This whole thing of parents admitting to being "educated" by their 6-year-olds is bonkers. The children aren't just a magically enlightened bunch; they are parroting what the adults at their schools are telling them. Every time I read this stuff it just strikes me as parents wanting to believe and desperate to demonstrate that their kids are the smartest, snowflakiest kids in the room.
I also think it comes, at least in part, from a desire among certain parents to avoid any parental role that smacks of traditional, "authoritarian" parenting. I don't think it's a coincidence that this stuff really started to take off when Millennials, and their kids, started to dominate the schools; lefties of that generation have a neurotic fixation on the idea of youthful innocence and a bitter resentment of adulthood in general.
Well, as hyped as Gen X gets for being “no nonsense,” they’re the ones who parented all of these teens and YAs in arrested development. Millennials’ kids are admittedly starting to invade the elementary schools, and part of the blame also lies with childless millennial teachers.
These parents have never read Rousseau, but that's who they're channeling. Emile (Rousseau's main book) is almost entirely about education. The belief is that children are a blank slate ("tabula rasa") and are therefore purer in thought than we are as adults.
I’m gay and admittedly fairly assimilationist (referring back to the old divide in gay rights movements between the more radical liberationists and the more conservative assimilationists). I’m married (been with my husband for 24 years). We have a kid who is in kindergarten. I’ve never been much of a “radical” so it’s possible my temperament is such that gender queer stuff will always be confusing to me. That said, I have a strong libertarian streak so for adults I’m very much in the camp of you do you.
But it’s the gender radical embrace of essentialism and catastrophism (meaning that failures to accord with exactly what a gender radical wants at a given moment amounts to an existential threat to their very person) which lose me. I in my mid 40s and I still have to navigate coming out every day. For example, because I have a child, people often assume I have a wife. No big deal. I correct them, or not, depending on the situation. But regardless, it is not a threat to my personhood or my ego or whatever.
I was wondering the other day why gender queerness has taken over to the extent that is has. Sexuality--gay vs straight or bisexual--seems now almost an afterthought.
To distill my thoughts into a single question: Why are people putting their pronouns after their names but not their sexuality?
If I were still in the dating pool, it seems like it would be far more helpful if people had taken up the habit of appending their sexuality to their names rather than their pronouns. 😜
They want to erase sex so they also want to erase sexuality. They see categories as boundaries, and boundaries as barriers. They want access. Some of the most homophobic BS I've ever seen comes from the gender ideologues. They use terms like "transbian", "lady dick", "genital fetishist" to bully people--starting with gay people but eventually everyone--into having sex with them.
Nope. Because some randos online say something doesn't equate to the majority of people in a group. The last time I checked, there isn't a meeting of all lesbians, right? No delegates sent from hither and dither to decide what's next for group think. Same for trans or nonbinary people.
Actually, groupthink conformity and badgering tactics have become quite common on social media. In my personal experience over the years as an unapologetic Internet superuser, I started out being rat-packed and strawmanned primarily by the Right- by militant supporters of the Iraq War; by upporters of the 21st century American torture regime; neo-Nazis and white supremacists. It was sometimes wearying, responding to multiple attackers coming at my posts and replies in a swarm. But it also made for good sparring practice.
However, what eventually disillusioned me was to find the same tactics adopted by self-identified progressives and liberals. And the massive amount of ignorance on the part of "enlightened progressive" Wokist vanguardists who imagine that they're entitled to lecture and harangue everyone who questions any of their ill-conceived opinions. Shifting right into lecture mode, as if some of us hadn't already been studying the same history for decades, reading the same books.
For whatever reason, the big shift in adoption of obnoxious rat-packing tactics toward the so-called progressive end of things correlated with the advent of the era of comment Likes- the terribly overrated measure that only insecure people and weak-minded people prize as a measure of post merit.
The beginning of the era of Likes also coincided with the era of the Obama presidency- which is when the actual costs of the Iraq War began sinking in for the heartland, and the rise of a permanent surveillance state became apparent to a lot more Americans. At any rate, along about 2012, I stopping hearing from people replying to my skeptical posts opposing the Iraq invasion, the Patriot Act, Gitmo Bay torture, and NSA spying by calling me a surrender monkey and a terrorist supporter, accusing me of being a coward or weakling for not being enough of a laptop bombardier or cheerleader for a police state. Maybe they're just holding their fire for the moment, but they don't talk so loud nowadays.
The principal difference between the people attacking me from "the Right" and those attacking me from "the Left" was the tone. The extreme Rightists can be terribly smug and superior, but they don't make so much of justifying their rat-packing and strawmanning as a demonstration of superior a moral sensibility, taking for granted that their every performance is an assertion of unimpeachable Social Justice Idealism squaring off against the Reactionary Evil of anyone who questioned their positions.
The Right apologists for militarism and nativism can be vituperative, and they often betray terrible personal insecurities in their historical pessimism and doomsaying predictions. Copypasta spam was one of the big tactics of the neofash neoNazis, when I battled them in the old Atlantic comment section: repetition, repetition, repetition. The neo-Nazis were- and continue to be- always bemoaning the fact of their marginalization (cry me a river.) But I'll give the extreme Right this: they weren't insufferably self-righteous. I never got the idea that they were mirror-gazing, or preening for upvotes. Whereas notwithstanding the fact that they hail from the other end of ideological extreme, the Wokists of today have the same arrogance of that Hitler Youth kid in Cabaret, singing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." The same hive pomposity of the Maoist Red Guards, and the Khmer Rouge. The same unquestioning self-assurance. The same embrace of unexamined assumptions, and the same demand for ideological policing to serve a goal of total conformity in every respect.
