My eighteen year old son tells me that at his college, everyone’s talking about gender and in particular whether they might be transgender, gender-queer, gender-fluid and a host of other things which he couldn’t remember. The teen/young adult years are a time of exploring identity; in those years it feels particularly crucial to find out who you are, and these days young people are faced with a bewildering display of options.
I wrote here about transgender children (and how they don’t exist) but what about young people? What do parents need to know?
The ideas that your kids will be hearing at college or university have come from the hugely influential trans-activist lobby and I’ll attempt to sum up what they’re saying here so at least you’ll feel informed. You might want to sit down and make yourself a cup of tea.
‘Transgender’ is a recent term which has replaced the more accurate ‘transsexual.’ Transsexuality is a distressing condition of body dysphoria which means that a person literally feels they have been born in the wrong body: it is impossible to live as their biological sex. It is a rare condition. Transsexuals suffer great discrimination and should obviously be afforded the same rights and respect as anybody: as a society we should do our best to understand the particular difficulties they face. That should go without saying.
The new word ‘transgender,’ on the other hand, means that there is no ‘male’ or ‘female’ physical body, there is only male or female ‘identity.’
Here’s a simple explanation of the difference between sex and gender:
As trans activists focus exclusively on men who identify as women (trans women) I will do the same here to explore what transgender means in terms of what they are asking us to believe. It’s this:
Based on this premise, we are asked to accept the following:
And we are asked to follow these rules (and not asked very nicely to be honest):
None of the above is happening to men, interestingly. No trans men are demanding access to men-only spaces and no men are being forced to accept them as ‘real men.’ Men are not in any danger if women enter their spaces, it is the woman who puts herself at risk. No trans men are hounding other men with rape and death threats on social media, as trans activists are doing to women. No trans men are insisting that gay men must find their vaginas sexually desirable.
No man is in any way threatened by the trans lobby’s beliefs-presented-as-facts. It is therefore very easy for a man to label himself as ‘cis’ and feel proud of the fact that he is right-on and ‘trans-inclusive’ when he has nothing to lose.
Trans activism is a bullying political lobby which puts women and girls at risk. It gives licence to any man who wants to access women’s space for whatever reason and it takes away women and girls’ right to protect themselves, state their terms or establish their boundaries. It puts men’s ‘needs’ first and silences women, taking away their right to say no. It also harms genuine trannsexual women; those who don’t deny that they are biologically male are being hounded from the trans community.
If your head is reeling by now, sorry about all this.
As parents we need to know though. If we want to support our kids we need to fully accept the daughter who is seen as ‘unfeminine’ or the son who is judged to be ‘girly’ by society, and defend their right to be who they are. Perpetuating the illusion that they actually are the opposite sex doesn’t help any child, whether that child is genuinely transsexual or not. We can accept where our kids are in their search for their identities without making a huge deal of it, but we also have a responsibility to be straight with them about the facts. If we understand the propaganda being peddled to young people by the trans activist lobby we are more equipped to counter it in conversations when our kids are confused.
If you are the parent of a young person who has declared themselves trans and you need some support and a safe space to discuss these issues I suggest you take a look at this blog written by a mother.
Next week I will write about the tactics used by the trans lobby, why our daughters are particularly susceptible to them, and how liberal feminism colludes in the disempowerment of young women. Fun times!
Isaac
It would be nice if you actually knew what you were talking about before you act as if you are some sort of expert on trans topics.
First of all, you are confusing gender identity and gender roles. Gender roles are culture’s ideas of male and female things; gender identity is a person’s internal sense of being a man or a woman. You say that there are no innate differences between male and female brains, but this is blatantly false no matter how you try to spin it. A quick check on Wikipedia can tell you this. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stria_terminalis And that is just one example. Please note that I am not trying to say that these structural differences mean that one sex is better than the other, or better at certain things than the other- I am merely pointing out that your assertion that sex differences do not exist is false.
>Lesbians should be attracted to penises when they are attached to trans women.
Your post is full of straw-men, but this one is the worst. Of course it’s a matter of opinion, and some trans people may believe this. But generally speaking most people understand that attraction/sexual preferences are a personal thing, and not being attracted to someone is not transphobic. In any case this is an opinion and shouldn’t be considered a belief all trans people hold.
