I won’t be happy until Colin Wright is presenting his argument for the binary, gamete-based understanding of sex before the SCOTUS. I haven’t seen anyone do better when it comes to calmly and plainly addressing and refuting the “sex traits ARE sex” argument.
Biologically speaking, there are only two sexes, period. Practically speaking, identification documents present problems. Why do we put biological sex on legal identifying documents? They link back to birth certificates, providing continuity of identity, plus there are real practical and medical reasons. But if a trans person presents at an ID checkpoint, let’s posit looking convincingly like one sex but identified as the other, it poses hassles.
There is a simple solution, though it is probably too guileless and “nonbinary” for our polarized, sophistical culture: call a spade a spade. “Trans women are women” is arm-twisting sophistry. Trans women are … trans women. And vice versa. Let them identify themselves as such. If there is no shame in being transgender, why lie about it? If we are not aiming to outlaw it out of existence (which can’t be done, and shouldn’t be attempted), why not just acknowledge it? A legal ID document would thus indicate both biological sex at birth and, if different, gender of presentation. That would at the very least speed up airport security lines and actually reduce, not increase, discrimination and “misgendering.” You can’t be unjustly unmasked if you’re not masked in the first place
There are indeed practical approaches. If some fella really insists on trying to pass as a woman and he's arrested in, oh ... say Russia, or Saudi Arabia, and strip searched, it could end up badly for him because cops and security personnel in general don't like disguises and false declarations. So, let's have 'M', 'F' 'TM' 'TW' and 'O' (other), so that nobody can be accused of lying.
But there is a counter argument that these people should not be yielded to in any way, no matter how moderately -- they must be utterly defeated. .
Defeating ideologues is great, but you also sweep up in your purge a number of harmless, defenseless people who just want to live their lives. How do you separate the sheep from the goats?
That's just the problem, but I think it needs to be faced squarely. One must decide: leave the woke in charge for fear of collateral damage, or bite the bullet, start the purge and know ahead of time that there will be innocent casualties. It seems to me that by facing the fact that there will be innocent casualties, one keeps it in mind to minimize them. Mind, as a Canadian, my instinct is to do things in the politest and least offensive way possible IF it will succeed. But I suspect that a purge will be needed. In Florida the New College attempted a fresh start but w.o. the purge -- the woke simply flowed around the official end to their SJW indoctrination. The won't and can't change, they must be purged. Repugnant as that kind of thing is to descent people.
One thing I’m trying to do is call the ideologues’ bluff. I know it can’t be done, because they are in bad faith. They don’t want to help more people coexist in peace. They want to fuck with everybody.
I'm curious, do the people you know ever speak out against men destroying women's sports, or the right of both men and women to have single-sex spaces?
I hope so. I don't know, because I haven't seen them for a while. Two (one in each direction) worked at my mom's assisted living place, and my mom died in 2024 (age 100!). They were completely nonpolitical in my experience. The third is the grown (30s–40s) child of friends and I have seen "him" only in passing. Facebook feed is almost entirely about cooking. ... There are trans commentators, no doubt too few, who say the activists have ruined things for everyone.
So-called "trans" is no more "real" than is Santa Claus, IMHO.....
...."And yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus".....
So I think of "trans" persons as "Santa's helpers".....
Also, in some contexts, "trans" means "no", or "not"....a "trans woman" is NOT a natural, biological woman, right?.... Am I understanding this correctly?....
"Trans women are … trans women. And vice versa. Let them identify themselves"
There is much in what you say, Annie, but the underlying pattern is a classic power struggle that began with a simple semantic trap and has been prosecuted by means of epistemic capture.
To illustrate, a thought exercise may be of use; what happens to the arc of the power struggle when "female impersonator" is substituted for "trans woman?"
Colloquially; we've seen this technique throughout the ages, and we're all familiar with the effects of it, when we observe people making a decision to buy as the result of what is known in sales as the "assumptive close."
What I'm addressing here, is how the entire world (it seems,) somehow got to the point of just nodding along with the assertion that "transwomen are women."
How did that start?
My own assertion, is that it began when a critical mass of people agreed to accept and repeat that one word; "trans women."
This is referred to as "framing." When the basic semantic framework is accepted, consequences follow as night follows day.
It started because people in general are rightly more concerned about what is happening to 99.9% of the population. They might care that nobody is actively oppressed but against the huge discrimination against 48% of Western people (males) the fiddling arguments about whether someone with mental illness issues is considered male or female is irrelevant.
And it is, or was, irrelevant originally.
The issues of trans people only tends to arise when someone people see as a woman pretends to be a man, or vice-versa. Otherwise, if I see a trans person who looks like a man go into the men's toilets, for example, I am not going to think twice about it, am I? It's a bloke going into the place for blokes. If, however, I see someone who comes across to me as a woman, I might say something (though men are used to women coming into men's toilets: certainly in Europe female cleaners etc. in there is quite common; somehow this is acceptable).
It is the activists, not the genuine people who make an effort to appear to be the opposite sex, who are the problem. And that is a political, not a medical nor an identity problem.
What started as a polite lie became a legal fiction - the public wasn't aware the activists intended to make it legal reality. The legal category of "gender" has actually replaced biological sex in many jurisdictions including Australia, ironically the feminist hero Julia Gillard (1st female PM) is responsible.
I don't think any feminist can regard Gillard any longer as either a feminist or a hero--but as a traitor to women, and destroyer of Australian women's sex-based legal rights to female-only spaces, sports etc.
Australian Sall Grover has just lost two lawsuits, brought against her and her company "Giggle for Girls", by the trans-identified male Jason "Roxanne" Tickle--for "discrimination" against his being allowed onto this female-only dating etc platform.
I disagree strongly with your opening point. After 3 decades of arguing with feminists I’ve determined that the predominant feature of feminism isn’t ideology/belief system/political policy agreement but IDENTITY. Feminists value Gillard not for whatever she did/n’t do - but for being the “1st woman to x/y/z” - the only thing that counts for them is that she was the first female PM, even if she ate babies live on TV. (Compare how the native Zimbabweans kept supporting Mugabe even as he killed them en masse)
That is precisely why her betrayal stings the GC activists so much - because they are forced into the cognitive dissonance of condemning their beloved symbol.
I am not Australian but English, so my knowledge of Gillard is fairly limited: to her having misused her power, as a woman and prime minister, by endorsing "gender identity" as trumping women's sex-based rights.
