Any resistance to compulsory femininity — high heels, tight dresses — is cast by the industry as Page being “difficult”. Roles for women are so sexualised that at one point Page describes Juno as representing “a space beyond the boundary”. This is, remember, a film in which Page’s character is pregnant: you could hardly get a more female role. But because Juno is not “hyperfeminised” — because Page wears tees and jeans for the part — the pressure of gender is lifted, somewhat.
But 2007 was also the year that trans writer Julia Serano published Whipping Girl, which is probably the most influential text in terms of solidifying gender identity theory. In it, Serano argued that “feminine verbal and aesthetic expression” are “driven by intrinsic and deep-seated inclinations that are likely to be the result of biology”. In other words, regardless of your actual sex, if you don’t act or dress “girly”, you might not be a girl at all.
As this idea gained intellectual purchase, femininity standards in popular culture were growing ever more exacting. This pressure was even dramatised in Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody’s follow-up movie, Jennifer’s Body, which starred ultimate hottie Megan Fox as a cheerleader succubus, and Amanda Seyfried as her hoodie-wearing, jealousy-gnarled best friend. The space for the kind of girl-character Page played — girls who were not limited to being objects of desire — was shrinking.
But Hollywood was only amplifying messages Page had heard from her family. Page’s mother informs her daughter that she can “do anything a boy can do”, but from Page’s perspective, this is never sincere. There is continual maternal pressure for Page to be more girly, as well as an absolute rejection of the possibility of homosexuality. One of the few vignettes in which Page recalls his mother being happy is when Page requests a shopping trip to buy “girl clothes” as a teenager. (Page enjoys the way the new wardrobe alters her social standing, but not the way the clothes make her feel about herself.) When Page initially comes out as gay, her mother’s reaction is to yell: “That doesn’t exist!”
Becoming a “transgender guy” doesn’t spare Page from judgement and disgust. (Page still seems wounded by a Jordan Peterson tweet that referred to the surgeon who performed Page’s mastectomy as a “criminal”.) But it does resolve the problem of being a lesbian: Page’s mother, at least, seems better able to accept a trans child than a gay one. “She loves her son endlessly,” writes Page. Transition also makes Page’s body safer — a body that has been repeatedly violated and threatened. Page mentions an “acquaintance” who told her, after she came out for the first time, “I’m going to fuck you to make you realise you aren’t gay.” There’s also a male director who “grooms” her, a male crew member on an early film who forces oral sex on her, and a female crew member on another film who sexually assaults her while presenting it to Page as a consensual relationship. Over and over, Page is informed with violence that her body is not hers.
Again, Hollywood reinforces what began in Page’s childhood. Her adversarial relationship with her body can be seen in her reaction to her stepmother’s cooking. Page hears an “internal voice” saying “no, that can’t go inside you” when she’s confronted with food that scares her: a terror of adulteration, of losing control. Puberty inevitably heightens this. Page describes the age of 11 as “the age I sensed a shift from boy to girl without my consent”. This is, I think, a common sensation for girls: puberty ends an era of uncomplicated, happy embodiment, and launches you into a world where your body appears to invite dangerous attention against your will. Not a shift from boy to girl, but a shift from “person” to “thing”. As Hilary Mantel wrote, some girls want out. They starve themselves, or punish their bodies, and now they have the option to disown their sex entirely.
Trauma is a commonplace of trans memoir, or rather, of trans men’s memoirs. Trans women’s memoirs are, for the most part, exuberant narratives of self-actualisation (albeit usually with some background homophobia, similar to Page’s mother’s). Trans men’s memoirs are often wrenching accounts of rape and self-harm, climaxing in irreversible body modification. Thomas Page McBee’s Man Alive features a harrowing description of the author as a 10-year-old girl being sexually assaulted by her father (the abuse started when McBee was four). It initiated a “split” between self and body. “I felt like a marionette, otherworldly and wooden,” writes McBee, who nonetheless separates his masculine identification from the depersonalisation caused by the abuse.
Carl (in the book that inspired Page) also relates being sexually assaulted at the age of 11 or 12, also by his father: “You’re becoming a woman. Your breasts are beginning to show. I like watching you change,” Carl recalls him saying. Later, the first stage in Carl’s transition is a double mastectomy. “I feel a fiery rage … for what men did to me,” Carl writes, before adding: “I feel so much joy living in a man’s body.”
For Page, these experiences of rejection and violation are incorporated into a story of latent maleness — or rather, of boyness. As the title suggests, there is little interest in being seen as an adult male. Even his new name, Elliot, is inspired by the boy hero of Spielberg’s E.T. Ceasing to be a woman confers a sort of immunity to time. Carl, who transitions in midlife, is spurred to take action by impending menopause: “I knew menopause, becoming an older woman, would kill me, that menopause would shove my femaleness in my face in a way that would make me too sick to live.”
In retrospect, the Noughties insistence that Page was different to the other girls could be seen as an excuse to mistreat her peers: by casting them as sluts in contrast to Page’s “good girl” figure, the media could suggest that they deserved what they got. Yet Page received much the same abuse; and her reaction was not entirely different. Rather than responding with public self-destruction, Page redoubled a private war against her own body — now his body. Britney shaved her head; Page removed her breasts; both cut away what gave them away as female.
It feels a long, sad distance from the woman who once protested that she was entitled to wear whatever made her “comfortable”; longer still from the girl who, back during promo for Juno, spoke up for a woman’s right to be at the centre of her own story. In Pageboy, Page’s girl-self seems passive and tragic: a sleeping beauty, held in suspended animation, afraid to grow up, and kissed without her consent. (There is, I suspect, some retconning here. Achieving a career such as Page’s takes considerable determination, and Page does not suggest this was driven by parental ambition. Yet Page never addresses where this drive to act comes from, or attributes his professional success to more than luck.)
As a “trangender guy”, Page can be Aladdin: the main character, capable of making decisions that affect reality. No more pressure to wear the dress or play the princess. But the fairytale Pageboy reminds me of most of all is the Little Mermaid. In the Hans Christian Andersen original, the mermaid fails to meet the condition of her womanhood. Her suffering ends when she is transformed into one of “the daughters of the air”; finally incorporeal, she makes an impossible, fantastical escape from her betraying body.
On the surface, Pageboy is a euphoric account of Page “finding himself”: the model narrative of the trans memoir. The happy ending is Page waking up in a hospital bed, breastless. Between the lines, though, there’s another story, of a self-hating girl who engineers a flit from femininity. It’s obligatory now to be shocked by the cruelty of Noughties culture. When, I wonder, will we recognise the even greater cruelty of inviting women and girls to barter their body parts for self-determination?
