I've also been attacked, trolled, defamed and ostracized with specious accusations. Buck Angel, though, used to be very pro-transition and influenced many lesbians like herself. She has not made statements to wrap up the grooming of lesbians she used to engage in, nor has she said she regrets the crass sex act she performed nude on the Howard Stern show.
The fact is, no adult does the "transition" without hurting others. My ex-husband refused to participate in the required therapy for our 9 year old son, who expressed suicidal ideation at school 2 years after his so-called "sex reassignment surgery," when he was trying out various versions of Mama-Neddy our 2 sons were suddenly supposed to say instead of Daddy. This is common in the children of crossdressing fathers who take their fetish out of the bedroom, as is the physical and sexual abuse they subjected the wife to before she got out. In my data on 67 trans widows, over 1/3 of us experienced one or both. About half of us were publicly defamed by ex and his therapists, friends and relatives. Even our own children. A trans widow who has spoken out with her story for 6 years now has suddenly withdrawn from her advocacy for this sisterhood, as her now adult children demanded she stop or she will lose this relationship, despite the fact she raised them without child support from the crossdressing father. Please stop saying "as long as it does not hurt anyone else" without watching Behind the Looking Glass at Lime Soda Films youtube channel, where many of us are also individually profiled. Here's author Christine Benvenuto's profile from my channel, Trans Widow Ute Heggen. Her husband tried to make sure she'd never work again:
Please, please stop saying this trope "as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else." Please write about trans widows, link Lime Soda Films or my channel or transwidowsvoices.org.
This is a perfect example of the cultural corrosiveness of the trans convulsion. Just so sad. And even with the awareness of the influence, money, and engineering of some very duplicitous people (Dentons, Pritzkers, etc.), it remains mystifying to me how such a tiny minority have gained such outsized influence.
"Trans" is a religious cult. Historically, religious cults can grow explosively when they fill a void in the cultural zeitgeist. In our case, it's the decline of practice and belief in the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. "Trans" gives us a new class of sacred people, and anyone can receive this sacrament by declaration, or (most insidiously) by declaring that your child has that high status. There are quite a few PhD theses to be written on all this ...
Yep. I'm bewildered by the friendly fire hate directed at Stella. I ran into it on Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Transgenderism. Maia Poet posted there, and was attacked but without specifics. I engaged the attackers asking for specifics, and they refused. Attacking my ability to use Google instead. Then came the pedo claims about people Stella had interviewed. Again, I both searched and asked for examples, evidence. Of course none. Then I was called a pedo.
i have defended stella plenty of times. she has operated to safe guard children by advocating for exploratory response to dysphoria in an environment of extreme group think and backwards thinking. even tho im not really that familier with her work, it seems to me thats what shes trying to do and deserves a great deal of credit. but that doesnt change the fact that she platforms agp fetishists and other kooks. i know why she does so. to gain credibility to help her safeguard. achieving this credibility was more importnant prior to the cass report. with the recent changes in awareness and peaking by many, its no longer productive to platform advocates for any form of rights destruction, such as when agp men advocate for exposing their hobby of wearing drag in public which reduces the right of everyone to not be exposed to their sexual fetishes.
Ignore them all. You are taking a thoughtful and nuanced approach. Buck’s insight matters. You don’t have to be perfect to be correct. Thank you for being brave. Many of the online insults are intended to weaken you and your response to the gender madness.
bucks views are a net negative. she gives witness to harmful quackery. she no different than a person in the audience of a carnival barker whose selling snake oil and she stands up and proclaims it worked for her. so what if she got better? the point is theres no evidence the snake oil works. people who claim the snake oil works are selling a scam. by advocating for buck you are as well and so is anyone who platforms her.
I feel as though social movements, whatever views they espouse, are always way, WAY harder on apostates than on infidels. I see this on the right, and I have personally experienced it on the left, where I reside. Being an open enemy is one thing, but to be a betrayer...well, that can never be forgiven. The GC folks see you as one such betrayer, just as the far-left progressives saw me as one.
These days, I am proud to be an apostate, and I see you are too. Apostates for the win!
Great article. Benjamin Ryan has faced a significant and unnecessary backlash from the gender-critical crowd for his use of people’s preferred pronouns.
The inability to hold space for opposing (or simply nuanced) views on this issue (or really, set of issues) undermines the causes of protecting kids from medical transition and keeping men out of women’s spaces. Dehumanizing the “other” never results in real progress.
Ah, I think I see how this is connected to my original comment.
