Analyzing The Trans Panic

Fascinating. My own (poorly formed) view is that it is too early for a child to make a life-long decision, but your argument is strong. I definitely agree that trans in sports is not fair.

Hey Ian, appreciate this piece. It’s been hard not to notice the sheer number of ppl who seem to see America’s imperialist behavior for what it is seem to have some quite atrocious views on social issues. I would add though just for perspective, that the majority of pre- pubescent children on hormone blockers are 9-10 year old girls delaying the onset of their periods since period pain is basically a monthly torture regimen to a pre-teen.

It’s actually a very, very straight forward phenomenon. ‘Biological sex as subscription service’ is exactly the type of thing you should expect to see in a late stage capitalism that has already reduced pretty much everything else to a debased transaction. It’s a cultural psychosis that will eventually burn itself out, hopefully massively discrediting the strain of liberalism and ‘progressivism’ (there’s no progress here) that pushed it (and yes, there is very much a coordinated push for it. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a right winger screaming about the ‘gay agenda’; it’s demonstrably true).

The framing here by Welsh is weird. Why are you equating crossdressing with being trans? Crossdessers do it for a lot of reasons, and historically few if any have ever seriously claimed to literally be the other sex ‘trapped in the wrong body’. Trans simply isn’t a historical phenomenon at any scale. Activists will often attempt to point at something like Native American two-spirits and claim ‘see, trans’, but inevitably when you actually zoom in on the specifics these always invariably came out of patriarchal, macho cultures that either didn’t know how to deal with the existence of gay men so shoved them into a box of ‘virtual women’, or were explicitly about excluding women from public performative or ritual roles. There’s nothing progressive about any of these historical third gender categories.

‘TERF’s’ mostly aren’t actually a thing. It’s a bad faith framing device to portray skeptics as the fringe weirdos. In fact skeptics, or outright refusniks, are the majority both within feminism and outside of it. But at this point voicing even mild criticism will still get you drowned out.

A thing I find funny is that I remember how even just ten years ago we were still at the ‘sex isn’t the same as gender’ stage. That’s a phrase that still exists, but now people simply parrot it but don’t contemplate it. Now we’re at the point where if you don’t conform to social gender expectations it’s because you’re literally the opposite biological sex and you need to start mutilating yourself to conform. This is progress?

Sports is fairly niche (professionally yes, though much less niche for kids recreational sports), but I think you’re really downplaying the potential impact. First, women are worse athletically across the board, usually massively so. Just, full stop, sorry. In fact mens specific sports mostly don’t actually exist; most of the ‘mens’ division rulebooks don’t actually forbid women. It’s just women can’t compete with the performance level so women’s divisions had to be created for them specifically. The exceptions where women are better are vanishingly rare, like long distance swimming where women have an advantage because they have a higher percentage of body fat. They aren’t stronger or have better endurance, they’re just working less because they float better.

You also seem to be framing the (in)ability of children to make sensible decisions as some failure of the wider culture. Children are actually idiots, and always have been. And by child I really mean anyone under the age of about twenty five, when the part of the brain that most governs rational decision making finishes fully forming. Kids are stupid, most notoriously around early to mid puberty, and are very easily manipulated and led by fads. Trusting children and getting them on hormones is a staggeringly moronic move. No one between the ages of ‘dad buy me this Fortnite skin I *need* it’) and ‘my role model that I emulate in all things is an Instagram bimbo’ shound be trusted with anything, least of all their own medical decisions.

What I predict is going to happen over the next ten to fifteen years is that huge amounts of people who have done permanent damage to themselves either through hormones or, worse, surgery, are going to gradually come to the horrifying realization that whatever problems they had haven’t actually been addressed and that they were lied to.

