How is the trans issue ever going to be resolved?

[PassportPanicFuuuck]

It seems as insoluble as the Israel/Palestine question when the two "sides" want directly opposing things. I've heard the arguments that trans people "just want to pee" and that "no-one would go through medical/surgical gender reassignment purely to abuse women", plus the mantras that "trans people exist", "trans rights are human rights" and "trans women are women" and it's quite clear that the people who believe these things fervently aren't going to change their minds any time soon.

But to a certain extent, life isn't fair. Not everyone does have equal opportunities. If you're in a gay relationship (and there's nothing wrong with that) you can't have a biological child with your partner; if you're infertile (as I am) you can't have a child at all; if you're trans (and there's nothing wrong with that either) you can't enter the spaces of the opposite sex; if you're British you don't have an automatic right to go and live in the US; if you're short and unsporty you don't have a right to be on the Olympic basketball team - and so on. All sorts of opportunities are denied people at various different points, some as a result of decisions you make (like not studying for a medical degree means I can never be a doctor) and some not (see above re. infertility), and beyond universal human rights you don't have a right - one might say "entitlement" - to an awful lot of things, much as you might keenly want them.

Like it or not, once we end up in these categories we have to accept it. Absolutely no-one is eligible to do everything or to go everywhere. However if you have made a choice - even if you consider it to be more a recognition of something innate rather than a conscious decision - it doesn't mean that you have made this choice on behalf of everyone else. If you have chosen to transition (again, you may not consider it to be a "choice") you can't dictate that everyone else ignore biology and logic and linguistic authenticity and you can't dictate that everyone else will want to celebrate your decision. No, we don't have to accept the "lady bulge", we don't have to accept child abuse under the guise of gender-affirming care and we don't have to accept men in female sports / changing rooms / organisations.

Not sure how coherently worded all the above is, but perhaps it will provoke some interesting debate.

I hear you Jelly. But communism doesn’t say it is based on physical science and it is a belief system. While you might be in the totalitarian country that enforces it, if I am not I don’t feel compelled to act as if me usually factually correct and accurate language is offensive and not ‘respectful’. I don’t have to call someone who calls themself comrade ‘comrade’ just because not doing so might cause them pain and trauma.

Although, that totalitarianism is very similar to the intense emotional manipulation that is used by people who demand that they shouldn’t be called a man when they are a human adult male. And the intense need for some people to be seen as ‘good’ and ‘righteous’ in acquiescing to that demand.

The last thing that TRAs are is "mute"!

The Catholic Church is a men’s organisation for men. It could not give a flying fuck about women or children, apart from that they are there to produce and service men. They proved that resolutely with their baby and female slave trade in their mother and baby homes, their murderous anti abortion and contraception stance, and in how they enabled, bordering on encouraged through blatant negligence, industrial scale child sexual exploitation all over the world. So if they are not that interested in helping women and children in the face of TRA in Malta or Ireland, no one should really be surprised. The pope may declare the Church to be GC all he wants, but he will never risk a single holy dollar or spend an ounce of political capital for the sake of the dignity or safety of any woman or child in the face of TRA. He will only make bland, generalised statements, and then only in places and at times where it is totally safe to do so.

Bilek’s investigative work has been utterly amazing. I think she is a little tunnel-visioned (I don’t think think she considers the social-contagion-in-autistic-teen-girls side of things much) and I hold out hope that she is also a little over-pessimistic (or maybe I am just somewhat more optimistic), but she is unparalleled in her digging to answer the question “cui bono?”

I’m thinking about religion. For believers and practitioners it provides a guide to how to live your life, an ethical structure. For non-believers and atheists it is provides a different structure, one of top-down control.

I can’t help wondering whether the rise of transgenderism is related to the descent of engagement with religion in the Western world, particularly the ‘protestant’ Christian areas. Transgenderism is a belief and a faith, after all, simply lacking a deity. It provides practitioners, believers and ‘agnostics’ with a form of ethical structure.

Does it replace a spiritual lack?

Do people need the structures of religion in order to function as a society?

In areas where religion is becoming a stronger influence again, control over people’s behaviour is increasing. The easiest targets are always women, so this does not always correlate with a decrease in tolerance for boundary-crossing transgenderism.

Among young people, transgenderism will wax and wane like any other social contagion.

Among the medical establishments, transgenderism will eventually go the way of lobotomy, electro-convulsive therapy and insulin comas for mentally ill people. But brain surgery, ECT and induced comas are still used therapeutically.