I think the main issue at play in most of these circumstances is consent and safeguarding. The reason children should never be medically transitioned is because of the likelihood of irreversible and harmful changes to their bodies to which they cannot provide informed consent (I am guessing we see this the same way).
The same is true for protected women’s spaces: having males present in these spaces increases the likelihood of bad male actors using access to these spaces to harm women or children, or (in the case of sports) women losing their protected category and fair competition. Again, these are all violations of consent.
It seems to me that for a male autogynephile to harm someone by transitioning, they would need to be intruding on another person’s rights without their consent. By simple virtue of transitioning, I am not seeing any direct harm caused to another. Maybe you can spell that out for me.
The issue of pronouns seems to be yet another separate issue. I think it can depend a lot on context, relationship, etc whether using a person’s preferred pronouns is humanizing/dehumanizing, constructive/destructive. I think it’s a tall order to ALWAYS insist on using sex-based pronouns, regardless of what factors are at play. Though I personally default to either that, or, in some cases, just using a person’s preferred name. Again, the ethical questions at play might be very different in different contexts (i.e. are we talking about a female teen with rapid onset dysphoria, or an autogynephilic male whose dysphoria has been present since a young age and has medically transitioned as an adult, etc).
Even if an AGP male has no children or wife, he has more than likely hurt his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings.
No parent consents to a child hating his own body so much that he surgically and chemically alters it beyond recognition. This is the same body that the father has nurtured since birth and the mother has nurtured since conception.
You haven’t provided evidence of how this violates the principle of consent. If a person medically transitions as an adult (let’s use age 25 or older as that is when brains typically are fully developed), regardless of their reasons for doing so, they are not causing harm to someone else in a direct way. It might be a significant loss for this person’s loved ones, something akin to a choice to move across the world and live in a different country (i.e. a fundamental change to the relationship), but doesn’t constitute a direct harm to another person.
I’m just not understanding how you draw a direct between an adult transitioning and harm to another person.
Parents not only give birth to their children, they nurture them. They feed them nutritious food, get them vaccinated and drive them to school and sports activities for 18 years. They arrange for music lessons and send them to summer camps--all to keep them developing towards a healthy and productive adulthood. They save for college so that their child will have economic prospects once they graduate.
To say that cutting off healthy body parts, particularly those which are involved in reproduction, *wouldn't* hurt a parent is obtuse. Those parents raised that body, and now the adult child is mutilating it. Even though they have a "right" to, it's not going to make the parents' pain go away. It is direct harm to their child, and their child is flesh of their flesh.
All I can say is that it is clear from your remarks that you have no children, and no understanding of what a parent feels for a child, whether they're an adult or not.
Your comments about my personal situation are incorrect. But perhaps more importantly they are unhelpful.
I agree, as a parent this would be painful and heartbreaking. Truly. But this would not be someone doing something AGAINST their parent so much as FOR themselves. This distinction matters.
My own kids are younger, so I don’t know who they will turn out to be. And perhaps when they are nearing adulthood, I will think and feel differently about this. But I think the best I can hope for is that they would be happy, healthy, productive, and maintain a relationship with their parents. If they modify their own bodies in harmful ways I imagine it would be devastating for me. But I still can’t see how that is them harming me. Because if we extend the argument that you are making even further, it would constitute harm if, for example, I really wanted my kids to have kids of their own, but they chose not to. We as parents don’t own our children’s bodies. We just get to be stewards, and then they grow up and get to make their own choices.
As a parent I would be devastated by one of my children removing a healthy arm or leg as much as I would be devastated by them removing a healthy breast or penis. It's not just the lack of grandchildren I would be harmed by. I would be harmed by my child's willingness to destroy his or her own healthy body in search of what appears to be temporary relief from mental distress. Surgically removing healthy parts of your body is akin to "cutting" although much more severe.
In my opinion, transitioning causes harm to others in that it further promotes gender ideology. Publicly transitioning-- even if you stay out of women's spaces and don't force resistant people to use your new pronouns-- further entrenches an ideology that tells gender-nonconforming people they need to alter and harm their bodies. And that leads to males in women's spaces even if a particular individual doesn't enter them.
I don't mean that just publicly dressing as the opposite sex furthers the ideology. It would be different if they just put on a dress. But saying they are women, asking willing people to call them "she", that is a problem. I'm not saying it should be illegal, just that it is a reasonable stance to not want to platform people who strengthen the ideology.
