Corinna Cohn had sex reassignment surgery at 19. He spent the spring and summer of 2023 urging state legislators to ban pediatric gender medicine. We talk about why.
Corinna captures the darkness and desolation I see coming toward affirming parents. I know two children irreparably harmed by pediatric gender medicine - a perfectly normal five-year-old boy transed by his mother for liking dolls and pink, and a young girl I watched grow up put on puberty blockers at 12, followed by testosterone and mastectomy. Brains, bodies, lives destroyed for what? The fantasies of men. Devastating.
I was watching an ostensibly unrelated YouTube essay the other day about the rise of the term "content" to refer to art (music, videos, movies, etc) streamed online, and it occured to me that the complete dominance not of that term per se but the mindset behind it – that ours is a culture not of art, or beauty, or love, or creativity but of commerce – is a perfect explanation for the spread of gender woo. A movie is no longer art, it's a fungible piece of material fed down the firehouse of business, sold (or not) to meet metrics and numbers and IPOs. And that we all adopted this worldview in unison about four or five years ago times perfectly with the view of the human body as raw material for a business pipeline.
"It's not only about protecting the kids. Sure, that's a very important part of it. This sort of totalitarian, absolute disparagement of our rights and our liberties, that must happen"
This is such a critical point. Trans isn't about kids. It's not even about sex. (Well for some of our ruling class it might be -- court eunuchs have always been popular.) Trans is a proxy for whether reality exists.
"Reality is a social construct" is a cornerstone of postmodernism. That is why our ruling class will die on the "transwomen are women" hill. Because if "man" and "woman" have objective meanings, other words might too. Words like "parent", "family", "baby", "God", "good", "evil"... and hard definitions for those words will derail the progress that liberalism places as the highest good.
The new culture war makes a whole lot more sense once you realize it's the same old class war wearing a new coat.
Liberalism is not Post Modernist (that being the philosophy that doesn't believe in objective fact and posits that we can create our own reality simply by redefining words to mean whatever will support our inadvisable aims.) Post Modernist "Social Justice" projects are specifically "Progressive". Classic Liberals believe in, among other things, science, facts, family, women, innocence and also human equality -- which does not imply that we believe that one group, no matter who they are, has the right to force everyone else to adopt their preferred "reality". To be sure, there are Liberals who have fallen into the trap of believing that this stuff is really promoting social justice for those presenting as "the most persecuted people ever" and thus actually endorse their completely irrational, destructive, bullshit ideas -- but many of the rest of us, whether by individual conversations or other means, are trying to deprogram them. But in any case, please don't make the mistake of assuming this stuff is Liberal. If anything, the Post Modern gender ideology is an authoritarian cult, with all the subtlety of the Medieval Church in its approach to "heretics". Whatever you may think of us Liberals, that isn't what we're about.
I don't see the distinction you do between progressives and liberals. Both share secular Enlightenment values, a commitment to progress, a belief in the privatization of religion, and generally a commitment to J.S. Mill's Harm Principle.
Postmodernism isn't a break from this tradition as much as its logical conclusion. The Enlightenment was built on a shared moral order (what Locke called natural law), but it undermined that very order by privatizing religion (and eventually morality under Mill). It sounds great to say the state won't take a position on God, except that by saying it, you ARE taking a position on God, specifically declaring that a state with moral norms derived from in a divine source is illegitimate.
Your comment about the postmodernists looking like the Medieval Church is spot on. Like the Church, the woke / postmodernists reject the Enlightenment premise of a neutral state. They want a state-backed moral order, specifically one based on a matrix of group oppression (intersectionality). Although smaller and far less powerful, the ethno-nationalist, secular Right does the same. (David Brooks' quote on this is accurate: "If you thought the Christian Right was bad, wait until you meet his nasty younger brother, the non-Christian Right.") But both these groups are responding to the collapse of the moral order that has guided the West for 1700+ years, a collapse which was precipitated (or at least accelerated) by the Enlightenment itself.
Please note, I don't know how to fix it. On a good day I think some form of Aristotelian virtue might do it. Sometimes I think the importation of some Eastern Christian philosophy will do it. On my bad days I'm almost ready to throw in with the Catholic integralists. (I said almost.) However I am certain that attempting to fix the problem from within the Enlightenment framework is futile. That said, in the hope I am wrong, I applaud your efforts to convince the postmodernists of the error of their ways.
This is a short summary. The best treatments of this are by Patrick Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed) and Brad Gregory (The Unintended Reformation).
I see. You believe they're the same thing, despite the fact that Postmodernism is a cynical method for overthrowing Enlightenment Liberalism, and embodies the antithesis of Liberal values. Which is about as constructive to society as throwing rocks at windows? Despite the fact that the "Theory" crowd are disguising scientifically-defined words with their own instrumental definitions in a bid to transform society into an utterly relativist yet authoritarian crapfest. It's a power-grab where women and Gay people are now deemed "oppressors" and denied their basic human rights, whereas a group of gynophilic men and their brainwashed fans get to run everything. Progressivism is the logical conclusion of Liberalism, is it? I don't think so. Feel free to disagree with both, mind you. Do I understand you correctly as preferring theocracy? I think that experiment was a thorough failure. I'm all in favor of religion, mind you (I'm clergy), but not the kind with governing power.
