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Trans activists have a new target: the Middle Ages

A sleeping Joan of Arc, who has been retrospectively 'transed'. Credit: Getty

January 18, 2024 - 6:00pm

In what is sure to be one of the academic highlights of 2024, The English Historical Review has published a creative writing exercise: “The Trans Middle Ages: Incorporating Transgender and Intersex Studies into the History of Medieval Sexuality”, with a rich discussion of how “transmisogyny operated as a distinct form of othering within medieval Byzantine gender frameworks.” If your first thought was “what Trans Middle Ages?” or “how did ‘transmisogyny,’ a term coined in 2007, operate several centuries earlier?”, you’re not alone.  

This alt-history version of the Middle Ages had its ups and downs. Alongside persecution, the author argues that “medieval societies associated trans and genderqueer identities with proximity to, rather than distance from, the divine”, casting the Middle Ages as a kind of “queer utopia” and rendering medieval religion “fundamentally queer”. Apparently, a genderqueer analysis is “indispensable” to “understanding the connections between gender and faith in the Middle Ages”. 

The author holds as axiomatic the idea that trans people “have always existed in all human cultures”. There are only “specifically historicised forms of trans experience”. This would indeed be impossible to prove but useful if only it were so. 

This isn’t new. Trans activists in the academy have abandoned their training in historical methods in order to reimagine figures from Roman emperors to Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I (as far as I know, no such attempts have been made on QEII), and author Louisa May Alcott as transgender. Just a few months ago, the North Hertfordshire Museum took the initiative to change up the pronouns the museum used to refer to one of Rome’s most notorious emperors, noting that Elagabalus, “long regarded as mad and one of the worst Roman emperors […] is perhaps now best thought of as a transgender teen”.

But there’s a dark underside to these absurdities. For the vast majority of human history, the concept of gender identity — much less transgender identities — didn’t exist. This isn’t to say that no one before the 20th century ever felt somehow wrong in the body he or she was born in or that no one ever wished that they’d been born a boy instead of a girl.

“Trans” is something else, though: the product of new medical technologies and new ways of thinking about identity that change the meaning of such pains and desires. As the philosopher of science Ian Hacking put it, new concepts and technologies create new ways of being human that didn’t exist before. 

There’s a lot of sexism involved (you know a female historical figure is at risk of being transed if she was in any way unconventional for the time and place when she live). But that’s not the only thing that’s troubling. There’s something grotesque about the way trans activists turn long-dead historical figures into marionettes for a new and radical ideology.

Why are these activists unwilling to acknowledge the newness of what they have created? Surely it would have been possible to argue that — having progressed so far from our benighted past — we have discovered bold new ways of being and doing that deserve recognition and protection. Why not own their invention, rather than impose it on those who came before them? 

Instead, they opted for rampant and shameless historical revisionism, turning the past into quicksand. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. 

There is something totalitarian about this act of rewriting and how it abolishes the possibility that other perspectives once existed. If we can’t acknowledge that we have created a new way of being human — being “trans” — we destroy our ability to look with curiosity on that creation and consider alternative ways of constructing ourselves as individuals and societies in the future. We leave ourselves with no solid ground to stand on, and no way out of our current prejudices and hyperfixations. 


Eliza Mondegreen is a researcher and freelance writer.

elizamondegreen

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UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 months ago

I read it at the weekend. It’s polemic, a fantasy, and it doesn’t even come close to the standards of rigorous scholarship that a journal like the EHR should demand. It’s a scandal that it got through the peer review process and was accepted for publication.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

If as Mondegreen is, you are under the delusion that people being transgender is a new thing — then as Mondegreen is you are an ill educated imbecile — and one dedicated to abusing transgender people in law and policy.
She has yet to and apparently can not, ever find any actual facts supporting her claims.
People are only ever born transgender, and there is no more reason to think the incidence rate of that has increased in recent years, than there is to think the incidence of people being gay or bisexual has increased in recent years.
The apparent increase is only a matter of this –when you stop abusing or even killing people for having characteristic X, more people then admit they have that characteristic.
You and your lickspittles and coaches deserve no respect, Mondegreen, because however careful a liar you are you are only a liar in this — and your purpose is the grotesque abuse of transgender people and children.
And as is seen elsewhere, should you have success in that abuse, you Social Conservatives won’t stop there. The existence and happiness of LGBTQ people is what you resent, and you will not stop until all are back in the closet, or wearing the triangle in public, or dead.
The only stage of genocide missing from your pogrom is the outright massacres — I have no reason to suspect you and your ilk will shrink from that if you get a chance to carry it out.
http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/

David McKee
David McKee
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Ms. Perkins, I am much obliged to you. We all need to see a real, practical example of how far down the rabbithole trans activists have gone, and how pointless it is in trying to reason with them.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  David McKee

Being the only one here in possession of any relevant facts, it is I who can not reason with you.
Here are relevant facts.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
You will have no relevant and true reply.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I’d wager that no-one here doubts the phenomenon of some people being born transgender – defined as, eg, ambiguous sexual organs, and mixed mental, psychology etc. It’s just that they are also aware of inconvenient facts for your apparent fundamentalism:

