Crossdreamers

What Pakistan's LGBTQ community can teach us about destructive trans separatism

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:17:00 +0000

Pride Pakistan points to the way transgender separatists have caused immense harm to other trans and queer people. We see the same phenomenon in Western countries.

I believe we need to include all of the world in the transgender conversation, which is why I have tried to share stories from Asia, Africa and Latin-America in my social media channels (which are - let us admit it - dominated by people from North America and Europe).

In a recent article Pride Pakistan discusses more recent event in Pakistan's LGBTQ community, with a focus on what I would call transgender separatism.

Facing extreme transphobia from religious fundamentalist authorities some trans activists try to distance themselves from the rest of the queer community in two ways:

1. Transmedicalism. They argue that true trans people are some kind of intersex, and that all policies had to be based on "biological sex" (which, in their minds it seems, seems to include themselves, but not any other trans people).

2. Homophobia: “Being transgender is a medical condition recognized by Islam, but being gay is a sin prohibited by the Quran.”

From the article:

//The most prominent example of this internal fracture occurred during the 2023 Federal Shariat Court (FSC) challenge against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2018.
In a shocking turn of events, it was not just conservative religious clerics leading the charge; it was certain factions of the transgender community itself. These groups argued that the law’s provision for “self-perceived identity” was “un-Islamic.” By advocating for a definition of transgender identity rooted strictly in biological “intersex” conditions, they effectively threw their own community members, those who transitioned socially or medically under the bus.//

This is, of course, how an oppressive patriarchal and sexist system works. It makes some marginalized people believe that if they play their cards right they might be accepted by the system. If the price is to throw everyone else under the bus, so be it.

Classical transsexual

When I started writing about gender variance and trans issues in this blog back in 2009, I found myself facing a group of trans women who called themselves "classic" or "classical transsexuals", as opposed to people who called themselves "transgender", whom they saw as sexual deviants.

They spent a lot of time attacking Ray Blanchard's toxic "autogynephilia" theory, while using the same theory to dismiss lesbian trans women. They did not care about trans men at all.

Some of us spent a lot of time deconstructing these mental maps, helping trans people free themselves from internalized homophobia and transphobia. I the end this subculture died out, before new generations resurrected this kind of conservative separatism as transmedicalism.

None of these groups have ever been embraced by transphobes, although I guess that the privileged among them - i.e. those who have access to gender affirming care and who have been able to please the traditionalist gatekeepers - might think they have chosen a winning strategy.

Becoming your own enemy

The article explains what makes this happen in a good way:

//When you are told from birth that your existence is “black magic,” a “spiritual disease,” or an “affront to God,” you develop a deep-seated need to prove you are “one of the good ones.” This leads to:
Horizontal Hostility: Attacking those within your community who are “more different” than you to appear more “normal” to the state.
Trauma-Induced Aggression: When mental health support is unavailable and you are forced into “conversion” sessions, that suppressed anger often manifests as hate toward your peers.//

Islamic or Christian, religious fanatics often behave in the same way, and they make use of the same tactics. Biological essentialism is an efficient weapon in this context.

Needless to say, the only ones who really win when trans people try to invalidate other trans people in the hope of fitting in are the transphobes.

Are you a man or a woman?

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:17:00 +0000

Someone says to a transgender person "but you were born a man!" and my head wants to explode. No one is born a man or a woman, but instead male or female with the added non-negligible array of intersex conditions and ambiguous genitalia which leaves us unable to instantly pick a binary designation at birth. All this because nature abhors uniformity.

Guest post by Joanna Santos

It turns out the perfect binary never truly existed but the idea was created and maintained to suppress any natural human gradations found everywhere else in biological processes.

If we base ourselves exclusively on science this perfect binary isn't real. It was a cultural artifact where religious leaders and the ruling class could have the predictability they needed, and for most people it worked if imperfectly.

Tolerance or intolerance?

Many native cultures have tolerated and even embraced those who exhibited gender variance. Others, more steeped in orthodoxy, fought it vigorously as it contradicted dogma that couldn't contain flexibility.

People in those latter cultures with the most need to transition, were obliged as much as possible into stealth. Even variations of expression were discouraged to the point of physical arrest and incarceration well into the 20th century.

Today the natural human spectrum is more visible than ever which is why the forces wanting to put things back into the genie bottle are so up in arms. The political weight of gender is coming down like an anvil over the heads of people who just want to be left alone. It doesn't matter how small their number because their very existence make traditionalist fear the risk that their natures will spread like a virus.

Societal obligation

The terms man and woman have always contained a healthy dose of societal obligation adhered to them. How to dress, gesture, speak and move were monitored to the point of holding many people paranoid that their proclivities towards variations would be punished. Despite gender norms shifting depending on the era, you were simply expected to mold yourself accordingly and follow the rules.

The late 20th century division of sex and gender into separate components has been strongly condemned by those who want to enforce the binary. Moral panics around women's spaces have been created to scaremonger and paint transgender people as predators.

But if sex is about gametes, chromosomes and other genetic markers, gender is about behaviour and feeling which the aforementioned do not govern. Yes there is brain chemistry involved. Most experts in the field argue that gender incongruence most likely has a biological, inborn, component.

However we haven't yet found that definitive smoking gun which many advocates want found as proof that transgender people are telling the truth. There are so many variables involved towards the creation of an individual that we may never have one and does it even matter?

When Matt Walsh asks "what is woman?" he is being disingenuous with the cultural framing of binary as his baseline. He doesn't want to decouple sex from gender and assumes they are one and the same. Biology determines the behaviour and identification and any anomalies are chalked up to mental illness. Many in the public agree without going further than their own bias and lived experience as proof.

After all, we live in an era where expertise need not apply.

Hierarchy and policing

Decades ago the drama surrounding gender variance and transitions eventually created its own internal policing and a hierarchy was formed. Those who transitioned medically early in life were considered more authentic than anyone else.

As the reins on expression and identity were loosened it became even easier to attack those who were more easily singled out as frauds for not meeting a standard. For decades, some people fitting the primary, classical or binary transsexual category (take your pick) saw fit to contest the authenticity of others.

Today walking around any large city will result in seeing many people who stray by degrees from what used to be an unyielding and rigid standard. Iterations of androgyny are ignored by a public now accustomed to witnessing it daily. Youth liberally mix elements of masculine and feminine to suit their originality as sharp contrast to what the 1950's once prescribed.

The era of stigma and secrecy should be over.

Nonbinary

If you ask some people whether they feel like a man or a woman they might tell you they don't know what that means. They feel like neither and they embrace an identity somewhere within some malleable middle ground of masculine and feminine terrain. They check off a box on a medical form because they must choose one; a reality only recently being revised as a category of "other".

Some gleefully toy with gender for their own motivations while for others it becomes a sacrosanct and integral part of their identity. Further proof that human beings are messy and unpredictable creatures.

Very much as nature intended.

Photo: Getty

From “Ideology” to “Mutilization”: Trump’s War on Trans People

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:40:00 +0000

Donald Trump is now using the made-up word "mutilization" to generate support for his transphobic policies. The real reason is not any threat from trans people.

Photo: Getty

Does this Trumpian nonsense matter? It does. The point is to repeatedly associate the term transgender with "transgender ideology" and now "mutilization" (or "mutilation", which is proper English and at term used by the Attorney General), and do this to the point were weak minds immediately make the same association every time the topic of transgender rights comes up.

A related catchphrase is "Transgender for Everybody":

“They’re fighting for men in women’s sports. They’re fighting for transgender for everybody,” Trump has said. “Everybody go out, get your kid a nice operation, and change the sex of your kid.”

Trump is not very smart, but he is good at one thing: bullying. He knows exactly what buttons to push in order to mobilize the hatred of the masses in such a way that their feelings forward his interests.

The main objective here is not to harm trans people per se. Trump was not a rabid anti-trans activist before he decided to become a fascist dictator. The goal is to use transphobia to distract Americans from the Epstein files, the tanking economy and the Iran war.

There seems to be one thing most Americans do agree on: You should not abuse children.

Sure, a lot of right wingers traumatize their queer children all the time, but in their twisted minds this is not abuse, but protection. But you must, as an American politician, never be seen as someone who harms kids.

Trump is, of course, already exposed as someone who abuses children. Maybe the Attorney General has managed to hold back the smoking Epstein gun, but there is a lot of smoke, and people know it.

By pretending to protect kids against transgender activists he wants Americans to see him as a protector of children and not as the sexual predator he clearly is.

Trump's mad Truth Social Post (click on it to enlarge.)

Republican politicians and party officials often use “fetish,” “lascivious,” “grooming,” or similar language about trans identity or social transition, while using “child abuse,” “mutilation,” or “experimentation” for the medical-care debate.

But we have also seen examples of them mixing the arguments. Darcy Schoening of the Colorado Republican Party argued for instance that a child wanting to transition was suffering from a "fetish". Ray Blanchard and his toxic "autogynephilia" theory was hovering in the background.

Attacking trans kids for being "autogynephiliacs" is probably not a winning formula in this context. The point is after all to present trans kids as innocent victims, and you do not do that by sexualizing them, at least not in a Republican context. However, it is possible to label trans activists and trans-positive caretakers as "paraphiliacs".

That will probably be the next step for Trump, and we have to prepare for it.

Trauma and self realization among older transgender people

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 09:06:00 +0000

Older transgender people can suffer from trauma and suppressed anger issues stemming from needing to hide and face rejection from family, friends and society as a whole. The roots of this trauma can sometimes date back to very early in childhood.

Guest Post by Joanna Santos

Having grown up under a rigid binary where their identity was forced underground often meant dealing with internalized transphobia while trying to adapt within the framework of a society that didn't suit them.

This trauma can be insidious and is often forced into hiding under layers of life distractions which can mask it. The underlying turmoil can then surface with a vengeance later on in life which is often referred to as the "cracking of our egg". Even someone who may have achieved a certain level of early self-acceptance still faced huge challenges attaining a peaceful and harmonious existence.

Dealing with this underlying trauma can be delayed but not indefinitely and once major life distractions fall away with age there is no place to hide from it.

Avoidance and reflection

We human beings have immense talent for deflecting and avoiding hard questions dealing with their psychological obstacles. We use methods which can work for a time such as plunging into career, focus on raising children. Sometimes we aid the subterfuge by indulging substance abuse habits, overeating, or some other method of distraction.

Metacognition is the exercise of thinking about our thinking. It is about focusing on our beliefs and placing them under a microscope to check their veracity. We examine preconceived notions about our own natures to hopefully reveal some inner truth which may have been masked via our early indoctrination.

We may have put decades into a thought process which one day results in a more fundamental understanding of self. It can be a painful and blunt exercise but unavoidable if we are to get to some inner truth and address any trauma we harbored.

This exercise will not resolve all of our life challenges, but hopefully produce a more balanced and cohesive version of the self by removing obstacles to authenticity. It should also help determine how much choice we are exercising. In other words, how much is innate behaviour and by extension unchangeable core identity.

Trauma can also be unrelated to gender and occasionally people will seek a remedy through transition. This is a red flag which avoids the underlying causes and seeks to repair them with an unrelated solution. An experienced sexologist should be able to weed this out in therapy.

Shame stands in the way

Older people, much more prone to suppression for years if not decades, often sought solutions by distracting attention away from the core problem. Coming to a realization of identity is made more difficult when the impediments of guilt, shame, fear and deeply internalized transphobia were drilled into them since childhood.

Sorting all this out can result in a misdiagnosing (underplaying or overplaying) their place on the spectrum of expression and identity. Today's more expanded terminology can contribute to a more nuanced self understanding, which is good, but it is also adding confusion as to how to proceed towards some form of resting point.

Having invested heavily into adapting to the rigid gender binary means their psychology needs to be reformed to allow for their suppressed identity to surface. Their investment into neuroplasticity is regrettably now further complicated by life commitments already made which can make coming out all the more daunting.

Every person is different with each journey seeing a wide array of decisions made and paths followed. However the underlying trauma needs to be addressed if we are to be truly honest with the self. The wound is treated and a solution found which, if not ideal, at least helps elevate self-esteem and encourage psychological harmony.

Youth today can avoid decades of trauma through self-rejection and/or the rejection of others. The subject matter is better understood, the public is much more aware plus clinical help is available to them much earlier. However this does not mean they are free of obstacles in an age where the options are so varied and so easily accessed. Moreover, it seems to be the goal of anti-trans activists to bring us back to an age similar to the one that created the trauma of many older trans people.

Nevertheless, as someone now in their 60's, I prefer where we are today by a long shot.

Illustration: Getty

On the nonbinary God, politics and culture war

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:21:00 +0000

Texas State Representative James Talarico (D), who is now hoping to become a blue senator from a very red state, is doubling down on his support for transgender people.

“We are all focused on the wrong 1%,” he recently told MS NOW. “Trans people aren’t taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren’t defunding our schools… It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but all of us, to focus on the real problem at hand.”

So what has this to do with the gender of God? Well, Talarico has been very good at making viral videos, and the Republicans are now digging up old videos they think will harm him. In one of these videos he says - in defense of nonbinary and trans people - that God is nonbinary.

The political connotations of the term "nonbinary" aside, I know of no serious religious scholars or theologians - being those Christian, Muslim or Jewish - who would argue that God is male only. To the extent the creator of the universe has a gender aspect, that would include all genders, for sure.

(The exception from this rule is found among the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, who argue that "the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s," but I neither have the time nor the patience to go into that here.)

I should add that in Hinduism, with all its gods, there is also the belief that all of them are aspects of one superior being, meaning again, that this being encompasses all genders.

In other words: The general consensus that God is as much a mother as a father. But this does not stop right wing fundamentalists from weaponizing this statement. They are not using theological arguments against him, however, just the regular culture war "woke is bad" kind of rhetoric.

What makes Talarico so refreshing is that i does not allow them to take the religious moral high ground, arguing that real Christians cannot and will not embrace any of the MAGA hate, and if they do, they have been misled.

I have great respect for biblical YouTube scholar Dan McClellan, who is able to present religious studies in a way that makes sense even to those who do not have a degree in theology. Admittedly, his arrogance sometimes go to far - no, you do no need to read Hebrew to say something meaningful about scripture - but I cannot but love his take-downs of fundamentalist extremists and bigoted dogmatics.

So when he made a video in defense of Talarico, I just had to write a post about it over at Transgender World. You will find that post here: Is God Nonbinary? Kinda!