As I said, this position is far more complex than can be summarized in comments on a blog, but I think I did a fair job of doing so. If you actually want to understand it (instead of reflexively insist that it can't be true) go read the two books I suggested.
Interesting you would bring up theocracy, since that's effectively what the woke are building: a secular theocracy. Serious question: if you face a choice between a woke, left-wing theocracy and a Christian, right-wing one, which would you choose? I understand you want a different choice, but since I believe the "tolerant, liberal society loosely based on Christian morals" that you and I would both prefer is not on the menu anymore... if you had to choose, which one would it be?
I believe that choice is coming. And sooner instead of later. I don't like it, but I don't think there's any way around it. I desperately hope that the choice is between those, instead of between left-wing wokeness and some form of right-wing ethno-nationalism. That's a much harder one for me.
That's hard to answer, since Evangelicals are something of a mixed bag. If by "right wing Christian" you meant the Medieval Catholic Church, then maybe I'd go with the woke crowd who will only deprive me of my dignity and livelihood (but not actually burn me at the stake). I kind of see your point, but hope it won't come to that.
“Moving beyond the troubled population” and normalizing queer identities is the point.
This is a classic Leftist political strategy: Exploit the plight of a minority group to advance a broad, unpopular political agenda.
They do this with literally every group/issue. American blacks are poor? Sweeping welfare state. Some women are impregnated by rape? State-funded abortion up until conception. A few children suffer from intense sexual dysphoria? No more limits on what can be done to help children achieve their “queer” identities.
When are we going to recognize this for what it is--emotional manipulation--and stop giving in to it?
Corinna may be right that sooner or later everyone who transitions will have to reckon with this realization... but I think he may be underestimating the extent to which he is just an unusually thoughtful and honest person. I was really impressed by the MichFest story. Some people can tolerate a lot more cognitive dissonance, for a lot longer, than he apparently could. It speaks well of him.
(Not even getting into the AGPs like Levine; I suspect it’s different for someone who transitions for sexual reasons, and some of them seem pretty self-aware.)
This is a phenomenal conversation. Thank you, Heterodork for your sincerity and honesty. I have to say, your comparison with the dentist/filling sitch really struck a nerve with me (see what I did there?) I’ve been attempting for the past several months to help my aging mother find healthcare providers who actually HELP her but am constantly met with “He’s so nice” and “She’s so kind” and the like. It’s maddening! Nice and kind seem to be a proxy for quality in her mind. I can’t seem to convince her that neither of those (very important) attributes constitute good, effective healthcare. Really every service and product provider in her sphere of reality need only meet those minimum standards for her to become a loyal-for-life customer. You verbalized this frustration perfectly. Best to you forever! You’re clearly so intelligent and thoughtful. You deserve peace of mind and true happiness. Someone will be fortunate to call you their best, most favorite and important person. Cheers!!!
So many helpful frameworks offered by Corinna. As a disenchanted liberal, I liked his comments about liberals and virtue signaling. No need for him to apologize, as the insights he offers are an important part of understanding the pickle we find ourselves in--and they are not really understood by either liberals or the exasperated conservatives who criticize them. "Liberals tend to be shallow in terms of trying to understand how deep systems of interactions can become...they have a difficult time understanding how larger systems actually interconnect." I have been in this left-side world most of my life (til a few years ago) and used to work for Democrats in my state. I have never heard the liberal approach to policy described as "shallow," but he is right. I think a lot of progressives/liberals latch on to the feel-good talking point at the top. I know that's what I did for years. They're not exactly lazy, but they're too busy living life to look too closely into any system, and the main thing is that they must know they are the "good people" on the "right side of history" AS HAS BEEN EXPLAINED TO THEM by other professional people in the know. If Chris Hayes says such and such is "anti-racist," well OK. If the lobbyist from the ACLU says a new bus policy helps poor folks, that must be good too. Many are too shallow to do their own digging, except for those of us who have actually done our own digging and been shocked at how unwilling our friends are to look more deeply into the complex truths. The basic rules are: follow the talking point, shut out dissent, and automatically support what the activist journalists and professional advocates and lobbyists are pushing as being "good for the poor," or "good for brown people," or of course "good for trans kids." My only caveat with this criticism of liberals is that you could probably say the same thing about most people of any political stripe. The world is far more complex than we can understand. Whatever our politics, humans seem to screw things up royally with unintended consequences flowing from a lack of understanding of complexity.