Trans panic? Huh. The first time I remember seeing a drag performance was a film of Charles Pierce (the Other One, noted drag comedian from times gone by) lip syncing to Vicki Carr’s “It Must Be Him” and annihilating the stage. It was hilarious in the extreme. That’s kind of what drag was. Yanno? Then not too long afterwards, a group of us went down to the Roxy Theatre on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood, c. 1974, to see “The Rocky Horror Show, ” which was the Sensation of the Season (not the movie, it was live on stage, direct from London but partially recast) starring Tim Curry, Meat Loaf, Kim Milford as Rocky, and so forth. We expected there would be a bunch of freaks and crazies in the audience, but no. The place was filled with suburban Str8 couples, some with their teenage kids, from the San Fernando Valley. They loved it. And there was no doubt about Frank-N-furter’s gender. Proudly male, raging with testosterone. Despite the fact that he wore fishnets and heels, lots of makeup, and a big wig, and called himself a Sweet Transvestite from Transexual Transylvania, this was no trans man. He just liked to dress up. He was funny. Hilarious at times — and also very sad.

Anyone who lived in or near the San Francisco Bay Area in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and into the ’90s knew about Finnochio’s where drag burlesque was performed nightly. Very few had any issue with it, but it was San Francisco, so what do you expect. The shows were often hilarious. They were as sexual as straight burlesque — maybe not as much — which meant innuendo more than anything. It was said that Finnochio’s was a great place to pick up sailors.

The most recent encounter I had with a transsexual was at an even a few years ago where a filmmaker friend introduced a stunning fashion model who he was dating at the time. It took me a while to realize that she had been born a he. I had never seen such a convincing man in drag, but in this case, she was not a man wearing drag. She was a beautiful woman who’d been previously misgendered.

I have a relative who decided to transition from male to female when he retired from the military (at 50+) and had the time, inclination and wherewithal to do it. She’s been an outspoken trans activist ever since. So I guess I’ve got a dog in this fight.

“Trans-panic” is a political wedge, sure, but it is also very dangerous if it is allowed to continue. We’ve all heard of str8 men who murder trans prostitutes out of “gay-panic” — and too often suffer few or no consequences. No, they’re “justified.” Fear of going out with a trans prostitute and finding out they’re being serviced by a “man” drives a lot of the panic we’re seeing.

Most of us of a certain age were exposed to men in drag on television and movies and maybe in real life from a very early in our childhood. It wasn’t life-shattering. It was almost always comedy. It wasn’t usually sexualized. Drag Queen Story Hour is not sexualized and not in any way meant to be. Parents know that — or should. There really isn’t anything to panic over. As for sports and bathrooms, the issue is more complex because we’re talking about people who have transitioned or are in the process. Yet women’s public rest rooms are quite private, aren’t they? Unlike men’s rooms, women do their business out of view of others. So what’s the problem? As for (some) sports, female competitors who developed as males may — or may not — have an advantage. The use of steroids and other enhancements is a bit too widespread to say.

I remember an old-fashioned phrase denoting the “irrelevance of it all” when someone tried to force engagement on some hot button issue or other.

” What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”

Moral panics backed by this much funding don’t appear out of nowhere. They are manufactured by entities with their own objectives.

I suspect — on the basis of no concrete evidence whatsoever, as the people who make these decisions are careful not to leave any smoking guns in public view — that the American right started the trans moral panic in an effort to stand its ground after winning the abortion war.

The GOP lost voting share among women after banning abortion; fabricating fears over women’s safety at the hands of trans people could well be an attempt to regain votes from women.

Christian nationalists also needed another target to replace the abortion issue. These people will crawl over broken glass to vote GOP only as long as they have something to hate. With abortion settled in the Christians’ favor, trans people were likely just the target that polled best in the fever swamps of Jesusland.

@nobody

Why the implicit assumption that the trans movement itself is completely natural and not a well funded astroturf campaign?

Something I find really interesting in all of this is that dissent isn’t allowed or platformed. It just isn’t. You instantly get called a transphobe and your opinions discounted. Or, if you’re actually female and dare to critisize, you get labeled a TERF. In either case, you also likely get brigaded (which after a while starts to look suspiciously like botting. I actually hope that’s the case, because if it isn’t that means it’s mostly terminally online weirdos acting like cultists and swarming the ‘heretics’). The attempts to cancel JK Rowling, who nerd media regularly attempts to portray as literally the worst person who has ever lived but seem to very carefully never actually quote any of her comments on these issues lest she start to seem pretty reasonable, is a really conspicuous case.

