The phrase “self-absorption” keeps coming up, which seems to sum this up.
I do have a close acquaintance who is trans, and his lived this way for decades. They’re an interesting and pleasant person, but it anyone meeting them would quickly realise they are totally self-absorbed. There conversion is almost exclusively about three topics:
1. Themselves
2. Gay and trans
3. Suffering
Everything has to revolve around them, their likes and their dislikes, which is sad, although it does mean we always have something to talk about … them.
Truth is that rather than identify as she/her, he/she or they/them, most trans people identify as nothing but me/I.
There are undoubtedly people that do have genuine gender issues, but right now, and particularly for youngsters, this seems like more of a fashion statement and a desire for attention. Hopefully, for those where it is genuine (and there are definitely some of those) we can seek full acceptance in society, and for the dedicated followers of fashion (the vast majority IMHO) they will grow up and still have their bits intact.
Hear hear. We employed a ‘trans’ person at our work. He left because he said I made him feel ‘uncomfortable’ – I think I had made some allo-allo style N**i themed jokes and ridiculed the terrible music of one of his trans heroes.
He had a 1st class degree in philosophy but hadn’t read any Schopenhauer etc only Marx.
He was fabulously dull. I would ask him what he did at the weekend and he would say things like ‘went for a walk with my parents’. He was 27!
The day he left he came into work dressed as a woman. What he didn’t realise was that none of us gave a flying f**k about his self image and really just wanted to know if he could do the job or not. It’s like the revenge of the nerds.
This chimes with my own experience. My stepson has (had) a ‘trans’ schoolfriend in his class. Female to male transition, suddenly relocated here. The child was completely accepted by the class. Quite a decent footballer also, and made it into the team. Gradually it emerged that this kid was just a complete a-hole and nothing but a troublemaker. And why shouldn’t they be – all manner of people are allowed to be a-holes. But once the parents figured out (a) their child was completely accepted in their chosen gender and (b) their child was becoming deeply unpopular, all hell broke loose (naturally). Pulled out for home schooling, then back in again, then relocated to another school. Meantime the host school now carries with it various Ofsted accusations of transphobia amongst the pupils. One senses that acceptance is greeted with horror by these notoriety seekers – it’s literally their worst nightmare.
But what you failed to understand, as my boss used to say, is that you think all people are the same.
Having to walk Jeremy Corbyn around his allotment is a serious undertaking.
Calling it dull is treason and would give you 30 years in a gulag.
I worked for a non profit organisation when a new staff member joined and declared themselves non binary. This resulted in long documents discussing how they were to be treated, how their status should be explained to those who used our service and also which office toilet they should use. It seemed to me at the time that the person was happy to receive a much larger degree of attention than any other new employee and that if all new employees had required this amount of attention, the organisation would get no work done.
”Main Traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder according to the DSM.
1.Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence,
unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
3. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by,should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that,wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply)
5. Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations
6. Is “interpersonally exploitative”, i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends
7. Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
8. Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her
9. Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted
**The criteria above are based on: American Psychiatric Association. (2000); Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth edition,”
Why doesn’t anybody treat what they’ve actually got?
I ask that question every time I need to fill out a ballot involving candidates vying for federal office. Why do the two major parties screen for narcissists as their preferred candidates?
I worked for a non profit company when a new employee declared themselves to be non binary. This resulted in pages of documents from. HR explaining how we should address them and how their status should be explained to those that the organisation came into contact with. Along with a discussion with all staff members about the documents and chats with the person about which office toilet they would use. At the time it struck me that if every new employee demanded that amount of attention, the organisation would never achieve anything.
Completely agree. How convenient it would be to claim to be no one in particular and bound by no rules. If that were the case, we could chose to be married one day and then single the next, depending on who we met at a bar.
We could chose to be male when confronted by a pretty woman, but then be a woman when danger is afoot. We could chose to be black when they are handing out racial preferences and white when we feel it would help. For that matter, we could chose to be dirt poor and unemployed when it came time to pay the bill, yet be wealthy when responding to the invitation.
This state of mind used to be diagnosed as a psychosis, but now it is a source of pride. I can only pray for a revival.
Great post.
Idea that the whole of society should somehow agree with demented, unscientific rubbish of mentally ill people is preposterous.
What happened to Enlightenment and evidence?
That’s a great comment, and unlike me and many commentators on here you do have some first hand-hand experience.
It sounds unkind, but self- obsession, however evolved, seems really to be at the heart of this phenomenon. After all, we live in the most self obsessed culture (at least as regards ordinary people rather than, say, Caligula!) there has ever been
Claire D
1 year ago
Stories like these make me wonder what would happen if these people were placed somewhere pastoral, in a friendly hard-working community. No make-up or fancy clothes available. Hair is cut short for health reasons. Everyone wears comfortable simple clothes. There is digging to be done, planting and harvesting – long hours of work. Good food and drink, music and stories round the fire at the end of the day (no TV, computers or any gadgets). Sleep, then more work each and every day. How long would their confusion last under these conditions ?
What a strange, artificial world we have created in just over 200 years.
I started wondering why these mental conditions develop and one reason could be too much self contemplation, too much time spent on this and not enough time in activating the body and mind with purposeful tasks. Is this down to laziness, inability to identify or focus on meaningful activities, insecurity in comparisons to others, etc.? I’ve no idea really but the earlier generations in the 20th C had to graft and suffer a lot more than nowadays to carve out a more prosperous lifestyle and didn’t have the time, energy or media channels available to develop such conditions. Social media is undoubtedly a huge contributing factor in different ways. Your suggestions could be a good idea.
Extended prosperity and a lack of real, existential war, is the main cause, IMO. War tends to buck up individuals once a century. We may be close to it again.
I started wondering why these mental conditions develop and one reason could be too much self contemplation, too much time spent on this and not enough time in activating the body and mind with purposeful tasks. Is this down to laziness, inability to identify or focus on meaningful activities, insecurity in comparisons to others, etc.? Apart from that, I’ve no idea really but the earlier generations in the 20th C had to graft and suffer a lot more than nowadays to carve out a more prosperous lifestyle and didn’t have the time, energy or media channels available to develop such conditions. Social media is undoubtedly a huge contributing factor in different ways. Your suggestions could be a good idea.
Or just had 2 emotionally available, unselfish parents. Both parents who set boundaries and don’t act as their child’s friend. Don’t manipulate their child for their selfish needs.
Exactly. Except for mating and reproduction, sex would be irrelevant in those circumstances and ‘gender identity’ would simply not exist.
Farmers are probably the nearest that we have to your description and they have no time for this nonsense, particularly if they work with livestock. A castrated bull is a bullock, not a heifer.
Max Price
1 year ago
I miss bull dykes, twinks, transvestites and old school trannies. They were a bit different but just went about their fabulous or troubled or mundane lives. They seem so strong, understated and dignified now. Not giving a f**k what the mainstream thought. These people didn’t debased themselves seeking validation. They were queer and they knew it.
I reckon that’s just a few examples on a long list. One addition – the Victorian Guardsman dressed up to the nines like a peacock, guarding the Queen by day, and getting shagged in an alleyway by night.
The only thing that’s new, perhaps, is the rebranding of this old wine in new bottles in ways, designed to bring maximum likes to insecure people.
And the new generation are frighteningly populated with adolescent girls. A phenomenon previously unheard of. What is propelling that? The same fears and feelings that likewise contributed to everything from the Salem Witch Trials to anorexia. Hysteria.
Lindsay S
1 year ago
Young people today! *head in hands* far too sensitive! Don’t put me in a box! They cry and then put themselves in a box. Get all worked up over being misgendered whilst insisting that their pronouns are genderless plurals!
I get growing up not wanting to conform, I did it myself, however it helps when you don’t get your knickers in a twist over other peoples opinions on the subject to the degree that you expect society and language to change to suit you.
Good comment. Yes I remember when not wanting to conform/rebelling was about not caring what anybody else thought, you were going to be you!