I know a parent of a trans male. Our daughters were best buddies from kindergarten to 4th grade but as they got into that preteen time they grew apart. We moved out of MA and I found out that her daughter announced she was trans and during college she had top surgery. I don’t know when hormones were introduced but I know that both parents had to go through counseling to process the loss of their daughter. It was like a death for them. I often wonder when and if their daughter will grow tired of the hormones and what will happen when and if that happens, we’ll see lots of this crazy finger pointing and blaming I’m sure. 🙄🤪
There is no such thing as a trans male. This is part of the problem. Every term used to denote sex becomes colonized by trans activists and their allies.
I know a parent of a girl who cuts her tits off, takes testosterone and changed her name to Julian. Does that sound better for you? It was easier to say tranny, but you want to split hairs
Hey, just trying to tell the story. So shoot the messenger. What should I have done, put it in “quotations” so that you know I think it’s bull? I wonder if you’re the type who talks about defending democracy when it should be REPUBLIC. Maybe you’re part of the problem.
as 1 of the 5 that liked the comment "there is no such thing as a trans male" can I elaborate that 'trans male' is confusing enough to be rendered meaningless?
trans is the opposite. male is a biological designation. so, shouldn't a trans male be a biological male who wants to be the opposite (ie: a woman). And yet the context clues of your comment mentioned your daughters being friends, so the 'trans male' could be a biological female, who now wants to be the opposite (ie: a man).
think way, way back to when you first heard trans-anything. our existing definition of words superceded the trans part, and most of us had to pause and ask: is a transwoman a woman who thinks she's a man? or a man to thinks he's a woman?
and now that the nomenclature has expanded from trans man/woman to trans male/female, it's gotten even more confusing to people just entering the conversation. a poll was done in the UK and a full 1/3 the respondents didn't realize that transwomen are biologically male.
"... will eventually acknowledge to be true: 'Their sex is what they were born as. Everybody knows if you're born male, you're always male. If you're born female, you're always female. There's no disputing that.'
That argument and conclusion very much depends on the premises, on the axioms, on the definitions one starts off with. But none of them are cast in concrete; Jehovah didn't blast some of them into the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai as the First Dictionary. But some are better and more useful than others. For instance, the "Sovereign State" of Oklahoma has apparently decided to inscribe some of them into their law books, although they're not much better than folk-biology, to wit:
KJRH: "For example, the Order defines 'female' as a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova. 'Male' is defined as a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female."
However, standard biological definitions -- those figuring in reputable journals and dictionaries like the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- say nothing of the sort. By those definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither therefore being sexless.
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
One CAN follow suit with Oklahoma, but it ain't biology. Not sure of the "wisdom" of going with folk-biology ...
Corrina: "So parents: that's what you have to look forward to.”
Really don't envy those parents when -- or if -- they do some soul-searching into their culpability for what is, without much if any hint of hyperbole, the medical scandal and crime of the century, of the last 100 years.
🙄 You might just as well object to the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry -- parallel lines never meet -- on the view that it subjects those lines to eternal loneliness ... 🙄
Those definitions are, similarly and in effect, the foundational axioms of biology. That you or Corrina get your knickers in a twist at the logical consequences of those "axioms" really ain't worth diddly-squat.
It’s a No True Scotsman fallacy, heterodorx feels he was mistaken, so therefore everyone who has similar feelings must be mistaken. No true Scotsman would have such feelings with any sincerity. Who is he to be speak for everyone? This is all about feelings after all, I feel that I am a kind of woman, heterodorx feels that he was mistaken in his choice, which one is right? Why is it either/or? This is not a rich or interesting way to discuss this issue.
If there is truth about gender indoctrination and the threat it poses to children, this hurts by limiting what help is acceptable. The cynical and limited ways I have read the behavior from this issues loudest critics has convinced me to be skeptical and cynical. There is no room for disagreement here. I have these discussions in my family in case anyone thought I was single.
I’m willing to call nonbinary educators communist appropriators. I’m willing to concede this is mostly what gender ideology inhabits. Who speaks for the culture being appropriated? Obviously not Heterodorx. Disappointing.
"This is all about feelings after all, I feel that I am a kind of woman ..."
No, sorry, it is most certainly not "all about feelings" -- a rather weak reed to be putting much if any weight on. Largely the whole transgender problem is the result of putting feelings before facts. Though honest people can disagree about what are the facts of the matter, and what their consequences are or should be.
But it seems that the most important "fact" in question is that there is solid justification for defining "woman" as "adult human female (produces ova)". Which, of course, no transwoman will ever qualify as. Although, as biologist PZ Myers once emphasized, if we go with the standard biological definitions -- the more sensible and scientific position -- then many "cis women" don't qualify as such either:
PZM: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female.
It's a problematic term to identify someone by their mode of reproduction."
