I find it comforting that you, a gay woman, has shared this. I am not gay, but shared many of your experiences, such as being a tom boy, having a crush on women when I was young and turns out I have a number of gay friends. But we never know how we will mature and what circumstances will take us to what outcome. The gay rights movement had the aura of legitimacy and was fighting injustice. I do not feel the same way about the trans lobby and their activities. I disagree with your partner's take on trans that we must "support our trans friends, as they are facing insurmountable dangers from the far right." I think most people are supportive of a live and let live philosophy, but the trans movement has made it a point to ride roughshod over women's rights and what they might see as adversity is really just push back against the breaking of the social contract of equal rights holders which is "I respect you, you respect me". Another point is many of the young teens I interact with in theatre are clearly going through "a phase", but are actively pursuing permanent changes. Most of them are autistic and I would know as I am also on the spectrum. Yet the medical community sees their "gender dysphoria" as the dominating issue, and not clear signs of autism or even their playing with various identities as expected in that life stage. It's like we used to examine fashions and select clothing, shoes to mould our appearance into an ideal. These kids are now picking sexual identities for themselves at the gender mall.
It does make one wonder if some of these people ever consider that they're adopting the same zero-tolerance strategies they claim to hate? Instead of conversion therapy they push medical gender reassignment and transitioning. Yet it's the same zero-sum game being played with peoples' lives and mental health.
Many of those pushing this ideology are doing so for retribution, not social progress or actual justice. They are not content to just "live and let live" and have genuine LGBTs (as opposed to the politically and media manufactured type) share equal rights and respect with the cis-hetero numerical majority. What they want is to destroy what they call heteronormativity altogether, and in the process eliminate pure homosexuality for the conception of a "spectrum" where gender and attraction itself are considered mere social constructs with no basis in objective, biological reality.
So, rather than accepting the fact that heteronormativity is the biological majority they are attempting to manufacture synthetic LGBTs at an alarming rate by putting pressure on kids who are captive audiences within the mandatory school system, and get them to in turn push that trend on other young people via social media. And they are doing so under the Virtue Cover of standing up for minority rights and opposing transphobia.
Since attempts by homophobes in the past failed to legislate or shame homosexuality or gender dysphoria out of existence, how do the liberal cis-heterophobes of today expect to do the same in the opposite direction?
This is a fantastic article. As an aside, I've always been fascinated to see the intersection between people who scream loudly about how children should not be charged as adults when they commit major felonies (the reasoning being their brains are not sufficiently developed to understand what they've done) and the people who scream loudly about allowing ALL children to transition and take puberty blockers. So their brains aren't mature enough to know that killing someone is wrong but they are mature enough to make decisions about treatment that could cause lifelong issues?
Identity-based politics are dangerous. Labeling people removes their individuality and allows for all kinds of stereotyping and marginalization. And lest we forget, the National Socialist party had all kinds of colored badges to identify people based on arbitrary categories like race, sexual orientation, and so on. We should all be very wary of where this path can lead.
To be fair, there is a difference between "cold cognition" and "hot cognition", with the former ability maturing significantly earlier than the latter. So there is some nuance about why some age limits should be higher than others, even if our society often gets it wrong or backwards. But otherwise, what you say makes sense.
No "T" is reasonable if he claims that he is actually a woman, any kind of woman, and demands access to women's spaces or women's sports. Right now almost no "reasonable Ts" are speaking up for women's sex-based rights and that children are too young to consent to "gender affirming" hormones and surgeries. They really need to because the "unreasonable Ts" are generating public hostility for anyone who is gender non-conforming, including to anyone with a homosexual orientation.
Thank you for this - “The idea that biology doesn't matter destroys the core of the gay community, which is entirely based on same-sex attraction.” I haven’t been able to reconcile how this movement’s underlying principle/message of ‘you were born wrong’ has been so widely accepted and ultimately impacts the most vulnerable. The message is by taking pills and getting surgery you avoid your internal emotional state of mind.
the complex nature of the human beings own evolution and to me a part of their soul's purpose is being completely shunned in favor of safetyism with a politcal agenda.
