i really appreciate your refusal to drift right on such issues as the nuclear family and gender expression — AKA, you understand that not everyone is the same, and the presence of different lifestyle isn’t in itself a sign of being an stupid antisocial madman. Stay following your inner compass rather than what seems like the new tribe. Thank you
Your consistently even-handed perspective is incredibly valuable.
When others take conservative turns, or sink into bombastic language, you remain, no matter what haters may say, as a bridge between full affirmation and any level of skepticism of the same.
I can listen to people who are more strident than you these days, with an open mind and a sort of active "anger/lingo/pain" translation process running in my head, but you and people like you (liberal, compassionate, even-keeled, honest) are a big part of what got me to where I could hear through that rhetoric to their policy arguments, whether I agree or not.
I'm not even-keeled in person, just in writing! But I do want to be even-keeled about this issue, and about what we may have traded for short-term gender wins.
I don’t know whether you would see this as in your wheelhouse, but I would love to see reporting on people and organizations who are working at the grassroots level on outreach and education, both to individuals and to legislators, so as to try and learn from their experiences what has worked, what hasn’t, and how they have adjusted their approaches as a result. Here are five examples about which I think it would be great to learn more: MA4Women/DIAG had a state-level project focused on getting a bill proposed and heard in the MA state legislature (I believe the bill related to insurance coverage for detransitioners). The California organization Women Are Real appears, over time, to have worked out some very intelligent strategies for public education activities (a notable one was that over the YMCA locker room incidents where trans-identifying men used the women’s locker room). Liz Fedak and the women at ROAR Women NYC have done some interesting public education work around women in prison, particularly at Rikers. WoLF put together an extremely well conceived legislative lobbying effort earlier this year that I think could help us all understand how to work effectively to reach legislators. The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group has engaged in a number of activities, including efforts to meet with legislators to discuss issues related to women’s sports (Mariah Burton Nelson and Nancy Hogshead would be very interesting to hear from on these efforts).
you’re already doing is exactly what needs to be done: pragmatically seeking rational/reasonable discourse. i think you keep on “modeling” that posture, while writing on the topics that demand attention.
we’re having a Crisis Of Reason which is making it difficult to address all our pressing issues (war, inequality, etc). usually what happens during these times is that new tools emerge to help us find our way back to reason. this is evident in your work and also in the writing of a few more that i can think of—so i feel like you’re on the right track. just keep on keeping on.
Lot's of older Boomers/Xers who may be JFK/Clinton era liberals trying to 'stay hip' still think 'trans girls' refers to 'girls who might be lesbian'. They need like flash cards or an electric buzzer (more likely a side by side photographic demonstration) to break what is essentially a neuro-linguistic virus. Lots of secular American writers are still scared to use accurate language, even in so-called alternative press.
Also: "Gender Dysphoria" in the DSM needs to be trashed and replaced.
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) has made a cute cardboard 'Trans-o-meter' paper & bracket rotating chart that's probably better than cards or buzzers ↑
Hi Lisa. There are websites completely devoted to "peak trans" stories, take a look. And here in Brazil, @matria.oficial has been publishing women’s videos about their peak trans on instagram.
On the topic of origin stories, but from the other side, kind of: I would be fascinated by a deeply reported account of how organizations and institutions (and communities of practice generally, I guess) reached — or seemed to reach, maybe — consensus on the acceptance of gender ideology.
I am a left-leaning professional in a deep blue area, with lots of women’s and gender studies classes under my belt: after so many years, this shift still seems wacko nuts to me, and I am anxious to understand the forces that originally caused influential people to adopt a ludicrously flimsy belief system with such fervor. This understanding is necessary, I think, if we are ever going to get past people’s default deference to expertise (which, to be clear, I think makes sense in many contexts, and it makes me very nervous when the right dismisses scientific and scholarly knowledge out of hand). I think there are some obvious hypotheses about why this happened, but i would love someone to explain exactly when and how key decisions and legislation got made. (If this narrative already exists, please point me towards it!)
