This is an excellent, thoughtful piece. It speaks to many of my personal concerns. I am NOT cis-female. I’m a 70ish female. I recognize that I’ll be judged as transphobic but I’m sick and tired of the tip of the tail wagging the dog. And an observation - changing your sex does not change your brain. Confront the issues which are giving you pain rather than thinking that an external change will fix everything.
I agree but unfortunately the divisive rhetoric will not end until universities stop receiving funding to publish inaccurate research that fuels the false debate on this issue.
Thank-you for finally addressing this topic! I have been standing in front of women's prisons for two years now, protesting the incarceration of intact males alongside women. I have written to my MP on 4 separate occasions about the prison issue and he/his office have never responded. Perhaps this brick wall that I've been smashing my head against is softening?
I do wish you had been able to go more into the harm to women posed by public autogynephilia (i.e. the social and legal pressure currently placed on women to participate in a male sexual fantasy, regardless of their consent), but I realized the darker side of AGP may be too deep a rabbithole for newcomers to the terf wars.
I am disappointed to see The Line run this article. This article doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said by hundreds of keyboard activists and dozens of Quilette articles. It even contains the standard line that this is somehow the fault of "imposed elite academic theories". It's not worth it to ask what theories, who is pushing them or how exactly academics have succeeded in imposing their theories because this line of argument is all a house of cards. If you want to place the blame somewhere it should be on the organizations/bureaucracies/governments that care more about saving face and good PR than conceptual clarity. THAT would be an interesting article read.
As someone who wants to do and say things that do not hurt people, yet, who has not a deep tolerance for nonsense, I am looking forward to the next installment from this sensible writer.
This’ll be one hell of a comment but I really like The Line and I have a lot to say about this. I have a lot of problems with the article but I wanna go over some of the sources used in the article in hopes of showing how flawed the general argument is.
The first source claims that the UK's main NHS clinic for transitioning: Tavistock may be sued by over 1000 families whose children were rushed into transitioning at a young age. That number comes from the lawyer who is suing the clinic. The clinic retorts that “around 1,000 patients have been referred to its endocrinology teams, to access hormone suppressants, over the past decade.” In addition in the UK for a trans teenager to get HRT the NHS requires that they be 16 years old and be on hormone suppressants for a year. That means that more or less every teenager who started their medical transition would be included in the clinic's figure. Therefore for the lawyer's number to be correct, almost every single person who was given treatment by the clinic would need to sue them. Or maybe the lawyer just pulled the number out of their ass to draw attention?
The next source I would like to mention is the article by the bbc linked to when the author said that “those who refuse sex with women who have a penis are transphobic.” That BBC article was widely condemned for the only data in the article being from a group “Get The L Out” whose mission statement includes stopping as many people from transitioning as possible, and not respecting their identities. In addition the article says that they reached out to prominent trans people but they didn’t want to talk to them, but this was a lie because they interviewed Chelsea Poe and then cut her interview from the story. In addition when the article was originally published the main source was Lily Cade who talked about how she was being pressured into sex with trans women. But Lily Cade admitted to sexually assault! Ironic that an article about about pressuring women into sex didn’t mention that one of their sources raped someone. The BBC is a serious outlet though so they quietly cut that part of the article without acknowledging they made a mistake.
Next the author wrote that “Male sex offenders have suddenly self-identified as women and been put in women’s prisons on sentencing.” I read the source and have no problems saying that the trans woman in the article is a terrible person who deserves to rot in jail. However, saying that they suddenly identified as a woman is blatantly false since the person mentioned in the article was in the process of transitioning for three to five years prior to going to jail. This is not a case of someone transitioning in bad faith in order to game the system. And if this is the best case the author can come up with then maybe we should just conclude that people don’t transition in bad faith.