I am same sex attracted it was part of my soul's evolution, which when I reached adulthood I was to be able to understand and express as part of a larger story. If they told me as a child, because I dressed as a tomboy, and didn't like girl stuff and was told the message, your are just born in the wrong body. Then prescribed hormones to change fundamentally who I was it would've completely stunted a sexual awakening in my early 30's that profoundly changed my life. If I was trans, then I would've made this announcement then and transitioned in my 30's - but I wasn't - and I came out as gay. If they gave those cross sex hormones to me, they permanently damage sexual function.
I am really grateful for your deeply personal and honest sharing. I am apparently one of those aberrant conservatives (according to leftist political mythology) who loves and accepts gay and lesbian people. I support same-sex marriage. (Well, here I go, reverting to type … I just plain support marriage.).
The term “transphobe” angers me, as I have always accepted adults who choose to live as their opposite sex. ADULTS. I despise contemporary radical transgender ideology, and its cash-cow industry which cold-bloodedly mutilates and sterilizes children for profit. Erasing women, including gay women, and their hard-earned spaces, is collateral, but deeply concerning, damage. The real target is our children … their bodies AND their minds.
Think of all the dangers children face today … abduction and sexual enslavement, radical ideological indoctrination (race and gender), murder by falsely-labeled and unnecessary Covid “vaccination”, states seizing children from parents who dissent from political gender mandates … you were so right to refuse to fly the “progressive pride flag” … it is about all of the above threats to our children, and yes, also erases the hard-earned rights of ALL women.
Replying almost a year later lol. But... You're hardly an aberration, at least not if You're in the USA.
Support for same-sex marriage among registered Republicans has continued to ramp upwards over recent decades—actually cracking 50% and gaining majority support for the first time in 2021.
In 2023 polling there was a drop of a couple percentage points—back to under 50% of Republicans supporting same sex marriage—presumably because of the forced teaming with the increasingly obnoxious extremist trans movement.
Wonderful article. Reminds me of the tens of thousands of the testimonials on the #WalkAway page through 2019 before they were deplatformed. And here is a clear explanation of how Foucault and Derrida rode a wave of French activism to pre-wire the jump to pedophilia as a human right.
Perhaps you need to take your own advice there...PJ, Nothing in this essay was attacking you or your child.
In fact, this entire essay is in support of your child being loved and accepted and celebrated for exactly who they are in the perfect body *your body built for them*. It is a tragedy that you cannot see that.
Get off your high horse and take a moment to see past your pain to the fact that your child and their reality are being used as an excuse to undo all of the hard won human rights of Women, Gays and Lesbians. There is a lot of money to be made by convincing kind people that lifelong hormone subscriptions (formerly known as chemical castration) and genital mutilation are "care."
Your love for your child and her distress are being exploited for cash by huge pharmaceutical companies and surgeons with no morals.
Trying to block puberty traps a person in puberty for the rest of their lives. A child cannot consent to forgoing any possibility for a normal adult sex life or being a parent when they reach adulthood.
A child can neither understand what they are giving up or the lifelong suffering they are being pushed towards.
If you want to fight for your child then fight for a world where the blue cage & the pink cage are irrelevant.
Right now you are fighting to take your child out of one cage and put it in the other, and for stronger bars on the cages. Your child is not the problem, the cages are the problem. Throw away the cages! The cages trap every single one of us and do their damnedest to make us less than we are.
“I have no doubt that if I were a kid now, I would be telling my mother that I was born in the wrong body instead of just secretly praying to God about it.”
I’m a man. I have a wife & two teenage kids. If I were a kid now, I would be telling family I was born gay.
The whole transgender movement is rooted in misogyny, homophobia & stereotypes. The more they (TRA's) try to explain it all the more it doesn't make sense. That's why any response towards an objection from the TRA's ends w "...phobic"...end of debate!
Excellent article and so well written. I have compassion for transgenders, especially young people going through the pangs of growing up in a very confusing world. However, I have anger, rage and contempt for those greedy bastards taking advantage of these searching souls. The therapists, the doctors, the wealthy individuals and corporations financing lies, and the groomers who are using the situation to push an agenda that serves nothing but their wallets and evil warped ideas. They obviously don't worry about the lives that they are so assuredly destroying, and it reaches beyond the patient to all of us. Keep fighting and I will fight with you.
The difference between the LGB fight for rights and the T++++ fight for rights is that T++++ actively attacks LGB rights and works to eliminate them in society through ideology.
