Transgender People Are Seeking Acceptance in the Wrong Way

By Editor |

Monday, July 5, 2021

The public image of transgender people is that of a sad group of people who feel stuck in the wrong bodies.  They are often victimized by their communities, and even murdered.  All of that is true.  But there is another side to transgender people which inspires less sympathy.  In this article I take a closer look at that side and explain why they are working against their own best interests.

Transgender Ideology and Its Obnoxious Gaslighting

Trans people have developed an entire ideology which is designed to justify their existence.  I’m not saying that they need to justify their existence, but that is apparently how they feel given that their ideology has no other discernible purpose.

At the center of this philosophy is their redefinition of the word “gender”.  “Gender” is a multi-purpose word which refers to any of the many differences between men and women.  At its most basic level, it means the gender of a person’s sexual reproductive system.  Thus, a person who has a penis, XY chromosomes, and other manifestations of maleness, is “gender male”, while a person who has a vagina, XX chromosomes, and other manifestations of femaleness, is “gender female”.  Trans activists are trying to erase this basic definition, despite its being a definition that people have used for thousands of years.  Activists say that the word “gender” should refer only to a person’s "gender identity" (i.e., to how the person feels about himself).

In other words, I am a man, not because I have a male body, but because I feel like a man.  The problem is that I don’t have a particularly strong gender identity.  For all my life I have said that if I had been born a woman, I would have adjusted to that.  Personally, I resent having people with gender dysphoria telling me what it is that makes me a man.  Trans people may have strong gender identities, but that doesn’t mean that everyone does.

This is the logic:  If a man feels like a woman, his gender identity is “female”, and that makes him an actual woman (!).  Most people know that such reasoning is absurd—you can’t be a woman if you have a male body.  It’s one thing for a man to act like a woman out of some inner compulsion, but it is something else for him to pretend to be a real woman.  So this redefinition of the word “gender” is entirely self-serving; it allows trans people to pretend that they are normal men and women, and therefore no different from anyone else.

The truth is that all manifestations of gender, both primary, secondary and social, emanate from the body.  Over the centuries, secondary sexual characteristics have arisen from our primary gender (our physical sex).  Those secondary characteristics would never have evolved if we didn't have a primary gender.  Ultimately, everything relates back to our sex as expressed by our bodies.  So, the traditional definitions—that a man is a person with a male reproductive system, and a woman is a person with a female reproductive system—are still the most logical.

For several years, an obnoxious test of liberality was being circulated.  It went like this:  Do you agree with the statement “A trans woman is a woman”?  That statement is a form of obfuscation, or what people today are calling "gaslighting".  It is an attempt to expand the definition of the word “woman” to include transgender women.  If you agree, then you pass the test.  If you disagree, then be prepared for the gates of Cancel Culture Hell to open up and swallow you whole.  Transgender activists and their supporters are very unforgiving if you don't accept all of their ideas.

The answer to “A trans woman is a woman” is “A trans woman is a trans woman” or “A trans woman is a man who feels like a woman, or thinks he does”.

Questionable Science

The idea that the word “gender” really means “gender identity” is being called “science” by trans activists, but really it is a semantic change.  (Redefining a word is semantics, not science.)  Nonetheless, there is ongoing research on the brains of transgender people, and the researchers say that they are finding similarities between the brains of transgender women and real women (maybe true, maybe not).  This leads to the idea of male and female brains.  Even if it is true that there are male and female brains (the implication being that a man can have a female brain, and vice versa), that doesn’t explain why a person’s gender should be determined by his or her brain type rather than reproductive system.  To examine a living person’s brain requires an MRI or CAT scan.  But with all the obvious gender markers to be found in the human body, it makes more sense to simply examine a person’s body to determine his or her gender.

But examination isn’t what trans people are after.  They want us to accept that their feelings—i.e., their gender identity—are adequate proof of their brain type.  This puts us in an endless loop of irrefutable evidence:  Their feelings determine their brain type, and their brain type determines their feelings (no other facts need apply).

Human beings are, first and foremost, physical creatures, so the gender of the body should be the thing that determines one’s overall gender.  That is the standard that biologists use for animals, and, whether we like it or not, human beings are animals.  And if it means that you are a man who feels like a woman, or vice versa, then that is simply what you are.

