To my mind the issue is simple: it is possible to have a same sex attraction and be mentally normal. It is possible to have a fulfilling sexual encounter with someone of the same gender .
It is not possible to CHANGE your gender. Period. Full Stop. There is no second option.
It is possible to change your gender PRESENTATION even to th…
To my mind the issue is simple: it is possible to have a same sex attraction and be mentally normal. It is possible to have a fulfilling sexual encounter with someone of the same gender .
It is not possible to CHANGE your gender. Period. Full Stop. There is no second option.
It is possible to change your gender PRESENTATION even to the point where your external genitalia are changed and your internal hormonal environment artificially altered (in what are likely profoundly unhealthy and life shortening ways), but you CANNOT CHANGE YOUR GENDER. Unless you are a hermaphrodite, you are born XX or XY. That is one of the most basic postulates of Biology, even if even that field is getting corrupted by politics.
So claiming that you can change your gender is delusional. Nuts. Insane. And demanding that others join you in that delusional belief is abusive and fascistic.
And as she said, Feminism has no meaning if anyone can be a woman any time they choose, even if they were born with a penis.
The whole Trans agenda is nuts, and I honestly think the people funding and driving all this have it as their intention breaking and shaking any remaining social cohesion we had to smithereens.
And to be clear, there have always been, in all cultures, people who identified as other than their birth gender. In some times and places they were punished severely, and in others accepted and even given a name that amounted to Other (as in Male, Female and Other). There is nothing wrong with being different in this way.
What is wrong is claiming that you actually CAN change gender, and in pushing pro-Trans propaganda relentlessly on our children, and then making it easy for them to make permanent bad decisions.
That, and of course cohering in violent mobs. There is nothing Liberal about that.
Kudos to Rowling for sticking to her guns in what truly is a cultural war.
Biological sex is distinct from gender. In the 90s, we knew this. We understood that biological sex is a fixed characteristic, though gender could be mutable (there have been two-spirit people around for ages). Now, too many people want to pretend that biological sex is mutable, but gender is fixed. You're a girl who wears your hair short and likes watching war movies and playing with toy trucks? You're actually a boy. Today's gender wars are the stupidest thing I have ever seen. And I'm not that young.
I've been reading biologists trying to claim that even biological sex is mutable.
Obviously, if people want to say that little boys don't need to act a certain way and little girls another, that's fine and it's true. Much of our expectations comes from acculturation.
But at the same time, praising little girls who reach for trucks and little boys who reach for dolls is also acculturation; and I would wonder if the little boy you made into a little girl by praising "girl" behaviors and ignoring or even punishing "boy" behaviors is HAPPIER.
Boys and girls really do have observative differences from the earliest ages. They are not major, but small things over time tend to become large things. Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking.
Would society benefit from emphasizing empathy more in boys, and assertiveness and physical courage in women? Probably. But that's not really what we are discussing, is it?
You can wish you were born another gender, but that doesn't mean you are. Same with race. Seems like it would be better to work on accepting what you are than trying to medically alter it.
Good point. I think the phrase was originally intended to mean in this world you can be anything you want to be but has been expanded to the world of imagination. So now for some the imaginary world is conflate with the real world.
"Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking," is that across cultures, or in just one culture? I have a hard time believing that a girl liking dolls is biological.
The research I know of was done, I believe, in the United States and the UK.
But have you not observed differences between men and women all your life in how they process the world? Women are born more social. And their brains have more connections between the hemispheres, which makes them better at multi-tasking, which is useful for mothers.
I can't for the life of me see why this would not be cross cultural. Men dominate in nearly every society the world over, and if, as I believe, matriarchal culture predominated for some time in our prehistory, that simply means that the boys were taught to respect the feminine more than they are now. They were still doing the hunting and heavy lifting.
And of course it is interesting to speculate on the psychosocial effects of female political dominance, but I'm not going to do that here today.