William R Jackson
1 year ago
Reading this piece, I sense that you are describing hurt children trying to make sense of confused/disordered childhoods. In otherwords ‘the child’ overwhelming ‘the adult’ which pretty much explains the angst, defence, confusion and fear of confrontation.
Much of our society is marked by groups who will not, or are not capable of taking responsibility for themselves. Like ‘children’ they demand attention and make a lot of noise.
My question is, when will we see the behaviour for what it is (child), and stop placating and rewarding it?
You might like to read, if you haven’t already, Games People Play by Eric Berne. He goes on about the roles people step into and that includes children, adults and parents.
I’m not your addressee, but thank you so much for posting your comment. I looked up Berne’s book and hope to get started on it soon. God bless you, and have a wonderful rest of your day!
What does it mean not to fit neatly into a sub-category of a whimsical and incoherent – albeit highly fashionable – conceptual framework?
Well nothing really, and it frankly deserves about as much investigation as the t-shirt choice of teenagers.
And I must say, taking this kind of stuff even remotely seriously only serves to strengthen the completely undeserved legitamacy of gender ideology and the likelihood of confused, attention craving people leaning into it. I see it as nothing more than a shortcut to social acceptance (and oppression points) in leiu of the presentation of any genuinely appealing character traits.
Unfortunately we do have to take them seriously, because they are the useful idiots of sadistic paedophiles who like drugging and castrating kids.
S Turner
1 year ago
Looking at this, the authors seem to have had troubling upbringings and have had negative experiences with both genders (absent father and a seemingly mentally abusive mother in one of their cases). As a result, they can’t seem to bring themselves to identify as either, perhaps in fear of becoming like the person that hurt them?
All a lay man’s opinion and definitely not to be taken as gospel by any means, but I do wonder if these people would benefit from therapy or some other mental health treatment to accept who they actually are.
I always thought it odd that they call themselves non binary but then choose plural pronouns.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
In a world where people suffer from the likes of cancer, and defects from birth, who have to suffer violence, real opression, poverty, war…. WHO GIVES A DAMN?!!!!
You have to, as some of the real oppression is generated on children by such believers. Closing the Tavistock isn’t enough, now they should investigate and prosecute those who kept it going. Next step is get rid of ‘Drag Queen’ events for children. Sadly, it can’t be ignored, it is abuse and it starts when they are very young. It has to be opposed and removed like a cancer. Either that or in a few years time the BBC will be explaining how yet another abuse scandal continued for so long.
Matthew Powell
1 year ago
Modern political thought has disappeared down the postmodernism rabbit hole but has forgotten that postmodern white rabbit, does not believe in identity itself.
The result has been a Frankenstein’s monster, of Rawlsian liberalism and Franco-American postmodernism, Rawlsianists, enthusiastically trying to categorise and define all these new identities and harness them as part of its project for political hegemony, whist the identities themselves are undergoing metastatic growth from the irradiating influence of postmodernism, which threatens to not only to overwhelm the political viability of the project but undercut the whole concept of identity itself.
Pursuing the endless goal of perfect equality, left wing liberalism has become its own carcinogen. By providing preferential treatment to those with recognised protected characteristics, it incentivises an endless multiplication of identities, each demanding the power of the state is used to rescue it from its oppression. If the political left has come to believe that future of the modern state is as a kind of identerian Leviathan, then non-binary identities actually threaten to become a kind of Russell’s Paradox at its heart, an identity, which is not an identity, and so collapses identities into a subjective, ungovernable morass, as hard categories are replaced with spectra of subjective feelings, which are impossible to ground political power in.
In an delicious irony, in order to retain the cause of identity as a political project, how long before the left has to oppress, the oppressed identities it has nurtured?
A good observation which I keep coming back to. I think the modern Progressive movements only half-understand, if that, the ideas of post-modernism. Some of the ideological heroes, like Focault and Derrida, would never place such emphasis on validation, nor consent for that matter. Born of those assume a neutral, floating “true self,” which is anathema to whole post-modern idea.
This is why I think the term “post-modern” is a misnomer. It derives from the same desire to disintegrate further and further and classify each step. In many ways, it’s more hyper-modern, or perhaps end-stage modernity
cynthia callahan
1 year ago
The missing piece of the puzzle. “Father-shaped hole.” Young children believe their parents are perfect. Growing up leads to learning that parents are flawed human beings like yourself. As a retired public school teacher I can tell you our children are Not Growing Up. For many reasons they are not developing emotionally like prior generations did.
Yes, and the relevance of which we have yet to come to grips with. I daresay this is a long-term trend. Victorian children were put to work in all sorts of iniquitous circumstances. My own mother started work in a cotton mill at the age of 14. Teenagers weren’t ‘invented’ till after WW2.
I also think it’s too early to pass any kind of lucid judgment on this process, including whether it’s a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing. At this moment in history, when we’re starting to gain a foothold on some kind of perspective, all we can do is pass our own individual judgments in comparison with our own experiences. But to add, that those experiences didn’t lead to a particularly coherent society, or a peaceful one either!
My own thoughts tend towards neutrality. Let those who wish to indulge (or feel they have to indulge) in the processing of their experience by writing books about it, but don’t expect the rest of the world to either indulge them or even take much notice. If the world does, it’ll be because of some merit such as artful writing, which Mary alludes to. It could also be an entirely necessary process brought about by post-industrialisation. What really interests me is how these individuals will view themselves in 10, 20, 30 years, when they’ll have the benefit of the type of lived experience which most commentators on Unherd might have.
It is bad for many. As a former teacher and supply teacher I spent many an hour talking to 15/16 year olds who refused to accept teaching, but could have walked into a job and wanted to, but where being held captive in school because the punishments would fall on their parents if they truanted. 15/16 year olds starting at the bottom would immediately re-shape society and work. No need to import millions of the 3rd or even European poor to do the cheap jobs. Once pay packets and the enclosed deductions were understood,and the effort that was needed to provide the taxes that Governments crave but squander, it might actually make sense to lower the voting age.
Might be something worth an essay yourself. While helping my late wife in her teaching days, I noticed that some kids had a sense of entitlement that the world centered on them. Often they were the target of others becoming “the other” now so in vogue. Once that happened isolation was complete.
Steve Elliott
1 year ago
I think the whole non-binary thing is just part of a juvenile need to be different. Like the kid in the movies who discovers he has superpowers and cries out “I always knew I was different from all the other kids”. It’s no surprise that celebrities have taken to this because it’s all part of their need for attention. I think it’s just a phase they’re going through and they’ll probably just grow out of it.
I also realised that although I think it’s daft, it just doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s a threat in the way that trans women with penises want to get into women’s safe places is a threat. It’s almost the exact opposite of the trans issue since a transwomen is a man who identifies as a woman but someone who is non binary doesn’t identify with either men or women. All the same, it would be interesting to see which changing rooms they use at the gym.
Actually, I’m not sure that they only want to be dfferent. Mostly, it seems to me, it is a desire to conform to one group i.e. their peers whilst at the same time differentiating themselves from others (usually older people, but sometimes those of a different ethnicity or political viewpoint), and has it ever really been that different? The only change is what they are doing to fit in with their peers; that and the fact that the juvenile years seem to now extend well in a person’s twenties or even thirties.
I view this sort of thing through a very strong lens, my three level theory that we are Creatives, or Responsibles, or Subordinates.
Responsibles are people that live according to some established cultural and/or religious framework. They follow the rules. Usually they stay safe.
Creatives are people trying to create something new. But that means they will almost certainly fail, as in tech startups, as in writers and artists. The creative life starts with the descent into the underworld of the unconscious, and there be dragons and monsters. According to chaps like Joseph Campbell, this Hero’s Journey usually ends in failure, and success usually means becoming a Sacrificial Hero on the border of Order and Chaos.
Imagining that you have a “right” to be creative or non-binary and have society validate you, because oppression, is utter ignorant folly. It means you literally know nothing.
Wilfred Davis
1 year ago
Surely everybody has ‘difficulty fitting in’ throughout life: you can’t expect to be rapturously received by every group in society, or be totally at home in every social setting.
