Very thought provoking, thank you. You concluded with, "should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?" Yes, that is where I have been going lately. Let's turn the spotlight on why a child or young adult would disassociate with their natural body and disown/remove parts of that body. And let's look at the motives for people or industries who push medicalization with drugs or surgeries.
A wonderful synopsis. Very difficult to comprehend that medical treatments are anything but harmful. If a biological male for example were rushed to hospital for some unknown reason & had a blood test to determine any what was wrong. Surely the first observation would be ‘this person has abnormally high levels of oestrogen’’Let’s fix that.
Gender dsyphoria. Perhaps it should be measured. The duration of the ‘dsyphoria’ against the duration of the ‘euphoria’
The poor kids in schools that are being taught how to be "trans" is so sad. Bill Maher calls it 'ENTRAPMENT". Here in Seattle, school counselors hand out resources about the Gender Creative Child. What a mess! My husband and I opted our daughter out of the "SEL" class when we looked up the new her/she/they counselors bio. We tried to alert the other parents (at that school we weren't allowed to use the word 'parent'--we had to say 'caregiver') but we were treated like the ones with the problem. This was the counselors response email blast: "Addressing Gender and Identity
On Day 1, we discussed the Genderbread Person to illustrate how identity, expression, attraction, and sex are distinct yet interconnected concepts. This discussion incorporated a chalk drawing I created, not a poster. Understanding gender diversity helps students appreciate that there are many ways to be a human. This discussion also emphasized acceptance of individual differences, without delving deeply into sexuality. Messages about gender are everywhere, and children receive very clear messages about the "rules" for boys and girls, as well as the consequences for violating them. By learning about the diversity of gender, children have an opportunity to explore a greater range of interests, ideas, and activities. When we discussed gender, we talked about what people like to wear, activities they engage in, and how they feel about themselves. This is not sexuality. Sexuality involves physical intimacy and attraction (which we also talked about). Gender is about self-identity. Gender identity is a person's internal sense of where they fit on the gender spectrum. This includes all kids, "typically" gendered or not. Children have an ability to grasp the complexity of gender diversity because sexuality does not factor in to complicate their understanding. Our children encounter people with different beliefs when they join any community. Gender diversity is an easy concept for children to grasp, and the Genderbread Person drawing was a small introduction to understanding these concepts. I shared how I am learning every day about understanding concepts that are not familiar to me. I also shared that I wished I had seen this image when I was in 7th grade because it would have affirmed ways I and many others identified." HOW ARE SCHOOLS ALLOWED TO TEACH THIS? Can we please stop using the word gender!?
If I had been present, I would have engaged in a strategy of peaceful resistance by questioning and critiquing every step of the way. Of course, that's easy for me to say from the comfort of my home and without having a child in a school where gender indoctrination is taking place. I imagine the instructors created a coercive, groupthink atmosphere.
Kids are afraid to speak up and say anything during these classes. My daughter finally spoke up when, as a Jewish student, her teacher told the class to write in Palestine as a country on their map drawings. My daughter raised her hand to explain the reality of the map and the teacher told her that she was wrong. During the quiz at the end of the week she refused to add Palestine as a country and she did not get the extra credit points that that her other classmates did that went along. Kids are being controlled, muzzled and indoctrinated with political propaganda.
In Portland, the teachers' union went to great lengths to create model pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist (if you believe the union) or anti-Israel/ antisemitic (if you don't) course materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. To its credit, the school district cracked down on this project because the union failed to obtain approval from the district.
As a taxpayer, I wish I knew how the Portland Public Schools are dealing with gender. I fear that if I went looking for information the result would be akin to turning over a log in a rain forest.
If you step back and use words with concrete definitions, the problem these children face is “stereotype dysphoria”, or why I’ll call stereodysphoria because it sounds strange but easy to say.
“Stereodysphoria” is childhood unhappiness at confronting, at puberty or so, their lack of natural conformance to sex trait stereotypes. Boys who lack some masculine traits and have a spectrum of feminine traits, girls who lack some feminine traits and have a spectrum of masculine traits can develop stereodysphoria, acute in gay and lesbian children. Lesbian, gay and bisexual children by definition are stereotype confounding since they exhibit sexual attraction to the same sex.
These children who counfound sex stereotypes are teased, shamed, bullied and rejected by peers, parents, adults and themselves because of the situation and reach out to anything, however dangerous, that they feel may help including drugs, alcohol, and damaging sexual practices. Autism-spectrum amplifies the condition due to lack of being able to easily intuit the disconnect between their emotional and physical changes and what’s expected by peers.
The condition resolves at the conclusion of puberty when they are both normalized and accepting of the gifts of their natural adult sex characteristics, and have built defenses against bullying by others and self-doubt.
The best known clinical treatment for stereodysphoria is affirmation of their worries as being real and consequential, and mental and emotional support (6-10 years) against bullying and self-doubt about their sex until they achieve physical, emotional and mental maturity sufficient to be ease with their new stable, natural state. This allows them to enter adulthood able to assume purposeful life and enter into meaningful gratifying sexual relationships with others who will find their traits gifts, and part of the natural spectrum of sexual behaviors.
The worst possible treatment is punishment through affirmation that they are malformed physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually by claiming that their traits constitute a phantom condition of “transgender”, which has no well-defined, testable basis in medical science. This punishment often includes forced childhood sexual behaviors such as age-inappropriate performative fetishistic transvesticism with simulation of cross-sex genitalia and bodies; drugs and damaging sexual changes including binding and crushing body parts, sterilization and puberty erasure to halt progression to adulthood when they would normally assume sufficient physical, emotional and mental maturity to become at ease with a new stable, natural state. Any or all of these approaches can leave the child radically damaged emotionally, physically and mentally and unable to cope with adult life in a meaningful way.