"Women are born more social." See, that's the kind of thing I mean. I need evidence for that. I just don't buy it. Maybe it's because I'm not social. Traditional gender roles like liking heels and lipstick are not biological any more than actual biological sex is mutable. In hunter-gatherer societies, it did make more sense for men to do the hunting because they were biologically stronger, yes. Women did the gathering and hunting small game and contributed to the food supply that way. I'll give you that. But the relative value placed on hunting vs. gathering varied widely across pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies.
Male and female brains literally have small differences, such as the density of the Corpus Callosum, and the relative sizes of different parts.
And estrogen obviously has an effect, as does testosterone. These differences are not HUGE, and differing cultures can wind up with a very very wide range of acceptable ways of behaving based on these biological differences. But they are real, and left to themselves do tend to cause nearly all cultures to view the male/female distinction as a primary difference from which many others derive, like sun and moon.
To my mind, scoping out the exact differences is not that interesting, and any more that's probably not research you can even do, any more than you could look into the possibility that many homosexuals were sexually traumatized and that that likely has something to do with it.
What I have wondered is instead of immediately transitioning effeminate males to females by giving them estrogen, surgery, etc, and masculine female to males by giving them testosterone, surgery, etc., why not start by giving testosterone to effeminate presenting males and estrogen to masculine presenting females along with psychological counseling first and see if that is effective.
I was maybe being more than a little sarcastic in my post. I'm sure the issue is more complex. But it seems like many, including a majority of the medical community, are willing to immediately implement extreme interventions for anyone questioning their gender identity.
These are fair points. For many years, life scientists and social scientists have been trying to figure out to what extent biology impacts social organization and gender roles, so we're probably not going to do that in the comments section. I'm sure you're right that it's not zero.
If you're a dude and want to dress like a lady or vice versa, that's your business.
And certainly condescending sexism in both directions needs to be done away with.
Those saying none of this is written in stone are certainly right. But they go too far when they start saying not only that it IS written in stone, but that their side is the only correct perspective. Nobody should be "cancelled" for publicly affirming what 99% of the worlds population (on the low side) believes today, which is that gender is biological. That is nuts.
What boys should do and how they should behave, and what girls should do and how they should behave. those are debateable questions, and many many good answers are possible.
I think the current idea of gender is a relative modern invention and has become divorced from biological sex in the sense of male and female (XX or XY chromosomes) which are obviously immutable from conception on.
And the medical profession knows this and is not speaking for fear of whatever, not that I think everyone has to come out with personal confessions. But in their practices they know and should be having truthful conversations with patients and with their families, friends, neighbors, anyone who asks their educated opinions.
Big money in trans surgeries. In my community the largest hospital in the state is preparing for it. They are asking for a 130 million dollar surgery building. Vermont.
I like to read diaries of the westerners who first moved into the former U.S. Western frontier. Original sources are the way to go. Learned that in high school history with De Toqueville's "Democracy in America," bless Mr. Rizos' heart. His humane, funny, informed rationalism outlives him in his many former students.
Learning in those diaries about the many Native American cultures exposed me to values uninfluenced by European and Middle Eastern history. Most Native American cultures were sexually modest, a few libertine. Virtually all had a role for those rare few, mostly men but occasionally women, who chose to present and live socially as the opposite sex. This convinced me trans identity is normal and valid even if rare, that it is more fundamental than being a liberal right of freedom, that describing it as a mental illness is unnecessary. Not clear whether it was related to homosexuality, which was not described. Maybe a taboo on the part of the diarists.
Yet Native Americans did not imagine such men were actually women. They were what they were, something different and unique. I never found any evidence that female warriors were permitted in male-only spaces like kivas. Men presenting as women may have been in female meal preparation areas but there would be no need for them to isolate for menstruation or childbirth.
Current archeology is strongly influenced by woke ideology and the subject is invisible, or questioned without supporting data. It would be fascinating for this subject to be explored by an unbiased researcher. The population of Native Americans was high enough that rare atypical behaviors would be apparent. Not so sure about other stone age groups, with lower populations, in South America and Africa. Wonder about the Aborigines.
>>They were what they were, something different and unique>>
On the Indian subcontinent, hijras are recognized as a third gender, neither male nor female. India, Nepal, and Bangladesh have all officially recognized third-gender hijras as citizens deserving of equal rights.