And I strongly disagree with your main point that "the predominant feature of feminism isn’t ideology/belief system/political policy agreement but IDENTITY".
As a female and a lifelong feminist myself, I am of course more disappointed and angry when women claiming to be feminists use their power to betray women, than I feel towards those who have never claimed to be feminist.
And of course this is especially applicable to women in positions of power, for misusing it.
Thank you for engaging with me - and I don’t mean to get into an argument over things we likely mostly agree with each other about. I speak to many women who self-label as feminist and are also GC in Australia, so the claim I made was based upon decades of observation & engagement, not as a put down.
Unless you would genuinely like to hear why I came to hold this view… I’m happy to oblige but don’t want to push my views on people.
You actually have not provided any real reason that it needs to be on identification. Do you mean for an emergency that happens to be sex specific? I guess it could be faster to check someone's pocket than their crotch. I am not strongly convinced by this. Even if it were true, then someone marking their ID wrong would just be harming themselves as badly as someone walking around without ID , so I still see no legal reason to require it. How about everyone being able to opt out of listing one at all?
Since these people have shown that they are very willing to harm themselves, why should anyone care if they misrepresent their sex to people who are trying to rescue them?
The sentiment is perfectly understandable, Sandra, but remember that parents have been told that their kids would commit suicide if they weren't "assisted" with affirmation, followed by chemical castration and genital mutilation.
Suicide attempts are considered a form of mental illness, and the suicidal person presents what first responders refer to as "a danger to themselves and others." First responders must act accordingly.
Because it has now become a matter of political coercion (creating a "protected class" under law,) what should be a private matter affecting a microscopic minority of people with a genuine psychological ailment (gender dysphoria,) has become a matter for consideration by the general public.
Well, yes, but in the case of someone who threatens suicide, their sex arguably has little relevance to first responders. The first responders wouldn't need to consider the potential for the person to actually suicide (much higher risk in white males) because they have to try to get the person into a hospital either way.
The accurate identification of sex would, however, be relevant if a male patient claimed to be pregnant and had a convincing set of surgically created genitals.
Your comment that the psychopathologies of this tiny minority have "become a matter for consideration by the general public" is certainly a fact. It's the whole reason why we are here having this conversation. And, I for one am really tired of having to work out accommodations to the tiny minority within the tiny minority that are guilty of making their problem into everyone else's responsibility.
I do not think airport security can really care that much about gender. A middle east gentlemen wearing his traditional robe: is he a man dressing like a western woman, or a woman with a beard? A western woman wearing a business suit with trousers: is she a woman in man's clothing or a man with bumps on his chest? These people see all sorts. What matters is if they are the person on their passport. Why have sex on there at all? Because it is more helpful in over 98% of the time than it is confusing in under 2% of the time: that is all.
Key authors—Arendt, Scott, Łobaczewski, Orlov, Scheidel, Le Bon, Toynbee, Graeber, and Jung—converge on a clear-eyed diagnosis of the current Canadian situation. Arendt sees in it the banality of bureaucratic evil: civil servants applying procedures without genuine moral judgment, as in the handling of complaints at the Bar or the expansion of MAiD. Scott recognizes in it the logic of high modernity: the state reduces human complexity (attachment to one's home, deep convictions, freedom of conscience) to simple administrative categories, producing an uncorrectable visibility. Łobaczewski speaks of a soft pathocracy, where the system naturally selects those who adapt to the coldness of procedure. Orlov sees in it the first signs of political and social closure, while Scheidel sees a rigidification of the elites that blocks mobility and accumulates tensions. Toynbee would diagnose a petrification of the creative elites who have become dominant: instead of responding creatively to challenges, they protect themselves with administrative and ideological routines, accelerating the internal decline of a civilization. Graeber would emphasize the absurd and violent bureaucratic dimension: the system imposes useless and restrictive rules that stifle human imagination and creativity, transforming citizens into mere subjects. Jung, with his concept of enantiodromia (the swing of the pendulum), would add that any tendency pushed to extremes eventually generates its opposite: the more technocratic and administrative closure intensifies, the more it generates existential fatigue and resistance that, at some point, will tip in the other direction. Le Bon would finally remind us that people tolerate this closure for a long time as long as the discourse remains coherent, but that a saturation point can be suddenly crossed, leading to a brutal and emotional reversal. In Canada, we are not experiencing violent persecution, but rather a profound and insidious transformation: a legal, administrative, and cultural closure that wears us down slowly rather than striking us directly, while simultaneously creating the conditions for its own future rejection. We are not returning to the world as it was before; we are moving toward a new configuration where the tension between technocratic control and human resistance will remain permanent.
In Quebec and Canada, we are not (yet) in a situation of “civil war” in the classical sense of the term, like the one some European analysts fear for the United Kingdom or France. Rather, we are in an advanced stage of societal fracture and institutional closure, which already exhibits several precursors of a gradual balkanization. The most visible division is regional and cultural: Alberta and parts of the Prairies feel increasingly alienated from Ottawa, perceived as a centralizing elite that imposes policies (carbon tax, energy restrictions, mass immigration) contrary to their economic interests and their identity. In Quebec, the tension is twofold: on the one hand, a historical resistance to federal centralization (Legault and Quebec nationalism), and on the other, a growing divide between rural/traditional regions and major urban centers (especially Montreal), where demographics are changing rapidly, and debates on identity, secularism, and reasonable accommodation remain heated. This divide is not yet violent, but it is deep and is being expressed.
I'm not sure, but I'll look into it in the literature.
A revolution or rejection is organic, just like a fever. The body (or the society) does not ask permission to react when the pressure becomes too great. While many people already have the will to resist, the real question is whether enough will find the courage — the “balls” — to act when the moment comes.
History shows that when the saturation point is finally crossed, the reaction can be sudden and powerful, even if it starts messy and emotional.
I wonder if the literature can answer the question. I agree with what you say as to 'saturation point', but a populace that has reached the tipping point may yet lack the spine to do what they want to do. Or the tools. In '1984' O'Brian explains how the proles would be kept in slavery forever by not only keeping them stupid and incapable or organization, but also by depriving them of any tools by which they could launch a revolution.
This may be a controversial take, but some communities are marginalised for good reasons. For example, we deliberately marginalise sex offenders and psychopaths, often detaining them against their will, for the good of society.
So, the academic and legal argument of this so-called 'epistemology' that marginalisation of people who claim to live outside of the sex binary is problematic begins with the assumption that the group in question is legitimate and deserves inclusion.
