When Hollywood actress Annette Bening declared, “To have a transgender kid has made me much more interesting,” she likely didn’t realize she was exposing a larger and darker truth about today’s cultural obsession with transgender-identifying children—or, indeed, about herself.
What stood out for me was when she said, "I think the greatest gift of my life is to have kids." My thought regarding this sentiment, which I share with her, is, "Then why advocate for a medical process that will jeopardize your child's fertility?"
This is an amazing insight. I’d like to add. The physicians. What is their pathology. As a retired pediatrician, I was a colleague 25 years ago with another pediatrician who currently does gender medicine and is a known advocate. She was nuts (using the vernacular) 25 years ago. She was attention seeking and dominated all conversations. There is definitely psychopathology among the physicians. Savior complex?
We encountered so many nurses and social workers in the mental health system with my teen daughter who suddenly adopted the idea of transitioning as a part of severe mental health issues that hit in the early teen years who were clearly affirming and encouraging medicalization and transition because it made them feel excited, special, and like a hero. It was fun and entertaining for them and they got to feel superior to the "awful parents" telling them to stop, that they did not consent, and to please treat the anxiety and depression instead. There are some seriously self-absorbed, shallow people in these fields doing a lot of harm.
Some therapists became social activists.The social worker Board did nothing.
Nothing. We have to do CEU’s every two years to make sure we don’t accept mittens from a client… That would be an ethical dilemma. But the board and the current education of counseling and therapy is teaching social advocacy as opposed to evidence based practice. 100% bullshit. I’ve been a therapist for 23 years. It is the board and the social advocacy of therapist that created this cultural bunch. Speak up. Let people know your truth. So many people fell into it… I was one of the few therapists in my area that would even talk about the nonsense of it. And part of the reason I was able to see it is because I am a lesbian in and watched young adolescent, females falling into some intense, nonsensical, and misogynistic woke joke. Most of my peers sat around and just stared at me. I could tell horror stories. But I won’t. Because we’re finally moving on and that’s a damn good thing! I dislike everything about the current administration. But I am so happy title IX is returning, and woke is waning- praise God! Gender Explorative therapy and Forward.com = NEVER AGAIN!
As an Occupational Therapist of over 30 years, I have watched a significant portion of my profession embrace this ideology. Our roots as mental health professionals has been completely obscured! I am sorry for your experiences with your daughter. Please know that there ARE professionals that do still read the latest research and want what’s actually the BEST for your child based on facts, and looking comprehensively at you and your family.
The question of what is wrong with the doctors and therapists who encourage transition is an important one. We will see it explored through the upcoming wave of malpractice litigation.
I can imagine class actions against hospital groups and clinics. I even foresee future human rights cases perhaps in international forums where a generation of maimed people seek reparations and large trust funds to cover the costs of their lifetime medical care.
Litigation may be the most important strategy to end this social contagion as quickly and humanely as possible.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when the Trump administration immediately reverses course on Title 9, insurance coverage for transition surgeries, and funding to schools and universities that promote gender ideology.
As others have noted, the key will be to enlist the support of moderate liberals by showing them the studies, the science, and how other rational countries have altered course based on evidence.
I am still amazed that parents like myself who want to protect their children's natural bodies and prevent self-harm are demonized and ostracized while parents who medicalize their kids are celebrated.
Parents who take pride in having a "trans kid" disturb me. "Whether consciously or not, they had turned their children into symbols of their own moral virtue, sacrificing their futures in the process."
It's a Munchausen's issue. The sicker the kid, the more attention and sympathy the parental unit gets. These are not "parents." They do not deserve to be called that. They are in fact, emotionally and psychologically stunted preadolescents.
As a psychologist who has long been concerned about how wokeness has invaded my field, I really appreciate this thoughtful and articulate essay. I hope it finds a broad readership.
What an incisive and beautifully written analysis! Thanks, Courage Coalition, for all you have done this year and all of the light you continue to shine on this scandal.
Talk about saying the quiet part out loud! Her lack of awareness of how that would sound to anyone outside of the "progressive" bubble shows how completely out of touch she is. I have yet to see any mainstream news coverage even mention the large crowd that was on the pro-ban side of the courthouse. If the press mentioned us, then readers would want to see photos, and they would see what a diverse group we were: young and old, housewives and butch lesbians, gay guys, detransitioners, hippies and normies... I noticed that Pink News included a photo of the people on our side by mistake. Ha!