Sometimes you aren’t going to be welcome, not everybody wants you as a friend, some social gatherings are going to be awkward, you won’t always fit in everywhere.
To grow up,one needs to learn that the world has got better things to do than conform itself to me, me, me.
Indeed it is of course logically impossible for the world to conform itself to the preferences of every individual.
As grandma would say, “You ain’t the only pebble on the beach.”
John Solomon
1 year ago
Two questions present themselves : first, why would anyone publish this tripe? (the books, not the Unherd article!) Answer (harking back to the Unherd article several days ago) because the publishers think they will make a profit by selling the books.
Second question, why would anyone in their right mind pick one of these books off a bookshop’s shelves, glance through it, and then hand over money for it (instead of putting it back)? (Even with online purchases, you don’t have to press the ‘purchase’ button). The only reason I can think of is that the purchaser thinks that the book will validate their own worthless opinions – I do hope there are other, better, reasons!
(I do hope the excellent Ms Harrington got freebie ‘review’ copies……)
I find my occasional visits to bookshops to be increasingly depressing. So many books, so few worth reading.
Philip Stott
1 year ago
Thank you for reading those so that we don’t have to!
Richard Parker
1 year ago
“And both clearly experience this as an unhappy, tiring state of affairs” – sad to say, but that’s pretty much how I’m starting to feel about this whole SNAFU. Moving on…
Lord Rochester
1 year ago
The interesting thing about those who declare themselves non-binary (and arguably trans, particularly teenage transboys) and so on is that they are far more invested in notions of a binary and the reductive stereotypes that follow than the constraining ‘they’ (e.g. heteronormative (yawn) society) that they claim to be rebelling against.
Except it isn’t funny the power these people wield. They abuse children, and the state and its minions kow-tow and co-operate. Read Spike and the Drag Queen scandal. It reports on how librarians lie to prevent parents knowing what actually goes on.
Agreed. And this is what the likes of Jordan Peterson have been pointing out for many years now. He sees the danger of it all and has been trying (reasonably successfully) to wake people up.
Just annoyed. pronouns, questions… Like the old question if you want a paper or plastic bag? Do you want whole, non-fat, low fat,oat or soy milk? One can only make so many decisions in a day and have mental space for only so much in a day. If they could stop socially offloading their discomfort on to others! What do Black women say? Don’t make me do your emotional labor? Yeah, that!
Miriam Cotton
1 year ago
The expression ‘up themselves’ comes to mind.
j morgan
1 year ago
If they didn’t call themselves non-binary then how would us plebs know they were better / more interesting than we are?
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
No. It’s fashionable nonsense. Straight and gay seen as dull. Gay young people, fearing homophobia, and wanting to be current, announce themselves as trans.
Jake Dee
1 year ago
Would I be wrong in guessing that none of these writers had what my grandfather called “A Real Job” ? Get outside, mow grass, stack boxes, bake bread even run a machine and many of these illusions will disappear
jerry lawler
1 year ago
Are they not just creating another binary? Non-binary vs binary. Isn’t being fluid just another self catorization?
Does anyone remember the ending of the series, “Six Feet Under”? I can’t remember the characters’ names anymore, but Rachel Griffith’s character dies as her brother KEEPS talking, as he had all throughout the series. The wokes won’t notice, as long as they can keep analyzing their feelings!
Michelle Johnston
1 year ago
Mary poses the question in an interesting way and the answer is no.
Setting aside the trivial issue of appearance (and kids have been experimenting with that forever cf Mick Jagger wearing make-up in the late 60s, skinhead girls etc etc ) increasingly boys and girls are being encouraged to do all sorts of things that fifty years ago were considered the exclusive province of one or the other BUT they are still boys and girls. We are quite correctly not putting them in the blue or the pink box just letting them find the natural way to fulfil their potential.
That is quite separate from the notion that some children are dysfunctional as a consequence of poor upbringing (and my daughter has a change student in her class who surprise surprise has all sorts of other problems). Giving it a label is intended to show empathy but it merely fans the flames because however much we enshrine for instance the security of gender re-assignment in Law it’s never enough there has to be something else except in this case there is not.
Non-BInary never existed fifty years ago but boys and girls who wanted to pursue things which were considered inappropriate for their given gender did. As a girlfriend said to me when she told her boyfriend’s mother thirty years ago that she could use a power tool that was the end of the relationship. It’s boxing in people’s interests and aspirations that should pass into history, not the fact they are a boy or a girl.
I married a 1970’s Tom-boy, there was something about the ‘bows and frills girly girls who couldn’t use a can-opener’ (deliberate exageration) that put me off them. Tho’ I wasn’t impressed when my now wife entered a mixed team in my Uni 5-a-side cup competition using assumed names – and yes she was my girlfriend then. No, I didn’t kick them out, but much as she and her hockey friends beat (literally, I bled more in that than any football game, and I played hard semi-pro level football) the living daylights out of me in a mixed hockey tournament, their all male opposition saw that they didn’t get past the first round. Maybe she was right to have kept quiet, as did my two best male friends who provide the male muscle in her team. As I may have thought the small gym, prominent wall bars & the penchant for opposing players to try and put one through them a bit too dangerous for women, particularly my girlfriend!
Thank you for an interesting story. Several of my girlfriends have worked, as I have, in very male-dominated industries, which early on made them challenge ‘who they were.’ Their response to this kind of thing is simply they do not believe in labels. I think now they have entered middle age and are entirely comfortable with having a mix of characteristics and qualities some of which were defined as M or F years ago they just get on with life.
As so many others have said the giveaway is self-absorption which stands out, even more, when the audience, us, just is not interested. There are 1001 more important issues.
Last edited 1 year ago by Michelle Johnston
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago
There are two types of people in the world, ones who are binary and ones who aren’t. Yeah the crap jokes just write themselves.
What times in which we live.
Ukraine keeps resolutely kicking Russia in the bollocks; Armenia & Azerbaijan throw down yet again over Nagorno-Karabakh; China rattles its sabre across the Taiwan Strait… So, with the world’s assorted wars & potential wars threatening to all join hands in a grand Eurasian murderfest, maybe the one upside is even less people outside the virtual salons of the chatterati will pay attention to people saying they are ‘non-binary’ 😉
Last edited 1 year ago by Perry de Havilland
Tony Sandy
1 year ago
Imposter syndrome. This is a well known psychological disorder. Why not leave it at that? Also ego and non-committal seems to come into all this. The last two hundred years? No the last twenty years more like and possibly even less than that. I have met men who are more pretty and feminine than other males and vice-versa. Also one person who was genuinely non-binary, not as a mental statement but by birth (hermaphrodite). All this stupid surgery too, which the state will have to correct and be blamed for, like the Tavistock Clinic – anything but grow up and be responsible for your own actions.
The Tavistock may be blamed, but the purveyors and the enablers in that abuse scandal look highly likely to get off scot free. Time to prosecute these people for child abuse.
Gayle Rosenthal
1 year ago
Being trans seems like the latest, greatest and newest way to avoid becoming an adult. Actually if you are a trans-child, it’s a way to avoid adolescence and all those yucky hormones the “adults” talk about incessantly. But oh wait …. you mean it involves even MORE hormones ? Oh dear the world is indeed a scary place !
Tony Sandy
1 year ago
Perhaps there is no such thing as non-binary. Maybe it’s just ego and childishness or the feminine desire for attention gone mad (and no, I don’t have anything against femininity because I wouldn’t be here (and neither would any of you (or indeed these ungrateful whingers)), if not for women as JK Rowling calls them
Paula G
1 year ago
I suppose many people haven’t learned to see themselves as individuals who can take some criticism and odd looks. I also am shocked how non binary and trans folks have embraced the binary stereotypes.
There are the plastic, trout-pout, highly-styled bio females out there who live for selfie posing, but not a large percentage. Yet those who feel a need to become a new woman-identified gender aspire to this sort of femininity, exclusively. I suppose it is the need to feel this Uber-feminine femininity makes the difference to go under the knife. And women who want to take off their shirts in public and have male privilege, or other delights.