After that the article mentions Lia Thomas just as every article like this does. There’s a common misconception that Lia Thomas was a bad swimmer before she transitioned but that can’t be further from the truth. In Lia’s freshman year, when she still competed on the men's team and before she was on HRT, she had the 6th fastest national time in the 1000m free. Once she transitioned her performance dropped drastically. Then once the bar for her to compete on the women's team was cleared she placed only slightly better on the women's team in her junior year than she did on the men's team in her freshman year. If she didn’t transition she would still be a phenomenal swimmer. I don’t have too much else to say about Thomas but one other point I would like to make is that it seems like articles like this one seem to focus on people like Lia Thomas and not at all on people like Fischer Wells who is a 13 year old trans girl who rallied her classmates to make a girls field hockey team. She played in one season before the state said it was illegal for Fischer (the only trans girl who played sports in the entire state) to play on a school sports team with her friends.
Finally I wanna give a shout out to the source for when the author quotes someone who said “Women and girls who are trans are biological women and girls.” If you click the link to that it will bring you to a tweet by the city of Toronto from April 2021 saying who was eligible to get vaccinated. I have no doubts the tweet the author referenced is real. I'm just analyzing the sources and I thought that slip up was funny.
I went into this article hoping for nuance but that wasn’t what I found. I analyzed the sources that the article used because every single time this topic is discussed they use the exact same sources. It wasn’t just that but it was also the same biological essentialism, and the same both sides argument I’ve seen a dozen times before. Instead of an article that was peppered with actual nuance and clarity about language (like the history of language that trans people used which I actually found very interesting and informative) I found a fear baiting article that analyzed a marginalized group who are at the receiving end of an uptick in hate crimes (see the bomb threat on the Boston Children's Hospital just today) and targeted harassment (see the swatting and repeated doxxing of trans Twitch streamer Keffals), and attempted to make an equivalence to the people arguing that said marginalized group are the real oppressors.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarity of your piece. I do feel in today’s world one is unable to question without being labeled as bigoted or god forbid “unwoke”.
Excellent article. The insanity at the federal and some provinces are pushing this agenda to the detriment of gay and straight people. The reason groomer is used is to shame those people who classify children as Trans because of behavior that would have been normal or may indicate they may be gay. The willingness to give these drugs to children is abuse and has to be condemned.
Very informative article. I always knew that the issues were complicated but until now had no idea of the degree. Blissfully ignorant has worked for me.
Quite a good essay - some interesting perspectives and useful links.
Certainly has been astounding the degree to which gender ideology has corrupted so much of the public discourse, and so many public institutions. Haven't read much of this myself yet, but others here might be interested in Joanna Williams' "The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology" for chapter and verse on the topic:
But more particularly on the corruption of language, I was somewhat "amused" on reading the linked Wikipedia article on "Transgender", this opening passage in particular:
"Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual."
No human changes sex since to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, and medical science hasn't advanced yet to the point of swapping out one set of functioning gonads for the other type. Why it was a bit "disconcerting" to see Allan's "distinguish transsexuals, who wanted to surgically change sex, from transvestites" which is just as bad for engaging in the same "redefinitions of language and concepts" that he justifiably decries.
But somewhat more broadly, that statement of Wikipedia's is just further evidence of the rot that gender ideology has wrought - so to speak - in an otherwise credible and useful resource. Basically, on anything to do with gender, Wikipedia is just as "ideologically captured" as is Stonewall, and as Tavistock was. I have been "deplatformed" there as an editor myself for objecting to the claim in the article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard that "she" had "transitioned to female"; see my Substack essay on that "enlightening experience" for details:
Smart, insightful and a very helpful contribution to the narrow/non existing public debate. I have now subscribed to The Line and I am looking forward to reading your thoughts on "how we can go about restoring some sanity to this conversation",
This is an excellent, thoughtful piece. It speaks to many of my personal concerns. I am NOT cis-female. I’m a 70ish female. I recognize that I’ll be judged as transphobic but I’m sick and tired of the tip of the tail wagging the dog. And an observation - changing your sex does not change your brain. Confront the issues which are giving you pain rather than thinking that an external change will fix everything.