The destabilizing effects of this punishment include lifelong dependence on drugs to maintain any type of non-morbid endocrine environment; permanent cognitive damage including mental and emotional immaturity; inability to bond sexually and enjoy sexual gratification with a partner; permanent sterility; inability to achieve motherhood as well as mother child bonding through lactation and feeding; early and accelerated menopause and senescence; accelerated osteoporosis; accelerated kidney damage and disease; permanent wounds; early death.
There is a population of clinically delusional people who are active in seeking out children with a number of complex issues including autism-spectrum, anorexia, and stereodysphoria, and seek gratification at amplifying their unhappiness by inculcating delusional thinking about their condition; they harness the damaging peer group dynamic of shaming and bullying for children especially sensitive to it such as autistic-spectrum children and using that to enforce compliance to delusional and self-damaging behaviors or risk abandonment by peers. They actively groom adults into being complaint with damaging their children, charges and patients. Sexual fantasy literature provides excellent case examples of the delusional condition and focus on children.
Thanks for your comment. It would need to be called “sex stereotype dysphoria” as lots of these people don’t behave in ways that are stereotypical in any other sense. Another word for “sex stereotype” is gender
I appreciate your response but I can’t accept your terminology.
As you must know, the entire edifice of “transgender” is built on false statements, and contradictions such as “I, a man, feel like a woman” - a classic. Feelings a man has, particularly about sex are categoricqlly male feelings. Feelings a woman has are female feelings. You arrive at the contradiction quickly that Male ≠ Female. The statement is as delusional as an anorexic saying “I feel fat”.
In the realm of gender itself, I find that in practice it is always true that when the word gender is used instead of sex, you will arrive at a logical contradiction. It’s an effect of antecedent consequent similar to the conversation between Alice and the March Hare (as in “Mad as a March hare, or rabbits in a mating frenzy”:
hen you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least-at least I mean what I say-that's the same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"
"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"
"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"
"It is the same thing with you." said the Hatter,
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Or, after Alice “Since I am a woman I have Feminine behavior”, vs “Since I have Feminine behaviors I am a woman”.
Consider your statement
“another word for sex stereotype is gender” which I’ll shorten to “sex stereotype is gender”.
Let’s use deductive reasoning, general to specific statements to find the contradiction.
Definitions:
Woman : Adult human female
Sex: The biological category corresponding to reproductive capacity, determined at conception
Female: The biological sex corresponding to the capacity to produce eggs
Sex Binary: The fact that for male and female sex, capacity to produce eggs and sperm are mutually exclusive.
Feminine: The gender associated with the female sex
Gender: A language category which identifies the relation to sex of a referent
Stereos: Greed for ‘solid’ / Typos: Greek for impression or model
Stereotype: Old: originally a solid printing plate to make uniform impressions
Stereotype: New: fixed, rigid, expected ideas about people, unyielding to change or reason
Assume your definition:
1. Sex stereotype is gender
2. Gender derives from biological sex.
3. A woman has female sex.
4. The gender used for her is “feminine.”
5. Sex stereotypes define fixed, or expected traits derived from a sex.
6. Stereotypes derived from the male sex are masculine in gender.
7. Lesbians exist and are women
8. Lesbians are sexually attracted to women.
9. Attraction to a woman is a stereotypically male sex trait.
10. A woman with masculine sex traits exists.
11. The gender used to describe her is derived from her sex is still feminine.
12. The gender used to describe her from a sex stereotyped trait she exhibits is masculine
We arrive at a contradiction with proposition 12 both it and 11 cannot be true: Masculine gender ≠ feminine gender.
1. Starting Point:
* The assumption “sex stereotype is gender” leads to the conclusion that gender is rigidly tied to stereotypical sex traits, and also these traits should align predictably with biological sex.
2. Logical Issues:
* If gender and sex stereotypes are strictly derived from biological sex (premises 2, 3, 4,and 6) then any deviation—such as women exhibiting "masculine" traits—should logically disrupt this alignment.
* Any deviation of deriving a sex stereotype from sex (5) renders sex stereotype meaningless and moots the starting point.
* Premises 7 through 12 introduce specifics (e.g., the existence of lesbians as women with masculine traits) that doesn’t conform. This means the framework that stereotypes derived from sex equate to gender becomes unstable.
3. Contradictions:
* Premises 11 and 12 conflict directly: if a woman with masculine traits has a “feminine” gender derived from her sex, then these traits should not also define her gender as masculine.
* This inconsistency means that gender cannot consistently be derived from stereotypical sex traits alone.
4. Conclusion:
* To resolve this, we can reject the assumption that “sex stereotype is gender.” Instead, sex stereotypes might describe expected sex behaviors or traits, but gender exists as a separate concept that isn’t strictly bound by these stereotypes.
By rejecting the premise that “sex stereotype is gender,” the contradictions dissolve.
Women being sexually attracted to women is not masculine, as a masculine sex stereotype would suggest. It is entirely feminine, for our Lesbian.
As long as there is a persistent attempt to link gender and sex directly (substitution) or indirectly (sex stereotypes are gender) there is contradiction and confusion. “Sufeitzy’s Law”
And, as transgender reminds us, this equation also is part of a delusion, which is derived from the purposeful use of gender instead of sex to confuse and deceive, both themselves and others.
As someone who pays attention to word usage - too much, perhaps - the only habit that irritates me more than the misuse of "myself" is the use of "gender" when the correct word is "sex."
I have had it with mainstream media figures and pundits who only ever say "gender" when they mean male or female. I don't know whether they do not know any better or whether at some point they learned that the word "sex" is taboo and enlightened people say "gender" instead.