I understand your reasoning and can appreciate this perspective. Certainly one can cause harm by promoting bad ideas. But it’s often hard to draw a straight line between the bad ideas and the harm it causes when it encourages others to make poor choices for themselves. Although I fully agree with you about the attempt to coerce others to use preferred name or pronouns - that’s bad - it’s still hard to see that simply making a choice for oneself, one’s own body and mental health, is directly harmful to others. And if we were to suppress (or always avoid sharing) the experiences of people who have transitioned and legitimately do feel better, we would be engaging in the same type of activism that has come from trans activists and which is so devastating to having a real conversation about it. I think every public figure should be free to platform whomever they would like without an attempt at cancelling them for it.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. When I said “women’s spaces” I really meant “women’s-only spaces,” but I assumed that given the context that was clear.
It’s not true that adult male autogynephiles don’t hurt anyone when they “transition” and it doesn’t dehumanize them to state that fact. Perhaps tangential to the point you were making.
Squeaky wheels get the grease. The reality is that most people oppose gender ideology without giving a lot of voice to it. Most of us also oppose ridiculous factionalism and purity tests. Thank you for taking a stand and doing good work.
"It’s a revealing glimpse into how tribalism and religious-like dogmatism can emerge on any side and stifle open, curious, and skeptical discourse." Very very true words proven on a daily basis
Thank you, Travis. I am so sorry that you have become a victim of certain ideologues. One of the qualities that I love and respect about Substack is that it is generally a forum for the free exchange of ideas. As for me, I am a conservative Christian retired physician but I enjoy reading and listening to the perspectives of others who have very different beliefs than I. Keep up the good work. I will support you. May heterodoxy live forever!
Wow, so stupid. We are cutting ourselves off by smothering the voices of others who agree with us on the subject of gender colonization. There is no one that I agree with on every nuance on the political spectrum, but I know that there is no way of moving forward on any issue without making alliances on the issues we agree on. To demand others agree with you on every single issue, or every nuance of an issue is childish, self-aggrandizing, and an attempt at coercive control. This is hardly different from the trans terrorists who want to enforce mind-control by forcing us (on penalty of discrediting, censure, slander, and ostracism) to speak lies that will destroy the lives of others. So self-defeating, childish and downright stupid is this mode of criticism it could be as effective embedded agents provocateurs from the trans terrorists cult trying to destroy us from within.
I am sorry this happened to you. I disagree with the people who criticized you and am grateful for your work!
I think some people assume that if you agree with them on one thing you agree with them in others and then misunderstandings arise. There are lots of issues to address. We should discuss them respectfully with each other.
We don't need a circular firing squad.
We are surely all going to disagree on some things but if we agree about the harm being done we should work together on trying to stop that and to help those who were harmed!
As much as the internet seems made for idiots & porn, gender is its own frightening rabbit hole, 1 reason I default to geneticist Baron Robert Winston's years old BBC statement that we unequivocally cannot change sex (much further evidence provided by RTA misogynism, #terfisaslur, canceled Exulansic & Glinner, Heretic Andrew Gold's detransitioner interviews, Rowling's statement making gender "ideology" more harmful that last century's lobotomies & false recovered memory syndrome & on & on).
This is an excellent documentary, which I will certainly share and recommend. Thank you.
A few comments on your essay, especially your comment "that adults in a free society should be able to live as they choose, so long as their rights don’t infringe on others":
1) Perhaps it depends on your definition of a free society, but I don't consider that the young adults taught from childhood in (taxpayer-funded) schools that all their problems, discomfort, flaws, awkwardness, even undiagnosed neurological differences (sometimes in defiance of or simply covertly from their parents) could be corrected with "gender-affirming" medicalization are truly making a free choice, even if they are now legal adults, especially with persistently flawed medical information;
2) I agree with other commenters, unless these transitioners are living in a cave, their "rights" WILL infringe on others;
3) You're right. You were naive to expect broad agreement from others who generally oppose pediatric transition and support women's rights! I, for example, disagree with much the current administration is doing, but applaud the recent HHS review of pediatric gender medicine. I deplore pornography and refuse to downplay the actual harm it has done to women, perhaps specifically to the women who object to your including Buck Angel in your project, but I still think Buck's clips enhanced your film. Eyes on the prize.
Trans ideology strips identity from children just when they are discovering who they are. This is because, like morality, they’re cutting all moorings and anchors of self, leaving the next generation bereft of any point of reference or framing for their nature and purpose. This is yet another seismic shift in their development which accommodates transforming them into anything ghastly the powers that shouldn’t be desire.
