Thank you, as always, for diving into the complicated, Lisa, and I'm so appreciating all the comments here. I think with Blanchard's historic taxonomy, we see the ‘law of the instrument’ in action: some transwomen like Phil feel Blanchard’s broad definition of AGP fits, other transwomen feel that Blanchard's category of homosexual transexualism fits...here's the hammer, here are two nails, ad infinitum. “I felt this way, therefore everyone else must, too, now and forever, amen.” They can't conceptualize that there are new cohorts, both female AND male, in a new era, living with a different social construction of gender, who may have different paths to what appear to be similar destinations. However, I've heard so many young men now talk about how the concept of being trans was suggested to them by external societal forces--peers, celebrities, parents, teachers, therapists--as an explanation for some type of gender non-conformity combined with some type of distress that I just don’t believe Blanchard’s taxonomy holds anymore. Certainly, there’s a lot to explore.
I appreciate that many of the feminists who were outraged about Phil’s dress were bringing a larger philosophical question to bear: if I know a man is turned on by wearing stilettos and doubly turned on by a woman seeing him in stilettos, am I being forced to non-consensually participate in a fetish if he wears high heels in my presence. That’s a good question for philosophy class but also a reasonable question for real life. I get it: I have a relative who’s a cross-dresser, and one way I don’t participate in the fetish is to absolutely ignore it. He wants attention. I do not provide it. It’s basic behavioral training, and it seems to be working--I get far fewer oblique attempts to draw me in.
It’s ironic but to me, the women who went nuts over the dress were likely participating more in the fetishistic behavior than the ones who simply dismissed it. Many also came across as sexist hypocrites. I think it was Debbie Hayton who said that women don’t understand men’s sexuality, and I believe Hayton: men are turned on by everything from boots to velvet to being observed in boots or velvet to causing outrage because of their boots and velvet--I don’t get it. But clothes don’t make the man, and they don’t make the woman. If we can stick to that basic principle and refuse to get distracted by the very things these men want to divert our attention to, I hope we can get past much of the current gender bullshit…maybe without losing our marbles.
You have such common sense, Kate, which I appreciate very much. In this case, I think the incident surfaced a lot of underexamined problems, so perhaps that’s a silver lining. I am not at the moment, however, feeling very optimistic about Genspect: the behavior of Lindsay and what I have now learned about Heying have shaken my faith in Genspect’s judgment, and I am not sure that’s retrievable. I know mistakes are inevitable, we all make them, but this seems something more than that, something flawed in the ethos of the organization. But my faith in you and Lisa remains strong, and I continue to be grateful to you both for all your hard and good work.
Kate and all: I just saw that Zach Elliott has weighed in on this issue, and thought it worth sharing:
“On AGP and Phil Illy.
Autogynephilia is a sexual paraphilia that is linked to personality disorders like narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and dangerous obsessive behaviors related to sexuality.
Typically those who have a paraphilia are not satisfied with keeping it to themselves. Their obsession often extends to including others in it, including the potential grooming of others to accept it and at worse to make others join in on the paraphilia. The range of individual AGP behavior can be anywhere from simple grooming to stalking, assault, and rape and murder. It is truly a spectrum of behavior and depends on the individual. The common theme is that it revolves around highly obsessive, narcissistic sexual behaviors.
Phil Illy wants AGP to be normalized as a sexual orientation and treated that way in society. This is a type of grooming: trying to lower boundaries and have people be okay with the paraphilia. He has also said that he thinks there are”trans kids” who would benefit from cross-sex hormones. He also believes that he has a “inner cross gender spirit.”
The fact that Phil now wants to open a “gender consulting business” should be very concerning because I guarantee he will utilize that to groom other people, including minors, into his ideology and narcissistic paraphilia. We can see all of these red flags from a mile away.
Finally, it would be a mistake to treat Phil and other AGPs as though they are simply engaging in gender non-conformity, as GNC behavior and paraphilias are completely different things.
Before interacting with this individual, if you must, utilize discernment and be cautious.”
Great comment, however I strongly disagree that the way forward is for the burden to be placed on women to adopt poker faces as fully-destigmatized narcissistic male sexual exhibitionists sexually harass us. The way forward is clearly to continue stigmatizing narcissistic antisocial behavior (of which agp is one. Frankly the cross dressing, while misogynistic and therefore disgusting, isn’t really the point. The disrespect of others boundaries is the real scare factor here).
Also, I can just here my brother reacting to that Hayton comment like “woah why is this creep speaking for men??” And I can say I know many women who would actually say the same thing about female sexuality- that men don’t understand that WOMEN are the ones capable of being turned on by anything and everything unusual, unexpected or abstract. Human sexuality is complex. Men being sex offenders (forcing others to look at what behavior, in this case cross dressing, that they tell us turns them on) is.
No. The women who went nuts were expressing shock over the lack of appropriate boundaries exercised by the conference organizers. A very healthy, appropriate and necessary reaction. **This is how we maintain appropriate boundaries when they are transgressed**.
Please remember that we don't know what causes AGP. Until we do, any theories about how today's trans aren't the same as yesterday's are based on superficial unscientific observations only, and not worth very much other than the obvious social contagion angle. We DO know that internalized and parental homophobia, the other main factor, is still alive and well unfortunately.
I love so much of this but I disagree with where you landed, viewing the conflict as a matter of competing biases. That assumes everyone on the Genspect scene has basically the same values and the conflict is just a matter of ordering priorities. I don't think that's the case at all. In fact they only share one value: reforming a system that's hurting children. Since the system is so obviously awful, practically any sort of person with any set of motivations can want to reform it. It's like if you convened a summit of Americans who like pizza and then acted dismayed because they didn't all agree on Israel/Palestine.
(Personally I don't have strong opinions about men in dresses -- I have a natural aptitude for ignoring male sexuality -- but I was repulsed by the misogyny and condescension of some OOs.)
You note that the people who upset you are your friends and colleagues. By contrast, many of your readers don't have strong ties to the people who pissed them off. What do you have to say to people who now think the denizens of Genspect are sexist, transphobic, or simply insane, and feel like walking away?
Your question at the end is to the point, and even more, you had me laughing with this, which is an aptitude I share: “I have a natural aptitude for ignoring male sexuality.” ⭐️👏⭐️
For what it's worth, THIS is the conference we should all be talking about in reference to Phil's presence. Ray Blanchard describes it as a conference if the world's best sex researchers. Phil presented his theories on "autosexuality" there and his presentation was highlighted by J Michael Bailey (see links below). There are problems with Phil promoting himself and his book as an expert source. Having him present at a professional conference with experienced researchers is an even problem, IMO. He may have insights, but he is not an expert and many of his ideas are not grounded in any science. Yes, listen to him, but he needs to be understood more as a memoirist, not as a researcher or expert.
I think the way he came to terms with his own AGP was by expanding its theoretical reach to include, like, *everything else* in the world of uncommon sexual interests. And for that reason, *I think of his book as a memoir, too!* Felt quite validated to see you describe it that way! (Or, at least, describe him as a memoirist.) I respond to "Autoheterosexual" as a very personal book, even when he is talking about other people's sexual interests. It's as though Illy's parsing the whole universe through the lens of his uncommon desire. It seems scientific because it's so categorical, and so confident, but it's probably (and probably not just probably) the precise opposite of scientific.
Not a good idea even to listen to AGPs. They are mentally-ill, charismatic mind-fuckers who successfully transgress on a routine basis, especially with convincing people that they are experts as you mentioned. Smart people with large egos seem to be particularly susceptible to their influence.
They are the least reliable of all possible reporters on their own mental illness.
Is that the symposium with Anne Lawrence, TIM's. Hsu, Bailey, Illy? if so, did you catch Hsu kept saying "if you believe the theory"? Lawrence mentioned a few things I found interesting: 1. Most AGP's are narcissistic. 2. The West places greater importance on individualism so this wouldn't happen in other cultures. 3. Young boys should be medicalized. There is so much to AGP that isn't explained.
This is a very fair overview of Phil's work and of the Genspect conference. I think you're right, Lisa, to fix on the tensions between a more libertarian/individualistic ethos vs. one that privileges public decorum or even stigmatizing some choices at the price of people's own desires or preferences.
I was at Genspect & sat next to Phil all day at a table on Saturday. I personally didn't get creepy or sex pest vibes from him--we didn't talk much, but he contributed to lunchtime conversation at the table, as we all did. The strongest vibes I got from Phil and his book (which I haven't read - 600 pages! - Lisa is a hero to struggle through that!) are about his autism, not his autogynephilia. Phil has his special interests, and will talk to anyone who wants to discuss them with him. If others found him obnoxious or too strange and off-putting, I wouldn't hold it against them for not wanting to associate with him. I get the impression that however he dresses, Phil probably knows that his special interests may be off-putting to many people.
Clothing is a signal to the world about us. We all broadcast through clothing who we are and how we believe we fit in, or don't fit in, with the world around us. Phil is pretty clear about broadcasting his strangeness and his unusual ideas! As a feminist scholar I've always been comfortable with sex non-conformity, and I think one of the ways we can move beyond the medicalized model for treating sex non-conformity is to let people use clothing and accessories instead of drugs and surgery to send signals about their identity. As the mother of a desister, I would consider it a massive victory if sex non-conformity would migrate back to clothing and makeup, as would most parents of children caught up in the gender cult.
Gender critical people rightly call out the authoritarianism in TRAs in trying to control other people's language and perception of reality. Therefore, GCs must acknowledge that we can't control how other people dress. We get to respond as we prefer to in public with said people--we can engage politely, engage icily, or keep our distance, like we do from all kinds of nonsense and strange behavior we see in public.
Having a tantrum about stuff we can't and don't control is just more unhinged emotional incontinence and manipulation. Haven't we all had enough of that already?
