Washington Post podcast on the “strain of feminism that rejects the existence of transgender identity”

[SuperSleepyBaby]

Podcast from the Washington Post: ‘Samantha Schmidt on a strain of feminism that rejects the existence of transgender identity.’

• podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/post-reports/id1444873564
  
  
  Do the views of the reporter here represent the vast majority of people in America? It sounds like anyone who questions the impact of transgender rights on women’s rights is in an extremist minority.

[CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost]

Do the views of the reporter here represent the vast majority of people in America?

I suspect 90% of people in America don't have this view, just like 90% of people here do not.

As so many people have recently learnt, the reporting of the Media doesn't represent the country.

[Michelleoftheresistance]

For 'rejects the existence' mentally roll eyes and replace with 'refuses to pander to'. While visualising the hair toss and the flounce upstairs of a spoilt and overtired teenager.

[Needmoresleep]

Explains why Trump will be reelected.

Lesser of two evils, which is saying a lot.

[VortexofBloggery]

It's one of those podcasts which actually makes the argument for the other side. The women on that podcast have no idea they are in the minority.

[Qcng]

My brother is a woke Californian, and his wife both find my views on gender ideology completely abhorrent, in fact my brother said I was "like a racist" for my view that women only spaces should be protected, they both seem to think same-sex is exactly the same as racial segregation.

The gender ideology / woke cult was brought to life in Northern America and Canada, and has since spread to Western Europe far more quickly than any of us expected.

The ideology was embraced by the US partly because of the $$$ gained from medicating a whole generation for life in a privatised Medal health care system, alongside identity politics that had already taken hold in the first place.

Identity politics is capitalism's wet dream, set people against each other in categories, convince them to be dependent on corporations rather than family, convince them they're "individual" etc.
The cult of the individual has been rampant since about the 80's as part of the neoliberal capitalist revolution

The USA, being the centre for consumerist neoliberal ideology promotes transgenderism far more than other countries, so more people in the USA buy into it more than they do here in Europe.

On the other hand, there are a lot of hard right wing conservatives (some of whom are very Christian) in America. What we have ended up with is the whole of Canada, California, other West-Coast, New York and other East-Coast in the USA completely taken in by gender ideology and PC woke stuff, but a huge backlash to the ideology in the middle of Northern America, where it's more conservative, who voted Trump because they're completely pissed off by the whole "PC Woke" thing promoted by the Democrats.

There are numerically speaking more anti-woke voters in America because look at the outcome, but the ideology still has an enormous influence.

[Barracker]

What's that you say, Washington Post?
You reject females who refuse to accept the existence of invisible 'female identity'?

It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again...

[PermanentTemporary]

Reading Naomi Wolf's tweets today saying 'we've had self-ID in the US and there are no problems' I did stare at them for a long time. This from a country with a culture that regards legal rights to paid maternity leave as too restrictive.

I think privacy and self-id fits much more easily into American individualism, which I'm not decrying, than it does into cultures that are less mobile and more class-focused, which I'm not saying is necessarily a good thing.

[pallisers]

I would say those girls in Connecticut who were robbed of their athletic places and possibly had their college application status significantly derailed would disagree with Naomi Wolf that there are no problems. In fact they have taken a law suit.

The women who will not make it into the Boston Marathon because their place has been taken by a self-identifying man who is glad of the different qualifying time might also disagree. There is a famous photo of a woman being physically pushed from the boston marathon in 1967. Women weren't allowed to compete at all until 1972. And now without any conversation or any acknowledgement that this will result in fewer women running, they are expected to budge over again.

I am in the Northeastern US near Cambridge MA. I don't bother saying it to ANYONE anymore in real life. My daughters are astonished that I won't say transwomen are women. My professor SIL told me recently I was committing literal violence by not accepting this (in fairness, every woke cliche known to man will pass her lips at some point). The only people really saying "hey no" are the evangelicals and right wing christians - and who wants to be associated with them? It is horrible.

