Women are still the most oppressed group in every corner of the world. Women MUST center women in feminism, or our hardwon protections and achievements will be lost to those who seek to co-opt our movement for their own gain.
I’ve been supporting the LGBT movement for decades, as a civil rights/human rights movement. As a feminist, I’ve recognized that we’ve always had the common goal of liberating ourselves from the rigid patriarchal social structure that has kept so many people oppressed. However, the LGB refers to sexual orientation, and the inherent discrimination that people have experienced from their innate sexual preferences. The T, which represents transsexualism, is problematic because many people who are not genuinely intersexed or dysphoric have attached themselves to that descriptor to seek advocacy under false pretenses. The point at which I could no longer support the T occurred at the stage in which the feelings of males were prioritized over the safety and privacy of women and girls. It’s been a long journey to let go of my allyship for the trans movement, but this movement’s open hostility toward women and their determination toward the destruction of our rights left me no choice.
I wanted to sympathize with the people who were struggling with a great deal of confusion and pain. I’ve read hundreds of articles and watched dozens of documentaries on transgender and transsexual people, their struggles, their ordeal with transition, and the complex reasons for their dysphoria. I’ve come to understand that political forces behind the movement largely stem from a handful of very wealthy individuals who want to normalize their autogynephile lifestyle, which is not related whatsoever to genuine dysphoria.
Several factors made me reject this political movement in favor of the careful and restrained treatment of the genuinely dysphoric individuals who are caught in the middle of a horrifying trend.
Historically, people who experience gender dysphoria have represented less than .3% of the population. They are nearly always on the autism spectrum, with other comorbid conditions in the Cluster B group (narcissistic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, etc.) They don’t seek to “be” the opposite sex, they feel they already are the opposite sex, and they have nearly always felt this way from early childhood. Most have gone through years of therapy before medical interventions were developed in an attempt to alter their bodies to simulate the experience of becoming the opposite sex, and they continue to require psychiatric care for their comorbid disorders. These patients are often referred to as “true trans”, even though their sex hasn’t technically changed. They do not refer to themselves as transgender, and most of them are wary of this new trend that rejects the solidly scientific designation of sex as binary. These “true trans”, who refer to themselves as transsexuals, have been attacked and deplatformed (banned from social media, academic discussions, etc.) for insisting that they identify as transsexuals, and not transgender.
Human sexual identity is determined to be either male or female, as distinguished by visible physical sexual characteristics and xx or xy chromosomes. Anomalies among humans are very rare. Gender is *entirely* a social construct. Gender is neither binary or non-binary, nor is it “fluid”. Gender is the arbitrary set of roles and traits that are designated as feminine or masculine, depending on the social conditioning of a culture and their expectations of men and women, along with their prejudices and biases. Gender roles are nearly always sexist and harmful to a society that seeks equality between men and women. Performing femininity does not make a man a woman. Only someone raised as a girl, having faced the biases and restrictions and millions of unspoken cues intended to direct her behavior, attitudes, and ambitions, can ever understand what it is to BE a woman. Woman is not a “feeling”, any more than being Black is a feeling. It is profoundly reductive and insulting for a man to claim he “feels” like a woman. The inherent misogyny of this movement is often downplayed or completely ignored.
Autogynephilia is the term for the disorder in which heterosexual men derive sexual excitement from wearing women’s clothes. When done in the privacy of their own home or with consenting adults, this is a relatively harmless practice. However, many of these men find that their excitement is heightened by forcing women to see them in women’s clothes or partially clothed or nude. The fear and confusion that they see in the reaction of women who suddenly find a man in their locker room or dressing room compounds their excitement. They have no empathy for the distress of their unwilling audience. Just as a flasher in a park is abusing the boundaries of unsuspecting women, a man who insists on disrobing in a space set aside for women is also perpetrating a form of sexual assault.
Autogynephiles (AGPs) are not distinguishable from transwomen, and for that reason, women must be allowed to maintain our safe spaces. Gender neutral facilities should be provided for transsexuals who are uncomfortable using men’s facilities. Most long-term transsexuals have no problem with this. It’s only the AGPs and other men who have a deep-seated hatred of women who want access to women’s facilities. It is never about safety- AGPs who are offered their own facilities have often rejected them, insisting on having access to women and girls. This behavior should be recognized for the predatory intention that it clearly demonstrates, and women and girls should not be expected to tolerate it.