The more general problem is that virtually everyone has turned "woman" and even "female" into "immutable identities" rather than recognizing that they're just labels for rather transitory reproductive abilities. Rather like "teenager". See my "What is a woman?" post for some elaborations:
The ova producing may be transitory, bur the system that produces them or should produce them is stable and easily identifiable. As is the system that never ever could.
"easily identifiable" -- in most cases, but not all, even in some humans.
Wikipedia: "An ovotestis is a gonad with both testicular and ovarian aspects. In humans, ovotestes are an infrequent anatomical variation associated with gonadal dysgenesis."
Such individuals are technically and precisely sexless, of neither sex because they can produce neither sperm nor ova.
While that "transitory thing" is often irrelevant, it is hardly a "distraction", it is the essential element, it is the crux of what it means to be male or female.
Something which too many have lost sight of to their lasting pain and grief. For instance, Corinna had a decent Quillette article several years ago about "her" rather desperate efforts, over some 30 years, to turn "herself" into a woman -- sadly turning herself only into a sexless eunuch.
Too many seem to subscribe to the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- and "think" that a "sex change" is only a matter of changing one's genitalia: "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now, offer ends soon!!" 🙄
In addition to which, too many others seem to "think" that sex is an "immutable identity" based on some "mythic essence" instead of accepting that "male" and "female" are JUST labels for transitory reproductive abilities. No ability, no sex.
Bloody criminal that too many are taking advantage of such pigheaded ignorance and scientific illiteracy.
“Scientists” always say this and it’s cute. It’s kind of like me being a poet in a godless age of pop culture and forsaken humanities. Its just a look, and it’s also about your feelings.
What pretentious, ignorant, and self-serving twaddle.
Science and mathematics are all about defining our terms, about naming and categorization. But there are important principles involved, it's not a free-for-all where anyone can pull one out of the air or their nether regions and then demand everyone else accepts them. Transwomen aren't and won't ever be females; they're males if they still have their nuts attached and are sexless eunuchs if they don't.
You might try reading a bit about those concepts:
Wikipedia: "n biology, taxonomy (from Ancient Greek τάξις (taxis) 'arrangement', and -νομία (-nomia) 'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics."
And for the sexes, those "shared characteristics" are whether we produce large or small gametes (ova or sperm). And those who produce neither -- e.g., transwomen who cut their nuts off -- are therefore neither male nor female, are sexLESS.
Your feelings are valid. Not everyone is a scientist mac, I said poet, I said forsaken humanities. When I look at the transgender question I see a thousand people like me asking a question, “why do I feel this way?” And then I see a million failures that can’t answer that question. That is all. Both sides are passing laws on this, because tyranny is alive and well. As long as we are defining terms lets be clear. Poetry is about clear language and defining terms in a literal sense. Science has relegated itself to the figurative with its colossal failure to make human meaning. In that field we still need emotions and feelings lest we resort to knuckle draggery.
If your "feelings" are that you're Jesus Christ or Napoleon then you're crazier than a shit-house rat. And you can join the thousands in mental institutions who "think", who "feel" the same way.
But "why do I feel this way?" is probably a very good question. Possibly an over-developed sense of empathy, too many mirror-neurons misfiring [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron]. Who knows. You might try watching Woody Allen's Zelig for some possible answers:
But the point is that biology STIPULATES that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless. More particularly, those with functioning testicles are males, and those with functioning ovaries are females, and those with neither are sexless. Do you have functioning ovaries? If not then you can't possibly be a female, regardless how you "feel" about that.
And I think you're badly mistaken about the difference between poetry and science. It is the latter that uses the literal sense -- it stipulates objective criteria for category membership -- whereas the former makes free use of allusion and a figurative sense and subjective criteria for category membership. But you probably have a point that science fails at "making human meaning", though that really isn't its bailiwick to begin with.
Root for the word literal is literacy Mr. Science. Now go watch a Woody Allen movie. I’m sure you will feel much better. I can just say there is an important distinction between gender and sex, and we changed the word from transexual to transgender for a reason. Can you beat that? Do you even know what I’m talking about? If not, why should I take this difference of opinion seriously? Your opinion would seem ill informed and suspect, not to mention not based in the current science.
Corrina's bit about IRC is interesting; the same ecosystem exists today on Reddit, Discord, Twitter/X, and 4chan.
An easy way to protect boys and vulnerable men would be to schedule estrogens -- all of those places provide resources to buy them from overseas pharmacies. Not as easy with testosterone.
Hi please remove my handle as I am not Corinna, I independently came up with this name out of the heteredox space, rebel wisdom kind of thing.
Though I do somewhat align with the views expressed and think you're both doing important work.
oops! I was able to add Corinna but not able to remove you. Will try again....
Ah well, maybe this is my 15 mins! Probably no biggie either way...
Corinna captures the darkness and desolation I see coming toward affirming parents. I know two children irreparably harmed by pediatric gender medicine - a perfectly normal five-year-old boy transed by his mother for liking dolls and pink, and a young girl I watched grow up put on puberty blockers at 12, followed by testosterone and mastectomy. Brains, bodies, lives destroyed for what? The fantasies of men. Devastating.
