puberty I discovered that other boys began smelling like men, and I didn’t. AND when broken down by bacteria create the distinct male (pungent) sweat odor Androstenone and other compounds. I don’t have any body odor whatsoever, which is probably due to the ABCC11 mutation - nobody in my family has that familiar smell).
The research is only 18 years old. The sexual dimorphism of human brain is well understood.
Unfortunately for the claim of a brain/sex mismatch in trans, there is no accepted evidence that a trans person has a brain which has anatomical features mismatching their sex.
Sufeitzy: "Unfortunately for the claim of a brain/sex mismatch in trans, there is no accepted evidence that a trans person has a brain which has anatomical features mismatching their sex."
Maybe somewhat moot.
JNS: "Conclusion: The results of this study show that the white matter microstructure in FtM and MtF transsexuals falls halfway between that of FCs [female controls] and MCs [male controls]."
But even if there are a few traits of MtF & FtM transsexuals that are more typical of FCs & MCs, respectively, that still doesn't mean MtFs are actually females. In the same way that a female exhibiting a height more typical of males makes her into a male.
Amanda MacLean had something of a nice description of that in her Decoupled From Reality at The Weekly Worker:
WW: "Reductionist disciplines that look at different parts of organisms - such as genes, tissues, physiology or neurobiology - use the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ as shorthand for ‘of males/females’ or ‘typical of males/females’."
"female brain" MEANS "the brain OF a female". Can't possibly have a female brain unless one is actually a female -- even if one's "male brain" might exhibit a few traits more typical of a "female brain". Though that "typical of" is maybe a bit questionable.
But "of a female" is consistent with both the Oxford definitions for the sexes, and with the definition for the preposition "of":
"female: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
That is, "female: OF ... the sex that ..." It's the ability to produce large gametes that makes an organism into a female, not the brain or heart or liver.
And see Encyclopedia: "of, prep: expressing the relationship between a part and a whole: the sleeve of his coat; in the back of the car"
I've read many studies, like these, stemming back for decades, starting with a conversation I had with a colleague of the notorious Dr. Money around 1985. One in 1995 has an accessable starting point with (Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, & Swaab, 1995) - that involved a total I think of 6 cadavers which to me proves nothing. I've read many others including the one you cite, Luders (2010) Rametti (2012) and so on. I'm skeptical of all of them.
And there are others summaries which generally reduce to "but 25% or more of studies cannot identify a consistent difference between trans brains and non-trans brains'.
My skepticism arises from the critical failure of all of these studies is to differentiate "transexual brains" from "homosexual brains" which is to say are there definitive identifiable structures or responses in transsexual brains different from all other brains?
No. There is no accepted evidence today for identifying a trans brain differentially from a homosexually oriented brain. Heterosexual trans brains cannot be differentiated from heterosexuals.
This is key.
The hypothalamus "sex center" response in gay men is almost perfectly aligned with straight women, and same for lesbians and straight men, for certain sex-linked steroids ( androstenedione = 5x more prevalent in males, estratetraenol = only present in females). Studies back to 2008 I think
No 'trans brain' study has found differentiated between homosexual men and homosexual trans women (males); they could however differentiate between male and female brains easily. Heterosexually attracted 'trans brains' cannot be differentiated from heterosexual brains of the same sex.
It's a methodological problem, and a quite serious one at that. It also strenghtens the Blanchard typology of homosexual transsexuals, and "autogynephile" transsexuals as being utterly different.
I do think there is a substantial brain structure difference in Transsexual brains, and it relates to BIID "Body Integrity Identity Disorder. BIID (primary found in men, as with TG) causes a person to obsess about limbs, and wanting them to be removed. It causes the dysphoria and constant obsession with "wrong body" thoughts and sensations. I've felt this was the case for almost 30 years, since I read the text of BIID amputees and TG amputees, and they used _identically the same language_ to describe relief and 'wholeness' once offending body parts were amputated. This is no coincidence, and the conceptual comparison of the two has been actively suppressed by the Transsexual community for decades.
"The BIID and the GD can be both explained by a mechanism hard-wiring where the body image is represented innately into the brain. It has been suggested the image of the sex organs of transsexuals are “hard-wired” in the brain in a manner which is opposite to that of their biological sex (Ramachandran & McGeoch, 2007; Brang et al., 2008). This idea is based on the fact that in transsexual population a different pattern of phantom syndromes occurs after castration or breast extirpation (Ramachandram & McGeogh, 2007; Brang et al., 2008). After gonadectomy and breast removal, transsexual patients experience a phantom syndrome less frequently than the non-trans- sexual population (Ramachandram & McGeoch, 2007). Around 60% of men who have to have their penises amputated for cancer will experience a phantom penis post-penectomy, but only 30% of the post-operative male-to-female transsexuals reported the incidence of a phantom penis. On the other hand surprisingly the 62% of the female -to-male transsexual patients reported having felt vivid phantom penises, including phantom erections for many years. Moreover only the 10% of those female to male transsexual patients experienced phantom breast sensations post-operatively (Ramachandram & McGeoch, 2008)."
So:
1) Yes, I believe there is a structural material difference in the brains of certain types of transsexuality, where the focus is on 'Wrong body' rather than 'I believe I am actually a woman'.
2) I believe it's related to the sensory and perceptual mapping of organs related to secondary sex characteristics into the brain.
3) I don't believe there's been any research (at least that which I could easily identify the last 30 years) on comparative BIID and TG brain structures as it relates to body mapping.
4) I think there is also a gigantic conceptual problem. Not liking ones sex organs is different from the feeling of being the oppose sex. Not all transsexuals have amputations, in fact only a minority do. The claim that this is due to cost or access can easily be refuted.
Until the conceptual confusion between homosexual / heterosexual TG varieties, and 'Wrong Body' vs 'Wrong Sex' varieties and possibly others is separated, there is no single body of TG experience, and there is no definitive diagnostic.
I would further claim that heterosexual TG may not manifest until puberty, and it's impossible to find a distinction between a child being unhappy about their body because they don't act like a 'real boy' or 'real girl' as their sex and body implies, or that they are unhappy about their body because 'they have the wrong genitals'.
