Validation

Or, why I don't add pronous to my sig files

Now we come to the very difficult discussion that comes next, the nagging question of harm in accepting and acting on the transgender claim.

It truly does not seem like much to ask, does it? Just put your pronoun in your bio even if they are the standard ones that match your sex, so that people know your gender identity and how to address you. Doing so allows those who are not as priviliged as the cisgender to feel comfortable doing the same, and everyone can relax. Not doing so means that you wish to assert your cis privilege and are not a bigoted, hateful person.

Not a lot to ask, you say? Just like it’s not a lot to ask to insist that you properly mourn Charlie Kirk because he was shot in front of his children. Just like I believe that sex is not the same as gender, I also don’t believe that Charlie Kirk is someone whose death I should mourn. The adaptation of pronouns to reflect gender identity rather than sex is a marker of belief, and it is how transgender activists determine whether or not you are in their camp. I’m not in their camp, but nor do I hate them, just as I don’t mourn Charlie Kirk but do not believe that he should have been shot.

People ask what the harm is in humoring people, or believing that a man is a woman due to gender identity as opposed to because of their sex. I have had friends decide that I am a bigot and hateful, and that turned on me instantly once they find out that I am not supportive of the gender identity theory of who is or is not a man or a woman. These were friends who had considered me to be kind, generous, and warm up until the moment I spoke what I think. I have only paid a small price compared to what many others have paid, and so I don’t feel like I should be complaining too much about that. I have held this lack of belief guardedly, and admit that some of it is due to cowardice.

There are, like I say, many others who have paid a heavier price in social isolation, harassment, job loss, gig cancellation, and lawsuits. Graham Linehan is among the men who have stood up against the effects of this belief, and has been arrested. But women have suffered far more for their lack of acceptance, and here is a brief listing from an AI search on Google:

Some women with gender-critical beliefs have experienced harm, including job loss, harassment, and physical assault. These incidents often happen during intense conflicts with transgender rights activists, particularly in the UK, where the debate around gender identity has been especially prominent.

Women who have been harmed

• Maya Forstater: A tax expert who lost her job at the think tank Center for Global Development in 2019 after posting a series of tweets expressing gender-critical views, including that biological sex is immutable. Forstater's case became a legal battle, and an employment tribunal later ruled that her dismissal was a form of direct discrimination based on her beliefs, which were found to be protected under UK law.

• J. K. Rowling: The Harry Potter author has faced intense public backlash, accusations of transphobia, and harassment for her prominent and vocal gender-critical views, which gained significant attention starting in 2020. She has since used her platform to support other gender-critical women and to fund organizations that advocate for "sex-based rights".

• Kathleen Stock: A professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, Stock resigned from her position in 2021 following a campaign of protest and accusations of transphobia from students. Her views, which critics describe as gender-critical, generated widespread controversy at the university.

• Marion Millar: A Scottish accountant and gender-critical activist, Millar was charged in 2021 for allegedly transphobic and homophobic tweets. The case was dropped before it went to trial, but it became a focal point in the debate over free speech and transgender rights in Scotland.

• Lesley Woodburn: During a 2019 May Day march in London, Woodburn was assaulted and subjected to racial abuse while holding a banner with the dictionary definition "Woman: Adult human female." A man allegedly grabbed and pulled her banner, causing her to fall and injure her back.

• Ophelia Benson: (I’m adding this in manually) She is a skeptic and a feminist, and had been a contributor to Freethought Blogs when it was formed as a response to Scienceblogs being bought out by National Geographic. She discovered that Freethought doesn’t really apply to gender when she questioned what it means to ‘Feel like a woman’ and was hounded off the site. I credit her blog for educating me on the “TERF” perspective.

Harassment and assault at protests and events

Gender-critical women have reported harassment, intimidation, and violence at protests and events where they clashed with transgender rights activists.

• At a 2017 event in London, activists taunted and chanted at women attending a discussion on the Gender Recognition Act.

• At a feminist event in Bristol in 2018, masked activists reportedly blocked the stairs to prevent attendees from entering or leaving.

• During a Manchester vigil in 2022 to protest male violence against women, attendees, including prominent radical feminist "Belstaffie," were subjected to abuse and had a milkshake thrown at them.