But more importantly to the parasite predators at the top pushing this vile sickness down upon us: The primary objective of this orchestrated trans movement is to get rid of and delegitimize age-of-consent laws by pretending little kids are actually “little adults”, mature enough to decide anything for themselves, so that when they are raped by actual adults its “consensual”. In the horrific linked which in very deep detail shows just how advanced the pedophile war on the next generation is, an ACLU lawyer argues that children as young as two know whether they are trans or not, and that castrating them is their choice, meanwhile the WHO is pushing masturbation from birth into the global school curriculum: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/demons-disguised-as-guardians-philanthropic
Pedophilia is rising and they stripped civics out of school curriculums specifically to suppress citizen action from stepping in and ending vile madness just like this: Podesta talks creating compliant citizenry by doing so: https://tritorch.com/degradation/podestaDropCivics.png [image]
“There is no evidence”, the battle cry of the willfully blind. Turns out you cannot find what you are looking for even if it is shoving itself right in your face.
Men have been getting erections imagining themselves as female for many centuries. It is a fetish. I do not doubt that Atrazine impacts the hormonal systems of living creatures in negative ways. Most pesticides and herbicides have a wide variety of health impacts. This, though, is a really stupid claim: "Obama Coated School Lunches With Atrazine."
American Scientific 2010: A Common Herbicide Turns Some Male Frogs Into Females https://archive.is/N6PAq
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The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111–296 (text) (PDF)) is a federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 13, 2010. The law is part of the reauthorization of funding for child nutrition (see the original Child Nutrition Act). It funded child nutrition programs and free lunch programs in schools for 5 years.[1] In addition, the law set new nutrition standards for schools, and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.[1] The new nutrition standards were a centerpiece of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative to combat childhood obesity.[2] In FY 2011, federal spending totaled $10.1 billion for the National School Lunch Program.[3] The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act allows USDA, for the first time in 30 years, opportunity to make real reforms to the school lunch and breakfast programs by improving the critical nutrition and hunger safety net for millions of children.[4] Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and Michelle Obama were a step in transforming the food pyramid recommendation, which has been around since the early 1990s, into what is now known as "MyPlate".
According to the US Department of Agriculture, for the 2012–13 school year, 21.5 million American children received free lunch or reduced-price lunch at school.[5] Across the U.S, the school lunch program varies by state.[6]
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A decade later we get an explosion of transgender children.
This was "Michele" Obama's project, who was exposed as a "tranny" by Joan Rivers just before she had her bucket kicked. We live in an inverted world where almost everything the government does is the inverse of what is claimed it is meant to accomplish. How far down this road must you walk Susan, before you see where it leads?
Likely a “health” requirement buried in many thousands of pages of regulations by the FDA which the executive branch controls that enforced atrazine as the herbicide needed to get a school linch contract.
i have given you all the pieces it does not take Sherlock Holmes to put them together
I'm looking forward to watching your videos. I was a Terf before we had a name for it for several reasons I won't go into here. I have no opinions on Buck Angel but have been railing against porn and prostitution since the 80s. I'll work and support anybody who speaks out about the toxic trans cult. I won't call a man (looking at you Bruce Jenner) a "she" but if you want to do so, I'll meet you where you are. I don't want to be called cis. Some women are fine with that and are only concerned with childhood transition. We should work together where we can and respect each other when we disagree. Thousands, dare I say millions of lives will be damaged and destroyed until we put an end to this insanity.
Some people prefer to be "right" then effective. I watched a video of Billboard Chris effectively engaging a woman on the street. He was making real progress helping her be curious about her gender orthodoxy. Then, he referred to Dr. Rachel Levine as "he." The woman clocked him as a disrespectful bigot and instead of loosening her stance, he reified it. I really get how each individual has to protect their integrity, so I don't fault him for his position. But, I cringe every time fertile opportunities are squandered in the name of ideological purity.
I've also been attacked, trolled, defamed and ostracized with specious accusations. Buck Angel, though, used to be very pro-transition and influenced many lesbians like herself. She has not made statements to wrap up the grooming of lesbians she used to engage in, nor has she said she regrets the crass sex act she performed nude on the Howard Stern show.