One side in this kulturampf has massive clout and funding, and it actually isn’t the side that wants to at least have conversation that maybe putting kids on hormones isn’t a good idea. Even if I’m wrong about everything, that’s still a debate worth having, and it just isn’t happening. You just get called a bigot and gaslit that *you’re* the strange one.

Yes ‘but what about the children!’ is a frequently deployed cynical tactic. But the reason it’s so frequently deployed is because, theoretically, societies care deeply about kids and their well being. With the transmovement giving developing children large amounts of hormones to (pretend to) change their sex is genuinely a thing that is happening, and those who want to put the brakes on and even consider this are the ones attacked. That is wild to me.

‘Well doctors say it’s fine…’ actually the evidence in support of it is not anywhere near as robust as defenders claim it is, but also, doctors said lobotomies were good to. I see another, even bigger mark of shame on the medical community developing here.

I’ve been reading you for a very long time, Ian. Essays like this are why.

I have a problem with the drag shows for kids, not because of drag but because kids don’t need that kind of sexualization. At all. Though I’m not sure how real / common those actually are. Other than that, just let people be. My (biological) niece is unsure at this point. All I care about is whether they love themself. Oddly, my very liberal parents are clearly not ok with it. It’s not to the level of refusing contact or anything, just refusing to accept it. The deadnaming and such.

Doubly odd because my stepdad’s brother died of aids in the like 1991. Gay was something we all accepted when it wasn’t all that accepted and aids was still a gruesome death. I can’t figure out the dichotomy of behavior.

For the most part, “TERFs” aren’t against trans-people existing. If you actually read Super-Terf J.K. Rowling (who I’m not a big fan of) ‘s essay on the subject, you’d find it quite reasonable. (It in no way justified the avalanche of un-lady-like rape and death threats that she received for it.)

Here’s the concerns of the gender-critical feminists:

That lesbian communities are being inundated with “transbians,” which is to say: heterosexual men (many of whom obviously have a fetish). And “cis” lesbians who reject transwomen are labelled as bigots and some dating sites ban genuine lesbians who try to state that they are only interested in other biological lesbians.

Washrooms and change-rooms: There’s a website called “this never happens” about the extent of men claiming trans status and practicing voyeurism and sexual assaults in women’s washrooms and change-rooms. Someone put together a video montage of all the transwomen filming themselves masturbating in the stalls.

Self-ID: This is what originally got UK women up in arms. The idea that nobody had to get any sort of certificate (“gate-keeping”) to be trans. And, since there’s no mandated way to have to “perform” “gender” any man could just say he was trans and go wherever he pleased.

Children: I haven’t read it but I’ve read some scary summaries [with quotes] of the Cass Report on the closure of the Tavistock Institute in the UK. Many inside workers became alarmed that girls with problems associated with sexual abuse, and gay children in general, were being processed as “trans” after only cursory diagnoses, and when they raised concerns about it they were reprimanded.

Plus there’s the concern that Lupron can cause osteoporosis.

I recall a few years ago a gay actor saying he’s glad he was born when he was, because as a tween he insisted he was a girl and that kept up until his mid-teens when he became comfortable in his own body. If he’d come of age today he’d have been put on the medicalization/surgery circuit.

There’s another country, a Nordic one I believe, that is also undergoing a major review of its treatment of “trans” youth.

And, besides, … what even is “gender” anyway? Do you feel “male”? What does that feel like? Do you feel “human”? How does that feel? Hating one’s body and wanting to be the opposite sex doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the opposite sex.

Despite disagreeing with you, I appreciate you giving this space to have a relatively nuanced and clear headed discussion of the topic.

I do think you’re missing the forest from the trees. The whole idea of binary trans and CIS division is in itself very reductive of human biology and development. There’s sexual deviation in every society and they deal with them very differently. There’s no clear evidence that transitioning to the other sex is the best option for majority of this population. The trans activists take a very maximalist and in your face approach and deems any deviation as transphobic. This comes straight out of Israel’s playbook equating any disagreement about its version of Jewishness with antisemitism.

The way this discussion is unfolding in the liberal sphere is in itself totalitarian because it’s impossible to have any discourse away from two distant and likely equally false maximalist positions. Even if the trans issue is exactly as you stated, the state of discourse and the liberal weaponization of transphobia against its critics should induce panic in you.

