It's interesting that Katie emphasizes that complaints about Dylan Mulvaney are coming from conservatives whose views are suspect. In the U.K. there are a lot of feminists who complain about this sort of thing--like the absurdity of Nike marketing sports bras to people without breasts--and they are very eloquent about it. I would love to…
It's interesting that Katie emphasizes that complaints about Dylan Mulvaney are coming from conservatives whose views are suspect. In the U.K. there are a lot of feminists who complain about this sort of thing--like the absurdity of Nike marketing sports bras to people without breasts--and they are very eloquent about it. I would love to hear a discussion of these people, who are much more interesting than the people issuing death threats. There's a video of Germaine Greer making the rounds and she is very convincing when she complains that Mulvaney and similar people are adopting gender stereotypes of femininity rather than the true feminine. As she points out, giving birth is the quintessential female act, and it is neither pretty nor feminine. It was a long time ago that I first noticed that drag queens were not at all like women, but were a kind of parody. Some find it inspiring and others find it offensive.
💯 this. The quintessential characteristic of being female is that we are the sex that gives birth. It’s like we have all collectively forgotten that sex is a reproductive act. Getting off in other ways isn’t necessarily, but sex is. The very idea that people think they can become the other gender without embodying the reproductive capacity of that other gender is ridiculous and offensive. It’s offensive bc apart from men being physically stronger than us, the difference in power comes from the fact that the sex act embodies us with the blessing and responsibility of child bearing and rearing
This is the tricky part, though, Ctdcb. As soon as you say 'sex is a reproductive act' you are challenging homosexuality, which I'm sure none of us here wants to do. Yet, this is precisely how the Ts get to align themselves with the LGBs, and ... we all know how messed-up that is
The only way humans are made is through a male gamete joining a female gamete and forming a zygote that ONLY an adult female human is able to carry and birth. We can have orgasms and pair bond in infinite creative ways, but the only sex able to birth without any sort of future trans human interventions are females. This fact of reproduction does not challenge homosexuality, heterosexual sex for pleasure alone, or any non reproductive variation of the sex act. That’s the point. It’s the bearing, or the blue print of the capability to bear children, and all the biological characteristics that go along with that, that makes one female. These transwomen want us to not publicly acknowledge any real difference, when the most quintessential difference remains the same. Anybody can get off, anyone can get plastic surgery, anyone can wear whatever clothes they want, anyone can wear makeup, only natal females have the capacity to bear children. That’s it. That and all the physiological and psychological characteristics that go along with that are what makes a woman.
We have had birth control for 60 years so we live in a world where that hasn’t been the most obvious fact in the world, but it is. Women are the bearers of children.
Acknowledging that *reproductive* differences in sex are real is not an assertion that homosexuality or trans identity are morally right or wrong. Homosexuality exists in objective reality. Trans women are not women in objective reality. Trans men are not men in objective reality. The moral question is whether trans people have the right to demand that others acknowledge their personal beliefs as objective reality and make rules and change the meaning of language to acknowledge their personal beliefs as objective reality. Any pharmaceutical or surgical interventions do not change the reproductive realities of the sex binary. There is no challenge to the reality of homosexuality in the assertion that sexual binary exists.
Yes! Since Katie appears to have some nuance on these issues, it’s jarring to hear her describing it as if everyone else is pro-Dylan-liberal & anti-Dylan-conservative.
I also note the Pod seems to class anyone to the right of AOC as “alt-right”, as though centrist and regular ol’ conservatives don’t exist any more. IIRC in the last pod they referred to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” — I could be wrong as don’t know a great deal about JP’s actual political positions (he strikes me as much more issues gadfly than party political), but “far-right white nationalist” (Wiki definition of alt-right) seems to me way over the line veering into slanderous.
I think the hosts would benefit immensely from talking to a free market economist or two, and some conservatives who could give them a window into Republican world (which neither Katie or Jesse seem to have spent much if any time in).
I do appreciate the perspectives of other UK feminists, though. In addition to Julie Bindel, who's often referred to in BARPod threads, I've recently become fascinated with women who've started out liberal and backed themselves into traditionalist/conservative opinions. The guests on Maiden Mother Matriarch often fall into that category, and sometimes Sarah Haider and Meghan Daum edge up to it, too.
Sarah Haider annoys me to no end with her tirades against hormonal birth control. I get that it didn't work for her and gave her brain fog, but that particular experience seemed to make her credulous towards every single fantastical claim about it:
"if you chose your husband off the pill, you will no longer appreciate the manly charms that helped drive you to him, making him a less appealing partner overall."