There is a bit of a description about the medical societies in the HHS report. Because it is baffling how these professionals swallowed a belief system and started presenting it to everyone as science.
I would not subsume "mutilation" under right-wing, inflammatory language. Merriam-Webster defines "mutilation" as "an act or instance of destroying, removing, or severely damaging a limb or other body part of a person or animal". So it is simply the truth, and avoiding the term is sugar-coating what is happening. I understand that it is triggering and so probably not helpful to get people to listen, but eventually, they will need to come to understand exactly this fact, that these interventions ARE mutilating.
The reversion to the endorsement of traditional gender stereotypes, on the other hand, is indeed a puzzling development, if that is what is happening among gender-critical feminists. I always thought that the rejection of stereotypes, besides the defense of women's rights, is at the core of the liberal/feminist critique of gender ideology. That not conforming to stereotypes doesn't make you any less of a member of your sex, and that therefore genderism reinforces regressive stereotypes rather than dissolve them, should be fairly easy to understand for liberals, and should be very useful in trying to convince them. Abandoning support for gender nonconformity, whether by females or by males (and I suspect that the rejection of gender nonconforming behavior on the part of feminists is mainly targeted at males) undermines our best argument against gender ideology. I can't help but suspect that this is driven by a deeper hostility towards men, which is very toxic.
“Mutilation” implies the intent to harm/damage. Is amputating a gangrenous body part mutilating it? I see no reason why we can’t speak about surgical removal of body parts without accusing surgeons of intentionally causing harm. However misguided/ deluded they might be, I suspect most believe that they are using their surgical skill to improve the quality of a gender distressed person’s life.
Intent to harm is not part of the dictionary definition, and I personally don't have this association. Reading it as implying intent already reveals a defensive posture, and I think you are right that this is how many liberals will react, which is why I said it's probably not helpful. I still maintain that it is an accurate description of "gender-affirming care", and it's definitely not "right-wing" to call it that.
Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between removal of a diseased body part and a healthy one. Surely you don't really see an equivalence between amputating a gangrenous limb and removing a healthy girl's or woman's breasts, or a boy's or man's penis. This kind of conflation is exactly why "mutilation" is an ultimately necessary term to distinguish these interventions from actual medical treatments, and discredit them.
Stella O'Malley had a great interview with a plastic surgeon on her podcast, who made this point very eloquently:
Whatever the dictionary might say, calling these surgeries "mutilations" isn't going to convince anyone who's not already convinced. Maybe your goal is not to convince, in which case, sure, use whatever term you want. But I think "mutilations" will tend not to persuade but to alienate.
I agree, and I said so multiple times. I am just arguing that the term is not a “right-wing” distortion of the facts. But I agree it will make people extremely defensive, so it’s not helpful to use it when talking to people you are trying to convince. The argument here only ensued because Ann said the term implied intent to harm and was therefore inaccurate.
Yes, I don’t recall his exact language, but he distinguished between plastic surgery designed to restore function and appearance to a body part that has been injured or diseased (eg breast reconstruction after breast cancer treatment) and plastic surgery designed to remove function (elective mastectomy) that is inaccurately described as “reconstructive.”
Yes, he objected to the term "reconstructive", but he also used the term "mutilation" at one point. He made it very clear that he thinks of these interventions as actively causing harm. The fact that the practitioners don't see it and think they are helping doesn't change this fact. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I suppose you mean intentional self-harm, because obviously mutilation always implies harm, that's not in dispute. But even if intention is always implied in the context of self-mutilation (which makes sense given the reasons people self-mutilate), it doesn't mean intent to harm is intrinsic to the term itself, and it obviously isn't the case in the context of "gender affirming care". Context matters for the meaning of words, and words don't carry all the same implications in all contexts in which they may be applied.
"Former feminists now proclaim that there is, in fact, a right way to be a man or a woman, that Western gender roles are biological and universal, that the nuclear family—an extremely modern formation—is best for everyone."