Re: autism - Have you seen his first interview with Benjamin Boyce and his discussion - and mostly rejection - of autism as a factor? I feel like that interview is very enlightening. It was one of his first (perhaps his first?) before he had a practiced message and narrative and was the center of so much attention and controversy. I sometimes wonder if he truly is AGP (at least in the classic Blanchard way) or if it's an idea he's grasped onto and hyper focused on as a way to explain many of the social, emotional, and relational challenges he describes in that first interview. Someone asks below what is causing AGP. I suspect there's a concept creep happening with AGP and that the more it's being put out for the public to see - whether it's called AGP or vehemently denied as AGP - it will become part of this culture's symptom pool, another idiom of distress, with more people - some rightly, many wrongly - grasp onto to understand their deep distress
Did you meant the interview/debate with Rudy that just dropped on Calmversations? I heard several interviews with Phil back when he first published his book (last year sometime?) I found his logic and arguments difficult to follow so TBH I didn't find him to be very insightful, vs. so many of the other interviews that Boyce hosts (along with the Aarons at Transparency, Gender: A Wider Lens, Lisa's interviews, or the Heterodorx.)
I like your idea of AGP as concept creep. AGP is defo one of Phil's special interests! I personally think we must use caution in slathering this diagnosis over all male trans-ID's people, especially the younger ones now. I thought that Angus Fox/Alasdair Gunn's series at Quillette, and his interviews on the subject, were quite powerful in suggesting that there may be something else going on with the younger population of males. I must say that I'm very skeptical of Phil's notion of autoandrophilia. I just don't think that lens captures much of what I think is at the heart of the young people caught up in gender, which is their achingly, tragically immature and simplistic view of the world and themselves. The juvenile, even babyish nature of trans culture just knocks me out, and I don't understand why we're not talking about this!
I haven't seen the interview with Rudy. I was referring to the very first interview Phil gave on Calmversations.
I agree that there are too many people trying to force the concept of AGP on all ROGD males. Of course some ROGD males are likely AGP, but I find it odd that there are people insisting it must be 100%, no other options. A few months ago, Dr. Debra Soh put out a tweet along the lines of "all rogd males are either homosexual or agp. There are no other options." I find this to be a completely unacceptable mindset for someone who claims to be a scientist. I've heard J Michael Bailey express similar opinions (although not quite as starkly). Why would a scientist take such a close-minded view when there's been such an obvious and well-documented change in the kids presenting with gender dysphoria? Why be openminded for the girls but not the boys? Maybe be the vast majority of ROGD boys are AGP - but no one has anywhere close to the data yet to make that claim and say there's no other possibility.
As for AGP and autism: I wonder if there are some autistic ROGD boys who are picking up on the language of AGP men from their online interactions and scripting with it in their attempts to present as female without literally feeling what they're repeating.
And I agree about AAP. Have you watched the Calmversations interview with Oak Leaves and Onions? I found her argument that what she was experiencing was AAP very questionable.
Interesting perspective- this made me think about some things differently. But don’t you think the reason some people end up with medicalization is because clothes alone is simply socially disruptive (as we saw play out)?
I don't know about this. I think that the sexologists of old (1970s-1990s) pushed the medical model because they assumed at the time, and most of their patients did too, that the goal was to pass or to blend in as much as possible. But now, being "trans" for the sake of trans seems to be more the goal for a lot of younger people. It's difficult to say because of the massive differences in the patient population that have emerged in the past 15 years. (The middle-aged AGP men vs. the teens and 20-something probably gay kids; the males vs. the surge in females, etc.)
It may be healthier, or a step back towards sanity, if we acknowledge that some young people want to be "trans," and just let them cross dress and use makeup. Let it be the new "goth," as Dr. Az Hakeem has suggested. That would defo be better than getting them all jumped up on cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and bilateral mastectomies--for their sake, for their families' sake, for the sake of our health care systems.
I largely agree, but don’t you think the main issue is that the identity is predicated on somehow BEING the opposite sex? I just can’t see trans turning into a clothes-only goth thing (maybe non-binary) bc it’s whole point is BEING the opposite sex. And its just that nobody buys that a man in a dress is a woman or a girl with a buzz it is a boy.
Lisa, I'm not even done with Phil. That review you've linked (thanks) is a qualitative assessment of what kind of text he wrote (a gnostic bible). He relies on Hirschfeld to construct his history of AGP in the literature. Aside from the excellent point you made about Blanchard's typology, there is the problem that Magnus Hirschfeld was an utter goofball and pseudoscientist. The man claimed that he could "see" who was gay on the basis of what amounts to phrenology and made the terrible mistake of applying his supposed skills to Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. He was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics, which he said would eliminate homosexuality. Contrary to the ahistorical portrayal of Hirschfeld as some sort of hero in Illy's book, he had high-level Nazi clients whose patient records all conveniently disappeared in a famous bonfire that has been re-cast as Hirschfeld's martyrdom.
So, there will be a bit more, is what I am saying.
Yes, the field has always been laden with goofballs (nice word for it). I mean, Harry Benjamin was a snake oil salesman and WPATH was named for him! I'm surprised that Hirschfeld supported eugenics to end homosexuality. I thought he wanted to normalize it! I have forgotten a lot of the history I've read.
We will have the real story soon enough :) TBC Hirschfeld thought that gays would disappear from the gene pool through eugenics, he was not advocating for gays to be killed.
Hirschfeld is an example of the historical negationism that occurs in the false histories of "trans." Phil's use of Hirschfeld this way to construct a gnostic bible illustrates the point. So far Fred Sargent is the only writer to tackle the Hirschfeld myth, and he will not be producing new historiography. That's where I come in. I was deputized to do this, Hazel-ra.
Under what set of standards should I refuse to take his words seriously? Do these same rules apply to the musical ouvre of Prince? Who appointed me an officer of the clothes police, and when?
These are simple predicate questions to your questions. No one can answer them for me. I refuse to answer your "have you stopped beating your wife yet" question until these predicates are answered with facts that convince me. Show me the standards. Explain why they will be specific to Phil and not universal to others. Cite the date of my commissioning in the clothes police, as well as the oath that I took at my swearing-in ceremony.
Then, and only then, will I answer your ridiculous interrogation.
Lisa, I think you raise a very important and interesting point in your excellent piece: "Can something be destigmatized without being normalized or approved of?"
I think at the heart of this question is another question: what should be approved of? In the Westernized world there will be people with very different answers to this question because we don't have a shared measure. Moreover, most people really don't have any measure. People nowadays want everything to be destigmatized because they consider stigma to be a bad thing. I, personally, like Mary Harrington's view on stigma - she says that stigma served (and still serves) a very important purpose in preventing people from doing harm to themselves and to others and especially to our group/society. But then what is harm, and what is harmful? Most of us, I would hazard, don't really think about this question deeply, and we don't think about *why* we think certain things are harmful. But I think it's a really important question to consider, and I think it's very important to be brave and to go all the way down, asking yourself "why?" at every answer you come to.
I think many of the evils I see in our society are the result of an unmooring, a loss of solid ground of morals and beliefs. I know I sound like an old woman railing at "the youth", but I truly believe it. We are floundering on quicksand because we feel it should be ok to watch some porn but not all porn, or for some men to wear dresses but not for others, or at least not at certain times or not in certain ways...
I'm not going to say what I think society at large should do, but I will repeat that I think every person needs to consider really carefully and deeply *why* they believe what they believe, and not be afraid of changing their attitudes and actions based on their realizations.
I realize this is only tangentially related to Phil Illy and the AGPgate. I appreciate your article tremendously, Lisa, especially your open mindedness and non-dogmatism. I just think the point about stigma and beliefs is a really huge and important one that we generally don't talk about, so I wanted to bring it out.
This is really smart and well put. Not at all a tangent, either. I think these questions go the the heart of what has surfaced in this incident, and they definitely deserve deep consideration.
Great piece, Lisa! As the mom of a (maybe desisted? I’ll never relax!) ROGD boy, I’ve been told by more than a couple of the gender-world celebs that my child is AGP and that’s that. I’m not averse to this if there were actual studies or anything in addition to Blanchard’s talking points (which I don’t think have been proven to apply to the newer cohort).
Thanks for recognizing that we don’t actually know that there are only 2 types of gender-confused boys. Many moms of boys like mine (autistic, highly gifted, non-sporty late bloomers) would love to see some evidence if it exists. 🤷♀️
It’s not very complicated though; this was a man parading a sexual fetish in a serious conference, and everyone is conditioned to “give him space”.
People: He dressed like a hooker in a cocktail dress and was getting off on the notoriety. Full stop.
The correct response is “sir, this conference is for review of science, not turning $2 tricks. You’re welcome to wear business attire and not present like your tuning tricks on Times Square 1979.
Same as you’d say to a man in assless chaps and a jockstrap. There are times when I feel like I’m the only one who has had enough sex to recognize full-blown public sex games.
As for the book, as I’ve mentioned on many forums, it’s a persistent fantasy among this group to force children to change the presentation of their sex either in dress, or ideally with drugs and best of all surgically the consent of more people the better. That’s one purpose of the book.
I generally don’t share sexual media but this is so over the top, everyone here can explore for themselves:
There were two other controversial invitees at Genspect's Denver conference. Here are my opinions about them. Other people might see things differently.
One speaker has gained notoriety for promoting Ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19 and by advancing the claim that the COVID-19 vaccine is a significant health risk. [1][2][3] Both views, which fall outside the person's academic field of expertise, have been rebutted by the nation's chief public health agencies. They have determined that Ivermectin is ineffective as a treatment for COVID-19 and that the COVID-19 vaccines are both safe and effective. Only peddlers of conspiracy theories and the gullible people who've fallen for them continue to insist otherwise.
The other figure has something in common with Donald Trump. Both of them see Marxists hiding every bed. It's not clear whether Trump also sees pedophile "groomers" lurking around every corner, but this speaker certainly does. If you come across a comment on social media that blames gender identity ideology on something called "Cultural Marxism," it's likely someone who has fallen under his influence, directly or indirectly.
Now, the origins of gender ideology are a subject of great interest and some controversy. Fortunately, a highly credentialed and qualified scholar has just published a book about the intellectual history that underlies the cluster of social phenomena of which the trans project is a part. His name is Yascha Mounk and his book is titled The Identity Trap. He's been making the rounds of all the usual pundits on his book tour.
Why Genspect would have chosen a self-taught culture warrior [4] with an often disagreeable online temperament (they once picked a Twitter fight with the Holocaust Museum) to appear in Denver when they might have had the distinguished and accomplished Dr. Mounk is utterly baffling.