"find the right one as may make your acne worse (or better), increase your shape-rotation abilities (or worsen them)."
"As so much of “who we are” relies on our hormones, when the pill changes them, it necessarily changes us."
"We know what it means to gain more choice. Do we know what it means to lose ourselves?"
I've been on hormonal birth control for years, but it doesn't turn me into some kind of alien. It's just weird to hear her--especially on the podcast--talking about how most women don't exist "as they actually are" anymore. Sure, maybe, if we all had massive amounts of brain fog all the time thanks to it, but most of us don't, and it just seems like by her saying "no" to the pill she's turned it into this big scary thing that she can feel superior about being drug-free and "truly herself" by not taking it.
Yes I agree. I do think it's a good idea for us to be more sceptical of hormonal contraceptives in general and I personally enjoy not being on them anymore. But the pill was and is still a great option for me and many women and it definitely didn't turn me into a different person. It was fine. I do bristle a bit at it being something we just give it to teenage girls as a matter of course.
Lol I'm the dream my childhood evangelical culture wishes were general reality: no sex until I got married, no birth control till a few months before marriage to make sure it was working by then. And ten years + one kid later it all actually worked out for me, no complaints. So I'm a weird mix of pretty traditional and pretty progressive and I have no idea how to give good relationship advice. But yeah I'm pretty far away from just giving it to teenage girls, unless they have really painful periods. And I definitely think we need better birth control options in general.
Nice to hear these privileged academic women can hold their tongues because it might cost them socially, while women in shelters & prisons have to share space with violent, intact men. Gender is such a load of classist bullshit.
I have to find that Greer video. It’s so true: we aren’t allowed to say that anything relating to having female biology is what makes up women, but the things that trans identifying males CAN access (clothes, cosmetic surgery, makeup, head tilt, and a Valley girl affect) ARE. Gee, I wonder why.
And the females escaping womanhood by trying to become men are the useful pawns, since that lets TIMs say “look at that bearded guy who is a pregnant person!” This whole ideology is a cluster fuck that screws women & girls.
“look at that bearded guy who is a pregnant person!” (Though I imagine you’d have to knock it off with the testosterone to maintain a pregnancy... I wonder how long a beard takes to go away. Or does it stay even when you desist?)
But this bullshit is why I get so incensed over the matter.
If the claim is that being trans is integral to a person’s mental health, and it is paramount to one’s well-being that everyone MUST affirm the new identity to assuage dysphoria, then how the hell does that square that with being pregnant and giving birth to a child?
There is literally nothing more female than gestating a child. So if a woman is a “trans man”, then surely being pregnant would trigger the alleged dysphoria to a catastrophic level.
It doesn't make sense. All of this is designed to make us question reality, and as a result recreate society to meet their vision. And from anecdotes I've seen, a female taking T will often have vaginal atrophy, pain, and many need a hysterectomy.
My guess is there really AREN'T many TIFs getting pregnant. TIFs are useful pawns brought up by activists as a way to disassociate women from our reproductive reality. Australia is the only place I’ve seen that has been keeping data on this. In 2018 Pink News reported that 22 trans men & non-binary females gave birth there… out of 304,200 births that year , which comes to 0.007%. This is by no means a % that requires rejiggering language to make them feel "included." And I'm less inclined to care at this point, to be honest, about females who put themselves in exile.
I dont' find it that hard. People are complicated.
They want kids, but realize the only reasonable way they can do that is if they get pregnant and have the kid themselves.. Adoption is not really an option for a lot of trans men, or it's at least a much more difficult option. And surrogacy is an ethical minefield that many people don't support.
So they are willing to experience gender dysphoria long enough to have the kid.
(re: beards, once testosterone has begun the facial hair growing process, it tends not to go away without electrolysis. Ftmtf detransitioners as well as mtf both share this problem. So it's not unreasonable at all that a pregnant trans man would maintain a beard).
These are mentally disturbed people. Changing societal taboos to let them into spaces with my daughters will never be something I'll accept, because so many of these guys are dangerously unstable.
Ella, I do much the same. I'm not "junior" in the sense of young - I'm old and in a teaching-intensive, non-tenurable position (not for lack of ability but because I followed my then-spouse). I'm still far braver than 98% of academics on just about any issue, including this one.
I have a "TERF" reference on RateMyProfessor for having once assigned Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's essay on nonbinary identities, which I paired with one by Robin Dembroff on the same topic. My crime was in saying that students might find something of value from RRC. It's a great essay, btw, and in some ways both authors are envisioning a similar world - one where gender would matter a whole lot less - but see very different paths toward arriving there. And frankly, all these female academics coming out as nonbinary are either just long-time gnc lesbians like Butler, or have glimpsed a way to elevate their stature and insulate themselves against any real criticism.