The problem with people who openly violate social norms - such as cross-dressing - is that it is impossible to be sure whether someone is compelled to break just one social norm, or whether they are compelled to break several, or all, social norms, the latter of which would obviously bring them into conflict with the criminal law.
Why should a society be compelled to include people who have signalled that they won't be complying with that society's norms? Queer theory treats normativity as problematic, but without norms, our society would not have had the means to build the ivory towers from which Theory is pronounced.
> Mahr chose to critique it from a “feminist epistemology”
How strange the undeniable fact that the erosion of the long established social and legal protections for actual females is driven -- perhaps not exclusively but very largely -- by females. They insist on harming themselves. They demand male rapists be sent to women's prisons, they demand males be permitted to compete with them in sports. Ideology not only trumps reality, it trumps self preservation. Most trannies are girls wanting to be boys and if that entails mutilation and sterilization -- wonderful! One might have predicted that a female who wants to be a male would be committing a sort of gender treason but no. It would seem that penis envy is so pervasive among feminists that when I girl goes for an addadicktome, this is celebrated. Nope, I suppose that if Mahr were ever sent to prison and the warden asked if she'd want to share a cell with Sue -- a 250 lb multiple rapist -- Mahr would answer that OF COURSE she'd welcome Sue. Feminist epistemology requires it.
WRONG! A female is nothing more than anyone who claims to be a female and feminism is just that agenda which advances the interests of people who Identify as female. This is difficult for some because we how have nouns that have no reference to anything but themselves and this is a new thing. Consider an example:
I am a shrognophorian. Now, I hear you ask: 'What on Earth is a shrognophorian? What facts does this term point to?' The answer is that it points to no facts other than that the shrognophorian is a person who Identifies as one. It's a perfect semantic ouroboros.
Not really answering your question directly, but there are a growing number of outspoken & proud "TERF's".....I doubt we've had a "trans TERF" yet, but that's probably only a matter of time.....
“THIS is a (VERY dangerous) manufactured controversy, because the basic biological claim that males and females are reproductive classes rooted in anisogamy (sperm vs ova) has not been overturned.” - And it never shall be. Impossible. It is real, ‘hard’ science Reproductive Biology, easily observable every.single.day FACT. (Unless, of course, our species physically changes that on purpose via cloning, or castration and neutering, and moves to test tube reproduction and artificial wombs ie., transhumanism ❌😉)
Yes, that has been [their] End Game from the beginning: The usurpation, capture, and CONTROL of *THE most POWERful Energies of Creation in the Universe*, to mold to [their] own deviant, devious Purpose(s) 👺👾 Very astute, perspicacious observation, Thomas ⚡😎
Of course the woke are not defeated. They have massive support among Millennials and GenZ, so all they have to do is wait. The people who have declared the war over and proclaim reality the victor do not have a deep or long range perspective on what is going on.
‘More importantly, the majority signaled its view that the challenged policies likely violate Montana’s constitution, holding that “transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination”…’
My undergraduate legal education told me that all law creates discrimination (driving, marriage, drinking, etc). Civil rights law therefore required the creation of a category of invidious discrimination, and sex discrimination was legislated to be such. Given all of the problems with transgenderism, legal discrimination against it is justified and therefore Montana’s activist conflation of the two is not justified.
'Legal' solution that should 'satisfy' BOTH 'sides': TWO check boxes! One for 'Biological (chromosomal) Sex' - that appears on the physical person's birth certificate - the other for 'Gender Identity' or 'Affiliation'. Easy, simple, crystal clear, and 100% unambiguous (eliminates all doubt and confusion). Wdyt?
Sorry, can’t agree. Allowing a separate ‘gender identity’ on a legal document will always increase confusion, not decrease it, for both individuals and social institutions. The best outcome is to make gender identity a truly private matter between affected individuals and their supportive family and friends, and to ensure ‘supportive’ no longer has the destructive connotations it presently has.
It would be sorta like have an 'S' tick box for 'Saved' Christians. It's nobody's business and no cop or border security guy gives a damn whether you are Saved or not. Nor it is any affair of his what you Identify as. Why elevate the subjective to the level where anyone would want to know?
So no 'sex' checkbox at all?? No 'race' either then? We ARE all simply Terrans ('Earth' humans), period. Same reproductively-compatible subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Right?
OK, I respect your opinion. What about race? *Not* skin color btw, aka ‘colorism’, which is **intentionally** manufactured confusion, a Propagandistic ploy by the Controllers (see the case of Kamala Harris for proof/use of that by the DS) - rather genetic makeup, same like biological M/F birth gender. Remove all those ‘checkboxes’?? You would think the Left would LOVE that, wouldn’t you? Eliminate race(ist) distinctions? Full Inclusion, right?? But alas, they hate ALL efforts to actually bring us together as a species, to achieve True Unity 😑
“Race” truly is on a spectrum. So, asking for a check box answer there, really is asking many people how they identify as something. The concept of “race” is such an odd thing to me. The sooner it gets thrown on the trash heap of history the better. It only benefits racists regardless of their skin color.
Sorry why would chromosomes matter even one tiny iota when compared to anatomy and hormone driven gene expressions and all the actually relevant components of sex are mutable, and further given that sterility does not (as of now) consign one to some kind of sexless limbo where all remaining aspects of sex are ignored?
Sex in any real world or meaningful sense is mutable. Sex as a class is obviously something some people change from one to the other, especially those who begin transition younger.
The claim that sex as a material class is immutable just renders sex an enormously irrelevant technicality that is just as unrelated to the legal and social and medial concerns you all claim to focus on… as the self ID circularity definitions.
"The majority" clearly doesn't know the difference between sex (real, biological) and "gender identity" (imaginary, ideological)--and is therefore not fit to pass any judgement on what it considers (wrongly) to be "sex discrimination" conflating the two.
The real kicker about the Montana decision is the way the justices blithely throw around the term "gender identity." They never define this term, which isn't surprising because even Jack Turban himself, high priest of gender woo-woo, cannot define it. By my lights, if you can't describe what a gender identity is, you shouldn't protect it in law, because how the hell can even know if you are protecting it? The justices act like this term is clearly defined and well understood, when neither is true. Hell, it would make more sense to protect leprechauns in law, because most Americans have seen the Lucky Charms box and could give at least a rough physical description of such a creature.
I agree entirely with Colin Wright’s arguments on the binary nature of sex, and I am totally opposed to gender transition in minors (because it is not supported by any evidence).