detransitioning is also a real thing; as are side effects – this is particularly salient where Trans activists deny/downplay the phenomena, whilst simulataneously encouraging children, in no uncertain terms, to have drug and surgical interventions that can do serious irreversible damage
the great majority of gender questioning people eventually decide that they are, after all, of the sex/gender ‘assigned’ at birth
autogynephila is a real thing (estimated at 3% of men, whilst transwomen are around 0.10%). While genuine trans people should be, and already are, protected in law; sexual kinks are not a protected characteristic.
90% of sexual predators are men – simple self identification will and has led to abuses. This is not a critism of Trans gender people, but of men who would use the T tile to gain access to women’s spaces. To deny this is gaslighting.
biological sex is real – people who say so should not be hounded out of their jobs (as recent court rulings have affirmed). In the States, 100 academics were cancelled/sacked for political wrong-think during the McCarthy era, 300 have been in the last 10 years (many for offending not trans people per se, but for having democratically, legally and scientifically uncontroversial views that happen to clash with Trans Lobbyists. Activists who’ve been hired, and given carte-blanche to determine policy, as fearful University staff surrendered to their bullying and hectoring)
In the last 10-15 years, carrying out quality research, as opposed to data mining, and other forms of polemical research, has become ‘too problematic’. The result is an appaling lack of an evidence-base for major social, drug, and surgical interventions.
Contrary to victimisation fantasies, many/most people with considered criticisms of Trans ideology, made in good faith are inconveniently – liberal, LGBTQ, feminist…

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

“detransitioning is also a real thing; as are side effects” <– No side effects you can name, and people who regret transition claiming it was a wrong diagnosis altogether are less than <1% of those who undertake it.
You lied.
“the great majority of gender questioning people eventually decide that they are, after all, of the sex/gender ‘assigned’ at birth” <– No, the overwhelming number of people who decide to undertake medical transition never change their mind.
You lied.
“autogynephila” <– Is a fraud at this point, there is no evidence for it that is not equally evidence of some other etioloigy, and Blanchard has been tryig to ignore the physical evidence and add epicycles to his baseless theory to keep it relevant — but it is out of the ICD now because it never had any logical validity.
You lied.
“90% of sexual predators” <– Which has no relevance, since only an individual can commit a crime. Misplaces misandry is only that.
You lied.
“biological sex is real” <– So what? So is a person’s biological gender, and the sex of a person makes no decisions at all. You have said something irrelevant as if it were relevant.
You lied.
“In the last 10-15 years” <– Research has proven your sort of bigot wrong over and over again. There is no such thing as legitimately invaliding all work wholesale which refutes you — you have to do it retail. Like I can and have with all the research you might claim supports you — I know your lies already.
You lie a lot.
“Contrary to victimisation fantasies,” <– You have yet to make any considered criticism, no one yet has. Because it is merely biology at work and you are bigoted against people with that biology, you never will. You are not able.
You love your lies too much.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Nothing but ad hominem attacks and other rhetoricical manipulations. Great shadow boxing!

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A
Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

You are a manipulative liar and nobody is fooled by you on so many levels.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

Except you can’t find any lie I’ve told here.

Jill Yendrys
Jill Yendrys
10 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

You play pretty fast and loose with the word “fact”.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
10 months ago
Reply to  Jill Yendrys

No I do not. That is why none here manage to cite any which contradict me.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

The peculiar thing, of course, about your stance is that by accusing your opponents of genocide, you are implicitly claiming that trans people are a race or nation apart. If that is the case, then the true trans genocidaires are those who promote medical transition of individuals identifying as the opposite sex, since there is almost no surer way of annihilating a people than to sterilize them all.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

No, because there is nothing of race or nationality required for a genocide.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I’ve just been reading up on mondegreens.
Will you be imparting such views to your progeny, Talia?

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I’ve already taught them not to lie. You and Mondegreen should try that.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Its only surprising that you managed to find a host body from which your spawn hatched.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Wow!! There is a mountain to unpack here. The hatred and vitriol is breath taking. I may be wrong, but I would suggest 75% of the posters on this site are live and let live – enjoy whatever lifestyle you want but don’t compel me to change my behaviour.

So what explains the sudden explosion in girls transitioning to boys? Less than 10 years ago, boys accounted for about 75% of gender changes. Not only has the total numbers exploded in 10 years, but girls transitioning to boys now accounts for about 75% of gender changes. This cannot be explained by simply pounding your fist on the table and accusing the rest of us of being bigots and homophobes.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

“but I would suggest 75% of the posters on this site are live and let live” <– Not only no, but, to go but what I’ve seen here — next to none of you are “live and let live” — you are dedicated including you personally, to abusing transgender children in law and policy.
“enjoy whatever lifestyle you want but don’t compel me to change my behaviour.” <– With basic civility towards transgender people being something you must feel no pressure to accomplish, of course. /s
“So what explains the sudden explosion in girls transitioning to boys?” <– Merely the fact they are coming more near into parity with youth transitioning the other way explains it in full, with the fact earlier occurrence rates thought variably to be 1 in 50 to 30 thousand being seen only when official policy as to try to abuse transgender people into not transitioning, while simultaneously surgical procedures were either not yet developed at all or were then quite primitive — compared to now.
“but girls transitioning to boys now accounts for about 75% of gender changes” <- Nonsense. No factual basis at all for that claim.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/bulletins/genderidentityenglandandwales/census2021
Where did you get the idea for such a ridiculous lie? occurrence rates stabilized around 6 years ago in any case.
“This cannot be explained” <– That is because it is a falsehood entire.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

The ten stages of genocide can just as easily fit the agenda of critical theorists and trans-activists:
Classification: divide the population in oppressor and oppressed (cisgender / transgender) (white / black) (man / woman) (straight / gay)

Symbolization: dehumanizing groups by referring to them in unfavorable terms gammons, breeders, pale stale males, cisgender, oppressors, patriarchy, TERFs

Discrimination: DEI and affirmative action, anti-semitism

Dehumanization: refer to opponents as imbeciles, liars, lickspittles, killers, n*zis, f*scists

Organization: Antifa, Stonewall, Mermaids, GLAAD, Them/Us, Movement Advance Project

Polarization: threatening of people who question the trans-agenda (JK Rowling, Julie Bindel)

Preparation: The installation of clinics with doctors willing to perform unnecessary and potentially life-threatening surgery on psychologically unstable patients.