I respect the hell out of Corinna. I love his podcast Heterodorks, and the compassionate and funny way that he speaks about these issues.
Heterodorx!
I was watching an ostensibly unrelated YouTube essay the other day about the rise of the term "content" to refer to art (music, videos, movies, etc) streamed online, and it occured to me that the complete dominance not of that term per se but the mindset behind it – that ours is a culture not of art, or beauty, or love, or creativity but of commerce – is a perfect explanation for the spread of gender woo. A movie is no longer art, it's a fungible piece of material fed down the firehouse of business, sold (or not) to meet metrics and numbers and IPOs. And that we all adopted this worldview in unison about four or five years ago times perfectly with the view of the human body as raw material for a business pipeline.
We are not humans, we're content.
You are free to read Ulysses anytime, have you read it?
PREACH! AMEN!
"It's not only about protecting the kids. Sure, that's a very important part of it. This sort of totalitarian, absolute disparagement of our rights and our liberties, that must happen"
This is such a critical point. Trans isn't about kids. It's not even about sex. (Well for some of our ruling class it might be -- court eunuchs have always been popular.) Trans is a proxy for whether reality exists.
"Reality is a social construct" is a cornerstone of postmodernism. That is why our ruling class will die on the "transwomen are women" hill. Because if "man" and "woman" have objective meanings, other words might too. Words like "parent", "family", "baby", "God", "good", "evil"... and hard definitions for those words will derail the progress that liberalism places as the highest good.
The new culture war makes a whole lot more sense once you realize it's the same old class war wearing a new coat.
Great article. Brave man. Very brave man.
Liberalism is not Post Modernist (that being the philosophy that doesn't believe in objective fact and posits that we can create our own reality simply by redefining words to mean whatever will support our inadvisable aims.) Post Modernist "Social Justice" projects are specifically "Progressive". Classic Liberals believe in, among other things, science, facts, family, women, innocence and also human equality -- which does not imply that we believe that one group, no matter who they are, has the right to force everyone else to adopt their preferred "reality". To be sure, there are Liberals who have fallen into the trap of believing that this stuff is really promoting social justice for those presenting as "the most persecuted people ever" and thus actually endorse their completely irrational, destructive, bullshit ideas -- but many of the rest of us, whether by individual conversations or other means, are trying to deprogram them. But in any case, please don't make the mistake of assuming this stuff is Liberal. If anything, the Post Modern gender ideology is an authoritarian cult, with all the subtlety of the Medieval Church in its approach to "heretics". Whatever you may think of us Liberals, that isn't what we're about.
I don't see the distinction you do between progressives and liberals. Both share secular Enlightenment values, a commitment to progress, a belief in the privatization of religion, and generally a commitment to J.S. Mill's Harm Principle.
Postmodernism isn't a break from this tradition as much as its logical conclusion. The Enlightenment was built on a shared moral order (what Locke called natural law), but it undermined that very order by privatizing religion (and eventually morality under Mill). It sounds great to say the state won't take a position on God, except that by saying it, you ARE taking a position on God, specifically declaring that a state with moral norms derived from in a divine source is illegitimate.
Your comment about the postmodernists looking like the Medieval Church is spot on. Like the Church, the woke / postmodernists reject the Enlightenment premise of a neutral state. They want a state-backed moral order, specifically one based on a matrix of group oppression (intersectionality). Although smaller and far less powerful, the ethno-nationalist, secular Right does the same. (David Brooks' quote on this is accurate: "If you thought the Christian Right was bad, wait until you meet his nasty younger brother, the non-Christian Right.") But both these groups are responding to the collapse of the moral order that has guided the West for 1700+ years, a collapse which was precipitated (or at least accelerated) by the Enlightenment itself.
Please note, I don't know how to fix it. On a good day I think some form of Aristotelian virtue might do it. Sometimes I think the importation of some Eastern Christian philosophy will do it. On my bad days I'm almost ready to throw in with the Catholic integralists. (I said almost.) However I am certain that attempting to fix the problem from within the Enlightenment framework is futile. That said, in the hope I am wrong, I applaud your efforts to convince the postmodernists of the error of their ways.
This is a short summary. The best treatments of this are by Patrick Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed) and Brad Gregory (The Unintended Reformation).
I see. You believe they're the same thing, despite the fact that Postmodernism is a cynical method for overthrowing Enlightenment Liberalism, and embodies the antithesis of Liberal values. Which is about as constructive to society as throwing rocks at windows? Despite the fact that the "Theory" crowd are disguising scientifically-defined words with their own instrumental definitions in a bid to transform society into an utterly relativist yet authoritarian crapfest. It's a power-grab where women and Gay people are now deemed "oppressors" and denied their basic human rights, whereas a group of gynophilic men and their brainwashed fans get to run everything. Progressivism is the logical conclusion of Liberalism, is it? I don't think so. Feel free to disagree with both, mind you. Do I understand you correctly as preferring theocracy? I think that experiment was a thorough failure. I'm all in favor of religion, mind you (I'm clergy), but not the kind with governing power.