The fetishists will eventually be driven back into their bedrooms and clubs. But who will service them?

Will there always be people willing to genuflect at the altar of gender, because they lack an alternative? Or because the alternative is prescriptive, equally misogynistic, and lacks immediate reward?

Autism is mentioned a few times in the book, along with other reasons why children would mistakenly be thought or believe themselves to be trans.

I imagine that it's precisely because she can see the social contagion phenomenon happening, that she doesn't discuss it much? Because she follows the money and power, and the TiMs are where those are at, with the girls as merely a temporary consequence. Just my hunch though.

Oh that’s interesting - haven’t read the book, only her articles. To be fair to her, she had a specific aim - follow the money - which she has definitely done.

I don't know about transgenderism as a religion, but transhumanism (which englobes transgenderism) is certainly a religion - an actual, official one! - for some:

https://transreligion.org/beliefs/

Okay, granted, it doesn't seem to have taken off. I clicked on the wrong button, was taken to Discord to join their server, and it said, "70 members". Still, though, it exists.

It'll be overcome when men accept men in dresses who make them uncomfortable are just men in dresses and men's discomfort shouldn't be prioritised above women's safety. If trans women weren't men then things would have never swung so far in their direction.

It is just a matter of time for common sense and a healthy dose of reality to be re-gained; though continued push back and resistance is still required in the meantime. It has always been a twenty year project.

Transhumanism is certainly an idea that is circulating in the collective at present. Human frustration with the natural limits of reality and life in a body on Planet Earth.

What does "It has always been a twenty year project" mean? Where did you get that figure from?

I agree that life isn’t fair, but over the past centuries it has been heavily contested which rights or entitlements should be available to which societal group — and often for good reason. While some limitations are biological (for example, gay or infertile couples cannot have children biologically, and short people are unlikely to compete in professional basketball), others are socially constructed (such as racial segregation, women’s right to vote or the right to same-sex marriage).

Trans activists see themselves in the tradition of civil rights movements. It is clearly very hard to convince them otherwise. Many lies have been spread and statistics distorted to fit a narrative. One of the laws of marketing is "Be in the market first". Unfortunately trans activism with its lies was first. It will be very hard to completely undo the damage caused by that.

Re: Transhumanism...

I can see how this body/soul dualism suits billionaire men. If 'My body is not me' then my body does not have human rights. Body parts can be hired or sold without human rights being infringed. A vagina-haver can hire out the use of their vagina (prostitution), a uterus-haver the use of their uterus (surrogacy), and a kidney-haver can sell their kidney (sale of organs). A bonfire of any restrictions on pure capitalism

I think this faith in ‘common sense’ is admirable but look at (non reconstructive) cosmetic breast implants for comparison. They have been proven to cause all sorts of tragic health issues, interfere with if not totally destroy breast feeding etc etc. Yet, women still go for them like a stampede of thirsty buffalos to a watery ditch. See also liberal prescribing of psychotropic medications (methamphetamines, anti depressants, tranquillisers) in general for ever growing populations of screen addicted, junk food addicted, essentially neglected, lonely and unparented U18 year olds. Why? Because mass media controls culture. And the profit motive controls the media. These forces won’t disappear because of a few statutory definitions in the UK and a few forced closures of the worst youth gender abattoirs in the US.

As long as there is money to be made, from vulnerable children and their parents, a bottomless supply of porn addled, misogynistic, AGP and incel men and more and more women (especially lesbian women) seeing an escape hatch from the dangers and humiliations that come with having a female body (increasingly so in the age of mass pornification, coupled now with AI and surveillance tech), there will be TRA and immense pressure on any and all protections for women and children to be usurped. Some of that pressure may abate with insurance trouble for medical misadventure, although that did nothing to stem the tide for breast augmentation and other dangerous cosmetic vanity projects.

Mostly, this fight has to be won through culture - making porn unacceptable again, making dissociation from the material world unattractive again, making men male again and women’s right to privacy from men essential again, making puberty and healthy sexual maturation normal again. These are tough positions to take in Western societies, in which large groups of powerful elites have labelled them right wing, extremist, illiberal, fascist, hateful, ignorant, uncool and backward. In that sense, this truly is a culture war. But that’s not to diminish its ramifications.

The idea of "rights" are an abstraction though really, they have some use, but sometimes they can also cloud the issue. You can say we all have a right to adequate food for example but it's pretty meaningless if there isn't any, or if people aren't willing to work to grow it. In a discussion like that the concept breaks down.