Let me add here that this debate shows clearly how so many are trapped in the limitations of human language. Far too many takes metaphors literally if this serves to uphold their belief systems and mental maps. They cling to banal dogma, because it makes them feel safe.

The strict gender binary gives, for instance, too many the sense of belonging, stability, safety and affirmation they so desperately seek. Anyone who threatens this system is therefore the enemy, an enemy you have the right to hate and destroy. Which is strange, because Jesus, for one, preached that you should love your enemies and embrace the outcasts.

Go to: Is God Nonbinary? Kinda!

Christ Giving a Blessing

PS: The painting “Christ Giving a Blessing” by Leonardo’s student Bernardino Luini above depicts an androgynous Christ. The androgyny is most likely intentional as an aesthetic of holiness and "whole-ness", but not necessarily intended as a claim about Christ’s gender identity in any modern sense. The point is the Incarnation and salvation transcend ordinary categories.

'Our true Mother' – interpreting a genderqueer Jesus

Gender Euphoria and Gender Dysphoria: Two Sides of the Same Coin

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 07:31:00 +0000

Exploring the gender variance and how it is expressed through gender euphoria and gender dysphoria

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Gender euphoria is the feeling of alignment and joy when we are in congruence with the aspects of gender and its expression we most want to reinforce. It can happen when either masculine or feminine traits are amplified and experienced most fully leading to harmony. This feeling can bring us closer to identity particularly when we might be otherwise forced to suppress in everyday life.

Conversely, gender dysphoria is the experience of being denied harmony which can lead to anxiety and incongruence sometimes to the point of rejecting traits of the physical body.

Most people have experienced some version of euphoria but the most virulent versions of dysphoria seem to be reserved for a tiny fraction of the gender variant population and most often requires therapy and medical treatment.

How to treat gender dysphoria

We don't fully understand where gender dysphoria is sourced, only that it appears to be a combination of social factors plus biological predisposition. It also appears to be graded such that it varies between individuals. This means that adopting a blanket approach to treat it would be to disregard this aspect.

The sexologist Anne Vitale (who herself transitioned medically) terms gender dysphoria "gender expression deprivation anxiety" which I think is fitting despite no description being able to address the root causes. For me it is the closest anyone has come to capturing the feeling of being trapped and unable to close the disconnect.

Two sides of the same coin

Regrettably I have seen euphoria and dysphoria be treated almost interchangeably which is a mistake since they are different sides of the same coin.

Historically, our rigid gender binary made dealing with dysphoria very complex since any deviation from the norm was seen as perversion and/or mental illness. As a result it was dealt with in stealth or hidden altogether from public view.

Every individual has a unique mixture of gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation which today makes decision making all the more complex. Masculine women and feminine men reflect on how to lead their lives in a world where there is much more elasticity in both expression and identity.

Balance

As someone who has socially transitioned I regularly experience both dysphoria and euphoria but in more muted tones; a reflection of the balance I have achieved in my life while addressing a lifelong disconnect. I have realized in the process that nothing is ever going to be perfect while acknowledging that I have greatly improved my life quality in the process.

Sometimes within the same day I will experience both euphoria and dysphoria while knowing from experience that both will subside back to a baseline I am now comfortable with.

Imposter syndrome

Fear and self-doubt make dysphoria management much more difficult. Impostor syndrome, even years after transition, plagues many people and so we must necessarily make introspection part of our playbook. Failure to do so leaves us constantly feeling less than and potentially as frauds which we aren't.

The concept of passing and living in stealth became obsessive pursuits for many people and for obvious reasons but they can also become something which holds us back since others simply seek authenticity from us. This I have learned first-hand which means hiding can often become a pathway to a permanently stunted and immature psychology.

The goal especially for older people is to seek harmony and balance between those two sides of the coin: the euphoria and the dysphoria.

The transgender backlash and what to do about it

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 07:37:00 +0000

Recent political data and public opinion research indicate that a backlash against transgender rights is getting stronger, particularly in the United States.

The reason for this is intense anti-trans propaganda from the Republicans and the failure of pro-democracy politicians to protect and defend trans people.

Shifting support

According to a US survey presented and analyzed by Lakshya Jain in The Argument, measures once widely opposed, such as bills requiring transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, now has the support of a majority of voters, with about 52 % backing such legislation and only 33 % opposing it.

Similar trends are found in sports, where over 60% of voters favor restricting trans athletes to teams based on sex assigned at birth.

The polling also finds strong opposition to gender‑affirming care for minors, including puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries, even when supported by doctors and parents.

The effect of anti-trans propaganda

Even if many of the anti-trans bills presented by Republicans in various states fail or are stopped in the courts, the extreme propaganda targeting transgender people has had an effect.

A majority of Americans do not known that much about transgender people, gender variance or gender dysphoria. The support trans people had up till 2024 might partly have been caused by a sympathy for marginalized people in general and LGBTQ people in particular.

Remember that 2014 was seen as the "tipping point" for transgender rights. Until recently the transgender community seemed to be winning.

The backlash has been severe. The anti-trans activists has managed to establish a narrative that causes what many see as "reasonable doubt", in spite of the fact that all serious research show that transgender identities are real, that gender dysphoria is not caused by a mental illness, and that trans women are not attacking cis women in women's bathrooms.

The anti-trans activists present themselves as defenders of women and children, even if the whole MAGA movement is anchored in patriarchal misogyny and - as we have seen recently - the Epstein cabal of sex abusers and pedophiles.

The failure of pro-democracy politicians

It clearly has not helped that Democratic politicians, including Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign, deliberately stayed away from the topic out of fear of losing voters. This was most likely taken as proof of there being something wrong with the trans community by some voters. If the Democrats do not want to talk about trans people, there must be something wrong, right?

Some Democratic politicians mistakenly believed that debating Republicans on transgender issues would give bad policies more attention. Others let cynicism trump decency, chasing transphobic voters.

But LGBTQ+ issues are actually not driving voter behavior. Democrats lead the generic ballot. The Republicans have not succeeded in using trans issues from distracting voters from Trump's failures on other fronts, the economy, foreign policy and immigration included.

On the other hand: Trump’s overall unpopularity has not translated into more tolerant views on gender identity either. If the Democrats had associated the transgender cause with MAGA fascism in general, that might have turned out differently.

Because the MAGA anti-trans policies are taken straight out of the fascist playbook: Find a marginalized group and make people believe they cause everything bad in the world. Hitler blamed the Jews, Trump blame trans people. The anti-trans crusade is proof of this being part of a fascist takeover, but instead of making that clear to Americans, most pro-democracy politicians and influencers take cover.

There are, fortunately, signs of some pro-democracy politicians understanding what is at stake.

First hand experience

Trump has also failed to turn the increasing skepticism towards trans people into hatred of all LGBTQ people. Support for same‑sex marriage remains strong and stable. But this is partly because Americans are more likely to know gay and bisexual people personally. They know from first hand experience that gay people are just people like themselves. They are not equally familiar with trans people.

However, the way so many Americans have turned against trans people in so short a time, tells me that this may also happen to other queer people. There is good reason to think that the next stage of the culture war will be against the rest of the LGBTQ community.

The ultimate goal for the right wing extremists and religious fundamentalists is a society governed through traditional gender roles and the old fashioned American cishet middle class family, and in order for that to happen, heterosexuality has to be the only option.

The Humanist Report

Mike Figueredo from the Humanist Report discusses Jain's article over at YouTube. Even if he shares many of Jain's observations he argues strongly against reading these numbers as proof of trans activist overreach:

But my real issue is with Jain's framing of the findings and the conclusions that he draws because I think that he is saying things that are harmful.
He provides zero evidence to suggest that radical trans activists are the ones who turn the country against trans people. And on top of that, he doesn't mention the millions of dollars being spent by Republicans against trans people...
...while I don't deny that public opinion on trans rights is obviously negative, the same can be said for literally every other civil rights issue throughout our country's entire history. If marginalized people waited until public opinion changed to ask for rights, we would never make any progress on any issue ever.

He argues that the reason why support for trans people has slipped is "because Americans have been bombarded with non-stop anti-trans propaganda for nearly four years."

He is right. And ultimately this is not only about trans people, either. It is about allowing a group of clearly evil bigots to destroy the decency and compassion needed to uphold a thriving democracy.

Top illustration: Getty

Gender variance and camouflaging conversion therapy as care

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 07:06:00 +0000

Joanna Santos reveals how the advice and practice of Sasha Ayad of The Metaphor of Gender YouTube channel stop gender variant people from reaching an understanding of their true selves.

Guest post by Joanna Santos with Jack Molay

Recently I wrote a comment on the Metaphor of Gender YouTube channel regarding my objection to its dogmatic roots. The channel is run by Sasha Ayad. After having caught the gist of the approach, I realized the channel was about using a soft-pedaled and "kind" approach towards questioning gender variance and more specifically transitioning.

I had looked up the author's previous appearances and discovered unsurprisingly that they subscribed to the gender critical school more broadly. More specifically they make use of the Ray Blanchard two type taxonomy model where the variance is supposedly steeped in sexual dysfunction rather than in essence or a way of being.

The need for help

Sasha Ayad runs The Metaphor of Gender channel

Gender variant people have historically needed help from others, therapists included. As undesirable members of society they save suffered from guilt and shame at one end of the spectrum to crippling dysphoria at the other.

This angst has been used as confirmation of the idea that their dreams are sourced in mental illness rather than being primarily caused by the rejection from others.

When gender variance is presented as a mental illness it is easier for gender critical "therapists" to present their "care" as a possible solution to their suffering.

I have always advocated that every person is unique and that transitioning is not for everyone. I do not think all people who experience any kind of gender variance should go through hormone replacement therapy and undergo surgery. We are facing a broad and diverse spectrum of gender identities and expressions here.

But in this case even gender dysphoric clients may be led to believe that there is a chance that they can overcome their suffering through "exploratory therapy", rather than by transitioning medically and/or socially. They are encouraged to put their transitioning process on hold in hope of becoming "normal".

Talk therapy is a natural part of many transgender people's journeys, and can be of great help in such processes. But it makes a huge difference if the therapist is respectful of transgender identities as opposed to having a hidden agenda of trying to stop as many from transitioning as possible.

Gender critical dogma

Gender critical dogma is very much founded on the idea that transgender women usurp the role of cisgender women. Trans women represent bad faith actors trying to inhabit a place where they have no business being.

Despite the small fraction of gender variant people who fully transition medically, the entire spectrum of gender variance is seen as a threatening avalanche on the brink of destroying the social order in general and the traditional roles of women in particular. This is a type of moral panic.

Gender critical thinking is based on the idea that the concept of gender is a cultural invention. Gender identity is not real. Gender should always be reduced to what they call "biological sex" (a socially constructed concept that glosses over intersex variation and the reality of gender incongruence). In this way traditional gender roles and differences become biological, "natural" and unchangeable.

Even if some of the gender critical activists see themselves as feminists, or even "radical feminists", their overall project is at the core very conservative. If this is your basis, gender variance can only be seen as a mental illness.

If you see gender variance and gender dysphoria as an illness, the logical goal is to "cure" it. But the fact is that the international health manuals, the DSM-5 and the ICD-11, do not consider gender dysphoria or gender incongruence mental illnesses. They stress that any therapy should give the patient room to be who they truly are.

Authenticity should be a main goal

Expression and identity combine differently in each person. Authenticity should be a main goal of every person's journey. Hiding is an unnecessary and destructive evil.

It is so much easier to explore and express yourself in a culture where the old rigid binary model is replaced by more elastic and tolerant approaches.

Are there those who experiment with modes of transition they might later rethink? Sure, that might happen. Life is messy. But note that the percentages of transition regret are at much, much, lower levels than regular plastic surgery. Large systematic reviews of gender-affirming surgeries typically find regret rates around about 1 percent overall. Reviews of cosmetic surgery outcomes among cis people reveal regret rates around 5–20 percent, depending on the procedure and follow-up period.

Abusing client openness

Some gender criticals have decided that a "kinder and gentler" approach towards dissuading transitions is a good way to derail the validity of decisions others have made. The crises that some people face for a time are used as ammunition to question the validity of the entire transgender experience.

Some people do indeed have fetishes which they regale in or suffer in angst from, and some of these fantasies are associated with their gender variance. Some of these people fall victim to dysfunction models until they come to a baseline where peace and balance are restored. This does not stop the gender critical activists from using these experiences as archetypes for what is wrong with the imaginary "transgender ideology" movement.

As soon as you see gender variance as a natural phenomena and not an aberration, respect for the individual's choices becomes essential.

Only each person knows what is right for them and the often difficult period of indecision some face should not be used as fodder for a badly intentioned push to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Joanna Santos

Trans activist Andrea James on Sasha Ayad

"Sasha Ayad is a conservative American psychologist and a key figure in anti-transgender extremism. Ayad and collaborator Stella O’Malley are world leaders in the gender critical movement attacking transgender people, especially children....
Ayad is connected to a number of anti-trans organizations, most of which are just part of a web farm with reciprocal links to make Ayad’s allies and their fringe ideologies seem more numerous and influential than they are."

Disguising conversion therapy as talk therapy or "exploratory therapy"

Trans clinicians and therapists frequently argue that delaying affirmation while searching for “root causes” of identity can be psychologically harmful and stigmatizing.

Trans Safety Network on coversion therapy.

Sasha Ayad and Genspect

Sasha Ayad is associated with the transphobic gender critical organization Genspect.

Biographical profiles describe Ayad as a founding board member or advisor connected to Genspect and related organizations working on gender-medicine policy debates.

She has also collaborated professionally with figures closely linked to Genspect (for example through co-authored books, conferences, or therapy-network initiatives associated with the same policy circles).

In addition, the therapy network Therapy First (formerly GETA), which Ayad helped found, has personnel overlap and institutional links with Genspect and allied organizations.

The autogynephilia theory is a pseudoscience rooted in transphobia

All you need to know about the “autogynephilia” theory (Resources)

New Study Dismisses the Autogynephilia Approach to Transgender Experience

Blanchard debunked: Surveys show that all kinds of people experience "autogynephilia"

"I feel pretty!" (On the "Autogynephilic" Woman, Erotic Crossgender Fantasies and More)

Science and Transphobia: Ray Blanchard is Now Assisting White Supremacists. Why?

Joanna Santos' blog.

Illustration: Getty

Does gender dysphoria have a biological basis?