The thing is I have no problem whatsoever with trans people - know some etc. no problem with using preferred pronouns too (especially for the teenagers - seems like the kind of thing that might seem important to you as a teen), not even much problem with sharing some spaces with a transwoman in some circumstances. But this self id is just ridiculous and the displacement of women in sports is a disgrace. And what KILLS me is there isn't a single man who spouts this stuff who ACTUALLY believes transwomen are women for the purpose of sex and attraction. They are only women for the purposes of women accepting them. It is so hypocritical.

There is a man in prison here for murdering his wife - just up the road from me about 10 years ago. He transitioned in prison and tried to sue the state to allow him to get the hormones/surgery (refused). Are we really expected to record his crime as a woman murdering her wife? How about when those statistics are used to show incidence of violence in same-sex marriage?

[BlueHarry]

I can't listen to the podcast, I think I need to get apple play.

About a year ago, an American friend of mine told me that his friend's daughter now wished to be known as a boy and was using a male version of her name. That was the first time the topic had ever come up between us. He asked me if I believe it is real (male brain in a female body type of thing) or did I think that they (trans identifying people) make it up for attention. I gave him my simplified alternative answer, something like children are brought up categorised into pink or blue, and if they're a girl who feels more at home in the blue category they are being lead to believe that their body is wrong rather than it being wrong that people are tightly categorised according to their sex. He's quite a conservative guy, but he seemed to take my answer seriously and said he'd never thought of it that way. I don't know about Americans in general, but I think his thoughts (scientific fact of mismatched brain/body or attention seeking), are probably what a lot of people who aren't too familiar with the debate will think.

[ReinstateLangCleg]

I believe in gender identity as much as I believe that Moses literally parted a Sea.

That is to say, I'm an atheist.

I can accept that others genuinely believe both of those claims.

Fine for them, as long as it doesn't affect others.

I'd just personally like NOT to be forced to pretend I believe in certain faith-based dogmas.

I reject the assertion that blasphemy should now be a punishable offence.

[pallisers]

I believe in gender identity as much as I believe that Moses literally parted a Sea.

It is the new transubstantiation. My academic in laws are vehemently and vocally anti-religion etc. but swallow the idea that sex is a spectrum and all in our mind (they couldn't locate any organ in the body with any degree of acuracy imo) and literal violence and what about intersex eh! without any critical thought at all. Except they know deep down (not that deep really) that she would not find a self-identifying transman attractive on any level and he would not find a self-identifying transwoman or even a fully transitioned transwoman attractive on any level. Sometimes I feel I am living in a medieval religious world. That's when I'm not thinking I'm living in the Weimar Republic but that's another story here in the US.

[Songsparrow]

Haven't listened to the podcast but my friends on the East Coast are dumbstruck when I voice my opinion on this.
The only people I've met who share my view are religiously minded and I am very much not. It's actually quite nerve-wracking talking to people about it.
And I have to avoid the friend whose autistic 16 year old son has "come out" as a girl because I'm not sure I could keep my mouth shut.

[wellbehavedwomen]

I have very dear US friends. People I've known twenty years and who unquestioningly assume I share their views. They use pronouns in email signatures. Have no clue that there even is another side.

I intend to wait until they visit to raise this one. I'm lucky, and they respect me enough that they won't instantly assume bigotry. I've been too solidly left for too long, and additionally they know my views on this in the past were also conventionally woke. They're people who will be uneasy with arguing that my views should not change with new information. That is, after all, what you're meant to do. I have no idea if they will shift views at all. But I do intend to try.

I don't reject trans identities any more than I reject Muslim or Jewish or Hindu identities. I respect all belief systems. I just don't want to live by one which I do not share.

[TheProdigalKittensReturn]

I don't reject trans identities any more than I reject Muslim or Jewish or Hindu identities. I respect all belief systems. I just don't want to live by one which I do not share.

