Transmaxxing

[pattihews]

Article in Unherd by Mary Harrington about 'transmaxxing', a phenomenon in which young men transition because they can, not because they have dysphoria but in some vague hope of having sex with sympathetic women.

It's reminded me of Ollie London, who assumed that just because you can do something (in his case have surgery to make him look Korean) it's okay. No ideological awareness, no ethics, just a why not? kind of attitude.

unherd.com/thepost/why-are-incels-turning-themselves-into-girls/

Still waiting on the markers that distinguish real trans people from those with a manifesto.

Care to enlighten us ELO?
What are the measurable signs that signify genuine transness from those "faking" transness, given that we are informed that anyone who says they are trans ARE trans, and that gender dysphoria is not a requirement of being trans?

"When we say we are trans - believe us. When we tell you who we are - believe us".
That's been said time and again, and yet here you are being wildly transphobic by denying these people their identities.

Help us out here, you have said you know this particular group are not trans.
Why are they not trans, and what is the criteria?

Did Lionel Shriver describe herself as a tomboy or was that shorthand used by someone else?

So this is your reason for refusing to read a really interesting article on identity ideology, is it?

Really?

Do you honestly think that many of the women on this thread and on this board did not go through a period of 'identifying' as anything but a female as a child through to teens? Lionel changed her name.

What she did not do was try to get laws changed to recognise that she was male. She did not try to convince people she was not female. And she got on with life.

I think it is clearly you, who seem to have missed the point.

Do you not ever think things through to their logical conclusion? Or are you all about the first instantaneous thought in your head being somehow the correct one?

I suspect that it is both and you don't seem to have ever critically thought through some of your opinions.

I am quite interested as well.

Wouldn't it be great if ELO has the way for us to judge a real vs a fake trans identity!

But the article isn’t specifically about trans issues which makes your response moot. It’s recommending developing ‘character’ over a lifetime rather than picking an identity at a young age as a supposed substitute for this.

Shriver did just that. And so do/have most people - whether it’s an identity around music, style, class, race and so on.

The article is terrible, not least because her own actions undermine her own recommendation.

Churchill also was something of chameleon in terms of his political identity - again, a bad example for her to use.

sorry, no cigar for you this time.

So she chose an off the shelf identity - ‘tomboy’ and gave herself a male name to fit it.

Come on ELO - you're this close to getting it!

erm….ok. If you say so.

@Pattihews, I enjoyed the quote because I like a good put-down, regardless of sex, and I enjoy pointing out the stupidity and short-sightedness of people like ELO. Usually it is BECAUSE they are young that they display this glorious fusion of ignorance and arrogance. It's pleasant knowing that they will likely eat their words at some point, especially if they are female.

i read it all.

thought it was weak sauce.

I wasn't commenting on the article ELO.

I was commenting on your comment:

“At age 15, she changed her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel because she did not like the name she had been given and, as a tomboy, felt a conventionally male name was more appropriate.[4]”

So she chose an off the shelf identity - ‘tomboy’ and gave herself a male name to fit it.

You really couldn’t have picked a worse example to illustrate your point.

Your comment is actually a stand alone story all in itself.

You just can't see it, can you?

I gave up smoking cigars a decade ago. Although, I actually have done a course in cigars.

I think that Lionel Shriver's decision to change her name is actually a really fitting example of the fact that women have had a very long history of 'gender dysphoria' and many of us on this board have suffered from it.

We have a rather unique perspective on just why young females have declared trans identities. And Lionel Shriver's name change is a very good example of

"about developing character and a robust self through hard-won experience rather than just picking a ready-made identity off a shelf."

You look at it from the superficial level - she chose the 'identity' of 'tom boy' and changed her name.

BUT, she did this and then went on to forge her own path and her own identity.

She did not call her self a 'man'. You seem to not be able to connect the dots on this.

I think EastLondonObserver was original WestLondonObserver but transitioned due to the benefits of East London over West London.

thought it was weak sauce.

Nah, weak sauce best describes your own contributions here. 'Something of inferior or disappointing quality.'

Shriver's 65 and changed her name 50 years ago before queer theory, before gender identity, before the internet. She was a ferociously intelligent teenager who hated being forced to comply with gender stereotypes (as many of us did) and rebelled by calling herself Lionel.

You'd have to be old like us to remember a time when men could wear frocks and eyeliner and still be men and girls could be called Lionel and wear Doc Martens and short hair and still be girls.

Why do so people who are heavily invested in trans ideology have such rigid gender stereotypes?

Stuff like non-binary, gender-fluid (and a lot of reasons behind transition) melt away when you don't have rigid gender stereotypes.

One might almost say they needed to reinforce gender stereotypes for some reason.

I do laugh really.

Posters such as ELO with their ageist comments really think that they have this 'new' narrative.