Excellent essay - clear, concise, free of dogma and cant - with precise boundaries both in grammar and space.
Now if only we could get Justin Trudeau to read it.
I agree but unfortunately the divisive rhetoric will not end until universities stop receiving funding to publish inaccurate research that fuels the false debate on this issue.
Thank-you for finally addressing this topic! I have been standing in front of women's prisons for two years now, protesting the incarceration of intact males alongside women. I have written to my MP on 4 separate occasions about the prison issue and he/his office have never responded. Perhaps this brick wall that I've been smashing my head against is softening?
Thank you for an excellent article.
I do wish you had been able to go more into the harm to women posed by public autogynephilia (i.e. the social and legal pressure currently placed on women to participate in a male sexual fantasy, regardless of their consent), but I realized the darker side of AGP may be too deep a rabbithole for newcomers to the terf wars.
I am disappointed to see The Line run this article. This article doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said by hundreds of keyboard activists and dozens of Quilette articles. It even contains the standard line that this is somehow the fault of "imposed elite academic theories". It's not worth it to ask what theories, who is pushing them or how exactly academics have succeeded in imposing their theories because this line of argument is all a house of cards. If you want to place the blame somewhere it should be on the organizations/bureaucracies/governments that care more about saving face and good PR than conceptual clarity. THAT would be an interesting article read.
As someone who wants to do and say things that do not hurt people, yet, who has not a deep tolerance for nonsense, I am looking forward to the next installment from this sensible writer.
Am I even allowed to comment on this?
This’ll be one hell of a comment but I really like The Line and I have a lot to say about this. I have a lot of problems with the article but I wanna go over some of the sources used in the article in hopes of showing how flawed the general argument is.
The first source claims that the UK's main NHS clinic for transitioning: Tavistock may be sued by over 1000 families whose children were rushed into transitioning at a young age. That number comes from the lawyer who is suing the clinic. The clinic retorts that “around 1,000 patients have been referred to its endocrinology teams, to access hormone suppressants, over the past decade.” In addition in the UK for a trans teenager to get HRT the NHS requires that they be 16 years old and be on hormone suppressants for a year. That means that more or less every teenager who started their medical transition would be included in the clinic's figure. Therefore for the lawyer's number to be correct, almost every single person who was given treatment by the clinic would need to sue them. Or maybe the lawyer just pulled the number out of their ass to draw attention?
The next source I would like to mention is the article by the bbc linked to when the author said that “those who refuse sex with women who have a penis are transphobic.” That BBC article was widely condemned for the only data in the article being from a group “Get The L Out” whose mission statement includes stopping as many people from transitioning as possible, and not respecting their identities. In addition the article says that they reached out to prominent trans people but they didn’t want to talk to them, but this was a lie because they interviewed Chelsea Poe and then cut her interview from the story. In addition when the article was originally published the main source was Lily Cade who talked about how she was being pressured into sex with trans women. But Lily Cade admitted to sexually assault! Ironic that an article about about pressuring women into sex didn’t mention that one of their sources raped someone. The BBC is a serious outlet though so they quietly cut that part of the article without acknowledging they made a mistake.
Next the author wrote that “Male sex offenders have suddenly self-identified as women and been put in women’s prisons on sentencing.” I read the source and have no problems saying that the trans woman in the article is a terrible person who deserves to rot in jail. However, saying that they suddenly identified as a woman is blatantly false since the person mentioned in the article was in the process of transitioning for three to five years prior to going to jail. This is not a case of someone transitioning in bad faith in order to game the system. And if this is the best case the author can come up with then maybe we should just conclude that people don’t transition in bad faith.
