I’ve seen pretty good evidence for both positions on this, and it usually comes down to how data on “desistance” is interpreted. When people drop out during the middle of the process, there’s usually no follow up (often due to funding restrictions) and so no one really knows why they stopped. Some interpret it as them being completely happy with partial transition, others with realizing they aren’t really trans and reverted back.
The Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland all interpreted their own date to find unacceptable rates of detransition. The Cass Review called for more study into the matter (and was rejected as therefore being anti-trans). And in the US, there appears to have been little appetite to try to look into the actual rates, sometimes from external pressure to consider it an already settled question, and other times just from lack of funding for such research.
So I think it’s reasonable to say we don’t really know. It may be higher than some imagine but lower than what some critics make it out to be. I personally know several, but my friend group is not a good basis for a scientific demographic study.
This really comes down to a question of bodily automony though in the end does it not? Do we trust that people can make descions- such as transition or abortion - for themselves and live with the consequences? Detransition should not be a bad thing, its not a bad thing to make an alteration to your body that you decide later you do not like or wish you hadn't done, but we live with these choices and we move on. In my view it is really transphobia (internal or external) which makes it seem as if making this choice and then deciding it is not for you a bad thing. I know people who have detransitioned/ retrasitioned. Like any other life changing choice it can be something you learn about yourself from. In the past, if you were a lesbian trans woman - such as myself - you were not allowed to transition. Women resorted to extremes such as self castration in order to get the care they required. We are whole heartdly in a better place then that now despite the challenges we face and the recent misters of gender theory.
I definitely resonate with the matter of medical vs individual diagnosis, and the idea of larger community involvement. With the sacred model I mentioned in the interview, the community was often involved in the process.
I do have a question, however: how would a self-ID method (without “gatekeeping”) work which wouldn’t allow for the documented abuses of it that have occurred especially in UK prisons?
This I think is the crux for many people, and I’ve not seen this addressed by my fellow leftists — and especially not by the social justice “left” — except to outright deny any abuses occur. And I think as in many other situations, leftist silence on this issue gives critics on the right the chance to seize the ground of truth.
My understanding from speaking with trans women in the UK is that you can not get diagnosed with gender dysphoria without intention to purse SRS as a trans woman and that doing so entails moving forward with that. But perhaps this is less formalized then I was lead to belive.
Those cases should simply be treated as casis of rape. Being transgender is irrelevant unless you are clinging to a belief in trans women having higher proximity to "maleness".
I think this is where the question of what a moderate political compromise that keeps everyone safe and still allows the most amount of autonomy would look like comes in.
I personally start with the notion that no rape or sexual abuse should be excused, and even more so especially of people in captive populations like prisons. And so any person with a history of enacting sexual violence should be kept away from vulnerable populations. This would look both like separating out those people from general populations and also, if necessary, separating vulnerable people out from general populations.
Unfortunately, I don’t know of a single government in the world who cares about the safety of prisoners to that degree.
"plenty of these historical non-western societies have also, after serious consideration, come to the conclusion that we're gross and just thrown us in fires." - What an odd take. Was that 'serious consideration' maybe colonialism? Because that is what I heard that happened.
This is also my impression, but I think the problem is that it's super difficult for us to disentangle that influence in every situation, since we're still in it. Taking the issue of homosexuality as a parallel, some African societies that are virulently anti-gay definitely appear to have picked this up as a result of western colonization. However, I've seen some evidence that others started out this way.
Same problem exists for paganisms in Europe. It's really difficult to figure out what is a later legacy and what pre-dated the anti-homosexual Christian legacy. And even more complicated -- how much of the anti-homosexual legacy in Christianity was really core to the early ideas, and how much came later in when Christians tried to identify themselves in opposition to pagan culture?
So, I think it's impossible for us really to know for certain, though I think you already know how I come down on this.
Yeah, I would have no problem with her saying „Non-Western and non-Christian societies have had a variety of attitudes towards what we would describe as Transgender people, including violent persecution.“ That would be an unsurprising statement. There is nothing where all cultures ever have been the same.
But the way this was stated, it sounds as if they all, in one moment out of their own free will, worldwide decided they hate the Transgender and then persecuted them for no reason. Now, that sounds utterly unreal. And there is one obvious candidate for the reason for widespread societal shifts happening at one fairly specific point in time.
At lot of pre-colonial civilisations had a degree of a tolerance towards minority groups like homosexuals not because they saw tolerance as a virtue, but they simply had little reason to be intolerant. There was often no ideological imperative to ban or actively persecute it. Not that they were always exactly treated with dignity and respect.
In reply to this: "And even more complicated -- how much of the anti-homosexual legacy in Christianity was really core to the early ideas, and how much came later in when Christians tried to identify themselves in opposition to pagan culture?"
When I was in college at a Lutheran liberal arts school ('87-'91), I wrote a research paper about the verses in the Bible that are used to denounce homosexuality. This was for a theology course. According to sources I cited, the Old Testament stuff (mainly Leviticus) was explained as one example of many prohibitions that were adopted as a means for the Hebrew people to distinguish themselves from their neighbors. This was especially important during the Babylonian captivity, when much of that literature was first written, and they were trying to retain a separate identity. Basically, "Here's another way we're not like them." Sounds like the same thing you're talking about here.
(I mention the timeline ('87-'91) just to point out that this interpretation preceded contemporary ideas and rhetoric.)
Yeah, a mostly-Norwegian school in Minnesota. My education up til then had been in Catholic schools, so being at a Lutheran institution felt like a liberation, lol, cuz I was like, "I can ignore all this."
Because it was a Christian school, I was required to take three theology courses. But I was in a special program that allowed me to work with professors one-on-one to create courses for credit. One of these had as its focus all the OT verses used by NT authors to prove that Jesus was the messiah who had been prophesied. As it turns out, not all of them were perfect fits, and the NT authors definitely took some liberties. This is when I found out that the doctrine of the virgin birth was based on a mistranslation of the original prophetic text, which happened to be a common one floating around at the time.
I'll say that my professors were all very open to this kind of thing. The academic freedom was real, and I was not discouraged from pursuing lines of inquiry that some Christians (including the Catholics who raised and schooled me previously) would have considered heretical.
That special program was discontinued in the early 2000s as the school moved more toward STEM, which is too bad.
Unfortunately, mine was not so open. I was there on a "Christian Leadership" scholarship which they cancelled during my second year when I came out as gay. Still, my old and new testament courses that first year taught me more than I think most believing Christians even get to know about the bible.
Dogon famously dislike sexual ambiguity and androgyny. It's even in their cosmogony, their very creation myth. In the beginning, the first sapient beings were hermaphroditic, but (without getting into much detail) when humans came around the gods determined two sexes and separated their attributes and anatomy as they know them today. And that's the religious justification for their practice of both male and female circumcision at an early age, to extirpate the (so-considered) ambiguous traits.
I think the key issue here is that things like transgender rights or gay marriage are not class issues. Corporations couldn't give a damn about them, and if the so-called left what to use up their political ammunition on these social issues rather than say pushing for a wealth tax then why not encourage them ? Marriage equality is fine, but housing equality and healthcare equality is much more of an important issue for the majority of people.
Yes, and those economic issues ALSO benefit all lower and working class parts of those social justice identity categories as well.
The problem, of course, is that these economic benefits wouldn't benefit the "PMC"/laptop elite classes of those same identity groups, which is why they don't push for them. In their minds, more black trans women working for Goldman Sachs is "true" progress, rather than making sure black trans women -- and everyone else -- can afford basic housing and healthcare.
Okay, I have been thinking about why - quite honestly - Transgenderism as the lib ideology being pushed right now upsets me, even though I actually do believe in letting people live the way they want.