Speaking as a gay man, and having spoken to gay men for 50 years, I found that it is quite common in gay childhood to feel that after being bullied for not being a 'real boy', or 'real girl', getting the genitals of the 'right sex' will make them happier. Having uncanny almost eidetic recall of my emotional and sexual life for more than 5 decades, I know that I felt these things quite precisely around 55 years ago at around age 5 - yes 5! - I knew I was happier playing with girls, and I decided if there were tomboys, I was a "janegirl" - I can recall the conversation, location, who I had it with, and the feelings I was having in the discussion - which went on endlessly with several 5-year-old girl friends. As an annoying child prodigy, when I had easy access to public libraries at around 7, I read up on these feelings and subjects unbeknownst to my parents and decided that I was probably transsexual. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. At puberty, all those feelings vanished, I was extremely happy with what was changing in my body - other children were flummoxed with my body hair, obvious bulges in the tight clothing styles of the '70s, and sudden appearance of muscles though I hated sports due to my clumsiness. I had also found psychological mechanisms to deal with bullies in the extremely rural deep south. But with persistent reinforcement that my sissy behavior meant that I wasn't a 'real boy', things could have easily gone awry before, and at puberty.
I suspect a simple PET scan in presence of androstenedione, or estratetraenol would probably have cleared up all misconception - it was 95% probable that I was a gay child, and behaviors of others around me should modulate, and support for my well-being would also change. That's the only brain structure with definitive identification - homosexual; though I don't know at what age that response emerges.
Long story, but that's why I say there no widely accepted evidence for trans brain structures; there is only evidence for homosexual brain structures in many studies.
Really interesting post. Since my daughter came out as a lesbian around the age of 14 I started thinking about all the gay boys that were starting to come out whilst I was at school (mid/late nineties) and then thinking about how not one girl was out, despite the statistical likelyhood of at least one being gay. Then I realised that even now, in my forties the only ones from school that were gay, are what I would call 'discretely' out, like the post says, leaving space for ambiguity in a way that gay men don't tend to do. I also became more consciously aware of trying to find positive lesbian role models for her and one thing I noticed was that whilst I was seeing more gay men as characters in shows or books that were incidentally gay (it wasn't a driving factor in the plot or character arc) there are much fewer lesbians represented in that way.
I have seen so many examples of people blithely contradicting their own self-professed principles, as soon as the reality of who's on the receiving end of whatever action being discussed changes (and, such occasions seem to more frequently include even individuals whom I've long-admired as smarter and more clear-thinking than the average bear). People who will take to the streets, screaming hysterically about how those who refuse to use the newspeak that "being inclusive" requires are "erasing" and "killing" trans people, are simply incapable of recognizing the logic of their own claims about "hate speech" and the "violence" it does to the vulnerable, when it comes to the "life experience" and "authentic" identities of women, never mind the stark material realities of how truly vulnerable a petite lesbian woman is when targeted to serve as an object of identity-validation by a male-bodied narcissistic trans woman who has deluded himself into believing he is a lesbian too. Too many of those of a more culturally conservative background, have long treated individuals whose temperament and tastes place them outside of the norms we feel more comfortable seeing observed by all members of their biological sex, as not worth being super-concerned about. Too long, gender non-conforming individuals strike "normies" as so foreign and "scary," that we exclude them from our communities and social circles. And now the long-term effects of this persistent cultural alienation felt by homosexuals, too often feeling informally rejected by roughly one-half of our society still, seems to have come home to roost in the distressed minds of our children. I witnessed a devout Christian speaking intensely about "evil people" just the other day - a believer, I thought, in the very doctrine that tells us to separate the sin from the sinner - and I despaired.
The so-called christians who condemn lesbians and gays for being 'born wrong' when LGs are just being how they were born and who they are drive some LGs who internalize so much of that homophobia and shame into the faux bosom of the 'trans' 'gender identity' trap. That trap of the 'trans' propagandists and profiteers also tell them that they were 'born wrong' but that they can be fixed by the 'gay conversion therapy' of 'transition' that will sterilize them, physically mutilate them, and render them anorgasmic life-long medical patients. The destructive fiction that is 'transgenderism' is misogynist and homophobic to its core and needs to be called out as the pernicious and sinister movement that it is.
A bisexual woman friend of mine once told me that the the break was whether a woman wanted to fellate a guy or not. I told her that by that definition there were a lot more lesbians out there not being counted and she just grinned at me
That is an absolutely unnecessary and incorrect distinction. People have different sexual likes and dislikes. To tell someone that because they don’t enjoy a certain act that it says anything about who they should be attracted to is just trying to convert people. No wonder half the teenagers identify as gay/bi/asexual/trans/queer/etc! Everyone has some criteria, telling kids that perfectly normal experiences and feelings mean that they have to put some label on themselves. According to them if you aren’t hyper-feminine, don’t look like a model, aren’t obsessed with your appearance, don’t want to have sex with every guy you meet and do everything his favorite porn star does, it must mean you win a label! And labels are so cool!
I actually agree with you now that I consider it by as I’m a male with zero interest I had no personal frame of reference. I think her perspective was based on her own experiences which frankly are alien to me. I’m a man who likes women and can’t really imagine anything else nor do I really want to
Referring to women and girls by our sex in noun (rather than adjective) form has been a term of abuse (like b*tch, h*e, th*t, c*nt, etc but considered milder) for decades. Because of this writers have been making absurd constructions that avoid the word female even before the transgenderist madness reached its zenith. You can find articles and lists like 100 Woman Composers or best woman athletes etc where female in adjective form is awkwardly omitted because it’s been tainted by gender status drama. Words that refer to other low status groups go through the same type of treadmill.
Of course this tainting of the word female is convenient to the trans political agenda to make femaleness ontologically / culturally accessible to the non-females, since female is a specifically biological term. If women aren’t female (ew yucky that’s bad) then male people can be women, and it’s cruel to keep referring to women who don’t want to be female (ew yucky gross) as female / women.
Hi, all: not sure where to note this with the possibility of it being seen, but the NY Times has an article today on Utah action on gender-“affirming” care that I found breathtaking in its bias: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/us/utah-transgender-bill.html I don’t feel I have sufficient competence on this issue to write to the article’s author, but others here likely do, and it seems, to me, one where that could be useful. In brief, here are my takeaways from the facts as I glean them. (I recognize, BTE, there is plenty of room for alternative opinions, even among those of us who are relatively like-minded on this, and welcome your thoughts.)
Utah’s Gov did this correctly, and with compassion
Contrast Texas’s Abbott, whose approach was wholly punitive, and wrongly aimed at parents
Cox, however, was wrong on women’s sports, and fortunately the Utah Legis overruled him, though at least some likely from very wrong reasoning.