After that the article mentions Lia Thomas just as every article like this does. There’s a common misconception that Lia Thomas was a bad swimmer before she transitioned but that can’t be further from the truth. In Lia’s freshman year, when she still competed on the men's team and before she was on HRT, she had the 6th fastest national time in the 1000m free. Once she transitioned her performance dropped drastically. Then once the bar for her to compete on the women's team was cleared she placed only slightly better on the women's team in her junior year than she did on the men's team in her freshman year. If she didn’t transition she would still be a phenomenal swimmer. I don’t have too much else to say about Thomas but one other point I would like to make is that it seems like articles like this one seem to focus on people like Lia Thomas and not at all on people like Fischer Wells who is a 13 year old trans girl who rallied her classmates to make a girls field hockey team. She played in one season before the state said it was illegal for Fischer (the only trans girl who played sports in the entire state) to play on a school sports team with her friends.
Finally I wanna give a shout out to the source for when the author quotes someone who said “Women and girls who are trans are biological women and girls.” If you click the link to that it will bring you to a tweet by the city of Toronto from April 2021 saying who was eligible to get vaccinated. I have no doubts the tweet the author referenced is real. I'm just analyzing the sources and I thought that slip up was funny.
I went into this article hoping for nuance but that wasn’t what I found. I analyzed the sources that the article used because every single time this topic is discussed they use the exact same sources. It wasn’t just that but it was also the same biological essentialism, and the same both sides argument I’ve seen a dozen times before. Instead of an article that was peppered with actual nuance and clarity about language (like the history of language that trans people used which I actually found very interesting and informative) I found a fear baiting article that analyzed a marginalized group who are at the receiving end of an uptick in hate crimes (see the bomb threat on the Boston Children's Hospital just today) and targeted harassment (see the swatting and repeated doxxing of trans Twitch streamer Keffals), and attempted to make an equivalence to the people arguing that said marginalized group are the real oppressors.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarity of your piece. I do feel in today’s world one is unable to question without being labeled as bigoted or god forbid “unwoke”.
Excellent article. The insanity at the federal and some provinces are pushing this agenda to the detriment of gay and straight people. The reason groomer is used is to shame those people who classify children as Trans because of behavior that would have been normal or may indicate they may be gay. The willingness to give these drugs to children is abuse and has to be condemned.
Very informative article. I always knew that the issues were complicated but until now had no idea of the degree. Blissfully ignorant has worked for me.
Good article.
Quite a good essay - some interesting perspectives and useful links.
Certainly has been astounding the degree to which gender ideology has corrupted so much of the public discourse, and so many public institutions. Haven't read much of this myself yet, but others here might be interested in Joanna Williams' "The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology" for chapter and verse on the topic:
https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/2454-A-The-Corrosive-Impact-of-TI-ppi-110-WEB.pdf
But more particularly on the corruption of language, I was somewhat "amused" on reading the linked Wikipedia article on "Transgender", this opening passage in particular:
"Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
No human changes sex since to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, and medical science hasn't advanced yet to the point of swapping out one set of functioning gonads for the other type. Why it was a bit "disconcerting" to see Allan's "distinguish transsexuals, who wanted to surgically change sex, from transvestites" which is just as bad for engaging in the same "redefinitions of language and concepts" that he justifiably decries.
But somewhat more broadly, that statement of Wikipedia's is just further evidence of the rot that gender ideology has wrought - so to speak - in an otherwise credible and useful resource. Basically, on anything to do with gender, Wikipedia is just as "ideologically captured" as is Stonewall, and as Tavistock was. I have been "deplatformed" there as an editor myself for objecting to the claim in the article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard that "she" had "transitioned to female"; see my Substack essay on that "enlightening experience" for details:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
Smart, insightful and a very helpful contribution to the narrow/non existing public debate. I have now subscribed to The Line and I am looking forward to reading your thoughts on "how we can go about restoring some sanity to this conversation",
Thanks. I have been trying to figure out what people were talking about on this subject and failed. Your essay helps - a lot.