The two sexes are products of evolution and natural selection. Clearly a biological selective advantage that manifests in countless species. Unless the theist’s god is a biological being, it is absurd to say it is male or female. Some writer in the desert wrote about his imaginary being in the sky and said it was male like his tribal chief. How on earth are such things still believed?
Thank you. I will take the time to check out those links. That Nietzsche link you had was very good. It gave me a new insight into interpretation of Nietzsche! Thank you again.
The God of the Abrahamic traditions is conceived as transcendent, unembodied Being, yet at the same time as unambiguously male. Maleness and, transitively, Femaleness must therefore be metaphysical states, prior to and more foundational than the characteristics of mere physical embodiment. I wonder if our contemporary sexual confusion is the upshot of internalizing this paradox. Maybe twenty centuries of habituation to the idea were bound to influence our thinking and behavior.
How can you tell if "He" is a male? What makes "Him" so? Maybe "She" is a female? Have you checked under "His" hood?
Words are kinda useless if you can't specify what they mean. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in a recent post by Michael Robillard, his Washington Examiner article, and my several comments thereon in the former:
MR: "In other words, an in-principle, wholly private, wholly subjectively defined meaning or term makes no logical or conceptual sense whatsoever."
That is what your "male" is -- a "wholly subjectively defined meaning" that makes no sense whatsoever. More or less exactly the case with "male" and "female" as "gender identities" as Robillard is arguing:
I love this - peering through a philosophical lens to examine the loss of self and soul both in general and trans identity confusion. Well done.
- forcing children to fit into shapes that are wildly at odds with their true natures, indeed.
I found it most interesting that through clinical/scientific study of trans individuals, Sadjadi explains the merging of science and religion - I assume he meant both in literature and subject self-report? Regardless, my mind goes to a starving of a reliable ideal and purpose experienced by today's youth (and of people/society in general but as is obvious, we are most impressionable in our formative years. More susceptible to external (mis)guidance on how to fill our 'god-shaped hole' - so to speak).
Thank you for the shout out! Much appreciated. I've 'plugged' your essay in said-conversation on my page - I attempted tagging @humanuseofhumanbeings - doesn't seem to have worked. I suppose that is reserved for notes.
Thanks Doc 🙂; most appreciated. And for the defense of my "meandering". 🙂
Particularly your support of "true natures" -- something close to the core of my argument that people can exhibit "atypical" personality traits while not being beyond the Pale. Many people seem to balk at that idea which is arguably part and parcel of the whole problem -- somewhat apropos of which, a post that you in particular might have some interest in by philosopher Michael Robillard, and my comments thereon, who is maybe guilty of that as well:
Good questions about Sadjadi re "literature and subject self-report". Art imitating life? Patient echoing physician? Something I'll have to take a closer read of the article to get a better handle on. Though Sadjadi is apparently a she, on the faculty of McGill University, at least several years ago:
But, speaking of "purpose" 🙂, I wonder to what extent you think that definition for "gender identity" holds water, is worth pursuing. Whether you might be interested in a "commission" -- of sorts -- to write an article on it, to develop it for publication in professional journals. Maybe for Psychology Today? Or even Canada's own "Mope and Wail"? 🙂
Seems to me, on no shortage of evidence, that a major factor contributing to the whole transgender clusterfuck is that virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has wildly different and quite antithetical definitions for both sex and gender. Seems that that "gender identity" definition -- " 'gender identity' [as] just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities", as Hippiesq succinctly put it -- may help to bring some "balance to the forces", so to speak. 🙂
But I'm kind of at a loss how to proceed from there, particularly as there are many aspects that are well out of my depth. Seems to me that the issue and definition needs some people with some professional "chops" to develop it further, at least if it is likely to contribute to moving the discussion forward.
I agree - I would argue that much of the gender confusion we're seeing is nothing more than the pathologization (or perhaps miscategorization) of "atypical" personality traits (eg., those on the autism spectrum are at particularly high risk for gender confusion/transition - this is well-documented).
This is not to say that gender dysphoria does not exist, or that transition is not beneficial for some, but the exploding rates are a real cause for concern.
The definitions for gender and sex - once basically the same thing - have been separated (bastardized?) by so called 'scholars' and theorists. Your physical sex and mental (spiritual) gender, it is said, are/can be in 'opposition' (enter science vs. spirit).
What I've found interesting is that within the past couple of years the argument is now being made that there is no such thing as sex (as if it weren't murky enough).
Back to personality - what is atypical, I think, is an individual having only masculine or feminine traits that line up perfectly with their physical sex. Example - I look very feminine but I think very male. Am I in the wrong body? Perhaps I would begin to believe that if I was a hormonal teenager. Jung wrote a lot about anima (female), animus (male) components that make up the 'self' - natural, healthy and present in us all. Is this now being manipulated/pathologized?
The topic of gender is not my expertise but I would consider writing something!
DrKJ: "pathologization (or perhaps miscategorization) of 'atypical' personality traits"
Egg-zactly! Bingo! 😉👍🙂
DrKJ: "The topic of gender is not my expertise but I would consider writing something!"
Thanks muchly; as mentioned, I'll email you shortly, but it might be useful to others here as well to elaborate briefly on a couple of salient points. First and foremost, is it fair to say that, to a first approximation, your "bread and butter", your expertise is in the whole ball of wax of personalities, their care and feeding and their pathologies?
My argument is essentially that "gender" IS, by definition, a rough synonym for personalities AND personality TYPES. Big part of the problem with the whole transgender clusterfuck is that many people seem to be talking at cross-purposes, to be using the same words in contradictory ways and with incompatible meanings. "You say po-tat-oe, and I say po-ta-toe, and let's start WW3 over pronunciation" -- Lilliputian civil wars and Rape of the Lock (part deux) is probably being a charitable characterization.
Think it would help immeasurably if "we" could agree on common terms of reference and that definition seems like a plausible contender. But a big part of the problem there is the supposed connection between personalities and personality types, a connection that many apparently balk at, largely because of "prior commitments" to questionable (feminist) ideology or historical (antediluvian) misperceptions.
Apropos of which, y'all 🙂 might have some interest in a conversation I've had recently with philosopher Dr. Michael Robillard:
He apparently had been committed to the feminist definition of gender -- JUST the stereotypes supposedly hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" for the sole purpose of "oppressing" women -- but is now apparently willing to consider its expansion to including sexually dimorphic personality traits. As I had indicated there, something of sticky wicket how we get from personalities to personality types. However, as I've frequently noted, Substacker Lee Jussim's article on "Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology" gives some weight to the idea:
Seems to me that the stereotypes follow from individual behaviour -- much of which is rooted in biology -- and not the other way around, at least to begin with. Somewhat analogously, consider the stereotype of "introvert". But that type exists in the first place because many of us are, in fact, introverts to one degree or another.
Similarly, see this joint probability distribution for agreeableness versus sex. Females are, on average, more agreeable than men -- about 4.1 versus 3.8 respectively. But some females are atypical, they have agreeableness factors more typical of males. One might say that IF agreeableness is one dimension of a multi-dimensional gender spectrum, those atypical females with agreeableness measures below 3.8 have a masculine gender (agreeableness):
"gender may not be your expertise" -- though one might argue that the whole issue is pretty much entirely characterized by the blind leading the blind. By pretty much everyone riding madly off in all directions.
However, it seems likely that your background in personalities -- and in the concept of personal identity that I've broached here in this post, and its roots in the philosophy of Nietzsche and others related thereto -- may be just what the doctor ordered to bridge the gap -- a chasm, in fact -- between personalities and personality types. Bring some balance to the forces. 🙂 Seems like an idea worth pursuing.
Nietzsche and Loyola in the same article! Dylan and Cohen too.
Nietzsche says that the soul is just a primitive belief that needs to be discarded. He wanted us to discard all that otherworldly metaphysical nonsense, such as god and afterlife. The scientific revolution had dynamited all that mental claptrap. But Nietzsche did worry about what would replace all that nonsense. He did warn us about that abyss. He knew also that science wasn’t all that free from irrationality and could become rationality gone mad. Careful about the abyss of nihilism he warned.
Well, as this article, spells out, we falling into that abyss. Scientific certainty is falling away and new priesthoods are arriving that are demanding the masses see black even though they see white, as Loyola said. The priesthoods arriving now are not capable of the total powers of those of the Catholic Middle Ages, since they are constantly redefining their ideology. Nothing has meaning and every is mutable and that is nihilism.
Though can't say I've ever read much of Nietzsche himself, and really only skimmed the Stanford [SEP] article to "flesh out" the idea of personal identity with his takes on the topic. However, I think that article makes a credible case that his ideas were a bit more "nuanced" -- at least over the course of his life -- than just an insistence about "discarding" the concept of a soul:
SEP: "This remains a controversial problem, but it is clear at least that Nietzsche’s own proposal was to develop a radically reformed conception of the psyche, rather than to reject the self, or soul, altogether (see Riccardi 2021). BGE 12 provides some provocative ideas about what such a reformed conception might involve: there, Nietzsche insists that we should 'give the finishing stroke' to what he calls 'the soul atomism', which he goes on to explain as:
the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon:… Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of 'the soul' at the same time, and thus to renounce one of the most ancient and venerable hypotheses—as happens frequently to clumsy naturalists who can hardly touch on 'the soul' without immediately losing it. But the way is now open for new versions and refinements of the soul hypothesis, [including] 'mortal soul', 'soul as subjective multiplicity', and 'soul as social structure of the drives and affects'… (BGE 12)"
Exactly where our consciousness comes from is a serious puzzle -- the "hard problem" of philosopher David Chalmers who suggested we might be obliged to postulate it as a fundamental element of reality like mass and electric charge:
Not too much of a stretch then to wrap that up in terminology not far removed from the "soul".