The exploitation of children is the worst aspect of the transgender movement. Many parents react negatively to the early signs that their child might be gay or lesbian. Children are highly perceptive, and will internalize these messages, no matter how subtle the parents think they are being. When a boy is “caught” playing with his sister’s dolls and is given a truck instead of being offered a doll of his own, that message lands hard on his self-worth. Keep insisting that your tomboy daughter put on a dress, and eventually she understands you hate her for “failing” as a girl. Children who receive these messages (and they come almost as often from liberal parents as conservative parents!) internalize this rejection. They perceive that their natural same-sex attraction is unacceptable. The dialogue is almost always impossible for the child to initiate, as they don’t have the vocabulary to express their feelings. Very young children may not be experiencing attraction yet, so they go by what they hear in stories or see on TV- if you like girl things, you must be a girl. If you like boy things, you must be a boy. The parents fail horribly to manage this confusion with tact and acceptance. Instead of saying to their son “I love you just the way you are, and if you like boys more than girls, that is just fine, and you can have a boyfriend when you grow up.” They leap on the child’s comment that he thinks he might BE a girl. It’s not a wild concept to accuse parents of being more accepting of a trans child than a gay child- regressive cultures currently offer conversion therapy and surgery (paid by the state!) to transsexuals, while condemning gays and lesbians to death. In the West, “Butterfly Families” receive attention, book deals, TV interviews, and scores of marketing opportunities. Gay and lesbian youth are virtually ignored.
Late onset gender dysphoria has been connected directly to “social contagion”, as the phenomenon of trans ideation appearing in groups of children connected by social media or social groups at school has been documented extensively.
Most children (as high as 85% in some studies) will desist from their dysphoria if they are allowed to progress through puberty naturally. Unfortunately, some countries now allow children as young as 12 to transition without the permission of their parents. In some cases, the child can ask the state to remove them from their own home if their parents do not agree to allow them to transition. Many online groups help children formulate a strategy for transitioning, helping them to obtain hormones illegally, or coaching them on how to convince their parents and doctors that they will commit suicide if they aren’t allowed to transition. The suicide rate for dysphoric children IS higher than for the rest of the population, but contrary to the claims of the trans activist movement, transitioning does NOT reduce the likelihood of a child committing suicide.
Transitioning from one sex to another is technically impossible. Contrary to the claims of the burgeoning gender affirmation industry, the only surgery that is successful is the double-mastectomy being performed on young girls. Phalloplasty to create a penis for Female to Male (FTM) transition requires several large sections of flesh to be “harvested” from the forearm and thigh of a girl in order to fashion a semblance of a penis that often has little or no sensation, cannot become erect without a mechanical pump surgically inserted, and often results in urinary problems and tissue necrosis. The patient is compelled to choose between a natural look and having actual sensation in the organ- they cannot have both.
The process to create a neovagina for Male to Female (MTF) transition is also problematic, in that hormone therapy often reduces the penis to a length that is too short to invert. In these cases, a section of intestine is harvested to lengthen the neovagina, and the patient must wear a colostomy bag on their abdomen for the months that it takes this surgery to heal. The neovagina has no natural lubrication or self-cleaning process, so hygiene becomes a very serious issue and remains so permanently. The majority of MTF patients experience infections and tears, requiring follow up surgeries. They are required to use dilating tools every day to stop the wound from closing up and shrinking, and may still experience pain from vaginal intercourse many years after the surgery. It is unconscionable to start a child on this path (some as young as six years old!) before they have a firm comprehension of what the future holds in store for them.
It SHOULD go without saying that women’s sporting events exist only because women were completely excluded from sports throughout history, and women fought hard for the resources and recognition that women in sport deserve. For men to compete as women is a complete travesty of competition. Men are erasing women’s records, taking our awards, taking our scholarships, and in some cases, even injuring women in competition. This is CHEATING by men, and it should be called out for what it is.
Advocacy groups for women should consist only of natal women- trans women have proven to only advocate for themselves to the extreme detriment of women. A trans rights group recently managed to cut funding from a long-established rape crisis center in Canada because they refused to allow men into the women’s shelter. These shelters usually have communal living quarters and group showers, but MEN insisted that fully intact males should be housed with women who were just raped. Let that sink in. No, the transwomen were not “turned away”, they were given other resources. They didn’t want those resources. In order to “feel like a real woman”, trans ideology demands that women let men into our safe spaces after the most painful, difficult experience a woman can endure. Make no mistake- this is a MEN’S RIGHTS movement.
The term “cotton ceiling” was coined by heterosexual men masquerading as transwomen to express their outrage that they are rejected by lesbians because they have a penis. “Cotton” refers to women’s panties. They call lesbians “transphobic” for not wanting to have sex with someone who has a penis.
I will be happy to support additional facilities for dysphoric people, but I will not support the erasure of women, the harassment of lesbians, and the mutilation of children.
~ 𝓙𝓮𝓷𝓷𝓲𝓯𝓮𝓻 𝓛𝓮𝓮