Women’s Single-Sex Spaces

Transgender women (meaning men who want to be women) are moving into women’s single-sex spaces, and that is causing resentment among some women.  By “single-sex spaces” I mean women’s rest rooms, women’s changing rooms, women’s locker rooms and spas, women’s sports, women’s dormitories, women’s shelters and women’s prisons.

I have read that, in Europe, where transgender women have the right to use women’s rest rooms, real women are avoiding public rest rooms in large numbers.  (Note that in Europe, a trans woman doesn't have to look like a woman.)  If transgender activists get their way, real women will be put in the position of having to look at male bodies in any place where women change or live as a group.  Only a minority of transgender women are having sex-change operations, which means that most trans women still have male genitalia.  That is already happening with Lia Thomas, a trans woman swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, who reportedly shows off her male genitals proudly in the women's locker room.

In Canada, there is a man who claims to identify as a woman but has a male body.  He has repeatedly exposed himself to women while staying at a women’s shelter in Vancouver, British Columbia.  The shelter refuses to kick him out because, as a transgender woman, that would be “transphobic”.  But it is obvious that he is a misogynistic man, not a trans woman.

Similarly, in California, there is a man who claims to be a woman who walks around naked at a women’s spa in front of both women and girls.  The spa feels that its hands are tied because the law says they must treat customers according to their gender identity and not their actual gender.  When women confront him, he becomes abusive.  He is yet another misogynistic man who is pretending to be a trans woman.

There have also been instances of rapists pretending to be women so they can be incarcerated in women’s prisons, where life is easier and where there are women available to rape.  It doesn't take much to imagine what a male rapist might do while incarcerated with women.

Transgender activists dismiss such stories as unlikely or rare because most transgender women want to fit into women’s groups, but given the amount of misogyny to be found among men, instances of hostile behavior on the part of men masquerading as women are not so surprising.  Such incidents can be expected to increase.

Trans Women in Women’s Sports

Women’s sports are a special circumstance.  Although it is true that taking estrogen (the female hormone) will make a man weaker, transgender women, on average, are still stronger than natural women.  In fact, taking estrogen for just a year will not weaken most men to the point where their strength is similar to a woman's.  For that to happen, they may need to take estrogen for five years or more.  And yet, many sports organizations are letting men compete as women after just one year of estrogen treatment.

Even with estrogen, men as a group (and therefore transgender women) have all of the following advantages over natural women:

* they are taller
* they have greater body mass
* they have longer legs
* they have longer and thicker muscles
* they have thicker and stronger bones
* they can reach farther
* they have larger hands and stronger grips
* they have larger hearts that pump more blood
* they have larger lungs that take in more air
* they have narrower hips (which gives them an advantage when running)

Because of these advantages, many women are upset at the prospect of having transgender women in their sports.  If nothing else, it would destroy the level playing field of women’s sports, and it would mean that biological men would be the victors of many women’s competitions and contests.  It would pretty much destroy women’s sports as a legitimate activity and profession.

It should be pointed out that many transgender "women" are not taking hormones these days, either because of the costs or because they are hedging their bets that they will want to remain trans women.  This means that many trans women are, in fact, still men in all respects, with all of men's strength and power.

Even though they are biological males, transgender women don’t want to play with the men for obvious reasons:  First, transgender women are weaker than men because they take (or should be taking) estrogen.  Being weaker than the men would make it hard or impossible for them to win any competitions.  Second, playing with the men would be an embarrassing admission that they are men too.  So transgender women choose to play with the women, among whom they have clear competitive advantages.  But is a win by a woman with a male body really a win by a woman?

Six-foot-one swimmer Lia Thomas is, in this author's opinion, living proof that men retain many of their male advantages when they become trans women.  Thomas is large and looks like a man.  When you see him standing on the winner's platform next to the runners-up, his advantages become obvious.  Thomas is so obviously a male that I refuse to refer to him with female pronouns.

It needs to be remembered that transgender women have chosen to transition from being male; if that makes them unsuitable to play competitive sports, they must take responsibility for that and not expect women to bear the brunt of their decision.