But quite agree with you about science often isn't "all that free from irrationality and [can] become rationality gone mad". Most people don't realize that reason and rationality and what is built on top of them are often only as good as the often questionable premises, if not articles of faith, they start off from:
Hume: "`Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."
Ran across a quote from Jonathan Swift the other day that I think summarizes that problem, much of the current zeitgeist, and many of the "debates" exercising far too many:
JS: "... Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired: For in the Course of Things, Men always grow vicious before they become Unbelievers. ...."
Thanks to you too. I have had a life long fascination with Nietzsche. I recommend you check out the fantastic podcast: “The Nietzsche Podcast.” It is brilliant and it will get you up to speed with Nietzsche.
Thank you for the fascinating links you have provided. I will check them out.
Yes. This podcast is genius. I have been a Nietzsche reader for decades and I am so very impressed with this podcast. Anyone with the slightest desire to understand the thinking of Nietzsche should begin listening to it. I believe this podcast is destined to be one of the greatest philosophical podcasts.
I have no stake whatsoever in its success, but I feel this to be true.
Well, alrighty now. It's always interesting to read your stuff.
This is how I see it. All them primitive people were close enough to reality to recognize the loony-time of puberty had to be managed to ensure the survival of "the people" {so many languages defined *us* as human and *them* maybe not so much). Hence painful and sometimes dangerous rituals and mutilations, of lesser to greater severity, to mark the passage to adulthood. I don't doubt that they understood, without having the concepts to explain why, that inflicting pain somehow opened the pressure-cooker valve.
But no society produces a 100% healthy crop. There's always the percentage that loves pain, whether to receive or to inflict or both or sometimes etc. etc. etc. When a society tilts towards the crazy standards and loses sight of the healthy ones, sees them as deficient in merit, as the boring vanilla that means there's nothing interesting about you--you get here, where we are right now. Not enough crazy people are burned away in wars. Medicine rescues a lot of Darwin Award candidates who used to just die of their self-caused misadventures.
So Western society right now is reeking of malignant boredom. You know those fretful OCD habits of picking at one's cuticles or pulling out strands of hair or picking the poxy things on one's skin? We got 'em ramped up with official approval and encouragement.
I keep asking. All these detransitioners with their sad stories all including "I had multiple mental health issues..."
Where did all these sick kids come from? How can so many children be that sick, pre-puberty?
There have always been bad parents. Literature and history are full of the stories of what sick parents do to kids. It's not new, but population density always exacerbates any social problem.
You're a stickler for terms and definitions. I think we need to stop ceding any ground to anyone discussing this issue, including the nice friendly ones like SIngal and Mondegreen who still can't stop being polite and wanting not to offend anyone (so they keep getting access, no doubt).
It's sex-obliterating treatment. It's mutilation. People do demented things to relieve distress. There's lancing a boil, and there's cutting off anything that might potentially develop a boil someday.
Allowing adults who obliterated their own sex to be the physicians, surgeons, therapists etc. for these kids is handing the chickens over to the foxes. We've got this at the top of government agencies now so it's official policy to obliterate the sex of children on demand--their demand or their parents.
But maybe this self-eugenicizing is necessary. IF they're that crazy maybe we want them out of the gene pool.
I've thought about this a lot--how much should society interfere with the way parents want to raise their kids? There's no shortage of horrors one reads about every day. Home schooling as the subterfuge for the imprisonment and torture of kids who never interact with anyone outside the dungeon-home. Can we send out squads knocking door-to-door to inspect the bedrooms and basements?
Evrey day we learn of some kid beaten and murdered and the family was known to the system but the system still let it happen.
In a free society you can't save everyone. I want to start at least with saving the kids always handed back to the drug-addict parents who eventually succeed in abusing them to death. The other kids--the sad victims of neurotic obsessed parents who want social credit for *affirming* their *identities*--
--well, if Republicans get back in full power, we can stop that, right? But we'll stop abortion everywhere too. They are equally determined to own the bodies of the citizenry.
This will have to burn through and burn out. The high-functioning autistic crowd and their enablers insisted on valorizing *neurodivergence* and calling it a superpower, and they've normalized dysfunction.
I know people with now-adult autistic kids who can never live without supervision, and of course parents age and die sooner than their adult kids, on average, and it's a horror of grief and terror they face. But the self-advocacy crowd is treating autism as some of the deaf community treat their disability--as something that's just an alternate way of being that doesn't need to be cured.
That's insanity. To be unable to function independently in the world without extreme accommodations and government-paid services is not an alternative lifestyle choice. It's the destruction of society.
So maybe definition of terms is a sort of elegant intellectual distraction. The practical effect is sex obliteration and lifetime tethering to big pharma and endless corrective surgeries. So let's maybe use the brutal words and drown out the "what is a woman" discourse with brutal reality.
SCA: "Well, alrighty now. It's always interesting to read your stuff."
Thank you; appreciate the comments, support, & restack. 🙂 May be a bit too much in your comment to chew through in a single go, but if I don't make it to the end I may try to address the balance in a couple of later responses.
SCA: "... So Western society right now is reeking of malignant boredom ..."
Yeah. As we've discussed a couple times, some merit in the aphorism about how even the gods themselves struggle against boredom. Devil makes work for idle hands. Fairly durable theme over the centuries.
SCA: "Where did all these sick kids come from? How can so many children be that sick, pre-puberty?"
Good questions. Endocrine disrupters? Read somewhere that we're creating some 50,000 new chemicals every year, many of which wind up in the air we breathe or foods we eat. And the young tend to be the most susceptible to the worst aspects of the ideologies we create, probably because they lack the "life experience", the immune responses in the first place to be able to separate wheat and chaff: "if you're not a socialist at 20 then you have no heart; if you're still one at 50 then you have no brain".
SCA: "You're a stickler for terms and definitions."
As I just mentioned in a recent comment here, more out of necessity than not:
SCA: "I think we need to stop ceding any ground to anyone discussing this issue, including the nice friendly ones like Singal and Mondegreen who still can't stop being polite and wanting not to offend anyone ..."
Indeed. Largely why I insist on drawing a line in the sand, on calling a spade an effen shovel. Bit disappointed in both Singal & Mondegreen, the former in particular as I had taken him at his word -- an email address in that post of his I had responded to with a Note -- and had responded accordingly. Crickets. And Eliza seems to talk a great game about being a "Graduate student researching gender identity", but seems incapable of stating what she means by the term. Ran across a quote of Upton Sinclair that may be of some relevance:
US: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in a related case, though from the other side of the fence: Catholic, author, transwoman, & transexual Aoife Assumpta Hart:
AAH: "Transition saved my life; it was the only treatment that, after decades of inescapable self-horror, finally allowed me to feel as if I inhabited a body in which I could belong. .... My life pre-transition was like a burning labyrinth with no centre and no exit. Transition was like falling in love for the first time: falling in love with myself. Rage dissipated, unbearable uncertainties and colossal self-hate dissipated. In its place came clarity, patience, awareness, compassion."
Apparently the only solution for some people, though often at horrendous costs. Often wonder to what extent society itself is responsible for that; much of the reason behind my quote of Omar Khayyam.
SCA: "So maybe definition of terms is a sort of elegant intellectual distraction. The practical effect is sex obliteration and lifetime tethering to big pharma and endless corrective surgeries. So let's maybe use the brutal words and drown out the 'what is a woman' discourse with brutal reality."
I'd argue that that "sex obliteration" is a consequence of sloppy and self-serving definitions, and defining our terms is anything but a "distraction". Seems to me that if we want to put an end to that then we need to start calling a spade an effen shovel -- some "brutal reality" -- and let the chips fall where they may, stop retailing the "little lies", the euphemisms that grease the skids for the big ones. For example, as I'd argued in a recent comment over on RLS, see the opening segment on this Fox News clip with Laura Ingraham:
Nice that Ingraham asks some pointed questions in her interview of a female detransitioner, and argues that "gender affirming care" boils down into "mutilating children". But what is rather "exasperating" is the headline under that story which asks, "Why is the left normalizing sex changes for kids?"
Too many people seem to "think" that the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- are all there is to it: "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" 🙄 There I think is the root of the problem: pervasive scientific illiteracy, or an emotional attachment to "male" and "female" as "immutable identities", or both. Kind of makes us all culpable to some extent -- you might have some interest in my comment thereon in response to a post and comment by "trans widow" Shannon Thrace:
JS: "... Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired: For in the Course of Things, Men always grow vicious before they become Unbelievers. ...."
Methinks we all have those "articles of faith" -- some more tenaciously held than others -- and get rather "testy" when they're challenged. Something of a hard task to continuously test them, but seems to be a necessity.
