Examining Gender Identity ideology and its impact on Women's Sex based rights and Gay Rights. Exploring how this has taken such firm root in Western societies (Cognitive & Regulatory Capture).
As Belinda Bell, Mermaid’s Trustee is giving evidence in Mermaids attempt to have Charitable Status withdrawn from the U.Ks only charity exclusively for those who are same sex oriented or bisexual it seems apposite to start with them. Dr Belinda Bell is not a medical doctor and is very keen to stress that Mermaids do not given medical advice. Here are a few snippets from her testimony this morning.
Here are a few clips from their submission to the Transgender Equality Inquiry:
First up: Puberty Blockers are reversible:
The President Elect of WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), Marci Bowers, a surgeon who performs body modifications in this field and who is “trans” identified said this about puberty blockers. Especially in natal males:
Susie Green, of Mermaids, is well aware of this having joked about her son’s stunted genitalia on camera. See below: 👇
This makes the surgery much more complicated because there is not sufficient penile tissue to work with and surgeons have to be “creative” in using flesh taken from elsewhere.
Mermaids were at the forefront of lobbying for earlier treatment justifying it with arguments about minimising the need for more surgeries in future.
They were not adverse to lobbying GPs on behalf of parents as was detailed in parent testimony in my series on “trans children”
Here they are describing a “full biological puberty” an “undesirable condition” and, again warning of the undesirability of delaying the administration of puberty blockers.
In addition they promote binders but then warn about the muscoskeletal damage they can cause.
Furthermore they are well known for leveraging fears about suicide to demand earlier intervention.
There is no evidence for this claim put out by Susie Green. Not exactly the kind of language you would expect from a Charity CEO?
Here’s Susie recommending Helen Webberley, of Gender GP, who had been suspended for supplying cross sex hormones to a 12 year old and is now suspended again. Her husband and work colleague was also Doctor but he has now been struck off the medical register.
Here they are quoting a clinician arguing it could be considered unethical to “withhold treatment”.
If you have not seen enough you can read more on Susie Green and her oral testimony, to the panel of the Transgender Equality Inquiry, here:
If you want to offset the influence of funded lobby groups, and tip the balance in favour of gender critical women, on this issue, you can support my work here:
Reading this book I have been by turns bemused and astonished at his belief system and effrontery. This chapter made me angry. Many /Most of you will have heard the acronym deployed D.A.R.V.O. in this “debate”. It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse,Victim and Offender and it was coined by J Freyd. You can read it here:
This except gives a flavour and it should be a recognisable pattern, by now.
This whole book is an extended piece of D.A.R.V.O. This chapter exemplifies his technique. He misuses feminist arguments, feigns to care about women and oppose sexism while campaigning against them, similarly with gay rights. If you read one chapter this is the one!
He opens this chapter with this quote from Kurt Vonnegut. This from a man whose pretence is that he is really a woman. He is toying with us.
He begins by complaining that the language of “sexual apartheid”, that is using male /female “infects” our vocabulary. His choice of language implies our lexicon is disease riven and of course, in that case, it must be “cleansed”. This is the language of “cultural genocide” as pointed out by Dr Julia Long; specifically in relation to Lesbian culture. At the time Long wondered if she was being hyperbolic but on examination of the phenomena she concluded she was not. I am strongly inclined to agree with her now we have seen the widespread erasure of words to describe women and women’s experience. Think “Trans Women are Women” versus Women are “Cis-Women”. It is now verboten to use Transwomen because males must not have any suggestion their inclusion is subject to qualification or uterus-haver, gestator or pregnant person.
Rothblatt makes it clear that he believes language is critical in achieving his project and questions whether the existing language may have been forced on an unwilling populace, rather than emerged as a simple response to the fact we are a sexually dimorphic species. This language, as he makes clear, has to change to make way for a “continuum of sexual identities”. This is where the project pronoun comes into play.
Rothblatt makes an appeal to authority by referencing Chomsky’s theory about the innateness of the human instinct to develop language. However he claims, because the words used to describe “gender” vary across time and cultures this is not innate. He also the way we describe “gender” may have emerged to enforce class divisions. I have no idea how he makes that leap and he doesn’t show his workings out.
Newspeak: Project Pronoun
There follows a section where Rothblatt plays around with the best way to de-sex language. He identifies for potential routes. One of them is to ask the recipient of your interaction what is their preferred mode of address. Rothblatt, correctly, identifies the difficulties with this. People may forget and inadvertently cause offence. Another alternative is to avoid any reference to language rooted in the reality of biological sex. We could invent a new lexicon. Rothblatt gives some examples of the newspeak.
The other option is to use existing words but change the way they are used.
Nobody can be unaware of the spread of pronoun propaganda. So many intelligent, otherwise thoughtful people are proclaiming their pronouns. This is not a neutral act. It signals agreement with an ideology that has now seen national media print statements like this:
This is not an isolated case. It is in fact because of IPSO the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Media reporting is only one issue. There is now an issue with male crimes, even rapes, being actually recorded by the criminal justice system as if they were perpetrated by females. What follows from this is the housing of male sex offenders in the female estate. This is where your virtue-signalling, pronouns in bio, leads.
Also no way am I calling my other half after a drug wreaking havoc in the prison system. In fact many women and men use “partner” anyway and lots of this changed language already evolved following feminist campaigning.
Rothblatt instructs his readers to call their vagina-having relatives by their preferred terms even if this is old-fashioned, sex revealing, language like “Aunt” or “Mom”. Superficially this sounds eminently reasonable but he can’t resist comparing those clinging to this language with the architects of apartheid; referencing Nelson Mandela. So you can call her “Auntie” but she is akin to a racist.