I agree. People have the right to believe what they like. They do not have the right to force other people to share or live by their beliefs.

[Goosefoot]

I live in Canada, and I think in reality people are quite mixed. I am on the east Coast which has a different sort of culture than either the American east coast or the central part of the US and Canada. There are the woke liberal type, often very influenced by the American left, and those are the people who buy into the whole thing and push it. But many here are a sort of small c-conservatism, especially in small towns and rural areas. They tend to be very grounded, not inlined to accept bs although they are also very likely to let people who have strange views or lifestyles carry on as part of the community without comment. Those people tend to be skeptical but also not inclined to contradict people who are vocal about issues.

Reading people's comments I think I am the opposite of some here - I think gender identity is real (though not what TRA say it is), but that it isn't what people think and it's not a good thing to accept, individually or socially gender ideology - it's damaging in a number of ways, psychologically and often medically.

[Needmoresleep]

I see that Bloomberg is being criticised, including AOC, for his attitudes towards transgenderism.

I wonder to what extent these will limit/enhance his chances of the Democratic nomination. And whether, as with Labour, the issue will now be out there for more open debate.

[quixote9]

Yes, in my experience the liberals and leftists in the US have lost the plot. The fundies and wingnuts are mostly against the whole idea of transgenderism. (Although apparently it can be preferable to coming out as gay, see eg Rick Santorum. Echoes of the Iranian mullahs there.)

So if the rightwingers are against it, the liberals have to be for it. That really, as far as I can see, is the substance and extent of analysis in the US. "ZOMG! Stop! That's what Trump said!" They dress it up of course.

Absolutely no dissent or critical thought is allowed on the topic on pain of banishment to the dungeon dimensions where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Yes, I think it's ridiculous, but it's also true. I don't know how the country capable of producing Dworkin could fall so completely into the grip of this mass delusion.

[Mockersisrightasusual]

It is the new transubstantiation.

It is, quite literally, Trans-substatiation.

The analogy I like is with Messianic Jews, who say Jesus of Nazareth was/is the Messiah prophecised in the Torah.

OK, say regular Jews, that makes you Christians. No, say the Messianic Jews, we are the true Jews, and you are the apostates.

[Lordfrontpaw]

The Americans/people living there - hell no. They think it’s a loud looney minority of luvvies and media types. And yes - it’s helping bloody Trump.

[Lordfrontpaw]

(The Americans/people living there that I personally know)

[Mockersisrightasusual]

There's a lot of white guilt in the USA for good reasons.

I'm a fan of Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, but his constant resort to crude racial stereotyping as the first source of his humour makes me uncomfortable. When he combines this with lazy nationalist stereotypes he is bang out of order, such as his reaction to the French World Cup victory when he looked at the picture of the victorious Les Bleus celebrating and declared that black people could not possibly be French. He also agrees with Trump that Norway is the whitest nation on Earth. Obviously hasn't seen their football team.

[Durgasarrow]

I think most Americans think it's bullshit. When the NYTimes has one of its ridiculous wokity woke pro-TRA articles, the comments are generally very negative. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is a huge sleeper issue--of course normal people hate being told that they are hateful bigots if they speak the truth, and this is going to be a huge sleeper issue that may cause problems for Democrats in the next election.

[ErrolTheDragon]

CBA to listen if it's coming from the strain of 'feminism' which rejects the existence of women as a clearly defined class.

[quixote9]

Clarifying my earlier comment: I'd agree that the issue isn't on the radar of most US-ers, and when it does appear, the Woke bullshit is going to push some people to the Repubs.

But in progressive ("progressive") circles it's all-TWAW-all-the-time. No debate. Preferably not even any thinking.

[Qcng]

Goosefoot
I think gender identity is real (though not what TRA say it is), but that it isn't what people think and it's not a good thing to accept

Do you actually mean you believe gender dysphoria is real?