As I said, this position is far more complex than can be summarized in comments on a blog, but I think I did a fair job of doing so. If you actually want to understand it (instead of reflexively insist that it can't be true) go read the two books I suggested.
Interesting you would bring up theocracy, since that's effectively what the woke are building: a secular theocracy. Serious question: if you face a choice between a woke, left-wing theocracy and a Christian, right-wing one, which would you choose? I understand you want a different choice, but since I believe the "tolerant, liberal society loosely based on Christian morals" that you and I would both prefer is not on the menu anymore... if you had to choose, which one would it be?
I believe that choice is coming. And sooner instead of later. I don't like it, but I don't think there's any way around it. I desperately hope that the choice is between those, instead of between left-wing wokeness and some form of right-wing ethno-nationalism. That's a much harder one for me.
That's hard to answer, since Evangelicals are something of a mixed bag. If by "right wing Christian" you meant the Medieval Catholic Church, then maybe I'd go with the woke crowd who will only deprive me of my dignity and livelihood (but not actually burn me at the stake). I kind of see your point, but hope it won't come to that.
Devastatingly powerful. Thank God for this person's courage and focus.
Small correction: as a Navy vet, I wanted to clarify that Rachel Levine is an admiral in the US Public Health Service, which has uniforms similar to the US Navy and Coast Guard, but which do have differences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Public_Health_Service_Commissioned_Corps
“Moving beyond the troubled population” and normalizing queer identities is the point.
This is a classic Leftist political strategy: Exploit the plight of a minority group to advance a broad, unpopular political agenda.
They do this with literally every group/issue. American blacks are poor? Sweeping welfare state. Some women are impregnated by rape? State-funded abortion up until conception. A few children suffer from intense sexual dysphoria? No more limits on what can be done to help children achieve their “queer” identities.
When are we going to recognize this for what it is--emotional manipulation--and stop giving in to it?
Corinna may be right that sooner or later everyone who transitions will have to reckon with this realization... but I think he may be underestimating the extent to which he is just an unusually thoughtful and honest person. I was really impressed by the MichFest story. Some people can tolerate a lot more cognitive dissonance, for a lot longer, than he apparently could. It speaks well of him.
(Not even getting into the AGPs like Levine; I suspect it’s different for someone who transitions for sexual reasons, and some of them seem pretty self-aware.)
This is a phenomenal conversation. Thank you, Heterodork for your sincerity and honesty. I have to say, your comparison with the dentist/filling sitch really struck a nerve with me (see what I did there?) I’ve been attempting for the past several months to help my aging mother find healthcare providers who actually HELP her but am constantly met with “He’s so nice” and “She’s so kind” and the like. It’s maddening! Nice and kind seem to be a proxy for quality in her mind. I can’t seem to convince her that neither of those (very important) attributes constitute good, effective healthcare. Really every service and product provider in her sphere of reality need only meet those minimum standards for her to become a loyal-for-life customer. You verbalized this frustration perfectly. Best to you forever! You’re clearly so intelligent and thoughtful. You deserve peace of mind and true happiness. Someone will be fortunate to call you their best, most favorite and important person. Cheers!!!
So many helpful frameworks offered by Corinna. As a disenchanted liberal, I liked his comments about liberals and virtue signaling. No need for him to apologize, as the insights he offers are an important part of understanding the pickle we find ourselves in--and they are not really understood by either liberals or the exasperated conservatives who criticize them. "Liberals tend to be shallow in terms of trying to understand how deep systems of interactions can become...they have a difficult time understanding how larger systems actually interconnect." I have been in this left-side world most of my life (til a few years ago) and used to work for Democrats in my state. I have never heard the liberal approach to policy described as "shallow," but he is right. I think a lot of progressives/liberals latch on to the feel-good talking point at the top. I know that's what I did for years. They're not exactly lazy, but they're too busy living life to look too closely into any system, and the main thing is that they must know they are the "good people" on the "right side of history" AS HAS BEEN EXPLAINED TO THEM by other professional people in the know. If Chris Hayes says such and such is "anti-racist," well OK. If the lobbyist from the ACLU says a new bus policy helps poor folks, that must be good too. Many are too shallow to do their own digging, except for those of us who have actually done our own digging and been shocked at how unwilling our friends are to look more deeply into the complex truths. The basic rules are: follow the talking point, shut out dissent, and automatically support what the activist journalists and professional advocates and lobbyists are pushing as being "good for the poor," or "good for brown people," or of course "good for trans kids." My only caveat with this criticism of liberals is that you could probably say the same thing about most people of any political stripe. The world is far more complex than we can understand. Whatever our politics, humans seem to screw things up royally with unintended consequences flowing from a lack of understanding of complexity.