A trans woman journalist in England named Diana Thomas believes that trans women should stay out of women’s sports altogether because it hurts their cause as transgender people.  She has also pointed out that in contact sports, such as soccer, a collision between a large transgender woman and a small natural woman could result in significant injury to the smaller woman.  Keep in mind that women can be as light as 100 lbs., whereas a man in athletic shape may be 180 lbs. or more—that's a huge difference.  Even a difference of 40 lbs. would be significant.  Trans women and natural women are essentially “apples and oranges”.  Their abilities are just too different for them to compete against each other.

Small men suffer some of the same disadvantages that women do, but that’s not the point.  In order for women to have any chance at all of winning their sports competitions, they must be segregated from men.  Some sports are divided up into weight classes, so a short man can find a niche.  The bottom line is, why should women as a class have to accept “women” into their sports who have so many advantages?  The answer is, they shouldn’t, because trans women are not actually women.

Diana Thomas has suggested that young trans women could put off transitioning in order to play sports in their youth.  The problem there is that many trans people feel that living as the wrong sex is a kind of existential torture which they can’t endure, so postponing transitioning is unacceptable to them.  (Apparently, waiting wasn’t too much torture for Diana Thomas, who transitioned in late middle-age.)

Women are a disadvantaged group in society.  A hundred and twenty years ago, with only a few exceptions, women did not participate in competitive sports at all.  Women had to fight for their rights in this area, and it is hardly fair that they should now have to welcome men into their competitions, even if those men have weakened themselves with estrogen.

Note:  Because of space limitations, I am not listing all the instances in which trans women have exhibited an unfair advantage when competing against real women.  I know of a dozen such instances, and there are probably more.  So far it is mostly happening in swimming, track & field, cycling and weight-lifting.

Gender Speak

Transgender people have devised their own vocabulary which they expect people to use when talking about them.  I have dubbed this “Gender Speak”.  I agree that [legitimate] trans women should be referred to as “she” and “her” in their presence, and trans men should be referred to as “he” and “him” in their presence, if for no other reason than to be polite.  (By “legitimate”, I mean people who are taking hormones and haven't just jumped on the trans bandwagon.)  But there are no other words in their lexicon which are really necessary.  “Cis men” can be referred to as “actual men”, “natural men”, “natal men” or “biological men”.  I refuse to say that doctors “assign” babies their gender at birth, because doctors merely note the gender of the baby’s genitalia.  I won’t refer to sex-change operations as “gender-affirming surgeries” because that gives the impression that they are simple palliative measures, when in fact they are radical procedures that often result in sterility.  I won’t use the words “binary” and “nonbinary” because everyone, transgender or not, is either male or female or a combination of the two, so we are all “binary”.  I certainly won’t refer to single individuals as “they” or “them” because it is confusing and illiterate.

Like much of transgender ideology, Gender Speak impinges upon women more than men.  Trans activists would have us believe that it is insulting to speak of “pregnant women” because that doesn't include transgender men who are still able to get pregnant.  Transgender activists are telling us to say “pregnant people”.  But of course, transgender men aren't actually men; they are women who feel like men (or think they do).  The truth is that only women become pregnant.  If you can become pregnant, you're a woman.

As you can see, the conceit that transgender men are actual men, and transgender women are actual women, is one of the reasons Gender Speak is so disruptive.  Gender Speak has those falsehoods built right into it in order to make transgender people feel good about themselves.  But those falsehoods are taking us away from reality and science.  With conservative Republicans denying reality on many levels, our nation can't afford to have liberals denying reality too.

The word “transphobic” is particularly obnoxious.  It is being applied to any person who doesn't accept and parody all of the elements of transgender ideology, or who refuses to use Gender Speak.  Many people might consider me to be transphobic because of the things I am saying here, but all of my opinions are perfectly rational.

In 2016, a female teacher in Oregon decided that she was “nonbinary” and that she wanted to be referred to as “they” instead of “she”.  (She had a double-mastectomy, so this was a conversion of convenience.)  Most of the other teachers tried to accommodate her, but a few of them didn’t, so she sued the school and won $60,000 for her hurt feelings.  So if you think that Gender Speak is something you don’t have  to worry about, you might be wrong.

I rather doubt that I am the only person who resents being told how to speak.