Extermination: The impoverishment of those who oppose the LGBQT agenda, either through cancel culture or through financial sanctions: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/world-bank-uganda-lending-anti-homosexuality-act/

Denial: Often phrased as ‘You’re lying, you’re wrong. it’s not happening, but if it was it would be a good thing anyway.’

A J
A J
11 months ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

Well done. Useful Uno reversal.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  A J

What it is is a good example of DARVO.
https://www.verywellmind.com/protecting-yourself-from-darvo-abusive-behavior-7562730
There are no transgender people to speak of, and no organizations, who are out to get transgender people.

Steve Farrell
Steve Farrell
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I wish people would stop talking about genocide

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Farrell

It rather reminds me of that Gregory Anton – always making outlandish claims and twiddling with the light fittings….

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Farrell

I wish people would stop attempting it.

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

You need to calm down Sir.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Aidan Trimble

You should stop being a liar.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago

You’re just trying to queer their pitch .And now you’ve triggered Talia .Oh dear

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago

Just a few months ago, the North Hertfordshire Museum took the initiative to change up the pronouns the museum used to refer to one of Rome’s most notorious emperors, noting that Elagabalus, “long regarded as mad and one of the worst Roman emperors […] is perhaps now best thought of as a transgender teen”.
Of all the Roman Emperors to lay claim to, they’ve settled on Elagabalus? What next, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports choosing Caligula as their champion?

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

No one said Elagabalus was an example of a good person, or even whom transgender people might wish to have be numbered among them — but that last is true of many of the Roman Emperors who were apparently as commonly cisgender as most people are.
Nevertheless, the fact a Roman Emperor was saying it meant it was remarked and recorded, and what they were saying is quite consistent with their having been born transgender.

Huw Parker
Huw Parker
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

‘… quite consistent with their having been born transgender.’

How is transgenderism even detected in a newly born human being?

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Huw Parker

Why are you making the special pleading of claiming it must be detected in a person when they are a newborn?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

Isn’t this the starting point of any new regime – tear down the symbols and history of the old regime and replace them with new ones. History is the story of the dominating ruling class and its perspective on the past. If the progressive elite is to become the next ruling class, it needs to destroy the past and create a new history.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

There by you show you are a hysterical imbecile.
Your agreement this has anything to do with it — “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — is only your letting it slip how much you want transgender people to be erased from the past, present, and future.

Huw Parker
Huw Parker
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

And who merely insults those with whom they disagree has no argument.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Huw Parker

It is an accurate description. If that is insulting, they should change it’s accuracy.
It is accurate, because none of you have any factual reply to those facts I present which refute you.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
11 months ago

Feminists have been doing this for years. In one text book I used to teach British Literature, the medieval era was often referred to as the Antifeminist era.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

It really sucks that Talia Parker’s comment was censored. Everyone should read the comment to get a glimpse into the thought process of a gender ideologue. Awful awful awful.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Could she have removed it herself ?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

Maybe. She has posted some pretty inflammatory stuff in the past so I wouldn’t think so, but you never know. She might have flagged my response as well, and maybe that triggered the censors.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I have only ever posted what I know and can prove is true.

With citations.

None of you still less Mondegreen have any factual excuse for what you claim.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Now is your chance; what are you waiting for? Go on show this irrefutable evidence (which is what “prove” and “true” mean in this context).

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T
Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Not biting with your website; I could get all sorts of viruses.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

Denial on your part. It’s not even my website.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

There is no “fact” in any of the trannie delusional madness. Just madness upon madness. Plus compulsion of normal people to pervert our language.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul Thompson

Your ignorance is wilful and bigoted. This is a link to what is real and representative of transgender people.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men

El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Sh.t

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Oh thats where they have gone; it says there are more comments than appear here.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

What is awful is that what I am saying is true.
Mondegreen and the likes of you are the only gender ideologues here.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

So what explains the sudden explosion in girls transitioning to boys? Less than 10 years ago, boys accounted for about 75% of gender changes. Not only has the total numbers exploded in 10 years, but girls transitioning to boys now accounts for about 75% of gender changes. This cannot be explained by simply pounding your fist on the table and accusing the rest of us of being bigots and homophobes.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

So what explains….
Latent misogony, I’d wager. Also an increase in binary thinking, ironically driven by SJW over-reach. Under identity fundamentalism, girls and women deemed to have male traits (such as a preference for women sexual partners, or having certain autistic traits) are encouraged to think of themselves as actually men; and the answer to their problems is to trans; and to project the source of all their pain onto the ‘other’ (e.g. through increasingly absurd accusations – persecution and genocide).

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I think there are a number of factors working together. There has been a general explosion in teenage mental health issues – I believe gender dysphoria is a mental health issue. Girls have always been more likely than boys to suffer from dismorphic and self harming mental health issues. I also think that adolescence is a harder time for girls both socially and biologically than for boys. With PHSE lessons encouraging them to think about their “true gender identity” and telling them that transition is possible, I think quite a few girls grasp at the idea of becoming a boy as a means of escaping from a womanhood they are being taught to fear.
All just my thoughts with no real evidence to back it up, but it is worth being aware of what is being taught to kids in PHSE lessons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Mhyc4d7M4

RM Parker
RM Parker
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Agreed – if it was the mods who removed the comment, and not Ms Parker, it is a loss to have only one side of the debate presented. We are adults here, after all: we do not require protection!
I do agree that allowing people to run their mouths (or keyboards) is a valuable thing to do: the truly deluded or dangerous do a better job of exposing themselves in the long run than would any of their critics.