Under the narrative of Wokist conformity, any parental pushback against the ill-conceived emphasis on sexuality- particularly non-normative sexual identities- as the primary focus of life science education in elementary school classrooms could only be a "panic" manufactured by reactionaries of the "religious Right" (often identified as "the Christians".). And any resistance to the amplification of zero-sum games of ethnic and racial division and hostility in high school history lesson plans by the adapters of CRT principles to pedagogy could only be due to Reactionary Racist Dog-whistle Book Banners. And anyone who doesn't support defunding the police and instant decarceration of felons and violent juveniles must implicitly support genocide against Black and Latino people.
If only it was that simple. If it was, I'd offer the Woke movement my whole-hearted support. As it is, I can only offer them some partial support- because some high school history curricula remain deficient in their approach to the history of slavery, Reconstruction, and the now bygone era of American apartheid. But partial support isn't enough, for the lockstep Red Guards of Wokism. And they're so convinced that their house is spotlessly clean that they won't even bother taking out their own garbage, or doing all the dirty dishes in their sink. All that dirt under their own rug.
Truthfully most people don’t know why they do it besides in group signaling (and in corporate world some hr depts really push it on you).
Wesley’s article touched on it when he pointed out the messaging ‘its ok if you don’t understand just do’ > so now you have a bunch of people with pronouns who have no idea why.
I'm old enough to remember that divide in the gay rights movement as well. I can recall a college professor of mine who was against gay marriage because marriage reinforced bourgeois norms. He taught a class on Jean Genet.
There's a few different notions floating around about why this is happening. One idea is that what is happening in our society today parallels what happened in the cultural revolution in China. Year Zero is, I'm assuming, a reference to Pol Pot in Cambodia. From the Wikipedia entry on Year Zero: "Year Zero (Khmer: ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, Chhnăm Sony [cʰnam soun]) is an idea put into practice by Pol Pot in Democratic Kampuchea that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and that a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch." Radicals are trying to destabilize society in order to tear it down and remake it anew.
I don't know if they will me put up a link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhf6K9_ort4 (The Killing Fields | 30th Anniversary - Reeducation | Warner Bros. Entertainment) .
This isn't about bourgeois liberal notions of civil rights to which the gay rights movement appealed in the past. This is about a complete remaking of society. This is part of the reason that the cartoon of the family discussing gender identity starts with the salad. The salad is an illustration of how the past has nothing to offer. It is a more subtle version of the child in The Killing fields clip erasing the connection between the parents and the children.
For a short time, it seemed as if the assimilationists won, but a new generation of radicals are reasserting themselves.
Has it taken over or been finally allowed to raise its head? But what is true is that trans people only make up less than 1% of humanity. So, there is no massive tide of children declaring non-binary or trans identity.
What is true is that there has been a cynical, if not evil, program that is targeting trans people:
This story is something to elevate. Look how long it took us with the opioid crisis. Only now the vulnerable population is kids. And schools are bifurcating kids from their parents.
Snide passive-aggressive sarcasm gets nowhere with me.
There's very little overlap between people with intersex chromosomes and self-declared trans identity. There can't be; phenotypically anomalous intersexuality is very rare, and found in perhaps 1 in every 2000 people.
Yet trans activists routinely insist that the population of intersex people is around 20 times that number, or more. Following the link to intersexuality in the Cleveland Health Clinic link in your post leads to this claim:
"How common is being intersex?
An estimated 1 in 100 Americans is intersex. Around 2% of people worldwide have intersex traits." The claim is unreferenced in the Cleveland Health Clinic link. Its principal advocate is Anne Fausto-Sterling, who arrived at a figure of 1.7% by adding in nonchromosomal genetic anomalies whose principal consequence is infertility, such as congenital adrenal hperplasia. CAP is just one of the conditions held to be "intersex" in Fausto-Sterling's unique reframing of the taxonomy, which has little traction in biology but is the primary finding cited in the field of gender studies to support the currently de riguer position on trans identity.
"Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors broadly said in 2000 that "[a]dding the estimates of all known causes of nondimorphic sexual development suggests that approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal dimorphism";[9][8] these publications have been widely quoted by intersex activists.[64][65][66] Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility.[67]
In response to Fausto-Sterling, Leonard Sax estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population,[4] after discounting several conditions including LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.[4]
In a 2003 letter to the editor, political scientist Carrie Hull analyzed the data used by Fausto-Sterling and said the estimated intersex rate should instead have been 0.37%, due to many errors.[68] In a response letter published simultaneously, Fausto-Sterling welcomed the additional analysis and said "I am not invested in a particular final estimate, only that there BE an estimate".[68] [A statement that's perhaps the most arrogant, imperious climb-down I've ever read from an ostensibly professional researcher backing away from their original research conclusion. ed.]
Your Cleveland Health Clinic link also doesn't lead to any research studies on "the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people." Which isn't surprising, because there is no such "hard science" on "brain structure and function" of trans people--because neuroscience is simply not advanced enough to draw detailed conclusions in regard to most of its findings, not just in regard to matters of sexual identity but in regard to most other characteristics related to higher brain functioning as well. Most neuroscience data is preliminary; the findings are overwhelmingly conjectural and speculative. Only in the past five years have connections been established between cerebral functions and neurally mediated motor functions within a human body. Brain science is a long way from developing conclusions about more complex and sophisticated features of brain function.
The claims of trans activist radicals and sex education activists who insist on the necessity of the mission of public schools teaching their views on biological sexuality to prepubescent children- sometimes before they're even able to read (i.e., grades K-2) -are not "hard science"; they're indoctrination into a cultural agenda that draws on false claims and relies on flimsy information for support. And the "erasure" that's really resulting from that false emphasis is all of the class time required to obtain literacy and numeracy skills, in order to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.
This post has been yet another exercise that bears out the axiom that the amount of energy required to refute nonense on the Internet is at least ten times the amount required to post the original false claims. Fortunately, I enjoy doing it. Beats playing Funbridge.