But I do object to his (and many others) tendency to define all ideology as binary. It’s not as simple as “left” vs “right”. My views in favour of universal health care, abortion rights and gun control would define me as “left”, yet I have other views which would be labelled as “right”, such as supporting Colin Wright!
Biological sex is binary. Social, economic and political ideology is not.
This was my first thought when I saw the title of this article. This is not a political, “left vs. right” issue as much as it is a philosophical, empirical vs. idealist issue. I insist on starting with perceived reality and constructing our categories from there. Are there philosophical compilations and challenges to the empiricist framework? Certainly. But it is far more defensible than the idealist perspective, which insists that reality bend to the categories of the mind. But, most relevant here, the empiricist/idealist split isn’t one of left/right. There are many left-wing empiricists (myself included) and rather a lot of right wing idealists. The fact that the postmodern/critical theory incumbent academic establishment is a post-Marxist leftist perspective is an accident of history. In Italy in the 1930s and 40s, with the ascendancy of blood and soil fascism, it would have been right wing.
I would argue that framing this as a left/right struggle rather than a reality-oriented struggle alienates the many people on the left like me, who value human flourishing, are skeptical of radical movements of all political stripes, and are secular while measuring the efficacy of political movements in terms of utility for the many rather than the few. The *vast* majority of people on the left disagree with Critical Theory woo, but framing philosophical issues in terms of left and right makes it harder to reach them. Tribalism is a hard thing to break through, and leaning into it with this framing further calcifies it.
This is interpreted by some I believe as harm being the same as questioning of claims made regarding gender dysphoria and its treatment. No debate. To keep them "safe". Similarly for treating sex accurately as fixed for humans and biological.
From medical best practice.
To keep people who don't like their sex and want something else to replace it in policy and language "safe".
It does feel bad to be argued with if you turn out to be wrong. Or when you don't like something about yourself.. But that is no excuse for refusing to correct errors or for publishing incorrect papers in the first place .
There are eight genders in the Torah. The Nazis attacked and destroyed the institute for sexual research where the world’s first transgender surgery was performed. All books burned and the Jews behind the Institute are still angry about that. It’s Gnoisticism, the belief they can simply control reality with words.
"There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you'!"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be Master - that's all."
Firstly, you can't spell Gnosticism. Secondly, the Third Reich employed one of the surgeons from Hirschfeld's institute to carry out radical experiments on human victims, so it was not opposed to the practice as such. The regime objected to any Jewish person in authority, and the attack on Hirschfeld's clinic was instigated by conservative students, not the regime itself.
It seems this ideological assault on reality is meant to break our brains. It’s difficult to even read about this absurdity, let alone contemplating that it’s happening.
However, I don’t think this statement is a comprehensive representation of reality:
“The cultural campaign against the biological reality of sex began in niche activist blogs, women’s studies departments, and obscure ideological magazines.”
Isn’t the proponent of gender spectrum in the Delaware debate an anthropologist? I realize Colin is claiming it began in “these places” and simply moved to mainstream from there, but who forced the mainstream to accept it? Women? Niche activists?
There is a considerable amount of money and influence on the side of pushing transgender that many women have in fact fought, coming from wealthy men.
As well, Judith Butler, on whose work much of queer theory is based, started in the philosophy department at Yale, earning a PhD in 1984, while not serving as acting chair of a women’s studies department until the early aughts?
Her resume is as dizzying as her writing, showing her hopping across the spectrum of subject matters, avoiding, of course, things like biology and physics.
Yet, her work in turn is based heavily on that of Foucault, a renowned ~male~ sexual predator, who advocated for lowering the age of consent and making rape a nonsexual crime, merely of violence. In which department did he operate? Philosophy.
His entire argument is balderdash. The idea that sex (physically) was multi layered and that people could change sex category with sufficiently intense and long term hormone therapy and sex change surgeries… was in fact pretty damned mainstream for many decades.
The reason almost every state in the U.S. allowed full transition MtF to marry men, even in the 60s and 70s, wasn’t because South Carolina and Indiana were too woke or trying to get gay marriage on the books in advance. It’s because some people changed sex (literally) and society accepted that some people did.
His constant attempt to claim that the belief in sex changes is new or unique, or that how humans use medical-biological sex is somehow to be subordinated to what unmedicated mammals might have to deal with… is absolutely inscrutable.
The Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels, who knew little of science but much about propaganda, apparently said "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
This is the tactic the trans-propagandist movement has copied. It’s not about science, even if scientific terminology is parroted. It’s all about politics. They understand the psychology of the liberal mindset, its predilection for prioritising whoever they classify as ‘oppressed minorities’. Within post modernist paradigms they reject objective reality, arguing that "truth" is subjective, relative, and constructed by language, culture, and the hierarchy of power relations. In reconstructing language they are confirming Goebbels’ prediction. In their abuse and persecution of critics they are also following another of his political tactics. What is strange and scary is just how easy it is to replicate the Nazi tactics and recruit otherwise intelligent individuals, like the court in Montana, to a perverse and bigoted worldview.
The mindset behind this mess in Montana structures society such that sex crimes committed by crossdressing men are not prosecuted. When the crimes are so heinous that there is conviction, the crossdresser serves his time in the women's prison estate, where he commits more violence against women. This has been the case in many liberal states. Due to the demands on news agencies from the Trans Journalists' Association Reportage Guide and Stylebook, these crimes and the following crimes occurring in the women's prison estate are not reported. In some states, the data is kept under the falsehood that women committed the crimes.
I won’t be happy until Colin Wright is presenting his argument for the binary, gamete-based understanding of sex before the SCOTUS. I haven’t seen anyone do better when it comes to calmly and plainly addressing and refuting the “sex traits ARE sex” argument.
Biologically speaking, there are only two sexes, period. Practically speaking, identification documents present problems. Why do we put biological sex on legal identifying documents? They link back to birth certificates, providing continuity of identity, plus there are real practical and medical reasons. But if a trans person presents at an ID checkpoint, let’s posit looking convincingly like one sex but identified as the other, it poses hassles.