• Also in Manchester in 2022, a Woman's Place UK meeting was threatened by a crowd blocking the entrance and shouting.

Broader context

The conflict and alleged harms occur within a wider, heated debate where:

• Gender-critical feminists believe that sex is a biological, immutable reality and that trans women are male. They argue their concerns are about protecting women's "sex-based rights," including single-sex spaces.

• Transgender rights advocates argue that these views are transphobic and dangerous, contributing to discrimination and real-world violence against transgender people, especially trans women.

This is just a brief list, but it is a teardrop in an ocean of harms that have come to women. The real harm in all the social areas is that it encourages the belief that the feminine gender is the position of power and privilege, a goal to be achieved for men who think it will make their lives easier.

And this is dangerous because it puts men in a position of envy towards women, seeking access to the areas that they feel shut out of, and since men are groomed and raised as boys to see how they have the power to get what they want? Women’s needs and concerns become secondary.

One example is that of the transwidows. These are women who married men, with no indication that their husbands had inclinations of a transgender identity, and after the marriage has been taken place their husbands start crossdressing and eventually declare that they are women. A transwidow is expected to identify as a lesbian in order to accommodate her husband. They are considered widows because the man they married is gone. And they are shamed when they speak about how it affects them, they are not allowed to have feelings about it because their husbands’ needs came first. You can read about it here:

A trans widow is a woman (usually heterosexual) whose male partner or husband believes that they have a gender identity other than “man” or who cross dresses. Often women also report having experienced that their husband or partner has autogynephilia (AGP).

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Women in this situation report feeling like their male partner has died. This is particularly the case if their partner or husband came out as trans’ and decided to transition. The transformation is usually so complete that their partner is unrecognisable as the man they married, both in looks and in personality. The woman will be forbidden from calling her husband by his previous “dead name”.

Another oddity in the way that women are hurt is that men who otherwise do not pay attention to the nature of feminism, choose to prioritize trans identity as a form of feminism over actual women’s experiences and understanding of feminism. I have encountered men who berate women for not supporting “all women” by rejecting transgender identifiers as women. And, it’s not only men who prioritize male needs in this issue, it is also quite often well-meaning women. I’ve written about my own experiences of rejection because I am a skeptic but that doesn’t matter as much as it does for women who have had their lives and careers ruined for not accepting that men and women are malleable physical categories.

Men seek validation, and the objections of women are secondary. A rite of passage for men who identify as women is their trip to the rest room. A trend a few years ago was for such men to take selfies in ladies’ restrooms, much like football players hanging garters from their rear view mirrors after getting laid with the head cheerleader. Perhaps it still is, I just don’t see it as much.

It’s a sense of belonging, of validation. It’s also a statement that “See, I’m not so bad. I’m not here to assault you, I’m here to go to the bathroom with my fellow women.”¹

We are losing sight of the historical fight that women have been engaging in order to be considered equal.

One of the reasons that “blackface” is offensive is because it represents the powerful class making light of the struggle of the less powerful class. When white people wear makeup to look black, accentuating lips with white makeup as in Amos ‘n Andy, it is to make fun of them. Similar to this is drag. Drag is a bit more squishy, in that there may be men trying to escape the restrictive norms of gender and so they find comfort in wearing clothes that, for whatever reason, are gendered as feminine. In fashion, gender can be fluid, or it can be fixed for good reason. For lingerie bras or panties (knickers) are designed as they are in response to the differing biology of males and females. Men may have some flab in their breasts, but there are no undershirts designed for that purpose because men do not need support in their breasts in the matter that women do. I don’t pretend to be an expert in lingerie, so I am just speaking in general terms.

There are men who do have a kink for wearing women’s clothes in private settings, and cross-dressing is not associated strongly with being gay in male, statistically. If you read the stories of transwidows, you will find that often it is a gateway to identifying as trans. I don’t know that it always is, and there is likely literature in science that explores this topic. The thing is, I really don’t know of good science on the entire issue of transgender expression, however the APA does recognize that gender is a set of social roles and sex is biological. I think they go off the rails in the remainder of the article (me as a skeptic, I’m not a psychologist) in identifying transgender identity as a condition that needs to be treated by validating someone as the sex they identify as being.

Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice or body characteristics. “Trans” is sometimes used as shorthand for “transgender.” While transgender is generally a good term to use, not everyone whose appearance or behavior is gender-nonconforming will identify as a transgender person. The ways that transgender people are talked about in popular culture, academia and science are constantly changing, particularly as individuals’ awareness, knowledge and openness about transgender people and their experiences grow.

What they are saying is that it is amorphous, not easily defined, and because of that, those who identify as trans should be accepted as they are when they self-identify. Without question. That is being open.

So, who does get hurt?

The most obvious class that it damages is women. Women are told that they must accept men who identify as women in their private spaces. And since self-identification is the only standard that is used to determine if one is transgender, this means that any male can self-identify into women’s private spaces. And while for some males who truly believe that they are female, it’s likely only for validation as in the “Selfie in the girl’s room” above. But for other men, it’s a ticket to a forbidden palace. Boys have always wondered what goes on “in there” and tried to sneak into the girls’ locker room, hoping to catch a glimpse of the naughty naked bits. And for another group of men, it’s the opportunity to assault women sexually without hindrance. We have no way of knowing which man is inside of the transgender identifying male, and this is why women say “No” to mixed sex restrooms. Even without the potential for assault, women need to be able to get away from men for a while, even for a few minutes. I don’t need to know why any partcular woman or girl needs to have a respite from males, it’s their business. And the restrooms have been that space.

While this is getting a bit long, and I appreciate those who have stuck with it, I am afraid that if I don’t finish it, this essay will remain in draft status for a couple of months. I am going to use that extra hour I have today to complete this for you!

The conflation of the meanings of sex and gender also cause harm to adolescents who are trying to understand their own place in sexual expression and gender identity. Boys and girls who are adolescent, or preadolescent, and observe that the strict gender roles only to realize they don’t fit with that get the message that they are either trans or non-binary. Rather than be encouraged to express their individual personalities they are being considered for hormone suppression in order to avoid taking on the secondary sex characteristics of their sex “In case they want to transition” as adults. Most children resolve their gender identities if not medically treated to suppress natural hormones that would aid in later transition. If children start a transition treatment before they understand the nature of gender identity as social roles, and instead believe that gender identity is natal as much as sex is, then we need to consider how the “sunk cost” fallacy influences their decision to consider medical transition for gender affirmation.

I really hate to associate my position here with the current government of the US and their policies that are anti-trans. I do think that we need to continue to research and provide medical and psychological support to those who do believe that they are “born into the wrong sex.” But that medical support is likely not the sort they think they need, I suggest that more research is needed into why people believe that by medically transitioning (through cross-sex hormontes, mastectomies, phalloplasties, penectomies, and orchiectomies) they will be fulfilled and validated. I strongly believe that freedom and self-actualization is not achievable this way because it gives in to the gender structure that is harmful. This furthers the association between biology and destiny that allows male dominance to continue, and I believe that the trans movement is regressive because it affirms that little boys are meant to be dominant and like sports and war, while girls are frilly and girly and etc etc etc.

I think we are all harmed by the idea that people are trans and born in the wrong body, that we need to be free to express ourselves contrary to gender norms without trying to affirm that our sex was a mistake of assignment at birth. Rather than defying the Pete Hegseths and Tradwives, the trans movement affirms them. It’s fundamentally a conservative idea, stuck in the past and counter to individual freedom.

Free to Be, You and Me

Unfortunately, most people are not open to this and consider and statement countering gender affirmation to be bigotry.

Fly. Be free. Be who you were meant to be. You were not born into the wrong body, you were born in YOUR body.

1. I often use certain words deliberately. Fellow may be used as a gendered term, or it may be non-gendered. Here’s an etymology lesson from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

The Old Norse word for a partner, felagi, means literally “one who puts down property.” Such people were those who laid together their property for some common purpose. Old English borrowed felagi from Old Norse and called a partner a feolaga. This word has come down to us, through several centuries and the development of a number of senses, as modern English fellow. Perhaps its most common use today is its very general one, in which it is applied to any boy or man.