A bit too meandering for me to follow the end point - but I loved the reference to Sounds of Silence and enjoyed all the quoting. More importantly, you brought up some good points. If “gender identity” were just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities, it might have some real usefulness in terms of being able to discuss differing personality traits - and maybe that was the origin of the term. However, it is not being used that way at all when people use the term to justify chemical and surgical alterations of young, healthy bodies. The degree or type of feminine and masculine qualities one possesses would not justify these medical interventions. Instead, the term is supposedly a sense of whether one IS a male or a female - which makes zero sense. Whether a person is male or female is strictly based upon biology. While the specifics of biology that determine one’s sex - male or female, or the very few people who are so ambiguous as to not be clearly one or the other because of a biological anomaly - can be debated and tweaked as science reveals more facts, there is no question that biology alone determines sex. Sex is not a state of mind, although experiencing life as a sex can affect one’s state of mind in different ways. The idea that a “gender identity” determines whether one is male or female and in turn whether one’s biology is “correct” is quite an insane notion. Even if there were a “gender identity” whereby a soul knows “I am really male/female despite my biology,” the only way it justifies medical interventions is if there is a component of this knowing that says “if you are male, you must have a male appearing body” and vice versa. That is something else entirely and leads to my “Noah’s Ark” idea. (Like Noah in the Bible story, who knew the ark had to be built and animals gathered. these people have a spiritual and unquestionable - unfalsifiable - knowledge that these medical interventions must be completed ASAP.). To me at least, there is no credibility to such a notion. You’re assessment that what children are being taught is bad “parenting” is correct. Telling children they have a magical “gender identity” that will determine whether they can inhabit their healthy bodies or must instead alter them in unhealthy ways is plainly wrong. Anyway. this made nice reading while a passenger on a long car ride.
Thanks muchly Hippiesq for your comments -- quite a bit to chew through there which will take me some time to do any sort of justice to. And, en passant, thanks to everyone else in fact for their comments which I'll try to get around to "shortly". But sorry if it was a bit "meandering" -- I'd already spent some 12 or 14 hours on it by the time I had to hit "Publish" before going to bed, and simply didn't have any more time to "fine tune" it.
However, you clearly got the more or less central point I was aiming at -- i.e., " 'gender identity' [is] just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities" -- and enjoyed reading my post so I'm more than a happy camper. 🙂
But I quite agree with your, "it is not being used that way at all when people use the term to justify chemical and surgical alterations of young, healthy bodies." However, my point there is that just because other people misuse language -- asserting "2+2=5", for example -- is no good reason for abandoning more logically coherent uses and definitions. Like " 'gender identity' == ... feminine & masculine qualities"; like "2+2=4".
As SCA has quite reasonably pointed out, I'm a "stickler for terms and definitions". But more out of necessity than anything else -- if we can't agree on what words mean then "debate" is no better than chasing our tails, just as inconclusive, just as unlikely to lead to any tangible social progress at all. Kind of a favourite quote from Francis Bacon summarizes the issue: "Therefore shoddy and inept application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways".
Which brings me to your "even IF there were a 'gender identity' whereby a soul knows 'I am really male/female despite my biology' ..." which I'm frankly at a loss how to tackle, but which seems the crux of the matter in many ways. But it reminds me of a famous quote by Abe Lincoln [AL], although it had predated him by several decades at least:
AL: "How many legs does a dog have IF you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg."
Some murky logic, assumptions, and "thinking" in both of those constructions -- in both of those uses of "IF" -- that I have a poor grasp of myself. But it seems to be encompassed by the concept of "what would have been true under different circumstances":
But simply conceiving of different circumstances is not the same thing as asserting that those circumstances actually "exist": a dog's tail is NOT a leg -- it doesn't contact the ground and is not used to propel a body in different directions. And, likewise, someone of a female sex exhibiting masculine personality traits -- i.e., those typical of members of the male sex -- is NOT thereby a male (sex). If that makes sense ... 🙂
Which brings me to your comment on Eliza's Substack about her call for responses from parents of dysphoric children:
Really looking forward to your comments on that score, and those of other parents as well. Though, if you haven't already responded to Eliza, I might suggest you try putting her on spot as to exactly what she means by "gender identity", particularly as she wasn't very "forthcoming" when I asked her. 🙂
But more particularly, I'm particularly interested in knowing, in understanding how it is that your daughter -- as I think you've indicated is the case -- has come think that she is or might be a male (sex). Is it because she has some "affinity" for males, some degree of overriding empathy for them; because she doesn't understand what it takes to qualify as a male (sex); because she perceives some personality traits in them that she recognizes in herself?
Some really complicated and convoluted aspects and "thinking" in all of that -- why Eliza has some justification for talking about "rabbit holes". But trying to get to the bottom of them without first being tied to a "rope" connected to some solid ground seems rather unwise at best. And that definition -- i.e., " 'gender identity' == ... feminine & masculine qualities" -- certainly seems the best candidate for that particular "rope" that I've seen so far. 🙂
Hi Steersman. I thought I would finally get around to answering your question above in this comment, which I was reminded of when you recently commented on my Gender Identity comment. I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is "male." I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is. She has re-written her childhood to say that she always knew this - but it's not true. She recalls things I also recall, like her wanting to wear a boy's bathing suit at one point, wanting to take off her shirt in the park on a hot day, and staying on the boys' baseball team for 2 years after they developed softball before defecting. She may not recall that she was entirely uncomfortable on the boys' team once the other girls left, and that she was very happy and did much better once she switched to softball. She also may not recall that the reason she stayed for 2 years was that she wanted to be the first female MLB player - although she only wanted the fame, and wasn't in for the hard work. Aside from a few random things like that, she was quite gender-conforming, and remains pretty feminine in her ways, despite now dressing as a goofy guy. She loves Broadway musicals, has crushes on celebrities, and is emotional. I suspect the idea of being male, for her, is an escape from what she thinks she would need to do to be a "hot" girl (she lamented her inability to be as hot as she wanted - a ridiculous "fear - when she was 12.5, just before she "discovered" that she was trans), and she sees certain typical female behavior as annoying. She's not really "boy crazy," in that her crushes are on older male celebrities, and, although she does like some boys her age, she is also perhaps bisexual, which is also a part of this. I think she would rather see herself as a quirky bisexual boy, slender and youthful, than as a girl who is not as hot as she wishes, and who (in her mind) would have to sell her soul and act like the typical girls around her. As a boy, she doesn't have to make efforts to look "hot" like wearing make-up, shaving her underarms and legs, wearing scantily clad clothing, etc., and, again, she doesn't have to worry about failing to achieve the level of hotness she so desired. She can shed her standards, and just be. (Of course, she could just do that without pretending she is male, but she hasn't figured this out yet!) This fantasy works for her and explains why she often feels socially awkward as well. It is something she can look to as a sort of guarantee of her own happiness. It also distinguishes her from me - and she sees me as not being happy, in part because I do the lion's share of caring for the family and financially supporting it. She has repeatedly said that she just cannot imagine growing up into a woman, which is, of course, true, especially since she has been play-acting at being male for 4 years now, and has never walked in the world as a young lady. Her fantasy of this bisexual boy has very little to do with the actuality of being a boy. I hope this answers your question, and sorry for the delay.
Hello Hippiesq. Thanks muchly for your comment, and terribly sorry for the delay in finally getting back to you. Although that is partly due to wanting to read Mondegreen’s take on parents with dysphoric kids to see how they dovetailed with your own experiences. En passant, I see that where she had had it published – Fairer Disputations: “Sex-Realist Feminism for the 21st Century” – has Louise Perry as one of its “Featured Authors”:
May need to read Perry’s book myself and see if she really does mangle the statistics as much as Helen Dale’s review of it suggests is the case. I thought your own comments on that 30-70 percentage “argument” were right on the money:
But a couple of inter-related points from Mondegreen’s article in particular stand out, and that largely because they echo or pertain to your comments about your own daughter:
Mondegreen: “[The parents] stand accused of missing the most basic facts about who their child really is: a boy, not a girl, or a girl, not a boy. .... We had many debates—more accurately described as arguments—where she said she was ‘really a boy’ and I asked what that meant. She never had any answers.”
When I first read that first comment – the one about “basic facts” – I thought it sounded something of a false note and raised more questions than it answered, and in particular, “what does it take to qualify as a boy or girl in the first place?”
And the second comment – more or less the crux of the matter – echoes yours about your daughter:
Hippiesq: “I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is ‘male.’ I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is.”
No doubt there are “age-appropriate” questions and discussions, and I don’t want to sound like I’m “armchair parenting” – like “armchair quarterbacking” 🙂 – but it seems that an appropriate response to both your daughter, and to the one referred to in the second comment, is to say that, “you can’t possibly be a male, and won’t ever be a male, because you have ovaries and not testicles”.
Largely why I have been “belaboring” the idea of “necessary and sufficient conditions” for sex category membership. Which in the case of the sexes turns out to be having ovaries or testicles – although the standard biological definitions stipulate that they also have to be functional. Which excludes probably a third of us, at any one time, from those “exalted estates” -- definitely not a "popular opinion" 🙂.
But as something of a case in point, you might be “amused’ by a classic Monty Python skit about “Stan” who wanted to be called “Loretta” because he “wanted to have babies”:
“Judith: Well, why do you want to be ‘Loretta’, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you. You haven't got a womb. Where is the fetus gonna gestate? You're gonna keep it in a box?”
Clearly, a “problem” that goes back at least to 1979 – when the movie, ‘The Life of Brian’, was released – if not to Roman times, the setting for the skit 😉🙂 .
But I think it underlines the fact that “boy” and “girl”, that “man” and “woman” aren’t matters of subjectivity, of “self-identification”. There are objective criteria that must be met to qualify as such – otherwise the terms are useless, if not worse than that.