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

If you ask most experts in the field what causes someone to become transgender (as in experiencing gender dysphoria or being gender incongruent), they will tell you that this most likely caused by a combination of biological, cultural, social and personal factors. Most of them will agree that there is a significant biological component.

This is important, because it means that it is hard to dismiss gender incongruence as something imaginary caused by political and cultural pressure from sinister people promoting some kind of "gender ideology". All serious scientists in the field acknowledge that the identities of trans people are real and tangible and the great majority believe there are biological factors influencing the development of gender incongruence.

That does not mean that our concepts of gender are not influenced by culture. They most certainly are, as seen in the anti-trans insistence on gender being reduced to "biological sex", another concept that is as vague and ambiguous as the term "gender".

"Biological sex", as it is used by anti-trans activist, is a political and cultural construct that goes against everything we know about gender variance and intersex conditions, both in humans and in other animals.

In intersex people chromosomes, gonads, genitalia and hormones do not match in wide variety of combinations, and in trans people a persistent and intense experience of a gendered self does not mach the gender assigned at birth. Dismissing this as "illusions" or "irrelevant variations" does not cut it.

What science says about the biological component

Research indicates significant biological factors influencing gender identity and dysphoria, particularly in brain structure and function.

Neuroimaging studies reveal sex-atypical brain features in transgender individuals, aligning more closely with their experienced gender than their assigned sex.

Genetic studies suggest a polygenic component (involving many genes) to gender dysphoria, with higher concordance rates in monozygotic twins compared to dizygotic twins, indicating heritable influences. (Monozygotic twins are twins that develop from one single fertilized egg that splits into two embryos early in pregnancy.)

The prenatal endocrine environment refers to the hormonal conditions in the womb during pregnancy that influence the development of the fetus. Prenatal hormone exposure plays a crucial role in brain sexual differentiation. Conditions with atypical androgen signaling show increased rates of gender dysphoria, suggesting that the prenatal endocrine environment significantly impacts gender identity development.

Current research provides evidence that gender identity and gender dysphoria are strongly influenced by biological factors, especially brain sexual differentiation and genetics, within a complex mind/body/society framework.

However, the field is still developing, and mechanisms, effect sizes, and individual variability are not fully understood. The mind/body system is insanely complex and we just have to live with that uncertainty. But transgender identities are real, regardless of how you understand the word "real".

(Thanks to Davida for input to this article).

Relevant literature

Saksham, S., Deeksha, S., Udithi, B., & Vinayaka, G. (2023). The neurobiology and neurocognition of gender dysphoria. InterConf. https://doi.org/10.51582/interconf.19-20.12.2023.026

Nowak, K., Stępień, P., Marczak, A., Halczuk, I., Stachura, B., Górska, J., Gawryszczak, S., Gliwa, A., & Halczuk, I.(2024). Gender dysphoria and incongruence - neurophysiological diversity and genetic factors. Current Problems of Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.12923/2353-8627/2024-0023

Boucher, F., & Chinnah, T. (2020). Gender Dysphoria: A Review Investigating the Relationship Between Genetic Influences and Brain Development. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, 11, 89 - 99. https://doi.org/10.2147/ahmt.s259168

Altinay, M., & Anand, A. (2019). Neuroimaging gender dysphoria: a novel psychobiological model. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 14, 1281 - 1297. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-019-00121-8

Ettner, R. (2020). Etiology of Gender Dysphoria. Gender Confirmation Surgery https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29093-1_2

Sari̇, M., Savci, U., Balta, B., Öztürk, Y., & Tufan, A. (2023). Neurobiological Components of Sexual Identity Development and Epigenetic Effects of Environmental Stressors - Current Approaches in Psychiatry.https://doi.org/10.18863/pgy.1238867

Duisin, D., Barišić, J., Milovanović, S., Bizic, M., & Đorđević, L. (2018). Neurobiological basis of gender dysphoria -actual hypothetical models, 40, 54-72. https://doi.org/10.5937/engrami1802054d

Stevenson, D., Murray, J., Muglia, L., Wong, R., & Katz, M. (2023). Challenges to the study of gender dysphoria.Acta Paediatrica, 112, 2273 - 2275. https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.16975

Fernández, R., Ramírez, K., Lorente-Bermúdez, R., Gómez-Gil, E., Mora, M., Guillamón, A., & Pásaro, E. (2024).Analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms of the metabotropic glutamate receptors in a transgender population.Frontiers in Endocrinology, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2024.1382861

Mueller, S., De Cuypere, G., & T Sjoen, G. (2017). Transgender Research in the 21st Century: A Selective CriticalReview From a Neurocognitive Perspective.. The American journal of psychiatry, 174 12, 1155-1162.https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17060626

Saraswat, A., Weinand, J., & Safer, J. (2015). Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity. Endocrinepractice : Official journal of the American College of Endocrinology and the American Association of ClinicalEndocrinologists, 21 2, 199-204. https://doi.org/10.4158/ep14351.ra

Swaab, D., Wolff, S., & Bao, A. (2021). Sexual differentiation of the human hypothalamus: Relationship to genderidentity and sexual orientation. Handbook of clinical neurology, 181, 427-443. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-820683-6.00031-2

Saleem, F., & Rizvi, S. (2017). Transgender Associations and Possible Etiology: A Literature Review. Cureus, 9.https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.1984

Kauffman, R., Guerra, C., Thompson, C., & Stark, A. (2022). Concordance for Gender Dysphoria in Genetic FemaleMonozygotic (Identical) Triplets. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 51, 3647 - 3651. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02409-1

Fernández, R., Guillamón, A., Cortés-Cortés, J., Gómez-Gil, E., Jácome, A., Esteva, I., Almaraz, M., Mora, M.,Aranda, G., & Pásaro, E. (2018). Molecular basis of Gender Dysphoria: androgen and estrogen receptor interaction.Psychoneuroendocrinology, 98, 161-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.07.032

Saffie, J., & Bäuerle, N. (2023). Etiology of gender incongruence and its levels of evidence: A scoping review protocol. PLOS ONE, 18. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283011

Thanks to Davida for putting up the list of sources.

Illustration: Getty

Pluribus and fighting the hive mind

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:59:00 +0000

May Rude has written an interesting article on the sci-fi serie Pluribus' reference to conversion therapy as a way to create a totalitarian society and belief system. Pluribus reflects on the way a confirmative culture will use all types of social conditioning to force people to adhere to the beliefs and behaviors required by that culture.

Conversion therapy is the logical extension of this practice. The fear of social exclusion and this kind of violence is what makes most people in such a culture complicit in the oppression, even many of those who are themselves outsiders.

Pluribus can be summed up as Contact + Body Snatchers + Matrix, but in very original and creative ways. These are the only spoilers you will get before the embedded video.

I love Pluribus because it using common sci-fi tropes manages to clarify why the hive mind of oppressive cultures (being those fascist, nationalist religious fundamentalist or communist) cannot allow the outsiders to exist in the open, because their very existence invalidates the god given or "natural" order defined by the oppressors.

Many of the ones who embrace the hive mind do so because they need a narrowly ordered universe that gives them a clear and unambiguous role that calms their anxieties. The anxieties are, of course, caused by the fact that the universe is not a safe and predictable place, and that whatever the meaning of it all is, that meaning contains diversity, uncertainty and suffering.

The oppressors cannot handle this so they have to design an imaginary universe where these uncertainties cannot exist, and where - to the extent they do exist - are caused by the very ones who break the rules and invalidates their world view.

In any period with great upheavals many of the fearful ones become militants. They use verbal and physical violence to force everyone else to obey. This is where we are right now, especially as regards transphobia and racism.

Pluribus manages to describe how hard it can be to stand up to the hive-mind, because the hive-mind promises love, companionship and a sense of belonging. The loneliness of outsiders can be heart breaking. But Pluribus also describes the falseness of the promises made. The hive-mind's love is not real love. Accepting the dogmas of its world is not real freedom. There is no room for unique life journeys in their society.

And that is why we have to fight back. Every day.

You find Pluribus over at Apple TV. Spoilers in the text below the video.

The invaders want Carol, the protagonist of Pluribus, to join them in their hive mind, giving up all individuality in the process. Carol, a lesbian, has been through this before - in conversion therapy.

Reflections on Gender Variance

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 09:23:00 +0000

Guest post by Joanna Santos

After having ended my blog, I wanted to add one last footnote and briefly summarize my thoughts on gender variance; a topic I have reflected on most of my life.

We can come to two primary conclusions in that firstly, it is a naturally occurring phenomenon dating back to recorded human history and secondly it comes in different iterations and severity and degree of attachment. In other words, what Harry Benjamin observed with his hundreds of patients (who largely lived secret lives) over his lifetime turned out to be ostensibly correct. Gender variance behaves like a continuum.

The resistance to this human variant is explanatory in that it is in contravention to a desired social and political structure which seeks predictability. People can be more easily controlled if their behaviour is slotted into a safe binary which conveniently adhered to birth sex. Even detectable anomalies of birth sex were corrected such that the infant could fall within one of only two choices.

As we became increasingly educated in genetics we unsurprisingly found that chromosomal anomalies were part of the global picture of humanity because nature abhors uniformity and perfection. However this did little to discourage the binary model to change since it suited the power structures within societies.

It wasn't until well into the 2000's that society began to recognize that in many instances gender dysphoria wasn't a choice and people's actions in addressing it were valid. This was because the initial numbers of people coming out didn't warrant a moral panic. The kind of people who had previously transitioned in stealth were now coming out despite not needing to.

However once the full breadth of gender variance was exposed as being much larger than imagined, it was seized upon as a moral panic and sold as social contagion. Youth who abandoned strict social rules and flaunted originality were suddenly part of a movement to derail society. The white man who was afraid of his world order being toppled, seized on the moment encouraged by subgroups with their own agendas.

Our problem today is that the definition of 'trans' has become so expansive that it has left much of society with confusion about how to deal with people who, for varying reasons, don't readily fit within the old definitions of man and woman. Some are emboldened by the freedom of choice while others deal with conflicts of identity dating back to early childhood.

Many of these people are themselves confused about what actions to take regarding medical interventions which may or may not be warranted. Some want a definition to give them a path forward only they can ultimately determine.

Sorting out what this means will take time but I feel the answer lies in a live and let live perspective which abandons discrimination along gender lines. People need to be seen as individuals who embrace authenticity in their own manner and ultimately improve life quality and balance in doing so.

Illustration photo: Getty

Queerphobia, Science and the Problem with Realism

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 10:41:00 +0000

Here's a guest post by Davida, following up our post on the causes of transphobia. Using the approach of philosopher and computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup Davida maps the logical and rhetorical tricks used by homophobes (and by implication transphobes) in their desire to defend their own beliefs. This way of arguing is also found in science.

By Davida

In his book, Meaning in Absurdity, the Dutch philosopher Bernardo Kastrup makes an argument against a metaphysical position known as realism. Kastrup’s opening words, “This book is an experiment: an attempt to use logic to expose the absurd foundations of logic.”

In his argument, he employs research from quantum physics to support his critique. An alternative presentation is offered here, which hopefully will illustrate his points in a less technical manner. However, it will be without the strong empirical support his argument offered.

His critique of realism is directed at its reliance upon bivalence logic (either, or), strong objectivity (alleged facts, independent of context or conditions), hidden variables (alleged causes, outside of that which can be known) and faith (belief treated as fact).

A dialogue with a homophobe

So, imagine the following scene. Bill is talking across a backyard fence with his neighbor, Sam, about their new neighbors down the street.

Sam: We don’t need people like them in the neighborhood.

Bill: What do you mean? What kind of people are they?

Sam: Isn’t obvious? Two men are buying a house together and claiming to be one another’s spouse.

Bill: What’s the big deal? It is pretty common these days.

Sam: I’ll tell you what the big deal is. It isn’t natural. It goes against nature. It is against the natural order of the world. (realism claim implying strong objectivity)

Bill: How so?

Sam: Men are attracted to women, and women are attracted to men. It is either one or the other. You can’t have it both ways. That’s just the nature of reality. (enter logic based on bivalence).

Bill: Well, LGBT people say that they are simply living according to their subjective sense of who they are. It is just the way they were born.

Sam: That isn’t possible. They have either been duped and need to be reeducated, or they are lying to avoid taking responsibility for their decision to go against the natural order. They should be put in jail for engaging in unnatural behavior.

Bill: How do you know that the natural order requires that men only be attracted to women and that women only be attracted to men?

Sam: Because God created man and woman that way in the beginning, and last I heard, he hadn’t changed his mind. (enter the hidden variable)

Bill: How do you know that this God exists and that if God exists, that this was God’s intent?

Sam: Because the Bible tells me this is the way it is, and my pastor tells me this is the way it is, so that’s the way it is. (enter faith in the Truth of a worldview)

The bivalence fallacy

Kastrup’s point is that realism, requires strong objectivity and the use of logic based on the principle of bivalence, which is part of the traditional scientific paradigm. A paradigm he argues that can’t stand and needs to be replaced. It is a dead man walking, but most people, including many scientists - especially outside of physics - haven’t noticed yet.

He suggests that analytic idealism (Kastrup’s formulation of idealism) better describes the nature of experience, requires fewer assumptions, and doesn’t depend on bivalence logic, strong objectivity or other concepts mentioned in his critique.

We all probably need to examine our thinking and ways of looking at things. Many of us may be employing strong objectivity and a logic based on bivalence in some of our thinking.

If you would like to explore this topic further, you might read the book cited in the opening, read Kastrup’s other books, papers and articles, watch his interviews and discussions on YouTube, and go to the website for The Essentia Foundation that he directs.

Photo: Getty

What Really Drives Transphobia: The Fears of the Fearful

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 08:11:00 +0000

Transphobia is fueled by the fears of the fearful, as are most kinds of bigotry. The fearful are people who want to protect themselves from the unpredictability of life by retreating into some kind of imaginary "normalcy."Any person who does not follow the rules given within this "Fortress of Normalia" is seen as a threat who must be eradicated.

If we want to understand transphobia, we need to understand these fears.

A darkness has fallen over our democracies. The mood is very much like in Europe in the 1930s. At that time evil and cynical politicians used Jews as the scapegoats needed to take control of society. Everything bad was, according to this narrative, caused by a secret cabal of Jews who controlled Hollywood, world banking and communism.