Sure, some young kids just "get it" when gender ideology is explained to them. Just like some kids intuitively understand that Fido went to live on farm, or that a bearded fat man in a red suit drops off presents every Christmas.* Kids have no choice but to trust adults to explain things correctly. These adults are using their kids' naturally unquestioning naivety as proof that gender ideology is not a difficult concept to understand, when in fact, it is a concept that can really only be "understood" by those who don't have the ability or the interest to think it through.
*not hating on Santa; we're a very pro-whimsy household
The supportive parents always attribute the curriculum to the children, rather than admitting that it is *taught* to them by the usually childless twenty-something adults in the room. See comments about how their 6-year-old children "explain" and "teach" these things to them at home; how openminded and kind their children are as opposed to any other group of children since the dawn of time.
Compassion is generally a good thing. I am not sure if you’re saying we should have compassion for those parents who were in the minority or the majority in Wesley’s story? I think that the majority (those who liked the ideological posts 20-30 times) are the ones who lack critical thinking and/or are concerned about being ostracized. I think the parent of the original post is an example of those who really need support.
Also, in general, I don’t see any forward momentum that doesn’t show compassion all around. Everyone is on edge or just not paying attention carefully to this issue.
I agree, the minority view in his article need support, and in commenting about it, it’s not so easy to go to a different school or separate from job, social network, etc. So compassion for these parents.
I have to wonder what it is that makes teaching sex education to prepubescent elementary schoolchildren such an imperative. I never had a biological science class of any sort in elementary school- almost certainly because even at the age of 11, neither I or my peers possessed the somewhat advanced literacy skills required to acquire and assess that knowledge. (Notwithstanding the fact that my reading comprehension skills measured well from the earliest grades. It helped to have a former elementary school teacher for a mother. Free tutoring daily.)
Since you've copied and pasted, so will I:
There's very little overlap between people with intersex chromosomes and self-declared trans identity. There can't be; phenotypically anomalous intersexuality is very rare, and found in perhaps 1 in every 2000 people.
Yet trans activists routinely insist that the population of intersex people is around 20 times that number, or more. Following the link to intersexuality in the Cleveland Health Clinic link in your post leads to this claim:
"How common is being intersex?
An estimated 1 in 100 Americans is intersex. Around 2% of people worldwide have intersex traits." The claim is unreferenced in the Cleveland Health Clinic link. Its principal advocate is Anne Fausto-Sterling, who arrived at a figure of 1.7% by adding in nonchromosomal genetic anomalies whose principal consequence is infertility, such as congenital adrenal hperplasia. CAP is just one of the conditions held to be "intersex" in Fausto-Sterling's unique reframing of the taxonomy, which has little traction in biology but is the primary finding cited in the field of gender studies to support the currently de riguer position on trans identity.
"Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors broadly said in 2000 that "[a]dding the estimates of all known causes of nondimorphic sexual development suggests that approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal dimorphism";[9][8] these publications have been widely quoted by intersex activists.[64][65][66] Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility.[67]
In response to Fausto-Sterling, Leonard Sax estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population,[4] after discounting several conditions including LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.[4]
In a 2003 letter to the editor, political scientist Carrie Hull analyzed the data used by Fausto-Sterling and said the estimated intersex rate should instead have been 0.37%, due to many errors.[68] In a response letter published simultaneously, Fausto-Sterling welcomed the additional analysis and said "I am not invested in a particular final estimate, only that there BE an estimate".[68] [A statement that's perhaps the most arrogant, imperious climb-down I've ever read from an ostensibly professional researcher backing away from their original research conclusion. ed.]
Your Cleveland Health Clinic link also doesn't lead to any research studies on "the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people." Which isn't surprising, because there is no such "hard science" on "brain structure and function" of trans people--because neuroscience is simply not advanced enough to draw detailed conclusions in regard to most of its findings, not just in regard to matters of sexual identity but in regard to most other characteristics related to higher brain functioning as well. Most neuroscience data is preliminary; the findings are overwhelmingly conjectural and speculative. Only in the past five years have connections been established between cerebral functions and neurally mediated motor functions within a human body. Brain science is a long way from developing conclusions about more complex and sophisticated features of brain function.
The claims of trans activist radicals and sex education activists who insist on the necessity of the mission of public schools teaching their views on biological sexuality to prepubescent children- sometimes before they're even able to read (i.e., grades K-2) -are not "hard science"; they're indoctrination into a cultural agenda that draws on false claims and relies on flimsy information for support. And the "erasure" that's really resulting from that false emphasis is all of the class time required to obtain literacy and numeracy skills, in order to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.
These are ridiculous solutions. You can teach kids not to bully other kids that are different without lying to them about sex. And allowing little boys to invade little girls bathrooms just sets up little girls to lower their boundaries which will not serve them over a lifetime. Queer theory will break our society. And Queer theory has nothing on offer that replaces what it breaks.
Why are the wealthy and educated so obsessed with race and sexual grievance groups? I'm not sure what scares me more:
1) that they're using the sexualization of children and wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag to avoid talking about their obvious class privilege...
2) that they are sexualizing children simply because they want sexual access to children...
3) that they are regurgitating obvious lies simply to retain their social position.
I hope it's 1. I could at least understand that.
I suspect it might be 2. Power has always prized youth. Epstein was popular for a reason.
If it's 3, we're probably doomed. An elite that corrupt can not maintain a republic.
The key word here is wealthy. By focusing on race and sexuality, they can hide their own class privilege while seeming like they're progressive. It's always the wealthiest private schools that go all in on this stuff.
Because none of the endless and endlessly dreary performativity, the preferred pronouns attached to corporate email signatures, the arguments over how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, none of that changes in any meaningful way how the economic pie gets sliced.