Huw Parker
Huw Parker
11 months ago
Reply to  RM Parker

We are adults here, after all: we do not require protection!

Tellingly, this is an argument you will rarely hear from the proponents of gender identity ideology. On the contrary, they almost always herald their arrival in the conversation with desperate cries of ‘No debate!’

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
11 months ago

As so often these days, Orwell sums it all up very neatly:

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

Exactly

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Except that has nothing to do with it. People have been transgender for the whole of humanity’s existence and many cultures accept them without the drama and hatred of them you prefer to have be law and policy. Since they are in every human population speculation as to whom in history when and where they were suppressed is a perfectly rational undertaking, especially when some clues are quite so obvious.
Your pretension this has anything to do with it “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” is only your letting it slip how much you want transgender people to be erased from the past, present, and future.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
11 months ago

Add to that the issue of who controls language. If the trannie delusional psychotics are allowed to define terms as they wish, the entire language falls apart. No one owns the pronouns for their sex.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

I suggest you carefully answer any reply to jim below, if you are capable of a substantive reply.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago

“Genderqueer” is the key to understanding this whole thing. In reality it means a heterosexual trans identifying man (a TiM) who has stuck on a bit of lippy, a very cheap wig’n’heels’n’pleather-skirt, with a head tilt and all his junk intact. The “identifying” is the important part since the old-fashioned notion that a trans person will have undergone GRS is an inconvenient obstacle to straight autogynephiles getting what they want; easy access to women and the sexual gratification of pretending to be one whilst dining out on the horror written all over the expressions and bodies of actual, violated, women. They don’t give a toss about actual trans people and the 2SLLGBTQIA+++recurring crowd who are the useful idiots that can be bought with a few banners, flappy-handed parades and lots of screeching of “kweeeeeen”.
I speak as a relentlessly horrified gay man.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

Since you went all in on the alphabet, a serious question: who thinks it makes sense to lump the As alongside the Gs? Were two no more opposite examples available?

Sara White
Sara White
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

The man you describe is an “actual” trans person. It’s only a transvestite fetish.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Sara White

I wasn’t describing any person in particular, just the cuckoos invading the nest of LGB people.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

There are no such cuckoos. Everyone who is a minority in their sexual dimorphism between their ears is “queer” i one way or another.
Whether you like it or not.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Sorry dude, no takers here.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

Not a dude.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
10 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

How about the seemingly male TV presenter who identifies as ‘a boy named Sue’ Perkins . Can you relate ?

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

I’ve only ever met one actual B; the rest were just kidding themselves, rather like most of the T’s now (cue: screeches of horror from the Wokerati).

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

The bigoted bisexual erasure is strong with this one.

Flibberti Gibbet
Flibberti Gibbet
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

2SLLGBTQIA+++

I feel sorry for the Prime Minster of Canada, he struggled with LBGTQ

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago

LGB
GLB
NEVER LBG.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

“Genderqueer” is the … screeching of “kweeeeeen”.

&

I speak as a relentlessly horrified gay man.

I’ll fix that for you, you speak as just another sort of bigot, who would object to bigotry being enforced against you. Relax, you are only an excuseless hypocrite.

Paul T
Paul T
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I really really don’t care what you think you horrid little, tiny little, man.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

I am not a man or horrid — your sort is trying to abuse childen in law and policy.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago

But there’s a dark underside to these absurdities.
Yes, there is. I think it was Voltaire who said (paraphrasing here) that someone who can make you believe absurdities can also cause the commission of atrocities, and we see that with this maniacal urge to surgically experiment on children.
For the vast majority of human history, the concept of gender identity — much less transgender identities — didn’t exist.
For most of human history, we neither tried to normalize the aberrant nor pretended that what was plainly visible before us did not really exist. But here we are. Enlightened times.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

The absurdities involved are one or more of these two:
1) That gender is only acquired habits and taught preferences created by how someone is raised and not how they are born, which is the assertion that there is not really any such thing as gender.
2) That gender, if it is acknowledged to physically exists, is always perfectly congruent between the ears to the sex of a person between their legs.
Those assertions are not merely absurd, they are flatly contradicted by all available physical evidence and building policy around them is child abuse.
And every time what I write is deleted, it is proof someone at UnHerd is a factless, faithless coward.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

#2 is massive straw man, even more so than #1, but either is deconstructed by reality: it is normal for boys and girls to deviate from conventional norms and still become adult men and women, be they gay or straight. Yet the ghouls among us insist that a tomboy is an actual boy, and not a girl who enjoys stereotypically male things.
Every such girl and gay man over the age of 25 should be grateful for the accident of growing up before the ghouls among us decided that medical experimentation was in order. You are what your DNA says you are, no matter how inconvenient that may be and no matter how many procedures you undergo.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Neither one is a strawman, and both are refuted by measured reality.
“it is normal for boys and girls to deviate from conventional norms and still become adult men and women,” <– So what? The fact that is normal says nothing about transgender people.
“Yet the ghouls among us insist that a tomboy is an actual boy, and not a girl who enjoys stereotypically male things.” <– No such ghouls meaningfully exist. That they do is your strawman.
“Yet the ghouls among us insist that a tomboy is an actual boy, and not a girl who enjoys stereotypically male things.” <– That there is medical experimentation is also a strawman, there is none such. No one able to further medical transition claims tomboys are are boys. You will find none. They do not exist.
“You are what your DNA says you are,” <– And as links I have posted and linked to before prove, there is a strong genetic component to being transgender — which refutes your nonsense again. And Mondegreen’s.
It shows you are deliberately ignorant child abusing liars.
“no matter how inconvenient that may be and no matter how many procedures you undergo.” <– Sure knobhead, and people with a corrected clubfoot really still have a clubfoot . . .

