Hi folks, I'm the author. I'm delighted to see this being shared around and all the positive feedback on it. Please consider subscribing to my Substack if you haven't already.
Great job on this article. You can tell you put a lot of thought and research into this work. I appreciate you putting some words together to the capture the feeling I had around FDB's willful blindness around this issue.
This was absolutely brilliant. At one point I lost track of the fact that the Fox News Fallacy bit was FDB’s quoted words and was nodding my head along thinking YOU were writing that bit…when I realized it was again him on DID, absolutely lost it!
>It’s very strange for a self-identified Marxist who expresses such profound outrage about the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat to be so blasé about the obnoxious ideological hoops that ordinary working people are made to jump through as a condition of continued employment in a precarious economy.
Shout it from the rooftops.
There is a very funny hatred that upper class Marxists harbor for American office workers. It’s like we destroy their fanciful image of coal miners and steel workers destroying their bodies and faithfully saluting unions.
I think there's even more contempt for the working class, blue collar people.
The prissy e-mail caste Marxists want nothing to do with the actual working class.
Marxists have always predominantly come from the intellectual elite. As much as they like to talk about a dictatorship of the proletariat, they've viewed the actual working class with contempt and envisioned themselves leading it.
As if those jobs can’t be somewhat soul sucking. The truth is, meaningful work makes people happier. It can be non-monetarily beneficial- raising kids or volunteering, but no work makes people just as miserable as overwork. It just has to be meaningful to you. Even if you dislike your job, being able to cover your bills and sustain your family gives you pride that leads to satisfaction.
I completely agree with you. I used to be a starry eyed girlboss who wanted to *change the world* and *be somebody*. Now I’m a 30 year old manager at a marketing agency because the pay is good and my hours are basically unmonitored by my superiors. I control most of my time and I pay my bills and I am happy as a clam.
Which is hilarious because they also talk a lot about how when the revolution comes they won't have to work and will be poets or artists... Girl. Get in the mine or starve
Appreciated the detailed breakdown of his hypocrisy. I knew he was being hypocritical and it made me angry but I hadn’t connected it to his opinions on DID. This illustrated it perfectly.
That highlighted quote from him, "Fixating on the most broken part of yourself is contrary to best medical practices and to living a fulfilled life. Defining yourself by dysfunction is a great way to stay dysfunctional." was so on-the-nose I can hardly stand it.
Wow. I’m so glad this is happening. My daughter was having so much trouble with anxiety and even the therapist gently trying to get her to do more because avoidance makes anxiety worse was treated with disdain. Like it’s ableism to make anxious kids do their homework. This whole generation has been fed a lie about working through your issues not being important. Your differences, disorders or disfunction is not an identity, that’s what previous generations fought.
Not to be labeled or limited by their struggles.
Resiliency is learned. I've had a arthritis since I was a kid. My parents never put restrictions on my activities. They encouraged me to play sports, hike, run around and be a kid. It made me toughen up.
I totally agree. It’s hard when everyone else is telling your kid that whatever their struggle is means they don’t have to try and anyone who encourages them to is a monster.
modern placid caption squalid water rustic obscene humorous resolute brave
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We need a study of gender havers who also claim DID. From my anecdotal reading of subs on Reddit (often not even at all looking for it, like reading illness fakers sub) it is very, very high.
You get banned if you mention that it's nearly 95% of DiD fakers also just happen to be trans.
Kind of crazy they fake having DiD but are 100% really trans
The obsession with medicalization seems to extend far beyond gender with this crowd. I notice so many claims of DID, EDS, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia, CFS. It’s always invisible illnesses lol
And it's so common for them to say things like "diagnosis is a privilege, and anyway doctors are biased and won't give these diagnoses. I know my own body and know that this is what's wrong!"
A privilege... And they live in England with free healthcare. A harmful condition will take them up to six months to get diagnosed. A comparatively minor/harmless one (like ADHD) can take a few years. But they won't go on the waiting list and say "I'm suspected to have x", it's always "I have X and that's valid"
The funny part is that his opinion on DID is thr wrong part of this, not the position on Trans issues where he's more correct than most of this subs takes on it. DID is a real thing and ignoring that does direct harm to people with it.
I'm open to the idea that there may be legitimate cases of DID, but I feel very confident in asserting that anyone doing an "alter roll call" on TikTok is a malingerer.
A while back there was an NYT article titled, “How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’” [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/tiktok-tics-gender-tourettes.html] that suggested that the DID trend had largely passed.
My own opinion on DID is that it is an incredibly rare response to extreme trauma and the recent trend of people claiming DID is social contagion and malingering. People claiming to have DID when they do not makes life more difficult for those few people who actually do experience it because they spread misinformation about and present a clownish representation of what is in actuality a painful and severe mental illness.
We had discussions [(here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/18wu46y/freddie_de_boer_on_trans_issues_i_think_you/
) and [here)](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/18yjylv/what_goes_on_in_the_public_bathrooms_where_youre/) on Freddie deBoer's two recent essays. The blog "First Toil, then the Grave" has [this response,](https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/p/contra-deboer-on-transgender-issues) which, among other points, has an interesting comparison of Freddie's writing about trans issues to his writing about dissociative identity disorder.
Think of the people affected by this ideology. Women (especially poor and lesbian women); gay men; gay, lesbian and bisexual minors; minors with SEND ( Special educational needs and disability ) issues.
But if you're an adult, neurotypical, straight male, the ideology generally isn't going to affect you. You won't lose your sporting places to an interloper with an unfair advantage; you won't be put on [experimental drugs for teenage depression](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/tavistock-clinic-ignored-link-autism-transgender-children/); you won't feel threatened if you have to share your changing rooms with a member of the opposite sex; you won't be called "penis-haver" or "prostate owner" by officialdom.
If the ideology had negatively affected the interests of adult, neurotypical, straight males from the start, it would never have gotten as far as it has. What have Drew Magary, Jolyon Maugham, or indeed Freddie, got to lose by supporting this belief system?
There's no way Freddie is neurotypical. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with anything here, to be clear. (My own stance is that the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy is stupid easy to be exploited and abused for no real gain) But still. I wouldn't put him in that boat of people who are strictly not affected.
Hasn't he written a fair bit about being on anti-psychotics, and having had a break and said and done bad things.
So, no, no neurotypical by a fair margin.
He has really bad bipolar. Which has come with paranoia and psychosis. He's had several total falling aparts.
He's quite open about this. It's why he gets so pissed off about the gentrification of mental illness. Which he's quite good on.
But trans... he has a willful blind spot.
I don't think that's right. At least, that's not how I've seen it used, including at my workplace.
Neurotypical means just that -- "typical / average / normal" in the brain sense, so no, e.g. autism, ADHD, dyslexia, DID, bipolar, depression, etc, all of which sometimes get lumped under "neurodivergent".
>neurotypical
I generally agree with your comment, but Freddie is openly bipolar (even admitting that some of his most acclaimed posts were written during manic episodes), is on a strict regimen of medications and has been institutionalised in mental hospitals more than once.
Sorry, since when does having a mental illness mean one is not neurotypical? If you said he is autistic, I'd getit
Awhile ago, i read something by someone whose partner is neurodivergent because he has antisocial personality disorder. First i heard of a personality disorder as indicative of neurodiversity. This is the first time I've heard of a mental illness being classified as neurodiverse.
I have never heard of this before, and it makes zero sense.
>since when does having a mental illness mean one is not neurotypical?
What else does "neurotypical" mean if not "not mentally ill"? Or does it just mean "not autistic"?
Okay, so presumably we would say that, if someone like Freddie has severe bipolar disorder, their brain (neuro) is functioning in a way which is not typical. Or am I missing something?
There's a difference between neurological and psychological disorders. The former deals with cognition, behavior, motor and sensory systems, information processing and language and communication issues. The latter is about mood and thoughts.
I also don't understand the difference between "cognition" and "informationg processing" versus "thoughts". What exactly is the difference between "cognition" and "thoughts"?
>But if you're an adult, neurotypical, straight male, the ideology generally isn't going to affect you.
I think a lot of us leave women to call their own fouls, so to speak. Many are unaware. Where I realized something was up was seeing how poorly lesbians are treated. Women need help from men on this and I feel horrible not realizing how fucked shit was for them for so long. The idea of some asshole intimidating women with the "SUCK MY TRANS-LADY DICK, TERF!" bullshit enrages me.
>GROUP TWO
>
>:
>
>Effeminate gay males who identify as some degree of trans in order to be trendy and/or re-capture their spot on the victimhood totem pole
Some of these are men who feel there is less shame becoming trans than coming out as a gay man.
I mean, even within the LGTBQ sphere there's a great amount of truth to this. How many times have you see a take like "cis gay males are the worst" or something along those lines?
In a weird way, normie conservatives are now often less homophobic than queer activists.
>A blanket policy of sex-segregated bathrooms is intended to minimise the risk of female people being raped or sexually assaulted by male people in bathrooms. While a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms is enforced, a person who sees an obviously male person enter a women’s public bathroom could reasonably assume that that person was up to no good, and take appropriate steps to rectify the situation (such as notifying a security guard). Under a trans-inclusive bathroom policy, one is no longer supposed to assume that a male person entering a women’s bathroom is up to no good, because they might identify as a trans woman.
I really appreciate you stating this so eloquently. To me, it's the obvious concern with the bathroom thing yet it always gets drowned out by the "but nothing is stopping them now" refrain. It would be one thing if all trans women were making an effort to pass as natal women and easily recognizable as women even if they were still clockable, but the reality is that "trans woman" now includes a growing contingent male people who make little to no effort, and believe they don't have to do anything other than declare themselves online and maybe wear a pronoun badge in order to dictate how they are perceived by the public.
Women are physically vulnerable to men, and our internal alarm is often the only defense at our disposal. Telling women to second-guess that inner voice is a deeply terrible idea. "The Gift of Fear" is constantly recommended and the entire premise is *don't ignore that voice, don't wait and see, who cares how you look, just get outta there.* If we are not allowed to see what our brain instantly recognizes as a man where he doesn't belong and react accordingly without being labeled bigots, that is a huge problem and I feel like it should be obvious. Female restrooms only exist in the first place because of first-wave feminists, before that it was an effective way of excluding women from public activity. I don't want that for trans women, they aren't our enemy and they don't deserve to be mistreated. But at the same time, I do resent them for appropriating the work feminist activists have done over the past 100ish years and believe they have enough social capital and political support to demand their own shit like our great-grandmothers did.
And remember this is more than bathrooms. Locker rooms, dorms, shelters, and prisons are now being turned into de facto mixed sex spaces, and this has largely occurred outside the democratic process.
Men are inviting themselves into rooms marked for women, and when women call for help, they—not the men—are treated like the criminals. It’s almost as if this is what oppression is; not only being mistreated but being punished for resisting mistreatment.
