Opposing the Transing of Children: Priorities and Strategies - Hearts and Minds.

Someone tweeted.  (https://twitter.com/CrimsonFlax/status/821356821696888836)

[I ]Keep reading people who oppose gender affirmation model saying "some kids will benefit from transition" & keep thinking, really? Assuming >

They're referring to extreme body dysphoria aka BDD & BIID. I've seen nothing suggesting that physical interventions are best practice >

for these conditions. So I guess it depends on how you view 'beneficial' but it sounds like appeasement to me - politically & in practice. 

I guess  "people who oppose gender affirmation model" includes me and the people I collaborate with in opposing the transitioning of kids and young people and the industry, dogma, ideology and activism that has grown up around it. When I say ‘we’ that’s who I mean. In this post I'm only speaking for myself, although I have discussed this with other people to clarify my ideas.



I wasn't really able to give a good answer at that time and in the limits of twitter posts. It’s a question that needs answering. I think there are real concerns among feminists and lesbians that we are prepared to sacrifice some trans children to keep others safe, or stand aside while trans activists dismantle women’s rights and lesbians existence.

My instinctive feeling is that the idea of us having a gender identity, innate and separate from our biological sex is a load of bollocks. It is no more valid than talking about possession by daemons. Before peak trans I kept quiet about that, thinking it was my problem, that if a small number of people wanted to live their lives telling the world they were the other sex, that was their business.

What I've learned since peak trans hasn't really changed that instinctive belief , but it has added to and deepened my understanding. I no longer keep quiet.

I've learned a lot about how transgenderism is being used  to invade women's spaces, not just toilets, but changing rooms, dormitories, hospital wards, clinics, prisons and even rape crisis centers and counseling. I've learned how trans ideology is not a liberation from sexism and gender. It fetishizes and supports the restrictions imposed by gender, but only offers the illusion of an escape at the cost of living a delusion and imposing that delusion on the rest of the world. 

It erases the reality of homosexuality and heterosexuality by replacing sexual orientation by a postmodern power game, where gender is merely a role.

I'm appalled by this, and am grateful for the great work done by radical feminists and lesbians in analysing and opposing it and I support them in their fight. I agree that the invasion of women's spaces and the erasure of women's and lesbians lived experience and culture is a great injustice.

It is an injustice worth fighting. But, I am a man and I think that makes it problematic for me to speak as part of that fight. I can support that fight but I cannot represent it. Due to my sex, inarticulacy and insensitivity it is best that I stay in the background.

Also I must admit that this particular fight is not my priority. My priority is my daughter, her well-being and her safety.  To look after her, I have to keep a good relationship going without pushing her further into trans. All this writing and the ranting on twitter is my way of dealing with the internal tensions I carry, from keeping it together with her.

So I read and I write and I tweet and that lets me know that there are others out there who are going thru the same shite as me and feel like me. It makes me feel like I am fighting something so I don't have to fight my daughter.

There are parents and professionals who are also appalled at the effect of the trans juggernaut  It’s great that some like my writing and we can get together and do something that slows the march of the transgender industry.

I'm not trying to change the minds of the trans activists, the autogynophiles and the snake oil  salesmen. They have too much invested. I'm not here for a lively debate or a stimulating discussion. I'm here to do my bit to bring down the doctrine of gender identity.

I find it easiest to connect with people like I am, or I was. Well meaning liberal lefties who support LGB rights and assume that LGBTQ+ is just an extension of that. People who just want to let people be and let children be healthy and happy.

The problem is that the core of the transgender ideology, the idea that: "Some people have a body that doesn't match their brain",  is simple, easy to understand and appealing.

It offers a simple medical fix and a happy ending with a moving story of a brave struggle and people learning to be tolerant and inclusive. It’s wrong, but it’s a bugger to shift.

My point of view is not easy to express in a sound bite or a tweet.

I know that a lot of people experience the set of feelings known as gender dysphoria and that this can be cripplingly painful. That is real. There has been an epidemic of young people experiencing this. No ones got an explanation of this. I believe this is due to the increasingly sexist nature of society, culture and commerce and the explosion of violent misogynist porn on the internet, that makes it almost impossible for young people to be comfortable in their own skin.