Influence on Children

Transgender people are vocal defenders of the idea that children should be able to transition to the opposite gender.  They don’t seem concerned that a child may not have the maturity to make such a decision, or that a child should not be making that decision for the adult still to come.  Nor do they consider that children are impressionable and may be influenced by the media and their peers.  (Actually, it isn’t just the media and their peers who are influencing children.  In some liberal communities, the schools are telling children that they are free to choose their gender, which is absolute and total nonsense.  The stupidity of some liberals is astonishing.)

Children are receiving many messages these days:  that there are many genders to choose from (there are only two); that transitioning to the opposite gender is possible (only the appearance of the opposite gender can be achieved); that transitioning is easy and simple (it is a long and arduous process that makes the transitioner a lifelong medical patient).  Children are being told by trans activists “if you are questioning your gender, that means you are trans”.  That is also false.  It is not unusual for children to question why they were born the gender they are, and it is not unusual to wonder what it would be like to be the opposite gender.  Given that children are new human beings who are just starting their lives, it makes sense that they should have such thoughts.

Although some children may actually have gender dysphoria, the likelihood is that the majority of children who question their gender have other reasons for doing so.  Many girls are able to see that boys and men are more privileged in our society, and they may get the idea that if they transition to being a boy, their lives will be easier.  Many young people who transition and then “detransition” say that they were lonely or felt that their relationships would improve, or they had other problems that might have been helped by counselling.  Society places tremendous pressure on girls and women to be beautiful, a consequence of which is that many girls dislike their own bodies.  Transitioning to a boy may seem like a solution to their "body dysphoria".

The bottom line is that no person should attempt to transition to the opposite gender unless he or she has true gender dysphoria.  Any person who transitions who does not have gender dysphoria will likely become a detransitioner—and by then, the person may be impotent or have other permanent physical damage.

In the mean time, transgender activists and sympathetic health professionals continue to encourage children to transition, and a lot of children are being harmed.  Although I am a liberal on most topics, I support the belief that children should not be able to take puberty-blockers or hormones, or to have surgeries designed to approximate the appearance of the other sex.  Children should grow up normally and allow the natural processes of childhood to occur.

It needs to be said that being “trans” is not the happiest life.  A trans person is neither wholly male nor female, so a trans person may have identity issues all of his or her life.  Being trans also requires a lifetime of taking  hormones and having surgeries.  I believe that, if given half a chance, most children will outgrow their “trans” phase and become happy with their natural sex.  It is because of this, and also because a child does not have the right to make life decisions for the adult yet to come, that I believe that all transitioning treatments should be available only to adults eighteen years of age or over.  If a child is indeed truly transgender, he or she will have a lifetime as an adult to make the change.

For the reasons given, responsible parents will never encourage their children to transition.  Astonishingly, there are some liberal parents who like the idea of having a trans child, probably because it makes the child “special” and gives the parents a “project” to work on.  Transgenderism is trendy right now.

If you are a parent, and your child expresses transgender feelings, the best course of action is to gently encourage your child to identify with his or her birth sex.  Tell him or her, “Transitioning is a difficult life-long project.  If, when you get older,  you still want to transition, you can do it as an adult.”  Hopefully, your child will outgrow his or her transgender feelings and grow up to be a normal person who feels comfortable with himself.

The transgender poet Diana Goetsch has railed against doctors who won’t give transgender people all the treatments they want, but rather insist that trans people go through counseling to make sure they are truly transgender.  She calls such doctors “gatekeepers”.  But it makes perfect sense that doctors should proceed cautiously, especially in the case of children.  Instead, the opposite is happening.  Many health-care professionals automatically support the desire of their patients to transition, and don't bother to examine their motives.  The result is large numbers of young people who end up regretting the damage they have done to themselves.  Sadly, Planned Parenthood is actively involved in this process of helping young people to "transition" without receiving adequate counselling.

An English trans woman by the name of Debbie Hayton has made the point that many children—including perfectly normal children—are confused about their gender, and that struggling with those issues is part of the growth process.  If we tell every girl who is a tomboy, or every boy who likes dresses or dolls, that he or she is transgender, we are giving them ready-made answers to complex issues that might best be resolved in other ways.  Hayton herself said that when she was a three-year-old boy, she wanted to be a girl, but she is nonetheless glad that transitioning was not an option at that age.  She would have lost out on being a father, which turned out to be an important part of her life.  Most tomboys grow up to be normal women.