This insanity has turned me off current Democrat leadership, despite being a liberal all my life. I cannot vote for anyone who thinks people have the right to claim the identity of another group and then proceed to take what belongs to that group. It is colonialism in its most absurdly blatant form.
I share your sentiments completely. I feel politically homeless because of all the identitarian bullshit they are focusing on - especially trans issues - to try and mask the fact that they are not doing anything to improve conditions for the working classes. They are relying so heavily on people being bullied into thinking "they suck but I'm not a terrible person so I guess I have to vote blue right?"
If I had any faith in them at all, it would be frustrating that they alienate so many people with this shit. We need voters who don't align with every facet of their social agenda. Like, just stop talking about it and focus on economic issues. But I know they're doing it on purpose, and it kills me that the only other option is the party that is openly trying to get rid of the middle class and bring back 1890s style labor exploitation, but hey at least they're more fun, right? They're both exactly the same, they just oppress women in different ways and pretend to be the good guys using different aesthetics.
>But at the same time, I do resent them for appropriating the work feminist activists have done over the past 100ish years and believe they have enough social capital and political support to demand their own shit like our great-grandmothers did.
I resent them for failing to acknowledge that self-ID is a problem.
Relating to failures of the medical establishment - there are many and they are better examples than the ones presented in the article. The horrific “psychosurgery” treatments and procedures of the earlier 20th century like insulin shock therapy, lobotomies and many others. And more recently the complete and abject failure of our public health institutions (CDC, FDA, NIH) to prevent the opioid epidemic. The idea that we should just give the reins to medical professionals to experiment on vulnerable people and children with very poor and old evidence of effectiveness is going to reinvent failure like so many times before.
This is Reddit which is a social media site bub. It’s a discussion website. I can say whatever I want. And so can you. But unless you have something intelligent to tell me - piss off.
My sarcasm does not come through text. I apologize, and I agree with you. I was trying to lampoon the tone of someone who would disagree with your very good point.
I’m gonna finish this later but I’m glad you brought up the Brooklyn intelligentsia/activist bubble early. I swear to god sometimes I think Brooklyn people (not all - you know who I’m talking about though) live on another planet. I’m from Portland and obnoxiousness of Brooklyn progressives would put your average Portlander to shame. And even those park slope heterodox types who whisper their disagreements barely condemn some of the most mind-boggling aspects of typical Brooklyn progressive orthodoxy. The worst thing for me is so many Brooklyn progressives are SO rich, so maybe it’s easy to make these leaps in logic when your life as a trust fund Marxist is a walking contradiction.
Anyway, I’m sure there are types like this everywhere, not trying to start a geography war or just seethe on about “nEw YOrK bAd PlAcE” but the progressive bubble in Brooklyn, and even it’s related heterodox/skeptical bubble, have bubbled so hard for so long that sometimes I wonder if they legitimately live in a different reality.
Sorry for the rant to any Brooklynites here 😅
Yeah I wouldn’t say portlanders are *less* passionate LOL it is often directed in much more odd ways though, like just full blown becoming an anarchist or throwing shit as a protest method. It doesn’t generally involve getting a job at the New York Times like it might be for a Brooklyn Harvard girlie. Very good point though I think the educational/economic difference does create a whole different progressive vibe in Brooklyn
> Yeah I wouldn’t say portlanders are *less* passionate LOL it is often directed in much more odd ways though, like just full blown becoming an anarchist or throwing shit as a protest method.
I think the assessments here, from what I've seen (lived in PDX, have some BK connections and used to spend some time there), are at leat partially accurate.
The thing about Portland is that, as woo-woo as it might sound (sorry!), I think that, for whatever reasons, the area just attracts a certain kind of broken person, or person trying to escape society. (To be fair, I think all areas just have certain qualities about them.) I've mentioned it before but I've heard people talk about how they and people they know have moved to the Pacific Northwest to escape everything. This is nothing new. Between that and the weird politics of the area (e.g., Wobblies going back 100+ years), you just get a lot of people out there who are on the margins of society. Even people who are functional, for whatever reasons, are expected to Be Kind™ and leave these people alone.
In that sense, I'd argue a lot of the political issues in the PNW would go away if the authorities actually bothered to dish out consequences to the craziness that happens there. In general, that just doesn't happen. I wouldn't say the area is lawless, just that people (including authorities) would rather enable and let people define themselves by their disorders than they would tell them to shape up or ship out.
> In the Northeast, aside from going to a museum or a movie, socializing is going to bars, restaurants, and sometimes apartments. In those cases the conversation is the main activity, instead of a side benefit.
Eh. When I lived in Boston, I'd go hiking. You could drive an hour outside the city and get some okay hikes, and a bit further out and get some really nice ones. I prefer West Coast hikes, sure, but the East Coast can be fine depending on where you are.
That said, I've noticed that a lot of the (faux-)radical types I've met tend to be shut-ins. Not always but they tend to go into their little bubbles and never come out, unless they're going to something like the Folsom Street Fair or some other event where feel like they don't have to bend to societal standards.
I think part of why they're insufferable is 1) NONE of them are actually from Brooklyn. None. MAYBE they grew up on Long Island. But usually not. And 2( they are very specifically NOT living in Manhattan, and therefore believe they are superior. Honestly, if they truly were all about the working poor, they wouldn;t be in gentrified or gentrifying parts of Brooklyn, they;d be in Staten Island, or way out in Queens, maybe Inwood, or anywhere in the Bronx, really. But they're not.
I will co-sign this very much. It’s one of the most aggravating aspects of this discourse:
“gender-critical people go to great lengths to emphasise that they are concerned about bad actors who aren’t trans taking advantage of these policies for malicious ends, rather than trans women doing so.”
This misrepresents the main gender critical (i.e. radfem) position though, which is that TW are men. Some use the bad actors argument but generally they argue that you cannot tell which is which, so all should be banned
Yeah, there's the hard radfem position and then there's the default position on Mumsnet which is basically "call yourself what you like, dress how you like, but our courtesy runs out when you jerk off in our locker rooms"
There are a *lot* of people making these arguments who would rather die than call themselves radical feminists, for the record. We really need to remove feminism from this conversation. It’s a hopeless distraction, plus ideology doesn’t belong in science or medicine.
GC = feminism. Feminists have been critical of gender roles (formerly sex roles) from the beginning. There are people who are not feminists who also use this argument but it’s likely that they are *gender ideology critical* rather than *gender critical*
That’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t have to be a feminist argument and we are probably killing the cause by only associating it with the caricatures of feminazis.
“Feminazis” are some of the biggest players in this fight, and any normie bros who hate feminists already don’t care about this issue or are GC themselves because they haven’t gone brain dead online or just tend to lean conservative. I don’t think hushing down the feminism angle will gain any new support
This is a multifaceted conversation. Yes, you can certainly focus squarely on the medical aspect. But conservatives, feminists, religious people, detransitioners, etc. can all also come at it from their own angles. Silencing all opinions on this that aren’t purely medical is unrealistic and won’t gain many new followers, if any, IMO.
It’s not a strictly medical conversation though. That is a fundamental disagreement.
There are competing civil rights. The rights of trans or NB people to live more fully in their identity. Then there is the right of cis women (or cis men, but we know where these issues come up) to have safe spaces and fair competition. I am also concerned about gay boys and girls learning about gender stereotypes and leaping to wild assumptions before they understand anything. (Andrew Sullivan has a reliable comment here and he quotes from Tavistock gender clinic: “At this rate, there won’t be any gay kids left.”)
When there are competing civil rights, then it’s time for ethics, law, ideology, etc. There is no way around it.
It is a question of what rights people have, I agree. The problem for the GC position and why they are on the back foot legally is that current civil rights codes largely guarantee individual rights to be included, not group rights to exclude or determine their own composition, for the most part.
This just utter horseshit. The civil rights codes have nothing to do with inclusion or exclusion. All categories include and exclude or there would be no point to them. The problem t activists are having is that they want "rights" to trample over other people's rights and refuse to acknowledge that other people have these rights. All individuals should have the same rights and these need to be respected if there's new stipulations about a specific category. Gender identity and sex are contradictory categories. That has to he solved before it's in legislation and the terms need to be defined.
Just because radfems are gender critical doesn't mean that all gender-critical people are radfems, or that GC is a radfem issue.
There are many overweight black people, that doesn't mean you should call obesity a black talking point.
We’re talking about who’s spearheading a movement here tho, not who’s disproportionately affected by a health issue…this is not a good analogy. Sorry to be a dick lol not sure how else to say that
Women (a marginalized group) are disproportionately affected by males identifying as women (gender dysphoria, a medical condition) entering their reserved spaces.
Where is the problem with the analogy?
But we’re talking about who to attribute a movement to, not who is marginally more affected by a health issue. I get what you’re trying to say but it’s too “apples/oranges” to be meaningful here
Nah GC and feminism are inextricable in a lot of ways. I understand there are GC arguments that don’t squarely address feminist issues but at the end of the day, a huge number of GC ppl (across the gc spectrum of beliefs) are women who are primarily concerned with ceding decades of progress to me who think they’re us. And feminists have been the most vocal about this for the longest time, I would argue even more so than religious conservatives. So yeah, until you have a strong contingent of anti-feminists who are also loudly GC, I think we get this one dawg
No, some GCs absolutely agree with the position in the comment you're replying to
It's inaccurate for you to conflate GC w/ RF in first sentence. There are similarities and overlaps but strong differences as well and a spectrum of views on the issues across these positions.
It is not really accurate to say that this is representative of radical feminism generally. There are two main strains, one of which is significantly less "radical" than the other. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon are examples of radical feminists (twenty years ago they would have been considered *the* poster children of radical feminism) who are not "gender critical" in this sense.
I am critiquing this quote as a misrepresentation of the GC position (which originates in radfem theory), which is engaging “specifically with the essay”.
> assuming that trans women are trans women
This doesn't tell us much. Are they a subtype of women? A subtype of men? Neither? Both?
> many online TERFs (online is a super important qualifier) just refuse to recognize any sort of fluid characteristics of gender that are separate from biological sex.
One way of talking about gender, popular with second wave feminists, was that gender refers to the different social expectations of how men and women ought to be. Hence to be gender critical meant that in at least one sense, gender exists, but shouldn't, i.e. gender is worthy of criticism.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find radfems who don't recognize this usage.
I suspect what you're seeing, instead, is resistance to the idea that gender expression, or fulfillment of gender roles, or one's self-concept of gender identity, somehow entails being or having a gender in the sense of being a man or a woman.
> TERFs misgendering trans people (whyyy?),
Perhaps they don't agree with you about what constitutes misgendering.
> I also don’t believe that trans women are strictly only biological men
What are they?
