thoughts on lgbt
(linked from this blurb)
feb 2024 review: this essay was first published in august 2023, and i am finally reviewing it now after a backlash from irl friends, pointing to a need to have it better reflect my constantly-evolving views. i’ve made some edits to better communicate what i was trying to say, but will also give a comment on their criticisms and anywhere where my opinions from the essay have changed in 6 months.
review [CLICK TO EXPAND]
i think this essay will still immediately lose most TRAs because they think gender ideology doesn’t exist and is a dogwhistle for social conservatism. they should spend more time reading from transsexuals who identify that way rather than as “transgender”. the best way i can define “gender ideology” is as the belief in gender identities as having meaning beyond one’s imagination, as something that one can identify with in other people rather than purely as a part of one’s self-conception, and that this is the truest form of sex. i appreciate this is a subtle distinction; it’s really a way of thinking that then projects onto society and what is considered “trans rights”. gender ideology posits that trans people are inseparable from their target sex in all contexts, that this “gender” is the essence of the concepts of man and woman, and that stretches to disputes over women’s sport, over whether people are allowed to consider “woman” to mean sex by default, over what sexual orientation is allowed to be based on, etc. . opposing (“gender critical”) ideology posits that rights and meaningful discussions should be based in observable traits (sex), and from there there’s a broad spectrum of how trans-inclusive people are, from affirming trans identities, pronouns and gendered nouns, to inciting hate against trans people. trans-exclusionary GC inherently interprets sex as at-birth, whereas inclusionary is more fluid per-context and cares more about spectral traits and passing.
looking back at the essay, maybe it’s a little too irreverent of the lens thru which believers of gender ideology see themselves, which on the one hand can healthily shake up a reader’s self-perception a bit, and on the other can lose em. but i wanted to offer it as a non-coercive take for people’s self-reflections. i would rather it be a bit irreverent so that people don’t take cultural phenomena (like “he/they”) as being essential to their experience, or that deep at all. i still think it’s totally cool if people like these things and use them for themselves, however.
i’m not sure how clear it is that this wasn’t ever intended towards people who have gender dysphoria to the extent of it being diagnosable, but rather towards people like me trying to make sense of themselves within the context of different philosophies of the self. none of what i’m saying about “self-acceptance” really applies to transsexuals. i added a sentence about the “co-opting of pain” in which i made it clearer where my empathetic connection to transsexuality comes from, and how i see it completely differently to non-dysphoric transgenderism
my extolling of the cass review as evidence against gender ideology took some flak, in that i hadn’t considered that the review may be biased by bigotry (grenfell is an analogy that occurred to me on how this might happen). i find this idea a bit outlandish, and am not convinced by my friends projecting adult medical data to say that what happened with GIDS is transphobic, but i’m fine reserving judgement on the issue pending further research. i think my take on it was reasonable given the evidence i was aware of
two mistakes i made that i’ve now fixed are (1) describing the gay aids epidemic in a vague and alarmist way (my point about this being partly caused by non-assimilationism of the lgbt movement was not wrong, but much better explained now), and (2) citing andrew neil as an example of someone being radicalised by the trans paediatrics issues (sorry, i took a big L there on awareness about the guy)
i also removed a reference to “subconscious resentment” because i realised that being in healthier surroundings on twitter helped me be more positive about things
but in general, i’m fine having this essay reflect where i was with things 6 months ago. since then, i have noticed the tide starting to turn on gender ideology a bit, people becoming less radicalised in general. i’ve shifted in blaming gender ideology a bit less for society’s rejection of trans people, and make less of an excuse for TERFs now. i care less about the implications of ideological corruption on society nowadays, and would rather just work one-on-one with people and personal opinions. but i left in the stuff talking about that cos i think the uptick in transphobia of late originates from gender ideology and its backlash/consequences, and i want to emphasise that
ty for the feedback, everyone. onwards, forever evolving :)
see here for the original version
1. my early background
in 2015 (i was 20), i had the average person’s attitude to transsexuality: it was rooted in a debilitating illness that left people with needs that necessitated understanding, special rights and social justice. i’d come up on feminism by reading the legendary social justice and words words words article, which prompted me to go to the oxford uni group “cuntry living” (i was in cambridge at the time) to gaze upon all these crazy sjws for myself, but the result it actually had was unexpectedly that, in the year i was there, i learned about feminism. (to be clear, the second article i link there should be read light-heartedly, but it’s pretty accurate and worth understanding that this is culturally where modern trans rights activism comes from). this means that i had, from the outset, a balanced and critical understanding of social justice.
there were some fringe gender ideologues in there discussing the elimination of a distinction between male and female but i kinda just agreed to disagree. it wasn’t fashionable to talk about that. there weren’t any he/theys in cuntry living. i eventually got booted out in 2016 for saying that a sexual preference for people of your own race wasn’t inherently racist, lol. i wore that ban as a badge of honour, tho kinda facetiously because i owed that group the fact that i was an intersectional feminist at all.