In New York you can be fined $275,000 for misgendering, in Ireland a man is in prison for breaching a court order which directed him not to return to the school where he worked; he is currently suspended, pending a disciplinary hearing, for refusing to use opposite sex pronouns for a boy. Whether you wanting it, or not, Martine, this is the world your authoritarian ideology has created. This is a classic reversal of victim and offender.
Deborah Tannen.
Rothblatt takes issue with a statement from Tannen by, in my view, wilfully misunderstanding the point she is making. Stating that women experience a male dominated society differently to men should be uncontentious. This does not mean we accept sex stereotypes as an accurate depiction of what it means to be a woman. Men do need to speak to women in a way that shows some appreciation of how we are obliged to navigate the world.
Martine, instead, makes the patronising assumption that anyone who opposes his gender identity propaganda just doesn’t understand. Tannen is not claiming Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus like a sexist man. She is simply saying we are not the same as men and the universal human is always a default male. A world built on the assumption we are the same is why office temperatures are always set a little bit lower than is needed for a female’s comfort or heart attack symptoms are overlooked. In this section we see some of Rothblatt’s motivation. Irritation that his need to perform woman face is rooted in a disorder. Why does he cling to the word “woman” and claim he wants to eradicate sex based language?
Women fighting for sex based rights = Racism
The theme that women defending the words to describe our lives and experiences is akin to racism is repeated Ad nauseum throughout this book. The repetition is designed to embed this thought process and trigger it whenever women defend their rights.
And
D.A.R.V.O on Steroids.
This has to be the most egregious lie at the heart of this book. Rothblatt is arguing that women asking for sex based language are causing females to identify out of their sex. Only a sick mind could blame feminism for the rise of girls identifying out of their sex and not Gender Identity Ideology but he really goes there. 👇
And this 👇
Not to forget our boys here a boy wanting to be a “mummy” is presented as a boon for children needing adoption. Rothblatt’s womb envy is off the scale. It is the utmost cruelty to pretend a boy can be a “mother”. We are not all earth mothers but we are the sex that carries babies and gives birth. Calling us “gestators” or “uterus-havers” or talking about “pregnant people” is seizing the forces of reproduction and erasing women’s labour, literally. I will forever despise men on the left for going along with this.
In case you have not woken up to the aim to eradicate sexual orientation, Rothblatt makes it abundantly clear in his writing. Here he returns to Chomsky and theories of in an innate language instinct. He has already argued that “gender” cannot be innate because we have no consistency of language to talk about sex/gender. Now he turns to sexual orientation. Is it innate?
He argues against it being innate, as some homosexuals do. There is a split on the issue. Early campaigners judged that arguing for it being innate would lend impetus for the campaign for equal rights. Some expressed concern that a “gay gene” would make natal gays vulnerable.
So, where does Rothblatt go with this argument? That’s right if you are motivated you can overcome your same sex orientation even if genetically predisposed.
Census Data & Femicide
Not for the first time Rothblatt uses extensive census data to document the phenomenon of aborting female foetuses/female infanticide. Remember Rothblatt’s wants to eradicate all sex based data including the census. If he gets his way we would t know the extent of this practice.
He then proceeds to express his horror that any biotechnology can be in the hands of sexists. Sexist man says what! (Only dogs can hear me now).
He does his usual trick here of switching from sex to gender. He is using the disappearance of the female sex to advance his own argument which is really about “gender identities”. He thinks if we stopped talking in terms of “sex” tweet will solve aborted, female, foetuses/female infanticide.
It’s not a coherent argument but he will use anything to justify his own need to cos play as his opposite sex stereotype.
Transhumanism
He then extends the discussion of bio-ethics to talk about engineering transhuman subjects. He argues that there is a race to engineer a sentient “robot” and in order to make them resemble humans their consciousness must be designed to have the full range of human emotions, including “angst and dread”. In this race, he argues, mistakes must be made and we have to developing a new ethics to decide how we confer rights in those new “cyber-conscious” beings.
He then draws comparison with the abortion of a “horribly retarded or autistic” foetus. (His words not mine).
Right Side of History?
He finishes with a recommendation for an ethical panel to review decisions about terminating the “life” of these new beings.
I will return with Chapter 7. The final chapter. If you are not convinced this is a a dangerous man, by now, I don’t know what will persuade you.
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This is the second edition. The original was titled: The Apartheid of Sex. The author is a trans-identified male who is also interested in “Transhumanism” which, crudely, envisages a post human life for man melded with technology. Most rational people would find his ideas ludicrous but, unfortunately, he is taken seriously and is now one of the trustees for The Mayo Clinic which is sometimes referred to as a world leading hospital. He is also very rich.
This post covers the fourth chapter of his book.
Notice he puts “objective reality” in scare quotes. Let us hope our politicians row back from following this book as if it were an instruction manual. The truth is this is a man and all the surgery in the world has not disguised him.
The chapter is broken down into the following sub-headings.
Love and Marriage
He starts with gay marriage which sounds perfectly reasonable until you see he wants the eradication of sex in life and law. Inevitably this means denial of same sex attraction.
This summarises his aims. 👇. To get rid of the recording of sex on any documents. Marriage to Rothblatt should be “sex blind”. He is also keen on mixed sex bathrooms and changing rooms. Basically he wants to penetrate all female spaces and he is quite clear a man, with a penis, can identify as a “woman”.
He is a qualified lawyer and very keen on using the law to get his own way. Here he argues that “transsexuals” are ideally placed to contest the recording of sex on marriage certificates.
A recurrent theme is drawing comparisons to the recording of race and racist laws against mixed sex marriage.