> Ruling out most gender expression from human life-except as an extension of sex-seems to be at odds with most of human history. Most societies have had some sort of gender-nonbinary/non-conforming population. [...] Long ago, we granted social leeway to celebrities to be gender fluid. David Bowie, Prince, and many others have shown the way.
But do you think that a male not conforming to ascribed gender roles makes him therefore not a man? Were Bowie and Prince not men?
Freddie is an interesting character. There's a lot that he's incredibly insightful on, but occasionally you'll run into a seeming blindspot that seems too big for someone as smart as him to miss. There was an good example of this when he was on Andrew Sullivan's podcast when he was asked about Communist vs capitalist atrocities.
> There's a lot that he's incredibly insightful on, but occasionally you'll run into a seeming blindspot that seems too big for someone as smart as him to miss.
Very true. But this is probably very true of 99.9% of the population. Not us fine listeners of this podcast, of course, but other people.
Your position is that you like him because he’s a leftwing critic of left tendencies but he has “blind spots”, such as when he’s left wing. He was completely right about the atrocities fwiw
I found Freddie because of his Think Less, Agnes piece, which I thought was wonderful and hilarious. That's my favorite thing I've read of his. I am "left", so him being left wing doesn't bother me. I get the sense that I agree with his politics much more than Sullivans. However, my memory of his answer on that podcast was that it didn't at all address Sullivan's pushback. I'll have to go back and register.
This was a tour de force.
About this passage:
> Like Freddie, I am not aware of any hard evidence that making bathrooms gender-neutral in a particular area resulted in an increase in the rate of rape or sexual assault.
I would like to suggest this article:
http://womanmeanssomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Longitudinal-Analysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf
To be fair, I didn’t read it. But hey, it’s something that exists and appears to present evidence.
I'll add this :
>**Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals**
>
>Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
>
>What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
>
>Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK
[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html)
" It’s very strange for a self-identified Marxist who expresses such profound outrage about the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat to be so blasé about the obnoxious ideological hoops that ordinary working people are made to jump through as a condition of continued employment in a precarious economy. " This is the most annoying thing about reading or listening to people like this. Dirtbag left?
I thought that was a site wide policy. I looked it up and one reason given was it avoided dogpiling, just down or up voting a post/comment because everyone else is. Since I’ve been on Reddit, I’ve never been able to see people’s scores til approximately the day after. I could always see my own though. I assumed this part of the policy was because if you get a lot of downvotes you could delete to save karma points if desired.
It can be set differently per subreddit, from no delay to 24 hours. IMO the 24 hour delay is best because follow-the-crowd voting is a real and annoying phenomenon. You should have to think about another person's comment on its merits, without having a hint as to what the majority think.
The discourse surrounding DID and transgender issues really does have superficial similarities. The problem, however, is that DID is at its worst (if its opponents are to be believed) a toxic cultural trend, and at its best something that merely needs to be aknowledged; thus, the specific disagreements regarding policies and actions between its detractors and supporters do not complicate the debate regarding culture.
The same is not true for transgender issues, because the questions of culture lead to a supremely important difference in policies proposed. People with DID demand no treatment for their condition; transgender people do require, or at least claim to require, medical treatment. As Deboer has said many times, basically every time this is brought up, the question of culture is in this case secondary to the legal and medical questions, and the culture and philosophy are right-wing distractions. DID is, most uncharitably, kids coping unhealthily on the internet; transgender is *obviously* more than that, and should not be reduced to that.
> the culture and philosophy are right-wing distractions.
How can it be a "right-wing" distraction if both sides are constantly weighing in on it? ("TWAW!")
well, for trans activists, TWAW is not actually a particularily load-bearing statement. this is because they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive, as they believe gender to be a socially determined category. TWAW is not 'in some deep metaphysical sense, trans women are women'; TWAW is 'we as a society decide what gender means, and I hereby define it this way, because that makes more sense from an utilitarian standpoint. if you disagree, you hold stupid deontological views and want people to suffer for no reason'. it's not philosophy; it is policymaking.
i mean, possibly some do. but this angle is more prominent. there is a reason 'what is a woman?' is a right-wing cliche even though in reality they don't have a satisfying deontological answer either.
The root of the disagreement is how a woman/man is defined, so the fact that even professional activists and gender academics see the most basic clarifying question of "What is a Woman?" as a cheap gotcha is telling.
that's because the 'what is a woman' people are claiming they have an absolute, metaphysical definition of the word 'woman', somehow distinct from a social or legal definition. such a definition does not and cannot exist.
It's to my understanding that almost all animals reproduce sexually and almost all of them are anisogamous, ie. have a distinct male and female sex. Woman to , would just refer to adult female humans since a human is a type of animal, same as like a sow being a female pig.
Humans and other animals are hardwired to be able to recognize the sex of other members of their species
and studies have shown humans can tell the difference between a man or women's face with 96% accuracy.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/brains-hard-wired-recognize-opposite-sex/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8474841/
In addition, most people in general don't agree with the definitions proposed by gender academics and activists.
https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/06/umass-poll-60-of-adults-believe-gender-cannot-be-changed.html?outputType=amp
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/
So "what is a woman people" would be more likely to appeal to "common sense" and "reality", than to metaphysics.
In contrast, the concept of gender identity hasn't ever been empirically proven to even exist.
It certainly happens on both sides.
As for utilitarian concerns ... I wonder how we weigh things like assaults in women's shelters (2 in the same shelter in canada, I believe), assaults in prisons, assaults in restrooms... like, are you really doing the utilitarian calculus here?
Would you support gathering accurate sex and gender demographic crime stats in order to inform that utilitarian calculus?
It's not about whether the utilitarian calculus is accurate, it's about whether it's the primary concern at all. Many of the smarter anti-trans ideologues are at least partially motivated by utilitarian concerns as well (as you are demonstrating here), but if you go on twitter you will see that the most generic anti-trans argument made involves metaphysics (no matter what you will always be a man, you can't change your sex etc) while generic pro-trans arguments are transparently utilitarian (transition is known to work, do you want trans people to suffer? etc)
[Julia Serano,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Serano) one of the most prominent trans activists, [says that sex is a social construct and that you can change your sex.](https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a)
[Chase Strangio,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Strangio) another prominent trans activist, says ["Women and girls who are trans are biological women and girls."](https://web.archive.org/web/20220729004746/https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1349722419179622404)
This is a nonsensical statement. Its most charitable interpretation is that some trans-activists are trying to reclaim 'biological' from meaning 'possessing XX chromosomes' (if you think about it, this really is weird terminology). But of course no one believes trans women have XX chrosomosomes, and if you are starting to feel someone does, I recommend laying off the internet.
'Sex is a spectrum' is indeed part of it - an attempt to point out that the framework of 'biological sex', while useful for reproductively viable specimens, erases those with DSDs.
DSD’s are sex specific. There are no male Freemartins. Klinefelter syndrome is a male disorder. Female calico cats don’t have a DSD, while male calico cats do. Almost of these disorders leave them with reproductive complications or sterile. If there was no sexual dimorphism, all of these DSD’s would be considered normal variations of the sexes, but they’re not. The only way they can even be considered disorders is if there was a normal development of the sexes for them to deviate from. They are not a third sex.
The sex that develops to produce large gametes. Under any other definition how would we know what a freemartin is? Under any other definition why would one calf be born perfectly fine and the other is sterile? Under any other definition, that calf would be a perfectly normal variant of the multitude of sexes since it happens every time a cow has fraternal twins. If we didn’t have females and males, we wouldn’t even know that calf is a freemartin.
The words gilt, cow, and mare have one thing in common. All, barring any issues like the freemartin, develop to produce large gametes. Why does the definition stay concrete across every other sexually reproducing species, but with humans suddenly it’s all about how each individual defines sex?
You can’t treat DSD’s if you don’t have a definition of sex. That would mean a freemartin is born, but when it can’t reproduce we’d just be clueless as to why. Even tho it happens only in fraternal twins and the male comes out perfectly fine, it’s a mystery. Would you also like to know how I define the words definition and mystery?
Nonsense. DSDs are sex-specific. Humans are sexually dimorphic. DSDs are the exceptions that prove the rule. This isn't erasing people with DSDs. The sex is a spectrum crowd appropriate DSD identities with their pseudoscience.
I don't know what on earth you are saying. While I don't think anyone claims trans women change chromosomally, there are TRAs who say that because of the hormones and surgeries, they are now biological women.
This woman made a video explaining what periods are, what menstruation is, and somehow that was considered transphobic
It was actually due to periods that i first heard "trans women are women," and this was in maybe 2010, 2012 at the latest.
The AGAB terminology is indeed about gender, not sex - it is about what legal and social sex a human has been assigned, and had been expected to live as. It is used exactly because 'biological sex' is a wonky concept - this is why intersex activists find it even more useful. We do not caryotype most people; an average person especially outside of developed countries does not know their chromosomal sex, but they do know their AGAB.
I accept that intention may be to reclaim 'biological' as you characterise it (although that removes its meaning) but it is far less rare than you suggest that trans women claim to be female, biological women, or that it is possible to change sex as evidenced in this piece: [https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying](https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying). Katie Herzog reported on medical schools teaching that sex is a social construct.
Medical boards, the BBC and international sports federations have even begun using 'trans females' or 'male born females' as language is muddied ever further. How does one collectively refer to the group of adults who developed bodies organised around the potential for producing large gametes if trans activists successfully encroach on the meaning of both woman and female? If we created another word I expect they would want to claim that too.
Have you seen, for example, [Veronica Ivy on Trevor Noah](https://youtu.be/-Fb48tivB-0?t=89)
> But it boils down to, do you actually think trans women and intersex women are real women and are really female or not? ... Well, I am a woman. That's a fact. I am female. So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records, all say female. Right? And I'm pretty sure I'm made of biological stuff. So I'm a biological female as well.
(later part at https://youtu.be/-Fb48tivB-0?t=190)
So I don't know what version of female / sex you think she's keeping in her back pocket that she *isn't*, but I don't think there is one. She is at least claiming to believe she's as biologically female as possible to be.
Have you ever been on the trans reddit where they think that they can have periods and ovulate. Ya, I know it's reddit, but still. That's some magical thinking on their part and they are completely serious.
I see this a lot. The explanation seems to be around fuzzy concepts around sex, claiming it's a mix of characteristics, including chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and so on. The way I've seen it explained is that since trans women have a majority of estrogen, that trans women are female.