There is a simple solution, though it is probably too guileless and “nonbinary” for our polarized, sophistical culture: call a spade a spade. “Trans women are women” is arm-twisting sophistry. Trans women are … trans women. And vice versa. Let them identify themselves as such. If there is no shame in being transgender, why lie about it? If we are not aiming to outlaw it out of existence (which can’t be done, and shouldn’t be attempted), why not just acknowledge it? A legal ID document would thus indicate both biological sex at birth and, if different, gender of presentation. That would at the very least speed up airport security lines and actually reduce, not increase, discrimination and “misgendering.” You can’t be unjustly unmasked if you’re not masked in the first place
There are indeed practical approaches. If some fella really insists on trying to pass as a woman and he's arrested in, oh ... say Russia, or Saudi Arabia, and strip searched, it could end up badly for him because cops and security personnel in general don't like disguises and false declarations. So, let's have 'M', 'F' 'TM' 'TW' and 'O' (other), so that nobody can be accused of lying.
But there is a counter argument that these people should not be yielded to in any way, no matter how moderately -- they must be utterly defeated. .
Defeating ideologues is great, but you also sweep up in your purge a number of harmless, defenseless people who just want to live their lives. How do you separate the sheep from the goats?
That's just the problem, but I think it needs to be faced squarely. One must decide: leave the woke in charge for fear of collateral damage, or bite the bullet, start the purge and know ahead of time that there will be innocent casualties. It seems to me that by facing the fact that there will be innocent casualties, one keeps it in mind to minimize them. Mind, as a Canadian, my instinct is to do things in the politest and least offensive way possible IF it will succeed. But I suspect that a purge will be needed. In Florida the New College attempted a fresh start but w.o. the purge -- the woke simply flowed around the official end to their SJW indoctrination. The won't and can't change, they must be purged. Repugnant as that kind of thing is to descent people.
One thing I’m trying to do is call the ideologues’ bluff. I know it can’t be done, because they are in bad faith. They don’t want to help more people coexist in peace. They want to fuck with everybody.
Harmless, defenseless people should try to be honest. Then we would have a better idea of which ones are sheep and which are goats.
The ones I am thinking of, people I know, are not only honest but even have a sense of humor.
I'm curious, do the people you know ever speak out against men destroying women's sports, or the right of both men and women to have single-sex spaces?
I hope so. I don't know, because I haven't seen them for a while. Two (one in each direction) worked at my mom's assisted living place, and my mom died in 2024 (age 100!). They were completely nonpolitical in my experience. The third is the grown (30s–40s) child of friends and I have seen "him" only in passing. Facebook feed is almost entirely about cooking. ... There are trans commentators, no doubt too few, who say the activists have ruined things for everyone.
These harmless people are badly served by seeking “liberation” through believing there is an essence to them which cannot cooperate with social norms.
So-called "trans" is no more "real" than is Santa Claus, IMHO.....
...."And yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus".....
So I think of "trans" persons as "Santa's helpers".....
Also, in some contexts, "trans" means "no", or "not"....a "trans woman" is NOT a natural, biological woman, right?.... Am I understanding this correctly?....
"Trans women are … trans women. And vice versa. Let them identify themselves"
There is much in what you say, Annie, but the underlying pattern is a classic power struggle that began with a simple semantic trap and has been prosecuted by means of epistemic capture.
To illustrate, a thought exercise may be of use; what happens to the arc of the power struggle when "female impersonator" is substituted for "trans woman?"
Colloquially; we've seen this technique throughout the ages, and we're all familiar with the effects of it, when we observe people making a decision to buy as the result of what is known in sales as the "assumptive close."
Transwomen are men. I don't care what anyone wears or how many operations they've had--every cell in their bodies is male.
People can't change s@x. They shouldn't be able to change their identifiying documents either.
It's important for people like doctors, emergency responders, police and prison guards to know the s@x of the person they're dealing with.
Agreed, Leslie.
What I'm addressing here, is how the entire world (it seems,) somehow got to the point of just nodding along with the assertion that "transwomen are women."
How did that start?
My own assertion, is that it began when a critical mass of people agreed to accept and repeat that one word; "trans women."
This is referred to as "framing." When the basic semantic framework is accepted, consequences follow as night follows day.
Yes, words matter.
That's why the pronoun thing is important as well. Nobody is plural, and people can tell by your face if you're male or female.
It started because people in general are rightly more concerned about what is happening to 99.9% of the population. They might care that nobody is actively oppressed but against the huge discrimination against 48% of Western people (males) the fiddling arguments about whether someone with mental illness issues is considered male or female is irrelevant.
And it is, or was, irrelevant originally.
The issues of trans people only tends to arise when someone people see as a woman pretends to be a man, or vice-versa. Otherwise, if I see a trans person who looks like a man go into the men's toilets, for example, I am not going to think twice about it, am I? It's a bloke going into the place for blokes. If, however, I see someone who comes across to me as a woman, I might say something (though men are used to women coming into men's toilets: certainly in Europe female cleaners etc. in there is quite common; somehow this is acceptable).
It is the activists, not the genuine people who make an effort to appear to be the opposite sex, who are the problem. And that is a political, not a medical nor an identity problem.
👍🏼
What started as a polite lie became a legal fiction - the public wasn't aware the activists intended to make it legal reality. The legal category of "gender" has actually replaced biological sex in many jurisdictions including Australia, ironically the feminist hero Julia Gillard (1st female PM) is responsible.
I don't think any feminist can regard Gillard any longer as either a feminist or a hero--but as a traitor to women, and destroyer of Australian women's sex-based legal rights to female-only spaces, sports etc.
Australian Sall Grover has just lost two lawsuits, brought against her and her company "Giggle for Girls", by the trans-identified male Jason "Roxanne" Tickle--for "discrimination" against his being allowed onto this female-only dating etc platform.
I disagree strongly with your opening point. After 3 decades of arguing with feminists I’ve determined that the predominant feature of feminism isn’t ideology/belief system/political policy agreement but IDENTITY. Feminists value Gillard not for whatever she did/n’t do - but for being the “1st woman to x/y/z” - the only thing that counts for them is that she was the first female PM, even if she ate babies live on TV. (Compare how the native Zimbabweans kept supporting Mugabe even as he killed them en masse)
That is precisely why her betrayal stings the GC activists so much - because they are forced into the cognitive dissonance of condemning their beloved symbol.
I am not Australian but English, so my knowledge of Gillard is fairly limited: to her having misused her power, as a woman and prime minister, by endorsing "gender identity" as trumping women's sex-based rights.
And I strongly disagree with your main point that "the predominant feature of feminism isn’t ideology/belief system/political policy agreement but IDENTITY".
As a female and a lifelong feminist myself, I am of course more disappointed and angry when women claiming to be feminists use their power to betray women, than I feel towards those who have never claimed to be feminist.