*
Sarah Ditum’s Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties is available to pre-order.
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SubscribePlenty of flowery language and trans ideological nonsense doesn’t cover up the ugliness and tragedy of Ellen Page’s situation.
As a young girl and woman she suffered sexual and mental abuse in the cesspit of Hollywood. Instead of seeking therapy to come to terms with it, she mutilated her body and lives under a silly delusion that she is a male.
She is not a Little Mermaid transformed in to one of “the daughters of the air”. She is a mentally troubled person who is compounding the tragedy of abuse by others with sick, surgical self-abuse.
…and encouraging others to indulge in their own self-abuse.
This is not good writing. The woman is being made into some kind of hero. People should not be encouraged to change their sex although you cannot really change your sex.
… and at a price. I doubt the surgeons, psychiatrists, charities, consultancies odds and bods turning people from one gender to another aren’t turning a coin at the same time.
This is not good writing. The woman is being made into some kind of hero. People should not be encouraged to change their sex although you cannot really change your sex.
… and at a price. I doubt the surgeons, psychiatrists, charities, consultancies odds and bods turning people from one gender to another aren’t turning a coin at the same time.
It’s noticeable that female writers treat trans-men far more sympathetically than they treat trans-women.
Males seem equally disparaging about both trans categories.
I think the reason for that is trans men don’t threaten women in any way, whereas trans men do. Men are not threatened by either of them.
I’m talking about real, physical threat, not ‘phobia’.
I think that’s an unfair generalization.
The majority of trans-women never physically threaten anyone.
Every assault by a trans-women is widely publicized but how many have we actually read about. The number is vanishingly small relative to their population.
Credible figures for the number of trans-women in the UK are hard to come by. There are no high quality figures available, but the best source is probably the Office of National Statistics. Based on their recent publications there are 58,000 trans-women, 48,000 trans-men and 114,000 non-binary people in the UK.
If 0.1 percent of trans-women were guilty of physical assault that would be 58 stories in the paper every year, i.e. approximately one a week. Obviously there have been nowhere near that number.
It doesn’t matter that most trans-women never physically threaten anyone, the point is that they have the physical capacity to do so as men do but unlike men are expected to be welcomed in to women’s spaces and are not bound by the social mores that (supposedly, and to some degree actually) restrain men.
Spot on.
And actual crime figure assaults are a poor metric anyway for the whole spectrum of harms women have complained about.
Spot on.
And actual crime figure assaults are a poor metric anyway for the whole spectrum of harms women have complained about.
Women’s sports involving strength, speed, and a number of other inherent male advantages would be ruined. Bog average men who decided to become to Transwomen would take all the prizes and then what are young girls supposed to do? Get up at 5.30am to train so they can be left off the Olympic team one day?
I ‘woke’ up to the whole issue just by reading (on Twitter) a Rugby coach (bloke) laughing about how Rachael was ‘deckchairing’ team mates in training. I played rugby for a while…I am mediocre at best and now old, but could likely still deckchair a top class woman player.
(Deckchairing is when you hit someone hard enough to drive them back while their upper body folds forward and their legs fold upwards… hit them around where their ovaries are basically.
I never had to worry about my ovaries, not having got any, and I would never hit a woman that hard…or laugh about it)
It doesn’t matter that most trans-women never physically threaten anyone, the point is that they have the physical capacity to do so as men do but unlike men are expected to be welcomed in to women’s spaces and are not bound by the social mores that (supposedly, and to some degree actually) restrain men.
Women’s sports involving strength, speed, and a number of other inherent male advantages would be ruined. Bog average men who decided to become to Transwomen would take all the prizes and then what are young girls supposed to do? Get up at 5.30am to train so they can be left off the Olympic team one day?
I ‘woke’ up to the whole issue just by reading (on Twitter) a Rugby coach (bloke) laughing about how Rachael was ‘deckchairing’ team mates in training. I played rugby for a while…I am mediocre at best and now old, but could likely still deckchair a top class woman player.
(Deckchairing is when you hit someone hard enough to drive them back while their upper body folds forward and their legs fold upwards… hit them around where their ovaries are basically.
I never had to worry about my ovaries, not having got any, and I would never hit a woman that hard…or laugh about it)
I think that’s an unfair generalization.
The majority of trans-women never physically threaten anyone.
Every assault by a trans-women is widely publicized but how many have we actually read about. The number is vanishingly small relative to their population.
Credible figures for the number of trans-women in the UK are hard to come by. There are no high quality figures available, but the best source is probably the Office of National Statistics. Based on their recent publications there are 58,000 trans-women, 48,000 trans-men and 114,000 non-binary people in the UK.
If 0.1 percent of trans-women were guilty of physical assault that would be 58 stories in the paper every year, i.e. approximately one a week. Obviously there have been nowhere near that number.
There are certain situations that strongly magnify the threat of transwomen to women. One is competitive sports, which will eventually exclude women from elite athletics if transwomen are allowed to compete with women. Another is prisons, where violent criminals, many of them sex offenders, identify as women and are subsequently housed with women. Men greatly outnumber women in prison, so eventually women’s prisons will be majority male, many of who will be violent sex offenders. Another is the courtroom, where female rape victims have been compelled to address their attacker as “she,” and to read about their attack as on woman attacking another. This is grave psychic harm. Another is female-only changing rooms, which must now accommodate female-identifying men with cell phones. I could go on.
There are certain situations that strongly magnify the threat of transwomen to women. One is competitive sports, which will eventually exclude women from elite athletics if transwomen are allowed to compete with women. Another is prisons, where violent criminals, many of them sex offenders, identify as women and are subsequently housed with women. Men greatly outnumber women in prison, so eventually women’s prisons will be majority male, many of who will be violent sex offenders. Another is the courtroom, where female rape victims have been compelled to address their attacker as “she,” and to read about their attack as on woman attacking another. This is grave psychic harm. Another is female-only changing rooms, which must now accommodate female-identifying men with cell phones. I could go on.
I think you meant that trans women do – although it’s all very confusing. And I’ve got an A Level in Biology
I agree.
A handy defence against casual insults and being labelled transphobic when I support women who don’t want trans women allowed in their sports, is that I am not transphobic (whatever that is meant to mean) because I couldn’t give a flying proverbial if Transmen want to box men, or play rugby against men, or race and swim against men.
Which, of course, never happens.
I think that’s an unfair generalization.
The majority of trans-women never physically threaten anyone.
