Somewhat en passant, particularly since the link may not have been all that evident, you might also want to take a look at my submission to Statistics Canada -- to say that I'm "peeved" with them is an understatement 😉:
Important stuff! Let's keep in touch. I'm beyond peeved too. I waffle between utter exasperation and quaking with fear about the future of the next generation, along with back burner questions about how high my taxes in this blue state are going to pay off these greedy doctors. I highly recommend the latest Benjamin Boyce video with Lisa Mondegreen on his YouTube channel. She snuck in to the WPATH meeting (in Canada?) and what she saw was absurd and outrageous.
Amen to all of that. If you want to subscribe, even for a moment, to my Substack I can send you my email address so we can chat offline. Making common cause seems the only way of turning the transloonie tide. 🙂
And I'm particularly interested in your experiences as a "trans widow", and your comments, if I remember correctly, about "disassociation". I've often argued that the phenomenon of transgenderism provides something of an insight into how we all develop our senses of self, and how that process can go off the rails.
But thanks for the suggestion about Boyce and Mondegreen; I'll look for the video. In case you're not aware of Eliza's Substack, and hadn't seen her WPATH article:
This could be a very interesting connection! my email uses my children's author pen name Lea Utsira (generations-ago Norwegian immigrants to Canada from that island, the westernmost of Norway) Thus: leautsira@gmail.com
Thanks Ute. I'll send you an email shortly, though you may want to edit your comment and delete your email address as you may wind up with spam otherwise. 🙂
Once you subscribe -- thanks -- your email shows up in my list of subscribers.
🙂 A "mess", indeed; a dog's breakfast, a bedlam produced because every man, woman, and otherkin - and their dogs, cats, and gerbils - has a different definition for sex and gender. And very few are listening to anyone else; no wonder they're all riding madly off in all directions.
But that's largely why I've been trying to promote rational and scientific definitions for both - see my Welcome for some preliminary elaborations 🙂:
But "comic relief" seems the only sensible way to approach the issue - you probably know of Jefferson's quip on the topic:
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of [gender]."
😉 (Sorry about that Thomas ...)
But "gender" has to take the cake in the "unintelligible propositions" sweepstakes. Though I've argued there is some glimmer of sense and science in the concept that will take some effort to develop and promote.
Lexi: "... a little bit of stability amidst this chaos ..."
🙂 Indeed. As you put it in your "S-He-It" post, "Logic may help you to keep your head when those around you are losing theirs.🤪" 👍🙂 But en passant, Amazon-CanadaPost have just informed me that your book has shipped so I should have it by the end of the week.
But I think more people are looking for that, and are maybe open to examining some of their "unexamined assumptions". Unfortunately, most people don't even know they have them so react rather "illogically" when confronted with some evidence or argument that they have them and that they don't hold much water at all. As Mark Twain put it:
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
Lexi: "... what do you attribute their real motives to be?"
Very good question, one I've been puzzling over for some time. I think vanity and envy covers a large part of it - on both or several sides of the issue. Fairly decent article here by UK "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones which I think speaks to part of that, this passage in particular:
"Because I’m going to say that what’s being concealed is the reality of sex, and the conflation of sex and gender enabled by pretending this horrendous clusterfuck is a bun-fight over some mythic essence of womanhood which confers some kind of privilege we’re all so jealously guarding."
"mythic essence", indeed. A somewhat less than flattering squabble, in part at least, over who's going to claim the golden apple - "for the fairest".
Lexi: "what if ... intentionally mess up our hormonally driven sexual development? ..."
I kind of expect it's more a case of Hanlon's razor: ""never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." The painting that goes along with the Wikipedia article is, sadly, a rather damning indictment of much of humanity:
Not sure if you've read anything about endocrine disrupters but some evidence that many of the chemicals we're creating and pumping into the environment - willy, nilly - are seriously messing with our "development, behavior, fertility, and maintenance of homeostasis (normal cell metabolism)":
Reminds me of reading something to the effect that one of the major causes for the collapse of the Roman Empire was that, for all their engineering marvels in creating aqueducts, they used lead pipes for their water supplies - which of course leads to lead poisoning:
"crazy world", indeed. Though your point about logic is one to keep in mind. As Conan Doyle put it:
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
But logic is, unfortunately or not, not a panacea; generally only as good as the premises one starts from - which are, as you've suggested, often rather subjective. As Martin Luther put it, "That whore Reason."
Thanks for this essay! I have to read it more thoroughly soon. I hope you'll allow me to excerpt some of the great points, with credit. Ute Heggen
Thanks for the compliments; please do. 🙂
Somewhat en passant, particularly since the link may not have been all that evident, you might also want to take a look at my submission to Statistics Canada -- to say that I'm "peeved" with them is an understatement 😉:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kRIpfkx0sq8y0nC7HBK6GyMiI_SUv_zv/view?usp=sharing
Bookmarked it. Let's keep in touch. Ute
Indeed. Just sent you an email.