Thank you for a great read, as always. A lot of this confusion would be helped with some better understanding of how psychology and biology works, for instance, "There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
Certainly, the schools don't understand the topics that they are foisting on their students, and the topics are much too complex to be understood by young children except the most superficial (and misleading) level. Aside from politics and money, however, a lot of this is being driven by the fact that it's much easier to teach this soft and fuzzy stuff that is to teach math, science, and history. And I'm saying this is a lifelong teacher, myself. Thank you again, Frederick
It's fascinating to see how the word "feeling" has displaced the word "thinking". Sharp way to attempt to displace empiricism. But reality isn't tamed so easy.
You can change signifiers, but much more difficult to change signifieds.
I coached middle school soccer at Lab in 2018 and 2019. In 1.5 years of coaching, I didn’t encounter any of this: no trans kids on the team, no documentation, no signs in the admin offices. Goes to show the speed of the transition.
It's fascinating how people can be smug when they're too lazy to even read what concerns students had. But, you do you. I'm sure there's a warm couch waiting for you to plant yourself and watch more episodes of Tucker Carlson's mendacious TV show to warp your mind and leave you comfortably numb.
Thank you for ‘coming down’ to preach to all of those so beneath you in need of enlightenment that only you can provide. Seems a real good use of time. Must one learn how to banter about the the word mendacious at all of the progressive private schools or just yours?
Mendacious is a fine word that perfectly describes Carlson. As his text messages revealed, he happily lied to his audience to keep his ratings high and earn his multi-million dollar salary. Carlson admitted that the whole election fraud stuff was garbage and said that he hated Trump. Yet he told his audience the opposite. Not only did he lie to his audience, he demanded that journalist at Fox who told the truth be fired.
Uh, you're welcome?
Not bothering to understand what troubles those kids and spewing trash without knowing facts is lazy and immoral. Bearing false witness is a sin, right?
" Lab is a place where jokes about racial and religious identification have been normalized. A place where Black students get their hair gawked at and constantly touched without their permission as if they were animals in a petting zoo. A place where many students of color unfairly feel the need to internalize racist and harmful “jokes” in order to assimilate and survive."
P.S.
It's weird that you take issue with the word 'mendacious.' You're an adult. If you don't know a word, look it up. You shouldn't expect others to dumb down their vocabulary to appease you.
The disease:Utopian ideological mass psychosis manipulated and controlled by malignant megalomaniacal narcissism.
The cure: A one person at a time re-awakening and re-connection to their own humanity and acceptance of responsibility and moral agency. It's an inside job. What has to change? Everything.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - live not by lies! To quote from that speech...
"We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. [Billboard Chris will do this, but most of us won't.] But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!
Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently)—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world."
I should not have to point this out. But sex is not 'assigned' at birth. It is observed. Of course, observed sex at birth is not always correct. For example, the runner Caster Semenya was thought to to be female at birth. In real life, he was/is a 46,XY male with male typical levels of testosterone and (of course) no uterus. In rural South Africa (where he was born), sex was determined by observation and was not (in this case) correct. For political reasons, he was allowed to compete with actual women in the Olympics.
I can appreciate I am not the only one to know if this actual only relevant chromosomal case study. Few participating in gender-affirm think even know this name. I’d dare say I’ve yet to see one acknowledge this real life scenario.
I’m 48 years old. My mother had eight children, two of whom are gay. My oldest brother died of AIDS in 1991. My father occasionally beat up my mother. My siblings and I were beat with a belt when we misbehaved. As a teenager, I became involved in the underground punk scene in the Bay Area. My bands played at 924 Gilman St. in Berkeley on a regular basis in the mid to late nineties. The politics in that specific subculture are now mainstream. Just like skateboarding, marijuana use, tattoos, which at that time were illegal/ underground, now the rules posted on the wall at Gilman are mainstream. I really appreciate Wes’ amazing writing, but I find myself having to close this newsletter several times while reading for the feelings of revulsion and hate that course through my body due to the truths he and others are espousing.
I’ve often wondered why, if gender is different from sex (and I agree it is), WHY we didn’t leave the words for sex alone. Boy girl man woman mother father sister brother daughter son -- those have everything to do with biological reality and nothing to do with your personality, your self-expression, or your masculinity or femininity.
Why didn’t the brave new gender warriors make their own words for their purposes? Why did they co-opt the existing useful words for sex, and then change the meanings, and then tell everyone who still needs and wants words for sex that those words are wrong?
We know from the Swedish study, conducted over 30 years and with several thousands of participants, that those to transition to a different sex than what they born as are 19 times more likely to commit suicide than those who don't. It's all about the money, plus the destruction of any religious or traditional values.
This whole thing of parents admitting to being "educated" by their 6-year-olds is bonkers. The children aren't just a magically enlightened bunch; they are parroting what the adults at their schools are telling them. Every time I read this stuff it just strikes me as parents wanting to believe and desperate to demonstrate that their kids are the smartest, snowflakiest kids in the room.
I also think it comes, at least in part, from a desire among certain parents to avoid any parental role that smacks of traditional, "authoritarian" parenting. I don't think it's a coincidence that this stuff really started to take off when Millennials, and their kids, started to dominate the schools; lefties of that generation have a neurotic fixation on the idea of youthful innocence and a bitter resentment of adulthood in general.
Well, as hyped as Gen X gets for being “no nonsense,” they’re the ones who parented all of these teens and YAs in arrested development. Millennials’ kids are admittedly starting to invade the elementary schools, and part of the blame also lies with childless millennial teachers.
These parents have never read Rousseau, but that's who they're channeling. Emile (Rousseau's main book) is almost entirely about education. The belief is that children are a blank slate ("tabula rasa") and are therefore purer in thought than we are as adults.