The characterization of sex-based critics as promoting a rigid and universalist view of male and female roles is a misrepresentation. It sets up a straw-man by implying that concerns about pediatric medical transition and the redefinition of legal sex are rooted in a desire to enforce traditional sex roles. In fact, many of those raising objections—feminists, gay people, clinicians, and detransitioners—are explicitly challenging the regressive assumption that nonconforming behavior in children must indicate a mismatch between sex and identity.
This critique is not about enforcing conformity to sex stereotypes, but rather about resisting the medicalization of sex nonconformity. The real irony is that it is the proponents of so-called "affirmative care" who are reviving sex-role essentialism—interpreting a boy’s preference for feminine clothes, friends, or affect as evidence that he is actually a girl. What is being defended by critics is the right to be a boy or girl who does not conform to prevailing norms of masculinity or femininity—without being reclassified, medicalized, or pathologized.
In this context, the essay’s tone toward the nuclear family raises a separate but related concern. The breezy dismissal of the nuclear family as "an extremely modern formation" and the romanticization of "clans and communities" echoes a strain of 1990s feminism that was not only hostile to marriage, but also burdened gay people with the ideological task of inventing utopian alternatives to it. At the time, same-sex couples were often told—implicitly or explicitly—that their value lay in pioneering new forms of kinship and caregiving, not in seeking inclusion within the structures from which they had historically been excluded.
That utopian impulse—however well-intentioned—was itself a form of prescriptive social engineering, every bit as limiting as idealizing the nuclear family. For many gay people, the desire to marry, raise children, or form stable households was not a capitulation to bourgeois norms, but a deeply personal and legitimate aspiration. To suggest that there is something inherently more “authentic” or “progressive” about alternative family forms can be just as coercive as insisting that one form fits all.
What is needed is neither a reassertion of rigid family structures nor a romanticization of their abandonment, but a clear-eyed recognition of pluralism in family life—and of the dangers of medical or ideological overreach when it comes to children who simply defy sex-based expectations. Reframing these concerns as evidence of radicalization does little to advance public understanding, and much to distort the ethical and empirical stakes of the debate.
Thanks for the reminder that if we give up on arguing compassionately we will fail. It's natural to he angry but let's not call it a war please. I understand the reality that "war" makes for a better headline, but I think you may agree we are striving for an awakening rather than victory.
A striking case in point is the huge number of LGB people not noticing the damage to gay kids, blinded by the left-right framing as you say. Opening eyes in the community could catalyze a lot of change because those pushing medicalization are relying on our passive assent.
I think what the gender wars need is offramps for those who were on the bandwagon.
The genderist position only survived this long because people didn't know what it was and pictured sweet fabulous old school transexuals in distress, if at all, and believed the rhetoric because it was progressive coded.
As the trans kids age out into sad asexual sterilised sadness, AGPs invade women's spaces and brag about it, women's awards and grants go to "the most marginalised group ever" and the girl's sport becomes colonised by confused boys, as consequences become very visible indeed... well the war is lost.
What would be bad, though, would be if the people invested in the movement - the transitioned, the people who transitioned their kids, the allies who built their identities on this - doubled down and held out, dooming us to a guerrilla war in the institutions, and violent acts of actual war.
So somebody needs to build offramps and golden bridges, needs find ways of framing trans identities in libertarian terms, but maybe wrapping them in with other sexual minorities, or maybe just put the blame where it ultimately lies: "you were misadvised, the science was faked, the studies selective, you did what you thought was right, maybe scientists will be able to grow your child a replacement ****..."
And we need to find ways of forgiving public figures like Malcolm Gladwell brave enough to admit their error, because that's how this ends quickly with no more collateral damage.
The science is flimsy as dust because between when the Nazis burned the first round of science in the 30s and about 2010, the only question that got any research funding was 'how do we stop trans people from being trans?'. And by the time we got past that the issue was already *heavily* politicized.
As far as why trans people are unlikely to back down on treating this as existential?
"We have to treat these people. We have to get them off the streets, and we have to get them off the internet, and we can't let them communicate with each other. I'm all about free speech, but this is a virus, this is a cancer that's spreading across this country," [Rep] Jackson said.