Wikipedia is unreliable and I don't find much else that is specific with a cursory search, but the category seems to have arisen from hermaphrodites, an ambiguous sex before chromosomes could be determined. Most hijras, though, seem to be male with their genitalia removed to make them eunuchs.
There is certainly a history in both East and West of converting males to eunuchs by removing at least the testicles before puberty. That was a unique gender role, eternal, adult prepubescence, although the testicles meant the individual's sex was male. Having internal gonads, it would be harder to make a female eunuch. It certainly is analogous to some of what is chosen now.
There's a book about and containing letters of Ethyl Waxham, called "Lady's Choice" that you would probably enjoy. She graduated from Wellesley in 1905 but then took a position teaching in a one room school house in a remote part of Wyoming and ultimately married a rancher nearby whom she corresponded with for a number of years. She's an excellent writer of letters and her life was very interesting. I bought a copy of it for my wife when we were visiting the museum shop at Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I haven't seen it elsewhere but it's probably available on line. We were reading the book to each other while driving from Washington State to North Carolina and back - through some of the country she was talking about.
We woke up this morning and there was 1/8th of an inch of "snow" on the grass outside. Nothing on the roads. They closed the schools to be safe. One of the remarkable things we kept noticing in the Waxham book was how they would routinely get on a horse and go through 3-4 foot drifts for miles off some beaten path just to say, "Hi" to someone they hadn't seen in a while. People today have no idea what they could be capable of.
The Trans community wants to portray historical females who "passed" as males for reasons having nothing to do with their gender identity as really being "trans men".
Wouldn’t it be better for Megan Phelps Roper to interview you Barry? You seem to have a better understanding in one post, then I’m sure we will pick up from the interview with JK. You cannot change your gender it’s as simple as that. If you born a woman that’s what you are the same for a man. If you just take interaction on this site, I’m sure 95% of people will agree with you. We need to stand up and stand together that this above all else is just demonic and has absolutely no place in our societies. I think what will be a big game changer is if any new administration cuts the federal $$$, the change will be instantaneous.
LOL. I am certainly ready with opinions, but am not myself so delusional as to think many people want or need them.
I have been calling J.K. Rowling Joanne Rowling for some time--and I am the only person I know doing this consistently--because that is her name. As I understand the story, the J.K. was intended to mask the fact that she was a woman, since the nerd world is largely dominated by male nerds.
So the very fact of how she is called provides some cause for feminist complaints of the valid sort.
For my part, I have high trust in her intelligence, courage and forthrightness, and anticipate an interesting interview. This is a huge win both for this interviewer and this website, and I am gratified to see that.
It's not that I am strongly opposed to gays but, I am furious about the LBGTQ political agenda that intentionally infiltrations this small. They have orchestrated very destructive divisions in this vulnerable state because of our size. Pop 600,000. VT now has more LGBTQ residents than another other state. Our small state ought to be federally protected from the abusiveness of incoming radicals with political agendas.
Parents can now register on a new-born's birth certificate that they are of no gender.
When you elected Bernie your senator many years ago, the state was set up for the consequences to set in. Reap what you sow - and maybe move to another state.
WE did not put Bernie in office. Bernie won his first campaign by one or two votes. Progressives saw that as an opportunity and moved in to conquer. Over the years they have had a lot of losses. But, they have a VERY firm grip now. It's tragic.
To my mind the issue is simple: it is possible to have a same sex attraction and be mentally normal. It is possible to have a fulfilling sexual encounter with someone of the same gender .
It is not possible to CHANGE your gender. Period. Full Stop. There is no second option.
It is possible to change your gender PRESENTATION even to the point where your external genitalia are changed and your internal hormonal environment artificially altered (in what are likely profoundly unhealthy and life shortening ways), but you CANNOT CHANGE YOUR GENDER. Unless you are a hermaphrodite, you are born XX or XY. That is one of the most basic postulates of Biology, even if even that field is getting corrupted by politics.