And that is because this seems like one more way of restating that not only does the body not matter - does mean nothing to who you are - it is even actually as Sigrid says a „horrible thing“. Something that needs to be beaten into submission. And how grateful we should be that now modern science can rescue us from puberty. From the horror of the body being what it is and doing what it does. Especially from the grotesque horror of uncontrolled reality of us as physically sexual beings.
Now, this is rarely stated out loud. But we all know that this vibe really exists in our society in general, and has for a long time. I mean, at least those who read this blog do see that, right? And it feels to me that lib style transgender theory is a way of stating and restating this idea.
I think I take Silvia Federici’s analysis in her book Beyond the Periphery of the Skin as a great guide here. The body-denying theories are products of capitalism, but because it suppressed or destroyed all other frameworks, we can’t separate these things yet.
(That’s the book of hers, you might remember, that caused her to be labeled “transphobic,” which is certainly absolutely not true.)
Problem is, it will take a lot of effort to resurrect those other frameworks or even create new ones. And we can’t do that while Judith Butler and other irresponsible academics still get to decide for everyone what, gender, sex, and the body itself “truly” mean.
"Problem is, it will take a lot of effort to resurrect those other frameworks or even create new ones. And we can’t do that while Judith Butler and other irresponsible academics still get to decide for everyone what, gender, sex, and the body itself “truly” mean."
Totally. I think that just about everyone in capitalist society dreads our alienation from the body. Even those who think they don't... and I think that causes the intensity of the reaction against the Transgender. If we could come to terms with the dread and of course, start to work on healing the alienation, we wouldn't fear the Transgender. And then we would find a more elegant framework that is not an insult to the body, or the Transgender experience.
Edit: And it really is irresponsible of Butler to talk the way she does and increase the dread, while she must know how that feels, and what kind of reaction it would cause
I really don’t think Butler does know or care. Its an academic game for her. And adopted a non-binary identity only recently, I think mostly to protect herself from the ravaging monster she’s created and to remain its master.
Yes, this is a great point, and a big part of it for me too. Especially with the whole "non-binary" concept, which kind of feels like someone unilaterally seceding from nature by declaring that the physical body and its limitations just plain don't matter. Another example of biophobia, to borrow a term from John Michael Greer. (Then again, I suspect a lot of young people just go for that identity because it's trendy and gives them a "marginalized" checkbox without any financial, social or physical costs, and can be instantly reversed at any time, unlike actually changing their gender)
Thank you for sharing, Sigrid! I hope that things cool off and get better for you.
Personally, I think the trans issue is used on the left as a stalking horse for reactionary agenda. And to be very clear, this is NOT the fault of trans people. The blame for that lies squarely on the people who want to use a minority with their own problems to push their agenda. But what I think is that 90s-era feminism scared people. Actual gender equality seemed almost within reach. Women were learning self-defense and home maintenance and self-confidence. And of course, that couldn’t be tolerated. Society needed a way to make women constantly question ourselves again. Enter the myth of femininity.
According to this myth, being feminine is wonderful. Women support and care for one another. We are more real than men- while men are emotionless robots offing themselves left and right because they don’t have real friendships (all they talk about is fishing- urgh), women are emotionally intelligent and happy. Femininity is empowering.
In reality, women are more depressed and anxious than men on average, and female and male loneliness numbers are about equal. Few women have a “chosen sisterhood” and most of those who do have it through a church or other subcultural milieu that only lets women express themselves in woman-only settings.
The joys of femininity are a mirage, but a useful one- they make women question ourselves. Why am I not a Golden Girl living with my besties? Is it because there’s something wrong with me? I better not talk about it- all the other women are supported and loved- if I don’t pretend to have it all everyone will think I’m a loser. This mirage has also stoked male resentment towards women- men often think that society cares about women and that loneliness is a male problem. And specifically, a male problem caused by feminism telling everyone they are dangerous and should be avoided. And modern feminism does them one better and says their friendships aren’t real because they are activity based.
Trans women play an important role as converts to femininity. They are centered not because anyone actually gives a hoot about them, but because if biological males love femininity and wish they could be feminine and are kept from being feminine by mean patriarchy, it lends credence to the idea that femininity is superior.
The other side of the coin is the silencing of traditional feminists or women who aren’t all that invested in femininity. If a woman has the confidence to watch a YouTube video and change her own electrical socket instead of paying a man $500 to do it for her, she is “not like other girls”. If she is just a busy mom with no time for dress up and goes to Walmart in baggy sweats with no makeup, she has internalized misogyny. Basically, the idea is to get every woman convinced that if she doesn’t constantly work to be feminine, her womanhood is going to slip out of her pocket and she’s going to be some sort of unfeminine creature. Which no REAL woman would be able to stand being.
By getting everyone to worry about their gender identity, the left has gotten everyone to stop thinking and talking about economic issues, or even bread and butter women’s issues like the wage gap or abortion access. And in the US, companies LOVE the idea of placating workers (or at least confusing their resistance to value extraction) by putting pronoun signatures on emails. It’s so much cheaper than paying women equally. So gender issues got a lot of interest and funding.
But no one cared about trans people. I’ve seen this with the trans people I know. They are often hurt and suffering. But most on the left engaged in reverse CBT from hell about how they are bound to kill themselves. The left works against any care for trans people that isn’t based in striving for femininity- therapy, antidepressants, or care for psychological comorbidities is denounced as “conversion therapy” even when it is recommended alongside gender-affirming care like HRT, puberty blockers, or surgery. The sad truth is the left likes trans women better as dead martyrs for the feminine cause than as real people with their own talents and flaws.
And that scares the crap out of me for what is going to happen to trans people after this election. I’m starting to see it already- the left is blaming trans politics for the election loss. The length of the step to go from blaming the emphasis on trans issues to blaming trans people themselves is tiny. If I were trans, right now I’d be more afraid of the Democrats than the Republicans. I don’t believe there was ever any real concern for trans people. They were just convenient. And now they are inconvenient.
I really enjoyed this interview and thought her perspective of just wanting to fit in vs. “coming out” was something you don’t hear about as much in popular narratives around what it means to be trans coming from the left. There is such a huge push to “normalize” the abnormal, while simultaneously a reactionary hatred for the normal that feels like it is in constant tension.
I see a lot of parallels going on between the politics of being trans on the left and the politics of neurodiversity on the left. There is also a huge movement to get rid of “gatekeepers” when it comes to diagnosing kids with neurodevelopmental disorders by professionals who specialize in how to diagnose and manage these conditions in favor of self-ID. I actually understand conservatives’ frustrations as well as skepticism over this, but ultimately, I think this type of left activism will lead to an unfortunate backlash that will end up getting some disability accommodations taken away from kids who need them the most.
Oh yes, there are absolutely parallels to disability, and the problems of social contagion (via TikTok especially) looks identical in both groups. And that leads extremists like “Libs of TikTok” to paint all of them as “just making things up.”
Thank you for this, and appreciate this attempt to build bridges across the aisle. As someone who used to be a very firm supporter of the LGB movement back in the 2000s but have been finding myself increasingly disenchanted with the T over the years, this is a valuable reminder to listen to the nuanced, sensible takes on the other side. And I do think there are reasonable compromises that could be found on most of this stuff, that we IMO basically had back in the 2000s, and mostly still have in my small European country. If only both sides would be willing to treat each other like humans rather than behaving like zealots, but of course it's also such a useful wedge/ideological purity test issue for the American left, as mentioned in the interview here. I think all this comes down to two main issues for me:
First, I'm not a fan of how "trans rights" are being presented as a take it or leave it package. We're talking about a whole range of policies here, and a whole range of positions on each. For instance, I have no problem with having an option for adults to medically and legal transition after an appropriate period and treatment program, and I'm fine with the state paying for it in public systems like we have (ie. the "truscum" position that was standard 15 years ago). Medical transition for children? I'm very skeptical, but I do see the points raised here, and I know it's unwise to make a 100% rigid system with no room for judging individual cases. I insist that parents should have a final veto on medical decisions for their minor children, though. Trans women in sports and declarative gender? Very much against, but I'll admit I don't especially care about sports either, more on principle. The whole bathroom/prison/oh no, drag queens in schools thing feels overblown to me, and (especially the latter) more like classic conservative "gay = pedo" propaganda. I wish there could be more actual debate about specific policies instead of all this posturing.