Racism was and is a key tool in any totalitarian handbook, since it ensures that the dominant, default, "race" remains in power. Racism is still a potent weapon wielded by those who seek control.

The current enshittfication of our societies is, like the previous one, also powered by the desire to defend traditional gender roles, which - according to this belief - is anchored in both nature and God's will. This sexist nonsense is an essential part of the word view of conservative extremists like Trump, Putin and Orban. Trans people are seen as a threat to this "natural" order. That is why it makes sense to persecute them.

From Hitler to Trump

This need for traditional gender conformity explains why one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power in Germany was to destroy Magnus Hirschfeld'ts Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.

Magnus Hirschfeld's science and practice called for a humanization of gay and transgender individuals. Hirschfeld did not see queer and trans people as mentally ill, but rather as natural variations of humankind. His work reflected an increasing tolerance of LGBTQ people in a city like Berlin.

Magnus Hirschfeld (the one with glasses) with friends.

The Nazis, however, believed in the gospel of strong white men dominating everyone else, and that world view required a strict adherence to traditional gender roles, where men rule and women raise children and serve men with adoration in their eyes.

Controlling science

This kind of nationalistic traditionalism was not only based on cultural norms and accepted behaviors; it was also based on pseudo-scientific ideas about the natural order of things.

Eugenic research was seen to "prove" white superiority over people of color. A lot of researchers studying sexuality and gender let their own prejudices label everything that did not follow the vanilla script of submissive woman loving dominant man as sexual perversions. Gender variance was just a sign of such perversions.

In the second half of the 20th century, science gradually managed to free itself from19th century prejudices. I guess the rising number of female scientists and scholars contributed to that. Contemporary science, from medicine to sociology, has thoroughly documented that gender cannot be reduced to reproductive sex and that the world of sex and gender is better understood as variation along continuums.

One of the main reasons for why Trump is currently bullying American universities into submission is that he and his servants want to put an end to open research in the real nature of sexuality and gender. When insisting that gender must be reduced to "biological sex", they are basically trying to ban any research that undermines their simplistic binaries. They want to create universities where science aligns with their political goals. (This is, by the way, exactly the same as Hitler did in Germany and Putin has done in Russia.)

Magnus Hirschfeld was dismissed as a leftist Jew. Today's sexologists and gender scholars are seen as part of a left wing conspiracy driven by "gender ideology", which - according to the right wing extremists and TERFs - denies biological realities and seduces kids into a life of sin.

There is no unified "gender ideology", and the idea that researchers on sex and gender think sexual orientation and gender identity is a personal choice is pure nonsense. But it makes sense in the minds of people who know next to nothing about true science and philosophy.

Transphobes live in a constant state of fear, where everything and everyone that do not confirm their ideas of a safe world become a threat. The great challenge now is that they are no longer satisfied with living behind the walls of their Fortress of Normalia. They want to turn the whole world into Normalia.

Transphobia cannot be explained by politics alone

The fact that fascists cynically make use of people's fears to take power, does not mean that they do no believe in their own gospel. Hitler truly believed that Jews were a mortal threat to Germans.

I am not sure Trump believes in anything but his own hunger for power and glory, but most of his collaborators do believe in some kind of white supremacy, as well as the social exclusion of LGBTQ people. They are using Trump's second victory to turn the US into a country that follows those ideals.

In other words: Do not think that their cynicism is nothing but cynicism. They have often been raised in toxic cultural environments where they have been rewarded for brutality and deceit and punished for tolerance and compassion towards anyone outside their own tribe. Their brutality gives them a sense of meaning, purpose and power. They believe their actions are justified and that evil is - in some bizarre sense - good. Republicans are now saying that empathy will destroy civilization.

I am underlining this point because there are some, especially on the left, who seem to fall for another kind of conspiracy theory, namely that all of this is a game aimed at controlling the economy, ensuring that the richest of the rich own everything. The 1 percent does not really believe in the nationalist/fascist narrative. They are just using it to control the masses.

Sure, there are rich Americans who believe they can control MAGA without being fascists themselves, in the same way there were conservative millionaires in Germany who though they could control the Nazis.

But they cannot do so without losing their souls. Just look at the rapid descent of Elon Musk into total darkness. The multibillionaires are not in control of the current collapse of liberal democracy. They are exploiting it, yes, but this madness is driven by forces out of their control.

To really understand transphobia, we need to understand the dark side of the human mind.

The psychology of transphobia

I will argue that transphobia, in the same way as homophobia and racism, is an expression of a deeply engrained fear of the unknown found in the minds of the fearful and anxious. This anxiety comes first. It can then be exploited by those who seek power.

Being human is hard. Many wise people (including Jesus, Buddha, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski and Jung) have argued that suffering is an essential part of existence, and I am convinced they are right about that.

We are born into a universe that makes little sense if you look at it with open eyes. There may be close to two trillion galaxies out there. This tells us that the Universe was not made to serve humans. And then there is death, which some believe annuls the very meaning of life.

I do not belong to them. There is simply too much love, creativity, joy and meaning around. But I can see why living in denial becomes a tempting option for many. Joining an imaginary belief systems that promises happiness, wealth and salvation may be seen as preferably to facing and embracing the uncertainties and pain of real life. And doing so will give you refuge in a community that seems to support you.

Back in 1942 the German-American psychologist and humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm wrote the following about the Nazis in his book Fear of Freedom:

"It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group. However much a German citizen may be opposed to the principles of Nazis, if he has to choose between being alone and feeling that he belongs to Germany, most persons will choose the latter... The fear of isolation and the relative weakness of moral principles help any party to win the loyalty of a large sector of the population once the party has captured the power of the state."

The human ape did not evolve to understand the secrets of the universe. It evolved to survive in the harsh conditions of nature, and it did so by being smarter than many other species and by forming strong social groups where the members support each other.

And this is where we find the ultimate reason for racism and transphobia. If your life depends on being part of a tribe, accepting the overall belief system of that tribe will make you feel safer. If you follow the moral rules of your tribe you are less likely to face social expulsion.

Moreover, by supporting the existing world order you will be seen as a safer bet by other members of the tribe when it comes to love, work and the sharing of resources.

The language of the tribe has been developed in tandem with its belief system. Your vocabulary reflect this belief system. It therefore limits your ability to think outside this box.

What in reality is pure nonsense ("gender equals biological sex") may seem like common sense to you, your family and your friends. If there is only one word to cover both reproductive sex, sexuality, gender identity, gender expression and gender roles, it is easy to believe that they are all one and the same.

The face of Hazel Bryan harassing Elizabeth Eckford entering Little Rock Central High School back in 1957 can serve as an example of how the hidden darkness of the human mind can be projected upon people who do not deserve it. (Wikipedia)

The Shadow

The fear of the outsider is fueled by forces buried deep in our psyche. Rational arguments normally come up short against the fear and the anger caused by these forces.

Carl Gustav Jung called the unconscious part of the personality that contains aspects of ourselves that we reject and repress "The Shadow". This part of our psyche - this archetype - includes traits, desires, and impulses that we consider unacceptable, shameful, or incompatible with our self-image.

The reason we suppress the parts of us we do not like is that these feelings entail the risk of social ostracism. Or, at least, we believe we will be despised and excluded if they become known. And we may be right about that, at least if we are member of a repressive culture, where dogma and religious laws trumps compassion, tolerance and diversity.

People of some personality types are so rebellious that they leave the safe haven of the tribe. They find other tribes that have room for their strengths and qualities, or they journey alone.

But others are more afraid and anxious, either by nature or because the rebellion has been beaten out of them. They like social and cultural rules and regulations, because these relieve them of the duty to think for themselves. Dogma and "common sense" clichés protect them against the chilly winds of the Universe.

Such people, who I call "the fearful", are more likely to push any unwanted desires down into the subconscious. So even if they have concepts about what the Shadow contains, they do not see these traits, desires or ideas as a part of themselves. Instead they project them upon others: They see in others what they cannot stand in themselves.

So the Jews are seen as power-hungry, greedy, violent and lecherous criminals, not because the actually are these things, but because these traits reflect repressed feelings and desires that remind the timid of these tropes. Trans people are seen as sex perverts who want to seduce children, not because they are, but because the human mind is full of desires that violate cultural taboos.

In the same way trans people are seen as leading a destructive
"gender ideology", Jews were presented as leaders of a secret cabal
controlling both communists and bankers.

Jung underlines that the Shadow is not only something that affects individuals. When a subculture develops a specific set of "truths", rules and moral teachings, the more timid and oppressed members of that culture are more likely to repress similar parts of their personalities. They reinforce each others fears.

The idea that both "biological sex" and gender identity are binary and can be reduced to your reproductive sex is a cultural and social construct.

The very existence of transgender and intersex people proves that this is not the case. The same applies to sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is not a binary, but found on a spectrum.

However, multi-dimensional continuums of gender and sexuality open the door to diversity and diversity threatens the narrow and easy to understand rules set up by the tribe. Things become complicated, and complicated is bad.

Note that even if a timid member of such a tribe has no oppressed sexual desires or cross-gender traits (most of them do), they will nevertheless fear these variations, because this diversity threatens the social order that makes them feel safe. They have invested so much in social roles determined by these binaries, that abandoning them will make their lives meaningless. Or so the believe.

Keep in mind that they fear that their social standing, acceptance and safety are at stake. If their children or family members are exposed as "deviants", that will threaten their own lives and perceived happiness.

Cis parents who destroy the lives of their own queer and trans kids, do so because they think they are protecting them against the great evil of "gender ideology". They know that LGBTQ kids will get harassed, because they take part in this persecution themselves.

This leads to the absurd situation where the very ones who say that sexuality and gender cannot be changed are the ones who tries to force their loved ones to deny their own nature.

All of this can only be described as a kind of collective mass hysteria, with emotional feedback loops that lead to violence and death.

The Myth of Normal

In the book The Myth of Normal the Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté argues that “Normal” is not a neutral, scientific term but a social judgment based on cultural expectations. Our society defines normal in terms of productivity, conformity, and functioning within systems, not in terms of actual human health or wholeness.

Many patterns considered normal today - chronic stress, suppressed emotions, disconnection, burnout, shallow relationships, overconsumption - are actually expressions of trauma and dysfunction. Because these patterns are so widespread, they appear normal, but in reality they are harmful adaptations. Maté argues that “normal” often means being well-adjusted to a sick society, or - in our context - a sick subculture.

Trauma and chronic stress underlie many conditions we label as disease. They are the body’s and psyche’s attempts to cope. According to Maté he solution is to rediscover authenticity, connection, and compassion, i.e. that what is truly natural for humans.

But what if there is no room for an authentic life in the subculture you are part of? How do you handle the fact that what the tribe believes will make you safe, healthy and wealthy is actually doing the opposite?

Well, you simply blame the people you think are violating your contract with God, the Nation or Nature.You pour all your pain and frustration into hating the ones who defy the dogma and practices your whole life depends on.

And this rage is powered by all the feelings stored in the dark depths of your mind. It is not rational. Is it not based on love. It becomes evil because it has been denied for so long. It has not been seen and accepted for what it is. It has not been integrated into a healthy psyche, so it is extremely hard to control.

Evil is a phycological reality. And it is time for us all to face that fact.

The fear of the dark forest represents the fear of that which is not, including the dark side of our own mind. The fearful seeks safety in their local tribe and channels their fears through racism and transphobia.(Getty)

The case of Britain

What is happening in the UK right now is an clear example of the collective Shadow taking control of so many that their irrational fears leads to what can only be understood as a violent expulsion of the unwanted - in this case transgender people.

In Britain the hysteria started among "gender critical" TERFs like J.K. Rowling, but since the TERFs share the fears of the right wing extremists (they both fear the collapse of the strict gender binary) it has now taken over most of the major parties.

As in the myth of the evil Jew, facts no longer matter. The real science on sex and gender is replaced by irrational narratives that have no basis in reality. Trans women do not attack cis women in bathrooms. Yet, that imagined threat is the basis for all the current oppression of trans women in Britain.

And in the same way as the Jews were seen as masters of a capitalist/communist ideology, trans people and their defenders are believed to be using a "gender ideology" to destroy civilization as we know it.

This does not mean that a majority of Brits are hysterical transphobes, at least not in the repressed Shadow sense of the word. And note that a majority of Americans still think trans people should be allowed to live their lives in peace. But most of the good ones keep quiet. They let the transphobes get away with this genocide for two reasons:

1. They do not know trans people and they do not know much about gender diversity, gender incongruence and gender identity, so they think they do not have the knowledge needed to take part in the debate.

2. The violent insanity of the haters scares them. They do not want to be dragged into a war they do not think is theirs. They know that if they become associated with the unwanted, they may become victims of same hatred themselves.

It is actually their war, because fascism always leads to more oppression and more hatred. Their own safety and comfort is depending on an open society that allows everyone to live their lives in peace. But I guess they manage to convince themselves that there are others better equipped to fight that fight.

That is how fascism wins.

What can we do?

As noted, Fascism cannot be reduced to a tactic used by a cynical and power hungry elite. Fascism grows out of "the common clay", ie. the fears of ordinary, run-of-the-mill people. It is the mindless stupidity of people who have fooled themselves into believing they are the "normal" ones and their enemies are not that is turning the world into a dystopian hellscape.

Some of the fearful will in the end see through the narratives that have shaped their lives and free themselves from these chains. But we cannot win by making all of the fearful less fearful through rational arguments. This is not about facts. This is mostly about feelings.

It is true that the fearful are less likely to become fascists in stable and wealthy societies, but there will always be a significant number of people who will seek safety in the concept of "normal". And right now the extremists are doing their best to make our societies less safe, less stable and much poorer, which again leads to more racism and transphobia.

If you want the fearful to stop harassing transgender people, you have to make them believe that trans people are "normal" too.

The reason so many of the fearful finally stopped hating and harassing gay and lesbian people was that more of them learned to know and love queer people. They had to face the fact that these people were human too. Increased visibility humanized gay and lesbian people in the eyes of the fearful.

We can argue that there are no "normal" people. There is no-one at the top of the bell curve. What we are seeing is an insane diversity of traits, abilities, interests and passions, and that is a good thing. But the fearful need the illusion of normalcy, and the only way to make them stop harassing trans people is that they learn to know so many trans people that they cannot turn them into the dangerous "other".