Imagine if the Civil Rights Movement had been oppressed and attacked by its own, it’s insanity.
Another difference is that they (T) are demanding sexual relations as a Human Right. LGs fought for the right to have sex with/amongst themselves.
Heterosexual male Transwomen are demanding that lesbians have (heterosexual) sex with them, calling those who refuse to date them (perform fellatio and have PIV intercourse with them) transphobic bigoted TERFs.
Lesbians cannot assert their homosexuality on dating apps without getting kicked off them.
LGBT orgs have rewritten the definition of gay to attracted to someone of the same gender, not sex.
In other words, they denying and cancelling homosexuality.
I really appreciated this thoughtful essay. I hope, though, in future writing you will divorce "T" from "LGB" for clarity's sake, and also for the sake of lesbians and gays who -- through this forced teaming, which has exploited acceptance of gay people to advance the "trans rights" movement -- are hurt by association with harms we never endorsed.
There are so many unsupported narratives in "woke" gender ideology, including that trans people are being victimized and brutalized, when even the most casual observer can see that it's gender-critical feminists and reasonably questioning others who are being bullied and intimidated. I recently ended a long friendship with a "woke" lesbian ex not because she has totally embraced the gender identity narrative, but because she supports a NYC law that heavily fines employers and landlords who decline to use employees', tenants' and customers' preferred pronouns.
I find that level of intolerance personally repugnant, an egregious trespass of the First Amendment, and -- sadly -- representative of "woke" gender ideologues. Unable to counter rational dissent -- including legitimate concerns for children and women -- they attempt to shut it down. It is profoundly unAmerican; authoritarianism from the Left is no less harmful than from the Right. Apart from the content of our disagreements, it destroys the structure by which they might be resolved.
I find it comforting that you, a gay woman, has shared this. I am not gay, but shared many of your experiences, such as being a tom boy, having a crush on women when I was young and turns out I have a number of gay friends. But we never know how we will mature and what circumstances will take us to what outcome. The gay rights movement had the aura of legitimacy and was fighting injustice. I do not feel the same way about the trans lobby and their activities. I disagree with your partner's take on trans that we must "support our trans friends, as they are facing insurmountable dangers from the far right." I think most people are supportive of a live and let live philosophy, but the trans movement has made it a point to ride roughshod over women's rights and what they might see as adversity is really just push back against the breaking of the social contract of equal rights holders which is "I respect you, you respect me". Another point is many of the young teens I interact with in theatre are clearly going through "a phase", but are actively pursuing permanent changes. Most of them are autistic and I would know as I am also on the spectrum. Yet the medical community sees their "gender dysphoria" as the dominating issue, and not clear signs of autism or even their playing with various identities as expected in that life stage. It's like we used to examine fashions and select clothing, shoes to mould our appearance into an ideal. These kids are now picking sexual identities for themselves at the gender mall.
It does make one wonder if some of these people ever consider that they're adopting the same zero-tolerance strategies they claim to hate? Instead of conversion therapy they push medical gender reassignment and transitioning. Yet it's the same zero-sum game being played with peoples' lives and mental health.
Many of those pushing this ideology are doing so for retribution, not social progress or actual justice. They are not content to just "live and let live" and have genuine LGBTs (as opposed to the politically and media manufactured type) share equal rights and respect with the cis-hetero numerical majority. What they want is to destroy what they call heteronormativity altogether, and in the process eliminate pure homosexuality for the conception of a "spectrum" where gender and attraction itself are considered mere social constructs with no basis in objective, biological reality.
So, rather than accepting the fact that heteronormativity is the biological majority they are attempting to manufacture synthetic LGBTs at an alarming rate by putting pressure on kids who are captive audiences within the mandatory school system, and get them to in turn push that trend on other young people via social media. And they are doing so under the Virtue Cover of standing up for minority rights and opposing transphobia.
Since attempts by homophobes in the past failed to legislate or shame homosexuality or gender dysphoria out of existence, how do the liberal cis-heterophobes of today expect to do the same in the opposite direction?