Second, I just want to be allowed to disagree. It's perfectly possible to hold both of these positions, which in fact I do: a) declarative gender is nonsense and b) trans people are full citizens just as much as me, and have every right to live however they want regardless of what I feel about their beliefs. That doesn't mean I feel any need to browbeat individual trans people with this, just like how I wouldn't harass random Christians or Muslims about their religions, but I do want to be able to say "no, I don't agree with this" as a public position without being labelled an evilly evil bigot.
It's very similar to how Christians, Muslims and atheists strongly disagree with each others' metaphysics, but they're still expected to uphold freedom of religion and live, work with and be polite to people who hold the other beliefs. That's what much of this is after all, at least in my opinion: a disagreement over metaphysics. Especially the modern academic/Judith Butler framework. I can think someone's metaphysics are silly without hating them or wishing them harm. Again, though, all this is really more an issue with Woke puritanism making trans stuff their foremost sacred cow rather than trans people themselves. Not that I feel too sorry for a mega-millionaire, but in a sane world there's no way someone like J.K. Rowling should have been treated as a pariah for her positions.
Something I said to Sigrid in a personal conversation was that it seems like the logical problem of monotheism haunts all our modern discussions about this. From the logic of "only one god" comes the logic of "only one truth," and this leads to a desperate societal need to come down on one side or another of the "trans women are women" idea.
From a polytheist pluralism, this isn't necessary at all. A transwoman can be a woman to herself and to her community without also changing the definition of women for all people. In other words, Judith Butler's ideas would be seen similar to the cult of a certain god, while other gods had other cults and they don't cancel each other out. And I think that kind of framing would have really made most of these arguments impossible to even have.
And you mention being in Europe. Something I noticed here is how some of those American and UK problems are just particular to those places. Like, the saunas here are all mixed sex except for special days. Men and women get naked together in really hot rooms and there's no fights about it. This wouldn't happen in America or the UK anywhere because of puritan-specific legacies.
This isn't really true and i have no idea where you got the idea that women/children in Europe take showers/share bathrooms with males in public spaces. There's been countlees scandals with TIMs assaulting children/women in public restrooms over here, they just get reported in the news in languages you don't speak (Europe has several of them in contrast to the US). Please don't bring your American stuff to our land.
This is such a valuable and important interview. Thanks to Rhyd and Sigrid for doing this. I do think there are a few points that could be expanded or pushed back on:
I agree that far stricter gatekeeping around child transition would dial down some of the hysteria and fear around pediatric gender medicine. And a simple dividing line of testosterone-fueled puberty vs non-testosterone fueled puberty is the clearest and simplest place to draw the line around women's sports.
But I'm not so sure that "earlier is always better" as far as transition occurs. True, if you put a male child on hormone blockers at an early age, it will make it much easier to pass as female once she's grown. But, as the prominent trans surgeon Marci Bowers has admitted, when children are blocked at that early stage—that is Tanner Stage 2 or earlier, which in males is the point where the testicles have begun to descend, but just before they experience muscle growth and voice change—they will almost certainly never experience orgasm. At least none of the kids who have been blocked at this stage have thus far, and we should remember that this is still a very new treatment without a lot of high-quality data behind it. The second thing Bowers mentions is that children blocked at this stage won't develop enough genital tissue for bottom surgery (or at the least it will make it much more difficult and prone to complications, as was the case with Jazz Jennings). There might be some children and families who decide it's worth it, but that's a hard decision to ask a child to make when they've never even had an orgasm.
As to the point Rhyd makes about the incentives of a for-profit health system—the incentives for increased throughput to maximize profits and therefore decreased assessment—that's one factor. But the truth is, decreased assessment and "gatekeeping" leads to an overall increase in treatment and procedures that must be paid for, either by insurance companies or out-of-pocket. Which brings us to the real monetary issue here: the primary purpose of the U.S. Healthcare system is not to heal illness or improve people's lives. It's to generate profits for pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, insurance companies, and providers.
The whole business model of Pharma is based on finding, inventing, and expanding new categories of illness that be treated with newly pateneted drugs. Ideally these are chronic conditions for which the patient must receive medication for the rest of his life. This is why cholesterol became the big culprit for heart attacks—because it can be lowered with the nely developed (at the time) statins—despite data showing that the relationship was far more complex than originally reported. Or why the neurotransmitter imbalance theory became the primary model for understanding mental illness, despite earlier research that pointed to underlying metabolic conditions that could be addressed with dietary changes.
A market research firm recently estimated that gender medicine will grow to an 11 billion dollar market in the US by the end of the decade. Hospitals in affluent areas have been opening up new gender clinics right and left. Specializing in gender medicine is a great way for a newly minted urologist or endocrinologist to find a marketable niche for themselves. And we need to be honest about the kinds of pressures these factors create to gloss over risks and complications, to overstate benefits, and to reduce thorough and careful assessments that might limit the pool of potential customers.
We need better conversations around this. As someone who's been publicly (although not that publicly) gender-critical in the last year or two, it's really hard sometimes to resist being polarized to the other side on this issue—that is, being angry and infuriated at the whole notion of transgenderism, and un-empathetic to someone like Sigrid's experience—because to offer even the mildest criticism evokes a cascade of emotional terrorism from proponents of extreme trans ideology. It's almost like you have to be extra pugnacious sometimes to even fight back. And that's a shame, because in the long run, no one, least of all gender-dysphoric and non-conforming kids, are served by that.
I'd love to underline the first sentence of your last paragraph and shout it from every rooftop. "We need better conversations around this" is the truest thing that can possibly be said!
I don't know why people insist on uncritically promoting old-school transexuals. They always try to promote that they are the 'true trans' - they were just a stage in people mistaking themselves as a narrative identity but needing a persuasive medical rationale to get surgery to try to resolve their obsessive thinking. Then advocating for child transition often because they still have dysphoria and obsessive thoughts and think if only they had transitioned early.
These people strike me as unreliable narrators. Go read the above again but this time skeptically and notice how he promotes child transition purely based off his own experience, like that's somehow more important than evidence based medicine. I'm tired of people putting trans people on an epistimological pedestal like their claims are somehow beyond question. I would argue people like Sigrid have made a fundamental mistake about self-hood and narratives of identity.
I think you might be missing something quite fundamental about the difference between the old-school "trannies" and the new wave of transgender. First of all, SRS wasn't seen as a crucial thing for many of them. Quite a few of the ones I was friends with didn't do any surgical modifications.
Secondly, and quite crucially, the way they lived and expressed themselves was much more like what similar people did throughout at least the last thousand years in Europe. Yes, Europe was full of them, especially in certain cities like Venice and London. And there are some pretty wild historical accounts of how female prostitutes started dressing like men to "pass" as men dressing like women to get male clients, since there was a general societal preference for what we'd call trannies now.
(Incidentally, it's still the same. I worked in an adult video store from 1997-1999, and the "tranny porn" section of the store was the one we had the most trouble restocking. It was really informative watching how many straight men went directly to that section.)
The point here is that this kind of existence is something that was always pretty well integrated into Western society, especially in Catholic regions in Europe. It was never a "movement" or a political ideology. Just a quirky and accepted oddity. But when Butler came along, suddenly this changed, and it the "OG Trannies" were actually the first to suffer from this.
So I'd definitely like to correct your statement about how "people insist on uncritically promoting" them. The younger Butlerite transgender activists loathe them. Really. Just go look at how they seethe against people like Buck Angel, or Dr. Marci Bowers, or Dr. Erica Anderson. They'll do anything they can to try to shut them up. No doubt any of them reading this would try to do the same to Sigrid.