Yes, I think it was Lisa Selin Davis who said she tried to speak to journalists there, saying something like ‘look at this diverse crowd- wouldn’t that make a great story?’ Needless to say, her words fell on deaf ears.
That old saying, "misery loves company," might fit here. If I am not emotionally balanced and whole, the more who share my dysfunctionality, the better. When almost everyone else seems off-kilter, a little nuts or even aberrant, I get to feel like I'm the new "normal."
Terrific work here, and I particularly appreciate the View from Skrmetti. The amount of information and insight gained from that one rally event is incalculable. Thanks to all who were able to attend and for bringing us the news. A question, also, if you have a link listing these studies, I would so appreciate having it to draw from for background information when trying to explain this to friends and neighbors who still don’t understand what is happening: “What makes this especially tragic is that most gender-dysphoric children—between 60% and 90%, according to 11 long-term studies—would naturally desist if left alone.”
For decades, since the 80’s, the number of self-identified people who engage in same-sex practices has on average been around 6% of the population in the US.
Around 6%, not 10%, not 1%.
the numbers vary from 1% to 10-12% depending on survey method, which can be either too intrusive or too anonymous. Consider just a center of the range, and use it for a start.
The tendency to self-identify as trans and live as trans in a lifetime has centered on around 0.3% of the population, consistent over decades. Trans has altered definitions gradually to take on transvestism, transsexualism, transgender, nonbinary, and other but, the most stable definition has centered on around 0.3% of the population since th 80’s
6% : 0.3% or roughly 95:5 as a ratio.
For every 95 adult lesbian or gay people you may encounter 5 trans in a population.
When you then read dysphorc children articles, what you begin to see is 95% of children “desist” or 90% “desist within the years of puberty - not even lifetime; these children reject trans and move towards gay straight or lesbian before adulthood, whereas most stable trans historically move towards it after adulthood.
That’s where ratio of roughly 95:5 or so crops up again.
For every 95 dysphoria kids you will find they are quickly gay or lesbian, and the remaining 5 we don’t know.
Not all lesbians and gays are dysphoric kids. Not everyone comes out as a teenager. Yet, as all people proceed to adulthood they have a more ans more stable sexuality and identity.
This will likely become more solid if you see these kids over 10-20 year frames - gays and lesbians rarely become trans but “trans identified” fairly commonly desist (10%? 30%?) back to lesbian, gay, or straight.
From puberty to 60, 70 when identity is most stable and most fixed you will see convergence back to the 95:5 or so seen for 40 years prior to 2000’s when the categories of trans started being disrupted to “prove” there were more trans than through.
Foe every lifetime in a population, for every 95 gays and lesbians we encounter we may also see 5 trans.
Decades long data, and consistent with child dysphoria research.
Hi Susan, Just seeing your request now. The link above is a critique by Canadian psychologist James Cantor, PhD, analyzing the ideology based pro-trans position of the AAP and deconstructing its justifications for supporting transition for minors.
Cantor relies upon decades of studies going back to 1972, which he lists and describes, that we rely upon today when asserting that the majority of gender non-conforming children will grow up to be gay once they reach or pass puberty.
It's just a normal part of child development. The dem's have turned a kid's normal, natural curiosity into a social anomaly and put it under a microscope, as something to which they "should be" responsive and adaptive. It's just plain ludicrous!
Using their children for virtue signaling. Hopefully, it will not be long before there is a reckoning, and with it, there will be massive lawsuits and years of therapy. This is such an unbelievable mess.
What you're much more likely to see, due to family dynamics, is a quiet slinking away in the majority of cases as the victim slips out of the limelight.
Very few kids are willing or able to publicly turn against their parents because they'd lose the rest of their family and be rendered outcast if they did.
I'm in pro of accusation: if instead of feeling more interesting and brave society will make them feel guilty and call them for what they are, bad parents (I'm talking about Transhausen by proxy) they will drop the show immediately. It's narcisimus. Same with men. As a fervour defender of free speech I don't think we should forbid men to cross dress (some feminist do). But if (besides not allowing them in women spaces and sports) everybody will call them "sir" they will drop it too. We are past compassion and empathy. The health of minors and women are at stake (women too; they are being raped in jail by men with tranvestic fetishism).