Thanks, Lisa. You are the only person I know of who has thrown out there the idea of a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. And I think it ripe for this particular moment in time, when we seem to be reaching a tipping point. Why not make hay while the sun is shining, get it started and seize the momentum. You have a broad network and a broad base of support. I don't know if we could wait on a Democratic administration. The following phrase comes to mine: "Here I am Lord, send me."
It’s just really hard not to use the word “mutilation”— what else can we possibly call the creation of a neo vagina? Or a fake penis from leg skin. Or even the effects on the body of years of wrong sex hormones, or actually stopping a child from experiencing puberty. Maybe I’m too deep but these things make me sick and I’m so tired of the euphemisms.
"that the gender culture war is not actually a left/right issue."
yes - an interesting thing I've been noticing on tiktok this week (yes I know) is that the groyper discourse has led to lots of people talking about transmaxxing - of all things! Their reasoning is that Kirk's shooter CAN'T be left wing, so if his partner is trans, there must be some connection to transmaxxing which is seen as incel/red pill culture - so right wing. I don't know if, long term, this will lead to a decoupling of some aspects of trans culture from the left-wing - or if they will still separate the 'real' trans (left wing LGBTQ) from the 'fake' (supposed transmaxxers).
The thing is, is transmaxxing even a thing in RL? I get the impression that there's not a 'community' as such, but its more of an online roleplaying/fetish idea.
i really appreciate your refusal to drift right on such issues as the nuclear family and gender expression — AKA, you understand that not everyone is the same, and the presence of different lifestyle isn’t in itself a sign of being an stupid antisocial madman. Stay following your inner compass rather than what seems like the new tribe. Thank you
Your consistently even-handed perspective is incredibly valuable.
When others take conservative turns, or sink into bombastic language, you remain, no matter what haters may say, as a bridge between full affirmation and any level of skepticism of the same.
I can listen to people who are more strident than you these days, with an open mind and a sort of active "anger/lingo/pain" translation process running in my head, but you and people like you (liberal, compassionate, even-keeled, honest) are a big part of what got me to where I could hear through that rhetoric to their policy arguments, whether I agree or not.
I'm not even-keeled in person, just in writing! But I do want to be even-keeled about this issue, and about what we may have traded for short-term gender wins.
I don’t know whether you would see this as in your wheelhouse, but I would love to see reporting on people and organizations who are working at the grassroots level on outreach and education, both to individuals and to legislators, so as to try and learn from their experiences what has worked, what hasn’t, and how they have adjusted their approaches as a result. Here are five examples about which I think it would be great to learn more: MA4Women/DIAG had a state-level project focused on getting a bill proposed and heard in the MA state legislature (I believe the bill related to insurance coverage for detransitioners). The California organization Women Are Real appears, over time, to have worked out some very intelligent strategies for public education activities (a notable one was that over the YMCA locker room incidents where trans-identifying men used the women’s locker room). Liz Fedak and the women at ROAR Women NYC have done some interesting public education work around women in prison, particularly at Rikers. WoLF put together an extremely well conceived legislative lobbying effort earlier this year that I think could help us all understand how to work effectively to reach legislators. The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group has engaged in a number of activities, including efforts to meet with legislators to discuss issues related to women’s sports (Mariah Burton Nelson and Nancy Hogshead would be very interesting to hear from on these efforts).
Great suggestions!
you’re already doing is exactly what needs to be done: pragmatically seeking rational/reasonable discourse. i think you keep on “modeling” that posture, while writing on the topics that demand attention.
we’re having a Crisis Of Reason which is making it difficult to address all our pressing issues (war, inequality, etc). usually what happens during these times is that new tools emerge to help us find our way back to reason. this is evident in your work and also in the writing of a few more that i can think of—so i feel like you’re on the right track. just keep on keeping on.
I like that phrase, "Crisis of Reason." I think I regularly go through that myself!