And one more thing. You don't need to personally believe or accept that my friend Sigrid is a woman. The "trans women are women" shibboleth the woke pushed on everyone did far more damage to trans acceptance than anything else. But on my substack, I honor the rules of hospitality. Which means that, while Sigrid is here and you are also here, you address her and speak about her as she prefers. She's an honored guest, and you're also a guest, so act like a good guest.
Thanks for your response, Im interested in the historical period and place of which you speak, I'm assuming you're in 19th century, early 20th century Europe? From what I've read it was certainly a ribald old time, though perhaps dominated by homosexual cross-dressers? Culturally, effeminate homosexuals have often been given special status, ie androgynes, while masculine homosexuals did not suffer so much stigma, as you have noted with your video store clients perhaps. If you have some sources I'd be curious as it's also a time where certain types of pornographic fiction were being widely consumed and so it is important to be circumspect about what is ‘real’ in the literature.
I think you're being a bit disingenuous as while not a movement, old school transexuals hew to a particular narrative about ‘what they are’. Sigrid passes commentary and makes metaphysical claims which I have a right to critique as much as anyone. He is like many such transexuals I have heard in that he is very insistent on what his condition is. I don't view individual testimony as sancrosanct on matters of human psychology and have a different view. I think trans is a culture bound syndrome, well evidenced from the shift from transvestite to transexual and now those dreaded transgenders threatening the consensus that transexuals and sexologists and later activists and lawyers set up, that we should treat these people ‘as if’ they were the opposite sex. I think it is a mistake to base your self-hood on a narrative identity and if it is just a treatment for dysphoria then it's a strange one and stop with the metaphysical claims about ‘right to exist’.
I notice you don't comment about his subtle advocacy for child transition (he believes in true trans) or ask about women’s rights to decide on who is in their private spaces.
Because of the recent growth (social contagion) and self-Id laws that you talk about it is time to reevaluate what trans is and how we accommodate these people as a broader society. That is why I use male pronouns, because Sigrid is a man and knows that. I don't think you get to say alone whether he should be accommodated in female spaces etc.If I knew Sigrid personally I may accommodate his preference to be seen as a her but as a stranger, I find it weird that he thinks he can be a woman just by thinking it. It's actually an imposition on people at large and a huge tell that these people insist on the facade because as you point to -- people can tolerate a wide range of gender non-conformity and there is no need to insist on it as some metaphysical truth, be gay and feminine and wear female clothes but don't pretend you are something you can't be. I'm of the view there should be no sacred cows in general debate but feel free to censor me in the interests of curating a certain space and you wish to elevate your friendship over the broader social milieu of people who think differently to you. Understandable but I won't be made to feel bad about expressing a basic fact of existence. Who really is fetishising sex, it's not that important in my view...
No, I feel you may have plenty of interesting things to add but I don't do that convention as I'm making a point that people should accept their biological reality first and we shouldn't have confusion or pretence around that fact and I want to mark out a space for resisting because we have drifted into the current situation through group think and as you both agree it's not working out. That is my social media stance, I wouldn't necessarily have the confidence to do this in person as I may be sanctioned - in those situations I avoid pronouns and use names only. But I understand where you're coming from in using them as well.
The transhumanist movement doesn't care about transexuals or children or anyone else. Once you see that the current fixation on transgenderism is all part of the technocratic desire to override the body and merge with the machine then it ceases to have anything to do with sexuality, the rights of transexuals, trying to do the right thing for unhappy kids etc etc. Everyone just becomes cannon fodder. People like Sigrid are indeed being cynically used for purposes that in no way have their wellbeing in mind.
I think an important reason for me to do this interview was to show that there's absolutely a struggle for many to try to wrest back their own experiences out of the stream of transhumanism. As you know, what we call trans now has always existed by many other names. The cyborg/singularity shit that came later didn't start or originate with them. Just as Butler and the "woke" did, they took these independent existences and tried to rewrite it all into their own agenda.
Many younger people don't know this, and this is one of the really profound things I think Sigrid and others offer to them.
It's important work and thank you for doing it. It's so very sad what critical theory has done to divide people who previously had no issue with one another apart from finding their differences simply interesting and perhaps curious. Still, advancements in medical technology have made new procedures possible that actually complicate things beyond what is natural. And speaking as a woman, regardless of my distaste for social justice identitarianism (I use that phrase all the time - copyright Rhyd Wildermuth!), I struggle to define a person born a biological man as a woman, no matter how their body has been altered with the knife. I am aware this sounds harsh, and not all women think this way, but I'm personally very clear about it.
I never had any hesitation about this with the "old school trannies" I refer to, and I still don't really understand why it didn't even occur to me to think of them as men.
I have a few ideas as to why it was like this for me. First of all, there's this weird thing in American English about gender that I think made it less of a big deal for me. For instance, I lived some time in New England, where saying 'you guys' was just normal plural, even if I was talking to a group of women. We have similar things with "bro" and "dude," a bit like lower class English people have with "mate." And then also in gay culture, where more campy sorts will call each other "girl" or "girlfriend" or even "sister" (something the woke really hate).
And oddly, I don't think much about the sex or gender of most people I'm talking to or about except as a shorthand to distinguish a person from another, or if it really is a relevant detail. But I also look at race this way, which, again, the woke really hate because apparently I'm only "pretending" to be colorblind. Though I think that maybe I might just be odd. :)
A lot of good comments here and I’m thankful for you Rhyd and also Sigrid for bringing a personal and grounded voice into what is indeed a fully hijacked and now political movement. I am also surprised that there has been little conversation around the role of big pharma and bio tech in this hijaking. As you both say, and what I believe to be true, trannies have always existed, people who want to present in a certain way, but never with the “tech” that we currently have. And I believe it’s just the beginning of this tech, being able to stealth live a role that isn’t our birth right in ways that it’s hard to imagine. The deep sadness around this movement is of course what Sigurd refers to, the unbearable being of not belonging in the body, our one true home. In my line of healing we would look into the external( demonic) or internal imbalance and try to return balance so that harmony is attained and one would be able to find there own way home to their sacred vessel, our birthright, our body. We would petition the invisible helpers as Sigrid did-and one of the paths presented is a life long reliance upon big pharma and all the agreements in place there. Which I believe brings about its own fate. One of these, in Sigrids case, is living in stealth mode.
As with any new tech it takes time to teach and educate the populous. And I’m sure? assume Sigrid was already quite exhausted without necessarily having to take that on and I assume that stealth mode only applies to the general people Sigrid meets rather than those who are close and intimate friends. But secrets are secrets and have their own energy. Which is a fate created. And I wonder about this fate that Sigrid has taken on and what it feels like to walk around amongst women in stealth mode and the separation that that creates.
Meanwhile as to the political shit show, the demand that people can change sex, the invasion of women’s spaces and the financial capturing of children’s dysmorphia and the insistence, as Hazel Henry mentioned, that ”prisons a violent place and getting raped is part of the experience “ with absolutely no acknowledgement that getting raped by a women is very different than getting raped from a man is horrifying to me.
It seems a clear that the further we move away from a life lived caressing the earth the less we can relate to our bodies and our sacred relationship to our birthright. Is this evolution? Is this evil? Is this part of our enlightenment? I guess that’s up to each of us.
Thanks for bringing this to the table Ryhd and thanks Sigrid for sharing.
I’ve seen pretty good evidence for both positions on this, and it usually comes down to how data on “desistance” is interpreted. When people drop out during the middle of the process, there’s usually no follow up (often due to funding restrictions) and so no one really knows why they stopped. Some interpret it as them being completely happy with partial transition, others with realizing they aren’t really trans and reverted back.
The Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland all interpreted their own date to find unacceptable rates of detransition. The Cass Review called for more study into the matter (and was rejected as therefore being anti-trans). And in the US, there appears to have been little appetite to try to look into the actual rates, sometimes from external pressure to consider it an already settled question, and other times just from lack of funding for such research.