Every assault by a trans-women is widely publicized but how many have we actually read about. The number is vanishingly small relative to their population.
Credible figures for the number of trans-women in the UK are hard to come by. There are no high quality figures available, but the best source is probably the Office of National Statistics. Based on their recent publications there are 58,000 trans-women, 48,000 trans-men and 114,000 non-binary people in the UK.
If 0.1 percent of trans-women were guilty of physical assault that would be 58 stories in the paper every year, i.e. approximately one a week. Obviously there have been nowhere near that number.
I think that’s an unfair generalization.
The majority of trans-women never physically threaten anyone.
Every assault by a trans-women is widely publicized but how many have we actually read about. The number is vanishingly small relative to their population.
Credible figures for the number of trans-women in the UK are hard to come by. There are no high quality figures available, but the best source is probably the Office of National Statistics. Based on their recent publications there are 58,000 trans-women, 48,000 trans-men and 114,000 non-binary people in the UK.
If 0.1 percent of trans-women were guilty of physical assault that would be 58 stories in the paper every year, i.e. approximately one a week. Obviously there have been nowhere near that number.
I think you meant that trans women do – although it’s all very confusing. And I’ve got an A Level in Biology
I agree.
A handy defence against casual insults and being labelled transphobic when I support women who don’t want trans women allowed in their sports, is that I am not transphobic (whatever that is meant to mean) because I couldn’t give a flying proverbial if Transmen want to box men, or play rugby against men, or race and swim against men.
Which, of course, never happens.
It’s something to do with actually having some understanding of them. If you have grown up female and reasonably cute, or even not, you may have received unwanted attention from men from a young age. I was attacked twice before 17 yrs old, and noted men to be avoided from a young sge. The presence of a strong father figure helped me, I’m sure. The onset of puberty is scary for many of us, but for some girls it is pure hell. Transwomen might have a different story – but it is not one of predatory females around every corner.
I think the reason for that is trans men don’t threaten women in any way, whereas trans men do. Men are not threatened by either of them.
I’m talking about real, physical threat, not ‘phobia’.
It’s something to do with actually having some understanding of them. If you have grown up female and reasonably cute, or even not, you may have received unwanted attention from men from a young age. I was attacked twice before 17 yrs old, and noted men to be avoided from a young sge. The presence of a strong father figure helped me, I’m sure. The onset of puberty is scary for many of us, but for some girls it is pure hell. Transwomen might have a different story – but it is not one of predatory females around every corner.
Well said.
Well said. It doesn’t get any plainer than that. Being looked on as some sort of a hero to the trans cult just makes the whole miserable affair sadder.
That said, you can’t save everyone from themselves. She has decided to go all in on the pretense. Trans activism is attempting to compel me to go along with the pretense as well and that’s where I draw the line. I have no interest in redefining genders and pronouns just to humour a tiny group of unhappy, angry people.
Quite right. I don’t tolerate pronoun crap any more.
That would make them happy only briefly. Then they would be on to demanding more. Tolerate => accept => applaud +> join.
Quite right. I don’t tolerate pronoun crap any more.
That would make them happy only briefly. Then they would be on to demanding more. Tolerate => accept => applaud +> join.
Exactly. Damaged, and completely messed up about sex, and note too how there us an assumption that maleness is non-sexual. Which shows how little agency these unfortunate women have in their lives. They seem to lack positive straight female role models. I often wish that these bitter, tortured and timid young urban women could fall in with a bunch of (raucous, bawdy and confident) young women from my small village on a night out. See how happy young rural women get drunk, chase men and have a laugh. It’d do them a power of good.
…and encouraging others to indulge in their own self-abuse.
It’s noticeable that female writers treat trans-men far more sympathetically than they treat trans-women.
Males seem equally disparaging about both trans categories.
Well said.
Well said. It doesn’t get any plainer than that. Being looked on as some sort of a hero to the trans cult just makes the whole miserable affair sadder.
That said, you can’t save everyone from themselves. She has decided to go all in on the pretense. Trans activism is attempting to compel me to go along with the pretense as well and that’s where I draw the line. I have no interest in redefining genders and pronouns just to humour a tiny group of unhappy, angry people.
Exactly. Damaged, and completely messed up about sex, and note too how there us an assumption that maleness is non-sexual. Which shows how little agency these unfortunate women have in their lives. They seem to lack positive straight female role models. I often wish that these bitter, tortured and timid young urban women could fall in with a bunch of (raucous, bawdy and confident) young women from my small village on a night out. See how happy young rural women get drunk, chase men and have a laugh. It’d do them a power of good.
Plenty of flowery language and trans ideological nonsense doesn’t cover up the ugliness and tragedy of Ellen Page’s situation.
As a young girl and woman she suffered sexual and mental abuse in the cesspit of Hollywood. Instead of seeking therapy to come to terms with it, she mutilated her body and lives under a silly delusion that she is a male.
She is not a Little Mermaid transformed in to one of “the daughters of the air”. She is a mentally troubled person who is compounding the tragedy of abuse by others with sick, surgical self-abuse.
The stand out point for me is that Page’s identity as a lesbian was rejected by her mother. Her mother preferred her to be trans. It reminded me of the former CEO of Mermaids who admitted that her son became trans because his father couldn’t accept he was gay. It highlights how the trans movement is counter-gay and shouldn’t be grouped with LGB. It’s a step backwards – the real conversion therapy (as it is in Iran).
The stand out point for me is there are still people – perhaps yourself among them – that think they can separate the unnaturalness that occurs when men think they’re women, from the unnaturalness that occurs when men think they should have sex with other men. What is the principle that justifies drawing a line between them?
The reason the T is appended to the LGB is because they all depend on the same essential prioritization of what feels right to you, over your biology. They all represent the elevation of humanity’s hopes and dreams over the reality of humanity’s actual bodily existence. In a sense they are the apex of the Western Enlightenment project; in another sense they are bizarre denials of the truth that will of course end badly for everyone.
I disagree. Sexual orientation is rooted in “actual bodily existence” – it’s about how your biological body responds to other biological bodies. Transgenderism exists only in the mind; it’s totally divorced from any notion of biological reality and relates to sexuality only as a fetish in some men’s minds (autogynophilia).
This comment reminds me of the great Seinfeld episode where George receives a massage from a masseur and is alarmed that “it moved” – fearing this demonstrates some hidden homosexuality. ‘Biological response’ obviously plays an important role in the characterization of someone as a homosexual, but whether biological response is the cause or the effect has been hotly contested for a very long time.