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

It shows you are deliberately ignorant child abusing liars.
Whatever you have to tell yourself, preying on impressionable children who lack the maturity to give informed consent.
people with a corrected clubfoot really still have a clubfoot 
And chemically or surgically-altered men and women are still genetically men and women. “Knobhead” is not particularly convincing.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“Whatever you have to tell yourself, preying on impressionable children who lack the maturity to give informed consent.” <– You are the only one of he two of us intending on abusing any children.
“And chemically or surgically-altered men and women are still genetically men and women” <– And the body their gender result ins why a transgender woman is a woman, and why a transgender man is a man.
““Knobhead” is not particularly convincing.” <– But accurately descriptive.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“Every such girl and gay man over the age of 25 should be grateful for the accident of growing up before the ghouls among us decided that medical experimentation was in order.” <– That is a strawman — there is no such experimentation, there is no such thing as “transing the gay away”, it does not and can not exist, it is not possible, and for the same reason no conversion therapy works.
As the the 2nd~4th links here prove, it is DNA which plays the greatest part in anyone being transgender in the first place — the same as it does with people being gay.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
“it is normal for boys and girls to deviate from conventional norms and still become adult men and women, be they gay or straight” <– Yes. So what? I said nothing to the contrary.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I think people should be free to be whatever gender they choose. I simply oppose life-altering medical procedures for children, and men who have transitioned to women competing in girls sports. Other than this, do whatever you please.

A J
A J
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

What is your view on male rapists sharing communal showers with women, as happened in Scotland?

If you mean, people should be free to express their sense of gender however they choose, as long as their birth sex remains their legal sex, I agree. This was the norm until very recently, and it kept women and girls safe.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

“I think people should be free to be whatever gender they choose” <– No one ever can choose their gender, a*%^&#$!
“I simply oppose life-altering medical procedures for children” <– On the basis of nothing but willful ignorance– your evil stupidity.
“men who have transitioned to women competing in girls sports’ <– Again on the basis of nothing, as after 2 years of HRT no “masculine” advantage remains.
“Other than this, do whatever you please.” <– Except be happy in a way which offends you, and harms none at all.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

You are still only a liar, Mondegeen, and a willful child abuser.
If as Mondegreen is, you are under the delusion that people being transgender is a new thing — then as Mondegreen is you are an ill educated imbecile — and one dedicated to abusing transgender people in law and policy.
She has yet to and apparently can not, ever find any actual facts supporting her claims.
People are only ever born transgender, and there is no more reason to think the incidence rate of that has increased in recent years, than there is to think the incidence of people being gay or bisexual has increased in recent years.
The apparent increase is only a matter of this –when you stop abusing or even killing people for having characteristic X, more people then admit they have that characteristic.
You and your lickspittles and coaches deserve no respect, Mondegreen, because however careful a liar you are you are only a liar in this — and your purpose is the grotesque abuse of transgender people and children.
And as is seen elsewhere, should you have success in that abuse, you Social Conservatives won’t stop there. The existence and happiness of LGBTQ people is what you resent, and you will not stop until all are back in the closet, or wearing the triangle in public, or dead.
The only stage of genocide missing from your pogrom is the outright massacres — I have no reason to suspect you and your ilk will shrink from that if you get a chance to carry it out.
http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

 there is no more reason to think the incidence rate of that has increased in recent years, than there is to think the incidence of people being gay or bisexual has increased in recent years.
Except there is plenty of reason to think the former has increased based on the volume and velocity of information about it. In the US, trans ID has doubled in five years and that’s from 2022 study: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf
From The Independent: “Younger teens make up 7.6 per cent of the US population as a whole, but around 18 per cent of transgender Americans. For 18 to 24-year-olds, they make up 11 per cent of the US population, but 24 per cent of transgender people.”
But, no; no reason at all to think anything. Meanwhile, genocide and pogrom. Sure.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“Except there is plenty of reason to think the former has increased based on the volume and velocity of information about it” <– Imbecile read what I actually wrote, not what you wish I wrote. I did not say there was not an increase, I said there was no reason to think the increase was as a result of anything other than greater common knowledge of it and it’s acceptance — that same as when the fraction of the population who said they are gay or bi went up quite so precipitously several decades ago.
“But, no; no reason at all to think anything.” <– No reason to think what you implicitly claim no.
“Meanwhile, genocide and pogrom. Sure.” <– Every stage of genocide but mass excutions is present yes. That is what restrictions of legal id change, removal of legal protections, and prohibition of proper medical care are.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

What you actually wrote was the usual hectoring that demands blind acceptance of trans dogma. There is every reason to think that the spike is owed to factors well beyond knowledge or acceptance.
Without the mass executions, there is no genocide. The former is a necessary condition for the latter. Forced sterilization of children is hardly medical care. What adults do is their business but going after the kids is a defining feature of history’s worst people and regimes.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“There is every reason to think that the spike is owed to factors well beyond knowledge or acceptance.” <– Except you can never find any evidence of that, because it does not exist.
“Without the mass executions, there is no genocide.” <– Tell it to Kristallnacht, or the yellow star or pink triangle wearers — the first stages came first, all were crimes against those humans.
“Forced sterilization of children is hardly medical care” <– The denial it is in some circumstances is you being a child abusing liar in denial, as is your claim it is commonplace or even detectably too common.
“What adults do is their business but going after the kids is a defining feature of history’s worst people and regimes.” <– You SoCons are the only ones going after any kids, because you loathe/hate/fear the fact some people are transgender.
You are vile bigots.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

That is simply not true, the people you’re accusing of such things (and that may include myself) are perfectly accepting – supportive – of those who, having attained an age of personal responsibility (i.e. adulthood) are then able to make an informed decision about how they wish to be perceived by others.
There are perfectly good reasons why young teens can become confused about their gender, as sexual characteristics emerge which they may feel uncomfortable with for a while; it’s really not unusual to experience these things. What is absolutely wrong is for adults and medical professionals to take these feelings of confusion and make irrevocable changes to a young person via surgery. Only if there’s absolutely no doubt about the decisions the young person has arrived at should that happen.
If, and when it does the rest of the world should then support them in their chosen gender.
How is that vile? How is that bigotry?