I know a parent of a trans male. Our daughters were best buddies from kindergarten to 4th grade but as they got into that preteen time they grew apart. We moved out of MA and I found out that her daughter announced she was trans and during college she had top surgery. I don’t know when hormones were introduced but I know that both parents had to go through counseling to process the loss of their daughter. It was like a death for them. I often wonder when and if their daughter will grow tired of the hormones and what will happen when and if that happens, we’ll see lots of this crazy finger pointing and blaming I’m sure. 🙄🤪
There is no such thing as a trans male. This is part of the problem. Every term used to denote sex becomes colonized by trans activists and their allies.
I know a parent of a girl who cuts her tits off, takes testosterone and changed her name to Julian. Does that sound better for you? It was easier to say tranny, but you want to split hairs
Hey, just trying to tell the story. So shoot the messenger. What should I have done, put it in “quotations” so that you know I think it’s bull? I wonder if you’re the type who talks about defending democracy when it should be REPUBLIC. Maybe you’re part of the problem.
as 1 of the 5 that liked the comment "there is no such thing as a trans male" can I elaborate that 'trans male' is confusing enough to be rendered meaningless?
trans is the opposite. male is a biological designation. so, shouldn't a trans male be a biological male who wants to be the opposite (ie: a woman). And yet the context clues of your comment mentioned your daughters being friends, so the 'trans male' could be a biological female, who now wants to be the opposite (ie: a man).
think way, way back to when you first heard trans-anything. our existing definition of words superceded the trans part, and most of us had to pause and ask: is a transwoman a woman who thinks she's a man? or a man to thinks he's a woman?
and now that the nomenclature has expanded from trans man/woman to trans male/female, it's gotten even more confusing to people just entering the conversation. a poll was done in the UK and a full 1/3 the respondents didn't realize that transwomen are biologically male.
"... will eventually acknowledge to be true: 'Their sex is what they were born as. Everybody knows if you're born male, you're always male. If you're born female, you're always female. There's no disputing that.'
That argument and conclusion very much depends on the premises, on the axioms, on the definitions one starts off with. But none of them are cast in concrete; Jehovah didn't blast some of them into the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai as the First Dictionary. But some are better and more useful than others. For instance, the "Sovereign State" of Oklahoma has apparently decided to inscribe some of them into their law books, although they're not much better than folk-biology, to wit:
KJRH: "For example, the Order defines 'female' as a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova. 'Male' is defined as a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female."
https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/gov-stitt-signs-womens-bill-of-rights-through-executive-order
However, standard biological definitions -- those figuring in reputable journals and dictionaries like the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- say nothing of the sort. By those definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither therefore being sexless.
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
One CAN follow suit with Oklahoma, but it ain't biology. Not sure of the "wisdom" of going with folk-biology ...
Corrina: "So parents: that's what you have to look forward to.”
Really don't envy those parents when -- or if -- they do some soul-searching into their culpability for what is, without much if any hint of hyperbole, the medical scandal and crime of the century, of the last 100 years.
The dictionary? So Corrina objects to being called she/her and prefers castrated eunuch. That makes sense.
🙄 You might just as well object to the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry -- parallel lines never meet -- on the view that it subjects those lines to eternal loneliness ... 🙄
Those definitions are, similarly and in effect, the foundational axioms of biology. That you or Corrina get your knickers in a twist at the logical consequences of those "axioms" really ain't worth diddly-squat.
It’s a No True Scotsman fallacy, heterodorx feels he was mistaken, so therefore everyone who has similar feelings must be mistaken. No true Scotsman would have such feelings with any sincerity. Who is he to be speak for everyone? This is all about feelings after all, I feel that I am a kind of woman, heterodorx feels that he was mistaken in his choice, which one is right? Why is it either/or? This is not a rich or interesting way to discuss this issue.
If there is truth about gender indoctrination and the threat it poses to children, this hurts by limiting what help is acceptable. The cynical and limited ways I have read the behavior from this issues loudest critics has convinced me to be skeptical and cynical. There is no room for disagreement here. I have these discussions in my family in case anyone thought I was single.
I’m willing to call nonbinary educators communist appropriators. I’m willing to concede this is mostly what gender ideology inhabits. Who speaks for the culture being appropriated? Obviously not Heterodorx. Disappointing.
"This is all about feelings after all, I feel that I am a kind of woman ..."
No, sorry, it is most certainly not "all about feelings" -- a rather weak reed to be putting much if any weight on. Largely the whole transgender problem is the result of putting feelings before facts. Though honest people can disagree about what are the facts of the matter, and what their consequences are or should be.
But it seems that the most important "fact" in question is that there is solid justification for defining "woman" as "adult human female (produces ova)". Which, of course, no transwoman will ever qualify as. Although, as biologist PZ Myers once emphasized, if we go with the standard biological definitions -- the more sensible and scientific position -- then many "cis women" don't qualify as such either:
PZM: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female.
