In my Thing two weeks ago I spent some time specifically addressing the rising tide of ugliness and impending violence associated with the backlash to declarative gender theory.
The response has been... interesting. I'd invite your input, if you'd care to give it, as a welcome bit of thought diversity on the matter.
This article has motivated med to accelerate my readthrough of Monsters.
Also, much as I will feel some sheepish guilt at soiling the exurbs of this beautiful piece, the section on the ontology of "buggery" was drowned out in my mind for several read-throughs by a witticism I learned in maybe 6th grade:
"If you build a thousand bridges and suck one dick, you're not a bridge builder, you're a cocksucker."
This is a very interesting subject for me. Several years back, I lost an amazing friend to suicide. She had declared a trans identity and we had tried to be supportive. Towards the end she drove us all away with angry demands that we pretend to believe in preposterous lies- things easily verifiable as false and also random and hardly worthy of a fight. Whether Margaret Thatcher personally invented soft serve, for example. She had a very difficult past and I wonder to this day if she would still be alive if she had gotten care instead of affirmation. And yet, to question that is to “hate transpeople”. I don’t know- perhaps I have some secret subconscious hate of transpeople. But I have to wonder what sort of “love” would not question what could have been done when a friend dies. I miss my friend, not as some avatar of trans identity but as a person. And if seeing the person beneath the demographic boxes is hate- give me friends who hate me like that.
As far as changing things in declarative gender, I suspect we will see sweeping changes soon. See, the movement has for the first time been linked to harm to male people, while the previous vandalism, bomb threats, and violence was directed at female people.
“such prominent and vitriolic figures only exist because they speak some degree of truth about these matters, even as they weave those truths into rather violent ideologies.” Yes! If you want to understand why extremists get supporters behind them, it is usually because the extremist is vocalizing something that’s true and been suppressed from the mainstream, that other people have felt invalidated for secretly believing. This feeling of alienation for having different beliefs can be so strong that they are willing to overlook all the other untrue things that extremist is saying.
And yes, there are people totally “activists” making careers by simply emotionally validating people and accruing followers online. Honestly the “American Dream” in people under 40 right now seems to get enough followers online so one can start a business out if it, understandably- because working conditions and labor rights seem to be getting so much worse under global capitalism.
BTW this is one of the most nuanced and respectful essays I’ve read about the gender debate recently and I like how you are tying it to critiques of global capitalism.
I watched Matt Walsh’s film What is a Woman and thought it was an important contribution to this issue. I didn’t see a ‘virulent moralistic’ approach - I just saw a desire to stop the ideologues from conducting life changing experiments on children. There are all different types of politics involved here and I think we need to respect everyone’s views and have a discussion. However in Canada, where I unfortunately live, any type of discussion about declared gendered could be prosecuted as hate speech. I am grateful to anyone who is standing up to protect children right now.
"There is no sense now that being “something like” transgender, non-binary, gay, lesbian, or anything else means you have a specific role, importance, or meaning to society. But then again, being a father or a mother, an elder or a grandparent, or an artist or a mystic doesn’t really mean anything to us anymore, either."
"Of course, that would require us to abandon ideology and return instead to a more relational way of being together and allowing in again a sense of the sacred."
I think this is the most important point in this essay.
The retreat to rigid ideology has, predictably, coincided with the retreat into heavily-policed, virtual communities. And we see authoritarian demands across the spectrum for the state, Company X, or University Y to enforce one ideology or another.
That's been accompanied by a decline in civic institutions in general and the commoditization of as much of human interaction as possible. All of the spheres were we would formerly need to interact with others and reach consensus are shrinking.
I really appreciate this piece and the dialogue associated with it. As a mother of two young boys in the US, my prayers for them and all young children is that however they see themselves and their roles in the world, they come to that on their own terms and not through societal pressures or anyone's agenda.
Hi Rhyd, thanks so much for this excellent piece. The part about being called into sacred roles by your community/elders really resonated...it’s so important in general, as you said. I used to think a community that assigns roles would feel stifling, but now all I want is a community that sees me and asks me to share gifts they recognize in me...