Cancel Culture

The transgender issue has become entwined with something called “cancel culture”.  “Cancel culture” refers to people who shame others for not being sufficiently compassionate or liberal or politically correct, although sometimes the most compassionate position is not the one which seems the most compassionate.  On the internet, I have been called a “hater” and a “bigot” for saying that our sexual reproductive system determines our gender, for saying that it is impossible to change genders, and for refusing to use Gender Speak, despite the fact that I believe that trans people should be protected in employment, housing and public accommodations.

The people who call me names are transgender people themselves, their friends and family members.  Many uninvolved people, especially liberals who don't want to seem prejudiced, also take up the banner.  The situation at some universities is particularly bad; women with feminist leanings are actively drummed out of their jobs by their own colleagues, and well-intentioned students wage campaigns against educators they feel are not adequately supportive of transgender ideas.  That the situation has gotten this bad over a social issue involving 1% of the population is quite amazing, especially since the pro-trans people have ideas that are very wrong.

Ironically, the supporters of trans people seem to be more hateful in their shaming than most trans people themselves, who seem to understand the nuances of their situation better than their supporters.  Obviously, the people who do the shaming feel threatened by views they don't like, though why the non-trans supporters should feel threatened, I don't know.  Defending the notion that any person can change his or her actual gender is nearly impossible, which is why shaming must be employed.  This shaming behavior is making transgender people and their supporters a lot of enemies.

A good example of someone that the transgender community is trying to “cancel” is J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.  Simply because Rowling doesn't agree with every aspect of transgender ideology, she has been excoriated by transgender people and their friends, and people are boycotting her books.  (Some advice to Rowling:  Don’t pull your punches.  Speak your mind openly.  They won’t like you either way.)

In October, 2021, a feminist professor in England named Kathleen Stock was drummed out of her job because she disagrees with transgender ideology.

I myself have suffered cancelling on the internet.  The Huffington Post deleted some of my comments, Medium.com blocked my IP address, and my ability to leave comments has been blocked on YouTube, Towleroad and the Washington Post, even though my comments are always rational and never vulgar.  The Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, but it would seem that “Democracy Dies at the Washington Post” is more suitable.

By cancelling the accounts of readers who make rational comments that contain no vulgarity, the Washington Post has given up any pretense of being an objective forum of ideas.  They have adopted the ideology of transgender activists without critical examination.  Those ideas and terms are highly controversial and therefore highly politicized.  Only a minority of people in the country agree with them or use the special trans vocabulary.  The Post's position is that transgender ideology is fact, and that transgender people must be shielded from opposing points of view to protect their delicate feelings (lest they commit suicide en masse).  That kind of irrational reasoning is something that we expect from Trump supporters, not from a newspaper which should be grounded in reality.  There really is a concerted effort afoot in Western society to erase people who don’t agree with transgender ideology.

And the cancellers seem to be succeeding, which I find puzzling, given that transgender people are an odd bunch (women who look like men, and men who look like boys).  I think it is their very oddness that makes people so intent on supporting them.  It would seem that their oddness serves as a cue that they need more than the usual amount of sympathy.  Consequently, people who are attracted to liberal causes, and who don't understand that human beings generally create their own problems, have glommed onto the transgender issue as the ultimate cause—because, it would seem, trans people are the ultimate victims of capricious misfortune.  Indeed, trans activists have cultivated an image of themselves as being so pitiful that when they do negative things, those negative things should be overlooked.  Not surprisingly, I don't agree.

Ironically, there is a lot of contempt on the part of trans women for natural women, even to the point where trans women have physically attacked feminists.  A natural woman is what every trans woman wants to be, and that generates jealousy because a natural woman is exactly what she can never be.

I believe that the willingness of trans women to dominate natural women in sports is a direct expression of their contempt.  If trans women truly cared about women as a group, they would support natural women, not try to displace them—but I guess that would require them to acknowledge that they aren't women themselves.

Some trans women seem to see themselves as better women than natural women.  Diana Goetsch has written about helping real women become more feminine.  Many trans women pride themselves on being sexier, more glamorous and more alluring than most real women.  But does being more feminine, sexy, glamorous and alluring make for a better woman?  To me, those qualities seem superficial.