Yes, I am past the point t of looking for compromise because it isn’t something they are capable. They are incapable of having any conversation that isn’t me, me, all, all right now! They have no empathy for women placed in cells with violent men who are lying about being trans women. At the point where I am talking about only men clearly lying to be moved to a female prison, who wouldn’t want that, and they consistently say it is ok because the guards rape the women anyway, I’m out. It took about ten-fifteen of those to make me stop trying.
Now I have come to realize that even talking to liberals is a waste of time. I’ve moved to the talking to conservatives stage. Pleasing them to do something. It is in their political best interest to to do something as their base will cheer them on. It is political gold for anyone who takes up the cause. Nancy Mace is doing so. She is being criticized of using it for publicity. Of course she is, she is a politician getting her name out there. That is what she is supposed to be doing according to the rules of the game. She is using my anger and others to get what she wants. I don’t care because it gets me what I want. Violent and predatory men out of female only spaces. Prisons and locker rooms are my property. The rest is needed but aren’t what makes me enraged in the coldest way. They demanded all and were given it. The only answer women can now is, no, none.
Oh but they are not all liying. They are more sexual aggressors among "trans" population. Mary Harrington wrote about it. In "cis" inmates de % of sexual aggressors is 13-15% (Mary has statistics from different countries). In "trans" inmates the % is 45-55%.
I had a discussion with an ex-text sex worker on reddit (where else). They had been involved in sissy porn, providing the "feminize yourself" instructions to customers.
That person told me that part of the dynamic is that the customer never remains in one mental position with respect to what counts as erotic. The intensity always has to be a factor, and since once a level of sissification is familiar the intensity dissipates, the customer must always move farther along the path of larping. The goal is always humiliation and shame, so it's not purely about cross-dressing for the mirror in a positive, "I'm pretty" way. It's about imagining that one is the degraded sex. Of course, to have that view of women is a precondition.
It's no surprise that there is always a progression. This is how kink works. The intensity is found at the edge, in fear.
Another aspect that's no surprise: this former sex worker told me that the work had damaged (him, probably him). The visions of the imagined roles stuck with him and interfered with his former default interiority. Fantasy and turn-on shifted to revolve around this stuff. That's how sex works in general, at least if troubling or difficult practices are slotted into eroticism in any impactful way. Flashes of the forbidden intrude and replace whatever was satisfying before. A person can come to believe, this ocd-like experience is the "real", "deeper" them.
I think this dynamic is not soothing or peaceful. It's not celebratory or intimate. If it's "beautiful" to some, I think it's the sort of aesthetic described as desirable by the dissatisfied, "sophisticated" jade. It is also imbued with urgency. So, no surprise if this mental habit opens the door to transgression more generally. No surprise if other paraphilias are also involved. It's not *only* the case that a default tendency towards transgression can lead *to* this sort of behavior, although that direction of travel happens as well, without a shred of doubt. I think any of these edge-seeking behaviors can lead to adding more to the repertoire.
I’ve seen parent after parent leave their child in “gender” distress instead of allowing him or her to be gay. They’d rather have a “broken” kid who they can shuttle through the medical system, always blaming their child’s neuroses instead of their bad parenting for the child’s lack of self-acceptance — rather than a gay one (or let’s be real, usually rather than a butch lesbian one, because this is happening so much more often to girls).
There are also a lot of parents who would rather have a special "trans teen" whose problems are all caused by other people's "transphobia" than an angst-ridden, messy, struggling behaviorally difficult, often straight, extra emotionally intense and/or sensitive teenage girl going through normal (although perhaps elevated) adolescent dysregulation and distress. There's not much sympathy in the world for these girls. They are routinely mocked, looked down on, or ignored. Let them find the gender nonsense online and their parents can run with it and turn those struggles that don't get much sympathy and might even be seen as embarrassing into something special, supported, and respected.
Take this girl's very sensitive mental health struggles being made very public by her father, including some very specific troubling behaviors. How much sympathy would the family and girl get for these struggles and behaviors without the trans identity to go with it?