More to the point, trans activists will argue that the same ’cause or effect’ question applies to them as well – so that (supposedly) a man-who-thinks-he’s-a-woman will experience increased health outcomes once he is affirmed in his supposedly unchosen delusion. This is obviously untrue, but the data is complex, there are many confounding factors and (crucially) there are ideological commitments – to self-expression, to the importance of unbounded liberty, to sexuality as an instrument of human authenticity, etc. – which alter how we interpret the evidence and those confounding factors.
These are all the same arguments made by gay activists 50 years ago when homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in DSM, or a moral failing in our churches, etc. Once upon a time the medical community was united in saying that putting a p***s in an a**s led to bad health outcomes and was plainly not the way those body parts were supposed to function. Then those ideological commitments took over, and suddenly the bad health outcomes were either re-characterized as the effect of ‘stigma’ or they were considered public policy challenges that justified govt intervention.
This is the exact same path that trans activists are on right now.
Same-sex attraction is different from cross-sex identification. It involves feelings that most people are familiar with; it’s just a question of what arouses these feelings. More importantly, same-sex attraction presents few to no problems for society. People who can’t stand gay and lesbians can just ignore them, for the most part. But transgenderism presents many problems for society, and most of these problems negatively affect women and girls, not boys and men. When women speak up about these problems, activists shout them down and threaten them.
I should add that trans activism also negatively affects gay and lesbians. Lesbians, of course, are women, but trans activists have condemned same-sex attraction as bigoted and transphobic, which affects gay men as well as lesbians, although it is lesbians who are pressured to accept transwomen as sexual partners. It also affects children who may be gay or lesbian, who are convinced that they are, instead, transgender. When gays and lesbians speak up about these problems, trans activists shout them down, and threaten them
Same-sex attraction is different from cross-sex identification. It involves feelings that most people are familiar with; it’s just a question of what arouses these feelings. More importantly, same-sex attraction presents few to no problems for society. People who can’t stand gay and lesbians can just ignore them, for the most part. But transgenderism presents many problems for society, and most of these problems negatively affect women and girls, not boys and men. When women speak up about these problems, activists shout them down and threaten them.
I should add that trans activism also negatively affects gay and lesbians. Lesbians, of course, are women, but trans activists have condemned same-sex attraction as bigoted and transphobic, which affects gay men as well as lesbians, although it is lesbians who are pressured to accept transwomen as sexual partners. It also affects children who may be gay or lesbian, who are convinced that they are, instead, transgender. When gays and lesbians speak up about these problems, trans activists shout them down, and threaten them
This comment reminds me of the great Seinfeld episode where George receives a massage from a masseur and is alarmed that “it moved” – fearing this demonstrates some hidden homosexuality. ‘Biological response’ obviously plays an important role in the characterization of someone as a homosexual, but whether biological response is the cause or the effect has been hotly contested for a very long time.
More to the point, trans activists will argue that the same ’cause or effect’ question applies to them as well – so that (supposedly) a man-who-thinks-he’s-a-woman will experience increased health outcomes once he is affirmed in his supposedly unchosen delusion. This is obviously untrue, but the data is complex, there are many confounding factors and (crucially) there are ideological commitments – to self-expression, to the importance of unbounded liberty, to sexuality as an instrument of human authenticity, etc. – which alter how we interpret the evidence and those confounding factors.
These are all the same arguments made by gay activists 50 years ago when homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in DSM, or a moral failing in our churches, etc. Once upon a time the medical community was united in saying that putting a p***s in an a**s led to bad health outcomes and was plainly not the way those body parts were supposed to function. Then those ideological commitments took over, and suddenly the bad health outcomes were either re-characterized as the effect of ‘stigma’ or they were considered public policy challenges that justified govt intervention.
This is the exact same path that trans activists are on right now.
Nonsense. Same sex attraction is real, physical and happens in other mammals. ‘Gender’ ideology is profoundly homophobic.
Same sex attraction is most definitely real – but so is gender dysphoria. All our social problems are real, and most of them are found in other animal communities. (Just think of all the poor female animals that are raped every day. Shiver.)
Same sex attraction is most definitely real – but so is gender dysphoria. All our social problems are real, and most of them are found in other animal communities. (Just think of all the poor female animals that are raped every day. Shiver.)
When transwomen have sex with a man isn’t that really being gay?
Most trans women appear to identify as lesbians – ie they are basically heterosexual men.
This feels like a definitional question… and I’m happy to draw the lines around the words wherever you like. But whatever you call it, when a man-who-thinks-he’s-a-woman has sex with a man, there are manifold disorders present.
Most trans women appear to identify as lesbians – ie they are basically heterosexual men.
This feels like a definitional question… and I’m happy to draw the lines around the words wherever you like. But whatever you call it, when a man-who-thinks-he’s-a-woman has sex with a man, there are manifold disorders present.
I can see why you would use the word ‘unnaturalness’; it has great power to provoke. And also why you, like many trans activists, would try to draw a parallel between homosexuality and transgenderism.
But it’s a false and disingenuous comparison. Homosexuality is about our sexual preferences and behaviour. It doesn’t require anybody else to change their understanding of reality to be accommodated. Transgenderism is a faith, with no objectivity or science to support it. Those of us who are skeptical are told that we must either buy in to the belief that a person can be ‘born in the wrong body’ or accept that we are bigots.
Attempting to draw a parallel between homosexuality and transgenderism is like attempting to draw a parallel between gravity and Scientology. It simply won’t do.
It is simply bizarre to suggest that the normalization of homosexuality has not required any accommodation from other people. Look at the world around you!
But I do agree it is all driven by faith. Do we believe there *should* be limits to the expression and manifestation of our feelings and desires? Could such a question be answered based on anything other than faith?
‘It is simply bizarre to suggest that the normalization of homosexuality has not required any accommodation from other people.’
But that’s not at all what I said. I said that people weren’t required to change their understanding of reality in order to accommodate homosexuality. Any accommodation required has been (and continues to be) in respect to ideas of morality, be they religious or otherwise, but nobody is arguing that homosexuality doesn’t exist.
Transgenderism, on the other hand, relies upon the belief that we each possess some intangible essence of gender – something akin to the religious notion of a soul – that may or may not match our physical sex. It is, as you acknowledge in your post, a matter of faith, and in this no different from Christianity, Hinduism or astrology.
Now, in a liberal democracy, we allow all their belief systems of choice, so long as these do not impinge upon the rights of others. But what we don’t do is insist that everybody else must believe them too, at risk of being found guilty of an entirely spurious ‘hate crime’.