Whenever possible, I use "sex" when referring to males or females, e.g., "Short pants appeal to both sexes during hot summer months."
I think there's a lot of truth in this. I'm a heterosexual man who has some more sensitive traits from childhood and struggled with it. I don't have AGP, but I think I understand where it comes from, which in my opinion is most often autistic traits, narcissism and childhood trauma, including separation anxiety.
I was struggling as a young child to live up to expectations of typical boys. I think it was not so much that I didn't to, but that I couldn't, due to being mildly autistic and highly sensitive, but also lacking in empathy. I wanted to run, jump and climb but if I fell and I cried and cried, because of emotional dysregulation. If I played football, I scored an own goal due to not understanding the rules. I would fight and wrestle, but if I lost I would cry. These things doesn't make a boy popular with other boys.
I remember having somewhat of envy of girls in 1st grade in a situation. We were playing football and I sucked at it as usual, but wanted to play. While I got shouted at by the other boys for not being good and then there was a girl playing and she also wasn't good, but she got praised just for trying. I remember thinking how that was unfair. This was probably an early sign of autistic thinking, not understanding the nuance, and this feeling of being upset at unfairness, was something that I carried with me.
I was lonely a lot and only had one friend for most of my school time and he moved schools. I spent a lot of time with my mother, god bless, who gave me all the love I needed to feel safe and loved. I think this might have been what "saved" me, the fact that she was always there, that she would never make me feel wrong or weird. That she said boys and girls can do and act however they like, that there was no thing that was only for one gender.
I now think this was really key. This intense separation anxiety I had, maybe from infant neglect, it might have led to me identifying with my mother in an attempt to not lose her, this was the freudian belief, but because my mother was so loving and attentive, I could all the comforting feminine that I wanted externally, I didn't need to create it in myself.
As I entered puberty, it was as if a switch was turned on, I became attracted to girls, I suddenly discovered my penis and became very proud of it and what I could do with it. At the same time, I finally made some friends, one in particular, who took me under his wing and taught me all about being a boy and eventually a young man.
That also, I think, was hugely important, in seeing the cool guy in me, not the weird outsider kid, the small, slightly feminine boy.
In puberty I grew a lot, became tall and strong, could grow a beard. Finally, after having my first sexual experiences with a girl in my early 20s, something clicked again and I realized in a way, the purpose of everything.
While I've had a lot of issues romantically, and have had internet porn addiction and some fetishes, I have not developed AGP.
I do think I mostly understand the causes of it though. The natural more sensitive temperament, the lack of empathy and theory of mind, due to having autistic traits, the narcissistic defense, the nerdyness and early dating difficulties.
But clearly not writing difficulty. Lucid, revealing and quite a good read, thank you.
The reason I wrote my piece was because I had the on-switch moment and, while I don’t self-diagnose as autism on any spectrum, I read a book about “Dibs in Search of Self” and recognized myself somewhat; I feel I know a little of what such children feel.
My light switch moment was watching an episode of the “Tomorrow” show with Tom Snyder about gay people and I saw a roomful of handsome sexy men kissing at a disco, and I though” I don’t have to become a woman to have a man love me. I had decided I was trans at around age 8.
Similar to you quite enjoyed my penis, and at 14 launched into gay sex, and never turned back.
I was considering writing a book “The Boy Who wasn’t a Girl - we should do “the boys who weren’t girls” and describe states of mind. Mine were extremely vivid.
My brother is gay, so there is probably some overlap between gay and AGP, probably having some more feminine brain makeup, but expressed differently if you're straight.
I also struggled in the beginning thinking I was gay, despite not being attracted to men sexually at all and having crushes on girls in grade school etc.
I think the term would be pseudo-bisexuality as labeled by Blanchard, where you are not sexually attracted to men, but enjoy feelings of femininity in relation the masculine.
I am not attracted to men sexually at all, had never felt a twinge down there to a man at all, but I have had felt feelings somewhat similar to romantic feelings with men.
It's more of warm feelings of how their masculine energy makes me feel, similar to how you might feel as a kid being seen and loved by your father or hanging out with older brothers. I always thought of it as a Yin-Yang thing, but it was confusing.
I am also sometimes attracted to passing homosexual transwomen, which again is probably pseudo-bisexuality, the "GAMP" type.
If people would label me bisexual, then I am fine with that, but I am not actually.
To me you seem a straight man, and quite articulate about his feelings. Were you to be subject to a PET scan of your medial preoptic and anterior hypothalamus while you were exposed to androstenedione, there would be little or no activity - gay men, straight women and bisexuals activate with this exposure to a male sex hormone. If you were exposed to estratetraenol, there would be activity consistent with straight men, lesbians and bisexuals.
That you have stereotypically “feminine” traits is not unusual at all. Common male behavioral stereotypes - Alpha Male, Jock, Bad Boy, Sensitive Guy, Protector, Macho Asshole… all share “feminine” traits with female stereotypes - Free Spirit, Nurturer, Seductress, Good Girl, Career Woman, Bitch… (not respectively) the common misconception is to believe they are mutually exclusive. Alpha Male & Femme Fatale are dominant (tops are in gay parlance); Sensitive Guy and Nurturer (empathetic); Bad Boy and Free Spirit (rebellious); Jock and Tomboy (competitive) Nice Guy and Girl Next Door (down to earth).
When a child locks on a stereotype (all men are supposed to be exclusively alpha males) they then classify their own traits by a fictional standard. Then, bullying begins externally, and self-criticism internally: dysphoria.