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

“That is simply … is that bigotry?” <– Is it possibly you are only so uneducated the topic about which you choose to comment, that you do not know that regret rates do not increase significantly when people begin medical transition as a youth? They do not.
What is actually measured is that people transition whether as your or beginning as adults do not detransition with regret or a claim of wrong diagnosis at rates higher than 2.5% for any study in the last 10 years, and the rates for such are measured as low 0.4%, and recent work overall converges on a figure below 1%.
What you are claiming here “There are perfectly … should that happen.” has no relevance to it, it doesn’t happen in the first place more often than at most 1 time in 100, and only 1 in 150 at most are even possibly at issue, and since only about 1 in 3 people who are transgender choose to transition medically more like 1 in 45,000.
You are saying that for the sake of 1 in 45,000 people you prefer to force 99 or more boys and girls to respectively have breasts and a period, and, a beard and a deep voice.
“How is that vile? How is that bigotry?” <– Because of what anatomy you are forcing onto people, and the fact you are claiming — whether you have the intelligence to realize it or not — that 1 cisgender person is worth more than 99 transgender people.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

You SoCons are the only ones going after any kids,
Plenty of non-socons find this fixation on children ghoulish, so play that identity stuff elsewhere.
Tell it to Kristallnacht, or the yellow star or pink triangle wearers 
None of which has a trans equivalent. Meanwhile, there are calls to “punch a terf” or whining that lesbians don’t want to date men pretending to be female. You folks are becoming that which you claim to hate.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

And yet is is only the Socons trying to destroy any children, because they have the fact those children exist.
The attempt to force transgender children to undergo the puberty of their birth sex is best explained by your hope you can thereby better :”always tell” whom you should target.
“Meanwhile, there are calls to “punch a terf” or whining that lesbians don’t want to date men pretending to be female.” <– None of which changes anything I have said, or is anything I have said, or is any excuse for anything said by the SoCons here.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

There’s nothing vile or bigoted about wanting to see young people given the chance to wait until they’re absolutely certain before undergoing life-changing surgery/hormonal treatment.
Many young people feel uncomfortable with the changes which occur around puberty, and sometimes it takes a while for them to adjust to their growing bodies. Giving them the chance to do so is perfectly reasonable.
If they then decide to go ahead and transition, the rest of us would be not just accepting but supportive of them.
How can that possibly be deemed to be vile? How can that possibly be deemed to be bigoted?

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

“There’s nothing vile or bigoted about wanting to see young people given the chance to wait until they’re absolutely certain before undergoing life-changing surgery/hormonal treatment.” <– <– There is when there is no excuse to pretend they are not certain, and all you are actually doing is forcing some boys to have breasts and periods and forcing some girls to have beards and deep voices.
“Many young people … their growing bodies.” <– Why do you bother with the stupid lie that that has anything to do with it?
“If they then decide to go ahead and transition, the rest of us would be not just accepting but supportive of them.” <– Nonsense. The entire point of all of these new laws and changes in policy are to degrade and destroy transgender people, the children who are transgender included.
“How can that possibly be deemed to be vile? How can that possibly be deemed to be bigoted?” <– Because forcing boys to have breasts and periods and forcing girls to have beards and deep voices is vile, and that is all you are even possibly doing or advocating. Because ignoring measured physical reality to favor in law and policy your emotionally born disgust and hatred of some innocent people owing to their being in a biological minority is bigotry.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

This genocide is really terrible ,Talia . What colour triangles are you guys and gals being made to wear ? I may well wear one in solidarity . (If it’s a pretty enough colour )

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

It is simply not reasonable to think rates have doubled in five years simply because people feel more comfortable. Attitudes in the general population have not changed in five years. There is obviously something deeper happening here.

Meanwhile, we are constantly being told that trans people are facing genocide because of the horrific abuse they receive.

You can’t have it both ways.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

“It is simply not reasonable to think rates have doubled in five years simply because people feel more comfortable.” <– It has not doubled in 5 years. In fact in the last five years the fraction has remained relatively steady.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/no-social-contagion-gender-transition
“Comfort” also has nothing to do with it, but with legal protections meaning a transgender person can have a legal life — a legal job, a medically correct legal identity, equal access to medical care. You forget how few people were thought to be gay when it was still punishable by death. It was 30 and 20 years I heard the screams from your sort of bigot when it was realized that absent pressure against them, that easily 1 in 20 people if not 1 in 10 were bisexual or gay. You were horrified.
“There is obviously something deeper happening here.” <– Only that your sort of bigot is dying out naturally. That’s a good thing. Your sort is a primitivist net negative to humanity.
“Meanwhile, we are constantly being told that trans people are facing genocide because of the horrific abuse they receive.” <– The legal efforts matching up towards immediate genocide only began a few years ago. Those are your ilk’s last gasp.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
10 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

But even if you could prove the cause of transgenderism is genetic or at least people were born with the condition , that still would not make a transwoman a real woman . There are trans women who are happy to admit they aren’t actually women . They are not persecuted , except perhaps by trans activist extremists , rather much respected .