I was so troubled reading it for so many reasons. One of the things that really upsets me is I know all too well that when a girl is struggling that "messy" way, she is looked down on, dismissed, and judged by friends and family and the entire mental health system because she is so emotionally dysregulated and difficult to treat and challenging in her behavior. And her parents will be judged harshly by everyone - friends, family, and professionals again - for what they did wrong to cause this without understanding that many adolescent girls really, really struggle with the physical, emotional, and social changes of puberty even in the most loving, stable, supportive, and functional families. There should be sympathy and actual good support. But would anyone care about this child and her struggles in the same way without the trans identity? Would the parents be seen as heroes and advocates fighting for their child without the identity? These girls and their families also deserve sensitivity, support, and quality care. It's not surprising that a good chunk of them will take on this identity. Walk into any adolescent inpatient program and see how many of the girls are identifying this way now
I have an autistic teen girl who has been in and out of residential care for the last 4 years. She’s been in many programs with girls who are identifying as boys. I think it is an easier path for many parents to go along with the girls who want to be boys because it’s a problem the kids are happy to focus on instead of the anger the kids have about their autism or behavioral or mental health issues.
Another piece I don’t see addressed very often is that I cannot get my daughter sterilized even though she will never be able to live independently or care for a child, but if she was trans, I could. I don’t want her to be trans, but I wouldn’t deny that knowing she couldn’t have a child would be tempting. There is a whiff of eugenics happening here.
I feel your frustration. You are really between a rock and a hard place.
Having worked with many autistic young people that also live with a disability, I saw a real attraction to following the zeitgeist amongst them. I never thought in a million years they'd be transing young people that were already lifelong medical patients...but it is now occurring. This Ideology has no boundaries.
Should parents be held accountable for FDIA? As a previous school psychologist, I saw this behavior in parents not only with ‘trans kids’ but with all kinds of mental health diagnoses. Half the time, the time the diagnoses were self fulfilling and the parents/professionals were intensifying the issues. Many of the kids would have been better off being told they were fine and to provide consequences for poor behavior not medical excuses.
Having gone through a period of wanting to “be a boy” at age 11, and learning from a teacher that as a girl and a woman I could be and do whatever I wanted and did not need to change my name or my clothes (we never thought of changing our bodies), I have to think that many kids today are being pushed into doing things by adults. I would have probably, at age 11, started the social transition process if my teacher has told me that was cool rather than telling me that women’s lib was cool. And I have very happily lived as a (not very “feminine”) free girl and woman for the 50 years since then. As have my 3 friends who were going to “become boys” with me.
It makes the case that forced sterilization should be held to be strictly illegal under the 14th amendment of the constitution. Parents who partially or completely subject their children to forced sterilization, as well as governmental groups, and medicinal individuals and institutions should be punished harshly, and judged by that fact in public view.
These are the same people who take their young children to inappropriate pride parades. Because, you know, a five-year-old really needs to see a gay man’s naked ass in a pair of chaps.
There are many children’s books out right now that parents buy that talk about “how mommy protests” and how to participate. A friend’s granddaughters are regularly taken to protests by their mom. For many, protests are the new “church service” where they implore their “god/government” to give them worth and their desires.
What stood out for me was when she said, "I think the greatest gift of my life is to have kids." My thought regarding this sentiment, which I share with her, is, "Then why advocate for a medical process that will jeopardize your child's fertility?"
that was the stand out line for me too: how dare she deny others this gift before they can truly know and decide.
gender non-conformity needs normalizing and acceptance, not medicization.
We had acceptance long ago. Think about Elton John or the 80s hair bands who wore makeup. Non-conformity has been around a long time.
Yes, reminds me of “Rachel” Levine.
And why advocate for abortion so that millions of little girls are killed in the womb?
This is an amazing insight. I’d like to add. The physicians. What is their pathology. As a retired pediatrician, I was a colleague 25 years ago with another pediatrician who currently does gender medicine and is a known advocate. She was nuts (using the vernacular) 25 years ago. She was attention seeking and dominated all conversations. There is definitely psychopathology among the physicians. Savior complex?