That’s why the trans delusion is so unpleasant. It pretends that these maximal stereotypes or lack of traits from these stereotypes are indicative of sex; and that bad feeling is assuaged by mutilating the body chemically and surgically to imitate a sex which is assumed to exhibit the stereotypes. After surgery you still have traits which are yours, and could those of a man or woman. Stereotypes are not goals, they are cliche fictions, and don’t determine sex.
“Real men don’t eat quiche”
Sadly, if a child were in puberty and went through trans, now they won’t complete puberty, their mind won’t mature and they won’t develop an adult appreciation and comfort with their traits as you and I seem to have done. And they would also be saddled with a set of serious health issues.
We used to say kids “are confused” during puberty. I would say they are confused by stereotypes, not themselves. It takes a lot of assurance that Alpha Male is not the only acceptable set of behaviors for a man, and that Hooker is not the baseline of female behaviors. That’s what friends, teachers, parents and extended family are for, reminding us what reality is and appreciating us for ourselves. You mom seems to have done that well.
Sorry to blather on. I’m intrigued by your being so self-aware of your heterosexuality as heterosexuality. Talk about awareness of internal mental process.
I've spent a lifetime thinking and most of that time has been alone and as an outsider. It's a form of extreme introverted thinking. Thinking about thinking.
I have very little filter to the world, to both sensory input or ideas or other people's argument, which must then be logically examined to be expelled, instead of dismissed automatically based on inner values or personality, which it seems most people do.
Like I said, I am not sure what my major brain dysfunction is, I was recently diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, but I think the base issue is more along autism and the need for categorization and the lack of intuitive understanding of social processes and one's emotional state.
It was interesting reading your takes, you are clearly a very perceptive person.
Let's face it. It has reached the point now where seemingly all the usual agents of socialization such as schools and peers are teaching our youth how to be gender dysphoric and trans. We have to purge gender from the K-12 curriculum, at a minimum.
Judging solely by the stories in gender critical circles of people who have gotten it in their head that they're trans, it was a grave mistake to abandon the diagnosis of "gender identity disorder" (GID). Speaking as a layman, I'd say most of those individuals are indeed disordered in the medical sense: they have "an illness that disrupts normal physical or mental functions, leading to major disturbances in thinking, emotional regulation, or behaviour."
A better approach would have been to retain the GID diagnosis in order to ensure people with that diagnosis receive the treatment they need, which seems to boil down to identifying the factors that have led the person to the mistaken conclusion that they're trans.
Tragically, the politics of gender ideology make such a suggestion anathema and its proponents heretics deserving only censorship, derision and banishment.
I think we vastly underestimate the role that sexuality plays in who decides to take on the trans label, both when its the AGP types and the homosexual types.
If you're a straight man with some feminine traits, dating can be difficult and you might feel you have to appear more masculine than you would prefer, leading to feelings of inauthencity. Likewise, very feminine homosexual men also struggle because most gay men desire masculine men.
A notable example is someone like the artist Prince, who was clearly an AGP, he is even quoted as having a persona "Christine". He is also quoted as saying he both desired to be with women as a man, but also be their "girlfriend".
Prince dealt with this by embracing his femininity and because of his personality and fame, always had the women he desired as sexual partners.
If you're not Prince, if you're a nerdy guy with some deficiencies in empathy and theory of mind, maybe because of aspergers or similar, then my theory is you might struggle with feelings of both resentment of the masculine and a glorification of the feminine, leading to thinking you were never masculine.
I am switching gears on this essay with a new comment!
Starting over!
An excellent discussion and inquiry. Of particular value: "Changing the diagnosis from ‘gender identity disorder’ to ‘gender dysphoria’ has been deeply damaging for many. This shift has led some young people to believe that their primary issue is simply feeling 'dysphoric,' rather than understanding that they may have a disordered mindset causing significant confusion—one that could lead to deep unhappiness unless they take steps to find clarity and consistency."
And your final sentence: "Perhaps the essential question is this: when children and vulnerable adults are actively being harmed, should we first focus on preventing the harm itself, or should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?"
My answer: prevent the harm first then dive into the underlying distress and help address, explore and treat that distress. My daughter had her healthy breasts removed first. When blaming the body and removing body parts ultimately doesn't solve any underlying issues or problems, it is too late to get the body parts back.
I’m sorry too, & you are right, treat the distress, that’s what it is. Unfortunately we are in a battle & there are sides. That this is perpetuated rests on the assumption that trans exists. Protect trans kids, trans people. There is no such thing. Until both sides can agree on that, there’s no starting point. Unless attempting (impossible) to transition from one sex to another can be proven to be a cure for distress, it has no place in medicine. Should it be allowed? is another matter. If so, it is purely cosmetic.
Great idea to attack diagnosis itself (the root of much evil). To your question: “should we first focus on preventing the harm itself, or should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?” — unfortunately, there is a five-alarm fire on both fronts— and *thank you* Stella for fighting both. Also, as one of seemingly thousands of parents of an adult transitioner, thank you for always including ‘vulnerable adults’ in your discussions of the trans phenomena.
You are such a brilliant writer. So clear, so comprehensive and so deeply helpful. Thank you so much
That's very nice of you, thank you!
Very thought provoking, thank you. You concluded with, "should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?" Yes, that is where I have been going lately. Let's turn the spotlight on why a child or young adult would disassociate with their natural body and disown/remove parts of that body. And let's look at the motives for people or industries who push medicalization with drugs or surgeries.
A wonderful synopsis. Very difficult to comprehend that medical treatments are anything but harmful. If a biological male for example were rushed to hospital for some unknown reason & had a blood test to determine any what was wrong. Surely the first observation would be ‘this person has abnormally high levels of oestrogen’’Let’s fix that.
