Dear Future,
Greetings from 2017, when we’re having Peak Trans. In 5-8 years this will be over. A generation of children currently being treated with hormones and surgery for being “born in the wrong body” will be suing their doctors and parents. People will no longer say that a penis is female if the penis-haver “identifies as a woman”. The current trend of allowing male athletes to compete “as women” as long as they’re taking estrogen will be history (to refresh: male-to-trans runners, weightlifters, volleyball players, etc. are currently thrashing female opponents because women’s sports organizations are unwilling to appear “bigoted.”)
My (former?) friends are sharing memes (will they still call them “memes” 5-8 years in the future?) that compare males’ demands to access female bathrooms to the Civil Rights Movement, and women who say no to them as white racists. Liberals are insisting that sex – biology – is a social construct, that humans aren’t sexually dimorphic because of the existence of intersex people and clownfish. They pass along sciency-sounding science-denial articles that use the same rhetoric as “creation science.” They denounce “creation science” because it is a tool of the Right, and they fear the Right. Their science denial is of the Left, and they deny it’s science denial. Science denial denial.
My (former?) friends support changing the legal definition of sex from biology to “identity.” If a man says they “feel like a woman,” and someone like me asks, “what does that mean? How do you ‘feel like a woman’? Is ‘woman’ a feeling?” they rush to support the male and condemn me.
I have recently come out as one of those witches who refuses to say males are female; who believes females need sex-segregated spaces like women’s shelters and prisons; who believes women are entitled to say “no” to males for any reason. I have been banned from Facebook* twice and my reddit* account has been suspended permanently. Friends have sent me messages saying they can’t associate with me any longer because I’m so “hurtful” and “ignorant.” I just lost a $2,000 speaking gig with no explanation; since women like me are regularly “no-platformed” as “TERF“s, I assume it’s because of my recently exposed politics.
So right now we’re in the midst of a kind of Liberal mass hysteria. There have been crazes like this in the past: actual witch hunts, McCarthyism, the lobotomy fad of the mid-20th century, the “false memories” of the 1980’s. It could be worse; maybe it will still get worse. But like other trendy hysterias, this will pass.
And when it does, what will you, my (former?) friends, be saying about it?
“Oh that, that time was so weird!” you’ll say, perhaps with an eyeroll or giggle.
Or, “I always knew it was wrong.” You’ll think you were the one who stood up for sanity back then. You’ll forget that you were in fact declaring you were on “the right side of history,” virtue-signaling with your civil-rights-appropriating memes, while shunning and condemning women like me. You will forget.
You will forget that you said “sex is a spectrum, we don’t understand biology.” You’ll forget you vehemently argued that “female brains” can be trapped in male bodies, “it’s SCIENCE!!!” You’ll forget you said “assigned male at birth” as if sex is assigned by transphobic doctors and not observed by anyone with eyes and a brain. You’ll forget that every time someone pointed this out you said “intersex and clownfish!!!” as though they disproved reality, because of some creationist-style sciency-science-denial that supported your politics.
You won’t be that dumb in the future. But right now, you are.
You didn’t know, you weren’t paying attention, it wasn’t your thing, you have to pick your battles. While women like me were screaming about the transing of children and the male pattern violence of males, you “didn’t know.” It was convenient not to know. Meanwhile you got head-pats and excitement in the “movement” (what movement? Against Trump? Why does opposing Trump mean you can’t think critically?) for repeating thought-terminating, loaded language like “trans women are women” and “assigned male at birth” and “cis”.
What will you blame, future? You will probably minimize the problem. It was just women, after all, they’re a minority, right? And so many women are white and middle-to-upper class, they did fine, it didn’t hurt them. OK, some kids got transed and regretted it, we went too far there, we meant well, why are you making such a big deal? It wasn’t that many, they were almost all homosexual anyway. It’s history, it’s over, we know better now.
Oh, Future, we’ll be lucky if you can read this. We’ll be lucky if you’re even there to ignore me.
*Facebook and reddit are social media sites. Will there be social media in the future? Will there even be electricity in the future? Since we’re on the brink of ecological and social collapse, I realize you might not even be able to read this. But if society and the planet are still holding together enough that you can: PAY ATTENTION.
Good god you are one dumb fucking cunt, and no, nobody will be laughing about this. You will forever by remembered as a vile transphobic fucking bitch.
I like how some of these comments are just blatantly proving your point. The people commenting that are “disappointed” in you are ignoring the facts in front of them. Sure, let people live how they want, but don’t pretend like material reality doesn’t exist. People are ridiculous.