The fact is, no adult does the "transition" without hurting others. My ex-husband refused to participate in the required therapy for our 9 year old son, who expressed suicidal ideation at school 2 years after his so-called "sex reassignment surgery," when he was trying out various versions of Mama-Neddy our 2 sons were suddenly supposed to say instead of Daddy. This is common in the children of crossdressing fathers who take their fetish out of the bedroom, as is the physical and sexual abuse they subjected the wife to before she got out. In my data on 67 trans widows, over 1/3 of us experienced one or both. About half of us were publicly defamed by ex and his therapists, friends and relatives. Even our own children. A trans widow who has spoken out with her story for 6 years now has suddenly withdrawn from her advocacy for this sisterhood, as her now adult children demanded she stop or she will lose this relationship, despite the fact she raised them without child support from the crossdressing father. Please stop saying "as long as it does not hurt anyone else" without watching Behind the Looking Glass at Lime Soda Films youtube channel, where many of us are also individually profiled. Here's author Christine Benvenuto's profile from my channel, Trans Widow Ute Heggen. Her husband tried to make sure she'd never work again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXGPi3qEV0g&list=PLOFlPPQm71IgFGCRHe5VxMtDlq1qtJQCy&index=28
Please, please stop saying this trope "as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else." Please write about trans widows, link Lime Soda Films or my channel or transwidowsvoices.org.
We all exist in relationship with others. No transition affects only the person claiming the altered status.
You could say that about literally any personal decision that one makes then, right?
This is a perfect example of the cultural corrosiveness of the trans convulsion. Just so sad. And even with the awareness of the influence, money, and engineering of some very duplicitous people (Dentons, Pritzkers, etc.), it remains mystifying to me how such a tiny minority have gained such outsized influence.
"Trans" is a religious cult. Historically, religious cults can grow explosively when they fill a void in the cultural zeitgeist. In our case, it's the decline of practice and belief in the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. "Trans" gives us a new class of sacred people, and anyone can receive this sacrament by declaration, or (most insidiously) by declaring that your child has that high status. There are quite a few PhD theses to be written on all this ...
Yep. I'm bewildered by the friendly fire hate directed at Stella. I ran into it on Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Transgenderism. Maia Poet posted there, and was attacked but without specifics. I engaged the attackers asking for specifics, and they refused. Attacking my ability to use Google instead. Then came the pedo claims about people Stella had interviewed. Again, I both searched and asked for examples, evidence. Of course none. Then I was called a pedo.
The Phil Illy thing was simply absurd. O'Malley handled the situation with grace and good sense, but you'd never know it from the howls of outrage.
i have defended stella plenty of times. she has operated to safe guard children by advocating for exploratory response to dysphoria in an environment of extreme group think and backwards thinking. even tho im not really that familier with her work, it seems to me thats what shes trying to do and deserves a great deal of credit. but that doesnt change the fact that she platforms agp fetishists and other kooks. i know why she does so. to gain credibility to help her safeguard. achieving this credibility was more importnant prior to the cass report. with the recent changes in awareness and peaking by many, its no longer productive to platform advocates for any form of rights destruction, such as when agp men advocate for exposing their hobby of wearing drag in public which reduces the right of everyone to not be exposed to their sexual fetishes.
Ignore them all. You are taking a thoughtful and nuanced approach. Buck’s insight matters. You don’t have to be perfect to be correct. Thank you for being brave. Many of the online insults are intended to weaken you and your response to the gender madness.
bucks views are a net negative. she gives witness to harmful quackery. she no different than a person in the audience of a carnival barker whose selling snake oil and she stands up and proclaims it worked for her. so what if she got better? the point is theres no evidence the snake oil works. people who claim the snake oil works are selling a scam. by advocating for buck you are as well and so is anyone who platforms her.
This is a great essay, thanks.
I feel as though social movements, whatever views they espouse, are always way, WAY harder on apostates than on infidels. I see this on the right, and I have personally experienced it on the left, where I reside. Being an open enemy is one thing, but to be a betrayer...well, that can never be forgiven. The GC folks see you as one such betrayer, just as the far-left progressives saw me as one.
These days, I am proud to be an apostate, and I see you are too. Apostates for the win!
Great article. Benjamin Ryan has faced a significant and unnecessary backlash from the gender-critical crowd for his use of people’s preferred pronouns.
The inability to hold space for opposing (or simply nuanced) views on this issue (or really, set of issues) undermines the causes of protecting kids from medical transition and keeping men out of women’s spaces. Dehumanizing the “other” never results in real progress.
Ah, I think I see how this is connected to my original comment.
I think the main issue at play in most of these circumstances is consent and safeguarding. The reason children should never be medically transitioned is because of the likelihood of irreversible and harmful changes to their bodies to which they cannot provide informed consent (I am guessing we see this the same way).
The same is true for protected women’s spaces: having males present in these spaces increases the likelihood of bad male actors using access to these spaces to harm women or children, or (in the case of sports) women losing their protected category and fair competition. Again, these are all violations of consent.