This is a fantastic article. As an aside, I've always been fascinated to see the intersection between people who scream loudly about how children should not be charged as adults when they commit major felonies (the reasoning being their brains are not sufficiently developed to understand what they've done) and the people who scream loudly about allowing ALL children to transition and take puberty blockers. So their brains aren't mature enough to know that killing someone is wrong but they are mature enough to make decisions about treatment that could cause lifelong issues?
Identity-based politics are dangerous. Labeling people removes their individuality and allows for all kinds of stereotyping and marginalization. And lest we forget, the National Socialist party had all kinds of colored badges to identify people based on arbitrary categories like race, sexual orientation, and so on. We should all be very wary of where this path can lead.
To be fair, there is a difference between "cold cognition" and "hot cognition", with the former ability maturing significantly earlier than the latter. So there is some nuance about why some age limits should be higher than others, even if our society often gets it wrong or backwards. But otherwise, what you say makes sense.
Trans radicals are the huge problem. LGB, and reasonable Ts, need to stand up now.
No "T" is reasonable if he claims that he is actually a woman, any kind of woman, and demands access to women's spaces or women's sports. Right now almost no "reasonable Ts" are speaking up for women's sex-based rights and that children are too young to consent to "gender affirming" hormones and surgeries. They really need to because the "unreasonable Ts" are generating public hostility for anyone who is gender non-conforming, including to anyone with a homosexual orientation.
Thank you for this - “The idea that biology doesn't matter destroys the core of the gay community, which is entirely based on same-sex attraction.” I haven’t been able to reconcile how this movement’s underlying principle/message of ‘you were born wrong’ has been so widely accepted and ultimately impacts the most vulnerable. The message is by taking pills and getting surgery you avoid your internal emotional state of mind.
the complex nature of the human beings own evolution and to me a part of their soul's purpose is being completely shunned in favor of safetyism with a politcal agenda.
You might want to elaborate on what you mean because I do not understand and I would like to understand!
I am same sex attracted it was part of my soul's evolution, which when I reached adulthood I was to be able to understand and express as part of a larger story. If they told me as a child, because I dressed as a tomboy, and didn't like girl stuff and was told the message, your are just born in the wrong body. Then prescribed hormones to change fundamentally who I was it would've completely stunted a sexual awakening in my early 30's that profoundly changed my life. If I was trans, then I would've made this announcement then and transitioned in my 30's - but I wasn't - and I came out as gay. If they gave those cross sex hormones to me, they permanently damage sexual function.
I am really grateful for your deeply personal and honest sharing. I am apparently one of those aberrant conservatives (according to leftist political mythology) who loves and accepts gay and lesbian people. I support same-sex marriage. (Well, here I go, reverting to type … I just plain support marriage.).
The term “transphobe” angers me, as I have always accepted adults who choose to live as their opposite sex. ADULTS. I despise contemporary radical transgender ideology, and its cash-cow industry which cold-bloodedly mutilates and sterilizes children for profit. Erasing women, including gay women, and their hard-earned spaces, is collateral, but deeply concerning, damage. The real target is our children … their bodies AND their minds.
Think of all the dangers children face today … abduction and sexual enslavement, radical ideological indoctrination (race and gender), murder by falsely-labeled and unnecessary Covid “vaccination”, states seizing children from parents who dissent from political gender mandates … you were so right to refuse to fly the “progressive pride flag” … it is about all of the above threats to our children, and yes, also erases the hard-earned rights of ALL women.
Thank you for writing your truth.
Replying almost a year later lol. But... You're hardly an aberration, at least not if You're in the USA.
Support for same-sex marriage among registered Republicans has continued to ramp upwards over recent decades—actually cracking 50% and gaining majority support for the first time in 2021.
In 2023 polling there was a drop of a couple percentage points—back to under 50% of Republicans supporting same sex marriage—presumably because of the forced teaming with the increasingly obnoxious extremist trans movement.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1249216/support-for-same-sex-marriage-in-the-united-states-by-political-party/
Wonderful article. Reminds me of the tens of thousands of the testimonials on the #WalkAway page through 2019 before they were deplatformed. And here is a clear explanation of how Foucault and Derrida rode a wave of French activism to pre-wire the jump to pedophilia as a human right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwLyP-vSnt0&t=178s&ab_channel=TheLivingPhilosophy
Thankyou
Perhaps performative displays of any symbol are great antidotes to thinking.