So claiming that you can change your gender is delusional. Nuts. Insane. And demanding that others join you in that delusional belief is abusive and fascistic.
And as she said, Feminism has no meaning if anyone can be a woman any time they choose, even if they were born with a penis.
The whole Trans agenda is nuts, and I honestly think the people funding and driving all this have it as their intention breaking and shaking any remaining social cohesion we had to smithereens.
And to be clear, there have always been, in all cultures, people who identified as other than their birth gender. In some times and places they were punished severely, and in others accepted and even given a name that amounted to Other (as in Male, Female and Other). There is nothing wrong with being different in this way.
What is wrong is claiming that you actually CAN change gender, and in pushing pro-Trans propaganda relentlessly on our children, and then making it easy for them to make permanent bad decisions.
That, and of course cohering in violent mobs. There is nothing Liberal about that.
Kudos to Rowling for sticking to her guns in what truly is a cultural war.
Biological sex is distinct from gender. In the 90s, we knew this. We understood that biological sex is a fixed characteristic, though gender could be mutable (there have been two-spirit people around for ages). Now, too many people want to pretend that biological sex is mutable, but gender is fixed. You're a girl who wears your hair short and likes watching war movies and playing with toy trucks? You're actually a boy. Today's gender wars are the stupidest thing I have ever seen. And I'm not that young.
I've been reading biologists trying to claim that even biological sex is mutable.
Obviously, if people want to say that little boys don't need to act a certain way and little girls another, that's fine and it's true. Much of our expectations comes from acculturation.
But at the same time, praising little girls who reach for trucks and little boys who reach for dolls is also acculturation; and I would wonder if the little boy you made into a little girl by praising "girl" behaviors and ignoring or even punishing "boy" behaviors is HAPPIER.
Boys and girls really do have observative differences from the earliest ages. They are not major, but small things over time tend to become large things. Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking.
Would society benefit from emphasizing empathy more in boys, and assertiveness and physical courage in women? Probably. But that's not really what we are discussing, is it?
You can wish you were born another gender, but that doesn't mean you are. Same with race. Seems like it would be better to work on accepting what you are than trying to medically alter it.
I think.much of it is a parent or parents with baggage of various types putting their thumb on the scale.
That and/or taking "You can be whatever you want to be" to the extreme.
Good point. I think the phrase was originally intended to mean in this world you can be anything you want to be but has been expanded to the world of imagination. So now for some the imaginary world is conflate with the real world.
"Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking," is that across cultures, or in just one culture? I have a hard time believing that a girl liking dolls is biological.
You MUST watch Jordan Petersen's 2-hour interview of Chloe Cole. You must.
It is biological & not only across cultures, across species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3MzPeomqs&ab_channel=JordanBPeterson
The research I know of was done, I believe, in the United States and the UK.
But have you not observed differences between men and women all your life in how they process the world? Women are born more social. And their brains have more connections between the hemispheres, which makes them better at multi-tasking, which is useful for mothers.
I can't for the life of me see why this would not be cross cultural. Men dominate in nearly every society the world over, and if, as I believe, matriarchal culture predominated for some time in our prehistory, that simply means that the boys were taught to respect the feminine more than they are now. They were still doing the hunting and heavy lifting.
And of course it is interesting to speculate on the psychosocial effects of female political dominance, but I'm not going to do that here today.
"Women are born more social." See, that's the kind of thing I mean. I need evidence for that. I just don't buy it. Maybe it's because I'm not social. Traditional gender roles like liking heels and lipstick are not biological any more than actual biological sex is mutable. In hunter-gatherer societies, it did make more sense for men to do the hunting because they were biologically stronger, yes. Women did the gathering and hunting small game and contributed to the food supply that way. I'll give you that. But the relative value placed on hunting vs. gathering varied widely across pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies.
Male and female brains literally have small differences, such as the density of the Corpus Callosum, and the relative sizes of different parts.
And estrogen obviously has an effect, as does testosterone. These differences are not HUGE, and differing cultures can wind up with a very very wide range of acceptable ways of behaving based on these biological differences. But they are real, and left to themselves do tend to cause nearly all cultures to view the male/female distinction as a primary difference from which many others derive, like sun and moon.