It seems to me that for a male autogynephile to harm someone by transitioning, they would need to be intruding on another person’s rights without their consent. By simple virtue of transitioning, I am not seeing any direct harm caused to another. Maybe you can spell that out for me.
The issue of pronouns seems to be yet another separate issue. I think it can depend a lot on context, relationship, etc whether using a person’s preferred pronouns is humanizing/dehumanizing, constructive/destructive. I think it’s a tall order to ALWAYS insist on using sex-based pronouns, regardless of what factors are at play. Though I personally default to either that, or, in some cases, just using a person’s preferred name. Again, the ethical questions at play might be very different in different contexts (i.e. are we talking about a female teen with rapid onset dysphoria, or an autogynephilic male whose dysphoria has been present since a young age and has medically transitioned as an adult, etc).
Even if an AGP male has no children or wife, he has more than likely hurt his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings.
No parent consents to a child hating his own body so much that he surgically and chemically alters it beyond recognition. This is the same body that the father has nurtured since birth and the mother has nurtured since conception.
You haven’t provided evidence of how this violates the principle of consent. If a person medically transitions as an adult (let’s use age 25 or older as that is when brains typically are fully developed), regardless of their reasons for doing so, they are not causing harm to someone else in a direct way. It might be a significant loss for this person’s loved ones, something akin to a choice to move across the world and live in a different country (i.e. a fundamental change to the relationship), but doesn’t constitute a direct harm to another person.
I’m just not understanding how you draw a direct between an adult transitioning and harm to another person.
Parents not only give birth to their children, they nurture them. They feed them nutritious food, get them vaccinated and drive them to school and sports activities for 18 years. They arrange for music lessons and send them to summer camps--all to keep them developing towards a healthy and productive adulthood. They save for college so that their child will have economic prospects once they graduate.
To say that cutting off healthy body parts, particularly those which are involved in reproduction, *wouldn't* hurt a parent is obtuse. Those parents raised that body, and now the adult child is mutilating it. Even though they have a "right" to, it's not going to make the parents' pain go away. It is direct harm to their child, and their child is flesh of their flesh.
All I can say is that it is clear from your remarks that you have no children, and no understanding of what a parent feels for a child, whether they're an adult or not.
Your comments about my personal situation are incorrect. But perhaps more importantly they are unhelpful.
I agree, as a parent this would be painful and heartbreaking. Truly. But this would not be someone doing something AGAINST their parent so much as FOR themselves. This distinction matters.
My own kids are younger, so I don’t know who they will turn out to be. And perhaps when they are nearing adulthood, I will think and feel differently about this. But I think the best I can hope for is that they would be happy, healthy, productive, and maintain a relationship with their parents. If they modify their own bodies in harmful ways I imagine it would be devastating for me. But I still can’t see how that is them harming me. Because if we extend the argument that you are making even further, it would constitute harm if, for example, I really wanted my kids to have kids of their own, but they chose not to. We as parents don’t own our children’s bodies. We just get to be stewards, and then they grow up and get to make their own choices.
As a parent I would be devastated by one of my children removing a healthy arm or leg as much as I would be devastated by them removing a healthy breast or penis. It's not just the lack of grandchildren I would be harmed by. I would be harmed by my child's willingness to destroy his or her own healthy body in search of what appears to be temporary relief from mental distress. Surgically removing healthy parts of your body is akin to "cutting" although much more severe.
In my opinion, transitioning causes harm to others in that it further promotes gender ideology. Publicly transitioning-- even if you stay out of women's spaces and don't force resistant people to use your new pronouns-- further entrenches an ideology that tells gender-nonconforming people they need to alter and harm their bodies. And that leads to males in women's spaces even if a particular individual doesn't enter them.
I don't mean that just publicly dressing as the opposite sex furthers the ideology. It would be different if they just put on a dress. But saying they are women, asking willing people to call them "she", that is a problem. I'm not saying it should be illegal, just that it is a reasonable stance to not want to platform people who strengthen the ideology.
I understand your reasoning and can appreciate this perspective. Certainly one can cause harm by promoting bad ideas. But it’s often hard to draw a straight line between the bad ideas and the harm it causes when it encourages others to make poor choices for themselves. Although I fully agree with you about the attempt to coerce others to use preferred name or pronouns - that’s bad - it’s still hard to see that simply making a choice for oneself, one’s own body and mental health, is directly harmful to others. And if we were to suppress (or always avoid sharing) the experiences of people who have transitioned and legitimately do feel better, we would be engaging in the same type of activism that has come from trans activists and which is so devastating to having a real conversation about it. I think every public figure should be free to platform whomever they would like without an attempt at cancelling them for it.