Lisa, should you see this, might it be possible to have a chat stream where we can alert one another to pending legislation/articles to respond to, in case anyone wants to take an action? Perhaps it’s just too unwieldy, and/or folks wouldn’t see it, but just throwing it out there for consideration.
I think that Lisa starts things off with a valid and useful point:
"The dictionary’s job is to reflect common usage, so this shift reveals how an obscure idea leaked from academia and activism into the some part of the world that etymologists observed, and perhaps mistook for common sentiment."
Many dictionaries are more or less descriptive -- as opposed to prescriptive, promoting syntactically correct phrasing -- so that if common usages are contradictory, inconsistent, and politically motivated then that's what is going to show up in them:
Generally why I argue that logically incoherent usages of words should be deprecated, if not anathematized -- we all kind of have an obligation to ensure correct and logically coherent language. As Francis Bacon put it:
"For men associate through conversation, but words are applied according to the capacity of ordinary people. Therefore shoddy and inept application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways."
But speaking of "obscure ideas", Matt Walsh has recently pointed, even if somewhat indirectly, to Merriam-Webster's circular definitions of "female" as a "gender identity":
While MW does lead off with the standard, biological definition for "female", they also indicate its use as a gender identity:
"female: having a gender identity that is the opposite of male."
But if you look at their definition for "male" it says this:
"male: having a gender identity that is the opposite of female."
Circular definitions R Us; gender, in the MW lexicon, is not just "subjective" but rank insanity. Whoever was responsible for that at MW should be fired, if not ridden out of town on a rail. While it is maybe not unreasonable to use "male" and "female" as genders or gender identities, it seems that "masculine" and "feminine" are preferred, and something which has been endorsed by the late Justice Scalia:
“The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
But what is particularly "problematic" is losing sight of the fact that those words often refer to very different if not mutually exclusive things and concepts: "sex" and "gender" are two entirely different kettles of fish. Why we may well be obliged to qualify each and every use of them and their derivatives: "male (sex)", "male (gender)", "female (sex)", "female (gender)", etc. Ignoring those different uses just provides opportunities for various grifters, charlatans, and political opportunists to engage in bait-and-switch frauds and equivocations.
But all of that is part and parcel of the rot that transgenderism is producing in a wide variety of venues, institutions, and scientific disciplines. Also of some related interest is an egregious bit of woke-ism and anti-scientific claptrap from Statistics New Zealand where they define "lesbian" as:
"A woman who is sexually attracted to people of the same sex or gender."
Some further details can be found in my Substack post on "Statistics Departments Corrupted by Gender Ideology" which includes those of both Britain and, I'm sad to say, Canada's own:
Rot and clap-trap indeed. But as Helen Joyce, author of 'Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality,' said in this interview, there are some quite powerful heterosexual men who insist they are women but who had to invent the 'trans child' to 'sell' their erotic fixation to the general public as 'I have always been this way.' And w/o these powerful men the 'trans' enterprise would not have advanced. Give it a listen. https://youtu.be/8xUrtNW6Fzo?t=648
Haven't read Joyce's book yet, though she generally seems to have her head screwed on right -- probably as a result of having trained as a mathematician. ICYMI, see her Quillette essay where she calls a spade an effen shovel:
Joyce: "Marks for cunning, I suppose. Using 'female' instead of 'woman' is clearly an attempt to avoid circularity. The problem is that 'female' is not something you can identify as. It’s a word with an objective definition that holds right across all of biology, and hardly any of the things it refers to are capable of identifying as anything. It means: 'of or denoting the sex class that produces large gametes,' ..."
Though I think she has her own biases -- in particular, a reliance on folk-biology definitions for the sexes -- but still something of a welcome beacon on the hill. So to speak.
Bookmarked the video, though not terribly impressed by Glendening's comment at the point you linked to. The IEA site looks credible but he sounds like a rather pretentious ivory-tower academic. But will look into it a bit later.
Good point about the dating pool. I know of a few older married men who “transitioned” (but didn’t have bottom surgery) and remained married to their wives. They wanted to live life LIKE a woman. But they remain (barring too many hormones) functional men. We used to call these men transvestites. And some women indulge their fantasies.
Or autogynephiles and 'trans widows' can talk about these men--some of whom claim to be lesbian. I should think fewer women nowadays remain w/ these AGPs or TvF (transvestic fetishists). Here is an article that would probably not get published today and was before the overall rebranding to 'transgender' and gives a bit of history re these men and their often long-suffering wives. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BkIQTu7BV2nifZ3sbSFpS7spWb9od3YU/view
It is bizarre that it was ok for you to say you’d only date women who were 5’2” or shorter (obviously a physical trait that a person has no control over) but not ok for you to say you won’t date people who have the physical trait of being male. One is obviously a lot more relevant to sexual attraction than the other. We’ve all felt it’s pretty unfair when someone isn’t attracted to us due to traits we have no control over, but such is biology.
A similar question that also raises points of political transgression: would you date someone with a different race/skin-color than yourself? The answer probably says more about one's stance on equality than actual attraction. Not that cross-racial attraction isn't common - it certainly is - just I suspect at lower rates than answers to that question would honestly show.
Thank you so much to the writer for highlighting the dictionary definitions and explaining their impact on lesbians, particularly, and to Lisa for offering a guest post spot to set forth these concerns. Lisa also raises an excellent question in her preface: “How important are dictionary definitions—how much do they affect what goes on outside their pages, electronic or paper?” I’d like to offer one answer: in law, they are everything. As one example, Kara Dansky, in a recent Substack, “Another Legal Win in the US,” offers an interesting analysis of a recent Title IX case. She opens her analysis by stating, “A decision was announced in the case of B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education yesterday. The central holding is that it is permissible for a state to define the words “girl” and “woman” as biologically female.” Everything in the case flowed from that determination. Often, BTW, though I don’t recall whether that happened here, courts, in making their determinations, do look to dictionary definitions for evidence of common meanings of terms. The Oxford dictionary change of definition will be disastrous to rights based on sexual orientation if used in that way.
I think the too-onlineness of many people in the L+ community has led a lot of them (us?) to put too much faith in the power of discourse--specifically, its power to affect human IRL behavior, and change social norms.
Can the discourse affect what you *can or can't say* in IRL, at least in polite society? Yes, it can.