In the 70s and 8s you could be a man and wear your hair long, and wear make up and no one wondered if they had changed gender. Hair bands, Goths…
And women could be d*kes or tomboys and there still was no gender confusion.
I test more alike with men on all sorts of tests of interests and even on dating profiles. None the less, I have never doubted my being a woman because…women contain multitudes. As do men. I find the narrowing, the channeling rather bizarre. Male and Female are wide enough umbrella concepts, with lots of choices, whether typical or atypical. I mean, just claim it!
Still, I guess some women long to be men, and men who long to be woman, and others who just despair and want their despair known.
I just like to keep things simple. I used to hate having to choose paper or plastic bags, or whole milk, low fat milk, non fat milk, soy or oat milk, at Starbucks. I do not want to have to inquire as to what gender all those with whom I am interacting with woke up to be on the day. Yet, apparently we must. I do wish it was a more stoic society.
Mick James
1 year ago
Given we live in a world where the pressure to conform to gender sterotypes has never been lighter, it is strange to find a movement of young people reinforcing them by declaring that they can’t “be” male or female because they are not masculine or feminine enough, (or consistently enough). It’s like being called a “girl” at school just because you don’t like rugby. Worse, they are committing us to a dualism where not only is the body seen as merely the “vehicle” for a controlling, gendered spirit but that “soul” is also the authentic, unitary and unchallengeable self. . And where so far from being encouraged to live with (or, better, as) our bodies (with all their imperfections) they are now rebellious enemies to be tamed. It’s all very retrograde.
John Murray
1 year ago
Boy George did it better over forty years ago now, and with better tunes too. Utter tosh. Having looked their pictures up, neither is even remotely androgynous (one is a woman with short hair, the other is a man with hairdo). Both desperately trying to pretend they are more interesting than they actually are.
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago
I am sure people starving in developing countries and lacking basic necessities don’t agonise over these issues.
Adam McDermont
1 year ago
People with gender issues have existed throughout history, so this manifestation today is nothing new. I have genuine sympathy for someone who feels that they are in the wrong body. However, the sheer explosion in people identifying as he, she, they, this, that etc. points to something engendered by propaganda. The purveyors of this are nefarious. As this article detailed, people with gender identity issues have often experienced difficult childhoods. I do wonder how many young people from a stable and happy home, who have never been exposed to trans-propaganda, have affirmed that they belong to a ”non-binary” identity? The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
Caroline Watson
1 year ago
Everyone is ‘non-binary’. No one fits a perfect set of ‘gender’ stereotypes. It is insulting and one-dimensional to assume that they do. The most apparently macho men will go to pieces over their children and furry animals, whilst the most apparently traditional women, who call themselves ‘housewives’, will often be skilled mechanics or DIY practitioners. I have worked on farms for years and there are a great many ‘traditional’ farmers’ wives who can lamb ewes, mend tractors, wallpaper huge houses, deal with blocked lavatories and broken generators and still turn out exquisite baking.
No one has to conform to socially constructed stereotypes, but every mammal is either male or female and cannot change from one to the other. Mammals are sexually dimorphic because that is how they reproduce. Sex-defined behaviours are all around mating, reproduction and the protection of young, and are apparent in all species. Behaviours that only humans have invented – wearing clothes, doing specific jobs, adopting or giving names, playing with toys or at sports – are all artificial social constructs and have no relation to sex. Anyone can do any of them but it doesn’t make them the other sex or ‘non-binary’.
For most of the time, particularly in the workplace or at school, what sex people are is irrelevant, although which toilets and changing rooms they use is not.
I agree we are all a mixture of masculine and feminine to varying degrees and we are all perfectly free to manifest these traits in society. The more extreme manifestations, at either end, would not historically have been conducive to the way society had to be run, being a matter of physical prowess and courage in men, and child bearing capabilities in women. It was understandable they were favoured. Nowadays they have both lost their urgency. So many of us wish to be other than what we have been conferred, be it brains, beauty, strength, weight, health, personality. We deal with the cards we have been dealt. We don’t take to the streets.
Matthew Powell
1 year ago
Modern political thought has disappeared down the postmodernism rabbit hole but has forgotten that postmodern white rabbit, does not believe in identity itself.
The result has been a Frankenstein’s monster, of Rawlsian liberalism and Franco-American postmodernism, Rawlsianists, enthusiastically trying to categorise and define all these new identities and harness them as part of its project for political hegemony, whist the identities themselves are undergoing metastatic growth from the irradiating influence of postmodernism, which threatens to not only to overwhelm the political viability of the project but undercut the whole concept of identity itself.
Pursuing the endless goal of perfect equality, left wing liberalism has become its own carcinogen. By providing preferential treatment to those with recognised protected characteristics, it incentivises an endless multiplication of identities, each demanding the power of the state is used to rescue it from its oppression. If the political left has come to believe that future of the modern state is as a kind of identerian Leviathan, then non-binary identities actually threaten to become a kind of Russell’s Paradox at its heart, an identity, which is not an identity, and so collapses identities into a subjective, ungovernable morass, as hard categories are replaced with spectra of subjective feelings, which are impossible to ground political power in.
In an delicious irony, in order to retain the cause of identity as a political project, how long before the left has to oppress, the oppressed identities it has nurtured?
Last edited 1 year ago by Matthew Powell
George Scipio
1 year ago
The concept of alienation seems relevant here. I’m surprised Harrington doesn’t see its explanatory force. Experiencing oneself as outside all social forms or bodily categories, which have of course become very stable over three million years of evolution, would seem to be a classic case of alienation. Maybe it’s time to apply this currently rather unfashionable idea, which has a rich philosophical hinterland, to today’s strange gender phenomenon. A human wanting to become the opposite sex represents the ultimate success of the neoliberal invasion of the self, with the non-binary path being a work in progress.
I’d agree with that. And also, the concept of fascination with “otherness”. And aren’t we all?
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
Shouldn’t a book about being non-binary be entitled “Neither the Above”?
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Everyone’s unique. Gender is just one part of that uniqueness, and to anyone sensible in these liberated days, it’s a very minor part. These people grandstand on this minor part and our society seems to like humouring them.
Katy Hibbert
1 year ago
Short answer – no. “Non-binary” is bollocks.
Melanie Mabey
1 year ago
Cluster B as Josh Slocum would say.
Kirsten Walstedt
1 year ago
I think Horn might rather be a mackerel.
jonathan carter-meggs
1 year ago
No one can know the mind of another, only their own. Consequently it is impossible for a biological male (or female) to know what it feels like to be the other. The best you can say is that you imagine being the opposite sex would feel preferable. Whether this is enough to rewrite the definition of sex is being debated. Clearly I think it is not.
Victoria Cooper
1 year ago
Most teenagers feel they do not fit in, that they are different, that they hate their bodies. I imagine these books will be found on the appropriate shelves. I see no need to alter the entire legal system to pander to them.
D.C. Harris
1 year ago
No.
Em Louise
1 year ago
Am I getting old and missing the point? We have all have both masculine and feminine traits and choose to express them in varying degrees throughout our lives. Why is it suddenly a problem to define ourselves in terms of the genitals we were born with (including sometimes both!) and live life expressing ourselves in any way we choose. It has been acceptable in western culture for women to wear stereo typically masculine trousers etc. for generations now; if men want to conversely clothe themselves in feminine attire, fine, whatever. I don’t see the problem. I’d like to see a paradigm shift towards people focusing on acceptance of what is rather than ‘being born wrong’ then maybe we can focus on more pressing issues like fixing the broken food system?
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Maybe I am non binary? Although it was a long time ago, Colour S’arnt Barry Lynas IG, yelled ” Mr Samengo-Turner, Serr… you are not just like a big girls blouse.. you are marching like the sh…g big girl in the f…g blouse”….
The phrase “self-absorption” keeps coming up, which seems to sum this up.