late 2020 (me 25), a friend comes out as he/they. having never seen that before and seeing them be flippant about it, i ask them “what’s with the he/they thing?”, and immediately i receive a hostile argument from third parties. their reason ended up coming down to not wanting to be thought of as a man. i still see that as being a rather sexist reinforcement of the stereotypes that define what a man is supposed to be thought of as. but i never really blamed them for wanting to follow their own heart on the matter. a transgender person is not sexist for trying to pass as eir chosen gender by pandering to stereotypes, and the same applies to a man who feels a need to be seen as “not that”.
the biggest shock for me tho was that somebody was choosing to be not male, rather than suffering from dysphoria that forced em to be not male. dysphoria is still how most people conceive of a trans person, but the “queer” movement intends to change that – by espousing a unique gender identity that every person has that we should all validate. everyone does have a unique experience of gender, so everyone has the option of being trans, which leaves the “cistem” as comprising people who voluntarily sideline their unique experiences to be allies, and people who just disagree that gender identities exist outside of one’s imagination of oneself, or really mean anything (other than as an expression of dysphoria). in 2021, i realised i was exactly that. since i experience a basically non-existent internal gender, i am an “agender transgender” person. but really as far as activists go, i am a cis man, because i disagree. the ideology requires you to “identify as” trans rather than “be” trans.
and that’s the crux really – supporting rights for transsexuals and supporting gender ideology are two completely different things.
2. my recent background
2021 to 2023, i researched trans rights a lot, and found that a lot of the opposition to the trans-rights activist (TRA) movement, particularly from feminists, was not out of bigotry (that is, evidence-resistant prejudice), but rather a reaction to ideological factors where, for example, gender identites were seen as these immutable things that 14-year-olds “knew” and so were unquestionably affirmed and medicalised, which caused a medical scandal that led to england’s only paediatric gender clinic “GIDS” being shut down. to me, that’s really the silver bullet for proving this ideology is harmful – read this editorial for a take on it that i agree with or, if you want to decide for yourself, the nhs review it’s interpreting (points 4.15–4.22). anyway. there were ideological arguments in both directions, transphobia, exclusionary feminism, legal and medical takes, and i ended up coming to the conclusion that trans rights had to be based on reality rather than subjective gender identities. a transgender person is someone trying to be seen as not of eir birth sex. that should be it.
i saw gender ideology as this kind of surreal, postmodern (meaning defining reality via subjective experience) cringe that was harmful to women, lgb people, and especially transsexuals and children. but i still felt a kind of distance from it, like a normal person would – “transsexuals are rare, how many have you even met?”. it felt like an intellectual exercise that was only relevant to a tiny, heavily-marginalised minority.
but during pride month 2023, walking around soho in london as a miserable bisexual looking at all the flags, lamenting that everyone was fighting and each side so misunderstood the other… just as an aside, i used a female bathroom by mistake, and got a stare i’ll never forget from a middle-aged woman. my first thought was “ig i know what it’s like to be trans now…”, and my second thought was “… but nobody asked her why she finds a man in her bathroom so disturbing”. anyway. i read an essay from a “transsexual separatist” critiquing gender ideology, and it flipped my own relationship with it. forgetting all the ideas in here that i agree or disagree with, the thing that really stuck with me is this:
What queer theory proposes is an anarchic demolition of societal boundaries and norms until reality becomes distorted and nebulous. It promises an illusionary utopia where all identities and expressions are ‘possible’. It is a disingenuous ruse of emancipation, which actually confines behavior within a strict, homogenised orthodoxy.
i had thought that my emotional reaction to gender ideology arose from it being self-contradictory and meaningless. but actually, i don’t think i’m that attached to my logic. what i am attached to is my real identity, a grounding, of knowing and accepting who i am, rather than replacing it with a constructed identity, that pretends i can be anything i want, but really just drowns me in this explosion of stereotypes over what it means to be male, bi, cis, or even just human. in 2022, i’d been drowning in internet people using gender as a focal point in constructing virtual identities, and reposting TRA extremism (puberty blockers are not actually known to be reversible for example – see the nhs report, points 3.24–3.33, esp. 3.32 – so it’s terrifying how many times i read that they were online). this had thrown me into the world of gender critical feminism, where i’d fortunately kept a cool head and avoided ruining my support for trans rights (credit to a couple of friends for helping). i had walked away mixed as usual.
i realised, then, that gender ideology, as part of the broader concept of “queerness”, is actually something that from a mental health angle affects everyone and is everyone’s business. there’s no allyship to be had here. it affects me. so i guess my motive was more selfish than i had realised.