We encountered so many nurses and social workers in the mental health system with my teen daughter who suddenly adopted the idea of transitioning as a part of severe mental health issues that hit in the early teen years who were clearly affirming and encouraging medicalization and transition because it made them feel excited, special, and like a hero. It was fun and entertaining for them and they got to feel superior to the "awful parents" telling them to stop, that they did not consent, and to please treat the anxiety and depression instead. There are some seriously self-absorbed, shallow people in these fields doing a lot of harm.
I am so sad about this and so ashamed. Even tho I never was involved in this directly.
Good read, thank you!
“Not so,” Don’t beat yourself up! Keep Speaking up!
Some therapists became social activists.The social worker Board did nothing.
Nothing. We have to do CEU’s every two years to make sure we don’t accept mittens from a client… That would be an ethical dilemma. But the board and the current education of counseling and therapy is teaching social advocacy as opposed to evidence based practice. 100% bullshit. I’ve been a therapist for 23 years. It is the board and the social advocacy of therapist that created this cultural bunch. Speak up. Let people know your truth. So many people fell into it… I was one of the few therapists in my area that would even talk about the nonsense of it. And part of the reason I was able to see it is because I am a lesbian in and watched young adolescent, females falling into some intense, nonsensical, and misogynistic woke joke. Most of my peers sat around and just stared at me. I could tell horror stories. But I won’t. Because we’re finally moving on and that’s a damn good thing! I dislike everything about the current administration. But I am so happy title IX is returning, and woke is waning- praise God! Gender Explorative therapy and Forward.com = NEVER AGAIN!
As an Occupational Therapist of over 30 years, I have watched a significant portion of my profession embrace this ideology. Our roots as mental health professionals has been completely obscured! I am sorry for your experiences with your daughter. Please know that there ARE professionals that do still read the latest research and want what’s actually the BEST for your child based on facts, and looking comprehensively at you and your family.
I see this as well
🎯
The question of what is wrong with the doctors and therapists who encourage transition is an important one. We will see it explored through the upcoming wave of malpractice litigation.
I can imagine class actions against hospital groups and clinics. I even foresee future human rights cases perhaps in international forums where a generation of maimed people seek reparations and large trust funds to cover the costs of their lifetime medical care.
Litigation may be the most important strategy to end this social contagion as quickly and humanely as possible.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when the Trump administration immediately reverses course on Title 9, insurance coverage for transition surgeries, and funding to schools and universities that promote gender ideology.
As others have noted, the key will be to enlist the support of moderate liberals by showing them the studies, the science, and how other rational countries have altered course based on evidence.
Alice we think alike. This only stops when the doctors stop doing it.
I don’t see them stopping. They are making bank!🏦
I am still amazed that parents like myself who want to protect their children's natural bodies and prevent self-harm are demonized and ostracized while parents who medicalize their kids are celebrated.
Parents who take pride in having a "trans kid" disturb me. "Whether consciously or not, they had turned their children into symbols of their own moral virtue, sacrificing their futures in the process."
It's a Munchausen's issue. The sicker the kid, the more attention and sympathy the parental unit gets. These are not "parents." They do not deserve to be called that. They are in fact, emotionally and psychologically stunted preadolescents.
As a psychologist who has long been concerned about how wokeness has invaded my field, I really appreciate this thoughtful and articulate essay. I hope it finds a broad readership.
What an incisive and beautifully written analysis! Thanks, Courage Coalition, for all you have done this year and all of the light you continue to shine on this scandal.
Talk about saying the quiet part out loud! Her lack of awareness of how that would sound to anyone outside of the "progressive" bubble shows how completely out of touch she is. I have yet to see any mainstream news coverage even mention the large crowd that was on the pro-ban side of the courthouse. If the press mentioned us, then readers would want to see photos, and they would see what a diverse group we were: young and old, housewives and butch lesbians, gay guys, detransitioners, hippies and normies... I noticed that Pink News included a photo of the people on our side by mistake. Ha!
Yes, I think it was Lisa Selin Davis who said she tried to speak to journalists there, saying something like ‘look at this diverse crowd- wouldn’t that make a great story?’ Needless to say, her words fell on deaf ears.
That old saying, "misery loves company," might fit here. If I am not emotionally balanced and whole, the more who share my dysfunctionality, the better. When almost everyone else seems off-kilter, a little nuts or even aberrant, I get to feel like I'm the new "normal."