I do have a close acquaintance who is trans, and his lived this way for decades. They’re an interesting and pleasant person, but it anyone meeting them would quickly realise they are totally self-absorbed. There conversion is almost exclusively about three topics:
1. Themselves
2. Gay and trans
3. Suffering
Everything has to revolve around them, their likes and their dislikes, which is sad, although it does mean we always have something to talk about … them.
Truth is that rather than identify as she/her, he/she or they/them, most trans people identify as nothing but me/I.
There are undoubtedly people that do have genuine gender issues, but right now, and particularly for youngsters, this seems like more of a fashion statement and a desire for attention. Hopefully, for those where it is genuine (and there are definitely some of those) we can seek full acceptance in society, and for the dedicated followers of fashion (the vast majority IMHO) they will grow up and still have their bits intact.
Hear hear. We employed a ‘trans’ person at our work. He left because he said I made him feel ‘uncomfortable’ – I think I had made some allo-allo style N**i themed jokes and ridiculed the terrible music of one of his trans heroes.
He had a 1st class degree in philosophy but hadn’t read any Schopenhauer etc only Marx.
He was fabulously dull. I would ask him what he did at the weekend and he would say things like ‘went for a walk with my parents’. He was 27!
The day he left he came into work dressed as a woman. What he didn’t realise was that none of us gave a flying f**k about his self image and really just wanted to know if he could do the job or not. It’s like the revenge of the nerds.
Good comment, except that I must confess to having a PhD in Philosophy, and having read approximately 3 pages of The World as Will and Representation.
This chimes with my own experience. My stepson has (had) a ‘trans’ schoolfriend in his class. Female to male transition, suddenly relocated here. The child was completely accepted by the class. Quite a decent footballer also, and made it into the team. Gradually it emerged that this kid was just a complete a-hole and nothing but a troublemaker. And why shouldn’t they be – all manner of people are allowed to be a-holes. But once the parents figured out (a) their child was completely accepted in their chosen gender and (b) their child was becoming deeply unpopular, all hell broke loose (naturally). Pulled out for home schooling, then back in again, then relocated to another school. Meantime the host school now carries with it various Ofsted accusations of transphobia amongst the pupils. One senses that acceptance is greeted with horror by these notoriety seekers – it’s literally their worst nightmare.
A little like this then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScQcM0tzW4
Brilliant and right on target. I doubt they’d be allowed to broadcast it these days.
Such a shame when it sounds like everyone had been totally understanding. I suspect this person was leaving a trail of upset wherever they went.
But what you failed to understand, as my boss used to say, is that you think all people are the same.
Having to walk Jeremy Corbyn around his allotment is a serious undertaking.
Calling it dull is treason and would give you 30 years in a gulag.
life would be a tad duller without these people to laugh at?!
So he read one philosopher and got a 1st degree?!
I worked for a non profit organisation when a new staff member joined and declared themselves non binary. This resulted in long documents discussing how they were to be treated, how their status should be explained to those who used our service and also which office toilet they should use. It seemed to me at the time that the person was happy to receive a much larger degree of attention than any other new employee and that if all new employees had required this amount of attention, the organisation would get no work done.
Yes Carol,
What about putting your new employee head into toilet of his/her/them/whatever choosing?
”Main Traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder according to the DSM.
1.Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence,
unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
3. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by,should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that,wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply)
5. Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations
6. Is “interpersonally exploitative”, i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends
7. Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
8. Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her
9. Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted
**The criteria above are based on: American Psychiatric Association. (2000); Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth edition,”
Why doesn’t anybody treat what they’ve actually got?
Martin,
You are so cruel to mentally ill people?
How can you live with yourself?
Suggesting mentally ill people get treatment for being mentally ill rather than surgery isn’t cruel.
I ask that question every time I need to fill out a ballot involving candidates vying for federal office. Why do the two major parties screen for narcissists as their preferred candidates?
brilliant!
I worked for a non profit company when a new employee declared themselves to be non binary. This resulted in pages of documents from. HR explaining how we should address them and how their status should be explained to those that the organisation came into contact with. Along with a discussion with all staff members about the documents and chats with the person about which office toilet they would use. At the time it struck me that if every new employee demanded that amount of attention, the organisation would never achieve anything.
Completely agree. How convenient it would be to claim to be no one in particular and bound by no rules. If that were the case, we could chose to be married one day and then single the next, depending on who we met at a bar.
We could chose to be male when confronted by a pretty woman, but then be a woman when danger is afoot. We could chose to be black when they are handing out racial preferences and white when we feel it would help. For that matter, we could chose to be dirt poor and unemployed when it came time to pay the bill, yet be wealthy when responding to the invitation.
This state of mind used to be diagnosed as a psychosis, but now it is a source of pride. I can only pray for a revival.
Great post.
Idea that the whole of society should somehow agree with demented, unscientific rubbish of mentally ill people is preposterous.
What happened to Enlightenment and evidence?
Trans/non binaries are the new vegan.
‘Have i told you i am trans ? Do you want to hear about my pronouns ?’
That’s a great comment, and unlike me and many commentators on here you do have some first hand-hand experience.
It sounds unkind, but self- obsession, however evolved, seems really to be at the heart of this phenomenon. After all, we live in the most self obsessed culture (at least as regards ordinary people rather than, say, Caligula!) there has ever been
Stories like these make me wonder what would happen if these people were placed somewhere pastoral, in a friendly hard-working community. No make-up or fancy clothes available. Hair is cut short for health reasons. Everyone wears comfortable simple clothes. There is digging to be done, planting and harvesting – long hours of work. Good food and drink, music and stories round the fire at the end of the day (no TV, computers or any gadgets). Sleep, then more work each and every day. How long would their confusion last under these conditions ?
What a strange, artificial world we have created in just over 200 years.
I started wondering why these mental conditions develop and one reason could be too much self contemplation, too much time spent on this and not enough time in activating the body and mind with purposeful tasks. Is this down to laziness, inability to identify or focus on meaningful activities, insecurity in comparisons to others, etc.? I’ve no idea really but the earlier generations in the 20th C had to graft and suffer a lot more than nowadays to carve out a more prosperous lifestyle and didn’t have the time, energy or media channels available to develop such conditions. Social media is undoubtedly a huge contributing factor in different ways. Your suggestions could be a good idea.
Extended prosperity and a lack of real, existential war, is the main cause, IMO. War tends to buck up individuals once a century. We may be close to it again.
Agreed, I guess there are not may ‘trans-gender’ people in Ukraine at the moment! In the overall scheme of things it’s just not that important.
I started wondering why these mental conditions develop and one reason could be too much self contemplation, too much time spent on this and not enough time in activating the body and mind with purposeful tasks. Is this down to laziness, inability to identify or focus on meaningful activities, insecurity in comparisons to others, etc.? Apart from that, I’ve no idea really but the earlier generations in the 20th C had to graft and suffer a lot more than nowadays to carve out a more prosperous lifestyle and didn’t have the time, energy or media channels available to develop such conditions. Social media is undoubtedly a huge contributing factor in different ways. Your suggestions could be a good idea.
Or just had 2 emotionally available, unselfish parents. Both parents who set boundaries and don’t act as their child’s friend. Don’t manipulate their child for their selfish needs.
Exactly. Except for mating and reproduction, sex would be irrelevant in those circumstances and ‘gender identity’ would simply not exist.
Farmers are probably the nearest that we have to your description and they have no time for this nonsense, particularly if they work with livestock. A castrated bull is a bullock, not a heifer.
I miss bull dykes, twinks, transvestites and old school trannies. They were a bit different but just went about their fabulous or troubled or mundane lives. They seem so strong, understated and dignified now. Not giving a f**k what the mainstream thought. These people didn’t debased themselves seeking validation. They were queer and they knew it.
Too bloody right.
I reckon that’s just a few examples on a long list. One addition – the Victorian Guardsman dressed up to the nines like a peacock, guarding the Queen by day, and getting shagged in an alleyway by night.
The only thing that’s new, perhaps, is the rebranding of this old wine in new bottles in ways, designed to bring maximum likes to insecure people.