It's possible that the former figure has repudiated Ivermectin and embraced the COVID-19 vaccine. Genspect may have discovered hidden merits in the latter's thinking. In any case, it owes its members and the public an explanation for platforming Heather Heying and James Lindsay, respectively, in Denver.
"Heying has said that she has taken ivermectin to guard against COVID-19 and that she and Weinstein have not been vaccinated 'because we have fears [about the side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines], as we have discussed at length on this podcast.' Heying compared the use of ivermectin for this purpose to taking antimalarial drugs.[5] Whereas all WHO-approved vaccines have shown a high level of safety and efficacy in all populations,[24] there is no good evidence of benefit from ivermectin in preventing or treating COVID-19."
"Also on this week's episode, we dive into a recent episode of the DarkHorse to explore the Alex Jones' level conspiracies that Bret and Heather have recently been promoting about the horrific events in Israel. You might imagine it would be difficult to make such a tragic event about COVID dissidents and vaccines but if so you are underestimating the InfoHorse hosts."
"This episode wasn't meant to be about Ivermectin, or Bret and Heather's unique ability to apply an 'evolutionary lens' to understand everything, including virology, epidemiology, immunology and the culture war... but it is.....We meant to make a few topical comments prior to the main episode, but the comments led into some rants, and then with the clips, those rants metastasised into a full-sized episode. So the duo had to travel back in time to record a new introduction, and back again, forward this time, in time, to record the outro and it all got very complicated.Anyway, it is what it is!Bret and Heather are 95% sure that the COVID vaccines are like playing Russian Roulette with a loaded gun, and that the scientific and public health authorities are lying to everyone, and we would be better off avoiding these risky vaccines and taking Ivermectin instead. Bret even demonstrates how to swallow a pill live on air. But they are not anti-vax! No not at all. They're not conspiracy theorists either! Of course they're not. Conspiracy hypothesisers, maybe... but there is a crucial distinction there. Either way they have concerns, and Matt and Chris have concerns with their concerns. So enjoy this very special 'meta' episode."
"This is an important episode. 2022 you needs to realise what 2020 you could not and what 2030 you is ready to tell you. Confused? You will be."
"On this episode we tackle two gurus that we have treated separately: James Lindsay of New Discourses (episode 2) and Michael O'Fallon of Sovereign Nations (episode 13). O'Fallon hasn't changed much from our episode analysing him, aside from starting a conspiracy laden daily news show. But James... well... judge for yourself."
"On this episode you will learn many amazing facts, including how feminist glaciology is at the core of the Great Reset, that the NFL is now the Critical Race Football league, and how what 'it' is really all about is making people into pets who are driven by AI cars and eat bugs."
"For this excursion, Chris and Matt are joined for the second time by Aaron Rabinowtiz, host of Embrace the Void (@ETVPod) and Philosophers in Space podcasts, PhD student, and lecturer at Rutgers University. This means we have now had two back to back episodes with philosophers... and we really can't apologise enough."
I’m very disturbed to learn this about Heying, who I did not know before being introduced to her via Genspect, and thought had intelligent things to say about the controversy at hand. Her support of ivermectin, which appears confirmed from my search on seeing this comment, now places her out of bounds for me. I know it’s difficult to vet people, and we are going to encounter a variety of opinions. The problem, though, is that if we wish to persuade others on these issues, we simply cannot offer them quacks when what we are trying to do is counter quacks. We have to be able to rely on the organizations we respect, like Genspect, to platform people who are credible. If we can’t do that, we are at a severe disadvantage. Based on what I now know, Lindsay, and, to my keen disappointment, it appears, Heying, should never have been invited to speak. I am sorry to say, but I now do not have confidence in looking to Genspect for anything. I certainly won’t point others to the organization unless and until they clean this up.
I was at the conference with a colleague who thought it was a big mistake to invite James Lindsay to speak. I disagreed, because there were people of all different points of view on most things--we were at the conference because we were in agreement for the most part about the dangers of gender ideology, especially for children. (I thought his talk was silly and tedious and factually wrong.)
Politics and persuasion are games of addition, not subtraction. It's impossible for us all to agree with everyone 100% of the time on every single political and ideological issue. That's a purity spiral, not an effective political movement!
"Purity spiral" is the wrong lingo to use in this context. Genspect prides itself on scientific rigor. Linsday simply lacks the academic qualifications, experience and temperament to make him a credible expert authority. His Ph.D in math, which he walked away from, is certainly no use. He's self taught. That might make him an interesting participant in a dorm bull session, but he's not otherwise up to par. Lindsay is, first and foremost, a culture warrior.
The appropriate analogy would defending having invited Flat Earthers to a conference on planetary science because they bring a different point of view. That they certainly do, but unless they're on the entertainment portion of the program they have no business being there.
I was impressed by Linsday at first, but the more I listened to him the more it became that he's a disagreeable loose canon with an axe to grind.
For example, Lindsay has a creepy preoccupation with the sexual practices of leftists. Whereas reasonable critics of gender identity ideology worry that children will suffer physical, psychological, emotional and developmental harm, Linday went on a tear on Twitter during which he was throwing around unfounded accusations of "child sexualization" at people he disagreed with. He was also calling folks on the trans side of the controversy "groomers," implying that they are pedophiles who are engaged in grooming minors for their sexual gratification. Nobody else among the large group of people who hold different points of view on trans has ever taken a similar position that I know of. It earned him a permanent ban until Elon let him back in together with others who had shown they couldn't play well with others.
Here's how Salon characterized him in a 2021 piece about the New Atheists:
James Lindsay: Once a promising young atheist, Lindsay published "Everybody Is Wrong About God" in 2015 and, three years later, "How to Have Impossible Conversations," co-authored with Peter Boghossian (below). Referring to himself as "apolitical" but boasting a profile page on the right-wing, anti-free-speech organization Turning Point USA, he is now one of the most unhinged crusaders against "critical race theory" (CRT), an idea about which he seems to have very little actual knowledge. (This is unsurprising, given that Lindsay has literally argued that he doesn't need to understand "gender studies" to call for the entire field to be canceled. See #10 here.) Over the past few years, he has teamed up with Christian nationalist and COVID conspiracist Michael O'Fallon, and now rakes in plenty of cash via Patreon — proof that grifting about "free speech" and "CRT" pays. Known for his social media presence, Lindsay has called women he disagrees with "bitches," while — seriously — hurling "your mom" insults at intellectual opponents who point out his mendacities. He recently argued that antisemitism is caused by woke Jews (i.e., they're doing it to themselves), spread COVID conspiracy theories, and claimed in 2020 that people should vote for Donald Trump (as he did) because Joe Biden is a neo-Marxist, or will succumb to the influence of scary neo-Marxists like Black Lives Matter.
Last year, Lindsay co-authored the commercially successful book "Cynical Theories," which received a glowing endorsement from Steven Pinker but repeatedly misrepresents the ideas of those it hysterically, and incorrectly, claims are tearing down "Western civilization." And let's not get into his wildly delusional conspiracy theories about the "Great Reset," which apparently, as someone Lindsay retweeted put it, "aims to introduce a new global planetary diet"! If you want to understand Lindsay's worldview, I suggest reading Jason Stanley's excellent book "How Fascism Works," which captures the anti-intellectual, anti-academic, anti-social justice spirit of Lindsay's activism perfectly.
Disagree. Lindsay is a nut, and it's good that he can show the world his nuttiness. His meltdowns since Genspect have been really great for that. He's not like a flat-earther, he's more like a reverse Judith Butler, only (to his credit) he will go to spaces where people disagree with him, unlike the High Priestess of Gender.
Authoritarianism is what the other side does: no debate, no disagreement, just straight to the gender abatoir. I have confidence in the common sense of most people, and in the reality of the material world around us, that we will prevail.
BTW, "groomer" is being mistakenly assumed to be like calling people pedos or nonces, but if you follow the scholarship on cults, you'll see that "groomer" doesn't necessarily mean "sexual grooming." It's a description of a technique that manipulative people and movements use to induce people to permit them to transgress healthy boundaries and safeguarding procedures. So, anyone can BE groomed, and anyone may groom anyone. I think it's a useful term, and I resent the implication that anyone who uses that term is anti-gay or mobilizing anti-gay tropes. (That said, Lindsay defo means the sexual implication when he says "groomer." But just because some bad or wrong people use a word doesn't render that word untouchable or unusable.)
If you can't be civil and won't engage in good-faith discussion of the ideas, what is your aim here? Personal insults only reflect badly on you.
Your other comments show this isn't your MO, so what did I do to earn your derision? If you disagree with my views on Linsday or Heying or if there's something else about what I've written that you take issue with, please say so and explain yourself. Enough with the name calling and jabs.
Wannabe-Red Guards trying to tarnish people with guilt-by-association and purity tests deserve nothing but derision. You are the lowest of the political low. Hang your head in shame.
And you continue to act in bad faith because you are mischaracterizing my argument and setting up a straw man in the form of the so-called purity test.
Others are equally critical of Lindsay's appearance as I am, if not more so. Here is what the hosts of the podcast Blocked and Reported had to say about Linsday in connection with the Denver conference. Are they engaging in guilt by association? Or purity tests?
Blocked and Reported
Episode 191: A Man in a Dress in a Pile-On. 18 November 2023.
“This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss the furor over a self-described autogynephile who wore a dress to a gender conference. Also, Zoomers discover 9/11.”
Here, Jesse and Katie discuss Genspect’s Denver conference of November 4 – 5, which co-host Jesse Singal attended. Before turning to the main topic of their conversation, Jesse gives his opinion on James Lindsay and his talk at the conference.
(40:00) Jesse: And most regrettably, from where I sit, they invited James Lindsay to give a talk on the Marxification of gender.
Katie: Yeah, James Lindsay. That jumped out at me, and it strikes me that if you want to be taken seriously outside of your bubble, James Lindsay is not the person to invite to speak at your conference, especially on this issue. Like if your conference is about how to have impossible conversations, maybe invite him. But if your conference is about gender, maybe not.