The Lovings were a couple who challenged the law which stated that their marriage was illegal. A fight they won, with the help of the ACLU, before they spent their energy attacking women’s rights in the name of Gender Identity Ideology.
Rothblatt argues that a legal case needs to quote the Loving v Virginia precedent to strike down the requirement to record sex on marriage certificates.
For the gay men and lesbians going along with this the goal is erasure of your sexual orientation. If you have not caught up with the #CottonCeiling /#BoxerCeiling now is a good time. The new generation of “transgender” ideologues think you are morally mandated to accept partners of the opposite sex if they identify as Lesbians/Gay men.
Let that sink in!
Government and Sex
Warming to his theme, Rothblatt argues that nobody is male or female.
He then uses the Ruth Bader Ginsberg case; in which she successfully won a male spouse the same rights as females, married to men in the armed forces. I am not sure Bader Ginsberg would have anticipated the way this case would be used by trans-activists; though she did act for a “transsexual” to be allowed to serve his time in women’s prisons.
Rothblatt’s thinks the government don’t need to collect data on sex for its census. He proposes that we add a “transgender “ or “other” category to the census. This has already happened in the U.K and it took a fight to make the Office for National Statistics (ONS) change the guidance to allow men to tick “female” if that was how they identified. A similar fight was lost in Scotland.
Rothblatt aims for a world in which “transgendered” becomes the main category.
In his ideal world the sex question would be dropped altogether and arguments about needing to know which diseases (and treatments) need differentiating by sex he regards as specious as arguments to record race. This is dangerous. To give one example; multiple sclerosis affects women in 68% of cases. At the same time men are more likely to get the progressive version of the disease and their prognosis is worse. Similarly we only recently discovered females were dying at higher rates after heart attacks. Turns out female symptoms present differently and they were being under diagnosed.
This next paragraph is a tiresome. A toddler realising the difference between males and females is a developmental milestone. Activists use this to argue that this is awareness of “gender identity”. Again he attacks the notion of female and male brains, at certain points, but he also argues for the “transgendered” brain. Separating the sexes has been done for safeguarding reasons because the male of the species have trouble regulating their penises. It’s not akin to Apartheid and it’s an odious analogy.
In Rothblatt’s ideal world we need a “Gender Pioneer” to challenge the legislature and argue against recording their sex, or their child’s, then all the other agencies will need to follow suit. We have already see Freddy McConnell fight to be recorded as the “father” on their child’s birth certificate; even though she is female. Another activist has spent years going through the courts to be acknowledged as neither male nor female. In addition a govt funded Research Council handed out a grant to examine this topic.
The bathroom bugaboo
This is the definition of “bugaboo”. He thinks women’s concerns are childish.
In fact there are huge inequities in toilet provision for females and women have been screaming into a void about this for decades. Yet the moment some men have “Lady Feelz” governments, public bodies and corporations have leapt into action. Clara Greed works in this field and has this to say.
The author thinks that we can address issues with female provision by removing the division between male and female toilets. He recognises that males may feel discriminating against if urinals are removed and also that the vagina-havers will end up cleaning up male urine. He dismisses these concerns. He is also dismissive about rape. He calls these concerns mere “speculation”.
Rothblatt instead chooses to focus on a woman who was arrested for using the male facilities to avoid the queues at the women’s facilities. She is now a campaigner for “potty parity”. Yep, Martine, we want equal provision but we don’t want to share with men.
Papering the Transhuman
In this section argues for the registration of artificial “humans”.
Martine is living in the realms of science fiction and in this chapter he argues for the registration of “trans humans” to enable people to live on in a different form. He has given this a lot of thought even down to worrying about he can maintain controls of his sizeable fortune.
So he wants to reorder the world to fit his fantasy and, thus far, he is getting what he wants.
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This chapter is called Science and Sex. The “science” as you will see is, to put it mildly, contested.
Rothblatt begins with this quote which is interesting because this entire book is built on belief not empiricism.
He opens with a discussion of Thomas Kuhn who talked about how new knowledge is created by a fracturing of belief in existing knowledge; resulting in a paradigm shift. What Rothblatt is pushing is an end to the “belief” in sexual dimorphism and establishing the primacy of “gender identity”. Notice this common rhetorical trick from Rothblatt, 👇the conflation of two different issues, belief in the fact of sexual dimorphism; does NOT mean a belief in two “mental natures”. These are separate topics.
Kuhn did correctly identify a flaw in academia, where young researchers are reluctant to engage in work that criticises their seniors and older academics resist a new paradigm; which could undermine their own body of work. Rothblatt knows what he is doing because he promotes the idea that this area of research offers “interesting” opportunities for young researchers to create “new knowledge”. He also uses “revolutionary” which is an attractive buzzword to the young.
This is the new paradigm that Rothblatt seeks to embed. Notice that he wishes to disassociate reproduction from the female sex class and promote a new model of “sociotechnical” means. He is, of course, a supporter of surrogacy and developments experimenting to manipulate science to enable the possibility to outsource motherhood and even to allow males to gestate a child.
Another trick he uses, somewhat repetitively, is to equate sex separated spaces with segregation of the races. This is a common tactic used by Nancy Kelley who called Lesbians, unwilling to date penis-havers, “sexual racists”. It was also used by David Lammy during the passing of the Gender Recognition Act, in the U.K.
He also puts the cart before the horse; claiming separation of the sexes allows women to be treated as inferior. In reality, single sex spaces were hard won women’s rights activists to enable women to participate in public life and end the “urinary leash”.
Bearing in mind Rothblatt campaigns to end the collection of sex based data in the census he is not afraid to use census based data to advance his arguments. The wording here is odd, almost as if he is suggesting female infanticide is to save girls from the sad fate of being a woman. In reality females are aborted / murdered because males are prized over females.