And the new generation are frighteningly populated with adolescent girls. A phenomenon previously unheard of. What is propelling that? The same fears and feelings that likewise contributed to everything from the Salem Witch Trials to anorexia. Hysteria.
Young people today! *head in hands* far too sensitive! Don’t put me in a box! They cry and then put themselves in a box. Get all worked up over being misgendered whilst insisting that their pronouns are genderless plurals!
I get growing up not wanting to conform, I did it myself, however it helps when you don’t get your knickers in a twist over other peoples opinions on the subject to the degree that you expect society and language to change to suit you.
Good comment. Yes I remember when not wanting to conform/rebelling was about not caring what anybody else thought, you were going to be you!
Reading this piece, I sense that you are describing hurt children trying to make sense of confused/disordered childhoods. In otherwords ‘the child’ overwhelming ‘the adult’ which pretty much explains the angst, defence, confusion and fear of confrontation.
Much of our society is marked by groups who will not, or are not capable of taking responsibility for themselves. Like ‘children’ they demand attention and make a lot of noise.
My question is, when will we see the behaviour for what it is (child), and stop placating and rewarding it?
You might like to read, if you haven’t already, Games People Play by Eric Berne. He goes on about the roles people step into and that includes children, adults and parents.
I’m not your addressee, but thank you so much for posting your comment. I looked up Berne’s book and hope to get started on it soon. God bless you, and have a wonderful rest of your day!
When they are drafted to fight for their lives on the coming world war. 🙂
Maybe Fathers are important after all?
What does it mean not to fit neatly into a sub-category of a whimsical and incoherent – albeit highly fashionable – conceptual framework?
Well nothing really, and it frankly deserves about as much investigation as the t-shirt choice of teenagers.
And I must say, taking this kind of stuff even remotely seriously only serves to strengthen the completely undeserved legitamacy of gender ideology and the likelihood of confused, attention craving people leaning into it. I see it as nothing more than a shortcut to social acceptance (and oppression points) in leiu of the presentation of any genuinely appealing character traits.
Unfortunately we do have to take them seriously, because they are the useful idiots of sadistic paedophiles who like drugging and castrating kids.
Looking at this, the authors seem to have had troubling upbringings and have had negative experiences with both genders (absent father and a seemingly mentally abusive mother in one of their cases). As a result, they can’t seem to bring themselves to identify as either, perhaps in fear of becoming like the person that hurt them?
All a lay man’s opinion and definitely not to be taken as gospel by any means, but I do wonder if these people would benefit from therapy or some other mental health treatment to accept who they actually are.
I am non-binary – I’m just one s*x.
I always thought it odd that they call themselves non binary but then choose plural pronouns.
In a world where people suffer from the likes of cancer, and defects from birth, who have to suffer violence, real opression, poverty, war…. WHO GIVES A DAMN?!!!!
well stated.
You have to, as some of the real oppression is generated on children by such believers. Closing the Tavistock isn’t enough, now they should investigate and prosecute those who kept it going. Next step is get rid of ‘Drag Queen’ events for children. Sadly, it can’t be ignored, it is abuse and it starts when they are very young. It has to be opposed and removed like a cancer. Either that or in a few years time the BBC will be explaining how yet another abuse scandal continued for so long.
Modern political thought has disappeared down the postmodernism rabbit hole but has forgotten that postmodern white rabbit, does not believe in identity itself.
The result has been a Frankenstein’s monster, of Rawlsian liberalism and Franco-American postmodernism, Rawlsianists, enthusiastically trying to categorise and define all these new identities and harness them as part of its project for political hegemony, whist the identities themselves are undergoing metastatic growth from the irradiating influence of postmodernism, which threatens to not only to overwhelm the political viability of the project but undercut the whole concept of identity itself.
Pursuing the endless goal of perfect equality, left wing liberalism has become its own carcinogen. By providing preferential treatment to those with recognised protected characteristics, it incentivises an endless multiplication of identities, each demanding the power of the state is used to rescue it from its oppression. If the political left has come to believe that future of the modern state is as a kind of identerian Leviathan, then non-binary identities actually threaten to become a kind of Russell’s Paradox at its heart, an identity, which is not an identity, and so collapses identities into a subjective, ungovernable morass, as hard categories are replaced with spectra of subjective feelings, which are impossible to ground political power in.
In an delicious irony, in order to retain the cause of identity as a political project, how long before the left has to oppress, the oppressed identities it has nurtured?
The left is already doing so. Ask any TERF.
I am sure it is an excellent comment but I did not understand it.
LOL. It took me a few reads as well, in sort of a Yogi Berra way.
Sorry, sometimes I like to channel my inner Terry Eagleton.
A good observation which I keep coming back to. I think the modern Progressive movements only half-understand, if that, the ideas of post-modernism. Some of the ideological heroes, like Focault and Derrida, would never place such emphasis on validation, nor consent for that matter. Born of those assume a neutral, floating “true self,” which is anathema to whole post-modern idea.
This is why I think the term “post-modern” is a misnomer. It derives from the same desire to disintegrate further and further and classify each step. In many ways, it’s more hyper-modern, or perhaps end-stage modernity
The missing piece of the puzzle. “Father-shaped hole.” Young children believe their parents are perfect. Growing up leads to learning that parents are flawed human beings like yourself. As a retired public school teacher I can tell you our children are Not Growing Up. For many reasons they are not developing emotionally like prior generations did.
Edited.
Yes, and the relevance of which we have yet to come to grips with. I daresay this is a long-term trend. Victorian children were put to work in all sorts of iniquitous circumstances. My own mother started work in a cotton mill at the age of 14. Teenagers weren’t ‘invented’ till after WW2.
I also think it’s too early to pass any kind of lucid judgment on this process, including whether it’s a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing. At this moment in history, when we’re starting to gain a foothold on some kind of perspective, all we can do is pass our own individual judgments in comparison with our own experiences. But to add, that those experiences didn’t lead to a particularly coherent society, or a peaceful one either!
My own thoughts tend towards neutrality. Let those who wish to indulge (or feel they have to indulge) in the processing of their experience by writing books about it, but don’t expect the rest of the world to either indulge them or even take much notice. If the world does, it’ll be because of some merit such as artful writing, which Mary alludes to. It could also be an entirely necessary process brought about by post-industrialisation. What really interests me is how these individuals will view themselves in 10, 20, 30 years, when they’ll have the benefit of the type of lived experience which most commentators on Unherd might have.
It is bad for many. As a former teacher and supply teacher I spent many an hour talking to 15/16 year olds who refused to accept teaching, but could have walked into a job and wanted to, but where being held captive in school because the punishments would fall on their parents if they truanted. 15/16 year olds starting at the bottom would immediately re-shape society and work. No need to import millions of the 3rd or even European poor to do the cheap jobs. Once pay packets and the enclosed deductions were understood,and the effort that was needed to provide the taxes that Governments crave but squander, it might actually make sense to lower the voting age.
Might be something worth an essay yourself. While helping my late wife in her teaching days, I noticed that some kids had a sense of entitlement that the world centered on them. Often they were the target of others becoming “the other” now so in vogue. Once that happened isolation was complete.
I think the whole non-binary thing is just part of a juvenile need to be different. Like the kid in the movies who discovers he has superpowers and cries out “I always knew I was different from all the other kids”. It’s no surprise that celebrities have taken to this because it’s all part of their need for attention. I think it’s just a phase they’re going through and they’ll probably just grow out of it.
I also realised that although I think it’s daft, it just doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s a threat in the way that trans women with penises want to get into women’s safe places is a threat. It’s almost the exact opposite of the trans issue since a transwomen is a man who identifies as a woman but someone who is non binary doesn’t identify with either men or women. All the same, it would be interesting to see which changing rooms they use at the gym.
Actually, I’m not sure that they only want to be dfferent. Mostly, it seems to me, it is a desire to conform to one group i.e. their peers whilst at the same time differentiating themselves from others (usually older people, but sometimes those of a different ethnicity or political viewpoint), and has it ever really been that different? The only change is what they are doing to fit in with their peers; that and the fact that the juvenile years seem to now extend well in a person’s twenties or even thirties.