And thanks again for the subscription. 🙂
Important stuff! Let's keep in touch. I'm beyond peeved too. I waffle between utter exasperation and quaking with fear about the future of the next generation, along with back burner questions about how high my taxes in this blue state are going to pay off these greedy doctors. I highly recommend the latest Benjamin Boyce video with Lisa Mondegreen on his YouTube channel. She snuck in to the WPATH meeting (in Canada?) and what she saw was absurd and outrageous.
Amen to all of that. If you want to subscribe, even for a moment, to my Substack I can send you my email address so we can chat offline. Making common cause seems the only way of turning the transloonie tide. 🙂
And I'm particularly interested in your experiences as a "trans widow", and your comments, if I remember correctly, about "disassociation". I've often argued that the phenomenon of transgenderism provides something of an insight into how we all develop our senses of self, and how that process can go off the rails.
But thanks for the suggestion about Boyce and Mondegreen; I'll look for the video. In case you're not aware of Eliza's Substack, and hadn't seen her WPATH article:
https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/so-i-went-to-wpath
https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/the-invisible-audience
This could be a very interesting connection! my email uses my children's author pen name Lea Utsira (generations-ago Norwegian immigrants to Canada from that island, the westernmost of Norway) Thus: leautsira@gmail.com
Thanks Ute. I'll send you an email shortly, though you may want to edit your comment and delete your email address as you may wind up with spam otherwise. 🙂
Once you subscribe -- thanks -- your email shows up in my list of subscribers.
Jim
🙂 A "mess", indeed; a dog's breakfast, a bedlam produced because every man, woman, and otherkin - and their dogs, cats, and gerbils - has a different definition for sex and gender. And very few are listening to anyone else; no wonder they're all riding madly off in all directions.
But that's largely why I've been trying to promote rational and scientific definitions for both - see my Welcome for some preliminary elaborations 🙂:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome
But "comic relief" seems the only sensible way to approach the issue - you probably know of Jefferson's quip on the topic:
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of [gender]."
😉 (Sorry about that Thomas ...)
But "gender" has to take the cake in the "unintelligible propositions" sweepstakes. Though I've argued there is some glimmer of sense and science in the concept that will take some effort to develop and promote.
Lexi: "... a little bit of stability amidst this chaos ..."
🙂 Indeed. As you put it in your "S-He-It" post, "Logic may help you to keep your head when those around you are losing theirs.🤪" 👍🙂 But en passant, Amazon-CanadaPost have just informed me that your book has shipped so I should have it by the end of the week.
But I think more people are looking for that, and are maybe open to examining some of their "unexamined assumptions". Unfortunately, most people don't even know they have them so react rather "illogically" when confronted with some evidence or argument that they have them and that they don't hold much water at all. As Mark Twain put it:
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/738123-what-gets-us-into-trouble-is-not-what-we-don-t
Lexi: "... what do you attribute their real motives to be?"
Very good question, one I've been puzzling over for some time. I think vanity and envy covers a large part of it - on both or several sides of the issue. Fairly decent article here by UK "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones which I think speaks to part of that, this passage in particular:
"Because I’m going to say that what’s being concealed is the reality of sex, and the conflation of sex and gender enabled by pretending this horrendous clusterfuck is a bun-fight over some mythic essence of womanhood which confers some kind of privilege we’re all so jealously guarding."
https://janeclarejones.com/2020/01/15/unreasonable-ideas-a-reply-to-alison-phipps/
"mythic essence", indeed. A somewhat less than flattering squabble, in part at least, over who's going to claim the golden apple - "for the fairest".
Lexi: "what if ... intentionally mess up our hormonally driven sexual development? ..."
I kind of expect it's more a case of Hanlon's razor: ""never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." The painting that goes along with the Wikipedia article is, sadly, a rather damning indictment of much of humanity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Not sure if you've read anything about endocrine disrupters but some evidence that many of the chemicals we're creating and pumping into the environment - willy, nilly - are seriously messing with our "development, behavior, fertility, and maintenance of homeostasis (normal cell metabolism)":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
Reminds me of reading something to the effect that one of the major causes for the collapse of the Roman Empire was that, for all their engineering marvels in creating aqueducts, they used lead pipes for their water supplies - which of course leads to lead poisoning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#History
"Forgive them Lord ..."
Lexi: "A little Sunday hymn ..."
Nice, I like it. 🙂 Reminds me of a couple of my favourites along the same line, Ronstadt's "torch song" and Midler's "The Rose":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScOpzm-BYX4
As someone once said - title of a book? - the heart is a lonely hunter.
But you're quite right on the "nice day" - a fine early autumn one here, perfect for my "daily constitutional"; later. 🙂
"crazy world", indeed. Though your point about logic is one to keep in mind. As Conan Doyle put it:
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
But logic is, unfortunately or not, not a panacea; generally only as good as the premises one starts from - which are, as you've suggested, often rather subjective. As Martin Luther put it, "That whore Reason."