Can the discourse make people attracted to bodies they're not inclined toward? No, it can't--and believe me, as a homosexual man who spent years in denial, I've already tried. (Adding motivated heterosexuality to MY dictionary, btw!)
The gay men I know are complete apes. They are into guys, they are openly intolerant of any attempt to get them in bed with a woman, and trans men are not on their sexual radar. But these gay men I'm talking about? They aren't online, unless we count Grindr. They don't contribute to, or participate in, the discourse. They socialize, and shag, in the real world.
Someone who receives their promises about the L+ wonderland from the internet will barely know these guys exist until they get out there. And that's one of the disadvantages of all the etiquette that's clamping down on the web: no one has any idea what they're getting into anymore.
This isn't to say that the landscape is barren for trans folk--literally *all* the trans people I know are partnered! But the web doesn't reflect *that* accurately either, if you ask me.
The web is like a funhouse mirror now. The dictionaries are just playing catchup.
"The word is formally “used in technical or scientific writing to refer to a woman or girl,” it says, with an addendum: “Except in scientific writing, most people find this usage of female offensive.” "
What???? *Most* people? On which planet?
Thank you for this great post. Wow.
Possibly the cursed and unrepresentative planet of the Very Online (TM). That is, online [Western] discourse in incel communities, groups hostile to feminists and feminism, and places with a misogynistic bent tend to call women and girls "females" in a pointedly derogatory manner. So a lot of Millennials and Gen Z who have spent far too much time on social media -I am guilty as charged of this- will have a kneejerk reaction to the word and assume it was used to be deliberately offensive.
That's just a hypothesis, though. Whether it's the true reason for the updated definition or not, I'm sad to find this sentiment essentially being codified by Cambridge.
Is it that, or is it that “female” is referring to sex, not gender, and is therefore exclusionary and offensive to those who consider themselves women but are not female? I kind of suspect these are the “most” people who have pushed for this change, because presenting their views as majority views is the MO of that activist group.
"exclusionary and offensive" seems to be right on the money.
ICYMI, one "Rhea Liang" got her knickers in a twist over ABC-Australia giving "adult human female" as the clue in a crossword puzzle, the answer to which was presumably "woman":
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1615993208302981121
Conversation subsequently went off the rails -- as those on Twitter often do ... -- from there into whether "adult human female" or "adult female human" was more accurate -- on which molecular biologist Emma Hilton had the more sensible and illuminating observations.
But what was particularly noteworthy was Rhea's claim that "adult human female" was "a siren call for hatred" -- clear and manifest evidence of a call for the genocide of the transgendered ... 🙄
Sadly, our dictionaries, even the better ones, are becoming battlefields over gender ideology. Jonathan Haidt had a more general but quite interesting observation in an article in The Atlantic some months ago -- "Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" -- where he used an apt analogy with the Tower of Babel:
"The text does not say that God destroyed the tower [of Babel], but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension."
https://archive.ph/mbrZh
That's the final "endpoint" in the general corruption of language -- a "crime" which many dictionaries are "aiding and abetting". But a great deal of it is driven by the desperation, if not outright thuggery, of the transgendered, transwomen in particular, to be seen and accepted as members of the sex categories for which they clearly don't meet the membership requirements.
Thanks to your friend and to you for sharing this great essay. The truth and needs of lesbians are at the center of this conversation for me for personal as well as conceptual reasons, so I want to see more of this. I agree with the 1% number, which has been inflated to as much as 10%. I believe that very few people are homosexuals, a class of people with an immutable characteristic of same-sex attraction. These people need clear definition and specific protection. The dictionary definition sliding away and being queered is very concerning.
Over the years I have often wondered if including the "B" back in the day was a misguided act of generosity from gays and lesbians, another strand of "inclusivity" leading to the mess we are in today. I'm older than the writer (64) but I have known so many (I'm talking dozens) of "bisexual" women in my life, that is, women who have at times fallen in love with women or had sexual relationships with women. Some of them are now proudly "queer," with their husband and their three kids and their human resource/academic jobs. Over the years, I have seen that each of these women turn out to be what in my (admittedly unscientific) opinion is simply a fairly common variant of a heterosexual woman. I include myself in this list, though because of my skepticism from the beginning I have never comfortably defined myself as bisexual. I never felt like I needed protection or to be part of a flag.
Lesbian feminist leaders of the second wave expanded possibilities in sexual expression for all women, as they did in so many other ways. Women my age in certain demographics (college educated and white for sure) stepped into this exploration. Maybe all the "bisexual" women I have known end up with men because of societal pressure to be straight, but I truly don't think that explains it. Many women don't like fellatio, but that doesn't make them lesbians, even if some lesbians wish that was the case. Not that there are not "true" bisexuals too who really could go either way, some of whom end up partnering long-term with someone of their own sex. Those women would also need definition and protection, such as same-sex marriage laws. But they aren't the people I have known anyway. The author states that men ALWAYS left her cold. That is something that can be measured physiologically, which makes it an immutable characteristic. Defining homosexuality clearly and unequivocally as exclusively same-sex attraction must be part of the project of getting to a healthier place in our society regarding gender and sex.
I think it's more likely that the "B" was included because lots of Ls and Gs are long-term partnered with Bs. It's difficult, and pointless, to exclude them from gay culture/events.
Very good point. I wasn’t really trying to criticize anything that happened with the understandable inclusion of the B. Just noting that in someways it helped to muddy the definition of gays and lesbians that really is necessary to advocate for rights.
Yeah, I totally understand--I didn't think you were criticizing. I've just given it some thought. There's also the issue that many L&G had hetero experiences before coming out, sometimes for years, and it can be difficult to tease out when that was compulsory heterosexuality/late self-acceptance versus when it was bisexuality of some kind.
I know what you're saying--while I think many Bs have a great deal in common with the L&G, too much to separate, there is also the fact that many "queer" sorts who really don't share the experiences or challenges of the L&G in any significant way are now slipping under the umbrella, and that's a problem for activism and even focused spaces for the core group in question.
Thanks Shannon, very well put. I have a few lesbian friends my age who if I asked them might call themselves bi, because they had kids with men 20 or 30 years ago. They are much happier being out and being partnered with a woman. They know they have overcome much to be true to themselves as lesbians-- but they were with men who fathered their kids and were ok with it at the time, still are ok with it. Some are still friends with the men. They're complicated and beautiful older women who just want to be who they are.