And on Soredemos on the kids are idiots comment. Though I would say they’re simply exploring their identity, not necessarily stupid. Lots of people don’t “find” themselves until they are in their 30s or even 40s. The idea that kids at 12 or 13 can responsibly make irreversible decisions about their lifelong health and identity, when 19 year olds consistently can’t figure out their college major in 4 years, is just nuts. As for parents and therapists, remember what happens to child actors who also have parents and managers to advise them?

As for how parents feel. Yes, overall society is still anti-trans but if you have a troubled tween/teen with hard to solve issues, this will look like the magic bullet. Besides, liberals don’t allow themselves to question appropriateness for their specific situation for fear of appearing anti-trans.
That’s why the current situation is so toxic.

Good post, Ian, especially the part about this being used as a wedge issue. MAGA is a fascist movement, and fascists always go after the “weakest targets” first. They are already signaling their intention to go after everyone else in the LGBTQ community, but they know they would lose support if they started with this intent.

Of course they will eventually go after everybody. That’s how fascism works. Fascists don’t have policies. They don’t have ideas. They only have enemies, and as they run out of enemies it becomes necessary to manufacture more. So they’ll go after gay people, people who use birth control, people who watch porn, non-Christians, people who wear masks, people who voice opposition to them in a public forum, etc.

If you don’t think MAGA is an actual, physical threat to your safety, it’s just because they haven’t gotten that far down their list yet.

The reason TERFs and the whole anti-trans movement are as wrong as 2 left feet is that they are essentialists. “You do what you do because of what you are” rather than the existentialist position ” You are what you are because of what you do”. This is as fundamental a philosophical differance as there is. As to the problem of cis men claiming to be Trans, a simple test is “do you live as a woman full time?”. If the answer is Yes, you’re dealing a Trans-woman, end of story. If they’ve gone through the trouble and expense to get their gender legacy changed, ditto. Also please note that surgical interventions on minors are VANISHINGLY RARE. Also wholly absent from this discussion have been the biologically indeterminate. According to a midwife friend of mine “In the US, 1% of live births annually result in some VISIBLE degree of gender ambiguity”. As it’s easier to “cut a little off that to add some on” you get a lot of “girls” that are in for a big surprise come puberty. The 1% also accounts for genetic conditions,like Klinefelter’s syndrome, where you have something other than the standard xx/xy dichotomy. I find the whining from the anti-trans crowd utterly laughable. “Just because I despise Jews and call for their extermination is no reason to call me a Nazi! Wah wah wah!”

There is no “liberal push back” against the anti-trans rage by the right. The liberals, such as they are, are doing their uttermost to shrug and turn away. It’s not their problem, is it?

Transsexuals are left to fight these battles on their own and to the extent they can — which isn’t much in anti-trans jurisdictions, which have passed and are implementing numerous restrictive and discriminatory anti-trans laws to interfere with the freedom of trans individuals of any age to receive appropriate medical care, use a public restroom, or appear in public in clothing that does not correspond to that appropriate to their gender as determined at birth.

While it is a political wedge issue, the upshot is that a marginalized minority is finding it harder and harder to even exist in many areas of the Anglo-sphere where for a brief period they were free to be themselves without interference from the state.

Niemoller’s lament is coming around again. Who cares?

Those who argue, endlessly, the intricacies of the topic and the attenuated academic fights over ‘cis’ and non, TERP and DERP and who knows what-all look foolish. The fascist right is an existential threat to perhaps thousands of people right now. But it never stops there.

And when your turn comes, do you say, “First they came for the gender-indeterminate….?”

DMC,

It’s the trans activists who are essentialists, and essentialist based on faith and proclamation alone.

That transwomen should need accorded all access and privileges granted to women, even when they are physically and yes, mentally different from women. That because transmen do something that is traditionally defined as feminine, they get to eradicate those concepts from women and woe befall the liberal who inadvertently trip up.