I’m gay and admittedly fairly assimilationist (referring back to the old divide in gay rights movements between the more radical liberationists and the more conservative assimilationists). I’m married (been with my husband for 24 years). We have a kid who is in kindergarten. I’ve never been much of a “radical” so it’s possible my temperament is such that gender queer stuff will always be confusing to me. That said, I have a strong libertarian streak so for adults I’m very much in the camp of you do you.
But it’s the gender radical embrace of essentialism and catastrophism (meaning that failures to accord with exactly what a gender radical wants at a given moment amounts to an existential threat to their very person) which lose me. I in my mid 40s and I still have to navigate coming out every day. For example, because I have a child, people often assume I have a wife. No big deal. I correct them, or not, depending on the situation. But regardless, it is not a threat to my personhood or my ego or whatever.
I was wondering the other day why gender queerness has taken over to the extent that is has. Sexuality--gay vs straight or bisexual--seems now almost an afterthought.
To distill my thoughts into a single question: Why are people putting their pronouns after their names but not their sexuality?
If I were still in the dating pool, it seems like it would be far more helpful if people had taken up the habit of appending their sexuality to their names rather than their pronouns. 😜
They want to erase sex so they also want to erase sexuality. They see categories as boundaries, and boundaries as barriers. They want access. Some of the most homophobic BS I've ever seen comes from the gender ideologues. They use terms like "transbian", "lady dick", "genital fetishist" to bully people--starting with gay people but eventually everyone--into having sex with them.
Nope. Because some randos online say something doesn't equate to the majority of people in a group. The last time I checked, there isn't a meeting of all lesbians, right? No delegates sent from hither and dither to decide what's next for group think. Same for trans or nonbinary people.
Actually, groupthink conformity and badgering tactics have become quite common on social media. In my personal experience over the years as an unapologetic Internet superuser, I started out being rat-packed and strawmanned primarily by the Right- by militant supporters of the Iraq War; by upporters of the 21st century American torture regime; neo-Nazis and white supremacists. It was sometimes wearying, responding to multiple attackers coming at my posts and replies in a swarm. But it also made for good sparring practice.
However, what eventually disillusioned me was to find the same tactics adopted by self-identified progressives and liberals. And the massive amount of ignorance on the part of "enlightened progressive" Wokist vanguardists who imagine that they're entitled to lecture and harangue everyone who questions any of their ill-conceived opinions. Shifting right into lecture mode, as if some of us hadn't already been studying the same history for decades, reading the same books.
For whatever reason, the big shift in adoption of obnoxious rat-packing tactics toward the so-called progressive end of things correlated with the advent of the era of comment Likes- the terribly overrated measure that only insecure people and weak-minded people prize as a measure of post merit.
The beginning of the era of Likes also coincided with the era of the Obama presidency- which is when the actual costs of the Iraq War began sinking in for the heartland, and the rise of a permanent surveillance state became apparent to a lot more Americans. At any rate, along about 2012, I stopping hearing from people replying to my skeptical posts opposing the Iraq invasion, the Patriot Act, Gitmo Bay torture, and NSA spying by calling me a surrender monkey and a terrorist supporter, accusing me of being a coward or weakling for not being enough of a laptop bombardier or cheerleader for a police state. Maybe they're just holding their fire for the moment, but they don't talk so loud nowadays.
The principal difference between the people attacking me from "the Right" and those attacking me from "the Left" was the tone. The extreme Rightists can be terribly smug and superior, but they don't make so much of justifying their rat-packing and strawmanning as a demonstration of superior a moral sensibility, taking for granted that their every performance is an assertion of unimpeachable Social Justice Idealism squaring off against the Reactionary Evil of anyone who questioned their positions.
The Right apologists for militarism and nativism can be vituperative, and they often betray terrible personal insecurities in their historical pessimism and doomsaying predictions. Copypasta spam was one of the big tactics of the neofash neoNazis, when I battled them in the old Atlantic comment section: repetition, repetition, repetition. The neo-Nazis were- and continue to be- always bemoaning the fact of their marginalization (cry me a river.) But I'll give the extreme Right this: they weren't insufferably self-righteous. I never got the idea that they were mirror-gazing, or preening for upvotes. Whereas notwithstanding the fact that they hail from the other end of ideological extreme, the Wokists of today have the same arrogance of that Hitler Youth kid in Cabaret, singing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." The same hive pomposity of the Maoist Red Guards, and the Khmer Rouge. The same unquestioning self-assurance. The same embrace of unexamined assumptions, and the same demand for ideological policing to serve a goal of total conformity in every respect.
Under the narrative of Wokist conformity, any parental pushback against the ill-conceived emphasis on sexuality- particularly non-normative sexual identities- as the primary focus of life science education in elementary school classrooms could only be a "panic" manufactured by reactionaries of the "religious Right" (often identified as "the Christians".). And any resistance to the amplification of zero-sum games of ethnic and racial division and hostility in high school history lesson plans by the adapters of CRT principles to pedagogy could only be due to Reactionary Racist Dog-whistle Book Banners. And anyone who doesn't support defunding the police and instant decarceration of felons and violent juveniles must implicitly support genocide against Black and Latino people.
If only it was that simple. If it was, I'd offer the Woke movement my whole-hearted support. As it is, I can only offer them some partial support- because some high school history curricula remain deficient in their approach to the history of slavery, Reconstruction, and the now bygone era of American apartheid. But partial support isn't enough, for the lockstep Red Guards of Wokism. And they're so convinced that their house is spotlessly clean that they won't even bother taking out their own garbage, or doing all the dirty dishes in their sink. All that dirt under their own rug.
Truthfully most people don’t know why they do it besides in group signaling (and in corporate world some hr depts really push it on you).
Wesley’s article touched on it when he pointed out the messaging ‘its ok if you don’t understand just do’ > so now you have a bunch of people with pronouns who have no idea why.