And so I'm back to planting tiny seeds. I remind myself that poppies and impatiens and many other gorgeous plants grow from seeds so small they're hard to manipulate.
I would *love* to be part of a GC/radfem academic group. If you know of one, please let me know. If one doesn't exist in the U.S., where I'm located, I'm game for trying to establish one - stealthily.
The kicker is that I've been immensely supportive of my gender-creative students for two decades, and the same for LGB people in my life for two decades longer. I've been told by a few of them that my support was life-saving. Even allowing for some hyperbole, this is one of the two biggest reasons why I'm not more open about my beliefs. (The second has to do with a loved one in my family, who knows where I stand, but it would put a lot more pressure on the relationship if I went public.)
This is so hard. I've grown into a GC perspective precisely *because* I saw the same population I'd served faithfully for 15 years be deeply harmed by the evolution in trans politics over the past 5-7 years.
Why not one on Substack? Say, an account for one where you share ideas under pseudonyms? Would there be a way to keep it private? Maybe a membership thing, but have no fee & use that as a way to keep it private to screen members?
The thing is, I think that the more trans people in all their diversity and their good and bad actors increase in numbers and get more visible on the mainstream, the less mystery there is about them and the more people are able to recognize that they are not literally of the gender they wish to be part of (and even less of the sex the gender in question is linked to). The only thing stopping people from saying so is fear of being called transphobic.
However, I fear the only escape this gives people who are fed up with the make-believe is making a hard turn to an exaggerated form of conservatism. I saw the same dynamic you describe in the lesbian woman who was recently interviewed in the Gender A Wider Lens podcast (edit: about her son's transition), who sounded a bit unhinged at the end in the way she described her conception of sex and gender now. I hope I'm wrong and we won't see too severe an overcorrection.
Trans people are people who, for myriad reasons, would prefer others see them as the opposite sex. Many take steps to physically alter themselves towards this end.
It's interesting that Katie emphasizes that complaints about Dylan Mulvaney are coming from conservatives whose views are suspect. In the U.K. there are a lot of feminists who complain about this sort of thing--like the absurdity of Nike marketing sports bras to people without breasts--and they are very eloquent about it. I would love to hear a discussion of these people, who are much more interesting than the people issuing death threats. There's a video of Germaine Greer making the rounds and she is very convincing when she complains that Mulvaney and similar people are adopting gender stereotypes of femininity rather than the true feminine. As she points out, giving birth is the quintessential female act, and it is neither pretty nor feminine. It was a long time ago that I first noticed that drag queens were not at all like women, but were a kind of parody. Some find it inspiring and others find it offensive.
💯 this. The quintessential characteristic of being female is that we are the sex that gives birth. It’s like we have all collectively forgotten that sex is a reproductive act. Getting off in other ways isn’t necessarily, but sex is. The very idea that people think they can become the other gender without embodying the reproductive capacity of that other gender is ridiculous and offensive. It’s offensive bc apart from men being physically stronger than us, the difference in power comes from the fact that the sex act embodies us with the blessing and responsibility of child bearing and rearing
This is the tricky part, though, Ctdcb. As soon as you say 'sex is a reproductive act' you are challenging homosexuality, which I'm sure none of us here wants to do. Yet, this is precisely how the Ts get to align themselves with the LGBs, and ... we all know how messed-up that is
The only way humans are made is through a male gamete joining a female gamete and forming a zygote that ONLY an adult female human is able to carry and birth. We can have orgasms and pair bond in infinite creative ways, but the only sex able to birth without any sort of future trans human interventions are females. This fact of reproduction does not challenge homosexuality, heterosexual sex for pleasure alone, or any non reproductive variation of the sex act. That’s the point. It’s the bearing, or the blue print of the capability to bear children, and all the biological characteristics that go along with that, that makes one female. These transwomen want us to not publicly acknowledge any real difference, when the most quintessential difference remains the same. Anybody can get off, anyone can get plastic surgery, anyone can wear whatever clothes they want, anyone can wear makeup, only natal females have the capacity to bear children. That’s it. That and all the physiological and psychological characteristics that go along with that are what makes a woman.
We have had birth control for 60 years so we live in a world where that hasn’t been the most obvious fact in the world, but it is. Women are the bearers of children.