Jesse: Yeah. I mean, from my point of view, someone like Lindsay just tips you in the direction away from legitimate science and discourse, of which there was plenty at this conference, and into demagoguery. James Linsday is not a serious voice on sex and gender. His talk made very little sense. He just has these, like . . . his theories are very superficial and often misguided, in my view. And he’s a huge prick online, a massive asshole, which does not help anyone. Which most people associated with Genspect are not.
(43:05) Katie: Actually, I do want to get a little bit more into [James Linsday’s] talk, if you don’t mind. Did he seem crazy, the way he was speaking, the way he does on Twitter? Because he comes across on Twitter like a giant, flaming, fucking asshole.
Jesse: He was more charismatic and less crazy-seeming than I thought, and more polished. There had been one TV appearance that he’d done in the past that was just a train wreck.
Katie: He didn’t just recite a bunch of citations?
Jessie: Well, no. He dropped a lot of names. And I haven’t rewatched it since I saw it. He makes all these claims trying to link everything to Marxism and a lot of what he’s saying is what ideologues in general do: accepting different standards of evidence, trying to change the subject . . . He has, like, this grand theory. Yascha Mounk’s book talks about how a lot of this stuff [i.e., post-structuralist ideologies] isn’t Marxism. It’s post-modern, it’s a rejection of these grand theories. I don’t think he really latches onto the nuances of what’s going on or how much of this is human nature and ideology in general. He claims to be an expert on all these different thinkers. I don’t think he is.
i agree with those who wonder why this guy was given a platform. what does he add? nothing. hes not any kind of expert. hes just some schmo describing how he feels when he enjoys porn. and then he gets more enjoyment after at the thought of himself describing it to vanillas. for those of you who wonder wtf is going on, thats it in a nutshell. like groucho marx joking with the straight lady, these dudes get huge laughs by gaslighting on this topic. its closer to sci fi than anything.
its probably not helpful to mention, but acting out an AGP in public is 100% voluntary. i know the gender industry claims trans ID is not a choice. but thats not really true. having a fetish may not be a choice. but acting on it is. being gay isnt a choice. but wanting to be a mtf gay man can also be understood as a misguided choice where one is led to believe they can be a women when in reality thats impossible. does dressing as a woman help people with agp fetish? the claim is laughable, if not so serious due to harms caused. does more heroin help heroin addicts? does more porn help porn addicts? of course not. people should be free to ID as they choose. but men in drag should always use spaces designated for biological men. other men couldnt care less if they do.
people who claim agp fetish is not choice, or are helped by acting out this fetish are lying. the problem is, there are few who can verify this is a lie. but its a lie nonetheless. therefore this lie will be apparent over time.
of course some guy in drag couldnt care less about all the people harmed by the issues around his fetish.
although i appreciate their sentiment, do push back on people who criticize genspec. genspec are doing good things. you cant make everyone happy.
Genspect are grownups, they can handle criticism of a single decision of theirs without freaking out interpreting it as a wholesale attack on their reason for existence.
The old fashioned AGP or gay assumption also comes with an assumption that AGP's are best treated with transition and that most adults who transitioned in this situation are happy. The data don't show this. Some highlighted people are happy, others are not, we just have anecdotes. But classifying MTF as AGP (say everyone who is not gay) can be a way to encourage them to believe that medical transition is what they need...and this has not been shown...witness the poor outcomes with adults which led to child transition in the first place and the lack of ability to show benefit of interventions...even for adults! (Levine & Abbruzzese, 2023, their paper on concerns, discusses this, with lots of references to go deeper!)
Illy made himself hard to ignore. This is common among crossdressing men. It's useful to describe the behavioral similarities of "transsexuals, transgenders, drag queens" &etc as crossdressing, because no one outside of his brain knows his intentions--we see his behavior. The behavior of these men affects everyone around him, including the men in the men's room. Illy will not admit that his book, his pontificating and his claims of just demonstrating a sexual orientation are the proof that he seeks to influence others. Richie Herron called it out on his TullipR channel post responding to one of the Aron's emotional rants in response. This ragged-voiced woman on testosterone was clearly threatened by the crossdressing truths this episode revealed, as it brings the entire "true trans" concept into question, bursting the balloon of self-deception that most "transitioned" individuals carry until they start detransitioning. BTW, Debbie Hayton is no saint. What he put his wife Stephanie through and then went out on interviews with her, talking over and for her, is exactly the power play men like this exert over their wives. Reaction, as one such ex-wife:
I'm going to share a story about someone I know (but I'm going to change some key details so I don't violate anyone's privacy).
I had a math teacher in high school who was very kind, but obviously troubled. He was eccentric, and highly sensitive (someone gently teased him about his eccentricities like how he talked to his plants and he cried- he clearly had an extremely fragile sense of self). He liked to go by the gender-neutral "Dr Lastname" rather than "Mr Lastname" and he was...not feminine but un-masculine, and again, just generally very eccentric.
He was married, and has two kids, including a very sick anorexic daughter, and he himself was quite thin at the time I knew him. He was super nice, a fantastic teacher, and never creepy in any noticeable way, but he did have a small posse of mostly female students who would hang out and work in his room (he had a gentle demeanor and got along well with female students).
While I was one of his favorite students, due to my aptitude for his subject, I didn't attend any of these hangouts. In retrospect, I think I intuitively picked up on something being off about his relationship to women/girls even though he had never said or done anything inappropriate, and that's why I never hung out there.
He ended up transitioning. I was shocked when I heard…..then I wasn't. I thought, "maybe he had really bad body dysmorphic disorder like his daughter and this provided an answer and identity that is helping him manage it rather than starvation. I hope he's happy." Then when I peaked and went down the rabbit hole, I thought "eww does that mean he's agp, since he's straight? That can’t be it, bc I never got creepy vibes though. Maybe it was more a body dysmorphia/ROGD thing."
Then, a few years later, after fully transitioning...he got fired from his tenured position for allegedly sexually harassing a female pupil on multiple occasions (talking to her about her breasts). It was then that I tried to rake through my memories and see if there was ANYTHING that could have predicted this- that's when I remembered the after-school hang outs in his room and how I never went.
If the allegations are true, it would seem he is likely sexually perverted (what some would call “an agp"). But all I really know for sure, from having him as a teacher, is that he had ISSUES. The idea this man is just “an autoheterosexual"- an otherwise developmentally normal person, normal personality development, normal emotional and mental health, normal behaviors, with just a variance of “sexual orientation” like a gay man or woman, is laughable. For men like this, the cross dressing/weird sexual shit seems to be the cherry on top of a deep iceberg of personality issues and mental and behavioral disorders.
This man I knew did not come across as predatory. He was a fragile, eccentric, sad person with many social idiosyncrasies. His whole vibe was one of quiet pain underneath the surface. Did the palpable emotional pain radiating from him come from "agp?" Or did the "agp" (if that’s what he had) grow out of his emotional pain, emotional pain perhaps arising from deep developmental problems that influenced many aspects of his life, including his sexuality?
Who knows.
So where do we go from here?
All I know for sure, is that my favorite math teacher transed, then perved out and lost himself his tenured job. One could say indulging in/normalizing this man's behaviors, whatever they were exactly, ruined his life.
So what's the idea? We tell men like this the most important thing is their own physical health and they needn't take hormones, bc we'll let them do everything else they want to: come to work in their sexy lady costumes, interacting with all their female students and colleagues as such, and as long as they say that they don’t identify as transwomen but rather as men with a cross dressing compulsion, it’ll all be okay? People think that's a practical, reasonable way to reorder human society? People think men or boys like this would be functional members of society if encouraged to do this?
The people who matter most to me here, are the people being subjected to the weird comments, the attempts to be drawn in to sexual conversations about bodies, clothes, etc, the people forced to look at their existence reduced down to a collection of objects meant to be possessed, used, worn like a costume: women and girls.
So, sure. Can this Phil guy wear his woman-as-fetish-outfit to an exploratory gender conference filled with all sorts of eccentric people with competing views, and hand out 700 pages of intellectual onanism about his fetish lifestyle? Sure.
But what about actual real-world society? What if Phil had a job as a high school math teacher? Would it be acceptable for Phil to dress in these clothes, publicly stating he’s sexually aroused by cross-dressing, and be some girl's math teacher? I say: no.
Your mistake, and I really hope you and others ask yourselves why you all made it because it was a failure to protect yourselves and others from toxic AGP influence, was thinking that a self-published book by an AGP and an interview with the AGP might be worth yours and your readers' time.
You should have known that the mental illnesses AGPs suffer from profoundly skew their perceptions, judgement and boundaries, making them unreliable reporters, opinionators or collaborators, to say the least. Everything that happened with him could and should have been predicted.
"But he's one of the good ones because he knows he's a man" is just silly. It's not based on any facts or evidence, but rather wishful naiveté. There are no excuses for naiveté where AGPs are concerned.
AGPs are emotionally, psychically and intellectually dangerous, especially to those who haven't experienced the consequences of being involved with them in any way. They are assertive, transgressive, persistent, obsessive and gaslighting. They have successfully bamboozled thousands upon thousands of otherwise intelligent, empowered people.
Your readers depend on you to appropriately gatekeep ideas. Please be worthy of their trust.
Thank you, as always, for diving into the complicated, Lisa, and I'm so appreciating all the comments here. I think with Blanchard's historic taxonomy, we see the ‘law of the instrument’ in action: some transwomen like Phil feel Blanchard’s broad definition of AGP fits, other transwomen feel that Blanchard's category of homosexual transexualism fits...here's the hammer, here are two nails, ad infinitum. “I felt this way, therefore everyone else must, too, now and forever, amen.” They can't conceptualize that there are new cohorts, both female AND male, in a new era, living with a different social construction of gender, who may have different paths to what appear to be similar destinations. However, I've heard so many young men now talk about how the concept of being trans was suggested to them by external societal forces--peers, celebrities, parents, teachers, therapists--as an explanation for some type of gender non-conformity combined with some type of distress that I just don’t believe Blanchard’s taxonomy holds anymore. Certainly, there’s a lot to explore.