So I think it’s reasonable to say we don’t really know. It may be higher than some imagine but lower than what some critics make it out to be. I personally know several, but my friend group is not a good basis for a scientific demographic study.
This really comes down to a question of bodily automony though in the end does it not? Do we trust that people can make descions- such as transition or abortion - for themselves and live with the consequences? Detransition should not be a bad thing, its not a bad thing to make an alteration to your body that you decide later you do not like or wish you hadn't done, but we live with these choices and we move on. In my view it is really transphobia (internal or external) which makes it seem as if making this choice and then deciding it is not for you a bad thing. I know people who have detransitioned/ retrasitioned. Like any other life changing choice it can be something you learn about yourself from. In the past, if you were a lesbian trans woman - such as myself - you were not allowed to transition. Women resorted to extremes such as self castration in order to get the care they required. We are whole heartdly in a better place then that now despite the challenges we face and the recent misters of gender theory.
I definitely resonate with the matter of medical vs individual diagnosis, and the idea of larger community involvement. With the sacred model I mentioned in the interview, the community was often involved in the process.
I do have a question, however: how would a self-ID method (without “gatekeeping”) work which wouldn’t allow for the documented abuses of it that have occurred especially in UK prisons?
This I think is the crux for many people, and I’ve not seen this addressed by my fellow leftists — and especially not by the social justice “left” — except to outright deny any abuses occur. And I think as in many other situations, leftist silence on this issue gives critics on the right the chance to seize the ground of truth.
There is no SRS requirement in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate/who-can-apply
Also, the UK prisons policy until very recently (2023) allowed self-ID of prisoners without any kind of gender certification. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63823420.amp
My understanding from speaking with trans women in the UK is that you can not get diagnosed with gender dysphoria without intention to purse SRS as a trans woman and that doing so entails moving forward with that. But perhaps this is less formalized then I was lead to belive.
Those cases should simply be treated as casis of rape. Being transgender is irrelevant unless you are clinging to a belief in trans women having higher proximity to "maleness".
Prisons are violent places. It's not as if cis women to do rape other women in prison.
I think this is where the question of what a moderate political compromise that keeps everyone safe and still allows the most amount of autonomy would look like comes in.
I personally start with the notion that no rape or sexual abuse should be excused, and even more so especially of people in captive populations like prisons. And so any person with a history of enacting sexual violence should be kept away from vulnerable populations. This would look both like separating out those people from general populations and also, if necessary, separating vulnerable people out from general populations.
Unfortunately, I don’t know of a single government in the world who cares about the safety of prisoners to that degree.
"plenty of these historical non-western societies have also, after serious consideration, come to the conclusion that we're gross and just thrown us in fires." - What an odd take. Was that 'serious consideration' maybe colonialism? Because that is what I heard that happened.
This is also my impression, but I think the problem is that it's super difficult for us to disentangle that influence in every situation, since we're still in it. Taking the issue of homosexuality as a parallel, some African societies that are virulently anti-gay definitely appear to have picked this up as a result of western colonization. However, I've seen some evidence that others started out this way.
Same problem exists for paganisms in Europe. It's really difficult to figure out what is a later legacy and what pre-dated the anti-homosexual Christian legacy. And even more complicated -- how much of the anti-homosexual legacy in Christianity was really core to the early ideas, and how much came later in when Christians tried to identify themselves in opposition to pagan culture?
So, I think it's impossible for us really to know for certain, though I think you already know how I come down on this.
Yeah, I would have no problem with her saying „Non-Western and non-Christian societies have had a variety of attitudes towards what we would describe as Transgender people, including violent persecution.“ That would be an unsurprising statement. There is nothing where all cultures ever have been the same.
But the way this was stated, it sounds as if they all, in one moment out of their own free will, worldwide decided they hate the Transgender and then persecuted them for no reason. Now, that sounds utterly unreal. And there is one obvious candidate for the reason for widespread societal shifts happening at one fairly specific point in time.
At lot of pre-colonial civilisations had a degree of a tolerance towards minority groups like homosexuals not because they saw tolerance as a virtue, but they simply had little reason to be intolerant. There was often no ideological imperative to ban or actively persecute it. Not that they were always exactly treated with dignity and respect.
In reply to this: "And even more complicated -- how much of the anti-homosexual legacy in Christianity was really core to the early ideas, and how much came later in when Christians tried to identify themselves in opposition to pagan culture?"
When I was in college at a Lutheran liberal arts school ('87-'91), I wrote a research paper about the verses in the Bible that are used to denounce homosexuality. This was for a theology course. According to sources I cited, the Old Testament stuff (mainly Leviticus) was explained as one example of many prohibitions that were adopted as a means for the Hebrew people to distinguish themselves from their neighbors. This was especially important during the Babylonian captivity, when much of that literature was first written, and they were trying to retain a separate identity. Basically, "Here's another way we're not like them." Sounds like the same thing you're talking about here.
(I mention the timeline ('87-'91) just to point out that this interpretation preceded contemporary ideas and rhetoric.)
You went to a Christian liberal arts school, too???
And yes, very much the same process. Didn't realise until reading your comment that it started much much earlier!
Yeah, a mostly-Norwegian school in Minnesota. My education up til then had been in Catholic schools, so being at a Lutheran institution felt like a liberation, lol, cuz I was like, "I can ignore all this."
Because it was a Christian school, I was required to take three theology courses. But I was in a special program that allowed me to work with professors one-on-one to create courses for credit. One of these had as its focus all the OT verses used by NT authors to prove that Jesus was the messiah who had been prophesied. As it turns out, not all of them were perfect fits, and the NT authors definitely took some liberties. This is when I found out that the doctrine of the virgin birth was based on a mistranslation of the original prophetic text, which happened to be a common one floating around at the time.
I'll say that my professors were all very open to this kind of thing. The academic freedom was real, and I was not discouraged from pursuing lines of inquiry that some Christians (including the Catholics who raised and schooled me previously) would have considered heretical.
That special program was discontinued in the early 2000s as the school moved more toward STEM, which is too bad.
Unfortunately, mine was not so open. I was there on a "Christian Leadership" scholarship which they cancelled during my second year when I came out as gay. Still, my old and new testament courses that first year taught me more than I think most believing Christians even get to know about the bible.
Dogon famously dislike sexual ambiguity and androgyny. It's even in their cosmogony, their very creation myth. In the beginning, the first sapient beings were hermaphroditic, but (without getting into much detail) when humans came around the gods determined two sexes and separated their attributes and anatomy as they know them today. And that's the religious justification for their practice of both male and female circumcision at an early age, to extirpate the (so-considered) ambiguous traits.
I hadn't known of this, thanks!
I think the key issue here is that things like transgender rights or gay marriage are not class issues. Corporations couldn't give a damn about them, and if the so-called left what to use up their political ammunition on these social issues rather than say pushing for a wealth tax then why not encourage them ? Marriage equality is fine, but housing equality and healthcare equality is much more of an important issue for the majority of people.
Yes, and those economic issues ALSO benefit all lower and working class parts of those social justice identity categories as well.
The problem, of course, is that these economic benefits wouldn't benefit the "PMC"/laptop elite classes of those same identity groups, which is why they don't push for them. In their minds, more black trans women working for Goldman Sachs is "true" progress, rather than making sure black trans women -- and everyone else -- can afford basic housing and healthcare.
Okay, I have been thinking about why - quite honestly - Transgenderism as the lib ideology being pushed right now upsets me, even though I actually do believe in letting people live the way they want.
And that is because this seems like one more way of restating that not only does the body not matter - does mean nothing to who you are - it is even actually as Sigrid says a „horrible thing“. Something that needs to be beaten into submission. And how grateful we should be that now modern science can rescue us from puberty. From the horror of the body being what it is and doing what it does. Especially from the grotesque horror of uncontrolled reality of us as physically sexual beings.