I'm old enough to remember that divide in the gay rights movement as well. I can recall a college professor of mine who was against gay marriage because marriage reinforced bourgeois norms. He taught a class on Jean Genet.
There's a few different notions floating around about why this is happening. One idea is that what is happening in our society today parallels what happened in the cultural revolution in China. Year Zero is, I'm assuming, a reference to Pol Pot in Cambodia. From the Wikipedia entry on Year Zero: "Year Zero (Khmer: ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, Chhnăm Sony [cʰnam soun]) is an idea put into practice by Pol Pot in Democratic Kampuchea that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and that a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch." Radicals are trying to destabilize society in order to tear it down and remake it anew.
I don't know if they will me put up a link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhf6K9_ort4 (The Killing Fields | 30th Anniversary - Reeducation | Warner Bros. Entertainment) .
This isn't about bourgeois liberal notions of civil rights to which the gay rights movement appealed in the past. This is about a complete remaking of society. This is part of the reason that the cartoon of the family discussing gender identity starts with the salad. The salad is an illustration of how the past has nothing to offer. It is a more subtle version of the child in The Killing fields clip erasing the connection between the parents and the children.
For a short time, it seemed as if the assimilationists won, but a new generation of radicals are reasserting themselves.
Dude,
Has it taken over or been finally allowed to raise its head? But what is true is that trans people only make up less than 1% of humanity. So, there is no massive tide of children declaring non-binary or trans identity.
What is true is that there has been a cynical, if not evil, program that is targeting trans people:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/anti-trans-transgender-health-care-ban-legislation-bill-minors-children-lgbtq/
Follow the money. The pritzkers make money from trans drugs. These kids will be hooked on big pharma for the rest of their lives. DIE makes us poorer, dumber, and less healthy: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2
This story is something to elevate. Look how long it took us with the opioid crisis. Only now the vulnerable population is kids. And schools are bifurcating kids from their parents.
I would like to know who is funding these educational materials, and who is funding those organizations.
Between this craze and mRNA injection mania, the elite class may not be with us much longer.
This may be of help:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
Nice how the well established science on sex chromosomes has been disregarded:
https://genetic.org/variations/
https://scienceline.org/2020/10/beyond-x-y-chromosomes-and-sex-organs/
Are you really going to say that intersex (hermaphroditic) haven't been well known for centuries?
And who cares about the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgender-brain-what-you-should-know/
Let's just ignore the science that doesn't support your views.
Snide passive-aggressive sarcasm gets nowhere with me.
There's very little overlap between people with intersex chromosomes and self-declared trans identity. There can't be; phenotypically anomalous intersexuality is very rare, and found in perhaps 1 in every 2000 people.
Yet trans activists routinely insist that the population of intersex people is around 20 times that number, or more. Following the link to intersexuality in the Cleveland Health Clinic link in your post leads to this claim:
"How common is being intersex?
An estimated 1 in 100 Americans is intersex. Around 2% of people worldwide have intersex traits." The claim is unreferenced in the Cleveland Health Clinic link. Its principal advocate is Anne Fausto-Sterling, who arrived at a figure of 1.7% by adding in nonchromosomal genetic anomalies whose principal consequence is infertility, such as congenital adrenal hperplasia. CAP is just one of the conditions held to be "intersex" in Fausto-Sterling's unique reframing of the taxonomy, which has little traction in biology but is the primary finding cited in the field of gender studies to support the currently de riguer position on trans identity.
"Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors broadly said in 2000 that "[a]dding the estimates of all known causes of nondimorphic sexual development suggests that approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal dimorphism";[9][8] these publications have been widely quoted by intersex activists.[64][65][66] Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility.[67]
In response to Fausto-Sterling, Leonard Sax estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population,[4] after discounting several conditions including LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.[4]
In a 2003 letter to the editor, political scientist Carrie Hull analyzed the data used by Fausto-Sterling and said the estimated intersex rate should instead have been 0.37%, due to many errors.[68] In a response letter published simultaneously, Fausto-Sterling welcomed the additional analysis and said "I am not invested in a particular final estimate, only that there BE an estimate".[68] [A statement that's perhaps the most arrogant, imperious climb-down I've ever read from an ostensibly professional researcher backing away from their original research conclusion. ed.]
A 2018 review reported that the number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%.[3]..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Terminology
https://web.archive.org/web/20210618100621/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
Your Cleveland Health Clinic link also doesn't lead to any research studies on "the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people." Which isn't surprising, because there is no such "hard science" on "brain structure and function" of trans people--because neuroscience is simply not advanced enough to draw detailed conclusions in regard to most of its findings, not just in regard to matters of sexual identity but in regard to most other characteristics related to higher brain functioning as well. Most neuroscience data is preliminary; the findings are overwhelmingly conjectural and speculative. Only in the past five years have connections been established between cerebral functions and neurally mediated motor functions within a human body. Brain science is a long way from developing conclusions about more complex and sophisticated features of brain function.
The claims of trans activist radicals and sex education activists who insist on the necessity of the mission of public schools teaching their views on biological sexuality to prepubescent children- sometimes before they're even able to read (i.e., grades K-2) -are not "hard science"; they're indoctrination into a cultural agenda that draws on false claims and relies on flimsy information for support. And the "erasure" that's really resulting from that false emphasis is all of the class time required to obtain literacy and numeracy skills, in order to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.
This post has been yet another exercise that bears out the axiom that the amount of energy required to refute nonense on the Internet is at least ten times the amount required to post the original false claims. Fortunately, I enjoy doing it. Beats playing Funbridge.
"The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI)"....great article from Tablet.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
Sure, some young kids just "get it" when gender ideology is explained to them. Just like some kids intuitively understand that Fido went to live on farm, or that a bearded fat man in a red suit drops off presents every Christmas.* Kids have no choice but to trust adults to explain things correctly. These adults are using their kids' naturally unquestioning naivety as proof that gender ideology is not a difficult concept to understand, when in fact, it is a concept that can really only be "understood" by those who don't have the ability or the interest to think it through.