3. i am not queer
the reason i oppose gender ideology is essentially the following. as a relatively “real” bisexual – one who goes by real name even online, one who values community, real people and being yourself – i want to live in a world where my (homo)sexuality is seen as normal and i can engage in it as a straight person would. i want to accept that i am attracted to men sometimes. that means i want my lgbt movement to ASSIMILATE, and to promote SELF-ACCEPTANCE. queer ideology is the opposite of that.
it’s ironic because inability to accept your sex is the making of dysphoria and the transsexual experience. that’s why the resulting queer movement was able to get away with promoting self-rejection to the extent it has i guess. but i don’t see any good coming from a non-dysphoric person persisting an imaginary gender identity, instead of coming to terms with eir sex and eir ability to be free from stereotypes and to challenge eir gender role as they please. a non-binary person isn’t really thought of differently from a binary person in most people’s eyes, other than this expectation that we should parrot all these extra neo-stereotypes when we think of that person.
given that every other aspect of mental health prioritises coming to terms with who you actually are, i don’t think this is in most people’s best interest. certainly not for most teenagers who don’t know the meanings of the words. it’s not harmless for everyone in your school to be seeking meaning, for their internal struggles, in realms of gender dissonance. by contrast, it seems to me like most real transsexual people just know from day dot that they are trans.
likewise, i can feel the effects of lgbt non-assimilation all the time. my friend complained about the default expectation of hookup-culture and grindr as stopping him from finding a soulmate. it’s a hangover from the gay liberation movement’s countercultural licentiousness, whose toll was the part it played in the aids epidemic. i don’t want being lgbt to be associated with being a “stereotypical queer” – which in the eyes of teenagers means engaging in kink sex, as i was reminded when reading a sexual assault case from Geometry Dash recently. i don’t want honest homosexual or transgender identities to be conflated with ideological movements to “queer” different things and spaces by breaking down social norms around them, like by allowing a penis into a rape crisis support team. anarchy is the opposite extreme to conservatism bro.
i had a nasty experience in 2021 when someone i was attracted to led me on and got into my head by being a pervert online, fake-flirting with me and crossing boundaries. when i confronted it in distress, he vented hypocritically about my “creepy” actions to someone who went on to try to cancel me with a false accusation of sexually harassing him. my and my friend’s best explanation was that he was “trying to be queer on the internet”.
i also just plainly don’t want my sexuality to be defined by a fucking slur.
4. conciliation
deep breath. i just don’t support that. but some people do, and disagreement is cool. the fight for lgbt rights is to give rights to everyone. that means it’s not our place to question people who say they are gay or trans, or want us to use certain pronouns or anything. calling people as they wish to be called is basic respect that goes beyond lgbt. there’s no part here where i want to judge individuals on whether they are who they say they are, even tho i consider trans rights as being intended for transsexuals rather than drag queens. rights are not for gatekeeping. rather, i want people one day to better understand who they themselves really are and be responsible when taking on an oppressed identity.
i will also always have respectful but critical views of opinions that for example see more of a path to trans emancipation in mainstream TRA activism than in my approach, which is more burn down gender ideology (well, in fact, gender) and start from scratch :). i sympathise with the view that an lgbt movement that homogenises these disparate identities is the strongest way to promote their rights. but i also can’t much fault someone who comes out as “proud terf” after reading and investigating a child detransition story, not after what happened with GIDS. at the end of the day, most people care more about children than transgender people. and most of the world is too small-minded to not let opposition to gender ideology turn into trans-exclusionary politics, as suggested by how support for trans rights in the UK is currently declining. it’s a double-standard to criticise this when all a TRA will do when someone opposes gender ideology is insinuate a hateful motive and shut down discussion.
remember that, even when people use politically loaded terms like “queer”, they often do it for benign reasons. many people think inclusive language is just like, “well why wouldn’t you want to include more people?”. remember also that trans people are not trans activists. i see them as victims of gender ideology personally, because it removes science from their healthcare and makes normal people turn against trans rights.
that’s really it. it’s hard. my pride month 2023 was not pleasant at all as i came to terms with the non-assimilationism of the lgbt movement i found myself in. being trapped between that and heteronormativity seems like it’s put me on a downward spiral to where i will die without having ever expressed my homosexuality. to put myself in the shoes of a transsexual, i try to combine that feeling with the feeling of dysphoria caused by my autism, the disconnect between my inner monologue and the person i’m able to express to the world. i guess i’ve always found it odd that this lgbt non-assimilationism is reinforcing the feeling of not fitting your body by glorifying stuff like, what i’ve seen cutely described as “gender euphoria”, people revelling in crossing boundaries around gender expression, in the same way that i’ve had to put up with a fetishised gay culture growing up that i just couldn’t seem to fit into. as a dysphoric autist, i understand where they’re coming from in being sensitive to their pain being co-opted by people who don’t suffer from it, even tho i also appreciate the lack of judgement in allowing people to take on a trans identity solely because it feels right for them.
i don’t know if things will ever get better but i do think gender ideology specifically will just be forgotten about in 50 years’ time. there’s too much of a backlash from non-trans-identifying people over its misogynistic and homophobic aspects (i can tell you that my bisexual brain perceives attraction based on someone’s physical characteristics rather than what gender ey says ey is – duh), and eventually TRAs will see that those people actually have no problem with lgbt people themselves, rather than pretending that everyone is a bigot or a closeted bigot.
p.s. what would one replace gender ideology with? how about an understanding of the rooting of transsexual oppression in gender roles? check out this kathleen stock essay on the different meanings of gender. gender roles are the third definition. it’s quite balanced for a gender-critical piece. reading it in late 2022 is what moved me away from destructively opposing gender ideology like an ignorant terf to constructively proposing something new. i finally wasn’t lost, unable to find the words to explain how something i felt was wrong was wrong.