To my mind, scoping out the exact differences is not that interesting, and any more that's probably not research you can even do, any more than you could look into the possibility that many homosexuals were sexually traumatized and that that likely has something to do with it.
What I have wondered is instead of immediately transitioning effeminate males to females by giving them estrogen, surgery, etc, and masculine female to males by giving them testosterone, surgery, etc., why not start by giving testosterone to effeminate presenting males and estrogen to masculine presenting females along with psychological counseling first and see if that is effective.
Bruce Jenner was hardly effeminate. All options should be on the table but I think this is more compkex than that.
I was maybe being more than a little sarcastic in my post. I'm sure the issue is more complex. But it seems like many, including a majority of the medical community, are willing to immediately implement extreme interventions for anyone questioning their gender identity.
Fair enough. Whatever it is, it is not responsible and ethically accountable scientific professionalism.
These are fair points. For many years, life scientists and social scientists have been trying to figure out to what extent biology impacts social organization and gender roles, so we're probably not going to do that in the comments section. I'm sure you're right that it's not zero.
If you're a dude and want to dress like a lady or vice versa, that's your business.
And certainly condescending sexism in both directions needs to be done away with.
Those saying none of this is written in stone are certainly right. But they go too far when they start saying not only that it IS written in stone, but that their side is the only correct perspective. Nobody should be "cancelled" for publicly affirming what 99% of the worlds population (on the low side) believes today, which is that gender is biological. That is nuts.
What boys should do and how they should behave, and what girls should do and how they should behave. those are debateable questions, and many many good answers are possible.
Camille Paglia, an old-school feminist that I have a lot of respect for, has said, "If women ran the world, we'd all still be living in grass huts."
I think the current idea of gender is a relative modern invention and has become divorced from biological sex in the sense of male and female (XX or XY chromosomes) which are obviously immutable from conception on.
And the medical profession knows this and is not speaking for fear of whatever, not that I think everyone has to come out with personal confessions. But in their practices they know and should be having truthful conversations with patients and with their families, friends, neighbors, anyone who asks their educated opinions.
Big money in trans surgeries. In my community the largest hospital in the state is preparing for it. They are asking for a 130 million dollar surgery building. Vermont.
Exactly. You have voiced my opinion entirely.
I like to read diaries of the westerners who first moved into the former U.S. Western frontier. Original sources are the way to go. Learned that in high school history with De Toqueville's "Democracy in America," bless Mr. Rizos' heart. His humane, funny, informed rationalism outlives him in his many former students.
Learning in those diaries about the many Native American cultures exposed me to values uninfluenced by European and Middle Eastern history. Most Native American cultures were sexually modest, a few libertine. Virtually all had a role for those rare few, mostly men but occasionally women, who chose to present and live socially as the opposite sex. This convinced me trans identity is normal and valid even if rare, that it is more fundamental than being a liberal right of freedom, that describing it as a mental illness is unnecessary. Not clear whether it was related to homosexuality, which was not described. Maybe a taboo on the part of the diarists.
Yet Native Americans did not imagine such men were actually women. They were what they were, something different and unique. I never found any evidence that female warriors were permitted in male-only spaces like kivas. Men presenting as women may have been in female meal preparation areas but there would be no need for them to isolate for menstruation or childbirth.
Current archeology is strongly influenced by woke ideology and the subject is invisible, or questioned without supporting data. It would be fascinating for this subject to be explored by an unbiased researcher. The population of Native Americans was high enough that rare atypical behaviors would be apparent. Not so sure about other stone age groups, with lower populations, in South America and Africa. Wonder about the Aborigines.
>>They were what they were, something different and unique>>
On the Indian subcontinent, hijras are recognized as a third gender, neither male nor female. India, Nepal, and Bangladesh have all officially recognized third-gender hijras as citizens deserving of equal rights.
How fascinating. I had never heard of this.