*not hating on Santa; we're a very pro-whimsy household
The supportive parents always attribute the curriculum to the children, rather than admitting that it is *taught* to them by the usually childless twenty-something adults in the room. See comments about how their 6-year-old children "explain" and "teach" these things to them at home; how openminded and kind their children are as opposed to any other group of children since the dawn of time.
Good point.
Lack of critical analysis by parents and fear of social ostracism by the same are part of the problem. So disappointing.
Compassion for parents is needed.
Compassion is generally a good thing. I am not sure if you’re saying we should have compassion for those parents who were in the minority or the majority in Wesley’s story? I think that the majority (those who liked the ideological posts 20-30 times) are the ones who lack critical thinking and/or are concerned about being ostracized. I think the parent of the original post is an example of those who really need support.
Karents are the root of the problem. As Wes' article shows, they gleefully mask, jab, and castrate their children for status: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-karent-progressive-ivy-league
“Karentz”?
Also, in general, I don’t see any forward momentum that doesn’t show compassion all around. Everyone is on edge or just not paying attention carefully to this issue.
I agree, the minority view in his article need support, and in commenting about it, it’s not so easy to go to a different school or separate from job, social network, etc. So compassion for these parents.
Nice how the well established science on sex chromosomes has been disregarded:
https://genetic.org/variations/
https://scienceline.org/2020/10/beyond-x-y-chromosomes-and-sex-organs/
Are you really going to say that intersex (hermaphroditic) haven't been well known for centuries?
And who cares about the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgender-brain-what-you-should-know/
Let's just ignore the science that doesn't support your views.
I have to wonder what it is that makes teaching sex education to prepubescent elementary schoolchildren such an imperative. I never had a biological science class of any sort in elementary school- almost certainly because even at the age of 11, neither I or my peers possessed the somewhat advanced literacy skills required to acquire and assess that knowledge. (Notwithstanding the fact that my reading comprehension skills measured well from the earliest grades. It helped to have a former elementary school teacher for a mother. Free tutoring daily.)
Since you've copied and pasted, so will I:
There's very little overlap between people with intersex chromosomes and self-declared trans identity. There can't be; phenotypically anomalous intersexuality is very rare, and found in perhaps 1 in every 2000 people.
Yet trans activists routinely insist that the population of intersex people is around 20 times that number, or more. Following the link to intersexuality in the Cleveland Health Clinic link in your post leads to this claim:
"How common is being intersex?
An estimated 1 in 100 Americans is intersex. Around 2% of people worldwide have intersex traits." The claim is unreferenced in the Cleveland Health Clinic link. Its principal advocate is Anne Fausto-Sterling, who arrived at a figure of 1.7% by adding in nonchromosomal genetic anomalies whose principal consequence is infertility, such as congenital adrenal hperplasia. CAP is just one of the conditions held to be "intersex" in Fausto-Sterling's unique reframing of the taxonomy, which has little traction in biology but is the primary finding cited in the field of gender studies to support the currently de riguer position on trans identity.
"Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors broadly said in 2000 that "[a]dding the estimates of all known causes of nondimorphic sexual development suggests that approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal dimorphism";[9][8] these publications have been widely quoted by intersex activists.[64][65][66] Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility.[67]
In response to Fausto-Sterling, Leonard Sax estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population,[4] after discounting several conditions including LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.[4]
In a 2003 letter to the editor, political scientist Carrie Hull analyzed the data used by Fausto-Sterling and said the estimated intersex rate should instead have been 0.37%, due to many errors.[68] In a response letter published simultaneously, Fausto-Sterling welcomed the additional analysis and said "I am not invested in a particular final estimate, only that there BE an estimate".[68] [A statement that's perhaps the most arrogant, imperious climb-down I've ever read from an ostensibly professional researcher backing away from their original research conclusion. ed.]
A 2018 review reported that the number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%.[3]..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Terminology
https://web.archive.org/web/20210618100621/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
Your Cleveland Health Clinic link also doesn't lead to any research studies on "the hard science on the brain structure and function of trans people." Which isn't surprising, because there is no such "hard science" on "brain structure and function" of trans people--because neuroscience is simply not advanced enough to draw detailed conclusions in regard to most of its findings, not just in regard to matters of sexual identity but in regard to most other characteristics related to higher brain functioning as well. Most neuroscience data is preliminary; the findings are overwhelmingly conjectural and speculative. Only in the past five years have connections been established between cerebral functions and neurally mediated motor functions within a human body. Brain science is a long way from developing conclusions about more complex and sophisticated features of brain function.
The claims of trans activist radicals and sex education activists who insist on the necessity of the mission of public schools teaching their views on biological sexuality to prepubescent children- sometimes before they're even able to read (i.e., grades K-2) -are not "hard science"; they're indoctrination into a cultural agenda that draws on false claims and relies on flimsy information for support. And the "erasure" that's really resulting from that false emphasis is all of the class time required to obtain literacy and numeracy skills, in order to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.
These are ridiculous solutions. You can teach kids not to bully other kids that are different without lying to them about sex. And allowing little boys to invade little girls bathrooms just sets up little girls to lower their boundaries which will not serve them over a lifetime. Queer theory will break our society. And Queer theory has nothing on offer that replaces what it breaks.
"nothing to offer that replaces what it breaks" is a great turn of phrase. Thank you for that!
Wes, there is a teacher-training video given by 4th and 5th grade Lab teachers that you must absolutely watch. I wrote a piece citing excerpts from that video showing how the BLM at School curriculum is incorporated at that school: https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/video-exposing-blm-at-school-a-deep-dive-into-the-indoctrination-of-fourth-graders/
Why are the wealthy and educated so obsessed with race and sexual grievance groups? I'm not sure what scares me more:
1) that they're using the sexualization of children and wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag to avoid talking about their obvious class privilege...