Nina, You are a SHERO and your critics have voluntarily jettisoned their ability to think critically. It’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally figured out where this lunacy is coming from and where it is leading. Transgenderism is a sick cultish ideology that has been marketed to our youth by narcissistic male billionaires invested in sex reassignment clinics and transhumanism technologies. Nobody is born in the wrong body or assigned a sex at birth. These assertions are just gaslighting bullshit promulgated by rich pricks and autogynephiles like James B. (Jennifer) Pritzker. “Gender” is being marketed mercilessly to our children in order to overturn Women’s Civil Rights and erase sex distinctions. Why? That’s the first step on the way to merging humanity with AI technology. To chip and implant us and turn us into sexless, unthinking, controllable drones for the elite. First they erase sex, then next they erase our humanity. Men with money are investing in robots and want to live forever. These sick fucks actually think they can download their consciousness into a robot and live forever. It’s Frankenstein on steroids, since they are also investing in how to “grow” children outside of a female body and inside of an AI incubator. In Saudi Arabia, the AI Robot named Sophia has been given personhood status and citizenship. So, they eliminate sex-based distinctions and next it’s our humanity. Supporting transmania, is participating in the destruction of humanity by an evil elite of rich men.
Greeting from 2019. I love you.
@You’re Wrong – I like how your nick suits you. You seem to be confusing “sex†with “genderâ€. “Sex” is defined by its material aspect. In biology, there are two sexes; and in the simplest terms, they are defined by the gametes they produce – ovum or sperm. (This is why we know the “pregnant†seahorse is the father). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete
Sexual dimorphism is associated with polygamy and parenting style in species. Males and females of monogamous species tend to be more similar to each other than those of polygamous species. There are even a few species in which the gender behaviors are reversed in terms of what we typically observe in other species. (i.e. Jacana birds). Therefore, we can conclude that gender characteristics are actually the result of natural selection.
“Gender bending†(that is, assuming characteristics of the opposite sex) has occasionally been observed in mammals (such as maned lionesses of Botswana). This does not, however, mean that they changed sex – just gender phenotypes.
In humans, DNA evidence (a male bottleneck) points to an ancestral past which suggests polygamy and/or a lot of warfare. Therefore, our evolutionary past shaped certain generalized physical characteristics for men and women — which on average still apply. The average man is typically, physically bigger and more powerful in terms of muscle and bone strength than the average woman. This is not likely to change within our lifetimes, and would probably only change for the species if a lot of stronger-than-normal women had lots of kids with weaker-than-normal men.
You know what’s super-conforming to stereotypes? …Purebed dog breeds. Flocks of birds. etc. Things in which conformity is enforced by natural or artificial selection. But civilization has enabled modern humans to circumvent the selective forces of the past. Modern humans have taken themselves out of nature, become more monogamous and aren’t reproducing according to a strict selective process… so actually, we should expect individuals who express variation as we progress in time. …Especially in a culture which no longer relies so much on mens’ physical strength as a means to support a family.
This doesn’t change the fact that males are sperm-producers and females are ovum-producers. What it might change is the percentage of individuals who conform to stereotypes.
“Gender Dysphoria” might be more like “I’m not quite fitting into social stereotypes of gender”-phoria? There’s a tendency for the human mind to want to sort things into neat little categories for the sake of expediency and convenience, and of course there is a strong tendency for humans to want to fit into their social groups. (How groups and culture influence behavior should also be considered).
However, the fact that non-stereotypicals are numerous enough to be a political force suggests that perhaps we ought to reconsider stereotypes instead of assuming there’s something weird or wrong about the non-stereotypical individual. Imagine someone’s perspective if the societal view was that it’s ok to be different.
Raf:
Ah-MEN!
The increasing references to “cissexism” absolutely blow my mind. I consider myself a fairly liberal person, but I am slackjawed that we are to redefine the biological realities of womanhood to appease the sensibility of 0.6 percent of the population.
I’m a 60 year old biologist with a background in medicine. I can say without equivocation that until the advent of social media, we never heard much about trans people. Oh, there were a few men who “felt trapped like a woman trapped in a man’s body†who became experimental subjects in sexual reassignment programs. The outcomes of this were horrific and the suicide rates of those reassigned soared. Because of this, major medical centers around the world – most famously Johns-Hopkins in the US) ceased performing these reassignments.
Yes gender is binary in all higher animals, with some rare exceptions. But there are distinct evolutionary reasons for these exceptions. Even lower life forms have the basis of what would eventually become gender. Bacteria reproduce by binary fission. But there are two types of bacteria: pulse and minus. A plus bacterium will occasionally produce a probosis which it will insert into a minus bacterium to transfer genetic material. This provides for the gene- flow needed for the species to survive.
You use the silly clownfish example that people use to justify their transexual fantasy. But here’s another example that turns the transexual argument on its ear. Parrot fishes have a social structure in which they live in groups that have a dominant male that oversees a harem of females. One of these females is the dominant female. If the male dies, the dominant female will begin to transform into a biological male within hours. That’s right, the she becomes a he by shutting down her ovaries and activating dormant testes. Humans can do this. We are born immutably male or female – and rarely in an intersex state such as true hermaphrodites.