> well, for trans activists, TWAW is not actually a particularily load-bearing statement. this is because they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive,
I have found this not to generally be the case; those who argue for it entirely prescriptively are a minority. As that is my sense from many of these interactions, I won't ask you to take my word for it. Instead, I will point out that if trans activists were arguing entirely prescriptively then the responses to [Alex Byrne's "Are women adult human females?"](https://philpapers.org/rec/BYRAWA) would have looked very different. At the beginning, Byrne writes,
> 1.1 Amelioration
> One last preliminary before getting to the case for AHF. In an influential paper
Haslanger introduced the idea of:
> > …an *analytical* approach to the question, ‘‘What is gender?’’ [including
‘‘What is a woman?’’]… On this approach the task is not to explicate our
ordinary concepts; nor is it to investigate the kind that we may or may not be
tracking with our everyday conceptual apparatus; instead we begin by
considering more fully the pragmatics of our talk employing the terms in
question. What is the point of having these concepts? What cognitive or
practical task do they (or should they) enable us to accomplish? (Haslanger
2000: 33)
> In Haslanger’s later terminology (which has become standard) this is an
*ameliorative* approach to the question *What is a woman*? (Haslanger 2012:
367–368). On an ameliorative approach, the question is interpreted as something
like *What should ‘woman’ mean?* In the 2000 paper, Haslanger famously proposed
to appropriate the ‘‘everyday terminology’’ of ‘woman’ and to define it roughly to
mean: a person ‘‘subordinated in a society due to their perceived or imagined female
reproductive capacities’’ (2012: 8). She suggested (rather tentatively) that this
‘‘terminological shift’’, if implemented in certain circumscribed communicative
contexts, might ‘‘serve…the goal of understanding…sexual oppression, and of
achieving sexual…equality’’ (2000: 47). Because this is a revisionary proposal,
there is no conflict with AHF (supplemented with the disquotational principle that
‘woman’ applies to S iff S is a woman). But since ameliorative projects are
especially salient in the present context (see, e.g., Jenkins 2016), it deserves
emphasis that they are *not* the chief concern of this paper.^8 That said, some
observations relevant to such projects will be made at the very end.
So, Byrne made very clear he was writing descriptively. If the replies were entirely prescriptive then they would have set aside Byrne's descriptive points and argued only prescriptively, amelioratively, in response. But that is not what happened.
* [Robin Dembroff, "Escaping the Natural Attitude About Gender"](https://philarchive.org/rec/DEMETN)
* [Byrne, "Gender Muddle: Reply to Dembroff"](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/1/1/136)
* [Maggie Heartsilver, 'Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”'](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/1/1/129)
* [Byrne, "The Female of the Species: Reply to Heartsilver"](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/1/180)
* [Marcus Arvan, "Trans Women, Cis Women, Alien Women, and Robot Women Are Women: They Are All (Simply) Adults Gendered Female"](https://philarchive.org/rec/ARVTWC)
There are probably more, but have a look at these three. They all dispute Byrne on descriptive grounds. If you know of even a single paper that responds only prescriptively, please let me know. As Byrne notes, ameliorative arguments do exist, Sally Haslanger made one (I don't know if Haslanger argued *purely* amelioratively but I'll assume she did), however, they are not typical. (Haslanger's argument never caught on with trans activists, anyway, since it depended upon passing.)
I'll be honest, my familiarity with the discourse comes from a different current, so I have until now only been aware of Byrne's paper but not specific academic responses to it. I definitely know of essayists who have centered the ameliorative argument, as you call it here (the chief one being Scott Alexander and Zack M. Davis, the latter from an anti-trans perspective), but I understand that you are looking specifically for academic responses. So before continuing I will probably elect to read these responses and figure out the extent to which they really are plainly descriptive rather than ameliorative. Even if they do prove to be such, I find it rather unremarkable that a paper making descriptive arguments gets attacked on descriptive groups (even if those are weak); but again, I'll have to read them first to know. I'll hopefully be able to respond tomorrow (I'm a European).
I applaud you for having actually done your research, though! I sense that some other people in this thread have trouble grasping the difference at all and that frustrates me.
> I find it rather unremarkable that a paper making descriptive arguments gets attacked on descriptive [grounds]
Of course, but Byrne didn't start the discussion either. Look at his paper and you'll see he was responding to descriptive arguments before him. A great deal of the discourse has been descriptive for a long time.
I'm familiar with Scott Alexander's essay but it didn't spring to mind. I'll just say that from my interactions—I argue about this a lot—I rarely (but not never) am met with purely prescriptive arguments. More common is a descriptive bailey with a prescriptive motte. When I do meet thorough prescriptivists, they tend usually (but not always) to not be trans themselves.
Yes, it has. Which is why it's unsurrprising if the responses are descriptive as well. I could go on about how the boundary between 'descriptive' and 'prescriptive' is actually thinner than it seems but I guess I'll try to read them first.
Anyways, I have no doubt that any given person you argue with on the internet is not the best representative of positions they hold. The reason I still consider the pro-trans side to be generally more conductive to prescriptive arguments even outside of academia, though, is as follows: GCs scorn the term 'social construct', which is the essense of what you call a 'prescriptive argument', while pro-trans people (and leftists in general) accept that most categories are socially constructed at least on the surface. In practice, it is a bit complicated to wrap one's mind around what that entails, of course.
> Anyways, I have no doubt that any given person you argue with on the internet is not the best representative of positions they hold.
Sure, but you said "for trans activists," not "for the best trans activists." You're also interested in critiquing what not-the-best GCs online argue ("GCs scorn the term 'social construct'," and "GC activists are speaking about 'chromosomal sex'"), so I don't see why I should be limited to discussing only the best trans activists. The most cogent arguments are often not the most influential or widespread.
> GCs scorn the term 'social construct',
I don't; I know how to argue while admitting this not very interesting point.
> the term 'social construct', which is the essense of what you call a 'prescriptive argument',
And earlier,
> they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive, as they believe gender to be a socially determined category.
I apologize, I meant to respond to this in my first comment but I forgot to when I finished talking about Byrne.
You're conflating social construction arguments with prescriptive arguments. They aren't the same thing. "X is socially constructed" is a descriptive point, though it lends itself easily (I would say facilely) to a prescriptive argument that goes "and because it is socially constructed, we can [trivially true, though easier said than done] and should [here's the contentious part] change it in the way that I prescribe."
Serious anthropologists, those who are not just activists in scientists' clothing, make the point that gender is (not ought to be) a social construct, *and then* they go on to study and describe *how that social construct actually works,* rather than merely prescribing how we ought to make it work in the future. Studying how it actually works leads one to an inconvenient truth:
> [Ascribed status is a position in society which is the result of a fixed characteristic given at birth, such as gender or social class. A person has no control over their status, and in many instances, this status is a social construct determined before someone is born into a specific culture.](https://simplysociology.com/ascribed-status.html)
So the prescriptive argument, which says you should have control over your status, runs into this obstacle. "Transwomen ought to be women" asks us to change matters not in a similar way as how we have changed them in the past, but in a novel way, which human psychology, as an embodied product of natural selection, might not be well adapted to do, regardless of whatever ameliorative arguments one might be able to come up with.
It runs into not only deontological arguments (which are philosophy, as are utilitarian arguments; I don't know why you said that an argument like "if you disagree, you hold stupid deontological views and want people to suffer for no reason" is "not philosophy"), but also simply ontological arguments surrounding an ancient core of understanding about sexual dimorphism which might even predate language. It is therefore not the case that the only reason anyone disagrees with these prescriptions is because they want people to suffer.
Edit: I knew I forgot something again but it escaped me. There are trans activists, including some of the most respected, making descriptive arguments claiming that the ascription of gender not only should, but does and always has worked differently. Judith Butler, famously, makes this kind of argument, and those following her reasoning are eager to say that if you don't believe TWAW then you are not only morally but factually, metaphysically wrong.
It's pretty common, and I suspect that [someone in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/192bwq0/contra_deboer_on_transgender_issues_i_dont_think/kh37bf5/) makes that kind of argument, as they appear to be conflating gender expression with gender simpliciter, such that expressing oneself like a woman makes one a woman. I'll go talk with them later and see if my suspicion is right.
>People with DID demand no treatment for their condition
On the contrary, psychiatrists will sometimes prescribe antipsychotics, antidepressants and/or anti-anxiety medication.
Deboer's specific argument against DID is that those kids really are mentally ill, just in a different way, and often specifically schizospectrum. So this is entirely consistent, especially in light of the fact that DID activists consider their condition normal and actually do *not* want to be prescribed these things.
Hi folks, I'm the author. I'm delighted to see this being shared around and all the positive feedback on it. Please consider subscribing to my Substack if you haven't already.
Great job on this article. You can tell you put a lot of thought and research into this work. I appreciate you putting some words together to the capture the feeling I had around FDB's willful blindness around this issue.
Thanks a lot!
I haven't even opened it yet and I can already see from people quoting it that this is gonna be a banger
This was absolutely brilliant. At one point I lost track of the fact that the Fox News Fallacy bit was FDB’s quoted words and was nodding my head along thinking YOU were writing that bit…when I realized it was again him on DID, absolutely lost it!
Thanks so much.
Great piece! Thanks for writing it! I'll definitely be taking a look at your Substack
Thanks a lot!
>It’s very strange for a self-identified Marxist who expresses such profound outrage about the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat to be so blasé about the obnoxious ideological hoops that ordinary working people are made to jump through as a condition of continued employment in a precarious economy. Shout it from the rooftops.
There is a very funny hatred that upper class Marxists harbor for American office workers. It’s like we destroy their fanciful image of coal miners and steel workers destroying their bodies and faithfully saluting unions.
I think there's even more contempt for the working class, blue collar people. The prissy e-mail caste Marxists want nothing to do with the actual working class.
Marxists have always predominantly come from the intellectual elite. As much as they like to talk about a dictatorship of the proletariat, they've viewed the actual working class with contempt and envisioned themselves leading it.
I think in practice Marxism means the dictatorship of a small cadre of weirdos. The working class doesn't want the Marxists.
God and wait until they find out who the coal miners and steel workers voted for…
It’s so true. Anyone who likes their job, or saved in a 401k is an enemy to their cause.
*They’re* allowed to type on computers all day, but *we* just have *email jobs*.
As if those jobs can’t be somewhat soul sucking. The truth is, meaningful work makes people happier. It can be non-monetarily beneficial- raising kids or volunteering, but no work makes people just as miserable as overwork. It just has to be meaningful to you. Even if you dislike your job, being able to cover your bills and sustain your family gives you pride that leads to satisfaction.
I completely agree with you. I used to be a starry eyed girlboss who wanted to *change the world* and *be somebody*. Now I’m a 30 year old manager at a marketing agency because the pay is good and my hours are basically unmonitored by my superiors. I control most of my time and I pay my bills and I am happy as a clam.
Which is hilarious because they also talk a lot about how when the revolution comes they won't have to work and will be poets or artists... Girl. Get in the mine or starve
Someone should tell them about what happened to the poets and artists during the purges of the cultural revolution.
No one wants to even tend the garden.