Wikipedia is unreliable and I don't find much else that is specific with a cursory search, but the category seems to have arisen from hermaphrodites, an ambiguous sex before chromosomes could be determined. Most hijras, though, seem to be male with their genitalia removed to make them eunuchs.
There is certainly a history in both East and West of converting males to eunuchs by removing at least the testicles before puberty. That was a unique gender role, eternal, adult prepubescence, although the testicles meant the individual's sex was male. Having internal gonads, it would be harder to make a female eunuch. It certainly is analogous to some of what is chosen now.
Thanks for sharing this.
Here's a good summary:
https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/gender/third-gender-and-hijras
There's a book about and containing letters of Ethyl Waxham, called "Lady's Choice" that you would probably enjoy. She graduated from Wellesley in 1905 but then took a position teaching in a one room school house in a remote part of Wyoming and ultimately married a rancher nearby whom she corresponded with for a number of years. She's an excellent writer of letters and her life was very interesting. I bought a copy of it for my wife when we were visiting the museum shop at Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I haven't seen it elsewhere but it's probably available on line. We were reading the book to each other while driving from Washington State to North Carolina and back - through some of the country she was talking about.
Thanks for the info!
Cool, thanks so much! I found it on archive.org. (The paperback is pricey online!)
We woke up this morning and there was 1/8th of an inch of "snow" on the grass outside. Nothing on the roads. They closed the schools to be safe. One of the remarkable things we kept noticing in the Waxham book was how they would routinely get on a horse and go through 3-4 foot drifts for miles off some beaten path just to say, "Hi" to someone they hadn't seen in a while. People today have no idea what they could be capable of.
The Trans community wants to portray historical females who "passed" as males for reasons having nothing to do with their gender identity as really being "trans men".
Wouldn’t it be better for Megan Phelps Roper to interview you Barry? You seem to have a better understanding in one post, then I’m sure we will pick up from the interview with JK. You cannot change your gender it’s as simple as that. If you born a woman that’s what you are the same for a man. If you just take interaction on this site, I’m sure 95% of people will agree with you. We need to stand up and stand together that this above all else is just demonic and has absolutely no place in our societies. I think what will be a big game changer is if any new administration cuts the federal $$$, the change will be instantaneous.
LOL. I am certainly ready with opinions, but am not myself so delusional as to think many people want or need them.
I have been calling J.K. Rowling Joanne Rowling for some time--and I am the only person I know doing this consistently--because that is her name. As I understand the story, the J.K. was intended to mask the fact that she was a woman, since the nerd world is largely dominated by male nerds.
So the very fact of how she is called provides some cause for feminist complaints of the valid sort.
For my part, I have high trust in her intelligence, courage and forthrightness, and anticipate an interesting interview. This is a huge win both for this interviewer and this website, and I am gratified to see that.
Boycott Vermont.
It's not that I am strongly opposed to gays but, I am furious about the LBGTQ political agenda that intentionally infiltrations this small. They have orchestrated very destructive divisions in this vulnerable state because of our size. Pop 600,000. VT now has more LGBTQ residents than another other state. Our small state ought to be federally protected from the abusiveness of incoming radicals with political agendas.
Parents can now register on a new-born's birth certificate that they are of no gender.
Please join this protest.
Boycott Vermont and make it known why.
When you elected Bernie your senator many years ago, the state was set up for the consequences to set in. Reap what you sow - and maybe move to another state.
WE did not put Bernie in office. Bernie won his first campaign by one or two votes. Progressives saw that as an opportunity and moved in to conquer. Over the years they have had a lot of losses. But, they have a VERY firm grip now. It's tragic.
Bernie ran for governor in VT and did not win.
And what does that tell you about the people - including the Democrat administration and medical community - which tells you otherwise?
Money and power are strong aphrodisiacs to whomever...
That they've lost their minds.
To my mind, after COVID anything is possible. And anyone who failed to grasp the obvious lesson from COVID--that the System is corrupt--is an idiot.
But yes, they are paying biologists to make one of the simplest ideas in biology convoluted and ambiguous. AND SOME OF THEM ARE DOING IT.