Great article! Thank you for helping me understand.
Perhaps you need to take your own advice there...PJ, Nothing in this essay was attacking you or your child.
In fact, this entire essay is in support of your child being loved and accepted and celebrated for exactly who they are in the perfect body *your body built for them*. It is a tragedy that you cannot see that.
Get off your high horse and take a moment to see past your pain to the fact that your child and their reality are being used as an excuse to undo all of the hard won human rights of Women, Gays and Lesbians. There is a lot of money to be made by convincing kind people that lifelong hormone subscriptions (formerly known as chemical castration) and genital mutilation are "care."
Your love for your child and her distress are being exploited for cash by huge pharmaceutical companies and surgeons with no morals.
Trying to block puberty traps a person in puberty for the rest of their lives. A child cannot consent to forgoing any possibility for a normal adult sex life or being a parent when they reach adulthood.
A child can neither understand what they are giving up or the lifelong suffering they are being pushed towards.
If you want to fight for your child then fight for a world where the blue cage & the pink cage are irrelevant.
Right now you are fighting to take your child out of one cage and put it in the other, and for stronger bars on the cages. Your child is not the problem, the cages are the problem. Throw away the cages! The cages trap every single one of us and do their damnedest to make us less than we are.
Are you replying to the right article?
This is a misplaced reply to a comment further down.
“I have no doubt that if I were a kid now, I would be telling my mother that I was born in the wrong body instead of just secretly praying to God about it.”
I’m a man. I have a wife & two teenage kids. If I were a kid now, I would be telling family I was born gay.
wow, yes I know so many straight people that have said this same thing to me.
For the record, I have no regrets about the path I choose.
Please keep talking. We need you. Thank you.
The whole transgender movement is rooted in misogyny, homophobia & stereotypes. The more they (TRA's) try to explain it all the more it doesn't make sense. That's why any response towards an objection from the TRA's ends w "...phobic"...end of debate!
Excellent article and so well written. I have compassion for transgenders, especially young people going through the pangs of growing up in a very confusing world. However, I have anger, rage and contempt for those greedy bastards taking advantage of these searching souls. The therapists, the doctors, the wealthy individuals and corporations financing lies, and the groomers who are using the situation to push an agenda that serves nothing but their wallets and evil warped ideas. They obviously don't worry about the lives that they are so assuredly destroying, and it reaches beyond the patient to all of us. Keep fighting and I will fight with you.
The difference between the LGB fight for rights and the T++++ fight for rights is that T++++ actively attacks LGB rights and works to eliminate them in society through ideology.
Imagine if the Civil Rights Movement had been oppressed and attacked by its own, it’s insanity.
Another difference is that they (T) are demanding sexual relations as a Human Right. LGs fought for the right to have sex with/amongst themselves.
Heterosexual male Transwomen are demanding that lesbians have (heterosexual) sex with them, calling those who refuse to date them (perform fellatio and have PIV intercourse with them) transphobic bigoted TERFs.
Lesbians cannot assert their homosexuality on dating apps without getting kicked off them.
LGBT orgs have rewritten the definition of gay to attracted to someone of the same gender, not sex.
In other words, they denying and cancelling homosexuality.
I really appreciated this thoughtful essay. I hope, though, in future writing you will divorce "T" from "LGB" for clarity's sake, and also for the sake of lesbians and gays who -- through this forced teaming, which has exploited acceptance of gay people to advance the "trans rights" movement -- are hurt by association with harms we never endorsed.
There are so many unsupported narratives in "woke" gender ideology, including that trans people are being victimized and brutalized, when even the most casual observer can see that it's gender-critical feminists and reasonably questioning others who are being bullied and intimidated. I recently ended a long friendship with a "woke" lesbian ex not because she has totally embraced the gender identity narrative, but because she supports a NYC law that heavily fines employers and landlords who decline to use employees', tenants' and customers' preferred pronouns.
I find that level of intolerance personally repugnant, an egregious trespass of the First Amendment, and -- sadly -- representative of "woke" gender ideologues. Unable to counter rational dissent -- including legitimate concerns for children and women -- they attempt to shut it down. It is profoundly unAmerican; authoritarianism from the Left is no less harmful than from the Right. Apart from the content of our disagreements, it destroys the structure by which they might be resolved.