I appreciate that many of the feminists who were outraged about Phil’s dress were bringing a larger philosophical question to bear: if I know a man is turned on by wearing stilettos and doubly turned on by a woman seeing him in stilettos, am I being forced to non-consensually participate in a fetish if he wears high heels in my presence. That’s a good question for philosophy class but also a reasonable question for real life. I get it: I have a relative who’s a cross-dresser, and one way I don’t participate in the fetish is to absolutely ignore it. He wants attention. I do not provide it. It’s basic behavioral training, and it seems to be working--I get far fewer oblique attempts to draw me in.
It’s ironic but to me, the women who went nuts over the dress were likely participating more in the fetishistic behavior than the ones who simply dismissed it. Many also came across as sexist hypocrites. I think it was Debbie Hayton who said that women don’t understand men’s sexuality, and I believe Hayton: men are turned on by everything from boots to velvet to being observed in boots or velvet to causing outrage because of their boots and velvet--I don’t get it. But clothes don’t make the man, and they don’t make the woman. If we can stick to that basic principle and refuse to get distracted by the very things these men want to divert our attention to, I hope we can get past much of the current gender bullshit…maybe without losing our marbles.
You have such common sense, Kate, which I appreciate very much. In this case, I think the incident surfaced a lot of underexamined problems, so perhaps that’s a silver lining. I am not at the moment, however, feeling very optimistic about Genspect: the behavior of Lindsay and what I have now learned about Heying have shaken my faith in Genspect’s judgment, and I am not sure that’s retrievable. I know mistakes are inevitable, we all make them, but this seems something more than that, something flawed in the ethos of the organization. But my faith in you and Lisa remains strong, and I continue to be grateful to you both for all your hard and good work.
Kate and all: I just saw that Zach Elliott has weighed in on this issue, and thought it worth sharing:
“On AGP and Phil Illy.
Autogynephilia is a sexual paraphilia that is linked to personality disorders like narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and dangerous obsessive behaviors related to sexuality.
Typically those who have a paraphilia are not satisfied with keeping it to themselves. Their obsession often extends to including others in it, including the potential grooming of others to accept it and at worse to make others join in on the paraphilia. The range of individual AGP behavior can be anywhere from simple grooming to stalking, assault, and rape and murder. It is truly a spectrum of behavior and depends on the individual. The common theme is that it revolves around highly obsessive, narcissistic sexual behaviors.
Phil Illy wants AGP to be normalized as a sexual orientation and treated that way in society. This is a type of grooming: trying to lower boundaries and have people be okay with the paraphilia. He has also said that he thinks there are”trans kids” who would benefit from cross-sex hormones. He also believes that he has a “inner cross gender spirit.”
The fact that Phil now wants to open a “gender consulting business” should be very concerning because I guarantee he will utilize that to groom other people, including minors, into his ideology and narcissistic paraphilia. We can see all of these red flags from a mile away.
Finally, it would be a mistake to treat Phil and other AGPs as though they are simply engaging in gender non-conformity, as GNC behavior and paraphilias are completely different things.
Before interacting with this individual, if you must, utilize discernment and be cautious.”
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1725943359674466413
Well said by Mr. Elliott.
For those still wondering how trans activists captivated so many people, we are seeing an example of it playing out in real time with this AGP.
Great comment, however I strongly disagree that the way forward is for the burden to be placed on women to adopt poker faces as fully-destigmatized narcissistic male sexual exhibitionists sexually harass us. The way forward is clearly to continue stigmatizing narcissistic antisocial behavior (of which agp is one. Frankly the cross dressing, while misogynistic and therefore disgusting, isn’t really the point. The disrespect of others boundaries is the real scare factor here).
Also, I can just here my brother reacting to that Hayton comment like “woah why is this creep speaking for men??” And I can say I know many women who would actually say the same thing about female sexuality- that men don’t understand that WOMEN are the ones capable of being turned on by anything and everything unusual, unexpected or abstract. Human sexuality is complex. Men being sex offenders (forcing others to look at what behavior, in this case cross dressing, that they tell us turns them on) is.
No. The women who went nuts were expressing shock over the lack of appropriate boundaries exercised by the conference organizers. A very healthy, appropriate and necessary reaction. **This is how we maintain appropriate boundaries when they are transgressed**.
Please remember that we don't know what causes AGP. Until we do, any theories about how today's trans aren't the same as yesterday's are based on superficial unscientific observations only, and not worth very much other than the obvious social contagion angle. We DO know that internalized and parental homophobia, the other main factor, is still alive and well unfortunately.
I love so much of this but I disagree with where you landed, viewing the conflict as a matter of competing biases. That assumes everyone on the Genspect scene has basically the same values and the conflict is just a matter of ordering priorities. I don't think that's the case at all. In fact they only share one value: reforming a system that's hurting children. Since the system is so obviously awful, practically any sort of person with any set of motivations can want to reform it. It's like if you convened a summit of Americans who like pizza and then acted dismayed because they didn't all agree on Israel/Palestine.
(Personally I don't have strong opinions about men in dresses -- I have a natural aptitude for ignoring male sexuality -- but I was repulsed by the misogyny and condescension of some OOs.)
You note that the people who upset you are your friends and colleagues. By contrast, many of your readers don't have strong ties to the people who pissed them off. What do you have to say to people who now think the denizens of Genspect are sexist, transphobic, or simply insane, and feel like walking away?
Your question at the end is to the point, and even more, you had me laughing with this, which is an aptitude I share: “I have a natural aptitude for ignoring male sexuality.” ⭐️👏⭐️
By far the most thoughtful piece I've read on this. Excellent work
For what it's worth, THIS is the conference we should all be talking about in reference to Phil's presence. Ray Blanchard describes it as a conference if the world's best sex researchers. Phil presented his theories on "autosexuality" there and his presentation was highlighted by J Michael Bailey (see links below). There are problems with Phil promoting himself and his book as an expert source. Having him present at a professional conference with experienced researchers is an even problem, IMO. He may have insights, but he is not an expert and many of his ideas are not grounded in any science. Yes, listen to him, but he needs to be understood more as a memoirist, not as a researcher or expert.
https://twitter.com/autogynephilic/status/1691941772686180375
https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1690896494008905728
I think the way he came to terms with his own AGP was by expanding its theoretical reach to include, like, *everything else* in the world of uncommon sexual interests. And for that reason, *I think of his book as a memoir, too!* Felt quite validated to see you describe it that way! (Or, at least, describe him as a memoirist.) I respond to "Autoheterosexual" as a very personal book, even when he is talking about other people's sexual interests. It's as though Illy's parsing the whole universe through the lens of his uncommon desire. It seems scientific because it's so categorical, and so confident, but it's probably (and probably not just probably) the precise opposite of scientific.
Not a good idea even to listen to AGPs. They are mentally-ill, charismatic mind-fuckers who successfully transgress on a routine basis, especially with convincing people that they are experts as you mentioned. Smart people with large egos seem to be particularly susceptible to their influence.
They are the least reliable of all possible reporters on their own mental illness.
Is that the symposium with Anne Lawrence, TIM's. Hsu, Bailey, Illy? if so, did you catch Hsu kept saying "if you believe the theory"? Lawrence mentioned a few things I found interesting: 1. Most AGP's are narcissistic. 2. The West places greater importance on individualism so this wouldn't happen in other cultures. 3. Young boys should be medicalized. There is so much to AGP that isn't explained.
This is a very fair overview of Phil's work and of the Genspect conference. I think you're right, Lisa, to fix on the tensions between a more libertarian/individualistic ethos vs. one that privileges public decorum or even stigmatizing some choices at the price of people's own desires or preferences.
I was at Genspect & sat next to Phil all day at a table on Saturday. I personally didn't get creepy or sex pest vibes from him--we didn't talk much, but he contributed to lunchtime conversation at the table, as we all did. The strongest vibes I got from Phil and his book (which I haven't read - 600 pages! - Lisa is a hero to struggle through that!) are about his autism, not his autogynephilia. Phil has his special interests, and will talk to anyone who wants to discuss them with him. If others found him obnoxious or too strange and off-putting, I wouldn't hold it against them for not wanting to associate with him. I get the impression that however he dresses, Phil probably knows that his special interests may be off-putting to many people.
Clothing is a signal to the world about us. We all broadcast through clothing who we are and how we believe we fit in, or don't fit in, with the world around us. Phil is pretty clear about broadcasting his strangeness and his unusual ideas! As a feminist scholar I've always been comfortable with sex non-conformity, and I think one of the ways we can move beyond the medicalized model for treating sex non-conformity is to let people use clothing and accessories instead of drugs and surgery to send signals about their identity. As the mother of a desister, I would consider it a massive victory if sex non-conformity would migrate back to clothing and makeup, as would most parents of children caught up in the gender cult.
Gender critical people rightly call out the authoritarianism in TRAs in trying to control other people's language and perception of reality. Therefore, GCs must acknowledge that we can't control how other people dress. We get to respond as we prefer to in public with said people--we can engage politely, engage icily, or keep our distance, like we do from all kinds of nonsense and strange behavior we see in public.
Having a tantrum about stuff we can't and don't control is just more unhinged emotional incontinence and manipulation. Haven't we all had enough of that already?
Re: autism - Have you seen his first interview with Benjamin Boyce and his discussion - and mostly rejection - of autism as a factor? I feel like that interview is very enlightening. It was one of his first (perhaps his first?) before he had a practiced message and narrative and was the center of so much attention and controversy. I sometimes wonder if he truly is AGP (at least in the classic Blanchard way) or if it's an idea he's grasped onto and hyper focused on as a way to explain many of the social, emotional, and relational challenges he describes in that first interview. Someone asks below what is causing AGP. I suspect there's a concept creep happening with AGP and that the more it's being put out for the public to see - whether it's called AGP or vehemently denied as AGP - it will become part of this culture's symptom pool, another idiom of distress, with more people - some rightly, many wrongly - grasp onto to understand their deep distress
Did you meant the interview/debate with Rudy that just dropped on Calmversations? I heard several interviews with Phil back when he first published his book (last year sometime?) I found his logic and arguments difficult to follow so TBH I didn't find him to be very insightful, vs. so many of the other interviews that Boyce hosts (along with the Aarons at Transparency, Gender: A Wider Lens, Lisa's interviews, or the Heterodorx.)