Yes, I know that Monty Python skit well, as does my daughter, who, despite her own break from reality, laughed at the absurdity of it. She's a big Monty Python fan. As to your main point, while you and I agree that precision of language is vital to a functioning society, and while your response makes perfect sense if you want to discuss the inappropriateness of a man who wishes he were born female and delusionally thinks he somehow is one insisting on urinating in the women's bathroom or undressing in a woman's changing room or playing soccer on the women's team, the same response would not be helpful when talking to a teenage girl in crisis. Why is there a difference? Mainly because precision of language is not the issue when it comes to a teenager with a possibly societally induced form of body dysmorphia. Such a young vulnerable person doesn't care if the word "boy" is accurate. She cares that she won't have her period, that she won't be a less than perfectly hot girl but can instead be seen as a quirky boy, she cares that she won't be sexualized, that she doesn't have to dress up, she cares that she can take her shirt off when it's hot outside, that she isn't in competition with her friends for boys or hotness or popularity, and maybe that she won't have the issues in life she perceives her mother has (the typical "burdens" of motherhood). She is looking to escape from what she perceives to be a potentially unhappy life and exchange it for a more carefree life. Telling her that she isn't a boy for the sole reason that her anatomy doesn't match the definition would do absolutely nothing to solve the problem. She is unhappy with her perceived lot in life and thinks she can fix the perceived problem by living as a man. That she isn't a "boy" by definition is hardly of any use in the context of this problem. What she needs to realize is that she can live as a woman and do what she wants when she wants and find happiness, without pretense or unhealthy medical interventions, not that a "boy" has a penis and testicles (the latter of which she already knows). I hope you understand what I'm saying here, and that you know I truly appreciate your concern with using objective definitions that make sense historically and categorically - of paramount importance most of the time!
Hippiesq: "... precision of language is vital to a functioning society ... [but] the same response would not be helpful when talking to a teenage girl in crisis"
Thanks for your elaborations. And my apologies if I appeared overly dismissive of your daughter's experiences and perspectives, of her "crisis". Which I'm sure is rather devastating and traumatic for you both -- whole issue is tearing up a lot of families, and much of society to boot.
So I can at least understand that she would be "unhappy", at best, with many of the feelings, roles and expectations associated with, and society's responses to, her being a female. Puberty in general is no picnic for anyone, but I expect even less so for females who obviously have far greater burdens in the reproductive department than do males. Which is partly why I've periodically argued that it might be useful if we could all "change sex", at least for a year or two so as to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes".
But while I also appreciate your qualifying "objective definitions make sense historically and categorically", I think it is part and parcel of an important earlier point of yours:
Hippiesq: "I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is 'male.' I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is."
"curious" phenomenon in many ways, but I think that sentence speaks to and underlines the depth of it, even if it probably doesn't get anywhere near the bottom. But offhand, it seems, particularly in light of your descriptions of your daughter's feelings, that she "thinks" she's a male because she has a particular "affinity" for many of the behaviour patterns of males in general. Arguably, some evidence of an "over developed" sense of empathy which is, maybe, commendable in itself.
Not sure if you've ever read much about "mirror neurons" -- basically, "monkey see, monkey do" -- but many neuroscientists and many others have argued that they are, in fact, what undergirds the whole phenomenon of empathy in the first place. Has its somewhat "pathological" or "amusing" manifestations -- see Konrad Lorenz on imprinting, and Woody Allen's Zelig -- but still an important if not essential part of being human:
So I'm definitely at a bit of a loss in seeing how your "thinks she's a 'male' ..." actually "squares" with your "not helpful to a girl in crisis". As you point out, she realizes that "a boy has a penis and testicles", but she apparently doesn't realize that the latter at least are kind of a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to qualify as a male in the first place.
No doubt a rather obscure point, particularly for juveniles given that many adults stumble over that concept of "necessary and sufficient". But that is largely why I've been arguing in favour of those "objective definitions", particularly those that qualify as the standard biological ones based on functional gonads.
So it seems that at least one effective way of dealing with your daughter's "body dysmorphia", and that of many other juveniles, is to emphasize that requirement, is to emphasize that, as much as she may "feel" as if she's a male, those feelings aren't sufficient to qualify as such. While I appreciate that you're trying to convince her that "unhealthy medical interventions" are "unwise", part of that seems to be to emphasize that as much as she may "succeed" at looking like a male, she won't actually ever BE one.
Incredibly complex issue, and I sure don't envy you having to deal with what is clearly a rather sticky wicket. Though I'm sure there are some joys and satisfactions of parenthood that I won't ever experience myself. But relative to that "disparity" between substance and appearance, between being a male or a female and only looking like one, I'm reminded of a rather brilliant article by Michelle Goldberg, an interview with transwoman "Helen Highwater":
Goldberg: "Though 'trans women are women' has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a 'vicious lie.' ...."
I appreciate how much you have thought about this issue, particularly when you don't have a personal stake in it - although I do believe we all have a personal stake in it in a broader sense. I have tried getting philosophical and technical at times with my daughter, probing her understanding of what it means to be male, but none of it has resonated with her because this is basically wishful thinking, or extreme fantasizing, and anything that interrupts the fantasy is resented. She also believes in the fictional "male brain" notion going around on the internet. Thus, in her mind, while her body is not that of a male, her brain is. Of course, there is no scientific basis for this. It also makes no sense unless there is such a thing as a brain that expects to see male body parts and works much better if it sees parts that look as if they were male - a totally and utterly made up notion. In other words, even if there were brains that had more "masculine" characteristics that might make a person more at home in a male societal role and a male-appearing body to accompany it, that would really just be saying that any masculine females (my definition, not yours) or feminine males (my definition, not yours) would only be at home in a body that appears the opposite sex because they will inevitably be unhappy living in society as the sex they are. Such a notion is regressive and doesn't allow for variation in the human condition, essentially punishing individuals whose femininity or masculinity is atypical by forcing them to medicalize and live a lie - when the real solution to such an issue is for society to end its narrow-mindedness. Further, that's not the argument being made, because, particularly for individuals like my daughter, who is not particularly masculine, although she has some masculine qualities(as do I, and most people are masculine in some ways and feminine in some ways), the argument is not that we need to transition masculine females and feminine males. Rather, the argument is that we need to transition anyone who thinks it's right for them - a consumerist notion for sure. The consumerist notion is disguised with the "gender identity" notion (which you know I have described as nonsense), but my daughter takes gender identity to refer to a scientific reality of a "male brain" (a brain that must be connected to either a male body, ideally, or, at least, a body that appears male) - because she so wants it to make sense, and thus adopted the "male brain" notion - but hasn't managed to think through the subtleties of that notion to realize that merely wanting to be male doesn't evidence a "male brain."
In the end, I agree that puberty is difficult and more so for girls (I myself didn't love it!), and they have been offered this get out of puberty free card. For those with any sort of vulnerability, this becomes an attractive notion, and it is harming a generation. I do want to say that, while this is terribly heart-breaking and distressing, you are right that there are things about being a parent that are wonderful and worth all the struggle. I would venture to guess that all parents going through this, like me, would still rather be going through it than not have their children. I'm not complaining that I hate being a parent to a trans-identified daughter. I'm complaining that society is doing an awful thing to vulnerable children, teens and young adults like my 17-year-old daughter who bought this notion that was sold to her at the vulnerable age of 12, and who has continued to receive the message that sterilizing herself, destroying her sexual function, and harming her overall health while pretending to be the opposite sex is a noble goal.
Wow, Steersman. So much to unpack. I will respond in more detail - it’s late as I read this - but suffice it to say: (1) I agree with you that we must be precise in our use of language when discussing important issues; and (2) there are many assumptions being made by people that defy reality these days!!! My daughter’s story is complicated and not entirely clear as to why she came to believe she is “really male.” (More on that later.) lastly, I did respond to Eliza. I basically told my story (my daughter’s and mine) with my commentary. I don’t know what she will get out of it, but she kindly responded. I don’t think she wants to constrain anyone’s responses to her request because she wants them to be as raw and uninhibited as possible (my thoughts alone). And one more comment - your writing is great and requires no apologies. I didn’t mean to say that meandering is a bad thing. It was challenging - which is a welcome distraction!
I quite like the 'meandering.' ha! Forced the mind into more critical/creative-thought, to pay close attention and extract meanings from the well-placed poetry/lyrics.
The two sexes are products of evolution and natural selection. Clearly a biological selective advantage that manifests in countless species. Unless the theist’s god is a biological being, it is absurd to say it is male or female. Some writer in the desert wrote about his imaginary being in the sky and said it was male like his tribal chief. How on earth are such things still believed?
Indeed. Somewhat apropos of which, you might check out Helen Dale's Substack -- and my recent comment there as well 🙂:
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/the-transcult/comment/21472270
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/the-transcult
As for the biology and ICYMI, you might be interested in my post on the "debate" between the binarists & the spectrumists:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
Thank you. I will take the time to check out those links. That Nietzsche link you had was very good. It gave me a new insight into interpretation of Nietzsche! Thank you again.
The God of the Abrahamic traditions is conceived as transcendent, unembodied Being, yet at the same time as unambiguously male. Maleness and, transitively, Femaleness must therefore be metaphysical states, prior to and more foundational than the characteristics of mere physical embodiment. I wonder if our contemporary sexual confusion is the upshot of internalizing this paradox. Maybe twenty centuries of habituation to the idea were bound to influence our thinking and behavior.
How can you tell if "He" is a male? What makes "Him" so? Maybe "She" is a female? Have you checked under "His" hood?