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
10 months ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

“There are trans women who are happy to admit they aren’t actually women .” <– Why do I care? There were “blacks” in America who were fine with Jim Crow, too.
“But even if you could prove the cause of transgenderism is genetic or at least people were born with the condition , that still would not make a transwoman a real woman” <– Yes it would, because special pleadings are logical fallacies. It i s known and already in every other case accepted fact that the only thing making someone a woman is how their brain has developed, there is no excuse to make an exception excluding MtF transgene women.
“They are not persecuted , except perhaps by trans activist extremists , rather much respected .” <– Every bit as much respectable as the average stereotypical “Uncle Tom”* was.
*The literary Uncle Tom was in fact an admirable man.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ohio-michigan-republicans-in-released/comments
“Endgame”, “Final Solution”, there is no excuse for any of you.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I’d strongly urge readers not to downvote you, since it’s important your views are aired, and not “disappeared” again (however that came about).
I very much doubt you can ‘prove’ what you claim to be true, but you make many claims and this forum is awaiting the evidence to support them. They can then be debated, hopefully without rancour, because this is just too important for people to start ranting.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I have already repeatedly cited it. None have found any inconsistency or improper procedure in any of it. Here is a link to a small part of it.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
You will be unable to find any substantive reply — the “researchers” on your side of this are so far all incompetent or deliberate frauds, and I can prove how.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

Nope we won’t stop. You got that right. Genocide LOL if I didn’t know you were mentally ill I would point out how deeply insulting that is

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

I am not mentally ill, and if you are insulted by an accurate description of your activities you should stop them.

El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

I am not mentally ill
Yes, you are

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Literally not, not in the opinion of any mental healthcare provider using standards in effect for practically 25 years now . . .
. . . because there never was any evidence for the idea gender dysphoric people are mentally ill. It was only baselessly presumed.
Dragged by evidence as physicists were in correcting Milliken’s Oil Drop result, psychiatry gave up on one of it’s favored biases.
Your only excuse for claiming it is willful, chosen bigotry.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
11 months ago

This is just part of the same trend that saw the book ‘Brilliant Black British History ‘ (aka Big Black Book of Lies) rewrite most of the past and shoehorn it into the required narrative. Shameless and quite desperate of course, but given time (as Goebbels correctly opined) the aim would be achieved.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
11 months ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

Along the lines of the 1619 project, which used the procrustean method to turn all of US history into a racist diatribe.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
11 months ago

A bit disappointed no mention was made of any Byzantine figures in the article after reading the sub-heading? Must do better, Unherd.

Also the term Byzantine is now contested space. Is the writer stuck in the Dark Ages?

Graham Stull
Graham Stull
11 months ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

You have certainly thrown down the gauntlet, Milton.

Peter B
Peter B
11 months ago

The best thing to do with trans activists – indeed most activists – is probably to ignore them. At some level this seems to be just another form of attention seeking.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

If that were only possible. But the trannie madness involves the coercion of normal people to the linguistic nonsense involved in trannie stuff. Plus the trannies have control of many organizations.
Ignoring them is neither possible nor wise. The trannie empire must be confronted. Mostly, we should laugh at them. They want us to treat them seriously. Don’t. Laugh at them.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
11 months ago

Thank you.

Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss
11 months ago

To even think that the middle ages were a gender queer utopia is absolutely nuts. Recall this is a time when they burnt or drowned witches, and the trial was done by dunking: drown and you’re innocent, survive and your a witch and then burnt at the stake. Under those circumstances one can only imagine that the attitutde towards so-called trans and gender-queer individual would have been no different from what it is today in the Muslim world (i.e. thrown off the top of buildings).

Dulle Griet
Dulle Griet
11 months ago
Reply to  Johann Strauss

Yes. Sexual activity between men was a capital offence, punishable in some countries by sawing in half.

Ida March
Ida March
11 months ago
Reply to  Johann Strauss

They didn’t burn witches in the Middle Ages. It was the Protestant Reformers who did that.
People rewrite history all the time ….

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Ida March

“Witches” were killed throughout European Christianity throughout history until about 250 years ago. Protestantism has nothing in particular to do with it.

iambic mouth
iambic mouth
11 months ago
Reply to  Johann Strauss

“Middle ages” looked completely different in the Eastern Roman (aka Byzantine) Empire than they did in the West, not to mention the fact that witch-hunting came after the medieval period in the West.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Johann Strauss

“To even think that the middle ages were a gender queer utopia is absolutely nuts.” <– And no one claimed anything to the contrary. Why did you make up the idea anyone had?

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
11 months ago

I’m so bored of this stuff. All my sympathy is gone. I want a harsh and unrelenting reactionary politics of weaponized common sense

Mary McCartney
Mary McCartney
11 months ago

Oh I like that ..

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
11 months ago

Totally.

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
11 months ago

Of course gender ideologues want to convince people that trans people have always existed by pointing to historical trans figures. The fundamental tenet of gender ideology is that being born in the wrong body is a natural and expected human variation. A tiny number of people are born with bright copper coloured hair and a small proportion of girls are born with p…..s and boys with v….s, all entirely natural and to be expected, just a bit rare. In the dim and distant past people with rare differences were treated as freaks, so hid the truth. Now we are so much more enlightened more people are admitting the truth about who they really are – well that’s the ideologues position and there is no proof it is true and none that definitively proves it is untrue – it is a matter of belief. What is worrying is the number of institutions like the English historical review and the North Herefordshire Museum who are prepared to go along with this fact free nonsense.
The reason why gender ideologues cling so closely to intersex is because intersex is a very real genetic aberration for which there is scientific proof. They therefore try to cloak themselves in this totally unrelated proof and ride on the coat tails of what the LGB movement achieved in previous decades – homosexuality is well documented throughout human history right back to sodom and gomorrah. Homosexual activity is also found in the higher animal kingdom so the gender ideologues would love to find a trans example in the higher animal kingdom – there are some in much simpler animals.