>None of the above is happening to men, interestingly. No trans men are demanding access to men-only spaces and no men are being forced to accept them as ‘real men.’ Men are not in any danger if women enter their spaces, it is the woman who puts herself at risk. No trans men are hounding other men with rape and death threats on social media, as trans activists are doing to women. No trans men are insisting that gay men must find their vaginas sexually attractive.
Trans men do use male-only spaces. But men generally don’t have their own spaces the way women do. Male only universities, shelters, etc don’t really exist the way woman-only facilities do.
For every trans activist you can show me that “hounds women with rape threats” on social media, I can find you a woman, a feminist, a (insert person belonging to X group) here who posts threats towards trans people. Feminism has a bad reputation among mainstream society because people focus on the bad apples, so I would think you would be more understanding of the fact that a few loud assholes do not represent an entire group of people.
When trans women want access to women’s spaces, like bathrooms, it’s because they just want to pee. Do you seriously think a man would go through months of therapy, paying for most of it out of pocket because most American insurance does not pay for trans related care, and take hormones that kill libido and cause erectile dysfunction just so he can go into women’s bathrooms? That simply does not happen.
>If we want to support our kids we need to fully accept the daughter who is seen as ‘unfeminine’ or the son who is judged to be ‘girly’ by society, and defend their right to be who they are.
Again, gender roles and gender identity are two different things. Most trans people fully support people embracing who they are and ignoring limiting gender roles, and doing so does not make someone trans.
I hear about the “man in a dress invading women’s spaces” all the time but I have yet to see any statistics about bathroom rape or anything like that. I’m curious if anyone has any sources to back this up.
Stephanie Davies-Arai
I’m not sure who you are to come straight in with an accusation that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I will take your points one by one.
First, you separate gender identity and gender roles, as if we have an innate sense of gender totally formed before we even begin to experience the relentless social conditioning which starts at birth. Gender is a social and cultural construct, our identity is built through experience. You only have to recognise the number of ‘tomboys’ to see that girls are not born with an innate sense of being a girl, but it is something that is reinforced daily by the people she encounters and the whole culture.
I study neuroscience, and I will repeat there is no innate difference between girls’ and boys’ brains at birth; gender differences begin to emerge around age 13 after a whole childhood of socialisation. This is fact. I don’t do my research on Wikipedia and I suggest you read some books.
Lesbians should be attracted to penises – this is NOT ‘a matter of opinion’ – it is a fact that lesbians are NOT attracted to penises and it is homophobic to insist that they should be. This is not a matter of belief that some trans activists hold, it is central to their dogma and the logical outcome of the tenet that there is no such thing as male and female bodies. Lesbians are routinely harrassed and sent rape threats on social media, you are minimising this fact.
My point about trans men is that 1) the trans movement isn’t about them, nobody is shouting loudly about their rights (and what are these men-only spaces they are entering? Are they storming men-only clubs? Are they being let in, when women aren’t?) and 2) we do not hear their voices on social media, they are not sending rape and death threats as trans women are. The socialisation of men gives trans women the arrogance, entitlement and lack of respect for women’s boundaries that enables them to bully women, and yet we have to accept them as ‘real women.’
Show me one woman/feminist/lesbian who has sent rape or death threats to trans women. It is not happening. The worst thing said is ‘trans women are men’ which is factually correct.
In the case of trans activists ‘a few loud assholes’ DO represent the whole group, trans ideology is based on their views and it is this ideology which is having great political influence reflected in trans policies throughout UK universities, political parties and liberal feminism.
Of course I understand why genuine trans women want to access women’s bathrooms, and I totally support their right to do so. What I don’t support is the right of ‘men in dresses’ to access women’s spaces. Maybe you need to check some facts about the percentage of such men within the trans movement, and the many reasons men may wish to dress and present as women.
The problem for women is that trans ideology (a man is a woman if he says so) gives us no way to distinguish between genuine trans women and men, which puts all women and girls at risk. I am sure you can understand that.
The rate of male violence is the same amongst men and trans women, in other words it doesn’t reduce when a man transitions. The link below shows that 88% of men who transition do so for psychosexual reasons and gives you plenty of evidence of ‘bathroom rape’ etc.
https://outofmypantiesnow.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/when-is-90-not-substantially-all/