Acknowledging that *reproductive* differences in sex are real is not an assertion that homosexuality or trans identity are morally right or wrong. Homosexuality exists in objective reality. Trans women are not women in objective reality. Trans men are not men in objective reality. The moral question is whether trans people have the right to demand that others acknowledge their personal beliefs as objective reality and make rules and change the meaning of language to acknowledge their personal beliefs as objective reality. Any pharmaceutical or surgical interventions do not change the reproductive realities of the sex binary. There is no challenge to the reality of homosexuality in the assertion that sexual binary exists.
Yes! Since Katie appears to have some nuance on these issues, it’s jarring to hear her describing it as if everyone else is pro-Dylan-liberal & anti-Dylan-conservative.
I also note the Pod seems to class anyone to the right of AOC as “alt-right”, as though centrist and regular ol’ conservatives don’t exist any more. IIRC in the last pod they referred to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” — I could be wrong as don’t know a great deal about JP’s actual political positions (he strikes me as much more issues gadfly than party political), but “far-right white nationalist” (Wiki definition of alt-right) seems to me way over the line veering into slanderous.
I think the hosts would benefit immensely from talking to a free market economist or two, and some conservatives who could give them a window into Republican world (which neither Katie or Jesse seem to have spent much if any time in).
They do much better discussing weird internet shit through a cultural lens rather than a political one.
They specifically agreed that it was not fair to call Jordan Peterson alt-right.
Katie: "I would not call Peterson 'alt-right.'"
I am not at all eager to hear from Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Boy), on masculinity, femininity, or beauty.
I do appreciate the perspectives of other UK feminists, though. In addition to Julie Bindel, who's often referred to in BARPod threads, I've recently become fascinated with women who've started out liberal and backed themselves into traditionalist/conservative opinions. The guests on Maiden Mother Matriarch often fall into that category, and sometimes Sarah Haider and Meghan Daum edge up to it, too.
Sarah Haider annoys me to no end with her tirades against hormonal birth control. I get that it didn't work for her and gave her brain fog, but that particular experience seemed to make her credulous towards every single fantastical claim about it:
"if you chose your husband off the pill, you will no longer appreciate the manly charms that helped drive you to him, making him a less appealing partner overall."
"find the right one as may make your acne worse (or better), increase your shape-rotation abilities (or worsen them)."
"As so much of “who we are” relies on our hormones, when the pill changes them, it necessarily changes us."
"We know what it means to gain more choice. Do we know what it means to lose ourselves?"
https://sarahhaider.substack.com/p/reduced-to-ourselves?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I've been on hormonal birth control for years, but it doesn't turn me into some kind of alien. It's just weird to hear her--especially on the podcast--talking about how most women don't exist "as they actually are" anymore. Sure, maybe, if we all had massive amounts of brain fog all the time thanks to it, but most of us don't, and it just seems like by her saying "no" to the pill she's turned it into this big scary thing that she can feel superior about being drug-free and "truly herself" by not taking it.
Yes I agree. I do think it's a good idea for us to be more sceptical of hormonal contraceptives in general and I personally enjoy not being on them anymore. But the pill was and is still a great option for me and many women and it definitely didn't turn me into a different person. It was fine. I do bristle a bit at it being something we just give it to teenage girls as a matter of course.
Lol I'm the dream my childhood evangelical culture wishes were general reality: no sex until I got married, no birth control till a few months before marriage to make sure it was working by then. And ten years + one kid later it all actually worked out for me, no complaints. So I'm a weird mix of pretty traditional and pretty progressive and I have no idea how to give good relationship advice. But yeah I'm pretty far away from just giving it to teenage girls, unless they have really painful periods. And I definitely think we need better birth control options in general.
So is Sharron Davies right wing?
Nice to hear these privileged academic women can hold their tongues because it might cost them socially, while women in shelters & prisons have to share space with violent, intact men. Gender is such a load of classist bullshit.
I have to find that Greer video. It’s so true: we aren’t allowed to say that anything relating to having female biology is what makes up women, but the things that trans identifying males CAN access (clothes, cosmetic surgery, makeup, head tilt, and a Valley girl affect) ARE. Gee, I wonder why.
And the females escaping womanhood by trying to become men are the useful pawns, since that lets TIMs say “look at that bearded guy who is a pregnant person!” This whole ideology is a cluster fuck that screws women & girls.
“look at that bearded guy who is a pregnant person!” (Though I imagine you’d have to knock it off with the testosterone to maintain a pregnancy... I wonder how long a beard takes to go away. Or does it stay even when you desist?)
But this bullshit is why I get so incensed over the matter.
If the claim is that being trans is integral to a person’s mental health, and it is paramount to one’s well-being that everyone MUST affirm the new identity to assuage dysphoria, then how the hell does that square that with being pregnant and giving birth to a child?
