When Colin Wright asked me to turn a slightly ranty tweet thread into an article, I happily complied. But the experience ended up clarifying so much for me about the continued misrepresentations and misinterpretations of ideas that, at one time, helped us understand gender nonconformity. It’s now free on
We need more people picking apart the concepts of gender identity and asking questions. I understand how someone can have a deep, intense, relenting feeling for something they want or wish desperately to be true, in this case being or looking like the opposite sex. I can imagine how it can become a defining part of their identity. But I struggle to see how this is fundamentally different than any other deep desire for something that is so intense that it becomes the core of a person's identity, like intensely driven professional athletes who don't see losing as an option or people who define themselves by their professional success. For those people, we recognize that's it's a mixture of personality traits and environment that create that focus and drive, not a single-dimensional thing in the brain that we all have that may or may not match the rest of us.
Thank you, Lisa, for turning that “slightly ranty tweet” into a long form article. Your summation at the end is says it all: “The problem with “gender identity” is that it ends inquiry rather than spurring it. It erases questions of etiology, and it privileges the slippery notion of gender over the material reality of sex. But this idea, rather than being questioned, has been institutionalized in medicine, in law, in education, and in the minds of a generation.” This all leads me, once again, to wonder whether clarity can only come back to us by excising the now much-abused linguistic term “gender” from the lexicon.
Great article. The most relevant point being that if I don’t subscribe to the vocal left “gender identity” religion, I’m being abusive and ultimately a TERF.
Re "It’s not until about age six or seven that most of us experience 'sex constancy'—the realization that our bodies dictate our sex, not our adherence to stereotypes."
While reading the above line, I had the (perhaps uncharitable) thought that all the mishmash about fluidity and self-identification and proliferation of truly ridiculous — actually, childish — "gender" identities (raccoon-gender, etc.) illustrates a kind of regression to infancy among both children and adults.
In other words, kids under the age of 6 or 7 do not possess the cognitive ability to grasp "sex constancy," but they gain it as they mature; meanwhile, some full-grown adults and teenagers today adamantly declare beliefs and positions supporting what we might call "sex inconstancy," a stance once understood as belonging only to small children.
Pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs, an adverse event some die from, is one of the risks of long term consumption of wrong sex hormones. Type "Ray Williams detransitioner" in the search line on YouTube and his channel comes up; his story of smoking cigarettes while taking oral estrogen (we know from contraceptive pills that this is a bad combo) and developing racing heart rate, pain and other symptoms of the blood clot in his lungs. So, he detransitioned, took back the name Ray, recently naming his lingerie habit as a "paraphilia" --his phrase. My analysis of his detransition process and comments on his commenter, another AGP, who's also anorexic since age 12--he didn't want to grow up, calls himself "adult boy." So many illnesses in one body/mind!
We need more people picking apart the concepts of gender identity and asking questions. I understand how someone can have a deep, intense, relenting feeling for something they want or wish desperately to be true, in this case being or looking like the opposite sex. I can imagine how it can become a defining part of their identity. But I struggle to see how this is fundamentally different than any other deep desire for something that is so intense that it becomes the core of a person's identity, like intensely driven professional athletes who don't see losing as an option or people who define themselves by their professional success. For those people, we recognize that's it's a mixture of personality traits and environment that create that focus and drive, not a single-dimensional thing in the brain that we all have that may or may not match the rest of us.
Thank you, Lisa, for turning that “slightly ranty tweet” into a long form article. Your summation at the end is says it all: “The problem with “gender identity” is that it ends inquiry rather than spurring it. It erases questions of etiology, and it privileges the slippery notion of gender over the material reality of sex. But this idea, rather than being questioned, has been institutionalized in medicine, in law, in education, and in the minds of a generation.” This all leads me, once again, to wonder whether clarity can only come back to us by excising the now much-abused linguistic term “gender” from the lexicon.
Great article. The most relevant point being that if I don’t subscribe to the vocal left “gender identity” religion, I’m being abusive and ultimately a TERF.
Can a cis-male-gay-man be a TERF?
Re "It’s not until about age six or seven that most of us experience 'sex constancy'—the realization that our bodies dictate our sex, not our adherence to stereotypes."
While reading the above line, I had the (perhaps uncharitable) thought that all the mishmash about fluidity and self-identification and proliferation of truly ridiculous — actually, childish — "gender" identities (raccoon-gender, etc.) illustrates a kind of regression to infancy among both children and adults.
In other words, kids under the age of 6 or 7 do not possess the cognitive ability to grasp "sex constancy," but they gain it as they mature; meanwhile, some full-grown adults and teenagers today adamantly declare beliefs and positions supporting what we might call "sex inconstancy," a stance once understood as belonging only to small children.
Who knew, I'm lilacgender!
BTW, just as an aside, I ran across this in a NYT advice column. The advice giver is Roxanne Gay. See what you think (I'll hold my fire . . .). https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/business/its-not-ok-to-police-co-workers-pronouns.html
Pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs, an adverse event some die from, is one of the risks of long term consumption of wrong sex hormones. Type "Ray Williams detransitioner" in the search line on YouTube and his channel comes up; his story of smoking cigarettes while taking oral estrogen (we know from contraceptive pills that this is a bad combo) and developing racing heart rate, pain and other symptoms of the blood clot in his lungs. So, he detransitioned, took back the name Ray, recently naming his lingerie habit as a "paraphilia" --his phrase. My analysis of his detransition process and comments on his commenter, another AGP, who's also anorexic since age 12--he didn't want to grow up, calls himself "adult boy." So many illnesses in one body/mind!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRtK6daC5hk&t=8s