It's always hard fitting political fights and activism to reality as it actually IS with actual people! Compromises are always made and it's easy to judge later when there is fallout. I just felt like I wanted to bring it up because in all the discussions about gender and feminism and homosexuality, I have not seen this whole issue discussed very much. I'm a big fan of lesbians, both those in my life and those who I never knew but who have made my life better by caring about rights for all women. And I am irritated as hell at those "queer" essentially straight people who have been the first to cut me off as I have stood up for women and against the excesses of gender ideology.
Thank you so much for the post on this topic, which hits my home directly! I will come back to it, but wanted right now to alert all to this Michelle Goldberg NY Times op-ed, "Trans Kids Deserve Private Lives Too," which, as I read it, is essentially endorsing parental abolition in school settings. Here is her flabbergastingly wrong conclusion: "I would be flabbergasted and, frankly, hurt if one of my kids took such a big step without my knowledge. Nevertheless, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the school did the right thing. Teenagers deserve a measure of privacy and autonomy to work out their identities, gender or otherwise, even if some of their choices and decisions seem like bad ideas to the adults in their lives." Really? She has clearly not done the most basic homework on this issue before weighing in. I've submitted a comment noting the Cass Report section on social transitioning (and will pass it on, if accepted), but I know Lisa and folks here can offer chapter and verse on why her op-ed is not only poorly researched and facile, but also just plain wrong. I'd recommend that anyone who can write a comment and/or letter to the editor in response. rehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/trans-kids-privacy-gender-identity.html
As promised, I’m updating my comment re the Michelle Goldberg op-Ed to include the comment I submitted, which has been published:
Susan S | Billings, NY
I have to say I am more than a little surprised and disappointed in Ms. Goldberg’s facile reasoning and conclusion, particularly given the stakes here for children and their families. An enormous amount of high-quality research and analysis has been done on social transitioning and its consequences, and it is not something schools are qualified to address. I recommend to anyone trying to understand this very fraught issue to read the Cass Report, which examined treatment of gender-questioning children at London’s renowned Tavistock clinic. The interim report, out for public comment, is available here: https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf On p. 62-63, you will find discussion of social transitioning. The report states in part “it is important to view it as an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning.” Parental involvement is therefore not only appropriate, but essential.
“Pheromones don’t emanate from gender identity” is a factual scientific statement, and points to something quite a surprise to many people. The author is on the spot about an amazing and little discussed element of the sex binary in humans.
It is impossible to create a steroid “pheromone” signature opposite to one’s own sex through any known scientific method involving surgery, hormones, or chemical alteration of puberty.
Short:
- Human females and males have quite different responses from exposure to AND (AND = androstenedione) and END (END = estratetraenol), odorless steroids produced by the reproductive and adrenal system.
- In Lesbians, bisexuals, and heterosexual males, their brain’s “mating center” turns on to END, produced only by females.
- In Gays, Bisexuals, and heterosexual females, their brain’s “mating center” turns on to AND, produced 5x as much by males as females.
- Only females produce END, in ovaries.
- Only males produce high volumes of AND, in testicles.
- Any claim that a lesbian should respond sexually to a male with a female “gender” is forcing an unnatural response. The same follows for gay men and a woman with a “male gender”.
- Estrogen and Testosterone treatment for trans individuals for cannot create these steroids, and neither can sterilizing “puberty blockers”.
- They will never be innately felt to be the sex opposite to their own sex.
Long
1. Female and Male brains have different structures in the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which regulates sexual response - called a“mating center”
2. While there is no direct wiring to a “pheromone activated mating center” in humans, as opposed to most other animals, certain chemicals are still sensed when inhaled through the nose after diffusing from the body in sweat, semen, urine and other fluids. They still measurably activate the “mating center”, and they turn it on differently for men and women, lesbians and gays.
3. Consider the completely odorless human steroids Androstadienol (AND) and Estratetraenol (END). Both are odorless - humans can’t detect them consciously.
4. AND begins being produced via adrenal glands a few years before puberty in both sexes as the adrenal glands activate. “Puberty blockers” have no effect on this maturation. Both sexes secrete AND in sweat. Beginning with activation of the testicles in males at puberty, they begin to produce 5x the AND than that of females.
5. The mating center of heterosexual females and homosexual males “turns on” from nasal exposure to AND.
6. Only Females synthesize END, in ovaries (possibly other systems), peaking around ovulation. The beginning of this is with puberty and the activation of the ovaries.
7. The mating center of heterosexual males and homosexual females turns on from nasal exposure to END. Bisexual males and females activate with both AND and END.
8. Studies of this sexual response involve zero “thinking” - seeing and interpreting images or words and so forth - which are often used to test sexual orientation response. They involve only brain (PET) scans of research subjects while they are exposed to these odorless steroids. These responses are innate, part of the unchangeable wiring of the human brain.
9. Giving testosterone to females cannot increase the volume of AND - high volume AND is created in the testicles, and is part of the creation of testosterone, not the other way around. Giving estrogen to males will reduce the volume of AND, but not eliminate production of AND.
10. Giving estrogen to males has no effect on END. Having no ovaries they will never create END.
11. For END, “Puberty blockers” in females will possibly irreversibly disrupt the maturation of ovaries and END production, and the maturation of an END “mating center” response in Lesbians. In males it may change response to END, there is no data.
12. “Puberty blockers” in males will not alter the maturation of adrenal AND production, and may not alter the maturation of AND “mating center” response in Gays. It will possibly irreversibly disrupt AND production in testicles. If females it may change responses to AND, there is no data.
(I’ve been interested in this for decades since at puberty I discovered that other boys began smelling like men, and I didn’t. AND when broken down by bacteria create the distinct male (pungent) sweat odor Androstenone and other compounds. I don’t have any body odor whatsoever, which is probably due to the ABCC11 mutation - nobody in my family has that familiar smell).
This is fascinating. Can you point me to a scholarly work where I can learn more about this?
Sure, I’m embarrassed that I abbreviated estratetraenol END instead of EST, I shouldn’t write these on my iPhone.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0600331103
More on the hypothalamus
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_dimorphic_nucleus#:~:text=The%20sexually%20dimorphic%20nucleus%20(SDN,to%20sexual%20behavior%20in%20animals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4145994/
The research is only 18 years old. The sexual dimorphism of human brain is well understood.
Unfortunately for the claim of a brain/sex mismatch in trans, there is no accepted evidence that a trans person has a brain which has anatomical features mismatching their sex.