Lot's of older Boomers/Xers who may be JFK/Clinton era liberals trying to 'stay hip' still think 'trans girls' refers to 'girls who might be lesbian'. They need like flash cards or an electric buzzer (more likely a side by side photographic demonstration) to break what is essentially a neuro-linguistic virus. Lots of secular American writers are still scared to use accurate language, even in so-called alternative press.
Also: "Gender Dysphoria" in the DSM needs to be trashed and replaced.
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) has made a cute cardboard 'Trans-o-meter' paper & bracket rotating chart that's probably better than cards or buzzers ↑
Hi Lisa. There are websites completely devoted to "peak trans" stories, take a look. And here in Brazil, @matria.oficial has been publishing women’s videos about their peak trans on instagram.
Can you send some of the sites?
Right now I only found a few links to lersonal stories I had saved, but I know there are more sites out there: https://www.peaktrans.org/my-peak-trans/
https://www.evakurilova.com/p/my-peak-trans-story?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
https://www.plebity.org/article/identity-crisis-episode-one-our-peak-trans-stories/
https://x.com/RachelRMoran/status/1425170605440126984?s=19
In this thread some testimonies are subtitled in english (including mine!), some aren't:
https://x.com/MATRIAoficial/status/1959673529127031197?s=19
(I'm from MATRIA and I keep collecting them to post, it's an on going series)
On the topic of origin stories, but from the other side, kind of: I would be fascinated by a deeply reported account of how organizations and institutions (and communities of practice generally, I guess) reached — or seemed to reach, maybe — consensus on the acceptance of gender ideology.
I am a left-leaning professional in a deep blue area, with lots of women’s and gender studies classes under my belt: after so many years, this shift still seems wacko nuts to me, and I am anxious to understand the forces that originally caused influential people to adopt a ludicrously flimsy belief system with such fervor. This understanding is necessary, I think, if we are ever going to get past people’s default deference to expertise (which, to be clear, I think makes sense in many contexts, and it makes me very nervous when the right dismisses scientific and scholarly knowledge out of hand). I think there are some obvious hypotheses about why this happened, but i would love someone to explain exactly when and how key decisions and legislation got made. (If this narrative already exists, please point me towards it!)
There is a bit of a description about the medical societies in the HHS report. Because it is baffling how these professionals swallowed a belief system and started presenting it to everyone as science.
You probably know this already, but I recently found this book that assembles such stories:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BMM5KGJR/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
I would not subsume "mutilation" under right-wing, inflammatory language. Merriam-Webster defines "mutilation" as "an act or instance of destroying, removing, or severely damaging a limb or other body part of a person or animal". So it is simply the truth, and avoiding the term is sugar-coating what is happening. I understand that it is triggering and so probably not helpful to get people to listen, but eventually, they will need to come to understand exactly this fact, that these interventions ARE mutilating.
The reversion to the endorsement of traditional gender stereotypes, on the other hand, is indeed a puzzling development, if that is what is happening among gender-critical feminists. I always thought that the rejection of stereotypes, besides the defense of women's rights, is at the core of the liberal/feminist critique of gender ideology. That not conforming to stereotypes doesn't make you any less of a member of your sex, and that therefore genderism reinforces regressive stereotypes rather than dissolve them, should be fairly easy to understand for liberals, and should be very useful in trying to convince them. Abandoning support for gender nonconformity, whether by females or by males (and I suspect that the rejection of gender nonconforming behavior on the part of feminists is mainly targeted at males) undermines our best argument against gender ideology. I can't help but suspect that this is driven by a deeper hostility towards men, which is very toxic.
“Mutilation” implies the intent to harm/damage. Is amputating a gangrenous body part mutilating it? I see no reason why we can’t speak about surgical removal of body parts without accusing surgeons of intentionally causing harm. However misguided/ deluded they might be, I suspect most believe that they are using their surgical skill to improve the quality of a gender distressed person’s life.