Chase Strangio

Chase Strangio, a trans man lawyer who works for the ACLU, has become one of the more obnoxious purveyors of cancel culture.  Strangio believes in all the worst nonsense of trans ideology—that one's gender comes from one's gender identity; that trans women are real women and trans men are real men; that children should be free to change their genders on just their say-so; and that trans women should have free access to women's single-sex spaces.  But Strangio has added his/her own obnoxious ideas to the mix.  He believes that it is "transphobic" to assert (during discussions of trans issues) that trans women are biological males, or that trans men are biological females.  Indeed, he has said that trans women are biological women, which is pure nonsense of the Trumpian kind.  He also claims that it is transphobic to mention in obituaries, news stories and encyclopedia articles that a person is trans, or to give that person's "deadname" (the name that he or she used before transitioning).  He has also called for the censorship of books which oppose transgender ideology.  I am quite sure that, if he could, he would prevent me from publishing this article.  All of these anti-democratic ideas are coming from a lawyer who works for the ACLU, an organization which has opposed censorship for a century.  It is a shame to see an old and honorable organization lose its focus.

Chase Strangio has crossed the line from logic and compassion into silly pretense and destructive social engineering.  His ideas are untethered from reality.  If the ACLU were fulfilling its mission properly, it would be defending natural women—one of the most disadvantaged groups in the world—against the incursion of men into their private spaces.

Law Suits

Transgender people have brought their share of lawsuits over the years.  Bringing a law suit is, of course, every person’s right.  Unfortunately, the courts, having given gay people their rights because of their identity, now believe that transgender people should get their rights because of their identity.  But there is a difference between gays and transgender people.  When a gay man says that he is attracted to his own sex, no one can dispute it.  But when a man says that he is a woman, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.  And if his greater strength and agility negatively affect women in their single-sex spaces, then the nature of his identity becomes everyone’s business.  Judges will eventually figure this out, but not before a lot of harm is done.  The point is:  It is possible to accept transgender people into society without accepting the lie that they are real men and women.  Gay people never asked society to accept any lies.

Seeking Control

It is in the nature of human beings to seek control—control of their lives, control of their environment, etc.  Trans people have these same impulses.  Since their self-esteem depends on the acceptance of other people, it makes sense that they should seek to control as much of society as they can.  It is out of this desire that they bring law suits, demand the use of special words, force their way into women’s spaces, and try to increase their numbers by encouraging transgenderism in children.  I like the way that Blaire White, a conservative trans woman who posts on various social-media platforms, says it:  Transgender people are trying to "deconstruct society" to suit themselves.  But in their aggressive efforts to change society, trans people are stepping on many toes, and they are evolving into victimizers in their own right.  If you are a sportswoman who must compete against women who have male bodies, you have been victimized.  If you are an organization that has been sued because you won’t use some trans person’s favored pronouns, you have been victimized.  If you have been shamed by cancel culture for not being sufficiently liberal, you have been victimized.  If you are a woman who has had to look at male genitals in any of women’s privates spaces, you have been victimized.  If you are a child who is being pressured to transition, you are being victimized.

It is time for trans people to back off.  They are hurting the rest of us.

The Right Attitude

In all of the ways mentioned above, trans people are alienating sensible people.  In my opinion, they are demanding more rights than they have a right to.

If, on the other hand, transgender people had an honest attitude, I believe they would face much less resistance from society as a whole.  An honest attitude would sound something like this:  “I am a man who, for whatever reason, feels like a woman.  I would appreciate it if you would treat me as a woman so that I can live my life the way I want to” (and similarly for transgender men).  Having made a simple statement of their feelings, transgender people would then have to back off of their obnoxious behavior (which would include staying out of women's private spaces).  Unfortunately, I don’t see any trans people “coming to their senses” at this point, meaning that there is a long battle ahead.

It should be pointed out that transgender people know exactly what they are, so they have no right to criticize other people who speak honestly about them.  Only a minority of transgender people are getting sex-change operations, which means that every time your average trans woman urinates, she has to handle her penis.  Even after a sex-change operation, a trans woman must work hard to maintain herself as a woman.  Her reality is ever present on her mind.  The truth of what trans people are is an open secret, so they might as well admit it and stop hating the rest of us who don't want our world upended by 1% of the population.

~end~