Ben Appel in Spiked about the new homophobia

[DerekFaker]

"All around me, it seemed, straight people were spontaneously identifying into my community and then policing our behaviours and customs. I began to think that this broadening of the ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ umbrella was giving a hell of a lot of people a free pass to express their homophobia."

www.spiked-online.com/2023/05/14/the-new-homophobia/

That is a wonderfully expressed description of his experience and why this cult is so wrong.

The stupidity and outrageousness is summed by his female friend , when he said that the non-conforming child he once was might have been presumed to be transgender and put on the pathway with puberty blockers, asking if he wouldn’t have been happier to be trans.

Let anyone read this who spouts the rubbish that not being in favour of banning conversion therapy for trans people means they are in favour of conversion therapy.

Persuading gay people they are trans is the real Conversion therapy going on.

As for the religious fat right accusation levelled at peopke who are against transgender ideology, it is the TRAS who are like the religious Iranians.

Shit.

I had never realised that the 'in the wrong body' narrative comes straight from Iran where homosexuals are offered a choice between transition or execution.

I wonder how many people trotting out that line realise who's mouthpiece they are being.

I had never realised that the 'in the wrong body' narrative comes straight from Iran where homosexuals are offered a choice between transition or execution.

I wonder how many people trotting out that line realise who's mouthpiece they are being.

They aren't being a "mouthpiece" just because they share an idea. Of course it may be a bad idea, but that's not because it's shared with a lunatic Iranian regime.

That is a really interesting piece of writing. Thank you for sharing the link. I agree that an awful lot of trans rhetoric sounds extremely homophobic at times.

Hit Post too soon - I meant to say, sterilising gay and autistic young people doesn't seem half as progressive as the glitter people tell us it is.

A really interesting article. Thank you for sharing OP.

When I first started exploring gender identity to help support my daughter. I was explaining to a friend that I was talking to people from the LGBT+ community to learn more about it. I remember my friend talking about a friend of theirs who had "left the LGBT community at work because he was getting angry that they didn't speak for him". At the time I had no idea what that meant so I just left it hanging there as a question. Fast forward several months and I had an inkling it was what was described in this article, so I checked with my friend. Yes. He felt his only option was to quietly back away, for fear of losing his job.

As a slight aside, the (friend of a friend's) work LGBT+ community is the one at the BBC. Since these conversations, I've read in the press about that specific LGBT+ community and its influence on programme etc. There are other threads on this so I won't veer off down that rabbit hole!

I don't have a gender identity belief but I respect that others do - the people who helped me get my head around gender identity from their LGBT perspective have been amazingly helpful and I'm so grateful that they gave me their time so that I could help my daughter. However, it's so important that messages like the one in this article get more coverage, so that vulnerable adolescents (and adults) don't find themselves unknowingly on a pathway that isn't right for them. Thankfully there are other voices too, like Mr Menno and those who have gone on to create LGB without the T communities - but it's still a very niche issue as far as the general public is concerned. Hopefully LGBT+ community members and allies who are reasonable (I'm sure there are many more reasonable than not) will take note, the more widely this is spoken about.

very good article

i'm constantly astonished that people can't see the homophobia at the root of the drive to mess with children's bodies if they 'play with the wrong toys'

there are absolutely parents who'd much rather have a trans child than an effeminate son or a butch daughter

I've had a very similar conversation with a close gay friend. He is convinced that had he been a young boy growing up in 2023 he would have identified as trans and finds it alarming. Just like the writer, as a young boy he wore his mum's heels, he played with kitchens and dolls not trains and dinosaurs, just about all of his friends were girls.

Thankfully, he is a very happy man in a fulfilling long term relationship. He's really close to both of his parents, he enjoys his work, he travels regularly. He is not part of the "queer" scene at all.

It's almost impossible to get the message out of the weeds that "being trans" isn't the issue. It's the medical pathway that is the issue, when that pathway is highly unlikely to be right for the majority of people who find themselves on it.. and for those that only realise this after modifying their bodies irreparably.

From the early days of gender dysphoria treatment, the expectation was that 80% would desist and be comfortable in their own bodies with a "watchful waiting" approach. I'm wondering which direction that percentage moves in when there is a gender affirming approach instead. It's almost impossible to predict but my hunch says that because even more people are being pulled towards something that isn't right for them, the likely percentage would be higher. The original figure was from when transgenderism was virtually unknown.

From everything that I've read, being transgender is the right outcome for some people. Just not for everyone who thinks it is. What a mess.

I sometimes think I would have been labelled trans as a kid. I HATED girly stuff. Only wanted to wear trousers. Didn’t like dolls, pink etc. Had short hair. I even used to say I wanted to be a boy. But that was just because I saw that boys had more fun and we’re out having adventures while girls were just playing dollies.

Thank god it was just never an issue. I was just called a Tom boy and left to get on with climbing trees and catching bugs.