I am feeling stuck on a point of confusion and I would love your thoughts. I felt very brainwashed by what some call “trans ideology” when I lived among west coast leftist circles, and I now see it as extremely regressive, as some variation of “women are Barbie, men are ken, and if you’re not either one then you’re not cis-gendered and your body might be wrong” (not to mention, there is a ton of social pressure to find some “queer” identity, lest you be seen as basically republican/a morally bankrupt individual. The social pressure is massive; when I visit my friends in California they are taken aback that my partner and I still identify as he/him man and she/her woman, and it clearly makes them uncomfortable.)
So I feel confused when I try to imagine a more beautiful version of the transgender experience that doesn’t rely on regressive stereotypes (the very idea that a effeminate man or a masculine women aren’t a man or a woman does not feel
empowering to me). Yet of course, there are some general (biologically based) descriptions of men and women that are true, in so far as they are descriptive on average and not prescriptive for everyone. There’s a tension here I struggle to work through between hating the regressive stereotypes and yet feeling some real stereotypes around men and women...the idea that a “woman” is a performance of makeup, heels and being submissive, and that “woman” can be separated from wombs, menstrual blood and pregnancy feels so wrong and sexist to me, yet at the same time, I can feel into the truth that there are some real behavioral stereotypes, that on average women are more nurturing, emotional, socially perceptive, and less action-oriented than men. Or maybe that’s even too restrictive...yet when I travel to other cultures, it doesn’t feel weird that for example, the women are primarily in charge of feeding and nurturing their families.
So what would it mean for a man to feel that he is on some level a woman? I suppose, given what you said above, he would not “actually really be a woman” (one who needs expensive surgeries and a lifetime of pills to change his body), but perhaps that he has more access to the feminine principle because of his female soul and thus has a different role to play than other men. And critically it would also likely not mean he could claim to have and need the same experiences as women, or access to all the same spaces. Maybe he would be able to speak on behalf of the feminine principle (yin, maybe?) as women are able to, as his being is more closely aligned to it than other men?
I know instead of a clear question I’ve rather offered some internal musings, but I hope you can get a sense of my confusion. I’m very curious what comes up for you.
I agree that our cultures lack sacred roles surrounding gender--however, we seem to have retained the opposite, the idea that certain gender expressions and sexual expressions are inherently profane. I would say "sin" but that isn't quite it, sin implies an action, not just a way of being. These feelings are not confined to religious people. I observe many who do not attend church or etc., who may never have received any religious instruction, but who nevertheless express the feeling that homosexuality, and whatever else falls under the LGBTQ-- banner, is somehow wrong, bad, unnatural, perverse, dangerous. It is interesting that the sexual taboos retain more effect than taboos against alcohol, gambling, dancing or other "sins" that were found in the teachings of whatever religion is in the background of the culture.
I'll join the chorus of praise here. Thank you for sharing your perspective on this; it's one of the most level-headed and interesting takes I've run across.
I was about to say ‘yes, but . . . ‘ and then you concluded with my points, about lack of anything we can call community in a meaningful sense. :)
In truth our lives are not our own. We are all the ongoing flux of many lives in our ‘self’ and cannot be understood apart from the broad perspective which knows us in context.
This is still true in the West, but our ‘community’ formation is more formation by deeply impersonal technology, to which we have become subservient. You might say, we are no longer formed by the real world, and are somewhat’out of it’
I'm physically and emotionally attracted to persons of either biological sex, somewhat equally -- and have no particular 'gender' identity, as that term is now being used. My many-years partner is a man, but may have been a woman, except perhaps due to chance. But I have no desire or need to have my pronoun change from 'he' to 'they' or 'them.'. I've always been -- at root and core -- an outside observer to all of the gender framings of popular culture.
I'm perfectly okay with being called 'he' and him. I wear men's clothing, for sake of convenience. But "she" or 'her' would not be a put down for me. And I'd have no problem with wearing a dress in spring or summer, if it didn't freak people out. I acknowledge my biological sex. It is what it is. But I'm not deeply attached to anything related to gender, which I regard as something other than biological sex, per se.
I suspect it would be better if we all welcomed one another as whatever
'gender' which shows up, while acknowledging biological sex as what it is: Biology.
Like the ancient Hermes of Greece,, I am also boundary marker: a herm. https://www.etymonline.com/word/herm But I'm not thinking I'm special because of it. I'm just not on either side of "the line" of demarcation -- a line I find rather strange to identify with, apart from biology.