Yes I think you are right Linda.
I view this sort of thing through a very strong lens, my three level theory that we are Creatives, or Responsibles, or Subordinates.
Responsibles are people that live according to some established cultural and/or religious framework. They follow the rules. Usually they stay safe.
Creatives are people trying to create something new. But that means they will almost certainly fail, as in tech startups, as in writers and artists. The creative life starts with the descent into the underworld of the unconscious, and there be dragons and monsters. According to chaps like Joseph Campbell, this Hero’s Journey usually ends in failure, and success usually means becoming a Sacrificial Hero on the border of Order and Chaos.
Imagining that you have a “right” to be creative or non-binary and have society validate you, because oppression, is utter ignorant folly. It means you literally know nothing.
Surely everybody has ‘difficulty fitting in’ throughout life: you can’t expect to be rapturously received by every group in society, or be totally at home in every social setting.
Sometimes you aren’t going to be welcome, not everybody wants you as a friend, some social gatherings are going to be awkward, you won’t always fit in everywhere.
To grow up,one needs to learn that the world has got better things to do than conform itself to me, me, me.
Indeed it is of course logically impossible for the world to conform itself to the preferences of every individual.
As grandma would say, “You ain’t the only pebble on the beach.”
Two questions present themselves : first, why would anyone publish this tripe? (the books, not the Unherd article!) Answer (harking back to the Unherd article several days ago) because the publishers think they will make a profit by selling the books.
Second question, why would anyone in their right mind pick one of these books off a bookshop’s shelves, glance through it, and then hand over money for it (instead of putting it back)? (Even with online purchases, you don’t have to press the ‘purchase’ button). The only reason I can think of is that the purchaser thinks that the book will validate their own worthless opinions – I do hope there are other, better, reasons!
(I do hope the excellent Ms Harrington got freebie ‘review’ copies……)
I find my occasional visits to bookshops to be increasingly depressing. So many books, so few worth reading.
Thank you for reading those so that we don’t have to!
“And both clearly experience this as an unhappy, tiring state of affairs” – sad to say, but that’s pretty much how I’m starting to feel about this whole SNAFU. Moving on…
The interesting thing about those who declare themselves non-binary (and arguably trans, particularly teenage transboys) and so on is that they are far more invested in notions of a binary and the reductive stereotypes that follow than the constraining ‘they’ (e.g. heteronormative (yawn) society) that they claim to be rebelling against.
Yes indeed, reacting to norms is still being defined by those norms and perhaps more so for the energy of reactivity.
I enjoyed this critique of the two books for its clarity and that reactivity was absent.
God, I’m so bored with this fad, and I’m bored by articles about it.
Yea verrily amen… oops not Amen?… Aperson? why do we sing Hymns not Hers?….it is all such comedy!
Except it isn’t funny the power these people wield. They abuse children, and the state and its minions kow-tow and co-operate. Read Spike and the Drag Queen scandal. It reports on how librarians lie to prevent parents knowing what actually goes on.
Agreed. And this is what the likes of Jordan Peterson have been pointing out for many years now. He sees the danger of it all and has been trying (reasonably successfully) to wake people up.
Just annoyed. pronouns, questions… Like the old question if you want a paper or plastic bag? Do you want whole, non-fat, low fat,oat or soy milk? One can only make so many decisions in a day and have mental space for only so much in a day. If they could stop socially offloading their discomfort on to others! What do Black women say? Don’t make me do your emotional labor? Yeah, that!
The expression ‘up themselves’ comes to mind.
If they didn’t call themselves non-binary then how would us plebs know they were better / more interesting than we are?
No. It’s fashionable nonsense. Straight and gay seen as dull. Gay young people, fearing homophobia, and wanting to be current, announce themselves as trans.
Would I be wrong in guessing that none of these writers had what my grandfather called “A Real Job” ? Get outside, mow grass, stack boxes, bake bread even run a machine and many of these illusions will disappear
Are they not just creating another binary? Non-binary vs binary. Isn’t being fluid just another self catorization?
Does anyone remember the ending of the series, “Six Feet Under”? I can’t remember the characters’ names anymore, but Rachel Griffith’s character dies as her brother KEEPS talking, as he had all throughout the series. The wokes won’t notice, as long as they can keep analyzing their feelings!
Mary poses the question in an interesting way and the answer is no.
Setting aside the trivial issue of appearance (and kids have been experimenting with that forever cf Mick Jagger wearing make-up in the late 60s, skinhead girls etc etc ) increasingly boys and girls are being encouraged to do all sorts of things that fifty years ago were considered the exclusive province of one or the other BUT they are still boys and girls. We are quite correctly not putting them in the blue or the pink box just letting them find the natural way to fulfil their potential.
That is quite separate from the notion that some children are dysfunctional as a consequence of poor upbringing (and my daughter has a change student in her class who surprise surprise has all sorts of other problems). Giving it a label is intended to show empathy but it merely fans the flames because however much we enshrine for instance the security of gender re-assignment in Law it’s never enough there has to be something else except in this case there is not.
Non-BInary never existed fifty years ago but boys and girls who wanted to pursue things which were considered inappropriate for their given gender did. As a girlfriend said to me when she told her boyfriend’s mother thirty years ago that she could use a power tool that was the end of the relationship. It’s boxing in people’s interests and aspirations that should pass into history, not the fact they are a boy or a girl.
I married a 1970’s Tom-boy, there was something about the ‘bows and frills girly girls who couldn’t use a can-opener’ (deliberate exageration) that put me off them. Tho’ I wasn’t impressed when my now wife entered a mixed team in my Uni 5-a-side cup competition using assumed names – and yes she was my girlfriend then. No, I didn’t kick them out, but much as she and her hockey friends beat (literally, I bled more in that than any football game, and I played hard semi-pro level football) the living daylights out of me in a mixed hockey tournament, their all male opposition saw that they didn’t get past the first round. Maybe she was right to have kept quiet, as did my two best male friends who provide the male muscle in her team. As I may have thought the small gym, prominent wall bars & the penchant for opposing players to try and put one through them a bit too dangerous for women, particularly my girlfriend!
Thank you for an interesting story. Several of my girlfriends have worked, as I have, in very male-dominated industries, which early on made them challenge ‘who they were.’ Their response to this kind of thing is simply they do not believe in labels. I think now they have entered middle age and are entirely comfortable with having a mix of characteristics and qualities some of which were defined as M or F years ago they just get on with life.
As so many others have said the giveaway is self-absorption which stands out, even more, when the audience, us, just is not interested. There are 1001 more important issues.
There are two types of people in the world, ones who are binary and ones who aren’t. Yeah the crap jokes just write themselves.
What times in which we live.
Ukraine keeps resolutely kicking Russia in the bollocks; Armenia & Azerbaijan throw down yet again over Nagorno-Karabakh; China rattles its sabre across the Taiwan Strait… So, with the world’s assorted wars & potential wars threatening to all join hands in a grand Eurasian murderfest, maybe the one upside is even less people outside the virtual salons of the chatterati will pay attention to people saying they are ‘non-binary’ 😉
Imposter syndrome. This is a well known psychological disorder. Why not leave it at that? Also ego and non-committal seems to come into all this. The last two hundred years? No the last twenty years more like and possibly even less than that. I have met men who are more pretty and feminine than other males and vice-versa. Also one person who was genuinely non-binary, not as a mental statement but by birth (hermaphrodite). All this stupid surgery too, which the state will have to correct and be blamed for, like the Tavistock Clinic – anything but grow up and be responsible for your own actions.
The Tavistock may be blamed, but the purveyors and the enablers in that abuse scandal look highly likely to get off scot free. Time to prosecute these people for child abuse.
Being trans seems like the latest, greatest and newest way to avoid becoming an adult. Actually if you are a trans-child, it’s a way to avoid adolescence and all those yucky hormones the “adults” talk about incessantly. But oh wait …. you mean it involves even MORE hormones ? Oh dear the world is indeed a scary place !