In common with a lot of people, who’s critical thinking has been corrupted by queer theory and post modernist ideas that, crudely, “language shapes reality”. He genuinely believes that if we do away the labels male and female then sexism will cease to exist. At the same time we will be unable to track this because data will cease to be collected. This has already started to have consequences in, for example, crime statistics where male sex offenders are having their crimes recorded under the female category.
Rothblatt again draws parallels with sexist science claiming female brains were different and inferior. Once again there are feminist neuro-biologists who have attacked much of the purported “science” of lady brain. Personally I think it is unlikely that there are no differences but certainly much of the research is built on flimsy foundations. Cordelia Fine debunks a lot of this research as does Gina Rippon. It is also worth noting that many trans-activists claim that there is such a thing as a “female brain” and it can “accidentally” land in a male body.
As always Martin cherry picks the research to undermine the notion of two sexes. His argument is that because some women can do maths or read a map then biological sex doesn’t exist.
Having set up this straw man Rothblatt proceeds to argue sexual dimorphism cannot explain female mathematicians so we need a new paradigm based on the idea sex exists on a continuum.
The problem is that Rothblatt thinks if we stop calling men male this will eradicate male aggression. This is magical thinking. Until the sex offending class stop being responsible for 99% of sex offences this idea is madness. 👇
Chromatic Categorisation.
So what does Martine propose to replace sex categories with? Unbelievably it is this idea.
Here is a handy chart that he includes.
Seriously! Now might be a good idea to post another quote from Rothblatt from this chapter.
Good luck with this endless navel gazing claptrap.
The above table speaks volumes about Rothblatt’s internal psyche. He seems to have retained the same dualism aggressive versus nurturing of every sexist man ever. He is leaving the categories intact! (See Janice Raymond on this, in my series on TranssexualEmpire).
Oh, honey it really isn’t realistic and “ungenitallyinfected” WTF! 😳.
Finally he links this all back to project transhumanism. He anticipates “some” people will be resistant to trans humans just as there will be *some* people resistant to the eradication of the sexes. Yep. There will be, resistance is building.
Just to contextualise this quote it comes from a man asked to define pornography and he said he couldn’t “but I know it when I see it.
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This is the updated title to the Apartheid of Sex.
This entire movement is built on appropriation and plagiarism of ideas then distorted out of all recognition. Rothblatt is no exception. In this chapter he feigns support for feminist ideas but twists them to support his own identity as a female impersonator. Instead of fighting to allow different expression, regardless of your biological sex, Rothblatt wants to destroy the categories of sex and with it the very basis of our humanity. Sex stereotypes are culturally and temporally shifting so much of the expectations imposed on males and females are neither natural nor inevitable. It does not follow that the path to liberation is to deny those differences that remain and push the idea of a life dependent on pharmaceuticals or surgeries.
Penetrators & Recipients
Rothblatt outdoes himself with this statement. I am going to go out on a limb here and say Martine is a total prick! He knows exactly who the males are in this scenario despite his appalling language. Language which assumes a passive role for the female and assumes the missionary position.
This is one of the places where Rothblatt’s claims we have “transgendered” brains and confuses personality traits for “gender”. No, love you are just confused. Single sex spaces are in existence because of the male sex and it’s propensity to forcibly “penetrate” the female sex class who are unwilling recipients! It’s because of rape that women need single sex facilities and nobody is raping us with their personalities.
Rothblatt then attempts to represent feminist though about the origins of the status of females within society. He correctly locates it in our ability to reproduce and the uncertainty of male parentage. He also notes male envy of female biology and talks about all the societies in which the males mimic menstruation in their rituals. It is a tad ironic that he is a living embodiment of this envy which has driven him to claim the identity of “woman” for himself and push extreme technology to replace the role of females in gestation and childbirth. He also advances the theory that women were convenient targets for testosterone fuelled, male aggression.
He then treats us to theories about matrilineal societies and cultures which allowed women to express our full range of human attributes. Paying a bit of lip service to feminism before he drops this corker. Apparently he does acknowledge male violence, in comparison to females, but it’s O.K. we have laws about that kind of thing.
Rothblatt seems to think we have male anger under control and conveniently ignores the fact that female perpetrators make up a small percentage of domestic abuse perpetrators and the overwhelming perpetrators are male. The prosecution rates are woeful and none of this has stopped three women a week being murdered, by men. That *should* is doing a lot of work there Martin!
Then there is some guff about deadly female soldiers and a reference to Gertrude Erle who swim the channel two hours faster than her male predecessors, in 1926. Rothblatt’s conveniently overlooks the fact that females actually do have an advantage in endurance feats over long distances. They definitely do not in covering shorter distances. I refuse to give credence to the idea he is unaware of these facts.
A further segment plays to his “feminist” readers when he debunks the idea of #LadyBrain. He is not doing this for any “feminist” reason he needs this to be true so he can argue his brain is not in any way “male”. The thing is love, your brain is in a male body and that is the issue.
And here is what he really wants. See women are as good as men, ergo men can share mixed sex spaces with them. You are not in any group that is female, Martin, That is the issue.
Thisnis where he was heading all along. We don’t need to exile men from womens spaces. We are all one gender continuum and labels like male /female are repressive. Sigh.
Finally we are onto his other obsession. Transhumanism. Leading, surprise, surprise to sex robots,
Men can become women and machines can be transgendered /trans humans.
Finally if we accept that a man with a penis can live as “she chooses” then we can accept a disconnect between humanity and the new robot humans. Let me remind you this is a very wealthy and influential man. He has a God complex visible from outer space. Our children are being sacrificed on the alter of transgenderism to make way for his religion. We need to stop this Bond Villain on steroids.