What a brilliant piece. So articulate. I'm still seething after our local Pride week. Our town's festival was absolutely hijacked. (I'm in Australia where we're drowning in the kool aid) One of the headline acts was a band whose lead singer took the stage shirtless to display their mastectomy scars. Parents dancing around with their kids in tow. The singer is apparently 22 years old and this surgery was performed age 20.
Being - tearfully and dramatically - lauded as an example of Queer bravery. And all those kids soaking up everything they heard with their parents clapping and whooping. It was like an evangelical church service. Or a cult.
I hope that article is really widely shared and read as it's particularly eloquent.

I bet more than half the women on this board came to a peak moment thinking exactly this.
We all remember being the Tom boy or hating girlie stuff, and we all can see that we turned out pretty well for all that non conforming. So changing childrens bodies for playing like we used to seemed very off to us.

I spent 2 years at peak puberty time, wondering if I was a boy, and it Horrifies me that had it been now I would have been transed. My parents told me that of course I couldn't be a boy and then left me to figure it out.

Ben Appel really hits the nail on the head when he talks about how identity politics suffocates people into being part of a group Once you have persuaded people to not trust their own senses and logic, anything is possible. Debate is out of the window and politics just becomes a grubby scramble to speak for those groups and persuade others their group is the most oppressed. It is post modern tribalism.

I can only imagine how if I had been a lesbian, it could have been even more confusing. Because it would have been another factor to add into the whole ‘I must be a boy’ narrative.

Even now I quite like male dominated things, like BMXing and climbing. Not into make up or hair.

I kind of wish that there were two separate ways of discussing the trans issue. One would be for the middle aged men who want to transition. That’s one thing. The second would be how we treat or don’t treat children who feel like they want to be the opposite sex/gender.

I have absolute compassion for people who feel like they’re in the wrong body. Especially teenagers. It must be awful for them and be so painful every day.

However, I feel like male rapists in women’s prison is in another league of debate. I have no compassion for them.

"Sylvester, an androgynous disco icon of the 1970s and 1980s, was once asked what gay liberation meant to him. He answered, ‘I could be the queen that I really was without having a sex change or being on hormones’"

That line literally brought tears to my eyes.

I have absolute compassion for people who feel like they’re in the wrong body. Especially teenagers. It must be awful for them and be so painful every day.

I don't think anyone will deny compassion for these people. And do see a distinction between confused youngsters and middle-aged fetishists.

But, certainly from a feminist point of view, it's a result of sexism. Feeling you cannot be your true self unless you deny your sex. Because of perceive, or all too real, prejudices.

I've said it before, feminism should be taught in schools. It would be eye-opening for many of these youngsters.

Well the middle age men are transitioning for very very different reasons to teens. And as much distaste as I have for AGPs, at least they are doing it as adults.

Mostly teens will grow out of dysphoria and those that persist can be treated when they become adult.

Males should in no way ever be allowed into womens spaces. I care nothing for their feelings in this. Womens feelings matter much more.
Do I personally give a shit if a man is in my swimming class? No, do I care about other women in my swimming class. Yes, more than any mans feelings. So for all those women, I say no.

I will keep saying no, until the gra is gone and no matter what sob story is given, no man can ever "legally" change sex.
Those men can go populate the mens spaces, force men to accept them and leave women alone.

I think the problem is, is the TRAs conflate the two issues. To make it look like we don’t care about teenagers’ mental health. It’s annoying.

I bet more than half the women on this board came to a peak moment thinking exactly this.
We all remember being the Tom boy or hating girlie stuff, and we all can see that we turned out pretty well for all that non conforming

See, I was a tomboy, hated everything girly, pink, loved climbing trees and playing in mud with the boys, I always knew I was a girl, and felt like a girl though.
I never thought oh I must be a boy.
I don't pretend to even begin to know about being trans, but I do think there must be an awful lot we still don't know yet as it's just not that simple.
Like the poster upthread with the gay friend who used to like putting on heeled shoes sometimes in dress up - so do straight boys too, doesn't mean they turn out gay.
Just like me being a tomboy meant I must have thought I was a boy, or would believe people telling me I might be one, to me it's the same thinking as telling the straight kid that putting a pair of heels or a dress on for dress up must mean they're gay and them thinking "you know what, maybe I am then..."

But the point is @CremeEggQueen , NO girl is a boy

it simply isn’t a thing

you can sterilise her with testosterone
you can chop off her healthy breasts
you can flay the skin off her forearm to form a sad little simulacrum of a penis

and at the end of all that, you have a girl with a ruined body, you do not, and never will have a boy

the stakes for these children are very, very high

it simply isn’t a thing
Trans people exist though.

Yeah, trans people exist

they are not members of the opposite sex

Do you think the thinking listed sound like healthy things to do to one’s body @CremeEggQueen ?

would you like your daughter to do them to her body?

At one point a lot of people existed who believed they were made of glass.

They definitely existed.

They were not in fact made of glass though, and the cause of their distress was not due to 'made of glass' being a physical reality.