Rather than celebrating their freedom to be themselves and make their own space, as earlier generations of drag queens did exceptionally well.
the current crop of trans activists are targeting breaking up women’s spaces. And the public face of this activism is often inappropriately sexualized and would be considered fetishistic if applied to anything other than trans gendering situations.
That’s why a substantial chunk of the population is upset.

@Ian Welsh

Yes, why on earth would anyone make a big deal about wanting to not mutilate children or screw over biological women. What overly passionate weirdos for having an interest in such things. Trans may be a small percentage of the population, but by definition it isn’t just trans being affected.

I’d turn this around and ask why something that matters to such a narrow spectrum of the population (something like 0.5% of the population in the US, at most) has gotten such a huge political and business focus in the last few years. There’s nothing organic about this.

@Astrid

That females get disproportionately screwed over in all of this is very hard to ignore. I can very easily see where someone who claims womanhood itself is being colonized is coming from. I’ve definitely witnessed from a distance the absurd spectacle of attempts to browbeat biological gay women into being willing to try ‘girldick’. If they refuse the next move is to accuse them of being ‘genital fetishists’. At some point a common move is rape and death threats. Those are often very ubiquitous in trans heavy corners of the internet and social media. I won’t go as far as some feminists who basically seem to think aggression and violence of uniquely male attributes, because, hah, they absolutely aren’t (as far as I’m aware research basically seems to show that testosterone doesn’t increase absolute aggression but rather lowers the fuse time on when aggression might explode). But it isn’t hard to find M2F trans discourse that is almost indistinguishable from straight incel or MRA talk.

One of the rhetorical flourishes I’ve seen before is the claim that if someone wants to, for instance, found a new, female-only shelter, that’s perfectly fine. Aside from the fact that such things were supposed to already exist, when Arch-demon-mega-Satan Rowling used some of her money to do exactly that, she was attacked for it.

I work extensively with the homeless, and see damaged people come through all the time. I can vaguely appreciate what it must be like to run something like a women’s rape shelter and have to now navigate letting in male bodies that ‘identify’ as women. I’m sure the type of female who might end up in such a shelter is likely to be real receptive to that kind of intrusion. Whether most transwomen are actually a threat or not is an issue I won’t touch, but the perception and felt needs of someone in such a shelter should surely take priority. The exact opposite should be happening: new, all-inclusive shelters should be being made if there is a need for such a thing.

It is completely ridiculous to me to claim that trans activists are somehow politically weak, in either the US or the UK (I can’t say how it is outside of these two countries because I haven’t paid much attention. I would imagine Canada is pretty much identical to the US for the most part). They have plenty of pull and can apply plenty of pressure if things are at the point where someone feels a need to open an explicitly female only shelter, because none of the other existing ones can operate in such a manner.

What Soredemos said.

It took me awhile to figure out the “Right’s” “obsession” with trans issues.

At it’s best, the quarrel is with Libs having turned a human right (do what ya want, truly consenting adults, who cares) into a gas-lit red-herring “trans drone operators, we’re so progressive” as well as a full on propaganda front against one of the basic binding agents of society, the Normal Family (as defined by our entire evolution ‘cept for the last 20 years). Everything else, all the variations (long live the freaks), all the villages, (and empire), build out from family.

If you doubt me on the latter point, have a look at the WEF, or PolicyHorizons Canada. You will own nothing, including your wet bits, now interfaced and programmable; and you will be happy. Soo happy. Lest you accumulate even more social demerit points.

Best summary of why not drag storytime. By a drag queen.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1432635139805286401

Also, check out “Gays Against Groomers”.

@Astrid. Thank you for your comment. I’m concerned when men, who have no lived experience as a woman, can’t respect women’s boundaries. We can’t even discuss our concerns without being called, not only a TERF but a nazi and a fascist. I think trans women should be able to live their lives free of harassment and fear. I don’t know why this is such a complicated issue. Bathroom, changing room, prisons and sports can all be adapted for trans women so that biological women still have sex based rights.

The handling of trans is eerily similar to handling of COVID vaccine. Somehow it just settled on two camps that have religious level beliefs about their position, even though there’s next to no scientific validation for either position. Both sides talking about people who would be indubitably hurt (vaccine harm, elderly) by their approach as a tiny population and why are they complaining so much, speaking for those people as though they can’t think for themselves. Meanwhile the massive issue of Long Covid and living with this endemic disease forever is not talked about, except for a tiny fringe that is mocked by both camps.