I know. I literally flinched when I read her comment a while back. So terribly vapid and out of touch. Just sad.
Terrific work here, and I particularly appreciate the View from Skrmetti. The amount of information and insight gained from that one rally event is incalculable. Thanks to all who were able to attend and for bringing us the news. A question, also, if you have a link listing these studies, I would so appreciate having it to draw from for background information when trying to explain this to friends and neighbors who still don’t understand what is happening: “What makes this especially tragic is that most gender-dysphoric children—between 60% and 90%, according to 11 long-term studies—would naturally desist if left alone.”
There are two key numbers to think of.
For decades, since the 80’s, the number of self-identified people who engage in same-sex practices has on average been around 6% of the population in the US.
Around 6%, not 10%, not 1%.
the numbers vary from 1% to 10-12% depending on survey method, which can be either too intrusive or too anonymous. Consider just a center of the range, and use it for a start.
The tendency to self-identify as trans and live as trans in a lifetime has centered on around 0.3% of the population, consistent over decades. Trans has altered definitions gradually to take on transvestism, transsexualism, transgender, nonbinary, and other but, the most stable definition has centered on around 0.3% of the population since th 80’s
6% : 0.3% or roughly 95:5 as a ratio.
For every 95 adult lesbian or gay people you may encounter 5 trans in a population.
When you then read dysphorc children articles, what you begin to see is 95% of children “desist” or 90% “desist within the years of puberty - not even lifetime; these children reject trans and move towards gay straight or lesbian before adulthood, whereas most stable trans historically move towards it after adulthood.
That’s where ratio of roughly 95:5 or so crops up again.
For every 95 dysphoria kids you will find they are quickly gay or lesbian, and the remaining 5 we don’t know.
Not all lesbians and gays are dysphoric kids. Not everyone comes out as a teenager. Yet, as all people proceed to adulthood they have a more ans more stable sexuality and identity.
This will likely become more solid if you see these kids over 10-20 year frames - gays and lesbians rarely become trans but “trans identified” fairly commonly desist (10%? 30%?) back to lesbian, gay, or straight.
From puberty to 60, 70 when identity is most stable and most fixed you will see convergence back to the 95:5 or so seen for 40 years prior to 2000’s when the categories of trans started being disrupted to “prove” there were more trans than through.
Foe every lifetime in a population, for every 95 gays and lesbians we encounter we may also see 5 trans.
Decades long data, and consistent with child dysphoria research.
http://www.jamescantor.org/uploads/6/2/9/3/62939641/cantor_fact-check_of_aap.pdf
Hi Susan, Just seeing your request now. The link above is a critique by Canadian psychologist James Cantor, PhD, analyzing the ideology based pro-trans position of the AAP and deconstructing its justifications for supporting transition for minors.
Cantor relies upon decades of studies going back to 1972, which he lists and describes, that we rely upon today when asserting that the majority of gender non-conforming children will grow up to be gay once they reach or pass puberty.
Hey, thanks for this. Cantor is excellent. Glad to have the link!
It's just a normal part of child development. The dem's have turned a kid's normal, natural curiosity into a social anomaly and put it under a microscope, as something to which they "should be" responsive and adaptive. It's just plain ludicrous!
Using their children for virtue signaling. Hopefully, it will not be long before there is a reckoning, and with it, there will be massive lawsuits and years of therapy. This is such an unbelievable mess.
Yes, I am waiting for the first child/young adult to speak out and say he/she was “transed” by a parent.
What you're much more likely to see, due to family dynamics, is a quiet slinking away in the majority of cases as the victim slips out of the limelight.
Very few kids are willing or able to publicly turn against their parents because they'd lose the rest of their family and be rendered outcast if they did.
And how many young kids have gotten braces on their teeth, 'cause it was fashionable to do so?! This is no different than that.
I'm in pro of accusation: if instead of feeling more interesting and brave society will make them feel guilty and call them for what they are, bad parents (I'm talking about Transhausen by proxy) they will drop the show immediately. It's narcisimus. Same with men. As a fervour defender of free speech I don't think we should forbid men to cross dress (some feminist do). But if (besides not allowing them in women spaces and sports) everybody will call them "sir" they will drop it too. We are past compassion and empathy. The health of minors and women are at stake (women too; they are being raped in jail by men with tranvestic fetishism).