Intent to harm is not part of the dictionary definition, and I personally don't have this association. Reading it as implying intent already reveals a defensive posture, and I think you are right that this is how many liberals will react, which is why I said it's probably not helpful. I still maintain that it is an accurate description of "gender-affirming care", and it's definitely not "right-wing" to call it that.
Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between removal of a diseased body part and a healthy one. Surely you don't really see an equivalence between amputating a gangrenous limb and removing a healthy girl's or woman's breasts, or a boy's or man's penis. This kind of conflation is exactly why "mutilation" is an ultimately necessary term to distinguish these interventions from actual medical treatments, and discredit them.
Stella O'Malley had a great interview with a plastic surgeon on her podcast, who made this point very eloquently:
https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/the-plastic-surgeons-verdict-gender?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=583431&post_id=171151647&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=18v5fm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Whatever the dictionary might say, calling these surgeries "mutilations" isn't going to convince anyone who's not already convinced. Maybe your goal is not to convince, in which case, sure, use whatever term you want. But I think "mutilations" will tend not to persuade but to alienate.
I agree, and I said so multiple times. I am just arguing that the term is not a “right-wing” distortion of the facts. But I agree it will make people extremely defensive, so it’s not helpful to use it when talking to people you are trying to convince. The argument here only ensued because Ann said the term implied intent to harm and was therefore inaccurate.
Yes, I don’t recall his exact language, but he distinguished between plastic surgery designed to restore function and appearance to a body part that has been injured or diseased (eg breast reconstruction after breast cancer treatment) and plastic surgery designed to remove function (elective mastectomy) that is inaccurately described as “reconstructive.”
Yes, he objected to the term "reconstructive", but he also used the term "mutilation" at one point. He made it very clear that he thinks of these interventions as actively causing harm. The fact that the practitioners don't see it and think they are helping doesn't change this fact. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In the psychiatric world, when we talk about “self-mutilation”, self-harm is implied.
I suppose you mean intentional self-harm, because obviously mutilation always implies harm, that's not in dispute. But even if intention is always implied in the context of self-mutilation (which makes sense given the reasons people self-mutilate), it doesn't mean intent to harm is intrinsic to the term itself, and it obviously isn't the case in the context of "gender affirming care". Context matters for the meaning of words, and words don't carry all the same implications in all contexts in which they may be applied.
"Former feminists now proclaim that there is, in fact, a right way to be a man or a woman, that Western gender roles are biological and universal, that the nuclear family—an extremely modern formation—is best for everyone."
The characterization of sex-based critics as promoting a rigid and universalist view of male and female roles is a misrepresentation. It sets up a straw-man by implying that concerns about pediatric medical transition and the redefinition of legal sex are rooted in a desire to enforce traditional sex roles. In fact, many of those raising objections—feminists, gay people, clinicians, and detransitioners—are explicitly challenging the regressive assumption that nonconforming behavior in children must indicate a mismatch between sex and identity.
This critique is not about enforcing conformity to sex stereotypes, but rather about resisting the medicalization of sex nonconformity. The real irony is that it is the proponents of so-called "affirmative care" who are reviving sex-role essentialism—interpreting a boy’s preference for feminine clothes, friends, or affect as evidence that he is actually a girl. What is being defended by critics is the right to be a boy or girl who does not conform to prevailing norms of masculinity or femininity—without being reclassified, medicalized, or pathologized.
In this context, the essay’s tone toward the nuclear family raises a separate but related concern. The breezy dismissal of the nuclear family as "an extremely modern formation" and the romanticization of "clans and communities" echoes a strain of 1990s feminism that was not only hostile to marriage, but also burdened gay people with the ideological task of inventing utopian alternatives to it. At the time, same-sex couples were often told—implicitly or explicitly—that their value lay in pioneering new forms of kinship and caregiving, not in seeking inclusion within the structures from which they had historically been excluded.
That utopian impulse—however well-intentioned—was itself a form of prescriptive social engineering, every bit as limiting as idealizing the nuclear family. For many gay people, the desire to marry, raise children, or form stable households was not a capitulation to bourgeois norms, but a deeply personal and legitimate aspiration. To suggest that there is something inherently more “authentic” or “progressive” about alternative family forms can be just as coercive as insisting that one form fits all.