Words are kinda useless if you can't specify what they mean. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in a recent post by Michael Robillard, his Washington Examiner article, and my several comments thereon in the former:
MR: "In other words, an in-principle, wholly private, wholly subjectively defined meaning or term makes no logical or conceptual sense whatsoever."
https://michaelrobillard.substack.com/p/virginias-gender-error
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/virginias-gender-error
That is what your "male" is -- a "wholly subjectively defined meaning" that makes no sense whatsoever. More or less exactly the case with "male" and "female" as "gender identities" as Robillard is arguing:
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1549382790952656899
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/male
Largely the reason for my efforts to put both "gender" and "gender identity" on a more scientifically and philosophically sound footing.
I love this - peering through a philosophical lens to examine the loss of self and soul both in general and trans identity confusion. Well done.
- forcing children to fit into shapes that are wildly at odds with their true natures, indeed.
I found it most interesting that through clinical/scientific study of trans individuals, Sadjadi explains the merging of science and religion - I assume he meant both in literature and subject self-report? Regardless, my mind goes to a starving of a reliable ideal and purpose experienced by today's youth (and of people/society in general but as is obvious, we are most impressionable in our formative years. More susceptible to external (mis)guidance on how to fill our 'god-shaped hole' - so to speak).
Thank you for the shout out! Much appreciated. I've 'plugged' your essay in said-conversation on my page - I attempted tagging @humanuseofhumanbeings - doesn't seem to have worked. I suppose that is reserved for notes.
Thanks Doc 🙂; most appreciated. And for the defense of my "meandering". 🙂
Particularly your support of "true natures" -- something close to the core of my argument that people can exhibit "atypical" personality traits while not being beyond the Pale. Many people seem to balk at that idea which is arguably part and parcel of the whole problem -- somewhat apropos of which, a post that you in particular might have some interest in by philosopher Michael Robillard, and my comments thereon, who is maybe guilty of that as well:
https://michaelrobillard.substack.com/p/virginias-gender-error
Good questions about Sadjadi re "literature and subject self-report". Art imitating life? Patient echoing physician? Something I'll have to take a closer read of the article to get a better handle on. Though Sadjadi is apparently a she, on the faculty of McGill University, at least several years ago:
https://www.mcgill.ca/ssom/staff/sahar-sadjadi
But, speaking of "purpose" 🙂, I wonder to what extent you think that definition for "gender identity" holds water, is worth pursuing. Whether you might be interested in a "commission" -- of sorts -- to write an article on it, to develop it for publication in professional journals. Maybe for Psychology Today? Or even Canada's own "Mope and Wail"? 🙂
Seems to me, on no shortage of evidence, that a major factor contributing to the whole transgender clusterfuck is that virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has wildly different and quite antithetical definitions for both sex and gender. Seems that that "gender identity" definition -- " 'gender identity' [as] just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities", as Hippiesq succinctly put it -- may help to bring some "balance to the forces", so to speak. 🙂
But I'm kind of at a loss how to proceed from there, particularly as there are many aspects that are well out of my depth. Seems to me that the issue and definition needs some people with some professional "chops" to develop it further, at least if it is likely to contribute to moving the discussion forward.
The defense was warranted.
I agree - I would argue that much of the gender confusion we're seeing is nothing more than the pathologization (or perhaps miscategorization) of "atypical" personality traits (eg., those on the autism spectrum are at particularly high risk for gender confusion/transition - this is well-documented).
This is not to say that gender dysphoria does not exist, or that transition is not beneficial for some, but the exploding rates are a real cause for concern.
The definitions for gender and sex - once basically the same thing - have been separated (bastardized?) by so called 'scholars' and theorists. Your physical sex and mental (spiritual) gender, it is said, are/can be in 'opposition' (enter science vs. spirit).
What I've found interesting is that within the past couple of years the argument is now being made that there is no such thing as sex (as if it weren't murky enough).
Back to personality - what is atypical, I think, is an individual having only masculine or feminine traits that line up perfectly with their physical sex. Example - I look very feminine but I think very male. Am I in the wrong body? Perhaps I would begin to believe that if I was a hormonal teenager. Jung wrote a lot about anima (female), animus (male) components that make up the 'self' - natural, healthy and present in us all. Is this now being manipulated/pathologized?
The topic of gender is not my expertise but I would consider writing something!
DrKJ: "pathologization (or perhaps miscategorization) of 'atypical' personality traits"
Egg-zactly! Bingo! 😉👍🙂
DrKJ: "The topic of gender is not my expertise but I would consider writing something!"
Thanks muchly; as mentioned, I'll email you shortly, but it might be useful to others here as well to elaborate briefly on a couple of salient points. First and foremost, is it fair to say that, to a first approximation, your "bread and butter", your expertise is in the whole ball of wax of personalities, their care and feeding and their pathologies?
My argument is essentially that "gender" IS, by definition, a rough synonym for personalities AND personality TYPES. Big part of the problem with the whole transgender clusterfuck is that many people seem to be talking at cross-purposes, to be using the same words in contradictory ways and with incompatible meanings. "You say po-tat-oe, and I say po-ta-toe, and let's start WW3 over pronunciation" -- Lilliputian civil wars and Rape of the Lock (part deux) is probably being a charitable characterization.
Think it would help immeasurably if "we" could agree on common terms of reference and that definition seems like a plausible contender. But a big part of the problem there is the supposed connection between personalities and personality types, a connection that many apparently balk at, largely because of "prior commitments" to questionable (feminist) ideology or historical (antediluvian) misperceptions.
Apropos of which, y'all 🙂 might have some interest in a conversation I've had recently with philosopher Dr. Michael Robillard:
https://michaelrobillard.substack.com/p/virginias-gender-error/comment/21309972
He apparently had been committed to the feminist definition of gender -- JUST the stereotypes supposedly hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" for the sole purpose of "oppressing" women -- but is now apparently willing to consider its expansion to including sexually dimorphic personality traits. As I had indicated there, something of sticky wicket how we get from personalities to personality types. However, as I've frequently noted, Substacker Lee Jussim's article on "Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology" gives some weight to the idea:
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereotype-accuracy-one-largest-and-most-replicable-effects-all
To briefly summarize my argument there:
QUOTE:
Seems to me that the stereotypes follow from individual behaviour -- much of which is rooted in biology -- and not the other way around, at least to begin with. Somewhat analogously, consider the stereotype of "introvert". But that type exists in the first place because many of us are, in fact, introverts to one degree or another.
Similarly, see this joint probability distribution for agreeableness versus sex. Females are, on average, more agreeable than men -- about 4.1 versus 3.8 respectively. But some females are atypical, they have agreeableness factors more typical of males. One might say that IF agreeableness is one dimension of a multi-dimensional gender spectrum, those atypical females with agreeableness measures below 3.8 have a masculine gender (agreeableness):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joint_probability_distribution_by_sex_and_agreeablenes.jpg
UNQUOTE
"gender may not be your expertise" -- though one might argue that the whole issue is pretty much entirely characterized by the blind leading the blind. By pretty much everyone riding madly off in all directions.
However, it seems likely that your background in personalities -- and in the concept of personal identity that I've broached here in this post, and its roots in the philosophy of Nietzsche and others related thereto -- may be just what the doctor ordered to bridge the gap -- a chasm, in fact -- between personalities and personality types. Bring some balance to the forces. 🙂 Seems like an idea worth pursuing.
Nietzsche and Loyola in the same article! Dylan and Cohen too.
Nietzsche says that the soul is just a primitive belief that needs to be discarded. He wanted us to discard all that otherworldly metaphysical nonsense, such as god and afterlife. The scientific revolution had dynamited all that mental claptrap. But Nietzsche did worry about what would replace all that nonsense. He did warn us about that abyss. He knew also that science wasn’t all that free from irrationality and could become rationality gone mad. Careful about the abyss of nihilism he warned.
Well, as this article, spells out, we falling into that abyss. Scientific certainty is falling away and new priesthoods are arriving that are demanding the masses see black even though they see white, as Loyola said. The priesthoods arriving now are not capable of the total powers of those of the Catholic Middle Ages, since they are constantly redefining their ideology. Nothing has meaning and every is mutable and that is nihilism.
Thanks. 🙂
Though can't say I've ever read much of Nietzsche himself, and really only skimmed the Stanford [SEP] article to "flesh out" the idea of personal identity with his takes on the topic. However, I think that article makes a credible case that his ideas were a bit more "nuanced" -- at least over the course of his life -- than just an insistence about "discarding" the concept of a soul:
SEP: "This remains a controversial problem, but it is clear at least that Nietzsche’s own proposal was to develop a radically reformed conception of the psyche, rather than to reject the self, or soul, altogether (see Riccardi 2021). BGE 12 provides some provocative ideas about what such a reformed conception might involve: there, Nietzsche insists that we should 'give the finishing stroke' to what he calls 'the soul atomism', which he goes on to explain as:
the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon:… Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of 'the soul' at the same time, and thus to renounce one of the most ancient and venerable hypotheses—as happens frequently to clumsy naturalists who can hardly touch on 'the soul' without immediately losing it. But the way is now open for new versions and refinements of the soul hypothesis, [including] 'mortal soul', 'soul as subjective multiplicity', and 'soul as social structure of the drives and affects'… (BGE 12)"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#SelfSelfFash
Exactly where our consciousness comes from is a serious puzzle -- the "hard problem" of philosopher David Chalmers who suggested we might be obliged to postulate it as a fundamental element of reality like mass and electric charge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Not too much of a stretch then to wrap that up in terminology not far removed from the "soul".