Gender dsyphoria. Perhaps it should be measured. The duration of the ‘dsyphoria’ against the duration of the ‘euphoria’
Both great points. It is notable to me that male detransitioners are often very rueful about the impact of oestrogen.
Depressed & teary I am guessing. Need proof. Either that it works, or it does not. It’s the only way to validate.
Sigh.
The poor kids in schools that are being taught how to be "trans" is so sad. Bill Maher calls it 'ENTRAPMENT". Here in Seattle, school counselors hand out resources about the Gender Creative Child. What a mess! My husband and I opted our daughter out of the "SEL" class when we looked up the new her/she/they counselors bio. We tried to alert the other parents (at that school we weren't allowed to use the word 'parent'--we had to say 'caregiver') but we were treated like the ones with the problem. This was the counselors response email blast: "Addressing Gender and Identity
On Day 1, we discussed the Genderbread Person to illustrate how identity, expression, attraction, and sex are distinct yet interconnected concepts. This discussion incorporated a chalk drawing I created, not a poster. Understanding gender diversity helps students appreciate that there are many ways to be a human. This discussion also emphasized acceptance of individual differences, without delving deeply into sexuality. Messages about gender are everywhere, and children receive very clear messages about the "rules" for boys and girls, as well as the consequences for violating them. By learning about the diversity of gender, children have an opportunity to explore a greater range of interests, ideas, and activities. When we discussed gender, we talked about what people like to wear, activities they engage in, and how they feel about themselves. This is not sexuality. Sexuality involves physical intimacy and attraction (which we also talked about). Gender is about self-identity. Gender identity is a person's internal sense of where they fit on the gender spectrum. This includes all kids, "typically" gendered or not. Children have an ability to grasp the complexity of gender diversity because sexuality does not factor in to complicate their understanding. Our children encounter people with different beliefs when they join any community. Gender diversity is an easy concept for children to grasp, and the Genderbread Person drawing was a small introduction to understanding these concepts. I shared how I am learning every day about understanding concepts that are not familiar to me. I also shared that I wished I had seen this image when I was in 7th grade because it would have affirmed ways I and many others identified." HOW ARE SCHOOLS ALLOWED TO TEACH THIS? Can we please stop using the word gender!?
If I had been present, I would have engaged in a strategy of peaceful resistance by questioning and critiquing every step of the way. Of course, that's easy for me to say from the comfort of my home and without having a child in a school where gender indoctrination is taking place. I imagine the instructors created a coercive, groupthink atmosphere.
Kids are afraid to speak up and say anything during these classes. My daughter finally spoke up when, as a Jewish student, her teacher told the class to write in Palestine as a country on their map drawings. My daughter raised her hand to explain the reality of the map and the teacher told her that she was wrong. During the quiz at the end of the week she refused to add Palestine as a country and she did not get the extra credit points that that her other classmates did that went along. Kids are being controlled, muzzled and indoctrinated with political propaganda.
In Portland, the teachers' union went to great lengths to create model pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist (if you believe the union) or anti-Israel/ antisemitic (if you don't) course materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. To its credit, the school district cracked down on this project because the union failed to obtain approval from the district.
As a taxpayer, I wish I knew how the Portland Public Schools are dealing with gender. I fear that if I went looking for information the result would be akin to turning over a log in a rain forest.
If you step back and use words with concrete definitions, the problem these children face is “stereotype dysphoria”, or why I’ll call stereodysphoria because it sounds strange but easy to say.
“Stereodysphoria” is childhood unhappiness at confronting, at puberty or so, their lack of natural conformance to sex trait stereotypes. Boys who lack some masculine traits and have a spectrum of feminine traits, girls who lack some feminine traits and have a spectrum of masculine traits can develop stereodysphoria, acute in gay and lesbian children. Lesbian, gay and bisexual children by definition are stereotype confounding since they exhibit sexual attraction to the same sex.
These children who counfound sex stereotypes are teased, shamed, bullied and rejected by peers, parents, adults and themselves because of the situation and reach out to anything, however dangerous, that they feel may help including drugs, alcohol, and damaging sexual practices. Autism-spectrum amplifies the condition due to lack of being able to easily intuit the disconnect between their emotional and physical changes and what’s expected by peers.
The condition resolves at the conclusion of puberty when they are both normalized and accepting of the gifts of their natural adult sex characteristics, and have built defenses against bullying by others and self-doubt.
The best known clinical treatment for stereodysphoria is affirmation of their worries as being real and consequential, and mental and emotional support (6-10 years) against bullying and self-doubt about their sex until they achieve physical, emotional and mental maturity sufficient to be ease with their new stable, natural state. This allows them to enter adulthood able to assume purposeful life and enter into meaningful gratifying sexual relationships with others who will find their traits gifts, and part of the natural spectrum of sexual behaviors.
The worst possible treatment is punishment through affirmation that they are malformed physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually by claiming that their traits constitute a phantom condition of “transgender”, which has no well-defined, testable basis in medical science. This punishment often includes forced childhood sexual behaviors such as age-inappropriate performative fetishistic transvesticism with simulation of cross-sex genitalia and bodies; drugs and damaging sexual changes including binding and crushing body parts, sterilization and puberty erasure to halt progression to adulthood when they would normally assume sufficient physical, emotional and mental maturity to become at ease with a new stable, natural state. Any or all of these approaches can leave the child radically damaged emotionally, physically and mentally and unable to cope with adult life in a meaningful way.
The destabilizing effects of this punishment include lifelong dependence on drugs to maintain any type of non-morbid endocrine environment; permanent cognitive damage including mental and emotional immaturity; inability to bond sexually and enjoy sexual gratification with a partner; permanent sterility; inability to achieve motherhood as well as mother child bonding through lactation and feeding; early and accelerated menopause and senescence; accelerated osteoporosis; accelerated kidney damage and disease; permanent wounds; early death.