Now, this is rarely stated out loud. But we all know that this vibe really exists in our society in general, and has for a long time. I mean, at least those who read this blog do see that, right? And it feels to me that lib style transgender theory is a way of stating and restating this idea.
I think I take Silvia Federici’s analysis in her book Beyond the Periphery of the Skin as a great guide here. The body-denying theories are products of capitalism, but because it suppressed or destroyed all other frameworks, we can’t separate these things yet.
(That’s the book of hers, you might remember, that caused her to be labeled “transphobic,” which is certainly absolutely not true.)
Problem is, it will take a lot of effort to resurrect those other frameworks or even create new ones. And we can’t do that while Judith Butler and other irresponsible academics still get to decide for everyone what, gender, sex, and the body itself “truly” mean.
"Problem is, it will take a lot of effort to resurrect those other frameworks or even create new ones. And we can’t do that while Judith Butler and other irresponsible academics still get to decide for everyone what, gender, sex, and the body itself “truly” mean."
Totally. I think that just about everyone in capitalist society dreads our alienation from the body. Even those who think they don't... and I think that causes the intensity of the reaction against the Transgender. If we could come to terms with the dread and of course, start to work on healing the alienation, we wouldn't fear the Transgender. And then we would find a more elegant framework that is not an insult to the body, or the Transgender experience.
Edit: And it really is irresponsible of Butler to talk the way she does and increase the dread, while she must know how that feels, and what kind of reaction it would cause
I really don’t think Butler does know or care. Its an academic game for her. And adopted a non-binary identity only recently, I think mostly to protect herself from the ravaging monster she’s created and to remain its master.
Yes, this is a great point, and a big part of it for me too. Especially with the whole "non-binary" concept, which kind of feels like someone unilaterally seceding from nature by declaring that the physical body and its limitations just plain don't matter. Another example of biophobia, to borrow a term from John Michael Greer. (Then again, I suspect a lot of young people just go for that identity because it's trendy and gives them a "marginalized" checkbox without any financial, social or physical costs, and can be instantly reversed at any time, unlike actually changing their gender)
Thank you for sharing, Sigrid! I hope that things cool off and get better for you.
Personally, I think the trans issue is used on the left as a stalking horse for reactionary agenda. And to be very clear, this is NOT the fault of trans people. The blame for that lies squarely on the people who want to use a minority with their own problems to push their agenda. But what I think is that 90s-era feminism scared people. Actual gender equality seemed almost within reach. Women were learning self-defense and home maintenance and self-confidence. And of course, that couldn’t be tolerated. Society needed a way to make women constantly question ourselves again. Enter the myth of femininity.
According to this myth, being feminine is wonderful. Women support and care for one another. We are more real than men- while men are emotionless robots offing themselves left and right because they don’t have real friendships (all they talk about is fishing- urgh), women are emotionally intelligent and happy. Femininity is empowering.
In reality, women are more depressed and anxious than men on average, and female and male loneliness numbers are about equal. Few women have a “chosen sisterhood” and most of those who do have it through a church or other subcultural milieu that only lets women express themselves in woman-only settings.
The joys of femininity are a mirage, but a useful one- they make women question ourselves. Why am I not a Golden Girl living with my besties? Is it because there’s something wrong with me? I better not talk about it- all the other women are supported and loved- if I don’t pretend to have it all everyone will think I’m a loser. This mirage has also stoked male resentment towards women- men often think that society cares about women and that loneliness is a male problem. And specifically, a male problem caused by feminism telling everyone they are dangerous and should be avoided. And modern feminism does them one better and says their friendships aren’t real because they are activity based.
Trans women play an important role as converts to femininity. They are centered not because anyone actually gives a hoot about them, but because if biological males love femininity and wish they could be feminine and are kept from being feminine by mean patriarchy, it lends credence to the idea that femininity is superior.
The other side of the coin is the silencing of traditional feminists or women who aren’t all that invested in femininity. If a woman has the confidence to watch a YouTube video and change her own electrical socket instead of paying a man $500 to do it for her, she is “not like other girls”. If she is just a busy mom with no time for dress up and goes to Walmart in baggy sweats with no makeup, she has internalized misogyny. Basically, the idea is to get every woman convinced that if she doesn’t constantly work to be feminine, her womanhood is going to slip out of her pocket and she’s going to be some sort of unfeminine creature. Which no REAL woman would be able to stand being.
By getting everyone to worry about their gender identity, the left has gotten everyone to stop thinking and talking about economic issues, or even bread and butter women’s issues like the wage gap or abortion access. And in the US, companies LOVE the idea of placating workers (or at least confusing their resistance to value extraction) by putting pronoun signatures on emails. It’s so much cheaper than paying women equally. So gender issues got a lot of interest and funding.
But no one cared about trans people. I’ve seen this with the trans people I know. They are often hurt and suffering. But most on the left engaged in reverse CBT from hell about how they are bound to kill themselves. The left works against any care for trans people that isn’t based in striving for femininity- therapy, antidepressants, or care for psychological comorbidities is denounced as “conversion therapy” even when it is recommended alongside gender-affirming care like HRT, puberty blockers, or surgery. The sad truth is the left likes trans women better as dead martyrs for the feminine cause than as real people with their own talents and flaws.
And that scares the crap out of me for what is going to happen to trans people after this election. I’m starting to see it already- the left is blaming trans politics for the election loss. The length of the step to go from blaming the emphasis on trans issues to blaming trans people themselves is tiny. If I were trans, right now I’d be more afraid of the Democrats than the Republicans. I don’t believe there was ever any real concern for trans people. They were just convenient. And now they are inconvenient.
This is such a beautiful and very profound analysis, thank you.
I really enjoyed this interview and thought her perspective of just wanting to fit in vs. “coming out” was something you don’t hear about as much in popular narratives around what it means to be trans coming from the left. There is such a huge push to “normalize” the abnormal, while simultaneously a reactionary hatred for the normal that feels like it is in constant tension.
I see a lot of parallels going on between the politics of being trans on the left and the politics of neurodiversity on the left. There is also a huge movement to get rid of “gatekeepers” when it comes to diagnosing kids with neurodevelopmental disorders by professionals who specialize in how to diagnose and manage these conditions in favor of self-ID. I actually understand conservatives’ frustrations as well as skepticism over this, but ultimately, I think this type of left activism will lead to an unfortunate backlash that will end up getting some disability accommodations taken away from kids who need them the most.
Oh yes, there are absolutely parallels to disability, and the problems of social contagion (via TikTok especially) looks identical in both groups. And that leads extremists like “Libs of TikTok” to paint all of them as “just making things up.”
Thank you for this, and appreciate this attempt to build bridges across the aisle. As someone who used to be a very firm supporter of the LGB movement back in the 2000s but have been finding myself increasingly disenchanted with the T over the years, this is a valuable reminder to listen to the nuanced, sensible takes on the other side. And I do think there are reasonable compromises that could be found on most of this stuff, that we IMO basically had back in the 2000s, and mostly still have in my small European country. If only both sides would be willing to treat each other like humans rather than behaving like zealots, but of course it's also such a useful wedge/ideological purity test issue for the American left, as mentioned in the interview here. I think all this comes down to two main issues for me:
First, I'm not a fan of how "trans rights" are being presented as a take it or leave it package. We're talking about a whole range of policies here, and a whole range of positions on each. For instance, I have no problem with having an option for adults to medically and legal transition after an appropriate period and treatment program, and I'm fine with the state paying for it in public systems like we have (ie. the "truscum" position that was standard 15 years ago). Medical transition for children? I'm very skeptical, but I do see the points raised here, and I know it's unwise to make a 100% rigid system with no room for judging individual cases. I insist that parents should have a final veto on medical decisions for their minor children, though. Trans women in sports and declarative gender? Very much against, but I'll admit I don't especially care about sports either, more on principle. The whole bathroom/prison/oh no, drag queens in schools thing feels overblown to me, and (especially the latter) more like classic conservative "gay = pedo" propaganda. I wish there could be more actual debate about specific policies instead of all this posturing.
