Wrong side of history

I know it's been mentioned on these threads before, but I think Martin Amis' novel The Alteration should be compulsory reading! Not about trans issues, it's an "alternative present" type of sci-fi book in which the reformation never happened and the Catholic church runs things - and about the life of a choirboy (aged about ten) who is faced with being turned into a castrato. There's a very poignant bit where he's trying to get his older brother to tell him what sex feels like ("playing with your willy while eating the nicest ice cream ever, but much much better than that", seems to be the best description the brother can come up with).

I just hope that puberty blockers don't have a long-term effect that stops these children from being able to speak out further down the line.

I'd not thought of that. If they're stuck forever in a form of cognitive pre adolescence then they will never have a voice - the way children don't. Only, they won't have people speaking out on their behalf the way children do.
Plus - the only way they will know they are missing vital parts of adulthood is by observing other adults - but they may not have the fully developed cognition skills to recognise it. Nor will they have the lived experience of 'normalcy' to compare it against.
Truly terrifying - creating victims that will never be able to speak out, or even understand what has been taken from them - all for the money that the trans juggernaut brings in.

I just hope that puberty blockers don't have a long-term effect that stops these children from being able to speak out further down the line.

I'm thinking of Jazz Jennings and how the drugs seem to have stunted not just his physicality, but his mental maturity.

Will they not realise what has been done to them? In his case, he doesn't know what he's missing (his libido, for instance).

We will surely look back on "gender reassignment surgery" and puberty blockers and breast binders in the same way that we now view trepanning and electroshock therapy

I hope we look back on it as much worse! After all trepanning goes all the way back to the stone age - for millenia people didn't know better or have better. It was the best they could do.
The people mutilating children, or stuffing them full of dangerous and untested puberty blockers do not have that excuse. They know that, as with all mental health disorders, therapy is necessary and affirmation is dangerous. They go down this route for the money and the money alone.
I hope they are viewed with the same kind of horror that we view Dr. Mengele with.

Icantreachthepretzels

I agree with your post. I suppose it's necessary to twist attributes and weaknesses in such a way to make oppression justifiable.

It would be an interesting thought experiment to imagine women as they physically stronger sex and how that would change all the rest of the language.

And I know that mutilating children will never, ever be the "right side of history". We will surely look back on "gender reassignment surgery" and puberty blockers and breast binders in the same way that we now view trepanning and electroshock therapy

Indeed.

Do you know what the best bit of "wrong side of history" is? It suggests that at some point in the future we will have moved out of the current fug of thinking to a point where we are able to look back on the debate happening right now and bring some critical analysis to bear.

And I know that mutilating children will never, ever be the "right side of history". We will surely look back on "gender reassignment surgery" and puberty blockers and breast binders in the same way that we now view trepanning and electroshock therapy

Yes it's only good in the abstract if you're thinking of the concept of strength.

In terms of oppression, it's meaningless.

I sort of disagree with that last bit. how we define 'strength' (or any word) and what attributes are considered important by society do have an impact on the way different classes treat each other.
Because some attributes are venerated and others denigrated - there is no natural order to this - it's all man made. And surprise surprise it's the male attributes that get venerated whilst the female ones get denigrated.
Women and girls are raised to not view themselves as 'strong' - to the point that 'strong female characters' are a a separate and spoken about category of fiction, in a way that 'strong male characters' just aren't.
How different might the world have been if women's physical endurance and ability to survive famines had been venerated as well as men's superior heavy lifting abilities? How might women as a class have fared if they had been raised to believe they were strong because of all these amazing feats of survival their bodies can perform? Instead we rarely hear about them.
And if women believed themselves to be - and were accepted to be- physically strong in their own way - might they have been allowed to be emotionally strong and resilient as well, instead of hysterical and unfit for education/politics/ making their own decisions? Women's 'mental inferiority' was always put down to our 'physical infirmity.' If women had had their own physical strengths recognised and rewarded - might they not have been given equal opportunities?
But men decided 'strong' only meant the lifting heavy objects variety - women were obviously not as good at that, and therefore were 'weak.' This allowed everything else to happen. Women's 'weakness' was the justification for the oppression. And men love to think they're nice guys - they need to be able to justify their actions, to themselves, at least.

I think ideas can oppress just as much as physical power can. Physical power is the blunt tool - the idea is more insidious but much longer lasting - and can survive well after the blunt tool has been removed. (just look at all the handmaidens championing men's rights above women's!) So our concept of 'strength' that it is the male attribute of heavy lifting, and not the female attribute of endurance and pain tolerance and famine survival, and the veneration of the male attribute - is as much a part of the oppression as their fists.

thebewilderness

Excellent vid. Totally believable.