Yes, I am past the point t of looking for compromise because it isn’t something they are capable. They are incapable of having any conversation that isn’t me, me, all, all right now! They have no empathy for women placed in cells with violent men who are lying about being trans women. At the point where I am talking about only men clearly lying to be moved to a female prison, who wouldn’t want that, and they consistently say it is ok because the guards rape the women anyway, I’m out. It took about ten-fifteen of those to make me stop trying.
Now I have come to realize that even talking to liberals is a waste of time. I’ve moved to the talking to conservatives stage. Pleasing them to do something. It is in their political best interest to to do something as their base will cheer them on. It is political gold for anyone who takes up the cause. Nancy Mace is doing so. She is being criticized of using it for publicity. Of course she is, she is a politician getting her name out there. That is what she is supposed to be doing according to the rules of the game. She is using my anger and others to get what she wants. I don’t care because it gets me what I want. Violent and predatory men out of female only spaces. Prisons and locker rooms are my property. The rest is needed but aren’t what makes me enraged in the coldest way. They demanded all and were given it. The only answer women can now is, no, none.
Oh but they are not all liying. They are more sexual aggressors among "trans" population. Mary Harrington wrote about it. In "cis" inmates de % of sexual aggressors is 13-15% (Mary has statistics from different countries). In "trans" inmates the % is 45-55%.
https://www.maryharrington.co.uk/p/how-many-sex-offenders?utm_medium=android&nthPub=361
About 70-80% of "trans woman" are autogynophile: heterosexual men with a fetish about imagine themselves as a women. It's a paraphilia, and paraphilias tend to go in cluster. Here there is a paper about it https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7879474_Transvestic_Fetishism_in_the_General_Population
True, and it confirms the point that none of these males should be incarcerated in the female estate. They are men.
I had a discussion with an ex-text sex worker on reddit (where else). They had been involved in sissy porn, providing the "feminize yourself" instructions to customers.
That person told me that part of the dynamic is that the customer never remains in one mental position with respect to what counts as erotic. The intensity always has to be a factor, and since once a level of sissification is familiar the intensity dissipates, the customer must always move farther along the path of larping. The goal is always humiliation and shame, so it's not purely about cross-dressing for the mirror in a positive, "I'm pretty" way. It's about imagining that one is the degraded sex. Of course, to have that view of women is a precondition.
It's no surprise that there is always a progression. This is how kink works. The intensity is found at the edge, in fear.
Another aspect that's no surprise: this former sex worker told me that the work had damaged (him, probably him). The visions of the imagined roles stuck with him and interfered with his former default interiority. Fantasy and turn-on shifted to revolve around this stuff. That's how sex works in general, at least if troubling or difficult practices are slotted into eroticism in any impactful way. Flashes of the forbidden intrude and replace whatever was satisfying before. A person can come to believe, this ocd-like experience is the "real", "deeper" them.
I think this dynamic is not soothing or peaceful. It's not celebratory or intimate. If it's "beautiful" to some, I think it's the sort of aesthetic described as desirable by the dissatisfied, "sophisticated" jade. It is also imbued with urgency. So, no surprise if this mental habit opens the door to transgression more generally. No surprise if other paraphilias are also involved. It's not *only* the case that a default tendency towards transgression can lead *to* this sort of behavior, although that direction of travel happens as well, without a shred of doubt. I think any of these edge-seeking behaviors can lead to adding more to the repertoire.
Apropos of this, a comment reply I posted on a previous LGBT Courage article: https://open.substack.com/pub/lgbtcouragecoalition/p/when-representation-means-platforming?r=3olc4q&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=91850922
I’ve seen parent after parent leave their child in “gender” distress instead of allowing him or her to be gay. They’d rather have a “broken” kid who they can shuttle through the medical system, always blaming their child’s neuroses instead of their bad parenting for the child’s lack of self-acceptance — rather than a gay one (or let’s be real, usually rather than a butch lesbian one, because this is happening so much more often to girls).