There is literally nothing more female than gestating a child. So if a woman is a “trans man”, then surely being pregnant would trigger the alleged dysphoria to a catastrophic level.
Someone make it make sense!
It doesn't make sense. All of this is designed to make us question reality, and as a result recreate society to meet their vision. And from anecdotes I've seen, a female taking T will often have vaginal atrophy, pain, and many need a hysterectomy.
My guess is there really AREN'T many TIFs getting pregnant. TIFs are useful pawns brought up by activists as a way to disassociate women from our reproductive reality. Australia is the only place I’ve seen that has been keeping data on this. In 2018 Pink News reported that 22 trans men & non-binary females gave birth there… out of 304,200 births that year , which comes to 0.007%. This is by no means a % that requires rejiggering language to make them feel "included." And I'm less inclined to care at this point, to be honest, about females who put themselves in exile.
I dont' find it that hard. People are complicated.
They want kids, but realize the only reasonable way they can do that is if they get pregnant and have the kid themselves.. Adoption is not really an option for a lot of trans men, or it's at least a much more difficult option. And surrogacy is an ethical minefield that many people don't support.
So they are willing to experience gender dysphoria long enough to have the kid.
(re: beards, once testosterone has begun the facial hair growing process, it tends not to go away without electrolysis. Ftmtf detransitioners as well as mtf both share this problem. So it's not unreasonable at all that a pregnant trans man would maintain a beard).
These are mentally disturbed people. Changing societal taboos to let them into spaces with my daughters will never be something I'll accept, because so many of these guys are dangerously unstable.
Ella, I do much the same. I'm not "junior" in the sense of young - I'm old and in a teaching-intensive, non-tenurable position (not for lack of ability but because I followed my then-spouse). I'm still far braver than 98% of academics on just about any issue, including this one.
I have a "TERF" reference on RateMyProfessor for having once assigned Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's essay on nonbinary identities, which I paired with one by Robin Dembroff on the same topic. My crime was in saying that students might find something of value from RRC. It's a great essay, btw, and in some ways both authors are envisioning a similar world - one where gender would matter a whole lot less - but see very different paths toward arriving there. And frankly, all these female academics coming out as nonbinary are either just long-time gnc lesbians like Butler, or have glimpsed a way to elevate their stature and insulate themselves against any real criticism.
And so I'm back to planting tiny seeds. I remind myself that poppies and impatiens and many other gorgeous plants grow from seeds so small they're hard to manipulate.
I would *love* to be part of a GC/radfem academic group. If you know of one, please let me know. If one doesn't exist in the U.S., where I'm located, I'm game for trying to establish one - stealthily.
The kicker is that I've been immensely supportive of my gender-creative students for two decades, and the same for LGB people in my life for two decades longer. I've been told by a few of them that my support was life-saving. Even allowing for some hyperbole, this is one of the two biggest reasons why I'm not more open about my beliefs. (The second has to do with a loved one in my family, who knows where I stand, but it would put a lot more pressure on the relationship if I went public.)
This is so hard. I've grown into a GC perspective precisely *because* I saw the same population I'd served faithfully for 15 years be deeply harmed by the evolution in trans politics over the past 5-7 years.
This is a wonderful comment. Your students are lucky to have you.
Why not one on Substack? Say, an account for one where you share ideas under pseudonyms? Would there be a way to keep it private? Maybe a membership thing, but have no fee & use that as a way to keep it private to screen members?
The thing is, I think that the more trans people in all their diversity and their good and bad actors increase in numbers and get more visible on the mainstream, the less mystery there is about them and the more people are able to recognize that they are not literally of the gender they wish to be part of (and even less of the sex the gender in question is linked to). The only thing stopping people from saying so is fear of being called transphobic.
However, I fear the only escape this gives people who are fed up with the make-believe is making a hard turn to an exaggerated form of conservatism. I saw the same dynamic you describe in the lesbian woman who was recently interviewed in the Gender A Wider Lens podcast (edit: about her son's transition), who sounded a bit unhinged at the end in the way she described her conception of sex and gender now. I hope I'm wrong and we won't see too severe an overcorrection.
Which interview was that?
Episode 109.
I liked that interview and don't remember her sounding unhinged at all, I'll have to listen again.
shouty activists like Chase Strangio? no. but trans people at large? Absolutely.
those 2 statements aren’t connected in any way.
Trans people are people who, for myriad reasons, would prefer others see them as the opposite sex. Many take steps to physically alter themselves towards this end.