‘It is simply bizarre to suggest that the normalization of homosexuality has not required any accommodation from other people.’
But that’s not at all what I said. I said that people weren’t required to change their understanding of reality in order to accommodate homosexuality. Any accommodation required has been (and continues to be) in respect to ideas of morality, be they religious or otherwise, but nobody is arguing that homosexuality doesn’t exist.
Transgenderism, on the other hand, relies upon the belief that we each possess some intangible essence of gender – something akin to the religious notion of a soul – that may or may not match our physical sex. It is, as you acknowledge in your post, a matter of faith, and in this no different from Christianity, Hinduism or astrology.
Now, in a liberal democracy, we allow all their belief systems of choice, so long as these do not impinge upon the rights of others. But what we don’t do is insist that everybody else must believe them too, at risk of being found guilty of an entirely spurious ‘hate crime’.
It is simply bizarre to suggest that the normalization of homosexuality has not required any accommodation from other people. Look at the world around you!
But I do agree it is all driven by faith. Do we believe there *should* be limits to the expression and manifestation of our feelings and desires? Could such a question be answered based on anything other than faith?
You’ve completely misunderstood her comment. Read it again.
I disagree. Sexual orientation is rooted in “actual bodily existence” – it’s about how your biological body responds to other biological bodies. Transgenderism exists only in the mind; it’s totally divorced from any notion of biological reality and relates to sexuality only as a fetish in some men’s minds (autogynophilia).
Nonsense. Same sex attraction is real, physical and happens in other mammals. ‘Gender’ ideology is profoundly homophobic.
When transwomen have sex with a man isn’t that really being gay?
I can see why you would use the word ‘unnaturalness’; it has great power to provoke. And also why you, like many trans activists, would try to draw a parallel between homosexuality and transgenderism.
But it’s a false and disingenuous comparison. Homosexuality is about our sexual preferences and behaviour. It doesn’t require anybody else to change their understanding of reality to be accommodated. Transgenderism is a faith, with no objectivity or science to support it. Those of us who are skeptical are told that we must either buy in to the belief that a person can be ‘born in the wrong body’ or accept that we are bigots.
Attempting to draw a parallel between homosexuality and transgenderism is like attempting to draw a parallel between gravity and Scientology. It simply won’t do.
You’ve completely misunderstood her comment. Read it again.
It’s a high bar; this is a fantastic piece of writing – illuminating, analytical, critical of the ideology that has brought Page to such a pretty pass, yet deeply and genuinely sympathetic of her plight.
For me, the stand out point, the nugget of truth from which everything else follows, was this:
This has been especially true in America where parents are far more at ease with mutilating their children’s bodies than accepting they are gay. Read Helen Joyce on this phenomenon.
And she’s in very bad company. The theocratic government of Iran takes a similar position. There, homosexuality is punishable by death but surgical interventions are accepted.
All my previous comments were deleted by Unherd (because my fellow Unherd readers disagreed with them so virulently?), so I will add a new one here, again rejecting your conclusion. Perhaps the censors will be too busy to catch this one…
T is grouped with LGB because they depend on the same essential conceit – that our genuinely held feelings and desires trump our biological directives… that the mind and the heart are greater than the body… that ‘nature’ deserves no deference but should be reshaped by us in our quest for authenticity… that even our most intimate and essential bodily functions are simply tools to express the ‘inner me’ and thereby to carve out some slim perch on which to stand in the face of the apparent meaninglessness of our coming deaths.
I find it ironic, sad, funny, I don’t know what, that so many Unherd readers refuse to acknowledge the very strong connection between T and LGB. T is traversing the same path – in scientific consensus, in religious acceptance, in social opprobrium, in legal recognition, you name it – that LGB trailblazed over the past half-century.
We either must examine anew the arguments given us by LGB, or we must accept T, too.
LGB had none of the massive institutional backing that the T has had since 2012 in the previous half a century. T doesn’t walk the same path and beyond superficialities of ‘kink’has virtually nothing in common. Subjective feelings are utterly irrelevant, and the diffrences between attraction and gender “incongruety” gigantic.
I understand where you are coming from with your argument but I think there is a fundamental difference between being gay and even having your same-sex relationship being officially acknowledged as a marriage and transitioning.
If I were a fundamental Christian (which I am not) I might regard gays as being in a state of sin and their right to marry as an abomination, but my own faith and beliefs are in no way affected and it is always open to gay individuals to see the light and put sin away.
In contrast conventions established to ensure women feel safer in refuges, hospitals, prisons and other male-free spaces are adversely affected by enforcement of the trans ideology and more tragically still those that have been persuaded to mutilate their bodies to simulate the sex they were not borne to can not simply change their mind and return to their former state. Moreover, women face competition in sport from men purporting to be women with all the advantages that provides them – no woman has ever protested that lesbians should be excluded from their sport whereas in many sports women are deeply unhappy at the intrusion of men purporting to be women in their sport.
It’s very strange that Kirk’s points – which were totally reasonable and relatively uncontroversial positions before homosexuality was fetishized by emotional partisans – are being met with such hostility on Unherd. If I’m being honest, it’s not homophobia that inspires my revulsion at the sight two men showing each other romantic affection, it is a rational masculine reflex. And It doesn’t mean heterosexual men can’t love, sympathize with, support and protect homosexuals. It just means that we’re not willing to lie to ourselves or others about same-sex relationships having the same intrinsic value to society as opposite sex relationships. Societies don’t flourish because of but rather in spite of existence of same-sex couples. Opposite sex couples are integral to a flourishing society. Same sex attraction is an artifact.
And the days of dispassionate research on the physiological and psychological origins of same-sex attraction are done. Whatever we think we know about the issue, it’s all we’re ever gonna know from a scientific standpoint. No sane researcher in the modern academy would risk discovering that homosexuals are the result of trauma or neglect, or a combination of environmental factors when doing so would get them ostracized or offed.
And the days of dispassionate research on the physiological and psychological origins of same-sex attraction are done. Whatever we think we know about the issue, it’s all we’re ever gonna know from a scientific standpoint. No sane researcher in the modern academy would risk discovering that homosexuals are the result of trauma or neglect, or a combination of environmental factors when doing so would get them ostracized or offed.
LGB had none of the massive institutional backing that the T has had since 2012 in the previous half a century. T doesn’t walk the same path and beyond superficialities of ‘kink’has virtually nothing in common. Subjective feelings are utterly irrelevant, and the diffrences between attraction and gender “incongruety” gigantic.