But quite agree with you about science often isn't "all that free from irrationality and [can] become rationality gone mad". Most people don't realize that reason and rationality and what is built on top of them are often only as good as the often questionable premises, if not articles of faith, they start off from:
Hume: "`Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Hume
Ran across a quote from Jonathan Swift the other day that I think summarizes that problem, much of the current zeitgeist, and many of the "debates" exercising far too many:
JS: "... Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired: For in the Course of Things, Men always grow vicious before they become Unbelievers. ...."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/10/reason-out/
Thanks to you too. I have had a life long fascination with Nietzsche. I recommend you check out the fantastic podcast: “The Nietzsche Podcast.” It is brilliant and it will get you up to speed with Nietzsche.
Thank you for the fascinating links you have provided. I will check them out.
Thank you.
👍🙂
Seems popular; 12k subscribers on the YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVWjbE4tddY
Bonus is the transcript -- at least on YouTube -- which I find more useful.
Yes. This podcast is genius. I have been a Nietzsche reader for decades and I am so very impressed with this podcast. Anyone with the slightest desire to understand the thinking of Nietzsche should begin listening to it. I believe this podcast is destined to be one of the greatest philosophical podcasts.
I have no stake whatsoever in its success, but I feel this to be true.
Well, alrighty now. It's always interesting to read your stuff.
This is how I see it. All them primitive people were close enough to reality to recognize the loony-time of puberty had to be managed to ensure the survival of "the people" {so many languages defined *us* as human and *them* maybe not so much). Hence painful and sometimes dangerous rituals and mutilations, of lesser to greater severity, to mark the passage to adulthood. I don't doubt that they understood, without having the concepts to explain why, that inflicting pain somehow opened the pressure-cooker valve.
But no society produces a 100% healthy crop. There's always the percentage that loves pain, whether to receive or to inflict or both or sometimes etc. etc. etc. When a society tilts towards the crazy standards and loses sight of the healthy ones, sees them as deficient in merit, as the boring vanilla that means there's nothing interesting about you--you get here, where we are right now. Not enough crazy people are burned away in wars. Medicine rescues a lot of Darwin Award candidates who used to just die of their self-caused misadventures.
So Western society right now is reeking of malignant boredom. You know those fretful OCD habits of picking at one's cuticles or pulling out strands of hair or picking the poxy things on one's skin? We got 'em ramped up with official approval and encouragement.
I keep asking. All these detransitioners with their sad stories all including "I had multiple mental health issues..."
Where did all these sick kids come from? How can so many children be that sick, pre-puberty?
There have always been bad parents. Literature and history are full of the stories of what sick parents do to kids. It's not new, but population density always exacerbates any social problem.
You're a stickler for terms and definitions. I think we need to stop ceding any ground to anyone discussing this issue, including the nice friendly ones like SIngal and Mondegreen who still can't stop being polite and wanting not to offend anyone (so they keep getting access, no doubt).
It's sex-obliterating treatment. It's mutilation. People do demented things to relieve distress. There's lancing a boil, and there's cutting off anything that might potentially develop a boil someday.
Allowing adults who obliterated their own sex to be the physicians, surgeons, therapists etc. for these kids is handing the chickens over to the foxes. We've got this at the top of government agencies now so it's official policy to obliterate the sex of children on demand--their demand or their parents.
But maybe this self-eugenicizing is necessary. IF they're that crazy maybe we want them out of the gene pool.
I've thought about this a lot--how much should society interfere with the way parents want to raise their kids? There's no shortage of horrors one reads about every day. Home schooling as the subterfuge for the imprisonment and torture of kids who never interact with anyone outside the dungeon-home. Can we send out squads knocking door-to-door to inspect the bedrooms and basements?
Evrey day we learn of some kid beaten and murdered and the family was known to the system but the system still let it happen.
In a free society you can't save everyone. I want to start at least with saving the kids always handed back to the drug-addict parents who eventually succeed in abusing them to death. The other kids--the sad victims of neurotic obsessed parents who want social credit for *affirming* their *identities*--
--well, if Republicans get back in full power, we can stop that, right? But we'll stop abortion everywhere too. They are equally determined to own the bodies of the citizenry.
This will have to burn through and burn out. The high-functioning autistic crowd and their enablers insisted on valorizing *neurodivergence* and calling it a superpower, and they've normalized dysfunction.
I know people with now-adult autistic kids who can never live without supervision, and of course parents age and die sooner than their adult kids, on average, and it's a horror of grief and terror they face. But the self-advocacy crowd is treating autism as some of the deaf community treat their disability--as something that's just an alternate way of being that doesn't need to be cured.
That's insanity. To be unable to function independently in the world without extreme accommodations and government-paid services is not an alternative lifestyle choice. It's the destruction of society.
So maybe definition of terms is a sort of elegant intellectual distraction. The practical effect is sex obliteration and lifetime tethering to big pharma and endless corrective surgeries. So let's maybe use the brutal words and drown out the "what is a woman" discourse with brutal reality.
SCA: "Well, alrighty now. It's always interesting to read your stuff."
Thank you; appreciate the comments, support, & restack. 🙂 May be a bit too much in your comment to chew through in a single go, but if I don't make it to the end I may try to address the balance in a couple of later responses.
SCA: "... So Western society right now is reeking of malignant boredom ..."
Yeah. As we've discussed a couple times, some merit in the aphorism about how even the gods themselves struggle against boredom. Devil makes work for idle hands. Fairly durable theme over the centuries.
SCA: "Where did all these sick kids come from? How can so many children be that sick, pre-puberty?"
Good questions. Endocrine disrupters? Read somewhere that we're creating some 50,000 new chemicals every year, many of which wind up in the air we breathe or foods we eat. And the young tend to be the most susceptible to the worst aspects of the ideologies we create, probably because they lack the "life experience", the immune responses in the first place to be able to separate wheat and chaff: "if you're not a socialist at 20 then you have no heart; if you're still one at 50 then you have no brain".
SCA: "You're a stickler for terms and definitions."
As I just mentioned in a recent comment here, more out of necessity than not:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-nothing-sacred-looking-into-the/comment/21219360
SCA: "I think we need to stop ceding any ground to anyone discussing this issue, including the nice friendly ones like Singal and Mondegreen who still can't stop being polite and wanting not to offend anyone ..."
Indeed. Largely why I insist on drawing a line in the sand, on calling a spade an effen shovel. Bit disappointed in both Singal & Mondegreen, the former in particular as I had taken him at his word -- an email address in that post of his I had responded to with a Note -- and had responded accordingly. Crickets. And Eliza seems to talk a great game about being a "Graduate student researching gender identity", but seems incapable of stating what she means by the term. Ran across a quote of Upton Sinclair that may be of some relevance:
US: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
https://michaelrobillard.substack.com/p/how-i-left-academia-or-how-academia
SCA: "People do demented things to relieve distress."
Amen to that. I'd dug into Heather Armstrong's rather tragic case -- "body image issues" seemed to have been the crux of the matter:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220812171818/https://dooce.com/2022/08/10/america-is-wrong/
Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in a related case, though from the other side of the fence: Catholic, author, transwoman, & transexual Aoife Assumpta Hart:
AAH: "Transition saved my life; it was the only treatment that, after decades of inescapable self-horror, finally allowed me to feel as if I inhabited a body in which I could belong. .... My life pre-transition was like a burning labyrinth with no centre and no exit. Transition was like falling in love for the first time: falling in love with myself. Rage dissipated, unbearable uncertainties and colossal self-hate dissipated. In its place came clarity, patience, awareness, compassion."
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/2015/08/trans-and-catholic-an-interview-with-aoife-assumpta-hart/
https://www.amazon.ca/Ancestral-Recall-Revival-Japanese-Modernism/dp/0773546901
Apparently the only solution for some people, though often at horrendous costs. Often wonder to what extent society itself is responsible for that; much of the reason behind my quote of Omar Khayyam.
SCA: "So maybe definition of terms is a sort of elegant intellectual distraction. The practical effect is sex obliteration and lifetime tethering to big pharma and endless corrective surgeries. So let's maybe use the brutal words and drown out the 'what is a woman' discourse with brutal reality."
I'd argue that that "sex obliteration" is a consequence of sloppy and self-serving definitions, and defining our terms is anything but a "distraction". Seems to me that if we want to put an end to that then we need to start calling a spade an effen shovel -- some "brutal reality" -- and let the chips fall where they may, stop retailing the "little lies", the euphemisms that grease the skids for the big ones. For example, as I'd argued in a recent comment over on RLS, see the opening segment on this Fox News clip with Laura Ingraham:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/progressive-journalist-breaks-left-warns-puberty-blockers-cause-irreparable-harm-children
Nice that Ingraham asks some pointed questions in her interview of a female detransitioner, and argues that "gender affirming care" boils down into "mutilating children". But what is rather "exasperating" is the headline under that story which asks, "Why is the left normalizing sex changes for kids?"
Too many people seem to "think" that the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- are all there is to it: "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" 🙄 There I think is the root of the problem: pervasive scientific illiteracy, or an emotional attachment to "male" and "female" as "immutable identities", or both. Kind of makes us all culpable to some extent -- you might have some interest in my comment thereon in response to a post and comment by "trans widow" Shannon Thrace:
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/eden-and-the-crisis-of-modernity/comment/21113233
As Jonathan Swift put it some 300 years ago:
JS: "... Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired: For in the Course of Things, Men always grow vicious before they become Unbelievers. ...."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/10/reason-out/
Methinks we all have those "articles of faith" -- some more tenaciously held than others -- and get rather "testy" when they're challenged. Something of a hard task to continuously test them, but seems to be a necessity.