The TERFs and the fascists are now forcing trans people out of public spaces. The real reason is not that trans women are a real threat to cis women and kids. No, they are forcing them back into the closet in order to make them invisible. If trans people become invisible none of the fearful will see that the trans people they fear so much "bleeds when they are pricked and laugh when they are tickled" too.

Good is evil, evil is good

One liberal tactic used against the fascist was, until recently, quite effective. This tactic was to present the bigots as bigots, and therefore as someone who were not "decent citizens", i.e. "not normal". Even the most fearful understood that "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was an essential part of democracy. And if they had been raised in a Christian tribe, they would also have learned that "blessed are the poor" and that you should "love your enemies." In other words: normalcy demanded at least a minimum of compassion and decency, real or pretend. Their fear of social exclusion kept some of their most destructive traits in check.

This is why the fascists started their culture war against "woke". By turning love and decency into something evil, they gave the fearful free reign to express their fears through hate and violence. Now evil is good and good is evil.

Right wing Christians are no longer quoting Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Why? Because the sermon so clearly shows that Jesus was "woke". He said that blessed are "the poor in spirit," "the meek", "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness", "the merciful", "the pure in heart", "the peacemakers," "those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake" etc. Come on! What's next? That Jesus respected women and believed that rich people could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Where does that leave Trump?

Still, the fact that their new gospel of hate is so blatantly evil, is also their weakness. Because a majority of people do not believe that evil is good. They are not religious fanatics, Republican fascists or hateful TERFs.

There are a lot of decent people out there. But they need to be mobilized for good. They need to see that their role models stand up for people of color, LGBTQ people, and the poor. If they can see themselves as part a larger movement for good, they will protest, they will march and they will talk back at family members and acquaintances who spread hate and prejudice.

And the tipping point often comes when the bigotry becomes som extreme that some selected people with voice and influence clearly and succinctly make that clear. They will not be arguing against the bigotry. They will simply be pointing out what most decent people knows: that these bigots are toxic creeps.

This is what eventually led to the fall of McCarthy's anti-liberal crusade back in 1954. Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy during a nationally televised congressional hearing: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

McCarthy's fascist terror had been unmasked for what it was. He was defeated.

What you must not do is to adopt the vocabulary of the haters in order to "reach the middle ground" or whatever it is some Democrats and Labour politicians tell themselves these days. Because if you legitimize the narratives that cause the terror, decent people will believe in them and stay quiet.

Norwegian doctors/gatekeepers stop transgender kids from getting the treatment they need

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:09:00 +0000

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten covers the challenges faced by transgender youth in Norway regarding access to gender-affirming medical treatment in a new article.

Photo of Stina's shoes from Aftenposten.
Photo: Charlotte Førde Skomsøy

It focuses on the case of "Stina," a 13-year-old who was denied puberty blockers by Rikshospitalet, Norway’s national medical institution for gender treatment. Instead, she sought treatment at the Health Station for Gender and Sexuality (Helsestasjon for kjønn og seksualitet, HKS) in Oslo, which granted her access to the medication.

Cis-normative gatekeepers

The article confirms what many trans people have argued for a long time: Public institutions for transgender health often become gatekeepers serving a cis-normative society.

Although the doctors see themselves as progressive and supportive, their internalized transphobia make them set up strict rules for who qualifies as a "real trans person".

Norwegian trans people will tell you that as far as Rikshospitalet is concerned, it helps to live up to the gender stereotypes of accepted femininity and masculinity if you want hormones and surgery.

This is ethically problematic, as these doctors - all of them cis people - have put themselves up as both judges and prisoners, claiming the power to decide whether a trans person should be living their lives as themselves or not.

Would they deny cis kids treatment?

Imagine the situation reversed: What if someone forced a cis kid to go through puberty as a gender not their own?

Indeed, boys with unusual breast growth, pubertal gynecomastia, will get surgery if needed, in spit of the risks involved. Girls with hyperandrogenism (excess androgens like testosterone) may get an enlarged clitoris, excess body hair, and - later in life - male-pattern baldness. Do they get medication? You bet!

Caution, the consequences be damned

The increasing anti-trans activism world wide has also inspired Rikshospitalet to urge "caution", claiming that we do not know enough about the effects of various treatments.

We should point out that the same hospital provides a lot of treatments were there may be doubt about side effects but they still treat the patients, given that no treatment will lead to even worse results.

In the case of transgender kids, the unwanted transformation caused by puberty will have a much more detrimental effect on the patient than using puberty blockers while waiting for the youth to be old enough to decide for themselves.

Last year the health authorities decided that puberty blockers are seen as "experimental", in spite of them having been used to save transgender kids the world over for a long time.

Stina has her own IKEA Blåhaj, a transgender symbol used by trans youth world wide.

HKS, the pro-trans alternative

While Rikshospitalet has become increasingly cautious with providing puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones to minors, HKS takes a more affirmative stance, emphasizing the severe mental health impacts of denying treatment to trans youth.

Stina’s family experienced two vastly different approaches between Rikshospitalet and HKS. After years of medical evaluations and consultations with Rikshospitalet,

Stina was denied puberty blockers, leaving her feeling unheard and deeply distressed. Ultimately, her family relocated to Oslo to access treatment from HKS, which they found to be more empathetic.

The mother feels that Rikshospitalet's approach exacerbated her daughter's problems. Mandatory evaluations at various stages delayed the process, reinforcing the feeling of not being believed and the fear of not receiving the medication in time.

When puberty began, the distressing emotions took over. Stina was unable to attend school.

"The pressure became too great, and life became too difficult," says the mother to Aftenposten.

"We did everything Rikshospitalet asked us to do. We attended meetings for years and went through difficult evaluations. Yet, my daughter did not receive the treatment she needed to feel well," she says.

"From being a deeply depressed child with no prospects for the future, I now have a teenager who looks at life with optimism. The struggle was tough, and the outcome was life-changing," says the mother.

To receive treatment at HKS, Stina had to move to Oslo. The health station is only available to Oslo residents.

For the rest of the country, Rikshospitalet is the only place authorized to offer medical treatment for gender incongruence to individuals under 18 years old. Stina had been followed up there since she was six.

The mother adds:

"All people have the right to bodily autonomy. Therefore, each individual should be able to decide what feels right for them after Rikshospitalet has provided the necessary information about the effects and side effects of the treatment in question."

Ingun Wiik of HKS tells Aftenposten that she believes that the current treatment offered by Rikshospitalet resembles conversion therapy. Her view is that the treatment process there is aimed at convincing the patient that they are the gender they were assigned at birth.

Aftenposten's headline: "'Stina' was born with a boy's body.
When puberty hit, she was denied medicine."

Rikshospitalet wants to close down HKS

Note that leaders at the National Treatment Service for Gender Incongruence (NBTK) at Rikshospitalet have tried to get HKS closed down.

Back in 2023 Christine Marie Jentoft and Inge Alexander Gjestvang of the national LGBTQ organization Fri commented:

"If the leadership is so concerned about treating transgender individuals, perhaps they should focus on other patient groups they feel more confident working with? It does not inspire trust in a leader when the main focus is the fear of making mistakes."

For more on the trans clinic of the Oslo University Hospital (Rikshospitalet), see our article: What Transphobic Norwegian Doctors can Teach Us about the Diversity of Transgender People

Celebrating Trans+ History Week with some articles from our archives

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 06 May 2025 10:03:00 +0000

Trans+ History Week is dedicated to recognizing and honoring the lives, struggles, and contributions of transgender people throughout history.

The week, from May 5 to May 11, is to:

Educate about historical and contemporary figures in the trans community.
Highlight milestones in trans rights movements.
Celebrate the cultural impact of trans individuals.
Reflect on past and ongoing struggles against discrimination and marginalization.

This site has several articles that cover often unknown parts of the history of gender variance. You might find the following ones interesting:

Were There Transgender Vikings? The Laxdæla Saga Says So.

Yes, Ernest Hemingway was Transgender

The Transmasculine Women of Ancient Baghdad

The Kama Sutra on Transgender People

Magnus Hirschfeld's Understanding of Transgender People

The Transgender Historian Zagria, Part 1: "A Gender Variance Who's Who"

What an old edition of Encyclopedia Britannica can tell us about the erasure of trans and queer people

A Short History of the Roots of Transphobic Science

How J.K. Rowling and transphobes are forcing men into women's bathrooms

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 06:45:00 +0000

Jaxon Feeley, trans man

One of the clear signs of bigotry is how its proponents do not understand the unintended consequences of their own irrational hatred. They need their "solutions" to their imaginary problems to be neat and easy to handle.

J. K. Rowling and the TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) celebrated their UK Supreme Court victory this week as a victory for women (i.e. cis women).

They clearly believe that this means that trans women will be excluded from women's spaces, including bathrooms, in the future.

What they have not considered is the fact that they have now opened the doors of women's bathrooms to men.

Indeed, if the British government follows up on this Supreme Court madness (gender reduced to "biological sex" at birth), trans men will be forced to either use the women's room or break the law.

A trans man in the restroom

Imagine this scenario: A trans man (indistinguishable from a cis man) walks into a woman's restroom to do their thing. Imagine one of the women in there alerting a male friend or the staff about this male incursion into female spaces. This may quickly escalate into something ugly.

And what about the trans women using the men's room? Are they going to feel comfortable, having to publicly out themselves in this way? And, as we know, the real creeps in such scenarios are for the most part cis men. How are they going to react to a woman in the men's room? This may quickly escalate into something even uglier.

Jaxon Feeley, a trans man, told The Independent:

“It [him walking into a women's toilet] not only obviously puts [cis women] in a difficult situation, but it also allows any [cisgender] man to walk into any so-called official single-sex space now and say, ‘Well, I was assigned female at birth.’ How are you policing that? You can’t police that.”

Social exclusion

You might argue that the whole point of "gender critical" and fascist transphobia is not to protect cis women against trans women or cis men, but to force trans women out of public spaces all-together.

Michael Hughes posted pictures of himself next to women entering cubicles and doing their makeup, documenting the absurdity of American bathroom laws.

These anti-trans activists do not consider trans men being real men anyway. They have probably never met a trans man in their life. Or, more correctly, they have never knowingly met a trans man, in the same way that they have not been aware of meeting trans women in restrooms, even if they have, given that nothing bad has happened.

The goal is rather to make trans people feel threatened and unwelcome, to the point where they detransition, stay hidden at home or take their own lives. These bathroom laws have the same purpose as the bathroom laws of Jim Crow or apartheid: To oppress those marginalized.

If all trans people stay away, the transphobes will no longer have to face their own bigotry and the fact that sex and gender is not so simple and binary as their frightened tiny minds require.

“The entire trans community is devastated,” jane fae, director of trans campaign group TransActual said. “Irrespective of the small print on this ruling, the intent seems clear: to exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society.”

Policing public restrooms

Coming back to Feeley's comment on policing: How are you going to police this?

We have already a lot of examples of cis women being harassed in women's restrooms for being trans, mostly because of a masculine or an ambiguous gender presentation. Some transmasculine lesbian cis women are already afraid of using public toilets.

Are all women to carry an ID paper with their assigned gender at birth? Should all women carry medical certificates, and if so, to document what really? Chromosomes? Gonads? Testosterone levels? If so, what about all the intersex people, whose genetic, hormonal and visible makeup represents variants of this factors, challenging the binary by their very existence?

Is the staff of public establishment going to carry out genital inspections? Should the police be allowed to do so? This may quickly escalate into something seriously ugly.

TERF attacks against transgender people are hurting butch lesbian women.
Transphobic TERF harasses cisgender woman in public bathroom after thinking she was trans.
Trans man takes on selfie campaign to fight 'ridiculous' bathroom bans.
Sciencevet explains intersex variations.
Court ruling on ‘woman’ at odds with UK Equality Act aim, says ex-civil servant. ‘Clear premise’ was to give trans and biological women same sex discrimination rights, says official who helped draft act.

You need to read TJ Klune's anti-JK Rowling books about love, diversity and magic

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 11:45:00 +0000

In a world full of evil fascists, transphobic TERFs and religious fanatics comes the anti-JK Rowling books you have been waiting for, books about love, diversity and personal growth.

It is when you are living in dark times like these that you need art that can give you meaning and hope. This is why I will use this opportunity to tell you about two books that have given me a psychological and spiritual injection of compassion and optimism.

TJ Klune

Travis John Klune (or TJ Klune as he is known) has written several romantic fantasy novels.

He is a gay and neurodiverse author who has some really profound insights into why some people become bigots who do everything in their power to control others. But he is also very good at describing how diversity and allowing people to be themselves can lead to personal growth and happiness.

The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the follow up Somewhere Beyond the Sea, are clearly targeting a young adult audience, but – believe me – the books have something for everyone, including a kind of humor those who have lived for some time will appreciate.

The House in the Cerulean Sea presents Linus Baker, a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He is the perfect by the book bureaucrat.

He is often sent to orphanages for magical children to report on them, and even though he feels compassion for the kids, he does not really see how the system uses these orphanages to keep the magical children away from society at large.

These children do not fit the standards of normalcy in this society and is therefore seen as a threat to many. A slogan seen on many walls is "See Something. Say Something!". In other words: safety is secured through surveillance.

The emotional lock-ins of bigots

TJ KLune (Library of Congress Life)

Klune's humorous presentation of the ministry and Linus' alienated life is alone worth the read. But under the comedy you will find a brilliant analysis of what makes some people afraid of those who are different, and how a strict rule and regulation-based system stops people from finding out who they truly are and what they were born to do in this world.

Here's a relevant quote:

“I won’t lie to you. The road ahead will not be smooth. No matter what I—we say, there will always be those who refuse to accept the truth. They surround themselves with like-minded people, and it creates an echo chamber that’s nigh on impossible to escape. A feedback loop that never ends.”

The cleansing force of childhood creativity

The magical children are obviously meant to represent the queer and neurodiverse kids in our world, although none of them are explicitly presented as LGBTQ. It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that Linus is gay, though.

Linus is sent on a secret assignment by the Extremely Upper Management of the ministry to evaluate an orphanage on a secluded island, home to six extraordinary children, including a gnome, a wyvern, a blob and the seven year old Antichrist (a young boy named Lucy). There is also the resident island sprite, Zoe, who comes to play a very important role in book 2.

This orphanage is led by the enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, and it is Arthur who, by the way he treats the kids and others, opens Linus up to a completely different way of being, a way that allows kids to be themselves, explore themselves and love themselves in creative ways that bring growth and happiness to everyone on the island (and beyond).