The idea that this is due to a mismatch of mind and body is, I believe, a combination of an attempt to validate autogynephilia and the rise of postmodernism and queer theory. It offers well meaning liberals a cause to fight for that does not entail actually giving up any privilege over people with less money.

This feeling is being projected onto young kids, who are just being weird little kids, the way kids are. Little kids are suggestable, they believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. So when adults tell them about many genders and assigned (fe)male at birth and how its not genitals but toy choices that matter they echo it back. And some like the wrong toys.

That's a hard sell. Its too much for people to take in one bite. You don't change hearts and minds by telling people they are stupid and they are supporting something horrific.

Trans activists can project the image of a kid who has a mismatch between brain and body and ask us to prove that such a child can never exist. They will cast us as uncaring monsters who would torture this child. The will produce photogenic children, bright suggestible children with loving caring parents who really believe in the transgender narrative. We will be accused of saying they are lying and abusing their children. All this time the trans narrative is being retold again and again.

So we ask the question. "How do you tell if a child is really trans?"

Of course there is no good answer. There is no way of telling because there is no reality behind it.

There are real people who, in their childhood could have been diagnosed as trans, as really trans as any trans, who fitted all the diagnostic criteria, who weren't, who turn out to be happy gay, lesbian or straight adults.

There are real people who, were diagnosed as trans, as teenagers or adults, as really trans as any trans, but after months or years or decades of hormones and surgery, stiill suffered and had to find their way back to the sex they were born with.

We ask another question: "Would you have been a trans kid?"

People, who live as happy adults, comfortable with their sex and sexuality,  can see that they may well have been one of the above and there is no way of telling how it would of ended.

There is only a mess of internalized misogyny and homophobia. Of parental homophobia and fear of the suicide myth. Of autism misdiagnosed, of social contagion. Of kids with problems and tumblr accounts and well meaning idealistic adults who google gender identity and find Gires, Gendered Intelligence or Mermaids,

It turns out to be an interpretation of a feeling. The feeling may be a crippling distress or a mild discomfort. The feeling is real, but the wrong body interpretation is just an interpretation imposed on suggestible kids by parents and well meaning professionals and less well meaning strangers on the internet.

We ask another question. "How else can you deal with gender dysphoria?"

It turns out people who had been diagnosed as trans, who had been as really trans as any trans person, have worked out their own way of dealing with gender dysphoria. And that way doesn't need surgery or hormones. That way accepts that the discomfort is real and examines the social and mental process that lead up to it. In doing so it strips the trans narrative of its validity. It exposes that transition may not help dysphoria, but can make it worse.

These people, the detransitioners, the desisters and the survivors tell their own compelling story.

They have come together, in secret, harassed and threatened by the trans activists that claim to have their interests at heart. When that story gets out, it sticks in peoples hearts and minds. It stops the simplistic trans narrative in its tracks.

So with these questions you find out there is no way of knowing who is really trans. We get people to see themselves as the confused kid hustled into trans.  We show them that there are other better less invasive, less brutal ways of dealing with the pain and distress of dysphoria.

These questions open up the cracks that let the flood of doubt in.

And when that is done, there is precious little left of the argument to trans kids. With it has gone the whole idea of gender identity and an innate, internal attribute of gender separate to biological sex. Transwomen are not women, they are men who prefer to live as women.

There will always be people, who as adults decide to live as the opposite sex. Its a choice to be taken  by adults, like religion, we don't have to accept it as true. Society can do its best to accommodate them, but not at the expense of other people. We can be humane and respectful to them and fight for their human rights.

Radical feminism gave me the framework to think rationally about trans. Radical feminists and lesbians inspired and supported me thru my peak trans

I'm not leaving any 'real trans' kids behind. I'm not throwing feminism under the bus, I'm not accepting a word of the transgender dogma.  Its my way of concentrating my efforts.I'm fighting my battle as best I can.