Second, I just want to be allowed to disagree. It's perfectly possible to hold both of these positions, which in fact I do: a) declarative gender is nonsense and b) trans people are full citizens just as much as me, and have every right to live however they want regardless of what I feel about their beliefs. That doesn't mean I feel any need to browbeat individual trans people with this, just like how I wouldn't harass random Christians or Muslims about their religions, but I do want to be able to say "no, I don't agree with this" as a public position without being labelled an evilly evil bigot.
It's very similar to how Christians, Muslims and atheists strongly disagree with each others' metaphysics, but they're still expected to uphold freedom of religion and live, work with and be polite to people who hold the other beliefs. That's what much of this is after all, at least in my opinion: a disagreement over metaphysics. Especially the modern academic/Judith Butler framework. I can think someone's metaphysics are silly without hating them or wishing them harm. Again, though, all this is really more an issue with Woke puritanism making trans stuff their foremost sacred cow rather than trans people themselves. Not that I feel too sorry for a mega-millionaire, but in a sane world there's no way someone like J.K. Rowling should have been treated as a pariah for her positions.
Something I said to Sigrid in a personal conversation was that it seems like the logical problem of monotheism haunts all our modern discussions about this. From the logic of "only one god" comes the logic of "only one truth," and this leads to a desperate societal need to come down on one side or another of the "trans women are women" idea.
From a polytheist pluralism, this isn't necessary at all. A transwoman can be a woman to herself and to her community without also changing the definition of women for all people. In other words, Judith Butler's ideas would be seen similar to the cult of a certain god, while other gods had other cults and they don't cancel each other out. And I think that kind of framing would have really made most of these arguments impossible to even have.
And you mention being in Europe. Something I noticed here is how some of those American and UK problems are just particular to those places. Like, the saunas here are all mixed sex except for special days. Men and women get naked together in really hot rooms and there's no fights about it. This wouldn't happen in America or the UK anywhere because of puritan-specific legacies.
This isn't really true and i have no idea where you got the idea that women/children in Europe take showers/share bathrooms with males in public spaces. There's been countlees scandals with TIMs assaulting children/women in public restrooms over here, they just get reported in the news in languages you don't speak (Europe has several of them in contrast to the US). Please don't bring your American stuff to our land.
Uh, I live in Europe and I speak several European languages.
All the public saunas in Luxembourg, where I live, are nude and mixed-sex except for special days.
I did not say that people take showers together.
This is such a valuable and important interview. Thanks to Rhyd and Sigrid for doing this. I do think there are a few points that could be expanded or pushed back on:
I agree that far stricter gatekeeping around child transition would dial down some of the hysteria and fear around pediatric gender medicine. And a simple dividing line of testosterone-fueled puberty vs non-testosterone fueled puberty is the clearest and simplest place to draw the line around women's sports.
But I'm not so sure that "earlier is always better" as far as transition occurs. True, if you put a male child on hormone blockers at an early age, it will make it much easier to pass as female once she's grown. But, as the prominent trans surgeon Marci Bowers has admitted, when children are blocked at that early stage—that is Tanner Stage 2 or earlier, which in males is the point where the testicles have begun to descend, but just before they experience muscle growth and voice change—they will almost certainly never experience orgasm. At least none of the kids who have been blocked at this stage have thus far, and we should remember that this is still a very new treatment without a lot of high-quality data behind it. The second thing Bowers mentions is that children blocked at this stage won't develop enough genital tissue for bottom surgery (or at the least it will make it much more difficult and prone to complications, as was the case with Jazz Jennings). There might be some children and families who decide it's worth it, but that's a hard decision to ask a child to make when they've never even had an orgasm.
As to the point Rhyd makes about the incentives of a for-profit health system—the incentives for increased throughput to maximize profits and therefore decreased assessment—that's one factor. But the truth is, decreased assessment and "gatekeeping" leads to an overall increase in treatment and procedures that must be paid for, either by insurance companies or out-of-pocket. Which brings us to the real monetary issue here: the primary purpose of the U.S. Healthcare system is not to heal illness or improve people's lives. It's to generate profits for pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, insurance companies, and providers.
The whole business model of Pharma is based on finding, inventing, and expanding new categories of illness that be treated with newly pateneted drugs. Ideally these are chronic conditions for which the patient must receive medication for the rest of his life. This is why cholesterol became the big culprit for heart attacks—because it can be lowered with the nely developed (at the time) statins—despite data showing that the relationship was far more complex than originally reported. Or why the neurotransmitter imbalance theory became the primary model for understanding mental illness, despite earlier research that pointed to underlying metabolic conditions that could be addressed with dietary changes.
A market research firm recently estimated that gender medicine will grow to an 11 billion dollar market in the US by the end of the decade. Hospitals in affluent areas have been opening up new gender clinics right and left. Specializing in gender medicine is a great way for a newly minted urologist or endocrinologist to find a marketable niche for themselves. And we need to be honest about the kinds of pressures these factors create to gloss over risks and complications, to overstate benefits, and to reduce thorough and careful assessments that might limit the pool of potential customers.
We need better conversations around this. As someone who's been publicly (although not that publicly) gender-critical in the last year or two, it's really hard sometimes to resist being polarized to the other side on this issue—that is, being angry and infuriated at the whole notion of transgenderism, and un-empathetic to someone like Sigrid's experience—because to offer even the mildest criticism evokes a cascade of emotional terrorism from proponents of extreme trans ideology. It's almost like you have to be extra pugnacious sometimes to even fight back. And that's a shame, because in the long run, no one, least of all gender-dysphoric and non-conforming kids, are served by that.
I'd love to underline the first sentence of your last paragraph and shout it from every rooftop. "We need better conversations around this" is the truest thing that can possibly be said!
I don't know why people insist on uncritically promoting old-school transexuals. They always try to promote that they are the 'true trans' - they were just a stage in people mistaking themselves as a narrative identity but needing a persuasive medical rationale to get surgery to try to resolve their obsessive thinking. Then advocating for child transition often because they still have dysphoria and obsessive thoughts and think if only they had transitioned early.
These people strike me as unreliable narrators. Go read the above again but this time skeptically and notice how he promotes child transition purely based off his own experience, like that's somehow more important than evidence based medicine. I'm tired of people putting trans people on an epistimological pedestal like their claims are somehow beyond question. I would argue people like Sigrid have made a fundamental mistake about self-hood and narratives of identity.
I think you might be missing something quite fundamental about the difference between the old-school "trannies" and the new wave of transgender. First of all, SRS wasn't seen as a crucial thing for many of them. Quite a few of the ones I was friends with didn't do any surgical modifications.
Secondly, and quite crucially, the way they lived and expressed themselves was much more like what similar people did throughout at least the last thousand years in Europe. Yes, Europe was full of them, especially in certain cities like Venice and London. And there are some pretty wild historical accounts of how female prostitutes started dressing like men to "pass" as men dressing like women to get male clients, since there was a general societal preference for what we'd call trannies now.
(Incidentally, it's still the same. I worked in an adult video store from 1997-1999, and the "tranny porn" section of the store was the one we had the most trouble restocking. It was really informative watching how many straight men went directly to that section.)
The point here is that this kind of existence is something that was always pretty well integrated into Western society, especially in Catholic regions in Europe. It was never a "movement" or a political ideology. Just a quirky and accepted oddity. But when Butler came along, suddenly this changed, and it the "OG Trannies" were actually the first to suffer from this.