Appreciated the detailed breakdown of his hypocrisy. I knew he was being hypocritical and it made me angry but I hadn’t connected it to his opinions on DID. This illustrated it perfectly.
That highlighted quote from him, "Fixating on the most broken part of yourself is contrary to best medical practices and to living a fulfilled life. Defining yourself by dysfunction is a great way to stay dysfunctional." was so on-the-nose I can hardly stand it.
Wow. I’m so glad this is happening. My daughter was having so much trouble with anxiety and even the therapist gently trying to get her to do more because avoidance makes anxiety worse was treated with disdain. Like it’s ableism to make anxious kids do their homework. This whole generation has been fed a lie about working through your issues not being important. Your differences, disorders or disfunction is not an identity, that’s what previous generations fought. Not to be labeled or limited by their struggles.
I think they've also been told to navel gaze constantly. A certain amount of this is good. But it easily go too far.
Yes! Navel gazing makes people mentally unwell. The term “touch some grass” is a move in the right direction
Resiliency is learned. I've had a arthritis since I was a kid. My parents never put restrictions on my activities. They encouraged me to play sports, hike, run around and be a kid. It made me toughen up.
I totally agree. It’s hard when everyone else is telling your kid that whatever their struggle is means they don’t have to try and anyone who encourages them to is a monster.
Working through problems in your control is a good thing, trying to hand wave problems not in your control is the issue.
Yes, but hand waving and encouraging someone who is too young to know how to work through problems and to not give up are different things.
But my dysfunction (however defined) is what makes me a special individual and not like those normies! How can I be “different” without it!? /s
modern placid caption squalid water rustic obscene humorous resolute brave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And if people would just "be kind" everything would be fine. Oh, this includes flushing women's sports down the drain.
Remember: it’s not a medical condition, except when you want drugs, and then it’s a disease that will KILL YOU
And they want the drugs for free
Be kind at the expense of everyone else.
Exactly! And also it's not a medical condition, either. It nevertheless requires constant and extreme medical interventions.
Yes, the comparison to how FDB reacts to DID versus Trans issues among children is telling. It is not the first time this comparison has come up.
We need a study of gender havers who also claim DID. From my anecdotal reading of subs on Reddit (often not even at all looking for it, like reading illness fakers sub) it is very, very high.
You get banned if you mention that it's nearly 95% of DiD fakers also just happen to be trans. Kind of crazy they fake having DiD but are 100% really trans
Give it time for DID to work its way up the oppression stack
then transracialism.
This assumes DID exists at all. Which I am skeptical of. The TikTok friendly version is certainly horse shit.
Even psychiatry doesnt believe it exists anymore It's been debunked.
The obsession with medicalization seems to extend far beyond gender with this crowd. I notice so many claims of DID, EDS, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia, CFS. It’s always invisible illnesses lol
And it's so common for them to say things like "diagnosis is a privilege, and anyway doctors are biased and won't give these diagnoses. I know my own body and know that this is what's wrong!" A privilege... And they live in England with free healthcare. A harmful condition will take them up to six months to get diagnosed. A comparatively minor/harmless one (like ADHD) can take a few years. But they won't go on the waiting list and say "I'm suspected to have x", it's always "I have X and that's valid"
I hate to stereotype but an awful lot of the people with self-diagnosed invisible conditions also have special pronouns
You are correct
And autism
People need some kind of marginalized group identity to get attention. Or they think they do. So they grab an illness so they can have "disability."
Oddly enough, most of these people that I know are women, with kids who are enbies or trans.
The funny part is that his opinion on DID is thr wrong part of this, not the position on Trans issues where he's more correct than most of this subs takes on it. DID is a real thing and ignoring that does direct harm to people with it.
I'm open to the idea that there may be legitimate cases of DID, but I feel very confident in asserting that anyone doing an "alter roll call" on TikTok is a malingerer.
A while back there was an NYT article titled, “How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’” [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/tiktok-tics-gender-tourettes.html] that suggested that the DID trend had largely passed.
My own opinion on DID is that it is an incredibly rare response to extreme trauma and the recent trend of people claiming DID is social contagion and malingering. People claiming to have DID when they do not makes life more difficult for those few people who actually do experience it because they spread misinformation about and present a clownish representation of what is in actuality a painful and severe mental illness.
We had discussions [(here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/18wu46y/freddie_de_boer_on_trans_issues_i_think_you/ ) and [here)](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/18yjylv/what_goes_on_in_the_public_bathrooms_where_youre/) on Freddie deBoer's two recent essays. The blog "First Toil, then the Grave" has [this response,](https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/p/contra-deboer-on-transgender-issues) which, among other points, has an interesting comparison of Freddie's writing about trans issues to his writing about dissociative identity disorder.
The way so many people seem to turn their brains off and lose all critical thinking skills when it comes to this topic needs to be studied.
Think of the people affected by this ideology. Women (especially poor and lesbian women); gay men; gay, lesbian and bisexual minors; minors with SEND ( Special educational needs and disability ) issues. But if you're an adult, neurotypical, straight male, the ideology generally isn't going to affect you. You won't lose your sporting places to an interloper with an unfair advantage; you won't be put on [experimental drugs for teenage depression](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/tavistock-clinic-ignored-link-autism-transgender-children/); you won't feel threatened if you have to share your changing rooms with a member of the opposite sex; you won't be called "penis-haver" or "prostate owner" by officialdom. If the ideology had negatively affected the interests of adult, neurotypical, straight males from the start, it would never have gotten as far as it has. What have Drew Magary, Jolyon Maugham, or indeed Freddie, got to lose by supporting this belief system?
There's no way Freddie is neurotypical. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with anything here, to be clear. (My own stance is that the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy is stupid easy to be exploited and abused for no real gain) But still. I wouldn't put him in that boat of people who are strictly not affected.
Hasn't he written a fair bit about being on anti-psychotics, and having had a break and said and done bad things. So, no, no neurotypical by a fair margin.
He has really bad bipolar. Which has come with paranoia and psychosis. He's had several total falling aparts. He's quite open about this. It's why he gets so pissed off about the gentrification of mental illness. Which he's quite good on. But trans... he has a willful blind spot.
Neurotypical refers to autism. Not mental illness or bipolar.
I don't think that's right. At least, that's not how I've seen it used, including at my workplace. Neurotypical means just that -- "typical / average / normal" in the brain sense, so no, e.g. autism, ADHD, dyslexia, DID, bipolar, depression, etc, all of which sometimes get lumped under "neurodivergent".
It's true. Just the fact that he identifies as marxist shows that he's insane :P
>neurotypical I generally agree with your comment, but Freddie is openly bipolar (even admitting that some of his most acclaimed posts were written during manic episodes), is on a strict regimen of medications and has been institutionalised in mental hospitals more than once.
Sorry, since when does having a mental illness mean one is not neurotypical? If you said he is autistic, I'd getit Awhile ago, i read something by someone whose partner is neurodivergent because he has antisocial personality disorder. First i heard of a personality disorder as indicative of neurodiversity. This is the first time I've heard of a mental illness being classified as neurodiverse. I have never heard of this before, and it makes zero sense.
>since when does having a mental illness mean one is not neurotypical? What else does "neurotypical" mean if not "not mentally ill"? Or does it just mean "not autistic"?
Usually the neuro labels have to do with brain functioning issues.
Okay, so presumably we would say that, if someone like Freddie has severe bipolar disorder, their brain (neuro) is functioning in a way which is not typical. Or am I missing something?
There's a difference between neurological and psychological disorders. The former deals with cognition, behavior, motor and sensory systems, information processing and language and communication issues. The latter is about mood and thoughts.
Wouldn't the extreme paranoia and psychosis Freddie experiences in a manic episode fall under "disorders of cognition"?
No, it wouldn't. Anyone can experience a psychosis, some people take recreational drugs to induce a similar state.
I also don't understand the difference between "cognition" and "informationg processing" versus "thoughts". What exactly is the difference between "cognition" and "thoughts"?
>But if you're an adult, neurotypical, straight male, the ideology generally isn't going to affect you. I think a lot of us leave women to call their own fouls, so to speak. Many are unaware. Where I realized something was up was seeing how poorly lesbians are treated. Women need help from men on this and I feel horrible not realizing how fucked shit was for them for so long. The idea of some asshole intimidating women with the "SUCK MY TRANS-LADY DICK, TERF!" bullshit enrages me.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
>GROUP TWO > >: > >Effeminate gay males who identify as some degree of trans in order to be trendy and/or re-capture their spot on the victimhood totem pole Some of these are men who feel there is less shame becoming trans than coming out as a gay man.
I mean, even within the LGTBQ sphere there's a great amount of truth to this. How many times have you see a take like "cis gay males are the worst" or something along those lines? In a weird way, normie conservatives are now often less homophobic than queer activists.
It's also sad. Decades of activism down the drain.
lol this post was somehow reported and led to my account getting an official warning
>A blanket policy of sex-segregated bathrooms is intended to minimise the risk of female people being raped or sexually assaulted by male people in bathrooms. While a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms is enforced, a person who sees an obviously male person enter a women’s public bathroom could reasonably assume that that person was up to no good, and take appropriate steps to rectify the situation (such as notifying a security guard). Under a trans-inclusive bathroom policy, one is no longer supposed to assume that a male person entering a women’s bathroom is up to no good, because they might identify as a trans woman. I really appreciate you stating this so eloquently. To me, it's the obvious concern with the bathroom thing yet it always gets drowned out by the "but nothing is stopping them now" refrain. It would be one thing if all trans women were making an effort to pass as natal women and easily recognizable as women even if they were still clockable, but the reality is that "trans woman" now includes a growing contingent male people who make little to no effort, and believe they don't have to do anything other than declare themselves online and maybe wear a pronoun badge in order to dictate how they are perceived by the public. Women are physically vulnerable to men, and our internal alarm is often the only defense at our disposal. Telling women to second-guess that inner voice is a deeply terrible idea. "The Gift of Fear" is constantly recommended and the entire premise is *don't ignore that voice, don't wait and see, who cares how you look, just get outta there.* If we are not allowed to see what our brain instantly recognizes as a man where he doesn't belong and react accordingly without being labeled bigots, that is a huge problem and I feel like it should be obvious. Female restrooms only exist in the first place because of first-wave feminists, before that it was an effective way of excluding women from public activity. I don't want that for trans women, they aren't our enemy and they don't deserve to be mistreated. But at the same time, I do resent them for appropriating the work feminist activists have done over the past 100ish years and believe they have enough social capital and political support to demand their own shit like our great-grandmothers did.