Sufeitzy: "Unfortunately for the claim of a brain/sex mismatch in trans, there is no accepted evidence that a trans person has a brain which has anatomical features mismatching their sex."
Maybe somewhat moot.
JNS: "Conclusion: The results of this study show that the white matter microstructure in FtM and MtF transsexuals falls halfway between that of FCs [female controls] and MCs [male controls]."
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/46/15466.long
But even if there are a few traits of MtF & FtM transsexuals that are more typical of FCs & MCs, respectively, that still doesn't mean MtFs are actually females. In the same way that a female exhibiting a height more typical of males makes her into a male.
Amanda MacLean had something of a nice description of that in her Decoupled From Reality at The Weekly Worker:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1247/decoupled-from-reality/
WW: "Reductionist disciplines that look at different parts of organisms - such as genes, tissues, physiology or neurobiology - use the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ as shorthand for ‘of males/females’ or ‘typical of males/females’."
"female brain" MEANS "the brain OF a female". Can't possibly have a female brain unless one is actually a female -- even if one's "male brain" might exhibit a few traits more typical of a "female brain". Though that "typical of" is maybe a bit questionable.
But "of a female" is consistent with both the Oxford definitions for the sexes, and with the definition for the preposition "of":
"female: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
That is, "female: OF ... the sex that ..." It's the ability to produce large gametes that makes an organism into a female, not the brain or heart or liver.
And see Encyclopedia: "of, prep: expressing the relationship between a part and a whole: the sleeve of his coat; in the back of the car"
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/of-2
"female brain ➡ brain of the sexed individual organism that produces large gametes, the brain of a person who is a female".
That's the way I read those definitions in any case. Even if the syntax still seems a bit murky at times.
I've read many studies, like these, stemming back for decades, starting with a conversation I had with a colleague of the notorious Dr. Money around 1985. One in 1995 has an accessable starting point with (Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, & Swaab, 1995) - that involved a total I think of 6 cadavers which to me proves nothing. I've read many others including the one you cite, Luders (2010) Rametti (2012) and so on. I'm skeptical of all of them.
here's a good summary here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4987404/
And there are others summaries which generally reduce to "but 25% or more of studies cannot identify a consistent difference between trans brains and non-trans brains'.
My skepticism arises from the critical failure of all of these studies is to differentiate "transexual brains" from "homosexual brains" which is to say are there definitive identifiable structures or responses in transsexual brains different from all other brains?
No. There is no accepted evidence today for identifying a trans brain differentially from a homosexually oriented brain. Heterosexual trans brains cannot be differentiated from heterosexuals.
This is key.
The hypothalamus "sex center" response in gay men is almost perfectly aligned with straight women, and same for lesbians and straight men, for certain sex-linked steroids ( androstenedione = 5x more prevalent in males, estratetraenol = only present in females). Studies back to 2008 I think
No 'trans brain' study has found differentiated between homosexual men and homosexual trans women (males); they could however differentiate between male and female brains easily. Heterosexually attracted 'trans brains' cannot be differentiated from heterosexual brains of the same sex.
It's a methodological problem, and a quite serious one at that. It also strenghtens the Blanchard typology of homosexual transsexuals, and "autogynephile" transsexuals as being utterly different.
I do think there is a substantial brain structure difference in Transsexual brains, and it relates to BIID "Body Integrity Identity Disorder. BIID (primary found in men, as with TG) causes a person to obsess about limbs, and wanting them to be removed. It causes the dysphoria and constant obsession with "wrong body" thoughts and sensations. I've felt this was the case for almost 30 years, since I read the text of BIID amputees and TG amputees, and they used _identically the same language_ to describe relief and 'wholeness' once offending body parts were amputated. This is no coincidence, and the conceptual comparison of the two has been actively suppressed by the Transsexual community for decades.
Here'e a relatively accessible article:
https://www.scirp.org/html/43284.html
"The BIID and the GD can be both explained by a mechanism hard-wiring where the body image is represented innately into the brain. It has been suggested the image of the sex organs of transsexuals are “hard-wired” in the brain in a manner which is opposite to that of their biological sex (Ramachandran & McGeoch, 2007; Brang et al., 2008). This idea is based on the fact that in transsexual population a different pattern of phantom syndromes occurs after castration or breast extirpation (Ramachandram & McGeogh, 2007; Brang et al., 2008). After gonadectomy and breast removal, transsexual patients experience a phantom syndrome less frequently than the non-trans- sexual population (Ramachandram & McGeoch, 2007). Around 60% of men who have to have their penises amputated for cancer will experience a phantom penis post-penectomy, but only 30% of the post-operative male-to-female transsexuals reported the incidence of a phantom penis. On the other hand surprisingly the 62% of the female -to-male transsexual patients reported having felt vivid phantom penises, including phantom erections for many years. Moreover only the 10% of those female to male transsexual patients experienced phantom breast sensations post-operatively (Ramachandram & McGeoch, 2008)."
So:
1) Yes, I believe there is a structural material difference in the brains of certain types of transsexuality, where the focus is on 'Wrong body' rather than 'I believe I am actually a woman'.
2) I believe it's related to the sensory and perceptual mapping of organs related to secondary sex characteristics into the brain.
3) I don't believe there's been any research (at least that which I could easily identify the last 30 years) on comparative BIID and TG brain structures as it relates to body mapping.
4) I think there is also a gigantic conceptual problem. Not liking ones sex organs is different from the feeling of being the oppose sex. Not all transsexuals have amputations, in fact only a minority do. The claim that this is due to cost or access can easily be refuted.
Until the conceptual confusion between homosexual / heterosexual TG varieties, and 'Wrong Body' vs 'Wrong Sex' varieties and possibly others is separated, there is no single body of TG experience, and there is no definitive diagnostic.
I would further claim that heterosexual TG may not manifest until puberty, and it's impossible to find a distinction between a child being unhappy about their body because they don't act like a 'real boy' or 'real girl' as their sex and body implies, or that they are unhappy about their body because 'they have the wrong genitals'.