So I'd definitely like to correct your statement about how "people insist on uncritically promoting" them. The younger Butlerite transgender activists loathe them. Really. Just go look at how they seethe against people like Buck Angel, or Dr. Marci Bowers, or Dr. Erica Anderson. They'll do anything they can to try to shut them up. No doubt any of them reading this would try to do the same to Sigrid.
And one more thing. You don't need to personally believe or accept that my friend Sigrid is a woman. The "trans women are women" shibboleth the woke pushed on everyone did far more damage to trans acceptance than anything else. But on my substack, I honor the rules of hospitality. Which means that, while Sigrid is here and you are also here, you address her and speak about her as she prefers. She's an honored guest, and you're also a guest, so act like a good guest.
Thanks for your response, Im interested in the historical period and place of which you speak, I'm assuming you're in 19th century, early 20th century Europe? From what I've read it was certainly a ribald old time, though perhaps dominated by homosexual cross-dressers? Culturally, effeminate homosexuals have often been given special status, ie androgynes, while masculine homosexuals did not suffer so much stigma, as you have noted with your video store clients perhaps. If you have some sources I'd be curious as it's also a time where certain types of pornographic fiction were being widely consumed and so it is important to be circumspect about what is ‘real’ in the literature.
I think you're being a bit disingenuous as while not a movement, old school transexuals hew to a particular narrative about ‘what they are’. Sigrid passes commentary and makes metaphysical claims which I have a right to critique as much as anyone. He is like many such transexuals I have heard in that he is very insistent on what his condition is. I don't view individual testimony as sancrosanct on matters of human psychology and have a different view. I think trans is a culture bound syndrome, well evidenced from the shift from transvestite to transexual and now those dreaded transgenders threatening the consensus that transexuals and sexologists and later activists and lawyers set up, that we should treat these people ‘as if’ they were the opposite sex. I think it is a mistake to base your self-hood on a narrative identity and if it is just a treatment for dysphoria then it's a strange one and stop with the metaphysical claims about ‘right to exist’.
I notice you don't comment about his subtle advocacy for child transition (he believes in true trans) or ask about women’s rights to decide on who is in their private spaces.
Because of the recent growth (social contagion) and self-Id laws that you talk about it is time to reevaluate what trans is and how we accommodate these people as a broader society. That is why I use male pronouns, because Sigrid is a man and knows that. I don't think you get to say alone whether he should be accommodated in female spaces etc.If I knew Sigrid personally I may accommodate his preference to be seen as a her but as a stranger, I find it weird that he thinks he can be a woman just by thinking it. It's actually an imposition on people at large and a huge tell that these people insist on the facade because as you point to -- people can tolerate a wide range of gender non-conformity and there is no need to insist on it as some metaphysical truth, be gay and feminine and wear female clothes but don't pretend you are something you can't be. I'm of the view there should be no sacred cows in general debate but feel free to censor me in the interests of curating a certain space and you wish to elevate your friendship over the broader social milieu of people who think differently to you. Understandable but I won't be made to feel bad about expressing a basic fact of existence. Who really is fetishising sex, it's not that important in my view...
Easiest way to keep your personal integrity without being an asshole is just not to use any pronouns at all and instead default to the first name.
Go back and change "he" to "Sigrid," and we'll continue this conversation.
No, I feel you may have plenty of interesting things to add but I don't do that convention as I'm making a point that people should accept their biological reality first and we shouldn't have confusion or pretence around that fact and I want to mark out a space for resisting because we have drifted into the current situation through group think and as you both agree it's not working out. That is my social media stance, I wouldn't necessarily have the confidence to do this in person as I may be sanctioned - in those situations I avoid pronouns and use names only. But I understand where you're coming from in using them as well.
You are absolutely welcome to 'resist' elsewhere, then.
The transhumanist movement doesn't care about transexuals or children or anyone else. Once you see that the current fixation on transgenderism is all part of the technocratic desire to override the body and merge with the machine then it ceases to have anything to do with sexuality, the rights of transexuals, trying to do the right thing for unhappy kids etc etc. Everyone just becomes cannon fodder. People like Sigrid are indeed being cynically used for purposes that in no way have their wellbeing in mind.
I think an important reason for me to do this interview was to show that there's absolutely a struggle for many to try to wrest back their own experiences out of the stream of transhumanism. As you know, what we call trans now has always existed by many other names. The cyborg/singularity shit that came later didn't start or originate with them. Just as Butler and the "woke" did, they took these independent existences and tried to rewrite it all into their own agenda.
Many younger people don't know this, and this is one of the really profound things I think Sigrid and others offer to them.
It's important work and thank you for doing it. It's so very sad what critical theory has done to divide people who previously had no issue with one another apart from finding their differences simply interesting and perhaps curious. Still, advancements in medical technology have made new procedures possible that actually complicate things beyond what is natural. And speaking as a woman, regardless of my distaste for social justice identitarianism (I use that phrase all the time - copyright Rhyd Wildermuth!), I struggle to define a person born a biological man as a woman, no matter how their body has been altered with the knife. I am aware this sounds harsh, and not all women think this way, but I'm personally very clear about it.
I never had any hesitation about this with the "old school trannies" I refer to, and I still don't really understand why it didn't even occur to me to think of them as men.
I have a few ideas as to why it was like this for me. First of all, there's this weird thing in American English about gender that I think made it less of a big deal for me. For instance, I lived some time in New England, where saying 'you guys' was just normal plural, even if I was talking to a group of women. We have similar things with "bro" and "dude," a bit like lower class English people have with "mate." And then also in gay culture, where more campy sorts will call each other "girl" or "girlfriend" or even "sister" (something the woke really hate).
And oddly, I don't think much about the sex or gender of most people I'm talking to or about except as a shorthand to distinguish a person from another, or if it really is a relevant detail. But I also look at race this way, which, again, the woke really hate because apparently I'm only "pretending" to be colorblind. Though I think that maybe I might just be odd. :)
You have such interesting friends, Rhyd! Thank you for sharing this nuanced conversation.
A lot of good comments here and I’m thankful for you Rhyd and also Sigrid for bringing a personal and grounded voice into what is indeed a fully hijacked and now political movement. I am also surprised that there has been little conversation around the role of big pharma and bio tech in this hijaking. As you both say, and what I believe to be true, trannies have always existed, people who want to present in a certain way, but never with the “tech” that we currently have. And I believe it’s just the beginning of this tech, being able to stealth live a role that isn’t our birth right in ways that it’s hard to imagine. The deep sadness around this movement is of course what Sigurd refers to, the unbearable being of not belonging in the body, our one true home. In my line of healing we would look into the external( demonic) or internal imbalance and try to return balance so that harmony is attained and one would be able to find there own way home to their sacred vessel, our birthright, our body. We would petition the invisible helpers as Sigrid did-and one of the paths presented is a life long reliance upon big pharma and all the agreements in place there. Which I believe brings about its own fate. One of these, in Sigrids case, is living in stealth mode.
As with any new tech it takes time to teach and educate the populous. And I’m sure? assume Sigrid was already quite exhausted without necessarily having to take that on and I assume that stealth mode only applies to the general people Sigrid meets rather than those who are close and intimate friends. But secrets are secrets and have their own energy. Which is a fate created. And I wonder about this fate that Sigrid has taken on and what it feels like to walk around amongst women in stealth mode and the separation that that creates.
Meanwhile as to the political shit show, the demand that people can change sex, the invasion of women’s spaces and the financial capturing of children’s dysmorphia and the insistence, as Hazel Henry mentioned, that ”prisons a violent place and getting raped is part of the experience “ with absolutely no acknowledgement that getting raped by a women is very different than getting raped from a man is horrifying to me.
It seems a clear that the further we move away from a life lived caressing the earth the less we can relate to our bodies and our sacred relationship to our birthright. Is this evolution? Is this evil? Is this part of our enlightenment? I guess that’s up to each of us.
Thanks for bringing this to the table Ryhd and thanks Sigrid for sharing.