Married fathers are already in women’s and children’s spaces: the family (which is everyone’s space until you make a choice foe porn).
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. When I said “women’s spaces” I really meant “women’s-only spaces,” but I assumed that given the context that was clear.
It’s not true that adult male autogynephiles don’t hurt anyone when they “transition” and it doesn’t dehumanize them to state that fact. Perhaps tangential to the point you were making.
Squeaky wheels get the grease. The reality is that most people oppose gender ideology without giving a lot of voice to it. Most of us also oppose ridiculous factionalism and purity tests. Thank you for taking a stand and doing good work.
Thank you.
"It’s a revealing glimpse into how tribalism and religious-like dogmatism can emerge on any side and stifle open, curious, and skeptical discourse." Very very true words proven on a daily basis
Thank you, Travis. I am so sorry that you have become a victim of certain ideologues. One of the qualities that I love and respect about Substack is that it is generally a forum for the free exchange of ideas. As for me, I am a conservative Christian retired physician but I enjoy reading and listening to the perspectives of others who have very different beliefs than I. Keep up the good work. I will support you. May heterodoxy live forever!
Thanks!
Wow, so stupid. We are cutting ourselves off by smothering the voices of others who agree with us on the subject of gender colonization. There is no one that I agree with on every nuance on the political spectrum, but I know that there is no way of moving forward on any issue without making alliances on the issues we agree on. To demand others agree with you on every single issue, or every nuance of an issue is childish, self-aggrandizing, and an attempt at coercive control. This is hardly different from the trans terrorists who want to enforce mind-control by forcing us (on penalty of discrediting, censure, slander, and ostracism) to speak lies that will destroy the lives of others. So self-defeating, childish and downright stupid is this mode of criticism it could be as effective embedded agents provocateurs from the trans terrorists cult trying to destroy us from within.
I am sorry this happened to you. I disagree with the people who criticized you and am grateful for your work!
I think some people assume that if you agree with them on one thing you agree with them in others and then misunderstandings arise. There are lots of issues to address. We should discuss them respectfully with each other.
We don't need a circular firing squad.
We are surely all going to disagree on some things but if we agree about the harm being done we should work together on trying to stop that and to help those who were harmed!
Definitely.
As much as the internet seems made for idiots & porn, gender is its own frightening rabbit hole, 1 reason I default to geneticist Baron Robert Winston's years old BBC statement that we unequivocally cannot change sex (much further evidence provided by RTA misogynism, #terfisaslur, canceled Exulansic & Glinner, Heretic Andrew Gold's detransitioner interviews, Rowling's statement making gender "ideology" more harmful that last century's lobotomies & false recovered memory syndrome & on & on).
This is an excellent documentary, which I will certainly share and recommend. Thank you.
A few comments on your essay, especially your comment "that adults in a free society should be able to live as they choose, so long as their rights don’t infringe on others":
1) Perhaps it depends on your definition of a free society, but I don't consider that the young adults taught from childhood in (taxpayer-funded) schools that all their problems, discomfort, flaws, awkwardness, even undiagnosed neurological differences (sometimes in defiance of or simply covertly from their parents) could be corrected with "gender-affirming" medicalization are truly making a free choice, even if they are now legal adults, especially with persistently flawed medical information;
2) I agree with other commenters, unless these transitioners are living in a cave, their "rights" WILL infringe on others;
3) You're right. You were naive to expect broad agreement from others who generally oppose pediatric transition and support women's rights! I, for example, disagree with much the current administration is doing, but applaud the recent HHS review of pediatric gender medicine. I deplore pornography and refuse to downplay the actual harm it has done to women, perhaps specifically to the women who object to your including Buck Angel in your project, but I still think Buck's clips enhanced your film. Eyes on the prize.
This may interest you guys, a string of madness from the top down imposed transgender insanity (no small amount of work went into this montage):
Exclusive The LBGTQ / 2SLGBTQQIPAA Pedophile Minor Attracted Person's WEF Descent Into Hell On Earth: https://old.bitchute.com/video/pB2WAeELDVtc [22mins]
Trans ideology strips identity from children just when they are discovering who they are. This is because, like morality, they’re cutting all moorings and anchors of self, leaving the next generation bereft of any point of reference or framing for their nature and purpose. This is yet another seismic shift in their development which accommodates transforming them into anything ghastly the powers that shouldn’t be desire.