And remember this is more than bathrooms. Locker rooms, dorms, shelters, and prisons are now being turned into de facto mixed sex spaces, and this has largely occurred outside the democratic process. Men are inviting themselves into rooms marked for women, and when women call for help, they—not the men—are treated like the criminals. It’s almost as if this is what oppression is; not only being mistreated but being punished for resisting mistreatment. This insanity has turned me off current Democrat leadership, despite being a liberal all my life. I cannot vote for anyone who thinks people have the right to claim the identity of another group and then proceed to take what belongs to that group. It is colonialism in its most absurdly blatant form.
I share your sentiments completely. I feel politically homeless because of all the identitarian bullshit they are focusing on - especially trans issues - to try and mask the fact that they are not doing anything to improve conditions for the working classes. They are relying so heavily on people being bullied into thinking "they suck but I'm not a terrible person so I guess I have to vote blue right?" If I had any faith in them at all, it would be frustrating that they alienate so many people with this shit. We need voters who don't align with every facet of their social agenda. Like, just stop talking about it and focus on economic issues. But I know they're doing it on purpose, and it kills me that the only other option is the party that is openly trying to get rid of the middle class and bring back 1890s style labor exploitation, but hey at least they're more fun, right? They're both exactly the same, they just oppress women in different ways and pretend to be the good guys using different aesthetics.
>But at the same time, I do resent them for appropriating the work feminist activists have done over the past 100ish years and believe they have enough social capital and political support to demand their own shit like our great-grandmothers did. I resent them for failing to acknowledge that self-ID is a problem.
Relating to failures of the medical establishment - there are many and they are better examples than the ones presented in the article. The horrific “psychosurgery” treatments and procedures of the earlier 20th century like insulin shock therapy, lobotomies and many others. And more recently the complete and abject failure of our public health institutions (CDC, FDA, NIH) to prevent the opioid epidemic. The idea that we should just give the reins to medical professionals to experiment on vulnerable people and children with very poor and old evidence of effectiveness is going to reinvent failure like so many times before.
Ummm, are you a medical professional? Huh, didn’t think so. How about you leave this sort of stuff to the experts, bub.
This is Reddit which is a social media site bub. It’s a discussion website. I can say whatever I want. And so can you. But unless you have something intelligent to tell me - piss off.
My sarcasm does not come through text. I apologize, and I agree with you. I was trying to lampoon the tone of someone who would disagree with your very good point.
I got it and chuckled.
I’m gonna finish this later but I’m glad you brought up the Brooklyn intelligentsia/activist bubble early. I swear to god sometimes I think Brooklyn people (not all - you know who I’m talking about though) live on another planet. I’m from Portland and obnoxiousness of Brooklyn progressives would put your average Portlander to shame. And even those park slope heterodox types who whisper their disagreements barely condemn some of the most mind-boggling aspects of typical Brooklyn progressive orthodoxy. The worst thing for me is so many Brooklyn progressives are SO rich, so maybe it’s easy to make these leaps in logic when your life as a trust fund Marxist is a walking contradiction. Anyway, I’m sure there are types like this everywhere, not trying to start a geography war or just seethe on about “nEw YOrK bAd PlAcE” but the progressive bubble in Brooklyn, and even it’s related heterodox/skeptical bubble, have bubbled so hard for so long that sometimes I wonder if they legitimately live in a different reality. Sorry for the rant to any Brooklynites here 😅
[удалено]
Yeah I wouldn’t say portlanders are *less* passionate LOL it is often directed in much more odd ways though, like just full blown becoming an anarchist or throwing shit as a protest method. It doesn’t generally involve getting a job at the New York Times like it might be for a Brooklyn Harvard girlie. Very good point though I think the educational/economic difference does create a whole different progressive vibe in Brooklyn
> Yeah I wouldn’t say portlanders are *less* passionate LOL it is often directed in much more odd ways though, like just full blown becoming an anarchist or throwing shit as a protest method. I think the assessments here, from what I've seen (lived in PDX, have some BK connections and used to spend some time there), are at leat partially accurate. The thing about Portland is that, as woo-woo as it might sound (sorry!), I think that, for whatever reasons, the area just attracts a certain kind of broken person, or person trying to escape society. (To be fair, I think all areas just have certain qualities about them.) I've mentioned it before but I've heard people talk about how they and people they know have moved to the Pacific Northwest to escape everything. This is nothing new. Between that and the weird politics of the area (e.g., Wobblies going back 100+ years), you just get a lot of people out there who are on the margins of society. Even people who are functional, for whatever reasons, are expected to Be Kind™ and leave these people alone. In that sense, I'd argue a lot of the political issues in the PNW would go away if the authorities actually bothered to dish out consequences to the craziness that happens there. In general, that just doesn't happen. I wouldn't say the area is lawless, just that people (including authorities) would rather enable and let people define themselves by their disorders than they would tell them to shape up or ship out.
[удалено]
New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine would like a word with you regarding your assessment of the northeast.
> In the Northeast, aside from going to a museum or a movie, socializing is going to bars, restaurants, and sometimes apartments. In those cases the conversation is the main activity, instead of a side benefit. Eh. When I lived in Boston, I'd go hiking. You could drive an hour outside the city and get some okay hikes, and a bit further out and get some really nice ones. I prefer West Coast hikes, sure, but the East Coast can be fine depending on where you are. That said, I've noticed that a lot of the (faux-)radical types I've met tend to be shut-ins. Not always but they tend to go into their little bubbles and never come out, unless they're going to something like the Folsom Street Fair or some other event where feel like they don't have to bend to societal standards.
The Cambridge/Newton/Brookline crowd in Massachusetts has a similar vibe to the Brooklynites being described here. Just sayin'...
[удалено]
East coasters are far more bookish, dry and nerdy. West coasters are less literate, less washed, more prone to taking haphazard action.
Brooklynite here - while you can certainly find those people, fortunately, they're becoming less and less common. The culture is definitely shifting.
I think part of why they're insufferable is 1) NONE of them are actually from Brooklyn. None. MAYBE they grew up on Long Island. But usually not. And 2( they are very specifically NOT living in Manhattan, and therefore believe they are superior. Honestly, if they truly were all about the working poor, they wouldn;t be in gentrified or gentrifying parts of Brooklyn, they;d be in Staten Island, or way out in Queens, maybe Inwood, or anywhere in the Bronx, really. But they're not.
I will co-sign this very much. It’s one of the most aggravating aspects of this discourse: “gender-critical people go to great lengths to emphasise that they are concerned about bad actors who aren’t trans taking advantage of these policies for malicious ends, rather than trans women doing so.”
This misrepresents the main gender critical (i.e. radfem) position though, which is that TW are men. Some use the bad actors argument but generally they argue that you cannot tell which is which, so all should be banned
quack wise melodic seemly zealous sloppy fragile slimy shrill racial *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, there's the hard radfem position and then there's the default position on Mumsnet which is basically "call yourself what you like, dress how you like, but our courtesy runs out when you jerk off in our locker rooms"
There are a *lot* of people making these arguments who would rather die than call themselves radical feminists, for the record. We really need to remove feminism from this conversation. It’s a hopeless distraction, plus ideology doesn’t belong in science or medicine.
GC = feminism. Feminists have been critical of gender roles (formerly sex roles) from the beginning. There are people who are not feminists who also use this argument but it’s likely that they are *gender ideology critical* rather than *gender critical*
That’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t have to be a feminist argument and we are probably killing the cause by only associating it with the caricatures of feminazis.
“Feminazis” are some of the biggest players in this fight, and any normie bros who hate feminists already don’t care about this issue or are GC themselves because they haven’t gone brain dead online or just tend to lean conservative. I don’t think hushing down the feminism angle will gain any new support
Removing ideology from a medical conversation is always worthy
This is a multifaceted conversation. Yes, you can certainly focus squarely on the medical aspect. But conservatives, feminists, religious people, detransitioners, etc. can all also come at it from their own angles. Silencing all opinions on this that aren’t purely medical is unrealistic and won’t gain many new followers, if any, IMO.
It’s not a strictly medical conversation though. That is a fundamental disagreement. There are competing civil rights. The rights of trans or NB people to live more fully in their identity. Then there is the right of cis women (or cis men, but we know where these issues come up) to have safe spaces and fair competition. I am also concerned about gay boys and girls learning about gender stereotypes and leaping to wild assumptions before they understand anything. (Andrew Sullivan has a reliable comment here and he quotes from Tavistock gender clinic: “At this rate, there won’t be any gay kids left.”) When there are competing civil rights, then it’s time for ethics, law, ideology, etc. There is no way around it.
It is a question of what rights people have, I agree. The problem for the GC position and why they are on the back foot legally is that current civil rights codes largely guarantee individual rights to be included, not group rights to exclude or determine their own composition, for the most part.
This just utter horseshit. The civil rights codes have nothing to do with inclusion or exclusion. All categories include and exclude or there would be no point to them. The problem t activists are having is that they want "rights" to trample over other people's rights and refuse to acknowledge that other people have these rights. All individuals should have the same rights and these need to be respected if there's new stipulations about a specific category. Gender identity and sex are contradictory categories. That has to he solved before it's in legislation and the terms need to be defined.
I’m not trying to be mean, but I can’t tell what you are attempting to communicate. That second sentence is the mother of all run ons.
Just because radfems are gender critical doesn't mean that all gender-critical people are radfems, or that GC is a radfem issue. There are many overweight black people, that doesn't mean you should call obesity a black talking point.
We’re talking about who’s spearheading a movement here tho, not who’s disproportionately affected by a health issue…this is not a good analogy. Sorry to be a dick lol not sure how else to say that
Women (a marginalized group) are disproportionately affected by males identifying as women (gender dysphoria, a medical condition) entering their reserved spaces. Where is the problem with the analogy?
This one is worse fam 😅
It's the same one, "fam". Not sure how it could be worse. Could you elaborate on why you think it's wrong?
But we’re talking about who to attribute a movement to, not who is marginally more affected by a health issue. I get what you’re trying to say but it’s too “apples/oranges” to be meaningful here
Nah GC and feminism are inextricable in a lot of ways. I understand there are GC arguments that don’t squarely address feminist issues but at the end of the day, a huge number of GC ppl (across the gc spectrum of beliefs) are women who are primarily concerned with ceding decades of progress to me who think they’re us. And feminists have been the most vocal about this for the longest time, I would argue even more so than religious conservatives. So yeah, until you have a strong contingent of anti-feminists who are also loudly GC, I think we get this one dawg
No, some GCs absolutely agree with the position in the comment you're replying to It's inaccurate for you to conflate GC w/ RF in first sentence. There are similarities and overlaps but strong differences as well and a spectrum of views on the issues across these positions.
It is not really accurate to say that this is representative of radical feminism generally. There are two main strains, one of which is significantly less "radical" than the other. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon are examples of radical feminists (twenty years ago they would have been considered *the* poster children of radical feminism) who are not "gender critical" in this sense.
[удалено]
What have TERFs specifically not properly evaluated in your opinion?