There is a population of clinically delusional people who are active in seeking out children with a number of complex issues including autism-spectrum, anorexia, and stereodysphoria, and seek gratification at amplifying their unhappiness by inculcating delusional thinking about their condition; they harness the damaging peer group dynamic of shaming and bullying for children especially sensitive to it such as autistic-spectrum children and using that to enforce compliance to delusional and self-damaging behaviors or risk abandonment by peers. They actively groom adults into being complaint with damaging their children, charges and patients. Sexual fantasy literature provides excellent case examples of the delusional condition and focus on children.
Thanks for your comment. It would need to be called “sex stereotype dysphoria” as lots of these people don’t behave in ways that are stereotypical in any other sense. Another word for “sex stereotype” is gender
I appreciate your response but I can’t accept your terminology.
As you must know, the entire edifice of “transgender” is built on false statements, and contradictions such as “I, a man, feel like a woman” - a classic. Feelings a man has, particularly about sex are categoricqlly male feelings. Feelings a woman has are female feelings. You arrive at the contradiction quickly that Male ≠ Female. The statement is as delusional as an anorexic saying “I feel fat”.
In the realm of gender itself, I find that in practice it is always true that when the word gender is used instead of sex, you will arrive at a logical contradiction. It’s an effect of antecedent consequent similar to the conversation between Alice and the March Hare (as in “Mad as a March hare, or rabbits in a mating frenzy”:
hen you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least-at least I mean what I say-that's the same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"
"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"
"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"
"It is the same thing with you." said the Hatter,
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Or, after Alice “Since I am a woman I have Feminine behavior”, vs “Since I have Feminine behaviors I am a woman”.
Consider your statement
“another word for sex stereotype is gender” which I’ll shorten to “sex stereotype is gender”.
Let’s use deductive reasoning, general to specific statements to find the contradiction.
Definitions:
Woman : Adult human female
Sex: The biological category corresponding to reproductive capacity, determined at conception
Female: The biological sex corresponding to the capacity to produce eggs
Sex Binary: The fact that for male and female sex, capacity to produce eggs and sperm are mutually exclusive.
Feminine: The gender associated with the female sex
Gender: A language category which identifies the relation to sex of a referent
Stereos: Greed for ‘solid’ / Typos: Greek for impression or model
Stereotype: Old: originally a solid printing plate to make uniform impressions
Stereotype: New: fixed, rigid, expected ideas about people, unyielding to change or reason
Assume your definition:
1. Sex stereotype is gender
2. Gender derives from biological sex.
3. A woman has female sex.
4. The gender used for her is “feminine.”
5. Sex stereotypes define fixed, or expected traits derived from a sex.
6. Stereotypes derived from the male sex are masculine in gender.
7. Lesbians exist and are women
8. Lesbians are sexually attracted to women.
9. Attraction to a woman is a stereotypically male sex trait.
10. A woman with masculine sex traits exists.
11. The gender used to describe her is derived from her sex is still feminine.
12. The gender used to describe her from a sex stereotyped trait she exhibits is masculine
We arrive at a contradiction with proposition 12 both it and 11 cannot be true: Masculine gender ≠ feminine gender.
1. Starting Point:
* The assumption “sex stereotype is gender” leads to the conclusion that gender is rigidly tied to stereotypical sex traits, and also these traits should align predictably with biological sex.
2. Logical Issues:
* If gender and sex stereotypes are strictly derived from biological sex (premises 2, 3, 4,and 6) then any deviation—such as women exhibiting "masculine" traits—should logically disrupt this alignment.
* Any deviation of deriving a sex stereotype from sex (5) renders sex stereotype meaningless and moots the starting point.
* Premises 7 through 12 introduce specifics (e.g., the existence of lesbians as women with masculine traits) that doesn’t conform. This means the framework that stereotypes derived from sex equate to gender becomes unstable.
3. Contradictions:
* Premises 11 and 12 conflict directly: if a woman with masculine traits has a “feminine” gender derived from her sex, then these traits should not also define her gender as masculine.
* This inconsistency means that gender cannot consistently be derived from stereotypical sex traits alone.
4. Conclusion:
* To resolve this, we can reject the assumption that “sex stereotype is gender.” Instead, sex stereotypes might describe expected sex behaviors or traits, but gender exists as a separate concept that isn’t strictly bound by these stereotypes.
By rejecting the premise that “sex stereotype is gender,” the contradictions dissolve.
Women being sexually attracted to women is not masculine, as a masculine sex stereotype would suggest. It is entirely feminine, for our Lesbian.
As long as there is a persistent attempt to link gender and sex directly (substitution) or indirectly (sex stereotypes are gender) there is contradiction and confusion. “Sufeitzy’s Law”
And, as transgender reminds us, this equation also is part of a delusion, which is derived from the purposeful use of gender instead of sex to confuse and deceive, both themselves and others.
As someone who pays attention to word usage - too much, perhaps - the only habit that irritates me more than the misuse of "myself" is the use of "gender" when the correct word is "sex."
I have had it with mainstream media figures and pundits who only ever say "gender" when they mean male or female. I don't know whether they do not know any better or whether at some point they learned that the word "sex" is taboo and enlightened people say "gender" instead.
Whenever possible, I use "sex" when referring to males or females, e.g., "Short pants appeal to both sexes during hot summer months."
Well, thanks. I too enormously dislike use of gender rather than sex. They’re not interchangeable terms, by a long shot.