It's a problematic term to identify someone by their mode of reproduction."
https://twitter.com/pzmyers/status/1466458067491598342
The more general problem is that virtually everyone has turned "woman" and even "female" into "immutable identities" rather than recognizing that they're just labels for rather transitory reproductive abilities. Rather like "teenager". See my "What is a woman?" post for some elaborations:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
The ova producing may be transitory, bur the system that produces them or should produce them is stable and easily identifiable. As is the system that never ever could.
The transitory thing is a distraction.
"easily identifiable" -- in most cases, but not all, even in some humans.
Wikipedia: "An ovotestis is a gonad with both testicular and ovarian aspects. In humans, ovotestes are an infrequent anatomical variation associated with gonadal dysgenesis."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis
Such individuals are technically and precisely sexless, of neither sex because they can produce neither sperm nor ova.
While that "transitory thing" is often irrelevant, it is hardly a "distraction", it is the essential element, it is the crux of what it means to be male or female.
Something which too many have lost sight of to their lasting pain and grief. For instance, Corinna had a decent Quillette article several years ago about "her" rather desperate efforts, over some 30 years, to turn "herself" into a woman -- sadly turning herself only into a sexless eunuch.
Too many seem to subscribe to the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- and "think" that a "sex change" is only a matter of changing one's genitalia: "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now, offer ends soon!!" 🙄
In addition to which, too many others seem to "think" that sex is an "immutable identity" based on some "mythic essence" instead of accepting that "male" and "female" are JUST labels for transitory reproductive abilities. No ability, no sex.
Bloody criminal that too many are taking advantage of such pigheaded ignorance and scientific illiteracy.
“Scientists” always say this and it’s cute. It’s kind of like me being a poet in a godless age of pop culture and forsaken humanities. Its just a look, and it’s also about your feelings.
What pretentious, ignorant, and self-serving twaddle.
Science and mathematics are all about defining our terms, about naming and categorization. But there are important principles involved, it's not a free-for-all where anyone can pull one out of the air or their nether regions and then demand everyone else accepts them. Transwomen aren't and won't ever be females; they're males if they still have their nuts attached and are sexless eunuchs if they don't.
You might try reading a bit about those concepts:
Wikipedia: "n biology, taxonomy (from Ancient Greek τάξις (taxis) 'arrangement', and -νομία (-nomia) 'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)
And for the sexes, those "shared characteristics" are whether we produce large or small gametes (ova or sperm). And those who produce neither -- e.g., transwomen who cut their nuts off -- are therefore neither male nor female, are sexLESS.
Your feelings are valid. Not everyone is a scientist mac, I said poet, I said forsaken humanities. When I look at the transgender question I see a thousand people like me asking a question, “why do I feel this way?” And then I see a million failures that can’t answer that question. That is all. Both sides are passing laws on this, because tyranny is alive and well. As long as we are defining terms lets be clear. Poetry is about clear language and defining terms in a literal sense. Science has relegated itself to the figurative with its colossal failure to make human meaning. In that field we still need emotions and feelings lest we resort to knuckle draggery.
If your "feelings" are that you're Jesus Christ or Napoleon then you're crazier than a shit-house rat. And you can join the thousands in mental institutions who "think", who "feel" the same way.
But "why do I feel this way?" is probably a very good question. Possibly an over-developed sense of empathy, too many mirror-neurons misfiring [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron]. Who knows. You might try watching Woody Allen's Zelig for some possible answers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUW8JsLDsNo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelig
But the point is that biology STIPULATES that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless. More particularly, those with functioning testicles are males, and those with functioning ovaries are females, and those with neither are sexless. Do you have functioning ovaries? If not then you can't possibly be a female, regardless how you "feel" about that.
And I think you're badly mistaken about the difference between poetry and science. It is the latter that uses the literal sense -- it stipulates objective criteria for category membership -- whereas the former makes free use of allusion and a figurative sense and subjective criteria for category membership. But you probably have a point that science fails at "making human meaning", though that really isn't its bailiwick to begin with.
Root for the word literal is literacy Mr. Science. Now go watch a Woody Allen movie. I’m sure you will feel much better. I can just say there is an important distinction between gender and sex, and we changed the word from transexual to transgender for a reason. Can you beat that? Do you even know what I’m talking about? If not, why should I take this difference of opinion seriously? Your opinion would seem ill informed and suspect, not to mention not based in the current science.
Corrina's bit about IRC is interesting; the same ecosystem exists today on Reddit, Discord, Twitter/X, and 4chan.
An easy way to protect boys and vulnerable men would be to schedule estrogens -- all of those places provide resources to buy them from overseas pharmacies. Not as easy with testosterone.
Wow. May I just say this was a frikkin fantastic interview! Thanks Wesley, thanks Corinna. ❤️