We also talk about different kinds of rights, and they shouldn't be confused. Particularly human rights which are meant to be universal and inherent, and things like citizenship rights, which aren't.

When we get to talking about equality in terms of equity, I think it becomes a silly discussion very quickly, there is no way to make everyone equal and if we could do it we would find ourselves in a terrible dystopia.

I'm not convinced talking about access to technologies in terms of rights is useful either. It certainly doesn't fall under human rights, how could it? Woman have the right not to have sex if they don't want to, or if they don't want to become pregnant, but a right to have sex without experiencing the biological results of the act? That's the kind of thinking that gets us to transgenderism.

That's always been my personal estimation of the timescale necessary to push back what has been a generational influence which has embeded itself at every level of public institution. Once something becomes embedded it has to be actively rooted out. Legal procedures and recalibration takes time too.

Honestly I think this is entirely possible.

I think the transhumanism argument is a good one.

I also think that if people stop making money out of ‘trans’ it will die out. And I think that could happen - and agree the supply of young people is probably already dwindling - but it may mutate into something more like transhumanism.

I’m interested in how the idea of the individual identity/essence/soul has become so deeply embedded on the Left. Looking back on my own life I think third wave feminism was a massive turning point. Currently the deference to individuality applies to lots of things, gender being one of the big ones. With some of my younger friends and colleagues you can hardly say anything about anything without being gently scolded. But I also think left-leaners of this tribal kind will shift easily to the next fashion, no matter how cognitively challenging. So it won’t always be gender. I don’t think they’ll necessarily ever see the light, just sort of move on from it, because it’s not really that important to them.

But it's behaving in very much the same way that communism has when it's been accepted as the controlling belief system of a government. It doesn't have enough supremacy in places like the UK to do that, but I don't see any reason to think it would behave differently if it gained the weight to do so.

I think overall, there has been a tendency in many western nations, and this is particularly true among more educated liberals, to assume that religion is a kind of totalising worldview, but non-religious views are not.

In fact communism is very much a totalising worldview. It's not belief in God that is the central issue, it's a claim to universalism and seeing means as subordinate to ends.

As far as the liberal democracies of the west, there has been a kind of low-key pluralistic secularism which has tended to avoid that kind of totalising thinking. But it seems to be that we have seen the emergence of something new, a kind of non-religious worldview that is also potentially totalising, which some might call the social justice movement, or "wokism" or whatever. And it makes the same kinds of demands as communism or any other similar type of thinking.

My apologies it should have been moot.

So, in Malta,

• a woman or girl can't use a public, school, oelr workplace loo without the risk that a man is in it;
• if the man turns out to be Isla Bryson, and he leaves her pregnant, she can't get an abortion;
• and people wonder why Malta has a huge female participation gap?

That a woman can only leave the house for as long as she can hold her bladder for will contribute a lot to that participation gap.

Adding Malta to the list of places that I won't holiday in, along with Saudi Arabia.

@PennyLaneisinmyheartandmysoul which is why I think that those of us who are GC must not shut up….until common sense prevails. Which I think it will eventually.

I have some disorganised thoughts on this.

The West's core values Christian until 2 or 3 generations ago. There's been an enormous rejection of Christian dogma since then. Christianity is now marginal.

I think though values derived from Christianity have hung on a bit longer. Human rights and, say, humanism seem like Christianity without the supernatural stuff. Of course their adherents would deny this but believing that one's own values purely come from reason is a very common mistake.

But they're declining too - being challenged by a philosophy of radical individualism and self-expression. I reckon it comes from 1960s Californian counterculture, and so it's no suprise that it's risen with the Internet as the tech bros live in California and that philosophy validates them becoming obscenely rich. Christianity never had much love for that sort of thing.

If the right to self-expression is the most fundamental thing about being human, self-ID is obviously right.

I think society has been too slow to realise that this is a men's rights movement as far as TRAs are concerned.

I don't believe it is a coincidence that it has flourished at a time when women were finally acknowleged to be fully adult human beings with the right to vote, have bank accounts, careers and to govern etc. For many TRAs it is a male backlash because they resent what they perceive as a loss of their unearned privilege. It's true even with AGPs - by pretending to be women they are reclaiming female territory.

For girls it has coincided with the sexualisation offered by porn, the internet and social media. They visualise a future they don't want and are trying to opt out by denying their bodies.

Most of us were looking away when this all started and we are now trying to play catch-up. We will get there in the end as long as we don't compromise in the way this stupid Government is trying to do. Reality cannot be denied for ever.