Speaking as a gay man, and having spoken to gay men for 50 years, I found that it is quite common in gay childhood to feel that after being bullied for not being a 'real boy', or 'real girl', getting the genitals of the 'right sex' will make them happier. Having uncanny almost eidetic recall of my emotional and sexual life for more than 5 decades, I know that I felt these things quite precisely around 55 years ago at around age 5 - yes 5! - I knew I was happier playing with girls, and I decided if there were tomboys, I was a "janegirl" - I can recall the conversation, location, who I had it with, and the feelings I was having in the discussion - which went on endlessly with several 5-year-old girl friends. As an annoying child prodigy, when I had easy access to public libraries at around 7, I read up on these feelings and subjects unbeknownst to my parents and decided that I was probably transsexual. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. At puberty, all those feelings vanished, I was extremely happy with what was changing in my body - other children were flummoxed with my body hair, obvious bulges in the tight clothing styles of the '70s, and sudden appearance of muscles though I hated sports due to my clumsiness. I had also found psychological mechanisms to deal with bullies in the extremely rural deep south. But with persistent reinforcement that my sissy behavior meant that I wasn't a 'real boy', things could have easily gone awry before, and at puberty.
I suspect a simple PET scan in presence of androstenedione, or estratetraenol would probably have cleared up all misconception - it was 95% probable that I was a gay child, and behaviors of others around me should modulate, and support for my well-being would also change. That's the only brain structure with definitive identification - homosexual; though I don't know at what age that response emerges.
Long story, but that's why I say there no widely accepted evidence for trans brain structures; there is only evidence for homosexual brain structures in many studies.
It's an important distinction.
Really interesting post. Since my daughter came out as a lesbian around the age of 14 I started thinking about all the gay boys that were starting to come out whilst I was at school (mid/late nineties) and then thinking about how not one girl was out, despite the statistical likelyhood of at least one being gay. Then I realised that even now, in my forties the only ones from school that were gay, are what I would call 'discretely' out, like the post says, leaving space for ambiguity in a way that gay men don't tend to do. I also became more consciously aware of trying to find positive lesbian role models for her and one thing I noticed was that whilst I was seeing more gay men as characters in shows or books that were incidentally gay (it wasn't a driving factor in the plot or character arc) there are much fewer lesbians represented in that way.
I hope you email the dictionary with this.
I have seen so many examples of people blithely contradicting their own self-professed principles, as soon as the reality of who's on the receiving end of whatever action being discussed changes (and, such occasions seem to more frequently include even individuals whom I've long-admired as smarter and more clear-thinking than the average bear). People who will take to the streets, screaming hysterically about how those who refuse to use the newspeak that "being inclusive" requires are "erasing" and "killing" trans people, are simply incapable of recognizing the logic of their own claims about "hate speech" and the "violence" it does to the vulnerable, when it comes to the "life experience" and "authentic" identities of women, never mind the stark material realities of how truly vulnerable a petite lesbian woman is when targeted to serve as an object of identity-validation by a male-bodied narcissistic trans woman who has deluded himself into believing he is a lesbian too. Too many of those of a more culturally conservative background, have long treated individuals whose temperament and tastes place them outside of the norms we feel more comfortable seeing observed by all members of their biological sex, as not worth being super-concerned about. Too long, gender non-conforming individuals strike "normies" as so foreign and "scary," that we exclude them from our communities and social circles. And now the long-term effects of this persistent cultural alienation felt by homosexuals, too often feeling informally rejected by roughly one-half of our society still, seems to have come home to roost in the distressed minds of our children. I witnessed a devout Christian speaking intensely about "evil people" just the other day - a believer, I thought, in the very doctrine that tells us to separate the sin from the sinner - and I despaired.
The so-called christians who condemn lesbians and gays for being 'born wrong' when LGs are just being how they were born and who they are drive some LGs who internalize so much of that homophobia and shame into the faux bosom of the 'trans' 'gender identity' trap. That trap of the 'trans' propagandists and profiteers also tell them that they were 'born wrong' but that they can be fixed by the 'gay conversion therapy' of 'transition' that will sterilize them, physically mutilate them, and render them anorgasmic life-long medical patients. The destructive fiction that is 'transgenderism' is misogynist and homophobic to its core and needs to be called out as the pernicious and sinister movement that it is.
A bisexual woman friend of mine once told me that the the break was whether a woman wanted to fellate a guy or not. I told her that by that definition there were a lot more lesbians out there not being counted and she just grinned at me
That is an absolutely unnecessary and incorrect distinction. People have different sexual likes and dislikes. To tell someone that because they don’t enjoy a certain act that it says anything about who they should be attracted to is just trying to convert people. No wonder half the teenagers identify as gay/bi/asexual/trans/queer/etc! Everyone has some criteria, telling kids that perfectly normal experiences and feelings mean that they have to put some label on themselves. According to them if you aren’t hyper-feminine, don’t look like a model, aren’t obsessed with your appearance, don’t want to have sex with every guy you meet and do everything his favorite porn star does, it must mean you win a label! And labels are so cool!
I actually agree with you now that I consider it by as I’m a male with zero interest I had no personal frame of reference. I think her perspective was based on her own experiences which frankly are alien to me. I’m a man who likes women and can’t really imagine anything else nor do I really want to
Referring to women and girls by our sex in noun (rather than adjective) form has been a term of abuse (like b*tch, h*e, th*t, c*nt, etc but considered milder) for decades. Because of this writers have been making absurd constructions that avoid the word female even before the transgenderist madness reached its zenith. You can find articles and lists like 100 Woman Composers or best woman athletes etc where female in adjective form is awkwardly omitted because it’s been tainted by gender status drama. Words that refer to other low status groups go through the same type of treadmill.
Of course this tainting of the word female is convenient to the trans political agenda to make femaleness ontologically / culturally accessible to the non-females, since female is a specifically biological term. If women aren’t female (ew yucky that’s bad) then male people can be women, and it’s cruel to keep referring to women who don’t want to be female (ew yucky gross) as female / women.
This is a great essay ...
Hi, all: not sure where to note this with the possibility of it being seen, but the NY Times has an article today on Utah action on gender-“affirming” care that I found breathtaking in its bias: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/us/utah-transgender-bill.html I don’t feel I have sufficient competence on this issue to write to the article’s author, but others here likely do, and it seems, to me, one where that could be useful. In brief, here are my takeaways from the facts as I glean them. (I recognize, BTE, there is plenty of room for alternative opinions, even among those of us who are relatively like-minded on this, and welcome your thoughts.)
Utah’s Gov did this correctly, and with compassion
Contrast Texas’s Abbott, whose approach was wholly punitive, and wrongly aimed at parents
Cox, however, was wrong on women’s sports, and fortunately the Utah Legis overruled him, though at least some likely from very wrong reasoning.