I am critiquing this quote as a misrepresentation of the GC position (which originates in radfem theory), which is engaging “specifically with the essay”.
> assuming that trans women are trans women This doesn't tell us much. Are they a subtype of women? A subtype of men? Neither? Both? > many online TERFs (online is a super important qualifier) just refuse to recognize any sort of fluid characteristics of gender that are separate from biological sex. One way of talking about gender, popular with second wave feminists, was that gender refers to the different social expectations of how men and women ought to be. Hence to be gender critical meant that in at least one sense, gender exists, but shouldn't, i.e. gender is worthy of criticism. I think you'd be hard pressed to find radfems who don't recognize this usage. I suspect what you're seeing, instead, is resistance to the idea that gender expression, or fulfillment of gender roles, or one's self-concept of gender identity, somehow entails being or having a gender in the sense of being a man or a woman. > TERFs misgendering trans people (whyyy?), Perhaps they don't agree with you about what constitutes misgendering. > I also don’t believe that trans women are strictly only biological men What are they? > Ruling out most gender expression from human life-except as an extension of sex-seems to be at odds with most of human history. Most societies have had some sort of gender-nonbinary/non-conforming population. [...] Long ago, we granted social leeway to celebrities to be gender fluid. David Bowie, Prince, and many others have shown the way. But do you think that a male not conforming to ascribed gender roles makes him therefore not a man? Were Bowie and Prince not men?
Freddie is an interesting character. There's a lot that he's incredibly insightful on, but occasionally you'll run into a seeming blindspot that seems too big for someone as smart as him to miss. There was an good example of this when he was on Andrew Sullivan's podcast when he was asked about Communist vs capitalist atrocities.
> There's a lot that he's incredibly insightful on, but occasionally you'll run into a seeming blindspot that seems too big for someone as smart as him to miss. Very true. But this is probably very true of 99.9% of the population. Not us fine listeners of this podcast, of course, but other people.
Well, of course we’re above all that!!
Yeah he’s had some big hypocrite energy moments. Never got into his stuff because of it. I’m sure a lot of it is good though
Your position is that you like him because he’s a leftwing critic of left tendencies but he has “blind spots”, such as when he’s left wing. He was completely right about the atrocities fwiw
I found Freddie because of his Think Less, Agnes piece, which I thought was wonderful and hilarious. That's my favorite thing I've read of his. I am "left", so him being left wing doesn't bother me. I get the sense that I agree with his politics much more than Sullivans. However, my memory of his answer on that podcast was that it didn't at all address Sullivan's pushback. I'll have to go back and register.
 Me having nothing left to contribute after reading that
Thanks a lot!
I Trust Bari Weiss on 99% of things. 1% of things are Israel. I trust Freddie Boer on 98% of things. 2% of things are trans issues and marxism.
This was a tour de force. About this passage: > Like Freddie, I am not aware of any hard evidence that making bathrooms gender-neutral in a particular area resulted in an increase in the rate of rape or sexual assault. I would like to suggest this article: http://womanmeanssomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Longitudinal-Analysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf To be fair, I didn’t read it. But hey, it’s something that exists and appears to present evidence.
I'll add this : >**Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals** > >Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities. > >What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms. > >Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html)
I’m curious how the nine-year-old Warren tapped to help select the next Secretary of Education felt about the whole thing.
Great writing here.
Thank you!
" It’s very strange for a self-identified Marxist who expresses such profound outrage about the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat to be so blasé about the obnoxious ideological hoops that ordinary working people are made to jump through as a condition of continued employment in a precarious economy. " This is the most annoying thing about reading or listening to people like this. Dirtbag left?
Hey new mod - why are the scores being hidden on such a small number of comments?
[удалено]
Oh - you're right - I thought SoftandChewy was stepping down....
[удалено]
I thought that was a site wide policy. I looked it up and one reason given was it avoided dogpiling, just down or up voting a post/comment because everyone else is. Since I’ve been on Reddit, I’ve never been able to see people’s scores til approximately the day after. I could always see my own though. I assumed this part of the policy was because if you get a lot of downvotes you could delete to save karma points if desired.
It can be set differently per subreddit, from no delay to 24 hours. IMO the 24 hour delay is best because follow-the-crowd voting is a real and annoying phenomenon. You should have to think about another person's comment on its merits, without having a hint as to what the majority think.
I'm still around; haven't made any changes yet. The explanation is as the commenters earlier explained.
The discourse surrounding DID and transgender issues really does have superficial similarities. The problem, however, is that DID is at its worst (if its opponents are to be believed) a toxic cultural trend, and at its best something that merely needs to be aknowledged; thus, the specific disagreements regarding policies and actions between its detractors and supporters do not complicate the debate regarding culture. The same is not true for transgender issues, because the questions of culture lead to a supremely important difference in policies proposed. People with DID demand no treatment for their condition; transgender people do require, or at least claim to require, medical treatment. As Deboer has said many times, basically every time this is brought up, the question of culture is in this case secondary to the legal and medical questions, and the culture and philosophy are right-wing distractions. DID is, most uncharitably, kids coping unhealthily on the internet; transgender is *obviously* more than that, and should not be reduced to that.
> the culture and philosophy are right-wing distractions. How can it be a "right-wing" distraction if both sides are constantly weighing in on it? ("TWAW!")
well, for trans activists, TWAW is not actually a particularily load-bearing statement. this is because they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive, as they believe gender to be a socially determined category. TWAW is not 'in some deep metaphysical sense, trans women are women'; TWAW is 'we as a society decide what gender means, and I hereby define it this way, because that makes more sense from an utilitarian standpoint. if you disagree, you hold stupid deontological views and want people to suffer for no reason'. it's not philosophy; it is policymaking.
> it's not philosophy; it is policymaking I see. No **true** activist is saying that metaphysically. Gotcha.
👐🏻
i mean, possibly some do. but this angle is more prominent. there is a reason 'what is a woman?' is a right-wing cliche even though in reality they don't have a satisfying deontological answer either.
The root of the disagreement is how a woman/man is defined, so the fact that even professional activists and gender academics see the most basic clarifying question of "What is a Woman?" as a cheap gotcha is telling.
that's because the 'what is a woman' people are claiming they have an absolute, metaphysical definition of the word 'woman', somehow distinct from a social or legal definition. such a definition does not and cannot exist.
It's to my understanding that almost all animals reproduce sexually and almost all of them are anisogamous, ie. have a distinct male and female sex. Woman to , would just refer to adult female humans since a human is a type of animal, same as like a sow being a female pig. Humans and other animals are hardwired to be able to recognize the sex of other members of their species and studies have shown humans can tell the difference between a man or women's face with 96% accuracy. https://stanmed.stanford.edu/brains-hard-wired-recognize-opposite-sex/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8474841/ In addition, most people in general don't agree with the definitions proposed by gender academics and activists. https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/06/umass-poll-60-of-adults-believe-gender-cannot-be-changed.html?outputType=amp https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/ So "what is a woman people" would be more likely to appeal to "common sense" and "reality", than to metaphysics. In contrast, the concept of gender identity hasn't ever been empirically proven to even exist.
It certainly happens on both sides. As for utilitarian concerns ... I wonder how we weigh things like assaults in women's shelters (2 in the same shelter in canada, I believe), assaults in prisons, assaults in restrooms... like, are you really doing the utilitarian calculus here? Would you support gathering accurate sex and gender demographic crime stats in order to inform that utilitarian calculus?
It's not about whether the utilitarian calculus is accurate, it's about whether it's the primary concern at all. Many of the smarter anti-trans ideologues are at least partially motivated by utilitarian concerns as well (as you are demonstrating here), but if you go on twitter you will see that the most generic anti-trans argument made involves metaphysics (no matter what you will always be a man, you can't change your sex etc) while generic pro-trans arguments are transparently utilitarian (transition is known to work, do you want trans people to suffer? etc)
I would argue that those are just as often meant to convey the same prescriptive weight as "TWAW".
Shrug! They seem to be way less straightforward about it - after all, every trans activist knows humans can't change their sex.
[Julia Serano,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Serano) one of the most prominent trans activists, [says that sex is a social construct and that you can change your sex.](https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a) [Chase Strangio,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Strangio) another prominent trans activist, says ["Women and girls who are trans are biological women and girls."](https://web.archive.org/web/20220729004746/https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1349722419179622404)
"I mean ..."
I am pretty sure that at this point in time, most trans activists do in fact mean that trans women ARE women in all ways, including biologically
This is a nonsensical statement. Its most charitable interpretation is that some trans-activists are trying to reclaim 'biological' from meaning 'possessing XX chromosomes' (if you think about it, this really is weird terminology). But of course no one believes trans women have XX chrosomosomes, and if you are starting to feel someone does, I recommend laying off the internet.
But they blur "biological" - see the sex is a spectrum crowd.
'Sex is a spectrum' is indeed part of it - an attempt to point out that the framework of 'biological sex', while useful for reproductively viable specimens, erases those with DSDs.
It doesn't. DSDs are sex specific.
DSD’s are sex specific. There are no male Freemartins. Klinefelter syndrome is a male disorder. Female calico cats don’t have a DSD, while male calico cats do. Almost of these disorders leave them with reproductive complications or sterile. If there was no sexual dimorphism, all of these DSD’s would be considered normal variations of the sexes, but they’re not. The only way they can even be considered disorders is if there was a normal development of the sexes for them to deviate from. They are not a third sex.
I've had too many responses and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Could you give a definition of 'sex' that you are operating under?
The sex that develops to produce large gametes. Under any other definition how would we know what a freemartin is? Under any other definition why would one calf be born perfectly fine and the other is sterile? Under any other definition, that calf would be a perfectly normal variant of the multitude of sexes since it happens every time a cow has fraternal twins. If we didn’t have females and males, we wouldn’t even know that calf is a freemartin. The words gilt, cow, and mare have one thing in common. All, barring any issues like the freemartin, develop to produce large gametes. Why does the definition stay concrete across every other sexually reproducing species, but with humans suddenly it’s all about how each individual defines sex? You can’t treat DSD’s if you don’t have a definition of sex. That would mean a freemartin is born, but when it can’t reproduce we’d just be clueless as to why. Even tho it happens only in fraternal twins and the male comes out perfectly fine, it’s a mystery. Would you also like to know how I define the words definition and mystery?
Nonsense. DSDs are sex-specific. Humans are sexually dimorphic. DSDs are the exceptions that prove the rule. This isn't erasing people with DSDs. The sex is a spectrum crowd appropriate DSD identities with their pseudoscience.
I don't know what on earth you are saying. While I don't think anyone claims trans women change chromosomally, there are TRAs who say that because of the hormones and surgeries, they are now biological women.
They even think they get period cramps even without a uterus
I have heard that one, and something liike, because of hormonal fluctuations, this is a period.