A J
A J
11 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Smith

I don’t see how finding a higher animal that changes sex would help the trans activist case. It is not a natural occurrence in humans. They like to reference clownfish, but even they just respond, unconsciously, to external environmental pressure. It’s not an identity and there is no self awareness that could have an identity. The alpha male dies; the alpha female becomes male. It’s less of a big deal than a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Or a woman reaching menopause. It just happens. But human bodies don’t just change sex.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  A J

“But human bodies don’t just change sex.” <– Without technology, no. So what? The technology involved accomplishes the changes just exactly as described.
“I don’t see how finding a higher animal that changes sex would help the trans activist case.” <– There are o such trans activists who need any such help. The known biological facts of human gender suffice perfectly well for the transgender people you smear as being “activist”.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men

Huw Parker
Huw Parker
11 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

“But human bodies don’t just change sex.” <– Without technology, no.

No human being has ever changed sex, with or without ‘technology’.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  Huw Parker

The technology involved accomplishes the changes just exactly as described. All you have in reply is denial.

Jill Yendrys
Jill Yendrys
10 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

No it doesn’t. It changes the appearance of secondary sex characteristics. Did you even pass high school biology??

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
10 months ago
Reply to  Jill Yendrys

Imbecile, I said it changes the sex of a person just exactly as described. I n response you bring up the irrelevancies of lies told to children for the sake of simplicity.

William Cameron
William Cameron
11 months ago

Trans activists (As opposed to the small number of truly trans folk) are all about mutilating children and getting access to women.

iambic mouth
iambic mouth
11 months ago

It’s good to see that Byzantine studies made their way to Unherd, but, at the same time, I’m sad to see that only because of research that doesn’t pass the litmus test of scientific method. It’s amazing that with such vast opportunities for original research into a quite alien culture and society, there are people who choose to do this. It’s merely projecting researcher’s own values and perspectives onto culture that didn’t even bother to think about such issues.

Kirsten Walstedt
Kirsten Walstedt
11 months ago

Sounds like fanfiction

Amanda Conidaris
Amanda Conidaris
11 months ago

Now the transactivists – so-called liberal thinkers- are actually COLONISING other people’s bodies and lives in retrospect at a time when colonial actions are considered to be an arrogant imposition. How can they possibly presume know an historical person as the individuals that they were – their thoughts, dreams and secret desires? Western academic research is really scraping the bottom of the barrel…

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

“are actually COLONISING other people’s bodies” <– That is delusional balderdash.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago

” For the vast majority of human history, the concept of gender identity — much less transgender identities — didn’t exist. This isn’t to say that no one before the 20th century ever felt somehow wrong in the body he or she was born in or that no one ever wished that they’d been born a boy instead of a girl.

“Trans” is something else, though: the product of new medical technologies and new ways of thinking about identity that change the meaning of such pains and desires.”

That is utter horseshit and you have no excuse not to know it, it must be a deliberate lie on your part.
Not only are there the citations here, including those for involved genetics:
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
But cultures for millenia across the globe have acknowledged the same sorts of variances in the occurrence of inborn gender, it is nothing new. Medical transition as an option to deal with the problem when it is such for a person is new, but as a science medicine is less than 250 years old, and being transgender is a problem some people have which that science has regarded contiguously for over 70 years, doing so first in some regard for almost 125 of them now.
You do not want intellectual curiosity or honesty, you want to tell the lies you love with impunity.
There is no such thing as transgender ideology, much less any radical one, and I note you took pains not to admit any of the reasons Elagabalus is considered to likely have been transgender:

Elagabalus is also alleged to have appeared as Venus and to have depilated his entire body. … Dio recounts an exchange between Elagabalus and the well-endowed Aurelius Zoticus: when Zoticus addressed the emperor as ‘my lord,’ Elagabalus responded, ‘Don’t call me lord, I am a lady.’ Dio concludes his anecdote by having Elagabalus asking his physicians to give him the equivalent of a woman’s vagina by means of a surgical incision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus#cite_note-Varner-2008-86
And there are quite more such references than that.
“There is something totalitarian about this act of rewriting and how it abolishes the possibility that other perspectives once existed.”
There is nothing totalitarian about regarding and stating that the bigotry once commonplace against persons not of a “white” is a stupid, excuseless bigotry. Neither is saying the same of you, Mondegreen, as you are possessed by what you deem a a proper view of transgender poeple which is equally only baseless, factless, deceitful bigotry.
You and I both know you will never cite any facts which back up your views, you will only cite other bigots and fools, and prevaricate with partial quotes and artful misrepresentation.

J F
J F
11 months ago

Hey there ‘Talia Perkins’.
You’re a man. And you’ll always be a man. Those XY chromosomes in every cell in your body aren’t going anywhere.
More specifically, you’re a dickless communist, and everyone that takes a casual glance at you knows what kind of weirdo you are.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
11 months ago
Reply to  J F

“Those XY chromosomes in every cell in your body aren’t going anywhere.”” <– I have never been a man, a boy, or a communist. XY chromosomes don’t make a person with CAIS a man, so it is clear at a glance you are only trying to make a bigoted special pleading.