Even up the fight donate to those of us working tirelessly to shed light on the dark underbelly of transgenderism.
If you have heard of Janice Raymond you have probably heard of this quote. 👇
This quote appears in the Appendix and those who use it claim Raymond had only nefarious intentions. This was not entirely unexpected, to Raymond, who knew she would be accused of intolerance. In fact it is a much less angry book than I had anticipated; this may be because the #CottonCeiling had not emerged or the research about autogynephilia. The Cotton Ceiling was coined, in 2012, by a trans-activist and porn star Drew De Veaux and refers to Lesbians who won’t date men, who are heterosexual, and identify as women. It’s a repurposing of the glass ceiling but, in this case, the ceiling is the Lesbian’s knickers. Autogynephilia refers to men who fetish the idea of being a woman and often have a history of transvestic fetishism involving masturbating while wearing women’s apparel. Often the items are stolen from relatives or sometimes strangers. The term was coined by Ray Blanchard in 1985.
This is the final of a series, you can read the rest below:
Raymond makes a number of suggestions for change to reduce the seductive route of “transsexualism”. The proposals stop short of making it illegal.
The legislation proposed would address the issue of sex role stereotyping that harms women, in particular, but also men who don’t adhere to the expectations for the male sex.
Sadly, in 2022, the teaching in our schools has moved from teaching sex stereotypes to teaching the idea one can literally be born in the wrong body. I covered quite a few of these teaching materials in this series. 👇 (State sponsored propaganda)
There were more suggestions which would help women and girls as well as gender non-conforming boys and men. Girls would have something to aspire to be as adults, men who fetishise women as “weak” won’t have a stereotype to flee towards. At the same time softening the aggressive, male stereotype, will help the none fetishistic type of “trans” identified males who flee their sex because of a rejection of this stereotype. Both types of males need to be educated out of the false idea that women are a universal “mother” who owe them protection.
If Janice Raymond had been listened to how many of our young gay males (my son), Lesbians, autistic kids and kids in care could we have saved? She said this over 40 years ago! 👇Instead we gave the Gender Industrial Complex free rein.
Instead of telling those suffering from a disconnect from their sex Raymond suggests consciousness raising. Rather than “affirming” their belief they are the wrong sex, and activating the conveyor belt to hormones and surgery, they would be supported to do explore their subconscious motivations. They would become actors in their own narrative not passive fodder for the “Gender Industrial Complex” .
Rather than creating a lifelong medical patient we could empower an alternative path for men /women in flight from the socially prescribed “gender performance” for their sex.
Like feminist consciousness raising these are steps that the “transsexual” counselling could take. 👇
This would allow the exploration of issues affecting the subject and their impact on society, broadening out an individual tragedy to a societal trend. Raymond is also keen to recognise that it must be the “transsexuals” themselves who must lead these groups. In 2022 we know that many of these males do deserve the term “deviant” but for those males who are not autogynephile we would probably use the term “men who deviate from male sex stereotypes”. 👇
Exploring the idea that gender non conforming men are not “females trapped in male bodies” may just supply a new narrative that saves these men from a life of hormones and surgery.
Why is it not acceptable to say that the primary motivations should be to save these males ( and females) from a lifetime dependence on medical intervention? Is there any other condition where we argue that it is bigoted not to wish people with “gender dysphoria” to recover?
Below 👇 Raymond points to the wider harms of perpetuating sex stereotypes which is a side effect of the belief that a “lady brain” can be born in a man’s body. Men and women who are not inclined to the stereotypical behaviour, for their sex, could be a force for good in challenging sex stereotypes. Instead they are “tamed” by the Gender Industrial Complex so that the stereotypes remain intact.
To accomplish this we need to take the treatment away from those who are ideologically (or financially) invested in creating lifelong medical patients.
Furthermore we need to hear more from those who oppose the medical “solution” such as Charles Ihlenfeld who abandoned the field having become disillusioned.
This is another quote from Ihlenfeld:
Raymond also suggested we need to hear more from people who resolved their own gender dysphoria without resorting to medical treatment.
Sadly, in 2022, the voices we are hearing from are those who have had physical interventions and now regret it. We also need to stop promoting “trans” as a lifestyle choice. This is what the media coverage was like in 1979, how much worse it is in the 21st Century? The media has effectively acted as the marketing branch of the Gender Industrial Complex for decades.
It is critical that we hear from homosexual men and Lesbians who reconciled to their sex and sexuality as well as women, of all sexual orientations, who know what it is like to find the burden of being a woman, in a misogynist culture, oppressive.
Those caught up in this belief system need to know that the problem’s manifesting as a belief in “trans” identification are normal reactions to the straitjacket of societally enforced sex stereotypes. It is natural, even inevitable, to rebel against these expectations. It can be resolved in your natal sex by bravely, and stunningly, rocking a gender non-conforming life!
Conclusion
In conclusion I find Raymond’s book astonishingly prescient, thorough and compassionate. If only I had encountered it earlier and her warnings had been heeded. I sense that she felt she would be dismissed as scaremongering but, if anything, her darkest predictions pale against the 2022 reality. I can’t wait to start her new book.
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This is the penultimate part of my series on this book. It was written in 1979 but is a must read for anyone wishing to understand the origins of this movement and the implications for women’s rights and gay rights, especially Lesbians.
This is the final chapter of the book, before the Appendix.