In my Thing two weeks ago I spent some time specifically addressing the rising tide of ugliness and impending violence associated with the backlash to declarative gender theory.
https://guttermouth.substack.com/p/tiws-day-thing-112922
The response has been... interesting. I'd invite your input, if you'd care to give it, as a welcome bit of thought diversity on the matter.
This article has motivated med to accelerate my readthrough of Monsters.
Also, much as I will feel some sheepish guilt at soiling the exurbs of this beautiful piece, the section on the ontology of "buggery" was drowned out in my mind for several read-throughs by a witticism I learned in maybe 6th grade:
"If you build a thousand bridges and suck one dick, you're not a bridge builder, you're a cocksucker."
Finally, a voice of reason.
This is a very interesting subject for me. Several years back, I lost an amazing friend to suicide. She had declared a trans identity and we had tried to be supportive. Towards the end she drove us all away with angry demands that we pretend to believe in preposterous lies- things easily verifiable as false and also random and hardly worthy of a fight. Whether Margaret Thatcher personally invented soft serve, for example. She had a very difficult past and I wonder to this day if she would still be alive if she had gotten care instead of affirmation. And yet, to question that is to “hate transpeople”. I don’t know- perhaps I have some secret subconscious hate of transpeople. But I have to wonder what sort of “love” would not question what could have been done when a friend dies. I miss my friend, not as some avatar of trans identity but as a person. And if seeing the person beneath the demographic boxes is hate- give me friends who hate me like that.
As far as changing things in declarative gender, I suspect we will see sweeping changes soon. See, the movement has for the first time been linked to harm to male people, while the previous vandalism, bomb threats, and violence was directed at female people.
“such prominent and vitriolic figures only exist because they speak some degree of truth about these matters, even as they weave those truths into rather violent ideologies.” Yes! If you want to understand why extremists get supporters behind them, it is usually because the extremist is vocalizing something that’s true and been suppressed from the mainstream, that other people have felt invalidated for secretly believing. This feeling of alienation for having different beliefs can be so strong that they are willing to overlook all the other untrue things that extremist is saying.
And yes, there are people totally “activists” making careers by simply emotionally validating people and accruing followers online. Honestly the “American Dream” in people under 40 right now seems to get enough followers online so one can start a business out if it, understandably- because working conditions and labor rights seem to be getting so much worse under global capitalism.
BTW this is one of the most nuanced and respectful essays I’ve read about the gender debate recently and I like how you are tying it to critiques of global capitalism.
I watched Matt Walsh’s film What is a Woman and thought it was an important contribution to this issue. I didn’t see a ‘virulent moralistic’ approach - I just saw a desire to stop the ideologues from conducting life changing experiments on children. There are all different types of politics involved here and I think we need to respect everyone’s views and have a discussion. However in Canada, where I unfortunately live, any type of discussion about declared gendered could be prosecuted as hate speech. I am grateful to anyone who is standing up to protect children right now.
"There is no sense now that being “something like” transgender, non-binary, gay, lesbian, or anything else means you have a specific role, importance, or meaning to society. But then again, being a father or a mother, an elder or a grandparent, or an artist or a mystic doesn’t really mean anything to us anymore, either."
This really hit home.
"Of course, that would require us to abandon ideology and return instead to a more relational way of being together and allowing in again a sense of the sacred."
I think this is the most important point in this essay.
The retreat to rigid ideology has, predictably, coincided with the retreat into heavily-policed, virtual communities. And we see authoritarian demands across the spectrum for the state, Company X, or University Y to enforce one ideology or another.
That's been accompanied by a decline in civic institutions in general and the commoditization of as much of human interaction as possible. All of the spheres were we would formerly need to interact with others and reach consensus are shrinking.
I really appreciate this piece and the dialogue associated with it. As a mother of two young boys in the US, my prayers for them and all young children is that however they see themselves and their roles in the world, they come to that on their own terms and not through societal pressures or anyone's agenda.
Hi Rhyd, thanks so much for this excellent piece. The part about being called into sacred roles by your community/elders really resonated...it’s so important in general, as you said. I used to think a community that assigns roles would feel stifling, but now all I want is a community that sees me and asks me to share gifts they recognize in me...