Dedicated to transgender people

In a text added to Somewhere Beyond the Sea Klune reveals that the books have been influenced by JK Rowling, although not in the way you may think (as in one fantasy writer inspiring another). No, volume two is explicitly an anti-JK Rowling book, and the book is dedicated to transgender people everywhere.

Here's what Klune says about this:

"I do want to be remembered as something, and it's very specific: not the Antichrist, but the Anti-J.K. Rowling. I want to be her antithesis, her opposite. I want my stories to fly in the face of everything she believes in. At the end of the day, she has no idea who I am, and that's okay. I'll still be here, chugging away, making sure queer stories are told. And I won't be doing it alone. There are so many queer authors writing stories that matter, important stories that show all the different facets of our lives.
To make it unequivocal: J.K. Rowling's beliefs on trans people are abhorrent and have no place in a modern society. People like her—people who believe trans people are somehow lesser-deserve to be shunned until they disappear into the ether. As Arthur says in the novel, 'Hate is loud.' He's right. People tend to love quietly and hate loudly. But here's the thing: I don't do anything quietly. I'm a loud motherfucker, and I will continue to be, especially when my community is under attack.
To my trans readers: this book is dedicated to you. Without you, there would be no us. You are vital, beautiful, and you deserve everything good in this world. There are so many more of us than there are of them. Yes, they're loud and it can feel like their hate is all we see and hear. And yet, I constantly think about the twelve-year-old boy I met at a small school in West Virginia. After speaking to a group of kids, this boy came up to me and said, "I know all about the gay stuff."
Bewildered, I replied, "What do mean?"
He said, "Last year, I had a girlfriend. He came out as trans, and now he's my boyfriend."

The House in the Cerulean Sea
Somewhere Beyond the Sea

The Weight of America: Transgender People Under Siege

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:28:00 +0000

American society is like the inside of this monstrous mall, where people move like “sentient corpses". Photo: estherpoon

America has truly lost its soul, Kai McKenzie argues. Trans people find themselves under siege.

Guest article by Kai McKenzie

As I sit in my Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada rental home, looking out at the quiet and cold snow-covered porch and yard outside, the ice crystals on the window glowing magically in the morning sunlight, and the little flecks of snow drifting upward on the breeze outside and catching the light like fireflies, I feel the weight of America.

It’s inescapable. It follows and haunts me. I feel a fierce anger at the country where I was born, at the citizens who have thrown me and my children away, who barely bat an eye as our fellow trans citizens are erased from monuments, histories, medical records, and public life. America has truly lost its soul.

The faces of the US

Born in Boulder, Colorado in 1964, growing up in Berkeley, California during the tumultuous 1960s and 70s, living in Boulder again for three decades before moving to Saskatchewan, Canada in 2018 for school, I’ve seen the many faces of the US: the liberal college town of Berkeley with its diversity and pride, colourful protests and street performers, passionate desire to stand up for human rights and fairness; the sleepy town of 29 Palms, California in the Mojave Desert, near the 29 Palms Marine Corp Base, where being American means being faithful and proud, ready to invade and stand strong at the behest of a Commander in Chief; Nashville, Tennessee, where my parents moved for a distinguished professorship in mathematics, a mix of southern tradition and new immigrants.

The US has many faces, but what, in my mind, seems to characterize Americans is their ability to carry the weight of pretence, of imagining themselves to represent freedom and democracy while spearheading coups, undermining democratically-elected governments, supporting dictators for their oil and wealth, while at the same time supporting scientific research and medical and social aid throughout the world.

These enormous contradictions mean that living in the US leads to a form of numbness, of pretence, of ignorance, of self-righteousness.

Comfortably numb

As my fellow Two-Spirit and transgender Americans lose health care, access to identity documents, the right to safety, employment, education, representation, access to their histories, agency, are Americans at large concerned? Some are, obviously, but most slide comfortably further into the numbness that characterizes American life.

David Guterson, in his 1993 essay “Enclosed. Encyclopedic. Endured. The Mall of America,” likened American society to the inside of this monstrous mall, where people move like “sentient corpses” in a landscape that confuses and distorts reality like an “M. C. Escher Drawing,” “outside of time and space . . . a potent dreamscape” with addictive and hallucinatory properties (166, 165, 172).

This well describes Trump’s America, where American propensities of the past, toward pretence and imaginative self-righteousness, are now blatant, unrepentant, and undisguised.

As King Trump makes wild proclamations about what is real and what is not, renames geographical features, and demands that Gaza, Canada, and Greenland offer themselves up on the altar of American greatness, the American bloated lack of regard for other perspectives is merely more obvious than it was in the past.

Under siege

My trans friends in Colorado, those with whom I and my children campaigned and lobbied for inclusion and respect from 2014-2018, now find themselves under siege, threatened by sinister, infiltrating federal “executive orders” received as law.

What I’m witnessing frightens me: the University of Colorado’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics going along with Trump’s dictates to remove references to diversity and trans issues, the National Park Service scrubbing trans people from the Stonewall Monument to the uprising which trans people played the biggest role in, people right and left in the US going along with these orders and commands, like zombies sleepwalking into fascism.

Imploding from within

My hope is that, as Trump and his sidekick Musk plunder American agencies, destroying the ability of the United States to respond to disease and disaster, that it will all implode from within, that the American greed to be great will finally undermine itself.

Meanwhile, I hope we can try to help the people most affected by Trump’s policies, low-income communities at risk of the impacts of global warming; Two-Spirit and trans people losing health care, identity documents and safety; scientists and policymakers targeted for standing up for science and sanity. Hold onto the shreds and fragments of the destruction and perhaps we can rebuild relationships, policies, and practices, just as little flecks of drifting snow continue to rise toward the light.

Work Cited: Guterson, David. “Enclosed. Encyclopedic. Endured. The Mall of America.” The Norton Anthology of Nonfiction, thirteenth edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, pp. 161-173.

Were There Transgender Vikings? The Laxdæla Saga Says So.

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 14:16:00 +0000

One of the main transphobic arguments these days is that people become trans because of "gender ideology". And "gender ideology" is apparently something new invented by post-modernists, Marxists and progressive leftists. So what if I told you there were transgender people in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages?

Transgender people in history

I have already documented transgender people in ancient and medieval India, ancient Phrygia and Rome, the Roman Empire, ancient Baghdad and late 19th century Berlin, and I have also written a popular article about William Shakespeare being in love with a transfeminine person.

However, with the exception of the poem on gender dysphoria from Kalonymos ben Kalonymus (1322), none of the original sources I have found have been written by trans people. All of the texts, including the one I present here, will therefore have to be read with an open, but critical, mind.

Getting behind the stereotypes
Reconstructed Viking women's clothing.
Photo: Battle-Merchant

Many of the historical texts are written by transphobes or people who do not understand gender variance. Still, even a queer-phobic or transphobic text can be a witness to gender variance, because why would the author imagine cross-gender expressions if the culture had no concepts of gender variance?

Whether the author of the text I am going to present today, namely the 13th century Laxdæla Saga (also written as Laksdøla, Laksdæla or Laxardale), is transphobic remains to be seen.

It clearly refers to negative tropes about both transfeminine and transmasculine gender variance. The story in the saga takes place around 1000 CE, which mean that this may also apply to the Viking age.

Note that I am using the word "transgender" as an umbrella term covering a wide variety of gender variance here. The references found in the saga do not tell us if the people referred to were gender dysphoric or gender incongruent as we use these medical terms today.

The similarities with contemporary gender variance leads me to believe, however, that many of them probably were.

A Norse Game of Thrones

The Laxdæla Saga is an amazing piece of literature, a kind of Old Norse Game of Thrones (but without the dragons). It can be classified as a kind of chivalric romance, a type of literature that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval Europe.

Yet, it is also extremely Scandinavian, especially when it comes to the description of the female characters, who do not in any way live up to the ideals of chaste and demure Christian women.

The lack of a real feudal culture in Norway and Iceland meant that the big farms were the centre of power, and there the women were nearly as powerful as the men, if not on paper so at least in real life.

There are those who argue that The Laxdæla Saga must have been written by a woman, given that the female characters are the ones who drive the narrative. This especially applies to Gudrun, the main character, whose plots and power plays define the saga. Gudrun Osvivsdotter was "the most beautiful of all the women who have grown up on Iceland, and she also seemed to be the wisest."

I have to add that she was also a manipulative badass, as reflected in the part we are going to look at, which covers two of her four marriages.

Sexuality and gender in the Viking age

Note that the sexual practices of Viking Norway and Iceland (from the late 700s to around 1050 CE) were very flexible. Virginity in brides was a non-issue and women could divorce their husbands just by saying so to witnesses. Female divorcees were also entitled to their part of the couple's property.

In Scandinavia, as in the rest of Europe and the Middle East at the time, people did not have a concept of homosexuality, in the sense of an inborn sexual orientation. Same-sex relationships were not banned, but a man that was seen as the receptive or passive partner was looked down upon. In other words: Being seen as "feminine" was bad for a man.

Lesbian relationships are close to invisible in the sources.

By the time the Laxdæla saga was written, Norway and Iceland had become Christian nations, and "sodomy" was seen as a sin. I do not think this has influenced the views of the author of this saga, however.

We have clear indications of gender variance in Viking Scandinavia. A famous Viking warrior burial (Birka Grave Bj 581) in Sweden was long assumed to belong to a man because it contained weapons, armor, and a military strategy game. However, DNA testing in 2017 confirmed that the skeleton was "biologically female". It is probably safe to say that they were some shade of transmasculine, but whether they saw themselves as s a man or a woman is not known.

In Viking society, practicing seiðr, a form of magic and divination, was often associated with women. Men who practiced it were therefor often seen as taking on a more "feminine" role and could be insulted as ergi or argr (a term that implied gender deviance, effeminacy, or homosexuality).

There may have been an overlap between Viking and Sámi cross-gender magical practices. Many shamanistic cultures allow for transfeminine shamans, and this seems to apply to the shamanism of both Germanic and Sámi tribes in Scandinavia.

Valkyrie or shield-maiden
from Hårby in Denmark
Photo: Gilwellian,

Some Viking graves contain both male and female artifacts, which could indicate people who lived outside of strict binary gender roles. We have graves with male skeletons wearing female dresses and jewelry. There are also stories about female warriors, or shield maidens, in the sagas.

Crossdressing and gender transformations were also known from Norse religion. Loki transforms into a mare and has intercourse with a stallion. Disguised as a woman Odin managed to beget a son to avenge Balder, and he practiced seiðr, which - as noted - could be seen as unmanly.

Transfeminine crossdressing in the Laxdæla saga

In the Laxdæla Saga accusations of crossdressing are used to achieve certain objectives.

It is clear that the crossdressing is seen as something negative and stigmatizing by most of the characters in the saga. This is why accusing someone of using clothes made for "the other" gender works.

However, it is not obvious that the author shares this disdain.

Interestingly, the story makes use of crossdressing accusations twice, first against a man and next against someone assigned female. There is nothing in the text that implies that the man is transgender, but the author is deliberately vague when it comes to the female assigned character.

My Old Norse is not good enough to give you a direct translation of the relevant parts of the saga, but I have made an English language version of the relevant text based on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish translations, and you can read the whole text over at my Sidebar blog. There you will also find references to the various translations.

So let's go back to Gudrun, the main protagonist and her desire to divorce her husband Thorvald. Gudrun wants to be with Thord and Thorvald is in her way.

Thord, on the other hand, is married to Aud, a woman he married for money and not for love. So he has to get rid of Aud if he is to hook up with Gudrun.

One day Gudrun demands more jewelry from her husband Thorvald, and he responds by hitting her in the face, arguing that she has become too greedy. Gudrun does not take this lightly and answers with the kind of understatement the sagas are know for:

"You have given me, by your standards, a great adornment—a good complexion. Rest assured, I will trouble you no further."

She then meets up with Thord:

She recounted the humiliation she had endured and asked what revenge she should take. Thord laughed and said, "I have a good suggestion: sew him a low-cut shirt! When you see him wearing it, you can demand a divorce and exercise your rights."

A Swedish translation adds the words: "for the law permits such, when the man dresses as a woman". Whether these additional words are included in any of the many Norse versions of the saga or if this is something the translator has added, I do not know.

The Icelandic version I could find does not have the Swedish addendum:

Þórður brosti að og mælti: "Hér kann eg gott ráð til. Gerðu honum skyrtu og brautgangs höfuðsmátt og seg skilið við hann fyrir þessar sakir."

Still, the added text makes sense, as the gender role violation is implied in all versions.

Viking serks. Photos from Grimfrost.

Why the Icelandic text uses the Old Norse word skyrtu and not serkr, is not clear, but they both refer to the serk, a Viking linen garment that might function both as a shirt or tunic for men and an underdress for women. As far as I know, the women's version could be longer than the male one (but did not have to be).

However, Thord does not refer to the length of the garment, but the length or the width of the opening. In the saga this is clearly meant to be a signifier of gender.

Whether this is a Viking thing or something that makes more sense in the 1240's, I do not know. Male serks have not been found, and the women's ones that have been found do not necessarily have deep necklines. However, the drawing below, from the Ulvdal stave church in Norway (late 12th century), shows a woman's serk with a deep neckline, so when the saga was written this was clearly a thing.

From Aftenposten

What the text tell us is therefore the following:

The author, writing in the mid 13th century, clearly thinks that for a man to wear a woman's shirt/serk/underdress was seen as a sign of some kind of femininity. This was so bad in the Viking age that it was cause for divorce.

In the saga Gudrun is granted divorce on the basis of this accusation. Thorvald's defense is not known, as the saga does not spend much time on his real gender identity.

The saga is in general pretty detailed when it comes to describing all the people included and what happens to them, and most experts argue that it is based on real people and real events.

Still, the author's interpretation of what happened in Iceland and Norway around 1000 CE might have been colored by their own life experiences around 1240 or so, which means that we cannot say for sure if this crossdressing story is from the Viking age.

However, we can with certainty say that there must have been male assigned persons on Iceland and in Norway in the 13th century who wore women's clothing, at least in privacy. Given the stigma attached to femininity in men, we can assume that the drive towards doing so was very strong. This was not something you did in jest.

This means that there must have been transfeminine people in Iceland and Norway at that time. I see no proof there being a leftist transgender ideology/cult that caused trans people to become trans in the high middle ages, so it is a fair guess that something like this could have happened in the Viking age as well.