But more importantly to the parasite predators at the top pushing this vile sickness down upon us: The primary objective of this orchestrated trans movement is to get rid of and delegitimize age-of-consent laws by pretending little kids are actually “little adults”, mature enough to decide anything for themselves, so that when they are raped by actual adults its “consensual”. In the horrific linked which in very deep detail shows just how advanced the pedophile war on the next generation is, an ACLU lawyer argues that children as young as two know whether they are trans or not, and that castrating them is their choice, meanwhile the WHO is pushing masturbation from birth into the global school curriculum: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/demons-disguised-as-guardians-philanthropic
Pedophilia is rising and they stripped civics out of school curriculums specifically to suppress citizen action from stepping in and ending vile madness just like this: Podesta talks creating compliant citizenry by doing so: https://tritorch.com/degradation/podestaDropCivics.png [image]
Oh and:
Transgender Movement Was Engineered, Obama Coated School Lunches With Atrazine to Feminize Males: https://old.bitchute.com/video/WOynKPQwQcCQ [2mins]
So the children are brainwashed from the bottom up, poisoned with chemical hormones from the top down... The evil on display here breaks the scale.
"Transgender Movement Was Engineered, Obama Coated School Lunches With Atrazine to Feminize Males" No evidence for this ludicrous claim.
https://old.bitchute.com/video/WOynKPQwQcCQ
Democracy Now and this father found it.
“There is no evidence”, the battle cry of the willfully blind. Turns out you cannot find what you are looking for even if it is shoving itself right in your face.
Eyes wide shut will not save you
Men have been getting erections imagining themselves as female for many centuries. It is a fetish. I do not doubt that Atrazine impacts the hormonal systems of living creatures in negative ways. Most pesticides and herbicides have a wide variety of health impacts. This, though, is a really stupid claim: "Obama Coated School Lunches With Atrazine."
American Scientific 2010: A Common Herbicide Turns Some Male Frogs Into Females https://archive.is/N6PAq
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The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111–296 (text) (PDF)) is a federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 13, 2010. The law is part of the reauthorization of funding for child nutrition (see the original Child Nutrition Act). It funded child nutrition programs and free lunch programs in schools for 5 years.[1] In addition, the law set new nutrition standards for schools, and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.[1] The new nutrition standards were a centerpiece of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative to combat childhood obesity.[2] In FY 2011, federal spending totaled $10.1 billion for the National School Lunch Program.[3] The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act allows USDA, for the first time in 30 years, opportunity to make real reforms to the school lunch and breakfast programs by improving the critical nutrition and hunger safety net for millions of children.[4] Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and Michelle Obama were a step in transforming the food pyramid recommendation, which has been around since the early 1990s, into what is now known as "MyPlate".
According to the US Department of Agriculture, for the 2012–13 school year, 21.5 million American children received free lunch or reduced-price lunch at school.[5] Across the U.S, the school lunch program varies by state.[6]
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A decade later we get an explosion of transgender children.
This was "Michele" Obama's project, who was exposed as a "tranny" by Joan Rivers just before she had her bucket kicked. We live in an inverted world where almost everything the government does is the inverse of what is claimed it is meant to accomplish. How far down this road must you walk Susan, before you see where it leads?
You still haven't provided any evidence that Obama gave an order to put Atrazine on school lunch foods.
Likely a “health” requirement buried in many thousands of pages of regulations by the FDA which the executive branch controls that enforced atrazine as the herbicide needed to get a school linch contract.
i have given you all the pieces it does not take Sherlock Holmes to put them together
I'm looking forward to watching your videos. I was a Terf before we had a name for it for several reasons I won't go into here. I have no opinions on Buck Angel but have been railing against porn and prostitution since the 80s. I'll work and support anybody who speaks out about the toxic trans cult. I won't call a man (looking at you Bruce Jenner) a "she" but if you want to do so, I'll meet you where you are. I don't want to be called cis. Some women are fine with that and are only concerned with childhood transition. We should work together where we can and respect each other when we disagree. Thousands, dare I say millions of lives will be damaged and destroyed until we put an end to this insanity.
For sure. Thank you!
Some people prefer to be "right" then effective. I watched a video of Billboard Chris effectively engaging a woman on the street. He was making real progress helping her be curious about her gender orthodoxy. Then, he referred to Dr. Rachel Levine as "he." The woman clocked him as a disrespectful bigot and instead of loosening her stance, he reified it. I really get how each individual has to protect their integrity, so I don't fault him for his position. But, I cringe every time fertile opportunities are squandered in the name of ideological purity.