I think this is pertinent to where we are today in the discussion.

This is partly because they have bought into a "package deal" view of left wing politics - that the correct ideology comes as an indivisible whole and to reject any part of it is to reject of it.

Yes, this is very well put. I know a few women like this - “there’s us and there’s the Daily Mail, you’re either on one side or the other #nodebate” (Men in my experience have always been much more willing to opt out of left-wing beliefs as and when it suits, like e.g. the oppression of women as a class, but then men tend to be the ones who get to decide what the package deal is.)

It was Hobbs or Hume that had a concept that men and women are fundamentally equal because they are both capable of killing each other. Problem is that men are slightly more capable and MUCH more willing. Statistically, in case of NAMALT!

Yes it's only good in the abstract if you're thinking of the concept of strength.

In terms of oppression, it's meaningless.

Just read the article and it is about women being hardier in times of famine and disease. So it's not about physical strength.

I think the point about different types of strength is well made, but as Datun points out, the particular sort of strength that matters in a fight is muscular strength/length of levers/reach/height/weight advantage. (I think Datun and I are tag-teaming this point on several threads).

Yes, the strength necessary to walk for tens of miles in search of water or food, or to withstand many many hours in active labour is awesome. But it's not the type of strength necessary to fight off a rapist.

But isn't being physically weaker the only way men can maintain the patriarchy?

Yeah, it is. I know there are different measures of strength and fitness, but the bottom line is, if women could match men in our potential to inflict physical harm, patriarchy wouldn't exist.

But isn't being physically weaker the only way men can maintain the patriarchy?

We wouldn't get raped, abused, harassed or attacked if we were stronger than men.

They don't actually have to do it (although many do) for us to know they can.

The interesting thing about women being physically weaker than men is that it's based on a patriarchal view of strength (i.e the thing men will win at - so 'strong' means 'able to lift heavy objects.')

Yes!

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jan/15/scientists-confirm-what-women-always-knew-men-really-are-the-weaker-sex

Check out the comments to see how upset peoplemen get when it's suggested otherwise.

The anorexia argument is so pertinent. I liken it to offering liposuction to a young boy suffering anorexia - nobody would countenance it. But if he says that instead of imagining himself to be fat he imagines himself to be female we say "oh sure, here you go, we'll just pump you full of hormones and remove your penis".

see the words "women are physically weaker than men..." and hear "women are the weaker sex..."

The interesting thing about women being physically weaker than men is that it's based on a patriarchal view of strength (i.e the thing men will win at - so 'strong' means 'able to lift heavy objects.')

But actually there are lots of different factors in physical strength. If you went with pain tolerance, ability to survive famines, ability to travel vast distances, length of life, resistance to illness, ability to recover from said illness - I believe women win in all these categories. They are all a type of physical strength.

Funny then how it has been determined that strength is measured as the ability to lift heavy objects, and not the ability to live a long and healthy life, surviving food shortages. Because nothing is more important or useful than the ability to carry a chest of drawers single handed, apparently.

Bit of a tangent - but it is one of the many hidden linguistic and ideological ways that male supremacy is upheld - and transing people won't change what type of physical strength you fall under - especially if no cross hormones are taken.

£14,620

So, in a decade's time, when this is a scandal of epic proportions that makes the Jimmy Savile horror seem minor in comparison, when a generation of sterilised and mutilated children are putting forward their first class actions...
and government enquiries are asking "who is responsible?" but the people who cheered this nightmare along (Hi OP) are frantically scurrying to provide evidence of 'which side of history' they stood on?

Let's meet back on this thread then, shall we?

The difference is, the women who are here, now, relentlessly trying to prevent a generation of children from being damaged by zealots (Hi OP) who refuse to acknowledge that BRAINS DON'T HAVE GENDER, well, we won't be crowing or gloating. We'll be as furious and frustrated as we are now that this PREVENTABLE catastrophe happened anyway. Because of people with attitudes like the OP of this thread.

Thanks for that Itsall. I hadn't read about that specific Scottish survey.

Suicide attempt numbers are based on a self reported survey of 27 trans people.

That is incorrect (for that particular statistic)

I believe that figure comes from here:
www.stonewallscotland.org.uk/scotland-research/education/school-report-scotland

While the 45% figure is sensational the methodology used to collect the data is deeply deeply flawed:

www.transgendertrend.com/stonewall-school-report-what-does-suicide-rate-mean/

When people like Liam Madigan say 45% of trans pupils in UK schools have attempted suicide...how many people are we talking about

How many trans kids are there?

Suicide attempt numbers are based on a self reported survey of 27 trans people.

fairplayforwomen.com/fact-checker/mermaids-tg-lying-unprofessional