Perhaps there is no such thing as non-binary. Maybe it’s just ego and childishness or the feminine desire for attention gone mad (and no, I don’t have anything against femininity because I wouldn’t be here (and neither would any of you (or indeed these ungrateful whingers)), if not for women as JK Rowling calls them
I suppose many people haven’t learned to see themselves as individuals who can take some criticism and odd looks. I also am shocked how non binary and trans folks have embraced the binary stereotypes.
There are the plastic, trout-pout, highly-styled bio females out there who live for selfie posing, but not a large percentage. Yet those who feel a need to become a new woman-identified gender aspire to this sort of femininity, exclusively. I suppose it is the need to feel this Uber-feminine femininity makes the difference to go under the knife. And women who want to take off their shirts in public and have male privilege, or other delights.
In the 70s and 8s you could be a man and wear your hair long, and wear make up and no one wondered if they had changed gender. Hair bands, Goths…
And women could be d*kes or tomboys and there still was no gender confusion.
I test more alike with men on all sorts of tests of interests and even on dating profiles. None the less, I have never doubted my being a woman because…women contain multitudes. As do men. I find the narrowing, the channeling rather bizarre. Male and Female are wide enough umbrella concepts, with lots of choices, whether typical or atypical. I mean, just claim it!
Still, I guess some women long to be men, and men who long to be woman, and others who just despair and want their despair known.
I just like to keep things simple. I used to hate having to choose paper or plastic bags, or whole milk, low fat milk, non fat milk, soy or oat milk, at Starbucks. I do not want to have to inquire as to what gender all those with whom I am interacting with woke up to be on the day. Yet, apparently we must. I do wish it was a more stoic society.
Given we live in a world where the pressure to conform to gender sterotypes has never been lighter, it is strange to find a movement of young people reinforcing them by declaring that they can’t “be” male or female because they are not masculine or feminine enough, (or consistently enough). It’s like being called a “girl” at school just because you don’t like rugby. Worse, they are committing us to a dualism where not only is the body seen as merely the “vehicle” for a controlling, gendered spirit but that “soul” is also the authentic, unitary and unchallengeable self. . And where so far from being encouraged to live with (or, better, as) our bodies (with all their imperfections) they are now rebellious enemies to be tamed. It’s all very retrograde.
Boy George did it better over forty years ago now, and with better tunes too. Utter tosh. Having looked their pictures up, neither is even remotely androgynous (one is a woman with short hair, the other is a man with hairdo). Both desperately trying to pretend they are more interesting than they actually are.
I am sure people starving in developing countries and lacking basic necessities don’t agonise over these issues.
People with gender issues have existed throughout history, so this manifestation today is nothing new. I have genuine sympathy for someone who feels that they are in the wrong body. However, the sheer explosion in people identifying as he, she, they, this, that etc. points to something engendered by propaganda. The purveyors of this are nefarious. As this article detailed, people with gender identity issues have often experienced difficult childhoods. I do wonder how many young people from a stable and happy home, who have never been exposed to trans-propaganda, have affirmed that they belong to a ”non-binary” identity?
The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
Everyone is ‘non-binary’. No one fits a perfect set of ‘gender’ stereotypes. It is insulting and one-dimensional to assume that they do. The most apparently macho men will go to pieces over their children and furry animals, whilst the most apparently traditional women, who call themselves ‘housewives’, will often be skilled mechanics or DIY practitioners. I have worked on farms for years and there are a great many ‘traditional’ farmers’ wives who can lamb ewes, mend tractors, wallpaper huge houses, deal with blocked lavatories and broken generators and still turn out exquisite baking.
No one has to conform to socially constructed stereotypes, but every mammal is either male or female and cannot change from one to the other. Mammals are sexually dimorphic because that is how they reproduce. Sex-defined behaviours are all around mating, reproduction and the protection of young, and are apparent in all species. Behaviours that only humans have invented – wearing clothes, doing specific jobs, adopting or giving names, playing with toys or at sports – are all artificial social constructs and have no relation to sex. Anyone can do any of them but it doesn’t make them the other sex or ‘non-binary’.
For most of the time, particularly in the workplace or at school, what sex people are is irrelevant, although which toilets and changing rooms they use is not.
I agree we are all a mixture of masculine and feminine to varying degrees and we are all perfectly free to manifest these traits in society. The more extreme manifestations, at either end, would not historically have been conducive to the way society had to be run, being a matter of physical prowess and courage in men, and child bearing capabilities in women. It was understandable they were favoured. Nowadays they have both lost their urgency. So many of us wish to be other than what we have been conferred, be it brains, beauty, strength, weight, health, personality. We deal with the cards we have been dealt. We don’t take to the streets.
Modern political thought has disappeared down the postmodernism rabbit hole but has forgotten that postmodern white rabbit, does not believe in identity itself.
The result has been a Frankenstein’s monster, of Rawlsian liberalism and Franco-American postmodernism, Rawlsianists, enthusiastically trying to categorise and define all these new identities and harness them as part of its project for political hegemony, whist the identities themselves are undergoing metastatic growth from the irradiating influence of postmodernism, which threatens to not only to overwhelm the political viability of the project but undercut the whole concept of identity itself.
Pursuing the endless goal of perfect equality, left wing liberalism has become its own carcinogen. By providing preferential treatment to those with recognised protected characteristics, it incentivises an endless multiplication of identities, each demanding the power of the state is used to rescue it from its oppression. If the political left has come to believe that future of the modern state is as a kind of identerian Leviathan, then non-binary identities actually threaten to become a kind of Russell’s Paradox at its heart, an identity, which is not an identity, and so collapses identities into a subjective, ungovernable morass, as hard categories are replaced with spectra of subjective feelings, which are impossible to ground political power in.
In an delicious irony, in order to retain the cause of identity as a political project, how long before the left has to oppress, the oppressed identities it has nurtured?
The concept of alienation seems relevant here. I’m surprised Harrington doesn’t see its explanatory force. Experiencing oneself as outside all social forms or bodily categories, which have of course become very stable over three million years of evolution, would seem to be a classic case of alienation. Maybe it’s time to apply this currently rather unfashionable idea, which has a rich philosophical hinterland, to today’s strange gender phenomenon. A human wanting to become the opposite sex represents the ultimate success of the neoliberal invasion of the self, with the non-binary path being a work in progress.
It’s all about the science! Until I say it’s not.
I’d agree with that. And also, the concept of fascination with “otherness”. And aren’t we all?
Shouldn’t a book about being non-binary be entitled “Neither the Above”?
Everyone’s unique. Gender is just one part of that uniqueness, and to anyone sensible in these liberated days, it’s a very minor part. These people grandstand on this minor part and our society seems to like humouring them.
Short answer – no. “Non-binary” is bollocks.
Cluster B as Josh Slocum would say.
I think Horn might rather be a mackerel.
No one can know the mind of another, only their own. Consequently it is impossible for a biological male (or female) to know what it feels like to be the other. The best you can say is that you imagine being the opposite sex would feel preferable. Whether this is enough to rewrite the definition of sex is being debated. Clearly I think it is not.
Most teenagers feel they do not fit in, that they are different, that they hate their bodies. I imagine these books will be found on the appropriate shelves. I see no need to alter the entire legal system to pander to them.
No.
Am I getting old and missing the point? We have all have both masculine and feminine traits and choose to express them in varying degrees throughout our lives. Why is it suddenly a problem to define ourselves in terms of the genitals we were born with (including sometimes both!) and live life expressing ourselves in any way we choose. It has been acceptable in western culture for women to wear stereo typically masculine trousers etc. for generations now; if men want to conversely clothe themselves in feminine attire, fine, whatever. I don’t see the problem. I’d like to see a paradigm shift towards people focusing on acceptance of what is rather than ‘being born wrong’ then maybe we can focus on more pressing issues like fixing the broken food system?
Maybe I am non binary? Although it was a long time ago, Colour S’arnt Barry Lynas IG, yelled ” Mr Samengo-Turner, Serr… you are not just like a big girls blouse.. you are marching like the sh…g big girl in the f…g blouse”….