I understand where you are coming from with your argument but I think there is a fundamental difference between being gay and even having your same-sex relationship being officially acknowledged as a marriage and transitioning.
If I were a fundamental Christian (which I am not) I might regard gays as being in a state of sin and their right to marry as an abomination, but my own faith and beliefs are in no way affected and it is always open to gay individuals to see the light and put sin away.
In contrast conventions established to ensure women feel safer in refuges, hospitals, prisons and other male-free spaces are adversely affected by enforcement of the trans ideology and more tragically still those that have been persuaded to mutilate their bodies to simulate the sex they were not borne to can not simply change their mind and return to their former state. Moreover, women face competition in sport from men purporting to be women with all the advantages that provides them – no woman has ever protested that lesbians should be excluded from their sport whereas in many sports women are deeply unhappy at the intrusion of men purporting to be women in their sport.
It’s very strange that Kirk’s points – which were totally reasonable and relatively uncontroversial positions before homosexuality was fetishized by emotional partisans – are being met with such hostility on Unherd. If I’m being honest, it’s not homophobia that inspires my revulsion at the sight two men showing each other romantic affection, it is a rational masculine reflex. And It doesn’t mean heterosexual men can’t love, sympathize with, support and protect homosexuals. It just means that we’re not willing to lie to ourselves or others about same-sex relationships having the same intrinsic value to society as opposite sex relationships. Societies don’t flourish because of but rather in spite of existence of same-sex couples. Opposite sex couples are integral to a flourishing society. Same sex attraction is an artifact.
The stand out point for me is there are still people – perhaps yourself among them – that think they can separate the unnaturalness that occurs when men think they’re women, from the unnaturalness that occurs when men think they should have sex with other men. What is the principle that justifies drawing a line between them?
The reason the T is appended to the LGB is because they all depend on the same essential prioritization of what feels right to you, over your biology. They all represent the elevation of humanity’s hopes and dreams over the reality of humanity’s actual bodily existence. In a sense they are the apex of the Western Enlightenment project; in another sense they are bizarre denials of the truth that will of course end badly for everyone.
It’s a high bar; this is a fantastic piece of writing – illuminating, analytical, critical of the ideology that has brought Page to such a pretty pass, yet deeply and genuinely sympathetic of her plight.
For me, the stand out point, the nugget of truth from which everything else follows, was this:
This has been especially true in America where parents are far more at ease with mutilating their children’s bodies than accepting they are gay. Read Helen Joyce on this phenomenon.
And she’s in very bad company. The theocratic government of Iran takes a similar position. There, homosexuality is punishable by death but surgical interventions are accepted.
All my previous comments were deleted by Unherd (because my fellow Unherd readers disagreed with them so virulently?), so I will add a new one here, again rejecting your conclusion. Perhaps the censors will be too busy to catch this one…
T is grouped with LGB because they depend on the same essential conceit – that our genuinely held feelings and desires trump our biological directives… that the mind and the heart are greater than the body… that ‘nature’ deserves no deference but should be reshaped by us in our quest for authenticity… that even our most intimate and essential bodily functions are simply tools to express the ‘inner me’ and thereby to carve out some slim perch on which to stand in the face of the apparent meaninglessness of our coming deaths.
I find it ironic, sad, funny, I don’t know what, that so many Unherd readers refuse to acknowledge the very strong connection between T and LGB. T is traversing the same path – in scientific consensus, in religious acceptance, in social opprobrium, in legal recognition, you name it – that LGB trailblazed over the past half-century.
We either must examine anew the arguments given us by LGB, or we must accept T, too.
The stand out point for me is that Page’s identity as a lesbian was rejected by her mother. Her mother preferred her to be trans. It reminded me of the former CEO of Mermaids who admitted that her son became trans because his father couldn’t accept he was gay. It highlights how the trans movement is counter-gay and shouldn’t be grouped with LGB. It’s a step backwards – the real conversion therapy (as it is in Iran).
What a confusing and sad piece of writing. This woman is referred to as a he and a she in the same paragraph. She will always be a she, a her and a lesbian.She read a trans memoir and suddenly realized this was who she was. Words are powerful to troubled people. The writer of this piece should remember that.
I found the use of he and she confusing too, but I suspect it was deliberate.
Yes and she has now written a memoir that is likely to influence other troubled and abused girls (maybe boys as well).
I found the use of he and she confusing too, but I suspect it was deliberate.
Yes and she has now written a memoir that is likely to influence other troubled and abused girls (maybe boys as well).
What a confusing and sad piece of writing. This woman is referred to as a he and a she in the same paragraph. She will always be a she, a her and a lesbian.She read a trans memoir and suddenly realized this was who she was. Words are powerful to troubled people. The writer of this piece should remember that.
Odd how so many of these trans stories revolve around abuse and assault suffered by the person prior to transitioning, the change explicitly recognized as a legitimate psychological and pathological response to to trauma, and yet is still held out as perfectly normal. Don’t these stories demonstrate that without the abuse there wouldn’t have been the compulsion to transition? Is it normal and natural or is it a response to trauma? It seems like the entire movement wants to have it both ways.
Odd how so many of these trans stories revolve around abuse and assault suffered by the person prior to transitioning, the change explicitly recognized as a legitimate psychological and pathological response to to trauma, and yet is still held out as perfectly normal. Don’t these stories demonstrate that without the abuse there wouldn’t have been the compulsion to transition? Is it normal and natural or is it a response to trauma? It seems like the entire movement wants to have it both ways.
The other sad thing about this is that he won’t be able to work as a mainstream actor again. His star appeal was as a woman – not as a man.
Yeah right, I mean who has ever heard of a movie studio giving prime work to actors based on their identity or gender regardless of audience preference?
She now looks like a small teenaged boy and will never look like a grown man, which was apparently her goal. Peter Pan leaps to mind, since Aladdin was into Jasmine, but Peter wasn’t into Wendy.
Exactly, a teenaged boy.
Exactly, a teenaged boy.
Very true, she can’t play a man very convincingly and presumably wouldn’t want to play a woman, so she will have to hold out for the rate opportunity to play trans man.
I hope it is worth it for her.
Or have a different career behind the camera.
Or have a different career behind the camera.
Yeah right, I mean who has ever heard of a movie studio giving prime work to actors based on their identity or gender regardless of audience preference?
She now looks like a small teenaged boy and will never look like a grown man, which was apparently her goal. Peter Pan leaps to mind, since Aladdin was into Jasmine, but Peter wasn’t into Wendy.