And of course this is especially applicable to women in positions of power, for misusing it.
Thank you for engaging with me - and I don’t mean to get into an argument over things we likely mostly agree with each other about. I speak to many women who self-label as feminist and are also GC in Australia, so the claim I made was based upon decades of observation & engagement, not as a put down.
Unless you would genuinely like to hear why I came to hold this view… I’m happy to oblige but don’t want to push my views on people.
You actually have not provided any real reason that it needs to be on identification. Do you mean for an emergency that happens to be sex specific? I guess it could be faster to check someone's pocket than their crotch. I am not strongly convinced by this. Even if it were true, then someone marking their ID wrong would just be harming themselves as badly as someone walking around without ID , so I still see no legal reason to require it. How about everyone being able to opt out of listing one at all?
Since these people have shown that they are very willing to harm themselves, why should anyone care if they misrepresent their sex to people who are trying to rescue them?
The sentiment is perfectly understandable, Sandra, but remember that parents have been told that their kids would commit suicide if they weren't "assisted" with affirmation, followed by chemical castration and genital mutilation.
Suicide attempts are considered a form of mental illness, and the suicidal person presents what first responders refer to as "a danger to themselves and others." First responders must act accordingly.
Because it has now become a matter of political coercion (creating a "protected class" under law,) what should be a private matter affecting a microscopic minority of people with a genuine psychological ailment (gender dysphoria,) has become a matter for consideration by the general public.
Well, yes, but in the case of someone who threatens suicide, their sex arguably has little relevance to first responders. The first responders wouldn't need to consider the potential for the person to actually suicide (much higher risk in white males) because they have to try to get the person into a hospital either way.
The accurate identification of sex would, however, be relevant if a male patient claimed to be pregnant and had a convincing set of surgically created genitals.
Your comment that the psychopathologies of this tiny minority have "become a matter for consideration by the general public" is certainly a fact. It's the whole reason why we are here having this conversation. And, I for one am really tired of having to work out accommodations to the tiny minority within the tiny minority that are guilty of making their problem into everyone else's responsibility.
These people are badly served by seeking “liberation” through believing there is an essence to them which cannot cooperate with social norms.
I do not think airport security can really care that much about gender. A middle east gentlemen wearing his traditional robe: is he a man dressing like a western woman, or a woman with a beard? A western woman wearing a business suit with trousers: is she a woman in man's clothing or a man with bumps on his chest? These people see all sorts. What matters is if they are the person on their passport. Why have sex on there at all? Because it is more helpful in over 98% of the time than it is confusing in under 2% of the time: that is all.
Genitalia is different than sexual identity.
Solution: TWO check boxes!
Key authors—Arendt, Scott, Łobaczewski, Orlov, Scheidel, Le Bon, Toynbee, Graeber, and Jung—converge on a clear-eyed diagnosis of the current Canadian situation. Arendt sees in it the banality of bureaucratic evil: civil servants applying procedures without genuine moral judgment, as in the handling of complaints at the Bar or the expansion of MAiD. Scott recognizes in it the logic of high modernity: the state reduces human complexity (attachment to one's home, deep convictions, freedom of conscience) to simple administrative categories, producing an uncorrectable visibility. Łobaczewski speaks of a soft pathocracy, where the system naturally selects those who adapt to the coldness of procedure. Orlov sees in it the first signs of political and social closure, while Scheidel sees a rigidification of the elites that blocks mobility and accumulates tensions. Toynbee would diagnose a petrification of the creative elites who have become dominant: instead of responding creatively to challenges, they protect themselves with administrative and ideological routines, accelerating the internal decline of a civilization. Graeber would emphasize the absurd and violent bureaucratic dimension: the system imposes useless and restrictive rules that stifle human imagination and creativity, transforming citizens into mere subjects. Jung, with his concept of enantiodromia (the swing of the pendulum), would add that any tendency pushed to extremes eventually generates its opposite: the more technocratic and administrative closure intensifies, the more it generates existential fatigue and resistance that, at some point, will tip in the other direction. Le Bon would finally remind us that people tolerate this closure for a long time as long as the discourse remains coherent, but that a saturation point can be suddenly crossed, leading to a brutal and emotional reversal. In Canada, we are not experiencing violent persecution, but rather a profound and insidious transformation: a legal, administrative, and cultural closure that wears us down slowly rather than striking us directly, while simultaneously creating the conditions for its own future rejection. We are not returning to the world as it was before; we are moving toward a new configuration where the tension between technocratic control and human resistance will remain permanent.
In Quebec and Canada, we are not (yet) in a situation of “civil war” in the classical sense of the term, like the one some European analysts fear for the United Kingdom or France. Rather, we are in an advanced stage of societal fracture and institutional closure, which already exhibits several precursors of a gradual balkanization. The most visible division is regional and cultural: Alberta and parts of the Prairies feel increasingly alienated from Ottawa, perceived as a centralizing elite that imposes policies (carbon tax, energy restrictions, mass immigration) contrary to their economic interests and their identity. In Quebec, the tension is twofold: on the one hand, a historical resistance to federal centralization (Legault and Quebec nationalism), and on the other, a growing divide between rural/traditional regions and major urban centers (especially Montreal), where demographics are changing rapidly, and debates on identity, secularism, and reasonable accommodation remain heated. This divide is not yet violent, but it is deep and is being expressed.
> while simultaneously creating the conditions for its own future rejection
But will the strength to resist be there? Many have the will, but do they have the balls?
I'm not sure, but I'll look into it in the literature.
A revolution or rejection is organic, just like a fever. The body (or the society) does not ask permission to react when the pressure becomes too great. While many people already have the will to resist, the real question is whether enough will find the courage — the “balls” — to act when the moment comes.
History shows that when the saturation point is finally crossed, the reaction can be sudden and powerful, even if it starts messy and emotional.
I wonder if the literature can answer the question. I agree with what you say as to 'saturation point', but a populace that has reached the tipping point may yet lack the spine to do what they want to do. Or the tools. In '1984' O'Brian explains how the proles would be kept in slavery forever by not only keeping them stupid and incapable or organization, but also by depriving them of any tools by which they could launch a revolution.
Makes sense!
This may be a controversial take, but some communities are marginalised for good reasons. For example, we deliberately marginalise sex offenders and psychopaths, often detaining them against their will, for the good of society.