In Rhetoric it is used as a “chiasmus” and can slip in paradoxes and highly misleading ideas because it sounds profound - not.
Some chiasmus are true and are great: (guess the source)
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
“Fair is foul, foul is fair”
“It’s not the men in my life that count; it’s the life in my men.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure”
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
“Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.”
“The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
But nonsensical are easy to create:
Effort creates success.
Success creates effort - not.
I pause to reflect.
I reflect to pause - not.
I give to receive.
I receive to give - not.
We take risk to grow.
We grow to take risk - not.
Which gets us back to core nonsense:
My gender comes from my sex.
My sex comes from my gender - not.
Don’t even get me started on the word homosexual and the word gay.
A superb analysis and summary. I'm going to file it for reference.
I think there's a lot of truth in this. I'm a heterosexual man who has some more sensitive traits from childhood and struggled with it. I don't have AGP, but I think I understand where it comes from, which in my opinion is most often autistic traits, narcissism and childhood trauma, including separation anxiety.
I was struggling as a young child to live up to expectations of typical boys. I think it was not so much that I didn't to, but that I couldn't, due to being mildly autistic and highly sensitive, but also lacking in empathy. I wanted to run, jump and climb but if I fell and I cried and cried, because of emotional dysregulation. If I played football, I scored an own goal due to not understanding the rules. I would fight and wrestle, but if I lost I would cry. These things doesn't make a boy popular with other boys.
I remember having somewhat of envy of girls in 1st grade in a situation. We were playing football and I sucked at it as usual, but wanted to play. While I got shouted at by the other boys for not being good and then there was a girl playing and she also wasn't good, but she got praised just for trying. I remember thinking how that was unfair. This was probably an early sign of autistic thinking, not understanding the nuance, and this feeling of being upset at unfairness, was something that I carried with me.
I was lonely a lot and only had one friend for most of my school time and he moved schools. I spent a lot of time with my mother, god bless, who gave me all the love I needed to feel safe and loved. I think this might have been what "saved" me, the fact that she was always there, that she would never make me feel wrong or weird. That she said boys and girls can do and act however they like, that there was no thing that was only for one gender.
I now think this was really key. This intense separation anxiety I had, maybe from infant neglect, it might have led to me identifying with my mother in an attempt to not lose her, this was the freudian belief, but because my mother was so loving and attentive, I could all the comforting feminine that I wanted externally, I didn't need to create it in myself.
As I entered puberty, it was as if a switch was turned on, I became attracted to girls, I suddenly discovered my penis and became very proud of it and what I could do with it. At the same time, I finally made some friends, one in particular, who took me under his wing and taught me all about being a boy and eventually a young man.
That also, I think, was hugely important, in seeing the cool guy in me, not the weird outsider kid, the small, slightly feminine boy.
In puberty I grew a lot, became tall and strong, could grow a beard. Finally, after having my first sexual experiences with a girl in my early 20s, something clicked again and I realized in a way, the purpose of everything.
While I've had a lot of issues romantically, and have had internet porn addiction and some fetishes, I have not developed AGP.
I do think I mostly understand the causes of it though. The natural more sensitive temperament, the lack of empathy and theory of mind, due to having autistic traits, the narcissistic defense, the nerdyness and early dating difficulties.
But clearly not writing difficulty. Lucid, revealing and quite a good read, thank you.
The reason I wrote my piece was because I had the on-switch moment and, while I don’t self-diagnose as autism on any spectrum, I read a book about “Dibs in Search of Self” and recognized myself somewhat; I feel I know a little of what such children feel.
My light switch moment was watching an episode of the “Tomorrow” show with Tom Snyder about gay people and I saw a roomful of handsome sexy men kissing at a disco, and I though” I don’t have to become a woman to have a man love me. I had decided I was trans at around age 8.
Similar to you quite enjoyed my penis, and at 14 launched into gay sex, and never turned back.
I was considering writing a book “The Boy Who wasn’t a Girl - we should do “the boys who weren’t girls” and describe states of mind. Mine were extremely vivid.
My brother is gay, so there is probably some overlap between gay and AGP, probably having some more feminine brain makeup, but expressed differently if you're straight.
I also struggled in the beginning thinking I was gay, despite not being attracted to men sexually at all and having crushes on girls in grade school etc.
I think the term would be pseudo-bisexuality as labeled by Blanchard, where you are not sexually attracted to men, but enjoy feelings of femininity in relation the masculine.
I am not attracted to men sexually at all, had never felt a twinge down there to a man at all, but I have had felt feelings somewhat similar to romantic feelings with men.
It's more of warm feelings of how their masculine energy makes me feel, similar to how you might feel as a kid being seen and loved by your father or hanging out with older brothers. I always thought of it as a Yin-Yang thing, but it was confusing.
I am also sometimes attracted to passing homosexual transwomen, which again is probably pseudo-bisexuality, the "GAMP" type.
If people would label me bisexual, then I am fine with that, but I am not actually.
Between us, Blanchard wildly overreached.
To me you seem a straight man, and quite articulate about his feelings. Were you to be subject to a PET scan of your medial preoptic and anterior hypothalamus while you were exposed to androstenedione, there would be little or no activity - gay men, straight women and bisexuals activate with this exposure to a male sex hormone. If you were exposed to estratetraenol, there would be activity consistent with straight men, lesbians and bisexuals.
That you have stereotypically “feminine” traits is not unusual at all. Common male behavioral stereotypes - Alpha Male, Jock, Bad Boy, Sensitive Guy, Protector, Macho Asshole… all share “feminine” traits with female stereotypes - Free Spirit, Nurturer, Seductress, Good Girl, Career Woman, Bitch… (not respectively) the common misconception is to believe they are mutually exclusive. Alpha Male & Femme Fatale are dominant (tops are in gay parlance); Sensitive Guy and Nurturer (empathetic); Bad Boy and Free Spirit (rebellious); Jock and Tomboy (competitive) Nice Guy and Girl Next Door (down to earth).