Very true, she can’t play a man very convincingly and presumably wouldn’t want to play a woman, so she will have to hold out for the rate opportunity to play trans man.
I hope it is worth it for her.
The other sad thing about this is that he won’t be able to work as a mainstream actor again. His star appeal was as a woman – not as a man.
” Over and over, Page is informed with violence that her body is not hers.” Chilling.
And, ironically, never more true than it is now.
And, ironically, never more true than it is now.
” Over and over, Page is informed with violence that her body is not hers.” Chilling.
If an adult wishes to transition from one outward appearance sex to another that’s their affair. But the tragedy of Page is that as a woman she was very cute and a wonderful actress with a great career ahead of her; but as “man” it is self-evident to anybody who cares to look, that Page still looks like a young woman pretending to dress up as man. The physique simply isn’t there. It’s not just the height but the the facial features and the body shape. A bit like in the scene from Charlie’s Angels where the 3 angels dressed up in suits to break into a massive vault. Nobody could be fooled that they ever looked like men, even with phony moustaches on!
Exactly this – no matter how wide the shoulder pads s/he still looks like a woman – the high cheek bones, the rounded chin, the lack of stubble – you can’t erase these things.
I think the tragedy of Page is that she believes this damaging nonsense, and is prepared to medicate and mutilate herself in a desperate attempt to make it real that can only compromise her health and well-being in the long run.
I certainly don’t think what you appear to be suggesting, that the tragedy of Page is in what she looks like to others – although ironically that may have played a part in her being taken in by this ideology in the first place.
Exactly this – no matter how wide the shoulder pads s/he still looks like a woman – the high cheek bones, the rounded chin, the lack of stubble – you can’t erase these things.
I think the tragedy of Page is that she believes this damaging nonsense, and is prepared to medicate and mutilate herself in a desperate attempt to make it real that can only compromise her health and well-being in the long run.
I certainly don’t think what you appear to be suggesting, that the tragedy of Page is in what she looks like to others – although ironically that may have played a part in her being taken in by this ideology in the first place.
If an adult wishes to transition from one outward appearance sex to another that’s their affair. But the tragedy of Page is that as a woman she was very cute and a wonderful actress with a great career ahead of her; but as “man” it is self-evident to anybody who cares to look, that Page still looks like a young woman pretending to dress up as man. The physique simply isn’t there. It’s not just the height but the the facial features and the body shape. A bit like in the scene from Charlie’s Angels where the 3 angels dressed up in suits to break into a massive vault. Nobody could be fooled that they ever looked like men, even with phony moustaches on!
We need some kind of society wide CBT.
Also, I’m sure it’s challenging for girls to go through puberty. But how helpful is it for society to keep reinforcing to girls that it’s shit to be a woman and their lives are over, etc. etc.
I would have liked to know about the places in Page’s memoir where Ditum is more sceptical, this seems too much like confirmation of Ditum’s priors, though I still found this piece to be good.
We need some kind of society wide CBT.
Also, I’m sure it’s challenging for girls to go through puberty. But how helpful is it for society to keep reinforcing to girls that it’s shit to be a woman and their lives are over, etc. etc.
I would have liked to know about the places in Page’s memoir where Ditum is more sceptical, this seems too much like confirmation of Ditum’s priors, though I still found this piece to be good.
It seems that there is a direct correlation between transmen, lesbians, and early, childhood sexual abuse, particularly being raped by a father. I remember knowing lesbians who shared that this had happened to them. Nowadays, perhaps, they would feel comfortable transitioning because it’s more acceptable. The irony is it’s like identifying with the enemy.
Alas, the number of children who are sexually abused is roughly 1 in 4. Hence if childhood sexual abuse were the cause of lesbians becoming trans men, there would be a whole lot more of them. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html#:~:text=Although%20estimates%20vary%20across%20studies,States%20experience%20child%20sexual%20abuse.
Like, if you expose 100 people to a pathogen, but only 20 become ill, it means the illness isn’t caused by the pathogen?
Like, if you expose 100 people to a pathogen, but only 20 become ill, it means the illness isn’t caused by the pathogen?
Alas, the number of children who are sexually abused is roughly 1 in 4. Hence if childhood sexual abuse were the cause of lesbians becoming trans men, there would be a whole lot more of them. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html#:~:text=Although%20estimates%20vary%20across%20studies,States%20experience%20child%20sexual%20abuse.
It seems that there is a direct correlation between transmen, lesbians, and early, childhood sexual abuse, particularly being raped by a father. I remember knowing lesbians who shared that this had happened to them. Nowadays, perhaps, they would feel comfortable transitioning because it’s more acceptable. The irony is it’s like identifying with the enemy.
She’s still a woman. That’s just a fact.
She’s still a woman. That’s just a fact.
Out of the millions of yards of print, a simple truth is being restated, some young girls find the onset of puberty and the development of their womanhood distressing. At the root of it can be stereotyping, ‘your in the pink corner OK !, but some of it is much more profound and down to abuse. For the latter, there are three journeys I have noticed.
1) Anorexia, is a denial of womanhood.
2) Rejecting men and drifting toward other women, who ‘understand’ them.
3) Self-Mutilation. (now corporatised).
It’s very clear we need a first-class psychologist class who are not intimated by any ‘ism’s and help people manage their way to peace and survival. The first rule is that if they display multiple mental health issues NEVER put the solution down to one outcome instead work through the palimpsest to the core.
If we start by accepting there are an exceptionally small number of well-functioning successful people, who just happen to have gender dysphoria then the moment the professionals meet someone with multiple issues, indeed more than one issue, the alarm bells should ring very loudly.
Out of the millions of yards of print, a simple truth is being restated, some young girls find the onset of puberty and the development of their womanhood distressing. At the root of it can be stereotyping, ‘your in the pink corner OK !, but some of it is much more profound and down to abuse. For the latter, there are three journeys I have noticed.
1) Anorexia, is a denial of womanhood.
2) Rejecting men and drifting toward other women, who ‘understand’ them.
3) Self-Mutilation. (now corporatised).
It’s very clear we need a first-class psychologist class who are not intimated by any ‘ism’s and help people manage their way to peace and survival. The first rule is that if they display multiple mental health issues NEVER put the solution down to one outcome instead work through the palimpsest to the core.
If we start by accepting there are an exceptionally small number of well-functioning successful people, who just happen to have gender dysphoria then the moment the professionals meet someone with multiple issues, indeed more than one issue, the alarm bells should ring very loudly.
Interesting to note that in early pantomime productions, Aladdin was traditionally played by a girl.
Often still is.