What is needed is neither a reassertion of rigid family structures nor a romanticization of their abandonment, but a clear-eyed recognition of pluralism in family life—and of the dangers of medical or ideological overreach when it comes to children who simply defy sex-based expectations. Reframing these concerns as evidence of radicalization does little to advance public understanding, and much to distort the ethical and empirical stakes of the debate.
Thanks for the reminder that if we give up on arguing compassionately we will fail. It's natural to he angry but let's not call it a war please. I understand the reality that "war" makes for a better headline, but I think you may agree we are striving for an awakening rather than victory.
A striking case in point is the huge number of LGB people not noticing the damage to gay kids, blinded by the left-right framing as you say. Opening eyes in the community could catalyze a lot of change because those pushing medicalization are relying on our passive assent.
I think what the gender wars need is offramps for those who were on the bandwagon.
The genderist position only survived this long because people didn't know what it was and pictured sweet fabulous old school transexuals in distress, if at all, and believed the rhetoric because it was progressive coded.
As the trans kids age out into sad asexual sterilised sadness, AGPs invade women's spaces and brag about it, women's awards and grants go to "the most marginalised group ever" and the girl's sport becomes colonised by confused boys, as consequences become very visible indeed... well the war is lost.
What would be bad, though, would be if the people invested in the movement - the transitioned, the people who transitioned their kids, the allies who built their identities on this - doubled down and held out, dooming us to a guerrilla war in the institutions, and violent acts of actual war.
So somebody needs to build offramps and golden bridges, needs find ways of framing trans identities in libertarian terms, but maybe wrapping them in with other sexual minorities, or maybe just put the blame where it ultimately lies: "you were misadvised, the science was faked, the studies selective, you did what you thought was right, maybe scientists will be able to grow your child a replacement ****..."
And we need to find ways of forgiving public figures like Malcolm Gladwell brave enough to admit their error, because that's how this ends quickly with no more collateral damage.
The science is flimsy as dust because between when the Nazis burned the first round of science in the 30s and about 2010, the only question that got any research funding was 'how do we stop trans people from being trans?'. And by the time we got past that the issue was already *heavily* politicized.
As far as why trans people are unlikely to back down on treating this as existential?
"We have to treat these people. We have to get them off the streets, and we have to get them off the internet, and we can't let them communicate with each other. I'm all about free speech, but this is a virus, this is a cancer that's spreading across this country," [Rep] Jackson said.
Newsmaxx 9/16/2025
Thanks, Lisa. You are the only person I know of who has thrown out there the idea of a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. And I think it ripe for this particular moment in time, when we seem to be reaching a tipping point. Why not make hay while the sun is shining, get it started and seize the momentum. You have a broad network and a broad base of support. I don't know if we could wait on a Democratic administration. The following phrase comes to mine: "Here I am Lord, send me."
Just a thought.
It’s just really hard not to use the word “mutilation”— what else can we possibly call the creation of a neo vagina? Or a fake penis from leg skin. Or even the effects on the body of years of wrong sex hormones, or actually stopping a child from experiencing puberty. Maybe I’m too deep but these things make me sick and I’m so tired of the euphemisms.
"that the gender culture war is not actually a left/right issue."
yes - an interesting thing I've been noticing on tiktok this week (yes I know) is that the groyper discourse has led to lots of people talking about transmaxxing - of all things! Their reasoning is that Kirk's shooter CAN'T be left wing, so if his partner is trans, there must be some connection to transmaxxing which is seen as incel/red pill culture - so right wing. I don't know if, long term, this will lead to a decoupling of some aspects of trans culture from the left-wing - or if they will still separate the 'real' trans (left wing LGBTQ) from the 'fake' (supposed transmaxxers).
The thing is, is transmaxxing even a thing in RL? I get the impression that there's not a 'community' as such, but its more of an online roleplaying/fetish idea.