I like your idea of AGP as concept creep. AGP is defo one of Phil's special interests! I personally think we must use caution in slathering this diagnosis over all male trans-ID's people, especially the younger ones now. I thought that Angus Fox/Alasdair Gunn's series at Quillette, and his interviews on the subject, were quite powerful in suggesting that there may be something else going on with the younger population of males. I must say that I'm very skeptical of Phil's notion of autoandrophilia. I just don't think that lens captures much of what I think is at the heart of the young people caught up in gender, which is their achingly, tragically immature and simplistic view of the world and themselves. The juvenile, even babyish nature of trans culture just knocks me out, and I don't understand why we're not talking about this!
I haven't seen the interview with Rudy. I was referring to the very first interview Phil gave on Calmversations.
I agree that there are too many people trying to force the concept of AGP on all ROGD males. Of course some ROGD males are likely AGP, but I find it odd that there are people insisting it must be 100%, no other options. A few months ago, Dr. Debra Soh put out a tweet along the lines of "all rogd males are either homosexual or agp. There are no other options." I find this to be a completely unacceptable mindset for someone who claims to be a scientist. I've heard J Michael Bailey express similar opinions (although not quite as starkly). Why would a scientist take such a close-minded view when there's been such an obvious and well-documented change in the kids presenting with gender dysphoria? Why be openminded for the girls but not the boys? Maybe be the vast majority of ROGD boys are AGP - but no one has anywhere close to the data yet to make that claim and say there's no other possibility.
As for AGP and autism: I wonder if there are some autistic ROGD boys who are picking up on the language of AGP men from their online interactions and scripting with it in their attempts to present as female without literally feeling what they're repeating.
And I agree about AAP. Have you watched the Calmversations interview with Oak Leaves and Onions? I found her argument that what she was experiencing was AAP very questionable.
Interesting perspective- this made me think about some things differently. But don’t you think the reason some people end up with medicalization is because clothes alone is simply socially disruptive (as we saw play out)?
I don't know about this. I think that the sexologists of old (1970s-1990s) pushed the medical model because they assumed at the time, and most of their patients did too, that the goal was to pass or to blend in as much as possible. But now, being "trans" for the sake of trans seems to be more the goal for a lot of younger people. It's difficult to say because of the massive differences in the patient population that have emerged in the past 15 years. (The middle-aged AGP men vs. the teens and 20-something probably gay kids; the males vs. the surge in females, etc.)
It may be healthier, or a step back towards sanity, if we acknowledge that some young people want to be "trans," and just let them cross dress and use makeup. Let it be the new "goth," as Dr. Az Hakeem has suggested. That would defo be better than getting them all jumped up on cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and bilateral mastectomies--for their sake, for their families' sake, for the sake of our health care systems.
I largely agree, but don’t you think the main issue is that the identity is predicated on somehow BEING the opposite sex? I just can’t see trans turning into a clothes-only goth thing (maybe non-binary) bc it’s whole point is BEING the opposite sex. And its just that nobody buys that a man in a dress is a woman or a girl with a buzz it is a boy.
Lisa, I'm not even done with Phil. That review you've linked (thanks) is a qualitative assessment of what kind of text he wrote (a gnostic bible). He relies on Hirschfeld to construct his history of AGP in the literature. Aside from the excellent point you made about Blanchard's typology, there is the problem that Magnus Hirschfeld was an utter goofball and pseudoscientist. The man claimed that he could "see" who was gay on the basis of what amounts to phrenology and made the terrible mistake of applying his supposed skills to Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. He was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics, which he said would eliminate homosexuality. Contrary to the ahistorical portrayal of Hirschfeld as some sort of hero in Illy's book, he had high-level Nazi clients whose patient records all conveniently disappeared in a famous bonfire that has been re-cast as Hirschfeld's martyrdom.
So, there will be a bit more, is what I am saying.
Yes, the field has always been laden with goofballs (nice word for it). I mean, Harry Benjamin was a snake oil salesman and WPATH was named for him! I'm surprised that Hirschfeld supported eugenics to end homosexuality. I thought he wanted to normalize it! I have forgotten a lot of the history I've read.
We will have the real story soon enough :) TBC Hirschfeld thought that gays would disappear from the gene pool through eugenics, he was not advocating for gays to be killed.
^^^Why the F these people are so obsessed with the diseased, self-serving rants of an AGP, just mystifies me. They know better.
"It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill."
--J.R.R. Tolkien
Hirschfeld is an example of the historical negationism that occurs in the false histories of "trans." Phil's use of Hirschfeld this way to construct a gnostic bible illustrates the point. So far Fred Sargent is the only writer to tackle the Hirschfeld myth, and he will not be producing new historiography. That's where I come in. I was deputized to do this, Hazel-ra.
That doesn't answer the question of why you took the AGP seriously to begin with. Do you have standards, or not? It's a simple question.
Under what set of standards should I refuse to take his words seriously? Do these same rules apply to the musical ouvre of Prince? Who appointed me an officer of the clothes police, and when?
These are simple predicate questions to your questions. No one can answer them for me. I refuse to answer your "have you stopped beating your wife yet" question until these predicates are answered with facts that convince me. Show me the standards. Explain why they will be specific to Phil and not universal to others. Cite the date of my commissioning in the clothes police, as well as the oath that I took at my swearing-in ceremony.
Then, and only then, will I answer your ridiculous interrogation.
Lisa, I think you raise a very important and interesting point in your excellent piece: "Can something be destigmatized without being normalized or approved of?"
I think at the heart of this question is another question: what should be approved of? In the Westernized world there will be people with very different answers to this question because we don't have a shared measure. Moreover, most people really don't have any measure. People nowadays want everything to be destigmatized because they consider stigma to be a bad thing. I, personally, like Mary Harrington's view on stigma - she says that stigma served (and still serves) a very important purpose in preventing people from doing harm to themselves and to others and especially to our group/society. But then what is harm, and what is harmful? Most of us, I would hazard, don't really think about this question deeply, and we don't think about *why* we think certain things are harmful. But I think it's a really important question to consider, and I think it's very important to be brave and to go all the way down, asking yourself "why?" at every answer you come to.
I think many of the evils I see in our society are the result of an unmooring, a loss of solid ground of morals and beliefs. I know I sound like an old woman railing at "the youth", but I truly believe it. We are floundering on quicksand because we feel it should be ok to watch some porn but not all porn, or for some men to wear dresses but not for others, or at least not at certain times or not in certain ways...
I'm not going to say what I think society at large should do, but I will repeat that I think every person needs to consider really carefully and deeply *why* they believe what they believe, and not be afraid of changing their attitudes and actions based on their realizations.
I realize this is only tangentially related to Phil Illy and the AGPgate. I appreciate your article tremendously, Lisa, especially your open mindedness and non-dogmatism. I just think the point about stigma and beliefs is a really huge and important one that we generally don't talk about, so I wanted to bring it out.
This is really smart and well put. Not at all a tangent, either. I think these questions go the the heart of what has surfaced in this incident, and they definitely deserve deep consideration.
Great piece, Lisa! As the mom of a (maybe desisted? I’ll never relax!) ROGD boy, I’ve been told by more than a couple of the gender-world celebs that my child is AGP and that’s that. I’m not averse to this if there were actual studies or anything in addition to Blanchard’s talking points (which I don’t think have been proven to apply to the newer cohort).
Thanks for recognizing that we don’t actually know that there are only 2 types of gender-confused boys. Many moms of boys like mine (autistic, highly gifted, non-sporty late bloomers) would love to see some evidence if it exists. 🤷♀️
It’s not very complicated though; this was a man parading a sexual fetish in a serious conference, and everyone is conditioned to “give him space”.
People: He dressed like a hooker in a cocktail dress and was getting off on the notoriety. Full stop.
The correct response is “sir, this conference is for review of science, not turning $2 tricks. You’re welcome to wear business attire and not present like your tuning tricks on Times Square 1979.
Same as you’d say to a man in assless chaps and a jockstrap. There are times when I feel like I’m the only one who has had enough sex to recognize full-blown public sex games.
As for the book, as I’ve mentioned on many forums, it’s a persistent fantasy among this group to force children to change the presentation of their sex either in dress, or ideally with drugs and best of all surgically the consent of more people the better. That’s one purpose of the book.
I generally don’t share sexual media but this is so over the top, everyone here can explore for themselves:
https://www.nifty.org/nifty/transgender/young-friends/
Here an example
https://www.nifty.org/nifty/transgender/young-friends/mommas-trans-boy
The archive goes back decades in this area.
These groups of people don’t operate with the worldview you or I have and discussion must start there.
There were two other controversial invitees at Genspect's Denver conference. Here are my opinions about them. Other people might see things differently.
One speaker has gained notoriety for promoting Ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19 and by advancing the claim that the COVID-19 vaccine is a significant health risk. [1][2][3] Both views, which fall outside the person's academic field of expertise, have been rebutted by the nation's chief public health agencies. They have determined that Ivermectin is ineffective as a treatment for COVID-19 and that the COVID-19 vaccines are both safe and effective. Only peddlers of conspiracy theories and the gullible people who've fallen for them continue to insist otherwise.
The other figure has something in common with Donald Trump. Both of them see Marxists hiding every bed. It's not clear whether Trump also sees pedophile "groomers" lurking around every corner, but this speaker certainly does. If you come across a comment on social media that blames gender identity ideology on something called "Cultural Marxism," it's likely someone who has fallen under his influence, directly or indirectly.
Now, the origins of gender ideology are a subject of great interest and some controversy. Fortunately, a highly credentialed and qualified scholar has just published a book about the intellectual history that underlies the cluster of social phenomena of which the trans project is a part. His name is Yascha Mounk and his book is titled The Identity Trap. He's been making the rounds of all the usual pundits on his book tour.
Why Genspect would have chosen a self-taught culture warrior [4] with an often disagreeable online temperament (they once picked a Twitter fight with the Holocaust Museum) to appear in Denver when they might have had the distinguished and accomplished Dr. Mounk is utterly baffling.
It's possible that the former figure has repudiated Ivermectin and embraced the COVID-19 vaccine. Genspect may have discovered hidden merits in the latter's thinking. In any case, it owes its members and the public an explanation for platforming Heather Heying and James Lindsay, respectively, in Denver.