A bit too meandering for me to follow the end point - but I loved the reference to Sounds of Silence and enjoyed all the quoting. More importantly, you brought up some good points. If “gender identity” were just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities, it might have some real usefulness in terms of being able to discuss differing personality traits - and maybe that was the origin of the term. However, it is not being used that way at all when people use the term to justify chemical and surgical alterations of young, healthy bodies. The degree or type of feminine and masculine qualities one possesses would not justify these medical interventions. Instead, the term is supposedly a sense of whether one IS a male or a female - which makes zero sense. Whether a person is male or female is strictly based upon biology. While the specifics of biology that determine one’s sex - male or female, or the very few people who are so ambiguous as to not be clearly one or the other because of a biological anomaly - can be debated and tweaked as science reveals more facts, there is no question that biology alone determines sex. Sex is not a state of mind, although experiencing life as a sex can affect one’s state of mind in different ways. The idea that a “gender identity” determines whether one is male or female and in turn whether one’s biology is “correct” is quite an insane notion. Even if there were a “gender identity” whereby a soul knows “I am really male/female despite my biology,” the only way it justifies medical interventions is if there is a component of this knowing that says “if you are male, you must have a male appearing body” and vice versa. That is something else entirely and leads to my “Noah’s Ark” idea. (Like Noah in the Bible story, who knew the ark had to be built and animals gathered. these people have a spiritual and unquestionable - unfalsifiable - knowledge that these medical interventions must be completed ASAP.). To me at least, there is no credibility to such a notion. You’re assessment that what children are being taught is bad “parenting” is correct. Telling children they have a magical “gender identity” that will determine whether they can inhabit their healthy bodies or must instead alter them in unhealthy ways is plainly wrong. Anyway. this made nice reading while a passenger on a long car ride.
Thanks muchly Hippiesq for your comments -- quite a bit to chew through there which will take me some time to do any sort of justice to. And, en passant, thanks to everyone else in fact for their comments which I'll try to get around to "shortly". But sorry if it was a bit "meandering" -- I'd already spent some 12 or 14 hours on it by the time I had to hit "Publish" before going to bed, and simply didn't have any more time to "fine tune" it.
However, you clearly got the more or less central point I was aiming at -- i.e., " 'gender identity' [is] just the degree and specificity of feminine and masculine qualities" -- and enjoyed reading my post so I'm more than a happy camper. 🙂
But I quite agree with your, "it is not being used that way at all when people use the term to justify chemical and surgical alterations of young, healthy bodies." However, my point there is that just because other people misuse language -- asserting "2+2=5", for example -- is no good reason for abandoning more logically coherent uses and definitions. Like " 'gender identity' == ... feminine & masculine qualities"; like "2+2=4".
As SCA has quite reasonably pointed out, I'm a "stickler for terms and definitions". But more out of necessity than anything else -- if we can't agree on what words mean then "debate" is no better than chasing our tails, just as inconclusive, just as unlikely to lead to any tangible social progress at all. Kind of a favourite quote from Francis Bacon summarizes the issue: "Therefore shoddy and inept application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways".
Which brings me to your "even IF there were a 'gender identity' whereby a soul knows 'I am really male/female despite my biology' ..." which I'm frankly at a loss how to tackle, but which seems the crux of the matter in many ways. But it reminds me of a famous quote by Abe Lincoln [AL], although it had predated him by several decades at least:
AL: "How many legs does a dog have IF you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/15/legs/
Some murky logic, assumptions, and "thinking" in both of those constructions -- in both of those uses of "IF" -- that I have a poor grasp of myself. But it seems to be encompassed by the concept of "what would have been true under different circumstances":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional
But simply conceiving of different circumstances is not the same thing as asserting that those circumstances actually "exist": a dog's tail is NOT a leg -- it doesn't contact the ground and is not used to propel a body in different directions. And, likewise, someone of a female sex exhibiting masculine personality traits -- i.e., those typical of members of the male sex -- is NOT thereby a male (sex). If that makes sense ... 🙂
Which brings me to your comment on Eliza's Substack about her call for responses from parents of dysphoric children:
https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/request-for-parent-stories/comment/21084369
Really looking forward to your comments on that score, and those of other parents as well. Though, if you haven't already responded to Eliza, I might suggest you try putting her on spot as to exactly what she means by "gender identity", particularly as she wasn't very "forthcoming" when I asked her. 🙂
But more particularly, I'm particularly interested in knowing, in understanding how it is that your daughter -- as I think you've indicated is the case -- has come think that she is or might be a male (sex). Is it because she has some "affinity" for males, some degree of overriding empathy for them; because she doesn't understand what it takes to qualify as a male (sex); because she perceives some personality traits in them that she recognizes in herself?
Some really complicated and convoluted aspects and "thinking" in all of that -- why Eliza has some justification for talking about "rabbit holes". But trying to get to the bottom of them without first being tied to a "rope" connected to some solid ground seems rather unwise at best. And that definition -- i.e., " 'gender identity' == ... feminine & masculine qualities" -- certainly seems the best candidate for that particular "rope" that I've seen so far. 🙂
Hi Steersman. I thought I would finally get around to answering your question above in this comment, which I was reminded of when you recently commented on my Gender Identity comment. I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is "male." I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is. She has re-written her childhood to say that she always knew this - but it's not true. She recalls things I also recall, like her wanting to wear a boy's bathing suit at one point, wanting to take off her shirt in the park on a hot day, and staying on the boys' baseball team for 2 years after they developed softball before defecting. She may not recall that she was entirely uncomfortable on the boys' team once the other girls left, and that she was very happy and did much better once she switched to softball. She also may not recall that the reason she stayed for 2 years was that she wanted to be the first female MLB player - although she only wanted the fame, and wasn't in for the hard work. Aside from a few random things like that, she was quite gender-conforming, and remains pretty feminine in her ways, despite now dressing as a goofy guy. She loves Broadway musicals, has crushes on celebrities, and is emotional. I suspect the idea of being male, for her, is an escape from what she thinks she would need to do to be a "hot" girl (she lamented her inability to be as hot as she wanted - a ridiculous "fear - when she was 12.5, just before she "discovered" that she was trans), and she sees certain typical female behavior as annoying. She's not really "boy crazy," in that her crushes are on older male celebrities, and, although she does like some boys her age, she is also perhaps bisexual, which is also a part of this. I think she would rather see herself as a quirky bisexual boy, slender and youthful, than as a girl who is not as hot as she wishes, and who (in her mind) would have to sell her soul and act like the typical girls around her. As a boy, she doesn't have to make efforts to look "hot" like wearing make-up, shaving her underarms and legs, wearing scantily clad clothing, etc., and, again, she doesn't have to worry about failing to achieve the level of hotness she so desired. She can shed her standards, and just be. (Of course, she could just do that without pretending she is male, but she hasn't figured this out yet!) This fantasy works for her and explains why she often feels socially awkward as well. It is something she can look to as a sort of guarantee of her own happiness. It also distinguishes her from me - and she sees me as not being happy, in part because I do the lion's share of caring for the family and financially supporting it. She has repeatedly said that she just cannot imagine growing up into a woman, which is, of course, true, especially since she has been play-acting at being male for 4 years now, and has never walked in the world as a young lady. Her fantasy of this bisexual boy has very little to do with the actuality of being a boy. I hope this answers your question, and sorry for the delay.
Hello Hippiesq. Thanks muchly for your comment, and terribly sorry for the delay in finally getting back to you. Although that is partly due to wanting to read Mondegreen’s take on parents with dysphoric kids to see how they dovetailed with your own experiences. En passant, I see that where she had had it published – Fairer Disputations: “Sex-Realist Feminism for the 21st Century” – has Louise Perry as one of its “Featured Authors”:
https://fairerdisputations.org/what-happens-to-parents-when-kids-come-out-as-trans/
May need to read Perry’s book myself and see if she really does mangle the statistics as much as Helen Dale’s review of it suggests is the case. I thought your own comments on that 30-70 percentage “argument” were right on the money:
https://substack.com/@hippiesq/note/c-39878578
But a couple of inter-related points from Mondegreen’s article in particular stand out, and that largely because they echo or pertain to your comments about your own daughter:
Mondegreen: “[The parents] stand accused of missing the most basic facts about who their child really is: a boy, not a girl, or a girl, not a boy. .... We had many debates—more accurately described as arguments—where she said she was ‘really a boy’ and I asked what that meant. She never had any answers.”
When I first read that first comment – the one about “basic facts” – I thought it sounded something of a false note and raised more questions than it answered, and in particular, “what does it take to qualify as a boy or girl in the first place?”
And the second comment – more or less the crux of the matter – echoes yours about your daughter:
Hippiesq: “I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is ‘male.’ I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is.”
No doubt there are “age-appropriate” questions and discussions, and I don’t want to sound like I’m “armchair parenting” – like “armchair quarterbacking” 🙂 – but it seems that an appropriate response to both your daughter, and to the one referred to in the second comment, is to say that, “you can’t possibly be a male, and won’t ever be a male, because you have ovaries and not testicles”.
Largely why I have been “belaboring” the idea of “necessary and sufficient conditions” for sex category membership. Which in the case of the sexes turns out to be having ovaries or testicles – although the standard biological definitions stipulate that they also have to be functional. Which excludes probably a third of us, at any one time, from those “exalted estates” -- definitely not a "popular opinion" 🙂.