2) that they are sexualizing children simply because they want sexual access to children...
3) that they are regurgitating obvious lies simply to retain their social position.
I hope it's 1. I could at least understand that.
I suspect it might be 2. Power has always prized youth. Epstein was popular for a reason.
If it's 3, we're probably doomed. An elite that corrupt can not maintain a republic.
The key word here is wealthy. By focusing on race and sexuality, they can hide their own class privilege while seeming like they're progressive. It's always the wealthiest private schools that go all in on this stuff.
So yes, it is 3.
Because none of the endless and endlessly dreary performativity, the preferred pronouns attached to corporate email signatures, the arguments over how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, none of that changes in any meaningful way how the economic pie gets sliced.
Thank you for a great read, as always. A lot of this confusion would be helped with some better understanding of how psychology and biology works, for instance, "There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
Certainly, the schools don't understand the topics that they are foisting on their students, and the topics are much too complex to be understood by young children except the most superficial (and misleading) level. Aside from politics and money, however, a lot of this is being driven by the fact that it's much easier to teach this soft and fuzzy stuff that is to teach math, science, and history. And I'm saying this is a lifelong teacher, myself. Thank you again, Frederick
It's fascinating to see how the word "feeling" has displaced the word "thinking". Sharp way to attempt to displace empiricism. But reality isn't tamed so easy.
You can change signifiers, but much more difficult to change signifieds.
I coached middle school soccer at Lab in 2018 and 2019. In 1.5 years of coaching, I didn’t encounter any of this: no trans kids on the team, no documentation, no signs in the admin offices. Goes to show the speed of the transition.
Almost like the school responded to criticism by offering curriculum to meet the concerns of students...
It's fascinating how people can be smug when they're too lazy to even read what concerns students had. But, you do you. I'm sure there's a warm couch waiting for you to plant yourself and watch more episodes of Tucker Carlson's mendacious TV show to warp your mind and leave you comfortably numb.
Thank you for ‘coming down’ to preach to all of those so beneath you in need of enlightenment that only you can provide. Seems a real good use of time. Must one learn how to banter about the the word mendacious at all of the progressive private schools or just yours?
Mendacious is a fine word that perfectly describes Carlson. As his text messages revealed, he happily lied to his audience to keep his ratings high and earn his multi-million dollar salary. Carlson admitted that the whole election fraud stuff was garbage and said that he hated Trump. Yet he told his audience the opposite. Not only did he lie to his audience, he demanded that journalist at Fox who told the truth be fired.
Uh, you're welcome?
Not bothering to understand what troubles those kids and spewing trash without knowing facts is lazy and immoral. Bearing false witness is a sin, right?
" Lab is a place where jokes about racial and religious identification have been normalized. A place where Black students get their hair gawked at and constantly touched without their permission as if they were animals in a petting zoo. A place where many students of color unfairly feel the need to internalize racist and harmful “jokes” in order to assimilate and survive."
P.S.
It's weird that you take issue with the word 'mendacious.' You're an adult. If you don't know a word, look it up. You shouldn't expect others to dumb down their vocabulary to appease you.
The disease:Utopian ideological mass psychosis manipulated and controlled by malignant megalomaniacal narcissism.
The cure: A one person at a time re-awakening and re-connection to their own humanity and acceptance of responsibility and moral agency. It's an inside job. What has to change? Everything.
Sniveler's perish. It's not them-it's you.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - live not by lies! To quote from that speech...
"We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. [Billboard Chris will do this, but most of us won't.] But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!
Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently)—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world."
Solzhenitsyn has much to teach us today: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
I should not have to point this out. But sex is not 'assigned' at birth. It is observed. Of course, observed sex at birth is not always correct. For example, the runner Caster Semenya was thought to to be female at birth. In real life, he was/is a 46,XY male with male typical levels of testosterone and (of course) no uterus. In rural South Africa (where he was born), sex was determined by observation and was not (in this case) correct. For political reasons, he was allowed to compete with actual women in the Olympics.
I can appreciate I am not the only one to know if this actual only relevant chromosomal case study. Few participating in gender-affirm think even know this name. I’d dare say I’ve yet to see one acknowledge this real life scenario.
I’m 48 years old. My mother had eight children, two of whom are gay. My oldest brother died of AIDS in 1991. My father occasionally beat up my mother. My siblings and I were beat with a belt when we misbehaved. As a teenager, I became involved in the underground punk scene in the Bay Area. My bands played at 924 Gilman St. in Berkeley on a regular basis in the mid to late nineties. The politics in that specific subculture are now mainstream. Just like skateboarding, marijuana use, tattoos, which at that time were illegal/ underground, now the rules posted on the wall at Gilman are mainstream. I really appreciate Wes’ amazing writing, but I find myself having to close this newsletter several times while reading for the feelings of revulsion and hate that course through my body due to the truths he and others are espousing.
I’ve often wondered why, if gender is different from sex (and I agree it is), WHY we didn’t leave the words for sex alone. Boy girl man woman mother father sister brother daughter son -- those have everything to do with biological reality and nothing to do with your personality, your self-expression, or your masculinity or femininity.
Why didn’t the brave new gender warriors make their own words for their purposes? Why did they co-opt the existing useful words for sex, and then change the meanings, and then tell everyone who still needs and wants words for sex that those words are wrong?
It’s. Crazy.
We know from the Swedish study, conducted over 30 years and with several thousands of participants, that those to transition to a different sex than what they born as are 19 times more likely to commit suicide than those who don't. It's all about the money, plus the destruction of any religious or traditional values.
Danny Huckabee