Well said
There are also a lot of parents who would rather have a special "trans teen" whose problems are all caused by other people's "transphobia" than an angst-ridden, messy, struggling behaviorally difficult, often straight, extra emotionally intense and/or sensitive teenage girl going through normal (although perhaps elevated) adolescent dysregulation and distress. There's not much sympathy in the world for these girls. They are routinely mocked, looked down on, or ignored. Let them find the gender nonsense online and their parents can run with it and turn those struggles that don't get much sympathy and might even be seen as embarrassing into something special, supported, and respected.
Take this girl's very sensitive mental health struggles being made very public by her father, including some very specific troubling behaviors. How much sympathy would the family and girl get for these struggles and behaviors without the trans identity to go with it?
https://www.wnct.com/news/north-carolina/for-transgender-youth-in-crisis-hospitals-sometimes-compound-the-trauma/
That news story was so troubling and sad.
I was so troubled reading it for so many reasons. One of the things that really upsets me is I know all too well that when a girl is struggling that "messy" way, she is looked down on, dismissed, and judged by friends and family and the entire mental health system because she is so emotionally dysregulated and difficult to treat and challenging in her behavior. And her parents will be judged harshly by everyone - friends, family, and professionals again - for what they did wrong to cause this without understanding that many adolescent girls really, really struggle with the physical, emotional, and social changes of puberty even in the most loving, stable, supportive, and functional families. There should be sympathy and actual good support. But would anyone care about this child and her struggles in the same way without the trans identity? Would the parents be seen as heroes and advocates fighting for their child without the identity? These girls and their families also deserve sensitivity, support, and quality care. It's not surprising that a good chunk of them will take on this identity. Walk into any adolescent inpatient program and see how many of the girls are identifying this way now
I have an autistic teen girl who has been in and out of residential care for the last 4 years. She’s been in many programs with girls who are identifying as boys. I think it is an easier path for many parents to go along with the girls who want to be boys because it’s a problem the kids are happy to focus on instead of the anger the kids have about their autism or behavioral or mental health issues.
Another piece I don’t see addressed very often is that I cannot get my daughter sterilized even though she will never be able to live independently or care for a child, but if she was trans, I could. I don’t want her to be trans, but I wouldn’t deny that knowing she couldn’t have a child would be tempting. There is a whiff of eugenics happening here.
I feel your frustration. You are really between a rock and a hard place.
Having worked with many autistic young people that also live with a disability, I saw a real attraction to following the zeitgeist amongst them. I never thought in a million years they'd be transing young people that were already lifelong medical patients...but it is now occurring. This Ideology has no boundaries.
Best of luck ❤️
Should parents be held accountable for FDIA? As a previous school psychologist, I saw this behavior in parents not only with ‘trans kids’ but with all kinds of mental health diagnoses. Half the time, the time the diagnoses were self fulfilling and the parents/professionals were intensifying the issues. Many of the kids would have been better off being told they were fine and to provide consequences for poor behavior not medical excuses.
THIS!!
Having gone through a period of wanting to “be a boy” at age 11, and learning from a teacher that as a girl and a woman I could be and do whatever I wanted and did not need to change my name or my clothes (we never thought of changing our bodies), I have to think that many kids today are being pushed into doing things by adults. I would have probably, at age 11, started the social transition process if my teacher has told me that was cool rather than telling me that women’s lib was cool. And I have very happily lived as a (not very “feminine”) free girl and woman for the 50 years since then. As have my 3 friends who were going to “become boys” with me.
I would give anything to be less “interesting” and have my daughter back happy and healthy.
Well-put piece, really appreciated it.
It makes the case that forced sterilization should be held to be strictly illegal under the 14th amendment of the constitution. Parents who partially or completely subject their children to forced sterilization, as well as governmental groups, and medicinal individuals and institutions should be punished harshly, and judged by that fact in public view.
....let alone dragging your child to a protest and using them as a Political banner.
How many parents from the non woke side brought their children I wonder.
These are the same people who take their young children to inappropriate pride parades. Because, you know, a five-year-old really needs to see a gay man’s naked ass in a pair of chaps.
This madness cannot end too soon.
There are many children’s books out right now that parents buy that talk about “how mommy protests” and how to participate. A friend’s granddaughters are regularly taken to protests by their mom. For many, protests are the new “church service” where they implore their “god/government” to give them worth and their desires.
That's disgraceful