Yes, “principal boys” were commonplace in pantomime when I were a lad…
Yes, “principal boys” were commonplace in pantomime when I were a lad…
Often still is.
Interesting to note that in early pantomime productions, Aladdin was traditionally played by a girl.
This is such a sad story – it seems Page was a young boyish lesbian but her formative experiences in childhood and as a young woman led her to hate her femaleness and indulge in radical surgery. She is still a lesbian, she doesn’t even look like a man, barely a boy in fact. She has ruined her career – all for what? Doesn’t even sound like she has obtained peace of mind from her transition. The trans lobby have a lot to answer for, as have the homophobes – many of whom are in said trans lobby. I find transgenderism to be profoundly homophobic – so many teenage lesbians now being convinced that they are actually heterosexual boys in the wrong body.
This is such a sad story – it seems Page was a young boyish lesbian but her formative experiences in childhood and as a young woman led her to hate her femaleness and indulge in radical surgery. She is still a lesbian, she doesn’t even look like a man, barely a boy in fact. She has ruined her career – all for what? Doesn’t even sound like she has obtained peace of mind from her transition. The trans lobby have a lot to answer for, as have the homophobes – many of whom are in said trans lobby. I find transgenderism to be profoundly homophobic – so many teenage lesbians now being convinced that they are actually heterosexual boys in the wrong body.
I would could that a vacuous and fictionalized re-telling of the tragic life of a girl was a pretty good actress at 20.
I would could that a vacuous and fictionalized re-telling of the tragic life of a girl was a pretty good actress at 20.
When people say they “were born in the wrong body” they are indicating they believe that there is something more to them than their bodies, i.e. spirits or souls. This is mind-body dualism, i.e. nonsense.
It’s interesting that Britney got sectioned for cutting off her hair while these borderline schizophrenics experiencing serious delusions about their bodies and identities are celebrated at every turn.
It’s interesting that Britney got sectioned for cutting off her hair while these borderline schizophrenics experiencing serious delusions about their bodies and identities are celebrated at every turn.
When people say they “were born in the wrong body” they are indicating they believe that there is something more to them than their bodies, i.e. spirits or souls. This is mind-body dualism, i.e. nonsense.
Ellen Page — a person who no longer exists, and who by strict application of the rules of gender identity never existed
How utterly confusing and confused. A person who “never existed”, nevertheless “transitioned” into a “trans” version of its opposite gender. The person “never existed” under a “dead name” which is well known but shall not be uttered. These sound like the mysteries of some esoteric faith whose totems and taboos must be accepted blindly as part of the initiation into it.
Ellen Page — a person who no longer exists, and who by strict application of the rules of gender identity never existed
How utterly confusing and confused. A person who “never existed”, nevertheless “transitioned” into a “trans” version of its opposite gender. The person “never existed” under a “dead name” which is well known but shall not be uttered. These sound like the mysteries of some esoteric faith whose totems and taboos must be accepted blindly as part of the initiation into it.
Is there any woman on this site who has not been afraid walking alone in a street at night when she thought she was followed? When she felt cornered by a man who is fysically stronger. Who has not felt hands in places where they should not be? Who has not been kissed on the mouth, just by accident? Who has been scanning the surroundings for passers by to help her out of a situation in which she felt threathened? Men are fysically stronger than women and can pose a serious threat. Pretending they are women does not change the situation. Unfortunately, women are not able to fight for their interests and show remarkable little solidarity with their sisters. Result is a second rate position in society thanks to a bunch of men who like to wear dresses and high heels. Patriarchy is an easy stroll in the woods, compared to what women will be faced with in the not so distant future, if they do not get their act together and form one front. Half of the population marginalised by a minute fraction of the population. What a clown’s world.
Is there any woman on this site who has not been afraid walking alone in a street at night when she thought she was followed? When she felt cornered by a man who is fysically stronger. Who has not felt hands in places where they should not be? Who has not been kissed on the mouth, just by accident? Who has been scanning the surroundings for passers by to help her out of a situation in which she felt threathened? Men are fysically stronger than women and can pose a serious threat. Pretending they are women does not change the situation. Unfortunately, women are not able to fight for their interests and show remarkable little solidarity with their sisters. Result is a second rate position in society thanks to a bunch of men who like to wear dresses and high heels. Patriarchy is an easy stroll in the woods, compared to what women will be faced with in the not so distant future, if they do not get their act together and form one front. Half of the population marginalised by a minute fraction of the population. What a clown’s world.
A perspicacious and compassionate reflection on “transition” as a form of armor for women whose sex — whether they are lesbian or straight — puts them in harm’s way. This helps me see “transman” as a kind of Stone Butch 2.0 — a way of performing male that protects against the vulnerabilities, and liabilities, of being female.
I am genuinely perplexed, however, by the writer’s use of male pronouns for Elliot. However kindly intended, I think this practice harmful. Language capture helped propel trans ideology; we should not indulge it. Nor is there anything disrespectful about biological truth: Whether Elliot or Ellen, Page is a woman. We can feel compassion toward wounded, distressed people who make the decision to “transition” without obliquely embracing the madness of gender ideology by using pronouns that indicate we believe they have actually changed sex.
Exactly! I felt disappointed that Ditum caved to the pronoun thing. I have read other stories, not about trans people, where the pronoun thing was used, and I had to read it many times to figure out what was being said. It’s frustrating.
I am totally skeptical of the trans movement – but I will use any adult persons preferred pronouns if they ask – unless they try and compel me or threaten me.
Absolutely. Rob – Robert; Steve – Stephen; He – She. Respecting a polite request when referring to another is simply good manners.
I’m happy to make anyone comfortable; doesn’t mean I buy into the whole gender ideology schtick. Try to compel me, however . . .
I used to feel the same way, until it struck me that from the outside, politeness and compliance look exactly the same even if the intentions in your head are not the same. At this point, the amount of politeness I’m willing to extend is to avoid pronouns altogether.
I second that, Daria.
It must be Elliot Page week. There was an article about Page in the Toronto Star today.
The doctor who cut her breasts off is in fact a criminal. A doctor’s duty is to heal and not affirm a lie which she was brought to believe. Never was anyone born in the wrong body.
A real Page-turner.
A real Page-turner.
This article is simply rambling and incoherent. It also seems to treat hearsay as fact.
This article is simply rambling and incoherent. It also seems to treat hearsay as fact.
Who is page? as if I cared?…
Firstly, you have the internet. Secondly, why are you here?
Firstly, you have the internet. Secondly, why are you here?
Who is page? as if I cared?…