So, the academic and legal argument of this so-called 'epistemology' that marginalisation of people who claim to live outside of the sex binary is problematic begins with the assumption that the group in question is legitimate and deserves inclusion.
The problem with people who openly violate social norms - such as cross-dressing - is that it is impossible to be sure whether someone is compelled to break just one social norm, or whether they are compelled to break several, or all, social norms, the latter of which would obviously bring them into conflict with the criminal law.
Why should a society be compelled to include people who have signalled that they won't be complying with that society's norms? Queer theory treats normativity as problematic, but without norms, our society would not have had the means to build the ivory towers from which Theory is pronounced.
In general, academia needs to be defunded for awhile.
This would be the least traumatic means of sloughing off the malfunctioning portions.
> Mahr chose to critique it from a “feminist epistemology”
How strange the undeniable fact that the erosion of the long established social and legal protections for actual females is driven -- perhaps not exclusively but very largely -- by females. They insist on harming themselves. They demand male rapists be sent to women's prisons, they demand males be permitted to compete with them in sports. Ideology not only trumps reality, it trumps self preservation. Most trannies are girls wanting to be boys and if that entails mutilation and sterilization -- wonderful! One might have predicted that a female who wants to be a male would be committing a sort of gender treason but no. It would seem that penis envy is so pervasive among feminists that when I girl goes for an addadicktome, this is celebrated. Nope, I suppose that if Mahr were ever sent to prison and the warden asked if she'd want to share a cell with Sue -- a 250 lb multiple rapist -- Mahr would answer that OF COURSE she'd welcome Sue. Feminist epistemology requires it.
What I would like to know is how feminism is defined, given the difficulties with knowing what a female is.
WRONG! A female is nothing more than anyone who claims to be a female and feminism is just that agenda which advances the interests of people who Identify as female. This is difficult for some because we how have nouns that have no reference to anything but themselves and this is a new thing. Consider an example:
I am a shrognophorian. Now, I hear you ask: 'What on Earth is a shrognophorian? What facts does this term point to?' The answer is that it points to no facts other than that the shrognophorian is a person who Identifies as one. It's a perfect semantic ouroboros.
Not really answering your question directly, but there are a growing number of outspoken & proud "TERF's".....I doubt we've had a "trans TERF" yet, but that's probably only a matter of time.....
“THIS is a (VERY dangerous) manufactured controversy, because the basic biological claim that males and females are reproductive classes rooted in anisogamy (sperm vs ova) has not been overturned.” - And it never shall be. Impossible. It is real, ‘hard’ science Reproductive Biology, easily observable every.single.day FACT. (Unless, of course, our species physically changes that on purpose via cloning, or castration and neutering, and moves to test tube reproduction and artificial wombs ie., transhumanism ❌😉)
Your ‘unless’ is partly the point of all this.
Yes, that has been [their] End Game from the beginning: The usurpation, capture, and CONTROL of *THE most POWERful Energies of Creation in the Universe*, to mold to [their] own deviant, devious Purpose(s) 👺👾 Very astute, perspicacious observation, Thomas ⚡😎
Your observation first.
And that "unless" is better known as globalist TRANSHUMAN TECHNOCRACY.....
Of course the woke are not defeated. They have massive support among Millennials and GenZ, so all they have to do is wait. The people who have declared the war over and proclaim reality the victor do not have a deep or long range perspective on what is going on.
‘More importantly, the majority signaled its view that the challenged policies likely violate Montana’s constitution, holding that “transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination”…’
My undergraduate legal education told me that all law creates discrimination (driving, marriage, drinking, etc). Civil rights law therefore required the creation of a category of invidious discrimination, and sex discrimination was legislated to be such. Given all of the problems with transgenderism, legal discrimination against it is justified and therefore Montana’s activist conflation of the two is not justified.
'Legal' solution that should 'satisfy' BOTH 'sides': TWO check boxes! One for 'Biological (chromosomal) Sex' - that appears on the physical person's birth certificate - the other for 'Gender Identity' or 'Affiliation'. Easy, simple, crystal clear, and 100% unambiguous (eliminates all doubt and confusion). Wdyt?
Sorry, can’t agree. Allowing a separate ‘gender identity’ on a legal document will always increase confusion, not decrease it, for both individuals and social institutions. The best outcome is to make gender identity a truly private matter between affected individuals and their supportive family and friends, and to ensure ‘supportive’ no longer has the destructive connotations it presently has.
It would be sorta like have an 'S' tick box for 'Saved' Christians. It's nobody's business and no cop or border security guy gives a damn whether you are Saved or not. Nor it is any affair of his what you Identify as. Why elevate the subjective to the level where anyone would want to know?
So no 'sex' checkbox at all?? No 'race' either then? We ARE all simply Terrans ('Earth' humans), period. Same reproductively-compatible subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Right?
Sex box only. All else is unnecessary.
OK, I respect your opinion. What about race? *Not* skin color btw, aka ‘colorism’, which is **intentionally** manufactured confusion, a Propagandistic ploy by the Controllers (see the case of Kamala Harris for proof/use of that by the DS) - rather genetic makeup, same like biological M/F birth gender. Remove all those ‘checkboxes’?? You would think the Left would LOVE that, wouldn’t you? Eliminate race(ist) distinctions? Full Inclusion, right?? But alas, they hate ALL efforts to actually bring us together as a species, to achieve True Unity 😑
“Race” truly is on a spectrum. So, asking for a check box answer there, really is asking many people how they identify as something. The concept of “race” is such an odd thing to me. The sooner it gets thrown on the trash heap of history the better. It only benefits racists regardless of their skin color.
Sorry why would chromosomes matter even one tiny iota when compared to anatomy and hormone driven gene expressions and all the actually relevant components of sex are mutable, and further given that sterility does not (as of now) consign one to some kind of sexless limbo where all remaining aspects of sex are ignored?
Sex in any real world or meaningful sense is mutable. Sex as a class is obviously something some people change from one to the other, especially those who begin transition younger.
The claim that sex as a material class is immutable just renders sex an enormously irrelevant technicality that is just as unrelated to the legal and social and medial concerns you all claim to focus on… as the self ID circularity definitions.
Ok, keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
"The majority" clearly doesn't know the difference between sex (real, biological) and "gender identity" (imaginary, ideological)--and is therefore not fit to pass any judgement on what it considers (wrongly) to be "sex discrimination" conflating the two.
SOMEBODY has to know the difference and work to convince the “majority”.