Androgyny
The chapter opens with an interrogation of the historical origins of the myths surrounding androgyny. I will skip over this part but if you are interested in delving this is the chapter for you. Moving into more modern times, Raymond argues that the concept of “androgyny” pretends to be about this 👇
In reality the concept of androgyny leaves the dualism “masculine v feminine” intact and postulates the idea of two inadequate halves:
As Mary Daly called it:
The “transsexual” accepts this dualism and modifies his, or her, body to fit either the “masculine” or “feminine” archetype rather than attempting to transcend the limitations of a normative idea of what it means to be male or female. The male constructed “woman” accepts the truth of these stereotypes and adopts risky and invasive medical/surgical treatments to carve those stereotypes into, and out of, his flesh. This, it should be obvious, is antithetical to a true women’s rights project.
What should tolerance look like?
Raymond was aware that her attitude would be dismissed as intolerance and bigotry and she has some thoughts about “tolerance”. The concept of a “transsexual” shores up a sexist society and, moreover, it is not in the best interests of the individuals who place their bodies at the disposal of the Gender Industrial Complex. A treatment pathway governed by integrity would engage in consciousness raising to allow the “transsexual” subject to examine the sexist underpinnings of his belief system and attempt to reconcile with his biological sex.
Here is what she had to say on the pseudo-tolerance that is asked of women re the issue of “transsexuals” .
#BeKind = #BeCompliant
This is a false “tolerance” that does not serve the transsexual well and the way women are exhorted to #BeKind and uncritical of “gender clinics”, or their customers, looks more like an oppressive tactic than a genuine call for compassion. It’s really #BeCompliant.
This is socially prescribed “tolerance” compelling women to accept our impersonators when nobody told the black community they had to accept Rachel Dolezal. Given that this now includes the sterilisation of children as young as 10, in the U.K, I don’t think calling it “evil” is hyperbole.
Raymond also raises the spectre of “polysurgery” in which the “transsexual” pursues ever more surgery to “correct” his features which fail to conform to the ideal “feminine”. Thus breast implants, facial feminisation surgery, shaving of the adam’s apple and even re-situating the hair line. Not to mention electrolysis and speech therapy all aside from the removal of the testicles, inversion of the penis and a life times dependence on synthetic hormones. All the time knowing they are seeking the unattainable:
Or as per Jan Morris 👇
Raymond hits on an important reason why women have found themselves expressing sympathy with men who are uncomfortable with their bodies. There is barely a woman alive who doesn’t understand this 👇.
The difference is that feminists became critics of the sexism inherent in the inculcation of bodily hatred in the female sex: 👇. Raymond poses the question of why persons, afflicted with a conflict about their sexed body, don’t band together to address the underlying reasons rather than hand themselves over to the medico-industrial complex?
Raymond also asks if the revolutionary potential of the “transsexual” has not just been neutered by the gender industry their plight has also been used, to great effect, in the new backlash against feminism/women’s rights.
The scale of this backlash has become clear in the last decade as men take women’s places in sport and politics and the word “woman” is being erased; even when talking about issues that only affect the female sex.
Quite apart from the negative consequences for the “trans” patient there are wider ramifications that ripple out to wider society such that this “individualist” solution has had devastating consequences, mainly for women.
Women are waking up to the consequences of this ideology for our rights and even our ability to name ourselves and exclude men from any spaces where we are vulnerable or organising to defend /advance our rights.
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In this chapter Raymond looks at the ethics of, so-called “sex reassignment surgeries” and their impact on individuals and society. What has come to pass is far worse than anticipated even though Raymond felt her dystopian predictions would be disbelieved.
The medical model has emboldened the medical priests in service of the Gender Industrial Complex to extend their practices far further than anticipated in 1979. We had not yet begun to experiment with puberty blockers for children.
The medical model prioritises surgical responses to a psychological problem. In 2022 the extensive evaluation has been jettisoned in favour of immediate affirmation and prompt access to hormonal treatments, followed by surgeries. The “transsexual” subject is not encouraged to challenge their discomfort with normative “gender” roles but, instead, to modify their body the better to perform a role more in keeping with their inclination.
As Raymond points out there is nothing revolutionary in this approach it is, in fact socially conservative, especially in relation to internalised homophobia. We are encouraging young homosexuals to retreat into a faux-straight medicalised closet.
The Gender Clinics have a monopoly on the “synthetic sex identity” business and do their best to restrict critics of the affirmative model or the practice itself. It is not in their interests to question the belief in “born in the wrong body” because their business model depends on a belief in “trans” ideology.
Raymond also makes the excellent point that any revolutionary potential in those at odd with the sex stereotypes is contained, neutered, in effect, by sex-conversion practices. Instead of rejecting the sex stereotypes they are, instead, having an opposite sex stereotype carved into, and out of their flesh.
Those designated “transsexuals” could turn their discomfort into real social protest and ally with feminists, gay men and Lesbians to disrupt normative expectations for their sex. Instead the social determinants for their dilemma are hidden by a process of mystification by the Gender priests. It is just the new face of defeatism against the sex hierarchy
Hormonal /Surgical interventions thus act as a social tranquilliser.
Raymond reminds us that the man who invented lobotomies won the Nobel prize. His patients were taken from mental health units and it has been well documented that this demographic is riddled with competing mental health diagnoses.
Another way in which Raymond was prescient was her speculation about the social control dimension which is masked by notions of “informed consent”. The notion of consent means the transsexuals are not seen as coercively controlled /manipulated into this solution but as enthusiastic participants. This was in 1979 before we had “Gender Identity Ideology” propaganda indoctrinating our kids from their nursery days. The Gender Identity Ideologues groom our kids so that the destination of the gender clinic has been normalised for a generation.