When a child locks on a stereotype (all men are supposed to be exclusively alpha males) they then classify their own traits by a fictional standard. Then, bullying begins externally, and self-criticism internally: dysphoria.
That’s why the trans delusion is so unpleasant. It pretends that these maximal stereotypes or lack of traits from these stereotypes are indicative of sex; and that bad feeling is assuaged by mutilating the body chemically and surgically to imitate a sex which is assumed to exhibit the stereotypes. After surgery you still have traits which are yours, and could those of a man or woman. Stereotypes are not goals, they are cliche fictions, and don’t determine sex.
“Real men don’t eat quiche”
Sadly, if a child were in puberty and went through trans, now they won’t complete puberty, their mind won’t mature and they won’t develop an adult appreciation and comfort with their traits as you and I seem to have done. And they would also be saddled with a set of serious health issues.
We used to say kids “are confused” during puberty. I would say they are confused by stereotypes, not themselves. It takes a lot of assurance that Alpha Male is not the only acceptable set of behaviors for a man, and that Hooker is not the baseline of female behaviors. That’s what friends, teachers, parents and extended family are for, reminding us what reality is and appreciating us for ourselves. You mom seems to have done that well.
Sorry to blather on. I’m intrigued by your being so self-aware of your heterosexuality as heterosexuality. Talk about awareness of internal mental process.
I've spent a lifetime thinking and most of that time has been alone and as an outsider. It's a form of extreme introverted thinking. Thinking about thinking.
I have very little filter to the world, to both sensory input or ideas or other people's argument, which must then be logically examined to be expelled, instead of dismissed automatically based on inner values or personality, which it seems most people do.
Like I said, I am not sure what my major brain dysfunction is, I was recently diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, but I think the base issue is more along autism and the need for categorization and the lack of intuitive understanding of social processes and one's emotional state.
It was interesting reading your takes, you are clearly a very perceptive person.
Let's face it. It has reached the point now where seemingly all the usual agents of socialization such as schools and peers are teaching our youth how to be gender dysphoric and trans. We have to purge gender from the K-12 curriculum, at a minimum.
Brilliant piece
Thank you!
Judging solely by the stories in gender critical circles of people who have gotten it in their head that they're trans, it was a grave mistake to abandon the diagnosis of "gender identity disorder" (GID). Speaking as a layman, I'd say most of those individuals are indeed disordered in the medical sense: they have "an illness that disrupts normal physical or mental functions, leading to major disturbances in thinking, emotional regulation, or behaviour."
A better approach would have been to retain the GID diagnosis in order to ensure people with that diagnosis receive the treatment they need, which seems to boil down to identifying the factors that have led the person to the mistaken conclusion that they're trans.
Tragically, the politics of gender ideology make such a suggestion anathema and its proponents heretics deserving only censorship, derision and banishment.
I totally agree with you
I think we vastly underestimate the role that sexuality plays in who decides to take on the trans label, both when its the AGP types and the homosexual types.
If you're a straight man with some feminine traits, dating can be difficult and you might feel you have to appear more masculine than you would prefer, leading to feelings of inauthencity. Likewise, very feminine homosexual men also struggle because most gay men desire masculine men.
A notable example is someone like the artist Prince, who was clearly an AGP, he is even quoted as having a persona "Christine". He is also quoted as saying he both desired to be with women as a man, but also be their "girlfriend".
Prince dealt with this by embracing his femininity and because of his personality and fame, always had the women he desired as sexual partners.
If you're not Prince, if you're a nerdy guy with some deficiencies in empathy and theory of mind, maybe because of aspergers or similar, then my theory is you might struggle with feelings of both resentment of the masculine and a glorification of the feminine, leading to thinking you were never masculine.
I am switching gears on this essay with a new comment!
Starting over!
An excellent discussion and inquiry. Of particular value: "Changing the diagnosis from ‘gender identity disorder’ to ‘gender dysphoria’ has been deeply damaging for many. This shift has led some young people to believe that their primary issue is simply feeling 'dysphoric,' rather than understanding that they may have a disordered mindset causing significant confusion—one that could lead to deep unhappiness unless they take steps to find clarity and consistency."
And your final sentence: "Perhaps the essential question is this: when children and vulnerable adults are actively being harmed, should we first focus on preventing the harm itself, or should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?"
My answer: prevent the harm first then dive into the underlying distress and help address, explore and treat that distress. My daughter had her healthy breasts removed first. When blaming the body and removing body parts ultimately doesn't solve any underlying issues or problems, it is too late to get the body parts back.
I’m sorry too, & you are right, treat the distress, that’s what it is. Unfortunately we are in a battle & there are sides. That this is perpetuated rests on the assumption that trans exists. Protect trans kids, trans people. There is no such thing. Until both sides can agree on that, there’s no starting point. Unless attempting (impossible) to transition from one sex to another can be proven to be a cure for distress, it has no place in medicine. Should it be allowed? is another matter. If so, it is purely cosmetic.
I’m so sorry and yes, I agree with you xxx
Great idea to attack diagnosis itself (the root of much evil). To your question: “should we first focus on preventing the harm itself, or should we instead address the underlying concepts that create the harm in the first place?” — unfortunately, there is a five-alarm fire on both fronts— and *thank you* Stella for fighting both. Also, as one of seemingly thousands of parents of an adult transitioner, thank you for always including ‘vulnerable adults’ in your discussions of the trans phenomena.