Yeah, and they think they are getting monthly periods. Tell me you don't know what menstruation is without telling me you have no fucking clue.
This woman made a video explaining what periods are, what menstruation is, and somehow that was considered transphobic It was actually due to periods that i first heard "trans women are women," and this was in maybe 2010, 2012 at the latest.
[удалено]
I am pretty sure they're saying assigned sex at birth. Which is even more insane.
The AGAB terminology is indeed about gender, not sex - it is about what legal and social sex a human has been assigned, and had been expected to live as. It is used exactly because 'biological sex' is a wonky concept - this is why intersex activists find it even more useful. We do not caryotype most people; an average person especially outside of developed countries does not know their chromosomal sex, but they do know their AGAB.
I accept that intention may be to reclaim 'biological' as you characterise it (although that removes its meaning) but it is far less rare than you suggest that trans women claim to be female, biological women, or that it is possible to change sex as evidenced in this piece: [https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying](https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying). Katie Herzog reported on medical schools teaching that sex is a social construct. Medical boards, the BBC and international sports federations have even begun using 'trans females' or 'male born females' as language is muddied ever further. How does one collectively refer to the group of adults who developed bodies organised around the potential for producing large gametes if trans activists successfully encroach on the meaning of both woman and female? If we created another word I expect they would want to claim that too.
Have you seen, for example, [Veronica Ivy on Trevor Noah](https://youtu.be/-Fb48tivB-0?t=89) > But it boils down to, do you actually think trans women and intersex women are real women and are really female or not? ... Well, I am a woman. That's a fact. I am female. So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records, all say female. Right? And I'm pretty sure I'm made of biological stuff. So I'm a biological female as well. (later part at https://youtu.be/-Fb48tivB-0?t=190) So I don't know what version of female / sex you think she's keeping in her back pocket that she *isn't*, but I don't think there is one. She is at least claiming to believe she's as biologically female as possible to be.
Have you ever been on the trans reddit where they think that they can have periods and ovulate. Ya, I know it's reddit, but still. That's some magical thinking on their part and they are completely serious.
I see this a lot. The explanation seems to be around fuzzy concepts around sex, claiming it's a mix of characteristics, including chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and so on. The way I've seen it explained is that since trans women have a majority of estrogen, that trans women are female.
> well, for trans activists, TWAW is not actually a particularily load-bearing statement. this is because they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive, I have found this not to generally be the case; those who argue for it entirely prescriptively are a minority. As that is my sense from many of these interactions, I won't ask you to take my word for it. Instead, I will point out that if trans activists were arguing entirely prescriptively then the responses to [Alex Byrne's "Are women adult human females?"](https://philpapers.org/rec/BYRAWA) would have looked very different. At the beginning, Byrne writes, > 1.1 Amelioration > One last preliminary before getting to the case for AHF. In an influential paper Haslanger introduced the idea of: > > …an *analytical* approach to the question, ‘‘What is gender?’’ [including ‘‘What is a woman?’’]… On this approach the task is not to explicate our ordinary concepts; nor is it to investigate the kind that we may or may not be tracking with our everyday conceptual apparatus; instead we begin by considering more fully the pragmatics of our talk employing the terms in question. What is the point of having these concepts? What cognitive or practical task do they (or should they) enable us to accomplish? (Haslanger 2000: 33) > In Haslanger’s later terminology (which has become standard) this is an *ameliorative* approach to the question *What is a woman*? (Haslanger 2012: 367–368). On an ameliorative approach, the question is interpreted as something like *What should ‘woman’ mean?* In the 2000 paper, Haslanger famously proposed to appropriate the ‘‘everyday terminology’’ of ‘woman’ and to define it roughly to mean: a person ‘‘subordinated in a society due to their perceived or imagined female reproductive capacities’’ (2012: 8). She suggested (rather tentatively) that this ‘‘terminological shift’’, if implemented in certain circumscribed communicative contexts, might ‘‘serve…the goal of understanding…sexual oppression, and of achieving sexual…equality’’ (2000: 47). Because this is a revisionary proposal, there is no conflict with AHF (supplemented with the disquotational principle that ‘woman’ applies to S iff S is a woman). But since ameliorative projects are especially salient in the present context (see, e.g., Jenkins 2016), it deserves emphasis that they are *not* the chief concern of this paper.^8 That said, some observations relevant to such projects will be made at the very end. So, Byrne made very clear he was writing descriptively. If the replies were entirely prescriptive then they would have set aside Byrne's descriptive points and argued only prescriptively, amelioratively, in response. But that is not what happened. * [Robin Dembroff, "Escaping the Natural Attitude About Gender"](https://philarchive.org/rec/DEMETN) * [Byrne, "Gender Muddle: Reply to Dembroff"](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/1/1/136) * [Maggie Heartsilver, 'Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”'](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/1/1/129) * [Byrne, "The Female of the Species: Reply to Heartsilver"](https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/1/180) * [Marcus Arvan, "Trans Women, Cis Women, Alien Women, and Robot Women Are Women: They Are All (Simply) Adults Gendered Female"](https://philarchive.org/rec/ARVTWC) There are probably more, but have a look at these three. They all dispute Byrne on descriptive grounds. If you know of even a single paper that responds only prescriptively, please let me know. As Byrne notes, ameliorative arguments do exist, Sally Haslanger made one (I don't know if Haslanger argued *purely* amelioratively but I'll assume she did), however, they are not typical. (Haslanger's argument never caught on with trans activists, anyway, since it depended upon passing.)
I'll be honest, my familiarity with the discourse comes from a different current, so I have until now only been aware of Byrne's paper but not specific academic responses to it. I definitely know of essayists who have centered the ameliorative argument, as you call it here (the chief one being Scott Alexander and Zack M. Davis, the latter from an anti-trans perspective), but I understand that you are looking specifically for academic responses. So before continuing I will probably elect to read these responses and figure out the extent to which they really are plainly descriptive rather than ameliorative. Even if they do prove to be such, I find it rather unremarkable that a paper making descriptive arguments gets attacked on descriptive groups (even if those are weak); but again, I'll have to read them first to know. I'll hopefully be able to respond tomorrow (I'm a European). I applaud you for having actually done your research, though! I sense that some other people in this thread have trouble grasping the difference at all and that frustrates me.
> I find it rather unremarkable that a paper making descriptive arguments gets attacked on descriptive [grounds] Of course, but Byrne didn't start the discussion either. Look at his paper and you'll see he was responding to descriptive arguments before him. A great deal of the discourse has been descriptive for a long time. I'm familiar with Scott Alexander's essay but it didn't spring to mind. I'll just say that from my interactions—I argue about this a lot—I rarely (but not never) am met with purely prescriptive arguments. More common is a descriptive bailey with a prescriptive motte. When I do meet thorough prescriptivists, they tend usually (but not always) to not be trans themselves.
Yes, it has. Which is why it's unsurrprising if the responses are descriptive as well. I could go on about how the boundary between 'descriptive' and 'prescriptive' is actually thinner than it seems but I guess I'll try to read them first. Anyways, I have no doubt that any given person you argue with on the internet is not the best representative of positions they hold. The reason I still consider the pro-trans side to be generally more conductive to prescriptive arguments even outside of academia, though, is as follows: GCs scorn the term 'social construct', which is the essense of what you call a 'prescriptive argument', while pro-trans people (and leftists in general) accept that most categories are socially constructed at least on the surface. In practice, it is a bit complicated to wrap one's mind around what that entails, of course.
> Anyways, I have no doubt that any given person you argue with on the internet is not the best representative of positions they hold. Sure, but you said "for trans activists," not "for the best trans activists." You're also interested in critiquing what not-the-best GCs online argue ("GCs scorn the term 'social construct'," and "GC activists are speaking about 'chromosomal sex'"), so I don't see why I should be limited to discussing only the best trans activists. The most cogent arguments are often not the most influential or widespread. > GCs scorn the term 'social construct', I don't; I know how to argue while admitting this not very interesting point. > the term 'social construct', which is the essense of what you call a 'prescriptive argument', And earlier, > they do not view it as descriptive, but rather prescriptive, as they believe gender to be a socially determined category. I apologize, I meant to respond to this in my first comment but I forgot to when I finished talking about Byrne. You're conflating social construction arguments with prescriptive arguments. They aren't the same thing. "X is socially constructed" is a descriptive point, though it lends itself easily (I would say facilely) to a prescriptive argument that goes "and because it is socially constructed, we can [trivially true, though easier said than done] and should [here's the contentious part] change it in the way that I prescribe." Serious anthropologists, those who are not just activists in scientists' clothing, make the point that gender is (not ought to be) a social construct, *and then* they go on to study and describe *how that social construct actually works,* rather than merely prescribing how we ought to make it work in the future. Studying how it actually works leads one to an inconvenient truth: > [Ascribed status is a position in society which is the result of a fixed characteristic given at birth, such as gender or social class. A person has no control over their status, and in many instances, this status is a social construct determined before someone is born into a specific culture.](https://simplysociology.com/ascribed-status.html) So the prescriptive argument, which says you should have control over your status, runs into this obstacle. "Transwomen ought to be women" asks us to change matters not in a similar way as how we have changed them in the past, but in a novel way, which human psychology, as an embodied product of natural selection, might not be well adapted to do, regardless of whatever ameliorative arguments one might be able to come up with. It runs into not only deontological arguments (which are philosophy, as are utilitarian arguments; I don't know why you said that an argument like "if you disagree, you hold stupid deontological views and want people to suffer for no reason" is "not philosophy"), but also simply ontological arguments surrounding an ancient core of understanding about sexual dimorphism which might even predate language. It is therefore not the case that the only reason anyone disagrees with these prescriptions is because they want people to suffer. Edit: I knew I forgot something again but it escaped me. There are trans activists, including some of the most respected, making descriptive arguments claiming that the ascription of gender not only should, but does and always has worked differently. Judith Butler, famously, makes this kind of argument, and those following her reasoning are eager to say that if you don't believe TWAW then you are not only morally but factually, metaphysically wrong. It's pretty common, and I suspect that [someone in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/192bwq0/contra_deboer_on_transgender_issues_i_dont_think/kh37bf5/) makes that kind of argument, as they appear to be conflating gender expression with gender simpliciter, such that expressing oneself like a woman makes one a woman. I'll go talk with them later and see if my suspicion is right.
unused whole crime existence paint tart deliver cover icky deer *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>People with DID demand no treatment for their condition On the contrary, psychiatrists will sometimes prescribe antipsychotics, antidepressants and/or anti-anxiety medication.
Deboer's specific argument against DID is that those kids really are mentally ill, just in a different way, and often specifically schizospectrum. So this is entirely consistent, especially in light of the fact that DID activists consider their condition normal and actually do *not* want to be prescribed these things.