I remember distinctly the numerous times I said to my own mother over 40 years ago that I wanted to be a boy and why couldn't I be.

Her comment was always simply because there is no way to change sex and you will always be a female.

Her comment was as true today as it was all those years ago. There is no way that extreme plastic surgery and manipulation of hormones makes a person 'change sex'. That is the reality.

She wasn't cruel. She didn't let me believe I could change sex and she didn't let me believe that any person on earth owed me validation of my wish to do so.

So what that Lionel changed her name. She followed a long line of female writers who did so due to being aware of the negative sexist discrimination attached to saying words with a female name.

WHY THE FUCK DO YOU THINK MOST OF US SHUN PRONOUNS AND HONORIFICS! FOR FUCK SAKE!

I learned on first joining the corporate world that advertising the fact that you are female leads to discriminatory behaviour from others. And the world has not changed that much.

By the looks of it, my dropping of any honorific (which was allowed in my home country) and reference to my sex when registering with organisations that did not need to know this information two to three decades ago, has made me an early adopter of 'non-binary'!

Who would have thunk it?

It is quite clear if people actually talked with us that many of us are not 'new' to this whole fucking thing. Despite the 'ageist' insults, frankly when you scratch the surface there is very little 'new' about this gender stuff.

Except that for some reason some people in the world are very keen to believe that if they say they are something the rest of society needs to make accommodations for that in laws and policies.

Why do so people who are heavily invested in trans ideology have such rigid gender stereotypes?

I know. I don't feel much nostalgia for the 70s when I was a teen, but we seemed so cool compared to what's going on today, didn't we? I see Harry Styles in his dresses and think how blatant but empty it seems. Bowie and Annie Lennox were so much more subtle. Playing with gender, not pretending to be something they weren't.

Deathly silence.

Tumbleweeds blowing across the screen..........

And by 'shun' I mean drawing any attention at all to the discussion that highlights that you are female where it is not relevant by the way.

Having to go through any discussion on 'pro nouns' absolutely does draw attention needlessly to people's sex.

I guess you think George Eliot, Geroge Sand, Michael Steele, and Currer Bell were/are all men/trans too ELO? What about George in the famous five?

The whole point of being a tomboy is that you're a girl – a girl who rejects the stereotypes often expected of girls. If having stereotypically masculine interests, short hair and trousers meant you magically became a boy, then that would be about maintaining and adhering to gender stereotypes, not challenging or breaking with them. Boys are not tomboys. Girls are. I was/am one myself. I have never been in any doubt about my sex (female). As I'm old, in my youth you could be anything you wanted without being told you had to deny your sex or line up for harmful drugs and surgery to try to "change" you into the other sex to make sure stereotypes were still all nicely fitted into.

Is that why you're scared of old women ELO? Because we actually wrote the book on challenging gender stereotypes?

Have we got an answer yet as to why the transmaxxers are taking the piss, but a 60 year old male insisting that wearing a frock and lipstick means he's in "girl mode" is not?

I used to think of myself as Sebastian Sinclair in my head. It was a coping mechanism for all the sexist shite and objectification I saw around me.

Talking to two of the female trans teenagers I know, they are doing the same thing. Except they are fully convinced that they CAN change sex, and that they pass as male. They don't pass at all, but you cannot make this shit up.

I have to agree that trans orgs that produce “manifestos” don’t necessarily have as much credibility as you might possibly wish for, as Action for Trans Health ably demonstrated back in December 2017:

archive.today/2017.12.17-174634/edinburghath.tumblr.com/post/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto

This fine piece of not-irony (apparently) demanded the right for trans people to perform medical experiments on each other, and to get away with murder (and rape, and anything else) scot free, among other not remotely batshit ideas.

So we’re free to dismiss the ramblings of ATH, according to ELO, presumably along with all the evidence that august org has provided to various parliamentary committees etc.

Oh but hang on, if they’re giving evidence to parliament, that means somebody somewhere is actually taking them seriously and they are indeed a credible org, doesn’t it?

So confusing.

But at least we can discount anything that comes from a sm account with a ridiculous anime avatar, right? Which covers about 90% of TRAs straight off the bat.

Which does make one wonder if ELO isn’t actually being a bit transphobic here, all this refusing to believe that people are what they say they are and whatnot. Hmm.

I love all the comments above! So clear and to the point. No comment yet from ELO. Do you think 'the youth of today' have the impression that in our teens we all sat around in frilly knee length socks, doing embroidery and waiting for a husband? They really have no idea how ridiculously regressive they are in their obsession with gender stereotypes.

I still find it perplexing that you can't get a tattoo until you're 18, but you can get cross-sex hormones (and surgery, even though they claim it doesn't happen) under the age of 18.

Some things are age-restricted to stop children doing stupid things that they are likely to regret later in life.