I am feeling stuck on a point of confusion and I would love your thoughts. I felt very brainwashed by what some call “trans ideology” when I lived among west coast leftist circles, and I now see it as extremely regressive, as some variation of “women are Barbie, men are ken, and if you’re not either one then you’re not cis-gendered and your body might be wrong” (not to mention, there is a ton of social pressure to find some “queer” identity, lest you be seen as basically republican/a morally bankrupt individual. The social pressure is massive; when I visit my friends in California they are taken aback that my partner and I still identify as he/him man and she/her woman, and it clearly makes them uncomfortable.)
So I feel confused when I try to imagine a more beautiful version of the transgender experience that doesn’t rely on regressive stereotypes (the very idea that a effeminate man or a masculine women aren’t a man or a woman does not feel
empowering to me). Yet of course, there are some general (biologically based) descriptions of men and women that are true, in so far as they are descriptive on average and not prescriptive for everyone. There’s a tension here I struggle to work through between hating the regressive stereotypes and yet feeling some real stereotypes around men and women...the idea that a “woman” is a performance of makeup, heels and being submissive, and that “woman” can be separated from wombs, menstrual blood and pregnancy feels so wrong and sexist to me, yet at the same time, I can feel into the truth that there are some real behavioral stereotypes, that on average women are more nurturing, emotional, socially perceptive, and less action-oriented than men. Or maybe that’s even too restrictive...yet when I travel to other cultures, it doesn’t feel weird that for example, the women are primarily in charge of feeding and nurturing their families.
So what would it mean for a man to feel that he is on some level a woman? I suppose, given what you said above, he would not “actually really be a woman” (one who needs expensive surgeries and a lifetime of pills to change his body), but perhaps that he has more access to the feminine principle because of his female soul and thus has a different role to play than other men. And critically it would also likely not mean he could claim to have and need the same experiences as women, or access to all the same spaces. Maybe he would be able to speak on behalf of the feminine principle (yin, maybe?) as women are able to, as his being is more closely aligned to it than other men?
I know instead of a clear question I’ve rather offered some internal musings, but I hope you can get a sense of my confusion. I’m very curious what comes up for you.
I agree that our cultures lack sacred roles surrounding gender--however, we seem to have retained the opposite, the idea that certain gender expressions and sexual expressions are inherently profane. I would say "sin" but that isn't quite it, sin implies an action, not just a way of being. These feelings are not confined to religious people. I observe many who do not attend church or etc., who may never have received any religious instruction, but who nevertheless express the feeling that homosexuality, and whatever else falls under the LGBTQ-- banner, is somehow wrong, bad, unnatural, perverse, dangerous. It is interesting that the sexual taboos retain more effect than taboos against alcohol, gambling, dancing or other "sins" that were found in the teachings of whatever religion is in the background of the culture.
I'll join the chorus of praise here. Thank you for sharing your perspective on this; it's one of the most level-headed and interesting takes I've run across.
Really interesting Rhyd and helpful
I was about to say ‘yes, but . . . ‘ and then you concluded with my points, about lack of anything we can call community in a meaningful sense. :)
In truth our lives are not our own. We are all the ongoing flux of many lives in our ‘self’ and cannot be understood apart from the broad perspective which knows us in context.
This is still true in the West, but our ‘community’ formation is more formation by deeply impersonal technology, to which we have become subservient. You might say, we are no longer formed by the real world, and are somewhat’out of it’
Thank you
I'm physically and emotionally attracted to persons of either biological sex, somewhat equally -- and have no particular 'gender' identity, as that term is now being used. My many-years partner is a man, but may have been a woman, except perhaps due to chance. But I have no desire or need to have my pronoun change from 'he' to 'they' or 'them.'. I've always been -- at root and core -- an outside observer to all of the gender framings of popular culture.
I'm perfectly okay with being called 'he' and him. I wear men's clothing, for sake of convenience. But "she" or 'her' would not be a put down for me. And I'd have no problem with wearing a dress in spring or summer, if it didn't freak people out. I acknowledge my biological sex. It is what it is. But I'm not deeply attached to anything related to gender, which I regard as something other than biological sex, per se.
I suspect it would be better if we all welcomed one another as whatever
'gender' which shows up, while acknowledging biological sex as what it is: Biology.
Like the ancient Hermes of Greece,, I am also boundary marker: a herm. https://www.etymonline.com/word/herm But I'm not thinking I'm special because of it. I'm just not on either side of "the line" of demarcation -- a line I find rather strange to identify with, apart from biology.
https://theheronhouse.substack.com/p/shes-not-there