“Too cynical a view you say?”

Nope, not at all cynical. It’s our reality. It’s what they do, and unfortunately how we respond. The smoke and mirrors, and the sleight of hand are very effective, which is why they keep doing it.

@ multitude of poors,

. . . I find it bleakly ironic that some of the most vociferous lovers of George W. Bush and other Republicans that I’ve run into have been LGBTQ persons. ” . . .

Were you able to find out how rich they were? Or at least how affluent they were? Or richness/ affluence aspirational? Could the LGBTQs for Bush/Trump/etc. be preponderantly what are called Log Mansion Republicans?

When liberal politicians, CEOs, thought leaders, etc. vigorously defend human rights explicitly including trans rights, in defiance of the recent spate of anti-trans laws, anti-woman laws, anti-drag wearing laws and on and on and actually does something to corral the anti-everything “I don’t like” festivities of law-making, I’ll consider them doing something other than “shrugging and turning away.”

Until then, nah.

i am staying out of this one, as so many here posted so much in such better ways than i ever could, but i do have this to share from my personal experiences.

an ex of mine, hetero white male blue collar working class tradesman, was periodically called upon to service women’s shelters. primarily because he was one of the few tradespeople who could pass the rigorous background checks to cross the barrier into the safe zone of these spaces. he was as clean as a whistle, and thus could go into certain areas necessary for work only when the women being sheltered were not there to be disturbed.

if he had to pass background checks to come in to make sure the place wasn’t going to violate health and safety, then why should anyone who passed through puberty male just be allowed to come in there by saying “I am a woman, hear me roar”?

it was clearly a safety issue that he not be allowed at all except as determined by his special status, special need and accommodation being made to prevent disruption of the purpose those places have been invented for.

yet anyone else who fancies themselves a woman can just prance right in?

as a disclaimer, my mother was a severely abused woman who had a lengthy relationship with a man who eventually bashed in the entire side of her face with a gun (pistol whipped) and ripped out half her hair. the cops would not even arrest him and of course my mother was not going to press charges (he was in a criminal gang, and she and all of us would likely have ended up assassinated for “snitching”). she had a hole in her sinus so deep, she could breath through her face, the bones were crushed and my grandmother had to fetch a wig for her to leave the hospital. her eye stayed permanently and visibly askew after that.

yes, her partner was a psycho nut who happened to be a male. but i would really have disliked the idea that she was going to a shelter into which any man might step foot just by proclaiming himself “one of us”. in the end she didn’t go to a shelter, she came home and slept on a spare mattress in my teenage bedroom. but at that time it was an all-woman/some prepubertal children household, although not a secure zone. she did not leave the premises for quite some time, and only her own brother and sons were allowed in.

Couple perspectives from psychoanalysis:

Consider this thought-exercise premise as true, even if you don’t believe it: when we desire something, we also experience an obstacle blocking us from getting it.

1)
It’s common for political situations of varying intensity to develop where “that specific group of people right there” takes the role of an obstacle that’s blocking a desire.

That [minority] is [taking away / threatening / blocking our access to / the reason we can’t get] our [jobs / security / health / sexual satisfaction], etc

It’s common because that kind of rhetorical mapping can both

a) activate deep-seated emotions around the desire that’s blocked

b) act as a kind of toxic dump for the strong feelings that can surround a blocked desire: channeling rage, acting as an escape valve for inadequacy, etc, which allows people participating in that political project an experience of relief of those feelings

Can the political rhetoric around trans people be easily mapped onto this form? Is it easy to see that form in something like ”Trans people are threatening safety in bathrooms and other spaces, preventing achievement in sports, blocking us from protecting our children”?

Now consider the types of political dynamics in the past that have taken root around rhetoric of that form.

Can we see those kinds of political dynamics forming now?

Is that something you want to encourage?

2)
Another thought experiment premise: at the same time as we are constantly experiencing obstacles to our own desires, we experience other people as transcending those obstacles and having access to their own desires.