No, this trans phenomenon is entirely a social construct, with no scientific basis at all. It is the product of an increasingly devolving society that has become used to accepting artifice as reality. These people are easy to identify, as they have “friends†on social media and become increasingly detached from reality. You know them when you see them. They are the ones sitting at table with family or friends in a restaurant engaged with their cell phones instead of the people they are with. They are dependent on continuous false social engagement, but still crave acceptance (but not willing to do the work required of them). So they go with the flow and blindly accept even the monstrously stupid ideas of the crowd out of a fear of becoming ostracized. Then, hopefully, one day they grow up and become fully self-actualized. We are eventually roll our eyes at the foibles of our youth. Well, at least we did before the advent of social media.
The fact that so many responses from the ideologues are just abuse says it all. They’ve nothing sensible or reasonable to say. Thanks Nina. I think you’re right, and all the fence-sitters and virtue-signallers will hope we’ll forget that they ever fell for any of it.
The use of the term “virtue signalling”, whether in an article or in comments, is diagnostic. Since when is it somehow a bad idea to rhetorically support some cause, or oppose some other, if it does not or will not personally involve myself? I have not lived on Prince Edward Island for more than fifteen years, and I am really unlikely to be on a position where abortion rights are relevant to me. Was I “virtue signalling”, then, if I stated online that I supported abortion rights on the Island?
Frankly, I had just thought I was providing some measure of support, that I was being nice. Why not? I was not then, and am not no, in a position to get involved in the affairs of that Canadian province. Saying that I supported the cause of people who were directly affected and were involved in that fight seemed to me at least encouragement. Do we not like to know that other people care for us and our causes?
When did it become so bad to try to be nice?
Thanks for the optimism in this piece which I agree is well grounded except that may take a whole decade rather than 5 years for people to come to their senses. We were rather taken by stealth than storm to start with but now it’s become a storm and people are angry about it because they’ve come to realize it isn’t just about a tiny minority of people wanting to live in a different way which doesn’t affect anyone else. Potentially it affects us all in a big (and mostly negative) way. It’s a commercial cult backed up by billion dollar investment, aimed at creating a gender tourism for profit purposes.
Thanks too for the many revealing links. The Guardian link to the runner calling himself Lauren Jeska convicted for the attempted murder by stabbing of a UK Athletics official, Ralph Knibbs, over a dispute on testing for testosterone levels, was astounding in that it completely avoided any referral to Jeskas actual sex, or to the background for the dispute leading to the stabbing. The naive reader would have left the article without the faintest idea of what might have driven a woman athlete to behave so uncharacteristically for a female (not that such behaviour is common for men either but definitely less untypical). I was shocked and dismayed to realize that the newspaper I once regarded as the best should have fallen to such deceitfully selectively dishonest reporting.
It’s this kind of thing which makes you suspect you can’t trust a word of what comes from the pro trans faction, and that everything needs to be double checked. It’s wearisome but more and more people now seem willing to make a contribution towards upholding fact and truth over lies and deception.
Unfortunately, your 5-8 year timeline is getting closer and the situation has gotten worse… Also, @Lenny on January 24, 2018. I bet you’d take your Bitcoin comment back now 😂, fucking moron.
I think there is a genuine attack on science. I think some will play the system, get their bio degree and then fall back on pseudo-science and activism again. One of them is the preposterous “sex spectrum”. In order to confuse people, they will post a load of stuff about chromosome differences related to sex, and then suggest that this means there are more than 2 sexes! They are completely ignoring the fact that “sex” is a reproductive role, and is 100% male and/ or female, in humans, with absolutely no evidence of a 3rd role.
Happily where I come from, the stupid are just beginning to realise the emperor is indeed naked and gender (sex) is a consequence of millions of years of biological evolution, not something that’s chosen, assigned or a “feeling”. Got a dick? Your a bloke. Get it cylut off and take hormones? You’re a bloke that looks (vaguely) like a woman. You’re a bloke. We should be supporting and counseling not cutting the tiny minority of people who think their biology is what is making them unhappy.
The blatant misogynistic slurs and hatred of women displayed of the comments disagreeing with this post really says it all. The trans movement was always about taking down and controlling biological women.
It’s well within the “5-8 years” window now, and unfortunately that ideology has yet to go away, though some cracks are visible.
Greetings from May 2024!
I quickly read your essay and did not realize it was written in 2017.
At first glance I thought it was written this week.
Give it *another* 8 years?
You are not going to believe this, but dRump might become president again.
Oddly enough, I think the trans movement might be really help him get there.
Because if one dares question, in the slightest, anything at all about the trans talking points (who decides them I do not know) — even in the most mild tones with a genuine desire for sincere discussion — they are branded a MAGA mouth breather — and I daresay this phenomenon is quietly pushing a great many folks precisely into the arms of modern fascism.
You may be interested:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/29/jan-morris-conundrum-memoir-transgender-son