Transmasculine crossdressing in the Laxdæla saga

Now that Gudrun had gotten rid of her husband Thordvald, Thord needs to get rid of his wife Aud. Gudrum has clearly learned from her own success, because now she copies Thorvald's original plan:

One fine day, while riding over Blue Forest Heath, Gudrun suddenly said, "Is it true, Thord, that your wife Aud frequently wears trousers with a flap on the back and straps down into her shoes?" He replied that he had not seen it.
"Then it must be idle talk if you haven’t seen it," said Gudrun. "But why then do people call her Trousers-Aud?" Thord replied, "That name probably hasn’t been used for long." Gudrun commented, "But she will be called that for much longer."

Gudrun points out that the punishment for a woman wearing trousers is the same as for as a man who wears a woman's low-cut shirt, exposing his chest. Both acts give grounds for divorce.

Baggy viking trousers with ribbons
over leg bindings.
Photo: Burgschneider

So here we go again, with someone slandering the reputation of people by accusing them of cross-gender expressions.

I have not found any archeological evidence of Viking trousers with a flap in the back, but we do know of trousers with a striped woven band running along the bottom of each leg. Moreover, Viking men often wore leg bindings—long strips of wool wrapped around the lower legs from ankle to knee.

(Not that this makes any difference as far as proof of cross-gender expression goes.)

I have not been able to find Icelandic or Norwegian laws from the Medieval period that punishes crossdressing, but there are apparently paragraphs in the Icelandic Grágás (Gray Goose) law and the Norwegian Gulathing and Frostathing laws that say that accusations of crossdressing are valid reason for duels. So Gudrun's explanation is not unreasonable.

Thord then goes to the Thing (i.e the law assembly/court), takes witnesses and declares himself divorced from Aud because she wears men’s trousers. Note that this is not something the assembly decides. He is there for the witnesses. When Aud learns of the divorce, she says: "Well, now I know it, I shall remain alone."

Later that year Thord and Gudrun gets married.

What I find interesting here is how the author does not spend any time on what happened to Thorvald after his humiliation. They spend much more time on Aud and her revenge.

Aud's revenge

The next summer Aud gets some intel from a shepherd up in the mountains. He tells her that Thord and Osvif are alone at their farm:

“You’ve done well,” she said. “Keep two horses saddled when the people go to bed.” The shepherd did as she instructed, and just before sunset, they both mounted their horses; at that point, it could be that Aud was wearing trousers.

In other words: The rumors about her manliness might have been true.

And Aud does indeed live up to her manly reputations when she rides down to Thord and Gudrun's farm and molests him with a knife.

Thord was sleeping on his back. Aud woke him, but he turned onto his side when he realized another person was there. She then drew a large knife and stabbed Thord, wounding him severely in his right arm and both nipples. She struck with such force that the knife stuck fast in the bed frame. Afterward, Aud went out, mounted her horse, and rode home.

Thord did not die, and when Gudrun comes back he stops her plans of revenge, saying that Aud was within her rights to act as she had.

To me the text seems to communicate admiration for Aud and not contempt. Because of this I do understand why some argue that the author must have been a woman. I would guess that she is also a wronged woman, and maybe even on the transmasculine side herself. But we cannot know this for sure.

But we can conclude that there were trans people in Iceland and Norway in the mid 13th century. I also find it reasonable that the crossdressing stories have an older origin, and that they also reflect Viking ideas about gender roles, even if the text is colored by 13th century experiences.

When we add this saga to the archeological finds, what we know about seiðr and mythological Norse gender transformations, I would argue that we with great certainty that, yes, there were transgender Vikings.

Read my translation of the crossd-gender parts of the Laxdæla Saga here.

Literature

Kjærlighet og ekteskap
Shield Maidens and Cross-Dressing in Anglo-Saxon and Viking Times
Viking Women of the Viking Age
Lauritsen, Tina and Ole Thirup Kastholm Hansen. "Transvestite Vikings?" Viking Heritage 1 (2003).
Jenny Jochens: Old Norse Magic and Gender: þáttr þorvalds ens Víðfǫrla
Bibliography of Sources for Viking Age Womens' Studies
Ségdae Richardson-Read: Queer Themes In Old Norse Myth

The rise of queer and transgender Bluesky

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 12:44:00 +0000

Bluesky has become a real alternative to X-twitter for LGBTQ people. Transgender World has experienced more than a 50% increase in followers since the US election.

The increasing polarization of American politics have seriously damages some of the most valuable parts of the internet: commons for debate and information sharing. Twitter was, for a time, such a place, used by millions of people across the political spectrum for debate and research.

Not anymore. Twitter was weakened even before Elon Musk took over, but since he became the owner and leader of what is now X, it has devolved a cesspool of hatred and trolling. He intentionally dismissed most of the moderators.

Toxic environment

I gave up debating transgender issues on twitter/X years ago, as it became increasingly clear that nearly all threads regarding gender variance might be taken over by trolls whose goal was not to learn but to win. If you debated on their terms, you soon found yourself lost in a toxic sea of "fake news" and lack of logic.

People have been leaving X-twitter for a long time now. I noticed that serious journalists stopped using twitter in their research. Activists who do not belong to the MAGA-tribe are also much less likely to use twitter for hashtag campaigns intended to raise awareness. Most trans people have stopped using twitter as a place of identity exploration or for finding friends.

Elon Musk has effectively destroyed Twitter, and I’m convinced it was intentional, as his extremist politics do not flourish in open and tolerant arenas for learning.

Note that Musk is a transphobe who has actively been harassing his transgender daughter on twitter, He is that bad.

Trans-supporter Jamie Lee Curtis says
goodbye to X.

Where to go?

Here's the problem: Even if there have been alternatives to twitter online, none of them have had the kind of reach that twitter has had when it comes to political and cultural debate.

While many platforms have more users, they do not serve as a commons like Twitter once did.

When LGBTQ individuals and allies have moved to other platforms, they haven’t been able to amplify their voices as effectively as on Twitter.

I believe the era of democratic, open, and tolerant discussion spaces is over, at least in the U.S. Trump and his MAGA activists promote hypermasculine dominance, making constructive debate impossible. Replacing Twitter’s role as an open forum for all is not feasible in that context.

However, it is possible to create a space where LGBTQ people and their allies can discuss trans issues without fear of harassment.

This requires a committed moderation team that enforces rules swiftly and fairly, which encourages a more positive discussion environment.

Enormous growth

Since Trump's victory Bluesky has seen an enormous growth. In September it had 9 million users. Now it boasts over 15 million. Some days it has clocked more than 1 million new members in a day.

An expert told Sky News that Google considers Bluesky to be ten times more significant than Musk’s platform for factual information, despite Bluesky being smaller.

I have been publishing my transgender news curation on both twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Telegram for a while now, and I noticed a huge increase in the number of Bluesky followers in the weeks after the American election. I had around 4000 followers on Bluesky before the election. Now I have 6700 [Nov 20: 7500], and I am getting more than 100 new followers every day.

I gained more followers on Bluesky in two years than in 14 years on Twitter. Even before the election, the LGBTQ community recognized Bluesky as a more meaningful space.

Musk’s support for Trump has shown many queer and trans individuals that Twitter is now hostile territory. For the first time, my Twitter follower count has dropped.

People tell me they feel that Bluesky is the twitter they used to know. That should come as no surprise, as the service was launched by people from twitter. It features a straightforward, algorithm-free timeline without unwanted @elonmusk posts. Advertising may come later, but it isn’t present yet.

I have also noticed that quite a few journalists and media people have signed up for my transgender news feed. This tells me that they are looking for alternative sources of information as far as LGBTQ content goes. I am happy to provide them with that kind of intelligence.

Whether Bluesky will manage to keep all these new members and keep them active, depends on whether the the platform stays safe for marginalized people. If they do not invest enough in content moderation, I am afraid they will fail.

The alternatives

Sometimes what makes the winner is a matter for coincidence and chance. This time celebrity endorsements made the press write about Bluesky, which made it a more visible alternative to many pro-democracy and LGBTQ-friendly people.

Mastodon remains an important twitter-alternative for a lot of active queer and trans people, but I have not seen a significant influx of new followers over there. I suspect that the more complicated system with a large number of alternative servers or "instances" to chose between stops some from signing up.

Meta's Threads serves as a viable Twitter alternative. I saw that when Stephen King finally abandoned twitter last week, he pointed followers to his account over at Threads. The reason it has not managed to benefit much from the fall of civilized twitter is probably because of its association with another US billionaire. Some LGBTQ-accounts have been mistaken for porn producers, and that is not the kind of stress queer and trans people need right now. By the way, Bluesky is much more liberal and tolerant of exploration of the erotic side of life.

Reddit remains a very important place for LGBTQ and trans people. I find, for instance, r/transgender to be a very important source of transgender-relevant news, and there are other subreddits/subforums addressing different aspects of the transgender experience. It is a different platform than twitter, however, and I do not think it can fully replace the old twitter as far as the LGBTQ-debate goes.

So what about the Transgender World twitter account?

I do not see any meaningful future for our twitter-account right now. I stopped using it for debate years ago. Musk's X, unlike Bluesky, severely punishes news feeds by giving them little exposure in the algorithm. There are fewer and fewer members of twitter that is interested in the kind of news we am providing. Moreover, I do not like the idea of providing content to a platform owned by a fascist.

So the only reason I have not turned it off, is that there are still some active transgender follower left, people who do find this content useful. However, this may change soon. Let me know what you think in the comments.

PS1:

Those who see a similarity between the Transgender World butterfly logo and Bluesky's should note that our logo came first and was used first, by us, over at Bluesky. We are not going to sue them 😄

PS2:

We will continue to deadname twitter as long as Musk deadnames his own transgender daughter.

Photo: Giuseppe Lombardo

Trump and the transphobes won in the US. But there are still ways trans people can win.

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:43:00 +0000

To defeat Trump and right-wing extremists, pro-democracy advocates must help humanize trans people in the eyes of Americans. Photo: Valeria Blanc.

Let us not beat about the bush: the election of Donald Trump is a disaster, for LGBTQ people, for America, and for those who want to make our societies more open to diversity and inclusion. This is going to be hard. But this "culture war" is not over. There are so many good people fighting for a better world out there, and if we act appropriately, tolerance and compassion may still prevail in the end.

But first, let us see where we are right now:

The Bad

Americans have elected a person who is - at best - an unhinged, aggressive populist, but who also tick off nearly all the boxes of what constitutes a Fascist.

We will now get a new administration in Washington packed with people who do not respect the basic rules of a democracy.

In other words: If the anti-fascists of the US do not manage to handle that danger, the worst-case scenario is the end of real American democracy. This is what happened in Germany when parts of the establishment decided that Adolf Hitler was a man they could manage.

Many are exhausted from enduring Donald Trump's toxic mental instability for over eight years. There is no rest where we can have moments in safe spaces of rationality and optimism. Trump is a seriously sick man, a narcissist incapable of genuine human compassion. And he is getting worse. The next four years are going to be bad.

But we are not where the Germans were in 1933 yet. And it is important to keep that in mind. This is not the end of this story. Actually, this may be the start of a better one.

The Ugly

Trump & Co have left any qualms they might have had about using the old Fascist playbook - as in using "The Other" as scape goats for everything that is wrong in the world.

"The Other" are, at this time in American history, immigrants, people of color, independent women and LGBTQ people. They are grouped together under vague umbrella terms like "communists", "socialists", and "liberals". These are people who, according to this narrative, threaten the very fabric of civilized society, a society which is based on traditional cishet family units run by white men.

Transgender people are the perfect scape goats in this playbook, as they threaten what the populists see as the self-evident nature of biological sex and gender roles.

Men are, according to this view, different than women in essence. It is the male essence that make "real men" strong and effective leaders. The true nature of women is to become compassionate mothers, not presidents. Just listen to J.D. Vance. If someone who is seen as a man realizes that she is a woman, that natural order is threatened. If a "woman becomes a man", "she" assumes a role that is not hers.

As in the Nazi campaigns against the Jews, the Trumpian war against transgender people is presented as a defense of helpless children. These children are seduced by evil into becoming something they are neither by nature nor the laws of God.

This narrative relates to the QAnon myth alleging that wealthy Democrats, such as the Clintons, run pedophile pedophile trafficking rings. In the transgender case, an alliance of transgender activists, pro-trans medical staff and gender researchers have replaced the Freemasons and the Jews of the Nazi narrative.

The Republicans are actively exploiting the irrational sexual anxieties of the American people. These fears are then projected onto those who do not fit the rules of their game.

And as we saw in the 1930s and the 1940s this can lead to horrible policies and immense suffering. The Republicans have already caused a lot of harm to transgender people in red states. Trump has promised to engage the federal apparatus to "protect children" against the "gender cult".

Make no mistake about it: In other countries both TERFs and Fascists will be encouraged by what has happened in the US, and they will intensify their attacks on trans people.

(See the article Today's anti-trans activism is about so much more than transgender people for more on this.)

The Good:

What can give us hope in such a situation?

Actually, there is a lot that LGBTQ people and their allies can do in order to help trans people. We have a lot of resources.

First: Keep in mind that half of the American electorate rejected Donald Trump. That does not mean that half of the American population are pro-trans per se or that they are engaged in transgender issues. But most of them believe in a society where people are allowed to explore their own destiny.

Indeed, polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that trans people should be accepted, even if the same Americans do not necessarily understand or accept the stories trans people and health experts tell them. Even Republicans didn't like the recent anti-trans election campaigns. Trump won because of the economy, not anti-trans propaganda.

As Trump's persecution of those he do not like intensifies, it will also become clearer to all people that the attacks against trans people are not really about protecting cishet children, but a ploy meant to distract people from what most consider essential issues, like the economy and welfare.

In other words: Instead of trying to pretend the transgender issue is of little relevance (as Kamala Harris did), there is a case to be made for presenting the fate of transgender Americans as central to the survival of American democracy.

This will draw more attention to trans people, for sure, but right now I think we have to accept that that will happen anyway. The defenders of democracy must be much more vocal about trans issues.

The good news here is that the pro-democracy front has a lot of knowledge and brainpower. It might look like America has completely abandoned rationality and fact-based discussions in favor of irrational conspiracy-theories, but the truth is that a significant portion of American adults have higher education and college degrees. They are not necessarily smarter than their opponents, but they have at least some basic training in critical thinking, competences that can be used effectively in this struggle.