Think of this as an internal dynamo which can produce energy for all kinds of things – neuroses, rage, creativity, drive, etc – powered by the perspective “they are enjoying themselves in that way and I’m not”

Now, imagine there is a specific extremely small social group whose defining characteristic is being able to access a specific desire they have.

That desire is also both common and deeply felt (for example, wanting to feel comfortable in one’s gender role and performance, or being able to enjoy specific types of performing ones gender).

When that group starts to gain broad social visibility, what happens to the dynamo within people? Does it produce more “energy” and create more heightened responses in people?

What kinds of things are people fueled by that energy capable of constructing?

Thank you, Ian 🙂

“When men are denied justice, they go to war. This is our war, only we are fighting it with banners instead of guns.” Alice Paul 1917.

It is obvious that the “trans panic”, is being orchestrated by powerful interests. That being said it doesn’t mean there is not harm being done to anyone. Women have historically been told to be silent when they are being pushed back, to wait their turn, to think of the poor other victims of a tragedy greater than “mere women’s issues”.

At a time when the language police are out in full force and we attempt to stop using slurs , we coin new slurs for women. TERF, Becky, Karen, cis-momen are all new slurs produced in an era when we let other groups decide how they want to be named.

Recognizing that the Global West, led by the US is staging a proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine does not make it any less tragic for the Ukrainians.
Staging this distraction on the small woman’s stage in the world does not make it less costly for women.

This is what aboutism. What about nuclear war? What about covid? Yes. These are also problems. People can have opinions on multiple topics.

This topic has been blown out of proportion because there is a constant push from men to be allowed in women’s spaces (pretending to be lesbians, access to women’s shelters, rape crisis centers, women’s prisons, women’s sports) and the word woman/mother is being abandon by officials in society (hospitals (cervix havers), governments, within laws ) and replaced with “birthing body” “vagina owners” “people who bleed” and on and on.
Besides being demeaning, these terms are used to break up the sex class of women (who are oppressed on the basis of sex) from being able to organize and women are losing jobs and friends merely for stating a women is an adult human female and sex is real.
Sure, nuclear war is worse. But putting men in women’s prisons where they go on to rape, abuse and impregnate women (Demi Minor) is actually quite important. People generally understand that housing men in women’s prisons is a human rights abuse. Unfortunately, at the moment people are perfectly willing to pretend not to know which sex someone is and men are currently housed in women’s prisons.

Women only spaces are important for women and were created by women—men opposed and deliberately sabotaged women’s fight for public toilets, men did not willing give women their spaces—Do women have to give up their hard won rights for women only spaces just because men are violent to other men? Should we allow gay men in women’s prisons and spaces? Men are violent to them as well. Are women human shields for some men?

The reason you never hear anything about transmen is they are women and everyone knows it. This is about men demanding access to women’s words, spaces, and policing Women’s ability to even talk about their experience. No one is demanding we stop saying men and start using ejaculators or penis havers or sperm producers. This isn’t really a debate about trans rights. It’s actually a debate about women’s rights and whether women have the rights they fought for and won within the last 100 years.

Sure, the world is burning but if you honestly can’t understand why half the population might be upset about an (apparently PMC social Marxist driven) effort to redefine their gender and permitting physically male bodies into formerly women only spaces, then maybe the problem isn’t with them.

Trans can be easily accommodated by through giving them resources (fairly low given their small number, though they are overrepresented in the homeless and abuse victim populations, unfortunately) to create their own private safe space and services, funding comparatively unbiased studies about best ways to handle transitions, generally economic and health services for them and everybody else, and full social acceptance of trans people in the public sphere. That’s what neither side of the trans debate is allowing. Instead, both sides are staking out women’s spaces and squeezing actual women in the middle.

BTW, the whole trans representation thing is just like representation of minorities. So we pat our backs for voting for Obama, who has no African American ancestors and grew up with his white upper middle class (almost certainly intelligence assets) grandparents for diversity. Obama’s engagement with black American communities is just terrible, arguably worse than any postwar white president (except maybe Clinton). We congratulate ourselves for admiring Caitlyn Jenner, an rich old white person not known for progressive politics or knowing anything about a homeless trans identifying teen running away from an abusive home situation.