[1] "Heather Heying." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Heying
"Heying has said that she has taken ivermectin to guard against COVID-19 and that she and Weinstein have not been vaccinated 'because we have fears [about the side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines], as we have discussed at length on this podcast.' Heying compared the use of ivermectin for this purpose to taking antimalarial drugs.[5] Whereas all WHO-approved vaccines have shown a high level of safety and efficacy in all populations,[24] there is no good evidence of benefit from ivermectin in preventing or treating COVID-19."
[2] [ii] Decoding the Gurus. "Interview with Julia Ebner: Extremist Networks & Radicalisation." https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/interview-with-julia-ebner-extremist-networks-radicalisation
"Also on this week's episode, we dive into a recent episode of the DarkHorse to explore the Alex Jones' level conspiracies that Bret and Heather have recently been promoting about the horrific events in Israel. You might imagine it would be difficult to make such a tragic event about COVID dissidents and vaccines but if so you are underestimating the InfoHorse hosts."
[3] Decoding the Gurus. "Brett Weinstein & Heather Heying: Why are 'they' supressing Ivermectin, the miracle cure?" https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/brett-heather-weinstein-why-are-they-suppressing-ivermectin-the-miracle-cure
"This episode wasn't meant to be about Ivermectin, or Bret and Heather's unique ability to apply an 'evolutionary lens' to understand everything, including virology, epidemiology, immunology and the culture war... but it is.....We meant to make a few topical comments prior to the main episode, but the comments led into some rants, and then with the clips, those rants metastasised into a full-sized episode. So the duo had to travel back in time to record a new introduction, and back again, forward this time, in time, to record the outro and it all got very complicated.Anyway, it is what it is!Bret and Heather are 95% sure that the COVID vaccines are like playing Russian Roulette with a loaded gun, and that the scientific and public health authorities are lying to everyone, and we would be better off avoiding these risky vaccines and taking Ivermectin instead. Bret even demonstrates how to swallow a pill live on air. But they are not anti-vax! No not at all. They're not conspiracy theorists either! Of course they're not. Conspiracy hypothesisers, maybe... but there is a crucial distinction there. Either way they have concerns, and Matt and Chris have concerns with their concerns. So enjoy this very special 'meta' episode."
[4] Decoding the Gurus. "James Lindsay & Michael O'Fallon: Eating bugs for Feminist Glaciology." https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/james-lindsay-michael-ofallon-eating-bugs-for-feminist-glaciology
"This is an important episode. 2022 you needs to realise what 2020 you could not and what 2030 you is ready to tell you. Confused? You will be."
"On this episode we tackle two gurus that we have treated separately: James Lindsay of New Discourses (episode 2) and Michael O'Fallon of Sovereign Nations (episode 13). O'Fallon hasn't changed much from our episode analysing him, aside from starting a conspiracy laden daily news show. But James... well... judge for yourself."
"On this episode you will learn many amazing facts, including how feminist glaciology is at the core of the Great Reset, that the NFL is now the Critical Race Football league, and how what 'it' is really all about is making people into pets who are driven by AI cars and eat bugs."
"For this excursion, Chris and Matt are joined for the second time by Aaron Rabinowtiz, host of Embrace the Void (@ETVPod) and Philosophers in Space podcasts, PhD student, and lecturer at Rutgers University. This means we have now had two back to back episodes with philosophers... and we really can't apologise enough."
I’m very disturbed to learn this about Heying, who I did not know before being introduced to her via Genspect, and thought had intelligent things to say about the controversy at hand. Her support of ivermectin, which appears confirmed from my search on seeing this comment, now places her out of bounds for me. I know it’s difficult to vet people, and we are going to encounter a variety of opinions. The problem, though, is that if we wish to persuade others on these issues, we simply cannot offer them quacks when what we are trying to do is counter quacks. We have to be able to rely on the organizations we respect, like Genspect, to platform people who are credible. If we can’t do that, we are at a severe disadvantage. Based on what I now know, Lindsay, and, to my keen disappointment, it appears, Heying, should never have been invited to speak. I am sorry to say, but I now do not have confidence in looking to Genspect for anything. I certainly won’t point others to the organization unless and until they clean this up.
Thank you - I rest my case!
I was at the conference with a colleague who thought it was a big mistake to invite James Lindsay to speak. I disagreed, because there were people of all different points of view on most things--we were at the conference because we were in agreement for the most part about the dangers of gender ideology, especially for children. (I thought his talk was silly and tedious and factually wrong.)
Politics and persuasion are games of addition, not subtraction. It's impossible for us all to agree with everyone 100% of the time on every single political and ideological issue. That's a purity spiral, not an effective political movement!
"Purity spiral" is the wrong lingo to use in this context. Genspect prides itself on scientific rigor. Linsday simply lacks the academic qualifications, experience and temperament to make him a credible expert authority. His Ph.D in math, which he walked away from, is certainly no use. He's self taught. That might make him an interesting participant in a dorm bull session, but he's not otherwise up to par. Lindsay is, first and foremost, a culture warrior.
The appropriate analogy would defending having invited Flat Earthers to a conference on planetary science because they bring a different point of view. That they certainly do, but unless they're on the entertainment portion of the program they have no business being there.
I was impressed by Linsday at first, but the more I listened to him the more it became that he's a disagreeable loose canon with an axe to grind.
For example, Lindsay has a creepy preoccupation with the sexual practices of leftists. Whereas reasonable critics of gender identity ideology worry that children will suffer physical, psychological, emotional and developmental harm, Linday went on a tear on Twitter during which he was throwing around unfounded accusations of "child sexualization" at people he disagreed with. He was also calling folks on the trans side of the controversy "groomers," implying that they are pedophiles who are engaged in grooming minors for their sexual gratification. Nobody else among the large group of people who hold different points of view on trans has ever taken a similar position that I know of. It earned him a permanent ban until Elon let him back in together with others who had shown they couldn't play well with others.
Here's how Salon characterized him in a 2021 piece about the New Atheists:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Lindsay: Once a promising young atheist, Lindsay published "Everybody Is Wrong About God" in 2015 and, three years later, "How to Have Impossible Conversations," co-authored with Peter Boghossian (below). Referring to himself as "apolitical" but boasting a profile page on the right-wing, anti-free-speech organization Turning Point USA, he is now one of the most unhinged crusaders against "critical race theory" (CRT), an idea about which he seems to have very little actual knowledge. (This is unsurprising, given that Lindsay has literally argued that he doesn't need to understand "gender studies" to call for the entire field to be canceled. See #10 here.) Over the past few years, he has teamed up with Christian nationalist and COVID conspiracist Michael O'Fallon, and now rakes in plenty of cash via Patreon — proof that grifting about "free speech" and "CRT" pays. Known for his social media presence, Lindsay has called women he disagrees with "bitches," while — seriously — hurling "your mom" insults at intellectual opponents who point out his mendacities. He recently argued that antisemitism is caused by woke Jews (i.e., they're doing it to themselves), spread COVID conspiracy theories, and claimed in 2020 that people should vote for Donald Trump (as he did) because Joe Biden is a neo-Marxist, or will succumb to the influence of scary neo-Marxists like Black Lives Matter.
Last year, Lindsay co-authored the commercially successful book "Cynical Theories," which received a glowing endorsement from Steven Pinker but repeatedly misrepresents the ideas of those it hysterically, and incorrectly, claims are tearing down "Western civilization." And let's not get into his wildly delusional conspiracy theories about the "Great Reset," which apparently, as someone Lindsay retweeted put it, "aims to introduce a new global planetary diet"! If you want to understand Lindsay's worldview, I suggest reading Jason Stanley's excellent book "How Fascism Works," which captures the anti-intellectual, anti-academic, anti-social justice spirit of Lindsay's activism perfectly.
https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/how-the-new-atheists-merged-with-the-far-right-a-story-of-intellectual-grift-and-abject-surrender/
Only Champagne Partisans care more about other issues than the issue at hand.
Disagree. Lindsay is a nut, and it's good that he can show the world his nuttiness. His meltdowns since Genspect have been really great for that. He's not like a flat-earther, he's more like a reverse Judith Butler, only (to his credit) he will go to spaces where people disagree with him, unlike the High Priestess of Gender.
Authoritarianism is what the other side does: no debate, no disagreement, just straight to the gender abatoir. I have confidence in the common sense of most people, and in the reality of the material world around us, that we will prevail.
BTW, "groomer" is being mistakenly assumed to be like calling people pedos or nonces, but if you follow the scholarship on cults, you'll see that "groomer" doesn't necessarily mean "sexual grooming." It's a description of a technique that manipulative people and movements use to induce people to permit them to transgress healthy boundaries and safeguarding procedures. So, anyone can BE groomed, and anyone may groom anyone. I think it's a useful term, and I resent the implication that anyone who uses that term is anti-gay or mobilizing anti-gay tropes. (That said, Lindsay defo means the sexual implication when he says "groomer." But just because some bad or wrong people use a word doesn't render that word untouchable or unusable.)
OK OK Ollie, we promise to make you Political Officer when the revolution comes. Sheeesh.
You're a bad-faith troll and bully who contributes nothing to the conversation except abuse.
Mine are so much wittier than yours though. It’s kind of sad.
If you can't be civil and won't engage in good-faith discussion of the ideas, what is your aim here? Personal insults only reflect badly on you.
Your other comments show this isn't your MO, so what did I do to earn your derision? If you disagree with my views on Linsday or Heying or if there's something else about what I've written that you take issue with, please say so and explain yourself. Enough with the name calling and jabs.
Wannabe-Red Guards trying to tarnish people with guilt-by-association and purity tests deserve nothing but derision. You are the lowest of the political low. Hang your head in shame.
And you continue to act in bad faith because you are mischaracterizing my argument and setting up a straw man in the form of the so-called purity test.
Others are equally critical of Lindsay's appearance as I am, if not more so. Here is what the hosts of the podcast Blocked and Reported had to say about Linsday in connection with the Denver conference. Are they engaging in guilt by association? Or purity tests?
Blocked and Reported
Episode 191: A Man in a Dress in a Pile-On. 18 November 2023.
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-191-a-man-in-a-dress-in-a#details
“This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss the furor over a self-described autogynephile who wore a dress to a gender conference. Also, Zoomers discover 9/11.”