The real kicker about the Montana decision is the way the justices blithely throw around the term "gender identity." They never define this term, which isn't surprising because even Jack Turban himself, high priest of gender woo-woo, cannot define it. By my lights, if you can't describe what a gender identity is, you shouldn't protect it in law, because how the hell can even know if you are protecting it? The justices act like this term is clearly defined and well understood, when neither is true. Hell, it would make more sense to protect leprechauns in law, because most Americans have seen the Lucky Charms box and could give at least a rough physical description of such a creature.
I agree entirely with Colin Wright’s arguments on the binary nature of sex, and I am totally opposed to gender transition in minors (because it is not supported by any evidence).
But I do object to his (and many others) tendency to define all ideology as binary. It’s not as simple as “left” vs “right”. My views in favour of universal health care, abortion rights and gun control would define me as “left”, yet I have other views which would be labelled as “right”, such as supporting Colin Wright!
Biological sex is binary. Social, economic and political ideology is not.
This was my first thought when I saw the title of this article. This is not a political, “left vs. right” issue as much as it is a philosophical, empirical vs. idealist issue. I insist on starting with perceived reality and constructing our categories from there. Are there philosophical compilations and challenges to the empiricist framework? Certainly. But it is far more defensible than the idealist perspective, which insists that reality bend to the categories of the mind. But, most relevant here, the empiricist/idealist split isn’t one of left/right. There are many left-wing empiricists (myself included) and rather a lot of right wing idealists. The fact that the postmodern/critical theory incumbent academic establishment is a post-Marxist leftist perspective is an accident of history. In Italy in the 1930s and 40s, with the ascendancy of blood and soil fascism, it would have been right wing.
I would argue that framing this as a left/right struggle rather than a reality-oriented struggle alienates the many people on the left like me, who value human flourishing, are skeptical of radical movements of all political stripes, and are secular while measuring the efficacy of political movements in terms of utility for the many rather than the few. The *vast* majority of people on the left disagree with Critical Theory woo, but framing philosophical issues in terms of left and right makes it harder to reach them. Tribalism is a hard thing to break through, and leaning into it with this framing further calcifies it.
Agree 100%!
Many journals are not doing their job, out of a misplaced sense of duty. There are policies to not harm communities, I think Nature has that?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
This is interpreted by some I believe as harm being the same as questioning of claims made regarding gender dysphoria and its treatment. No debate. To keep them "safe". Similarly for treating sex accurately as fixed for humans and biological.
From medical best practice.
To keep people who don't like their sex and want something else to replace it in policy and language "safe".
It does feel bad to be argued with if you turn out to be wrong. Or when you don't like something about yourself.. But that is no excuse for refusing to correct errors or for publishing incorrect papers in the first place .
There are eight genders in the Torah. The Nazis attacked and destroyed the institute for sexual research where the world’s first transgender surgery was performed. All books burned and the Jews behind the Institute are still angry about that. It’s Gnoisticism, the belief they can simply control reality with words.
"There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you'!"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be Master - that's all."
-- Alice in Wonderland
Firstly, you can't spell Gnosticism. Secondly, the Third Reich employed one of the surgeons from Hirschfeld's institute to carry out radical experiments on human victims, so it was not opposed to the practice as such. The regime objected to any Jewish person in authority, and the attack on Hirschfeld's clinic was instigated by conservative students, not the regime itself.
It seems this ideological assault on reality is meant to break our brains. It’s difficult to even read about this absurdity, let alone contemplating that it’s happening.
However, I don’t think this statement is a comprehensive representation of reality:
“The cultural campaign against the biological reality of sex began in niche activist blogs, women’s studies departments, and obscure ideological magazines.”
Isn’t the proponent of gender spectrum in the Delaware debate an anthropologist? I realize Colin is claiming it began in “these places” and simply moved to mainstream from there, but who forced the mainstream to accept it? Women? Niche activists?
There is a considerable amount of money and influence on the side of pushing transgender that many women have in fact fought, coming from wealthy men.
As well, Judith Butler, on whose work much of queer theory is based, started in the philosophy department at Yale, earning a PhD in 1984, while not serving as acting chair of a women’s studies department until the early aughts?
Her resume is as dizzying as her writing, showing her hopping across the spectrum of subject matters, avoiding, of course, things like biology and physics.
Yet, her work in turn is based heavily on that of Foucault, a renowned ~male~ sexual predator, who advocated for lowering the age of consent and making rape a nonsexual crime, merely of violence. In which department did he operate? Philosophy.
Is philosophy now considered niche?
His entire argument is balderdash. The idea that sex (physically) was multi layered and that people could change sex category with sufficiently intense and long term hormone therapy and sex change surgeries… was in fact pretty damned mainstream for many decades.
The reason almost every state in the U.S. allowed full transition MtF to marry men, even in the 60s and 70s, wasn’t because South Carolina and Indiana were too woke or trying to get gay marriage on the books in advance. It’s because some people changed sex (literally) and society accepted that some people did.
His constant attempt to claim that the belief in sex changes is new or unique, or that how humans use medical-biological sex is somehow to be subordinated to what unmedicated mammals might have to deal with… is absolutely inscrutable.
This is well past the lawfare stage. Maybe it is in a new time period of the lawfare, though.
The Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels, who knew little of science but much about propaganda, apparently said "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
This is the tactic the trans-propagandist movement has copied. It’s not about science, even if scientific terminology is parroted. It’s all about politics. They understand the psychology of the liberal mindset, its predilection for prioritising whoever they classify as ‘oppressed minorities’. Within post modernist paradigms they reject objective reality, arguing that "truth" is subjective, relative, and constructed by language, culture, and the hierarchy of power relations. In reconstructing language they are confirming Goebbels’ prediction. In their abuse and persecution of critics they are also following another of his political tactics. What is strange and scary is just how easy it is to replicate the Nazi tactics and recruit otherwise intelligent individuals, like the court in Montana, to a perverse and bigoted worldview.
The mindset behind this mess in Montana structures society such that sex crimes committed by crossdressing men are not prosecuted. When the crimes are so heinous that there is conviction, the crossdresser serves his time in the women's prison estate, where he commits more violence against women. This has been the case in many liberal states. Due to the demands on news agencies from the Trans Journalists' Association Reportage Guide and Stylebook, these crimes and the following crimes occurring in the women's prison estate are not reported. In some states, the data is kept under the falsehood that women committed the crimes.
Holy shit just looked up this trans document you mentioned. JFC 😂