Lisa, should you see this, might it be possible to have a chat stream where we can alert one another to pending legislation/articles to respond to, in case anyone wants to take an action? Perhaps it’s just too unwieldy, and/or folks wouldn’t see it, but just throwing it out there for consideration.
I think that Lisa starts things off with a valid and useful point:
"The dictionary’s job is to reflect common usage, so this shift reveals how an obscure idea leaked from academia and activism into the some part of the world that etymologists observed, and perhaps mistook for common sentiment."
Many dictionaries are more or less descriptive -- as opposed to prescriptive, promoting syntactically correct phrasing -- so that if common usages are contradictory, inconsistent, and politically motivated then that's what is going to show up in them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
Generally why I argue that logically incoherent usages of words should be deprecated, if not anathematized -- we all kind of have an obligation to ensure correct and logically coherent language. As Francis Bacon put it:
"For men associate through conversation, but words are applied according to the capacity of ordinary people. Therefore shoddy and inept application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways."
But speaking of "obscure ideas", Matt Walsh has recently pointed, even if somewhat indirectly, to Merriam-Webster's circular definitions of "female" as a "gender identity":
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1549382790952656899
While MW does lead off with the standard, biological definition for "female", they also indicate its use as a gender identity:
"female: having a gender identity that is the opposite of male."
But if you look at their definition for "male" it says this:
"male: having a gender identity that is the opposite of female."
Circular definitions R Us; gender, in the MW lexicon, is not just "subjective" but rank insanity. Whoever was responsible for that at MW should be fired, if not ridden out of town on a rail. While it is maybe not unreasonable to use "male" and "female" as genders or gender identities, it seems that "masculine" and "feminine" are preferred, and something which has been endorsed by the late Justice Scalia:
“The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
But what is particularly "problematic" is losing sight of the fact that those words often refer to very different if not mutually exclusive things and concepts: "sex" and "gender" are two entirely different kettles of fish. Why we may well be obliged to qualify each and every use of them and their derivatives: "male (sex)", "male (gender)", "female (sex)", "female (gender)", etc. Ignoring those different uses just provides opportunities for various grifters, charlatans, and political opportunists to engage in bait-and-switch frauds and equivocations.
But all of that is part and parcel of the rot that transgenderism is producing in a wide variety of venues, institutions, and scientific disciplines. Also of some related interest is an egregious bit of woke-ism and anti-scientific claptrap from Statistics New Zealand where they define "lesbian" as:
"A woman who is sexually attracted to people of the same sex or gender."
https://aria.stats.govt.nz/aria/?_ga=2.135330993.1433053733.1593671441-939313310.1593671441#ConceptView:uri=http://stats.govt.nz/cms/Concept/IcM9WKm4lCLgcV1M
Some further details can be found in my Substack post on "Statistics Departments Corrupted by Gender Ideology" which includes those of both Britain and, I'm sad to say, Canada's own:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/statistics-departments-corrupted
Rot and clap-trap indeed. But as Helen Joyce, author of 'Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality,' said in this interview, there are some quite powerful heterosexual men who insist they are women but who had to invent the 'trans child' to 'sell' their erotic fixation to the general public as 'I have always been this way.' And w/o these powerful men the 'trans' enterprise would not have advanced. Give it a listen. https://youtu.be/8xUrtNW6Fzo?t=648
Haven't read Joyce's book yet, though she generally seems to have her head screwed on right -- probably as a result of having trained as a mathematician. ICYMI, see her Quillette essay where she calls a spade an effen shovel:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200714210100/https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/
Joyce: "Marks for cunning, I suppose. Using 'female' instead of 'woman' is clearly an attempt to avoid circularity. The problem is that 'female' is not something you can identify as. It’s a word with an objective definition that holds right across all of biology, and hardly any of the things it refers to are capable of identifying as anything. It means: 'of or denoting the sex class that produces large gametes,' ..."
Though I think she has her own biases -- in particular, a reliance on folk-biology definitions for the sexes -- but still something of a welcome beacon on the hill. So to speak.
Bookmarked the video, though not terribly impressed by Glendening's comment at the point you linked to. The IEA site looks credible but he sounds like a rather pretentious ivory-tower academic. But will look into it a bit later.
Good point about the dating pool. I know of a few older married men who “transitioned” (but didn’t have bottom surgery) and remained married to their wives. They wanted to live life LIKE a woman. But they remain (barring too many hormones) functional men. We used to call these men transvestites. And some women indulge their fantasies.
Or autogynephiles and 'trans widows' can talk about these men--some of whom claim to be lesbian. I should think fewer women nowadays remain w/ these AGPs or TvF (transvestic fetishists). Here is an article that would probably not get published today and was before the overall rebranding to 'transgender' and gives a bit of history re these men and their often long-suffering wives. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BkIQTu7BV2nifZ3sbSFpS7spWb9od3YU/view
It is bizarre that it was ok for you to say you’d only date women who were 5’2” or shorter (obviously a physical trait that a person has no control over) but not ok for you to say you won’t date people who have the physical trait of being male. One is obviously a lot more relevant to sexual attraction than the other. We’ve all felt it’s pretty unfair when someone isn’t attracted to us due to traits we have no control over, but such is biology.
A similar question that also raises points of political transgression: would you date someone with a different race/skin-color than yourself? The answer probably says more about one's stance on equality than actual attraction. Not that cross-racial attraction isn't common - it certainly is - just I suspect at lower rates than answers to that question would honestly show.
Thank you so much to the writer for highlighting the dictionary definitions and explaining their impact on lesbians, particularly, and to Lisa for offering a guest post spot to set forth these concerns. Lisa also raises an excellent question in her preface: “How important are dictionary definitions—how much do they affect what goes on outside their pages, electronic or paper?” I’d like to offer one answer: in law, they are everything. As one example, Kara Dansky, in a recent Substack, “Another Legal Win in the US,” offers an interesting analysis of a recent Title IX case. She opens her analysis by stating, “A decision was announced in the case of B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education yesterday. The central holding is that it is permissible for a state to define the words “girl” and “woman” as biologically female.” Everything in the case flowed from that determination. Often, BTW, though I don’t recall whether that happened here, courts, in making their determinations, do look to dictionary definitions for evidence of common meanings of terms. The Oxford dictionary change of definition will be disastrous to rights based on sexual orientation if used in that way.