Writing from a U.S perspective Raymond speculates about the consequences if the Gender Industry was state run. In the U.K we have watched that play out in the U.K. with the state sponsored spread of Gender Identity Ideology now taught as “fact” in many (most) U.K schools and Universities. Raymond also anticipates the large scale social engineering we have witnessed unfold over a decade, aided by the internet.
At this point Raymond, almost apologetically, raises the expected skeptical reaction to her dystopian vision. Her prediction was eerily accurate. She also hits on another feature of this topic. People don’t want to believe it even now when it has clearly panned out as Raymond predicted. Though, I would argue, on a much larger scale than even she, would have predicted.
Raymond also points to the experimental nature of these surgeries and known cancer risks from exogenous hormones. She also speculated aboutthe lack of discussion about the pain from these procedures. This is very common from the YouTube generation who minimise the negative medical consequences from their surgeries. ( In the U.K we may just be puncturing this denial as new waves of detransitioners share their post operative complications).
One of Raymond’s theories is that their is a masochistic aspect to these surgery subjects; almost as if the pain to be reborn as your authentic self is worth it, or a rite of passage which shows they really are a “woman” or “man”. Speaking personally I would not rule out some sadists in the Doctors / Surgeons working in this field. I have no doubt that some get a perverse kick out of “forced feminising” males or mutilating teenage girls. Yes, this is dark but there are dark minds at work in this field.
It is worth posting Raymond talking about John Postgate at this point. Postgate was a microbiologist at Sussex University. He proposed a male pill to limit the number of female children. (This did not get a mention in his Guardian Obituary. Ironically he had three daughters himself.). This is a dark proposal and it gets worse when he speculated about the social consequences.
Informed Consent.
In the modern context the notion of “informed consent” seems little more than a means of trying to dodge legal liability. There is also the vexed question of children as young ten “consenting” to puberty blockers. Again Raymond was ahead of the game questioning how the “transsexual” could really give meaningful “informed consent” to these experimental procedures. For Raymond the transsexual subject is not encouraged to explore the societal conditioning that created this mind/body split in the first place.
There follows a lengthy section on parallels with the Nazi experiments which included one 13 year old boy who is reported as having been turned “into a woman”. This is interspersed with Richard Green lamenting that there has not been enough willingness to use “transsexual” subjects to further research in this field. The relevance of this line of enquiry is summed up by this quote.
The other issue that should concern us all is what this says about our priorities. This 👇 still holds true 50 + years later.
Finally Raymond was ahead of the curve with this prediction: I will wager even she did not anticipate the rate of growth over this last decade.
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This is part of a series. You can find a link to Janice’s superb work and marvel that she predicted much of what is unfolding in 1979! Lesbians really are the canary in the coal mine on women’s rights and we owe our Lesbian sisters a great debt.
The last chapter included this quote, from 1973! In include it again here because it frames this chapter beautifully.
Raymond has an interesting footnote to this chapter explaining why she really did not want to write the chapter but felt she must. Even in 1979 there were some Lesbians keen to accept men who claimed to be both women and lesbians. Raymond was clearly keen not to amplify the divisions except for a damn good reason. This topic is the very best of reasons and we can now see how it played out all those decades later. Lesbians were removed from Pride Cymru for protesting the #CottonCeiling and Lesbians in Tasmania have lost the right to exclude males from Lesbian events. In 1979 things were just starting down this path.
The “transsexual” community would have been much smaller in 1979 but Raymond argues that their presence raises important issues for feminism.
The nature of the men claiming to be Lesbians was on display even 50 years ago as they inveigled their way into Lesbian/Women’s groups and rose to prominence.
Raymond notes that a trans identified male, Sandy Stone, took a role in a purported all women venture, Olivia Records. This became quite a contentious issue and Raymond noted that, had he been sincere, he would have recused himself rather than stoke divisions.
She mentions Renee Richard (“trans” identified tennis player) as causing similar issues and another name with which I was not familiar. 👇 Barsky seems to be somewhat in the tradition of Mridul Wadhwa, in Scotland, who infiltrated a rape crisis centre and became the Chief Executive.
Raymond’s point is that despite their small numbers these “lesbian identified” males bring with them a male energy and don’t have the baggage which comes with being a woman, and a Lesbian. Arguably this makes them more inclined to seek leadership roles and compete for dominance within the women’s organisations. Their numbers may be small but their impact is out of proportion to their numbers.
Raymond draws an analogy with the historic use of Eunuchs to control the leader’s harem.
Raymond cautions women to remember the role of eunuchs to police women’s spaces and notes that it was these men who were able to invade those spaces where other men were excluded. This gives them privilege over other men and the attraction of female only spaces is appealing to these men. All the more appealing is Lesbian spaces, which are women centred and therefore the ultimate validation for men who identify as women.
To Raymond the “transsexual lesbian” is a boundary violator who uses deception, where he passes to trick his way into female only, Lesbian, events but she was opposed by some Lesbians.👇
This conflict has played out in the U.K with prominent Lesbians (Ruth Hunt, Nancy Kelley and Linda Riley, to name a few) having taken a lead role in dismantling lesbian boundaries. It is perhaps the case that the aforementioned were simply motivated by money /career advancement but Raymond argues there are complex reasons for the way in which Lesbians have been seduced into accepting “male lesbians”.
Some may be naive and draw a false equivalence between the historic oppression of Lesbians and the new oppressed class of the “transsexual”. Some may not quite of shaken off an assumption of male superiority. Some were responding, as women, accepting a care giving role to this group.
Others are grateful to have been noticed in their struggle by any male and some, she argues, are acting from the remnants of being male-identified and subconsciously or otherwise prioritising men’s rights over their own. The effect of this incursion is to sap women’s energy, cause division and force women to fight battles on Patriarchal terms.