But as something of a case in point, you might be “amused’ by a classic Monty Python skit about “Stan” who wanted to be called “Loretta” because he “wanted to have babies”:
https://youtu.be/jlo7YZW8vPA?t=58
“Judith: Well, why do you want to be ‘Loretta’, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you. You haven't got a womb. Where is the fetus gonna gestate? You're gonna keep it in a box?”
Clearly, a “problem” that goes back at least to 1979 – when the movie, ‘The Life of Brian’, was released – if not to Roman times, the setting for the skit 😉🙂 .
But I think it underlines the fact that “boy” and “girl”, that “man” and “woman” aren’t matters of subjectivity, of “self-identification”. There are objective criteria that must be met to qualify as such – otherwise the terms are useless, if not worse than that.
Yes, I know that Monty Python skit well, as does my daughter, who, despite her own break from reality, laughed at the absurdity of it. She's a big Monty Python fan. As to your main point, while you and I agree that precision of language is vital to a functioning society, and while your response makes perfect sense if you want to discuss the inappropriateness of a man who wishes he were born female and delusionally thinks he somehow is one insisting on urinating in the women's bathroom or undressing in a woman's changing room or playing soccer on the women's team, the same response would not be helpful when talking to a teenage girl in crisis. Why is there a difference? Mainly because precision of language is not the issue when it comes to a teenager with a possibly societally induced form of body dysmorphia. Such a young vulnerable person doesn't care if the word "boy" is accurate. She cares that she won't have her period, that she won't be a less than perfectly hot girl but can instead be seen as a quirky boy, she cares that she won't be sexualized, that she doesn't have to dress up, she cares that she can take her shirt off when it's hot outside, that she isn't in competition with her friends for boys or hotness or popularity, and maybe that she won't have the issues in life she perceives her mother has (the typical "burdens" of motherhood). She is looking to escape from what she perceives to be a potentially unhappy life and exchange it for a more carefree life. Telling her that she isn't a boy for the sole reason that her anatomy doesn't match the definition would do absolutely nothing to solve the problem. She is unhappy with her perceived lot in life and thinks she can fix the perceived problem by living as a man. That she isn't a "boy" by definition is hardly of any use in the context of this problem. What she needs to realize is that she can live as a woman and do what she wants when she wants and find happiness, without pretense or unhealthy medical interventions, not that a "boy" has a penis and testicles (the latter of which she already knows). I hope you understand what I'm saying here, and that you know I truly appreciate your concern with using objective definitions that make sense historically and categorically - of paramount importance most of the time!
Hippiesq: "... precision of language is vital to a functioning society ... [but] the same response would not be helpful when talking to a teenage girl in crisis"
Thanks for your elaborations. And my apologies if I appeared overly dismissive of your daughter's experiences and perspectives, of her "crisis". Which I'm sure is rather devastating and traumatic for you both -- whole issue is tearing up a lot of families, and much of society to boot.
So I can at least understand that she would be "unhappy", at best, with many of the feelings, roles and expectations associated with, and society's responses to, her being a female. Puberty in general is no picnic for anyone, but I expect even less so for females who obviously have far greater burdens in the reproductive department than do males. Which is partly why I've periodically argued that it might be useful if we could all "change sex", at least for a year or two so as to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes".
But while I also appreciate your qualifying "objective definitions make sense historically and categorically", I think it is part and parcel of an important earlier point of yours:
Hippiesq: "I don't really know why my daughter thinks she is 'male.' I've repeatedly asked and her answer is always that she just is."
"curious" phenomenon in many ways, but I think that sentence speaks to and underlines the depth of it, even if it probably doesn't get anywhere near the bottom. But offhand, it seems, particularly in light of your descriptions of your daughter's feelings, that she "thinks" she's a male because she has a particular "affinity" for many of the behaviour patterns of males in general. Arguably, some evidence of an "over developed" sense of empathy which is, maybe, commendable in itself.
Not sure if you've ever read much about "mirror neurons" -- basically, "monkey see, monkey do" -- but many neuroscientists and many others have argued that they are, in fact, what undergirds the whole phenomenon of empathy in the first place. Has its somewhat "pathological" or "amusing" manifestations -- see Konrad Lorenz on imprinting, and Woody Allen's Zelig -- but still an important if not essential part of being human:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUW8JsLDsNo
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/15/movies/film-zelig-woody-allen-s-story-about-a-chameleon-man-034845.html
So I'm definitely at a bit of a loss in seeing how your "thinks she's a 'male' ..." actually "squares" with your "not helpful to a girl in crisis". As you point out, she realizes that "a boy has a penis and testicles", but she apparently doesn't realize that the latter at least are kind of a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to qualify as a male in the first place.
No doubt a rather obscure point, particularly for juveniles given that many adults stumble over that concept of "necessary and sufficient". But that is largely why I've been arguing in favour of those "objective definitions", particularly those that qualify as the standard biological ones based on functional gonads.
So it seems that at least one effective way of dealing with your daughter's "body dysmorphia", and that of many other juveniles, is to emphasize that requirement, is to emphasize that, as much as she may "feel" as if she's a male, those feelings aren't sufficient to qualify as such. While I appreciate that you're trying to convince her that "unhealthy medical interventions" are "unwise", part of that seems to be to emphasize that as much as she may "succeed" at looking like a male, she won't actually ever BE one.
Incredibly complex issue, and I sure don't envy you having to deal with what is clearly a rather sticky wicket. Though I'm sure there are some joys and satisfactions of parenthood that I won't ever experience myself. But relative to that "disparity" between substance and appearance, between being a male or a female and only looking like one, I'm reminded of a rather brilliant article by Michelle Goldberg, an interview with transwoman "Helen Highwater":
Goldberg: "Though 'trans women are women' has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a 'vicious lie.' ...."
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/gender-critical-trans-women-the-apostates-of-the-trans-rights-movement.html
I can well appreciate your efforts, and those of many parents in the same boat, to save your kids from that particular bit of grief.
I appreciate how much you have thought about this issue, particularly when you don't have a personal stake in it - although I do believe we all have a personal stake in it in a broader sense. I have tried getting philosophical and technical at times with my daughter, probing her understanding of what it means to be male, but none of it has resonated with her because this is basically wishful thinking, or extreme fantasizing, and anything that interrupts the fantasy is resented. She also believes in the fictional "male brain" notion going around on the internet. Thus, in her mind, while her body is not that of a male, her brain is. Of course, there is no scientific basis for this. It also makes no sense unless there is such a thing as a brain that expects to see male body parts and works much better if it sees parts that look as if they were male - a totally and utterly made up notion. In other words, even if there were brains that had more "masculine" characteristics that might make a person more at home in a male societal role and a male-appearing body to accompany it, that would really just be saying that any masculine females (my definition, not yours) or feminine males (my definition, not yours) would only be at home in a body that appears the opposite sex because they will inevitably be unhappy living in society as the sex they are. Such a notion is regressive and doesn't allow for variation in the human condition, essentially punishing individuals whose femininity or masculinity is atypical by forcing them to medicalize and live a lie - when the real solution to such an issue is for society to end its narrow-mindedness. Further, that's not the argument being made, because, particularly for individuals like my daughter, who is not particularly masculine, although she has some masculine qualities(as do I, and most people are masculine in some ways and feminine in some ways), the argument is not that we need to transition masculine females and feminine males. Rather, the argument is that we need to transition anyone who thinks it's right for them - a consumerist notion for sure. The consumerist notion is disguised with the "gender identity" notion (which you know I have described as nonsense), but my daughter takes gender identity to refer to a scientific reality of a "male brain" (a brain that must be connected to either a male body, ideally, or, at least, a body that appears male) - because she so wants it to make sense, and thus adopted the "male brain" notion - but hasn't managed to think through the subtleties of that notion to realize that merely wanting to be male doesn't evidence a "male brain."
In the end, I agree that puberty is difficult and more so for girls (I myself didn't love it!), and they have been offered this get out of puberty free card. For those with any sort of vulnerability, this becomes an attractive notion, and it is harming a generation. I do want to say that, while this is terribly heart-breaking and distressing, you are right that there are things about being a parent that are wonderful and worth all the struggle. I would venture to guess that all parents going through this, like me, would still rather be going through it than not have their children. I'm not complaining that I hate being a parent to a trans-identified daughter. I'm complaining that society is doing an awful thing to vulnerable children, teens and young adults like my 17-year-old daughter who bought this notion that was sold to her at the vulnerable age of 12, and who has continued to receive the message that sterilizing herself, destroying her sexual function, and harming her overall health while pretending to be the opposite sex is a noble goal.
Wow, Steersman. So much to unpack. I will respond in more detail - it’s late as I read this - but suffice it to say: (1) I agree with you that we must be precise in our use of language when discussing important issues; and (2) there are many assumptions being made by people that defy reality these days!!! My daughter’s story is complicated and not entirely clear as to why she came to believe she is “really male.” (More on that later.) lastly, I did respond to Eliza. I basically told my story (my daughter’s and mine) with my commentary. I don’t know what she will get out of it, but she kindly responded. I don’t think she wants to constrain anyone’s responses to her request because she wants them to be as raw and uninhibited as possible (my thoughts alone). And one more comment - your writing is great and requires no apologies. I didn’t mean to say that meandering is a bad thing. It was challenging - which is a welcome distraction!
I quite like the 'meandering.' ha! Forced the mind into more critical/creative-thought, to pay close attention and extract meanings from the well-placed poetry/lyrics.