Here, Jesse and Katie discuss Genspect’s Denver conference of November 4 – 5, which co-host Jesse Singal attended. Before turning to the main topic of their conversation, Jesse gives his opinion on James Lindsay and his talk at the conference.
(40:00) Jesse: And most regrettably, from where I sit, they invited James Lindsay to give a talk on the Marxification of gender.
Katie: Yeah, James Lindsay. That jumped out at me, and it strikes me that if you want to be taken seriously outside of your bubble, James Lindsay is not the person to invite to speak at your conference, especially on this issue. Like if your conference is about how to have impossible conversations, maybe invite him. But if your conference is about gender, maybe not.
Jesse: Yeah. I mean, from my point of view, someone like Lindsay just tips you in the direction away from legitimate science and discourse, of which there was plenty at this conference, and into demagoguery. James Linsday is not a serious voice on sex and gender. His talk made very little sense. He just has these, like . . . his theories are very superficial and often misguided, in my view. And he’s a huge prick online, a massive asshole, which does not help anyone. Which most people associated with Genspect are not.
(43:05) Katie: Actually, I do want to get a little bit more into [James Linsday’s] talk, if you don’t mind. Did he seem crazy, the way he was speaking, the way he does on Twitter? Because he comes across on Twitter like a giant, flaming, fucking asshole.
Jesse: He was more charismatic and less crazy-seeming than I thought, and more polished. There had been one TV appearance that he’d done in the past that was just a train wreck.
Katie: He didn’t just recite a bunch of citations?
Jessie: Well, no. He dropped a lot of names. And I haven’t rewatched it since I saw it. He makes all these claims trying to link everything to Marxism and a lot of what he’s saying is what ideologues in general do: accepting different standards of evidence, trying to change the subject . . . He has, like, this grand theory. Yascha Mounk’s book talks about how a lot of this stuff [i.e., post-structuralist ideologies] isn’t Marxism. It’s post-modern, it’s a rejection of these grand theories. I don’t think he really latches onto the nuances of what’s going on or how much of this is human nature and ideology in general. He claims to be an expert on all these different thinkers. I don’t think he is.
i agree with those who wonder why this guy was given a platform. what does he add? nothing. hes not any kind of expert. hes just some schmo describing how he feels when he enjoys porn. and then he gets more enjoyment after at the thought of himself describing it to vanillas. for those of you who wonder wtf is going on, thats it in a nutshell. like groucho marx joking with the straight lady, these dudes get huge laughs by gaslighting on this topic. its closer to sci fi than anything.
its probably not helpful to mention, but acting out an AGP in public is 100% voluntary. i know the gender industry claims trans ID is not a choice. but thats not really true. having a fetish may not be a choice. but acting on it is. being gay isnt a choice. but wanting to be a mtf gay man can also be understood as a misguided choice where one is led to believe they can be a women when in reality thats impossible. does dressing as a woman help people with agp fetish? the claim is laughable, if not so serious due to harms caused. does more heroin help heroin addicts? does more porn help porn addicts? of course not. people should be free to ID as they choose. but men in drag should always use spaces designated for biological men. other men couldnt care less if they do.
people who claim agp fetish is not choice, or are helped by acting out this fetish are lying. the problem is, there are few who can verify this is a lie. but its a lie nonetheless. therefore this lie will be apparent over time.
of course some guy in drag couldnt care less about all the people harmed by the issues around his fetish.
although i appreciate their sentiment, do push back on people who criticize genspec. genspec are doing good things. you cant make everyone happy.
Well said, up to the last paragraph!
Genspect are grownups, they can handle criticism of a single decision of theirs without freaking out interpreting it as a wholesale attack on their reason for existence.
Thank you--this covers it so well!!!
The old fashioned AGP or gay assumption also comes with an assumption that AGP's are best treated with transition and that most adults who transitioned in this situation are happy. The data don't show this. Some highlighted people are happy, others are not, we just have anecdotes. But classifying MTF as AGP (say everyone who is not gay) can be a way to encourage them to believe that medical transition is what they need...and this has not been shown...witness the poor outcomes with adults which led to child transition in the first place and the lack of ability to show benefit of interventions...even for adults! (Levine & Abbruzzese, 2023, their paper on concerns, discusses this, with lots of references to go deeper!)
Illy made himself hard to ignore. This is common among crossdressing men. It's useful to describe the behavioral similarities of "transsexuals, transgenders, drag queens" &etc as crossdressing, because no one outside of his brain knows his intentions--we see his behavior. The behavior of these men affects everyone around him, including the men in the men's room. Illy will not admit that his book, his pontificating and his claims of just demonstrating a sexual orientation are the proof that he seeks to influence others. Richie Herron called it out on his TullipR channel post responding to one of the Aron's emotional rants in response. This ragged-voiced woman on testosterone was clearly threatened by the crossdressing truths this episode revealed, as it brings the entire "true trans" concept into question, bursting the balloon of self-deception that most "transitioned" individuals carry until they start detransitioning. BTW, Debbie Hayton is no saint. What he put his wife Stephanie through and then went out on interviews with her, talking over and for her, is exactly the power play men like this exert over their wives. Reaction, as one such ex-wife:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afb5rdiIakc&t=1s
I'm going to share a story about someone I know (but I'm going to change some key details so I don't violate anyone's privacy).
I had a math teacher in high school who was very kind, but obviously troubled. He was eccentric, and highly sensitive (someone gently teased him about his eccentricities like how he talked to his plants and he cried- he clearly had an extremely fragile sense of self). He liked to go by the gender-neutral "Dr Lastname" rather than "Mr Lastname" and he was...not feminine but un-masculine, and again, just generally very eccentric.
He was married, and has two kids, including a very sick anorexic daughter, and he himself was quite thin at the time I knew him. He was super nice, a fantastic teacher, and never creepy in any noticeable way, but he did have a small posse of mostly female students who would hang out and work in his room (he had a gentle demeanor and got along well with female students).
While I was one of his favorite students, due to my aptitude for his subject, I didn't attend any of these hangouts. In retrospect, I think I intuitively picked up on something being off about his relationship to women/girls even though he had never said or done anything inappropriate, and that's why I never hung out there.
He ended up transitioning. I was shocked when I heard…..then I wasn't. I thought, "maybe he had really bad body dysmorphic disorder like his daughter and this provided an answer and identity that is helping him manage it rather than starvation. I hope he's happy." Then when I peaked and went down the rabbit hole, I thought "eww does that mean he's agp, since he's straight? That can’t be it, bc I never got creepy vibes though. Maybe it was more a body dysmorphia/ROGD thing."
Then, a few years later, after fully transitioning...he got fired from his tenured position for allegedly sexually harassing a female pupil on multiple occasions (talking to her about her breasts). It was then that I tried to rake through my memories and see if there was ANYTHING that could have predicted this- that's when I remembered the after-school hang outs in his room and how I never went.
If the allegations are true, it would seem he is likely sexually perverted (what some would call “an agp"). But all I really know for sure, from having him as a teacher, is that he had ISSUES. The idea this man is just “an autoheterosexual"- an otherwise developmentally normal person, normal personality development, normal emotional and mental health, normal behaviors, with just a variance of “sexual orientation” like a gay man or woman, is laughable. For men like this, the cross dressing/weird sexual shit seems to be the cherry on top of a deep iceberg of personality issues and mental and behavioral disorders.
This man I knew did not come across as predatory. He was a fragile, eccentric, sad person with many social idiosyncrasies. His whole vibe was one of quiet pain underneath the surface. Did the palpable emotional pain radiating from him come from "agp?" Or did the "agp" (if that’s what he had) grow out of his emotional pain, emotional pain perhaps arising from deep developmental problems that influenced many aspects of his life, including his sexuality?
Who knows.
So where do we go from here?
All I know for sure, is that my favorite math teacher transed, then perved out and lost himself his tenured job. One could say indulging in/normalizing this man's behaviors, whatever they were exactly, ruined his life.
So what's the idea? We tell men like this the most important thing is their own physical health and they needn't take hormones, bc we'll let them do everything else they want to: come to work in their sexy lady costumes, interacting with all their female students and colleagues as such, and as long as they say that they don’t identify as transwomen but rather as men with a cross dressing compulsion, it’ll all be okay? People think that's a practical, reasonable way to reorder human society? People think men or boys like this would be functional members of society if encouraged to do this?
The people who matter most to me here, are the people being subjected to the weird comments, the attempts to be drawn in to sexual conversations about bodies, clothes, etc, the people forced to look at their existence reduced down to a collection of objects meant to be possessed, used, worn like a costume: women and girls.
So, sure. Can this Phil guy wear his woman-as-fetish-outfit to an exploratory gender conference filled with all sorts of eccentric people with competing views, and hand out 700 pages of intellectual onanism about his fetish lifestyle? Sure.
But what about actual real-world society? What if Phil had a job as a high school math teacher? Would it be acceptable for Phil to dress in these clothes, publicly stating he’s sexually aroused by cross-dressing, and be some girl's math teacher? I say: no.
Your mistake, and I really hope you and others ask yourselves why you all made it because it was a failure to protect yourselves and others from toxic AGP influence, was thinking that a self-published book by an AGP and an interview with the AGP might be worth yours and your readers' time.
You should have known that the mental illnesses AGPs suffer from profoundly skew their perceptions, judgement and boundaries, making them unreliable reporters, opinionators or collaborators, to say the least. Everything that happened with him could and should have been predicted.
"But he's one of the good ones because he knows he's a man" is just silly. It's not based on any facts or evidence, but rather wishful naiveté. There are no excuses for naiveté where AGPs are concerned.
AGPs are emotionally, psychically and intellectually dangerous, especially to those who haven't experienced the consequences of being involved with them in any way. They are assertive, transgressive, persistent, obsessive and gaslighting. They have successfully bamboozled thousands upon thousands of otherwise intelligent, empowered people.
Your readers depend on you to appropriately gatekeep ideas. Please be worthy of their trust.
So a man made a spectacle of himself and kind of messed up an important conference. It’s really wrong.
Helen Joyce has now written an excellent post containing excellent advice for all of us and the organizations we support. She includes a shout-out to Lisa, too! https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-67/