Raymond questions whether anyone has the right to “self-define” in a way that impacts on another group. We don’t look kindly on those who self-identify as black. for example. Whether it is biology or socialisation or a combination of the two the fact is men are different to women. “Transsexuals” may indeed have their own issues to resolve but the place to do so is not in women’s groups.
Furthermore, she continues, the “transsexual” is from the same stable as penthouse depictions of lesbians, a man made version of what a woman is.
As it is 1979 there is no coverage of autogynephilia which casts even more light on heterosexual men who identify as lesbians. Cotton Ceiling rhetoric had, presumably. reached the same heights as it has today. Even without these darker manifestations Raymond had a very clear understanding of the pitfalls of lowering boundaries for the benefit of *any* males.
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This chapter packs a lot in so I will devote an entire post to it. Raymond covers the way mothers are blamed for their “transsexual” son and daughters. She then unpicks the way stereotypical sex (ist) role expectations shape the “trans” narrative. The “fathers” of this ideology are steeped in sexist assumptions about women and normative expectations for their male subjects. The “mothers” are to blame and the male architects of this ideology are blameless or, even worse, heroes for rescuing these “defective” males (according to their ideology, not mine) and providing a role for them.
The “transsexual” subject is expected to perform woman face effectively, to access medical treatment; they must “pass” as women to be allowed the feminising treatments. It is worth noting that this “passing” includes using women’s spaces thus pressing women into service as, unwitting /unwilling validation aids.
Robert Stoller is one of the male figures behind this ideology. He also “blames the mother”.
Apparently we are afflicted with penis envy, we are dominant and assertive and we project our envy onto our sons.
The fathers are absent and the marriages are failing. Not because of the absent father but because of the dominant, assertive or depressed mother. We are also to blame if this afflicts the daughter.
Richard Green puts more emphasis on the role of peers in the making of the “transsexual” child.
We don’t escape criticism entirely. Now we are too prone to providing our child with a surfeit of emotional support, co-sleeping etc. Every generation the rules about what makes a good mother change which serves to make every generation “wrong” and severs contact with the previous generation of mothers; who have their advice dismissed as old-fashioned. The absent father is a repetitive theme but he seems to escape the opprobrium dished out to the mothers, quelle surprise!
Green also espouses biological causes for the condition which, I imagine, is also the mothers fault for having an inhospitable womb. He also considers that societal acceptance of a “deviant sexuality” plays a role; by which he means homosexuality.
It is the lack of acceptance for the homosexual male that is also a driver for the wish to be “female” and Green speculates that increasing societal acceptance may lessen this desire.
It’s a tragedy that, rather than fighting for real acceptance of homosexuals, organisations like Stonewall pivoted to “trans activism” thereby introducing a new homophobia into the purported “gay rights” struggle.
This point and Raymond’s note are tragic in the consequences for our gay boys, now on the Turing Treatment rather than embraced as the gay men they are.
“Transsexual” voices.
Raymond quotes extensively from a study by Thomas Kando on “transsexuals”. As a group they show the greatest respect for males and express highly regressive perspectives on women. Below is an interesting footnote on the laws surrounding prostitution in 1970’s Louisiana. 😳
The “transsexuals” in Kando’s study aspire to roles they equate with femininity. Here is a sample: 👇
They tend to embody sex stereotypes and express hostility and competition with women; a competition in which they can present themselves as the likely victor, as if man made women are the superior kind.
Their need to be validated involves an adherence to sexist stereotypes in order to sharply differentiate themselves from men.
Take Jan Morris who was a married father and successful journalist before embracing his “inner” woman. The concept of autogynephilia doesn’t appear in Transsexual Empire but may make an appearance in Raymond’s new book “Doublethink”. Morris seemed to meet a lot of the diagnostic criteria. Here he is talking out his new life and celebrating the sexual objectification at the hands of a man.
There were a lot of fawning interviews with Morris by women who regard themselves as feminists. I was astonished how blatant his sexism was in his book Conundrum, but to be fair, to his female interviewers, many of us were late to understand autogynephilia.
One of the participants, without a trace of awareness, expressed their views about child rearing again emphasising how deeply they adhere to sex stereotypes.
Still another expressed blatant homophobia. Something I have seen expressed a lot in this context. It seems having the “trans” label allows a man to say he is only attracted to “straight” men and get a free pass, despite what this betrays about their attitude to homosexuals. The men have to be men who are attracted to women to validate the male to female constructed “transsexual”.
Such attitudes are not uncommon as exemplified by Juno Dawson who described his fiancé as “straight” and once argued being a gay man was a consolation prize for those not “transitioned”.
Kando concludes that “transsexuals” are reactionary in their views. The “Uncle Toms” of the gender wars.
Raymond writes that Kando does not seem to appreciate the significance of his findings. His subjects have just swapped one set of stereotypes for another leaving society wholly unchanged. In part the gender industrial complex shares the blame because adopting a stereotypical performance “as a woman” was part of the process of being accepted for surgery. If it is the stereotypes that give rise to the condition of “transsexualism” propping them up will perpetuate “gender dysphoria”. It is, sadly, far easier to blame the mother than to tackle the deep rooted sex sterotypes that burden women and even men.
A Lesbian speaks.
Even in 1973 there had were Lesbians opposing the infiltration of “feminised” males into Lesbian spaces. Here is Robin Morgan speaking out. 👇
Raymond makes it clear, in this chapter, that the “transsexual” project is antithetical to women’s rights. It shores up the patriarchal norms used to limit women’s lives. Men who choose this role and claim it is the only way to be an authentic “woman” are men’s rights activists.
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