The Bad that Might Lead to Good

Second: The second Trump presidency will most likely be a chaotic nightmare of mismanagement and crazy policies. The relatively sane people that stopped Trump from doing too much damage in his first term are gone.

What happens next will be exhausting for both Americans and those in the world who wishes America well. But if one of the main reasons so many independents voted for Trump was the economy, the Trump tariffs alone will show them that the Trump administration is not going to make their economic situation better. It will make it much worse.

And if Trump actually follows up promises of making RFK Jr. a health czar and allows Elon Musk to destroy the federal welfare system, the mood may shift quickly. Let us keep in mind that the Brazilians let go of their right wing extremist when they realized that he was no better than those who came before him.

But if pro-democracy politicians and activists want to benefit from such a backlash, they need to reframe their understanding of the American crisis. The crisis is systemic, caused by technological change (which has transformed previously job intensive industries) and policies undermining a fair redistribution of wealth in society.

The rich have gotten richer and more powerful, while significant portions of the middle and working classes are struggling to make ends meet. Kamala Harris's defeat can be explained by inflation and high interest rates. This is not something "the market" or new innovations will fix by themselves.

If the democratic politicians of the US do not face the systemic properties of the current crisis, and do something about them, the American polarization and the accompanying hostilities will get only worse and worse. The only ones who benefit from that are the Fascists.

When people feel that they are seen, understood and cared for, their fear subsides and they are much less likely to allow manipulators to direct their anger towards scapegoats like people of color and trans people. In other words: The defense of trans people cannot be reduced to specific pro-trans policies and instruments. It must be seen as part of a larger reform of society.

We need to understand the psychology of fear and hope. This struggle cannot be reduced to fact-based arguments about the reality of gender dysphoria and the fact that trans people are of no threat to cis people. If you want to reduce the bigotry of bigots, you need to take away the fuel that drives their fear and prejudices.

Fascism harness people's fear of uncertainty and social exclusion by redirecting their anger towards outsiders.
Illustration: Pandagolik.

What else?

It would be tempting to withdraw from the whole conflict and stop engaging with politics and transphobes. But if all LGBTQ people and their allies did that, it would not take long before being trans is completely outlawed in all of the US. There is a good chance the reactionaries will be going after the rest of the letters of the LGBTQ+ acronym next.

We need to create strong communities for support of trans and queer people both online and offline. It is especially important to help young trans people who do not have the experience and knowledge that may make all of this understandable to them. Each and everyone of us cannot solve these problems by our own, but we can all do our share. One person helping another trans person thrive is a victory.

We need to make sure that the rest of the LGBTQ community is fully committed to defend and support trans people.

We need to build alliances with positive cis-people and organizations, and get them to make the argument that anti-trans policies represents attacks on democracy and tolerance and that this is not only about transgender lives.

We need to continue to make trans people visible. I see fewer and fewer positive transgender life stories in the media. That is understandable given the amount of harassment many trans people face, but this is also very dangerous. If we are to gain more support for pro-trans policies trans people have to be visible. If not, the transphobes will succeed in dehumanizing trans people.

In the blue states of the US, politicians and activists must continue to build walls against transphobia. In other democratic countries pro-democracy politicians and activists must intensify their support of trans people.

We need to continue to celebrate trans identities and gender expanding expressions. Our mental health and our quality of life requires safe spaces outside the realm of politics where we can just be who we are. This applies to those who are out in the open and those whose gender variance is still hidden. If everything is reduced to political battles, many will soon lose the ability to fight. This means that LGBTQ bars, clubs, societies, parades and personal networks are essential. And we need to give ourselves time and room to rest and recharge.

I know that many of us hoped that this election would be a positive turning point. It is not and we have to prepare for more years of suffering and hard work. But if we do this right, we may prevail.

Donald Trump's horrific plan for transgender people

Today's anti-trans activism is about so much more than transgender people

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:58:00 +0000

LGBTQ people scare the fearful because they seem to threaten their imagine world order.
Photo: valentin russanov

The extreme anti-trans activism we see today is about much more than gender diversity. The transphobia is driven by a deep and irrational fear of the unknown, a fear political extremists are exploiting in order to gain power.

When I started this blog back in 2008, most of the transgender debate gave the impression of being about "facts", both inside and outside the transgender community. We wrote article after article about science addressing gender variance and the real life experiences of trans people themselves.

Sure, there were transphobic activists around, as well as transphobic pseudo-science. But many believed that it should and could be possible to come to an agreement on what gender variance was, based on sound science and the lived experience of trans people.

Those of us who took part in the debate back then, still have a tendency to appeal to science, facts and the reality of the lived experience of trans people when debating transgender issues, the idea being that our opponents will actually listen to knowledge-based arguments. It worked before, so why not now?

This is about much more than gender identity

In order to understand this, it is important to understand that the current backlash against transgender people is not really about transgender people in isolation – or about what it really means to be transgender.

It may look as if the "debate" continues to be about "facts", given that anti-trans activists often refer to "science" when dismissing transgender identities. But the truth is that this has nothing to do with science or facts. This is all about feelings, and particularly about the fear of the unknown. They are not debating in order to learn. They are debating in order to win. They seek control.

Moreover, at this point in history the social and economic context makes it so much easier to use transphobia as a political tool.

The fall of the progress narrative

The modern Western narrative has been about continuous progress towards a better future for all. Politics, economics, science and innovation will eventually make all of us live safe and meaningful lives, protecting us from the cold winds of an unforgiving universe.

This has been the social contract: People give our society their working hours in return for the promise of comfort and safety now or in the future.

Politicians promised them flying cars. Instead they are on the brink of losing their homes.
(From Tomorrowland)

As long as it looked like this contract was upheld – in the sense that we seemed to live better lives than our parents – suffering could be blamed on the fact that we had not reached the endpoint yet. There was more work to do, and people would do it – for themselves, for their kids and for the next generation.

This narrative also gave room to an increasing tolerance of groups that had previously been excluded, including people of color, poor people and queer people. When people feel safe, the unknown seems less threatening. The inclusion of marginalized groups was also part of the story about progress.

In many countries, however, it is as if politicians have forgotten that this contract requires active social policies that makes sure that everyone gets their part of the growing cake of plenty. In other words: These politicians have not fulfilled their side of the bargain.

Instead they have gotten lost in ideas of perfect markets, unfettered competition and extreme individualism. Capitalism no longer delivers what it promised and the fundamental, instinctual, fear of chaos, hunger and social exclusion is back.

The fear of loss of social standing

It has been said that Hitler did not win in Germany because the middle class had become poor. He won because they feared that they would become poor and lose their social status. We see the same today, especially among those who are wired for caution and conservatism: They no longer trust the system, and their fear of chaos and poverty drives them into the arms of fascist charlatans.

It does not matter if these politicians are cynically exploring these fears or if they – like Hitler – actually believe in their own fever induced fantasies.

This process lead to toxic feedback loops where the fear of the oppressed and the timid leads to hate fueled political narratives that promise to fix the system and bring back the good old days. The propaganda of hate makes people even more afraid and more likely to go for bigoted policies.

Since the fearful no longer believe in the promise of endless progress, they instead look for salvation in an imaginary past. In this imaginary past people like themselves got their piece of the pie and the social order was simple and easy to understand.

Or, at least, this is what White people like to believe, given that people like them used to rule the world in whatever time period they dream about, the 1950s, the 1960s or the Confederacy and the British Empire of the19th century.

This world view does not represent a future world of plenty, so it makes sense for those who believe in this dream to put their own tribe first and take whatever they need from the others.

An imaginary past (Photo H. Armstrong Roberts)

The great conspiracy

It seems to me that relatively few of the fearful actually understand what is really going on, and the few that do (Steve Bannon comes to mind) skillfully exploit this lack of understanding when manipulating those who experience this nostalgia for a past that never was.

The manipulators tell them that all their suffering is caused by some kind of sinister cabal of Jews and Bolsheviks (Hitler) or Postmodernist Communists who are pushing a disruptive "Gender Ideology" on our youth (Trump). These ideologies (Communism in the 1930s and Gender Ideology in the 2020s) are – according to these narratives – destroying the ideal society that once gave the fearful safety and wealth.

An essential part of this fantasy is the importance of the nuclear family (father+mother+children). Historically speaking this family structure is an outlier, but in this narrative it becomes a God given or Nature given necessity.

This vision of the cisgender and heterosexual nuclear family ensures that men rule, women take care of children, and society gets the people they need for industry and war. It is therefore extremely important to stop people from seeing that there are alternative models that work just as well.

It has become extremely hard for the political manipulators to exploit the traditional fear of homosexuality, since too many now know gay and lesbian people and therefore see them as human. Far fewer know transgender people, however, so they can be used as dehumanized scapegoats.

Trans people are seen as threatening the building block of the traditionalist narrative, the nuclear family. The mom plus pop plus 2.1 kids and a dog narrative requires a firm and unquestionable divide between the two "biological sexes".

Moreover, both right wing transphobes (fascists and religious fanatics) and left wing transphobes ("gender critical" TERFs) believe men are violent by nature. This violence requires a social structure that protect weak women from strong men, and the only ones who can give that protection are strong men. This is completely bizarre, I know, but this is how they think, and this is why it becomes hard to get real gender equality. Strong men are there to protect their property (women and children) against other violent men, and men who do not want to live up this stereotype cannot be real men. And if they want to be women, they must be mad.

Possessed by the Shadow

But there is more: This divide gives the fearful an easy to understand social role to live up to. Performing the role of the masculine man and the feminine woman, gives them the social confirmation they need. They are accepted. They will not be excluded.

Trans people threaten this sense of meaning and belonging. Since the whole binary is false, and nature's diversity applies to the most conservative of conservatives, the very existence of trans and gay people triggers feelings that threaten the traditionalist's sense of self. They have feelings that go against the strict binary.

That doubt has to be suppressed. The fear and the anger must be redirected towards an external enemy. And that enemy is "the Other", in this case trans people, in other contexts people of color. (Or both, as reflected in the fact that Black transgender women are most exposed to transphobic violence.)

Carl Gustav Jung talked about both people and cultures being possessed by their "Shadow." The Shadow archetype represents the part of their psyche they have suppressed and denied, because it threaten their understanding of the world and their place in it. These feelings do not go away, however. They seek another outlet, which leads these people to irrational acts of aggression and violence. This is indeed what we are witnessing today.

The feeling of emotional relief and agency that follows transphobic acts is a powerful drug, indeed.

In Star Wars the Empire and the First Order exemplifies
how a culture possessed by its shadow (fear of disorder) leads to
fascism and bigotry. From the TV series Andor)

I believe this psychological possession is strengthened by the fact that so many today actually seem to embrace diversity and dismiss the strict binaries as oppressive and bad.

There are so many people out there who are not wired for this kind of fear. Whether this is an end result of socialization or and inborn personality is hard to determine, but it is clear that for every fearful traditionalist we find a curious explorer, open to new experiences and new acquaintances.

David Godhart wrote about "Somewheres" and "Anywheres". According to Goodhart, the Somewheres are people who are more locally rooted and conservative as opposed to the Anywheres, who are globalists, open to change. I do not think that this necessarily is a divide defined by globalization, but it is definitely about openness to diversity. There are people who are more accepting of people that are not like themselves.

This especially applies to younger people, who – having lived in a world of open access to all kinds of communities online – are not so easily liable to "other" those that are different. They are also much more likely to see and accept the diversity in themselves.

For the fearful this is an affirmation of the belief that the enemy is indeed seducing the young, destroying the world order they long for in the process.

For many of them this point in history seems to be their last chance at stopping the revolution of tolerance and open-mindedness. When Gen Z takes over the world will end in chaos, as they see it. This is the message of Putin, Orban, Farange and Trump. This is why so many of them are even willing to end democracy in order to stop this from happening.

Trans-exclusionary "radical feminists" like J.K. Rowling are not that different. They want, like the right wingers, to use the state to force everyone else to accept their banal view of "biological sex" being "biological sex", forcing all trans people back into the closet in the process. Theirs is also an authoritarian program of social exclusion, make no mistake about it.

In other words: This is not really a debate about transgender lives. This is about establishing a fixed and unchangeable social order, using violence and the power of the state. The goal is to make sure that ambiguity and diversity are removed, so that the fearful can sleep well at night without awareness of an unpredictable universe.

We need diversity

Yes, theirs represents a childish and immature approach to the world. Every time someone tries to tame the universe and establish a completely safe and predictable social order, it ends in tragedy.

A thriving culture and an adaptable society requires a mix of tradition, creativity and radical innovation. We need visible diversity in order to be able to expand our understanding of the world and find new solutions to both old and new problems. Gender variance is part of that diversity.

We have been through some horrible years of transphobia and anti-trans legislation in many countries. The far right and the transphobic left (TERFs) have tried to overwhelm the democratic system with laws and propaganda that blame gender variance for everything from male aggression to youth rebellion. The tactic is to make the reactionary goal seem inevitable, wearing those who defend diversity and democracy down.

They succeeded in Russia. They have nearly won in the UK. It seems, however, that the fever is breaking in the US, where those who love diversity and freedom seem to have gotten their hope back.

This energized anti-fascist counter-movement is not succeeding because of its use of science and policy papers, however. The tactic that truly seems to work is to put up a contrast between joy, laugher and humanity on one side, and aggression, lies and hypermasculine policing on the other. In this context the defense of marginalized groups become a sign of compassion and love.

When I write this it seems like the Harris/Waltz campaign in the US is based on a strategy where the message is that it is the compassionate defenders of the weak who are the "normal" ones and the haters who are the "weird" ones. After all, being hopeful and glad is a natural human trait, so why not embrace it?

The right wing reactionaries seem to sense the trap. Over at Fox News they are spending a lot of time presenting compassionate men as feminized weaklings. Even female politicians who smile, laugh and hug are seen as dangerous. But this only confirms that they are misogynists who have lost their ability to love, and that the only thing that drives them is hate, fear and the need to dominate. And that is "weird".

Voting for Kamala Harris can turn men into women, Fox News reports.

In this context trans people might win. Not because we have science on our side, but because we have good people on our side.

Thanks to very valuable input from Joanna Santos and my friends over at CDL.

All you need to know about transgender regret rates

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 12:46:00 +0000

We have collected a large number of articles and papers on to what extent trans people regret transitioning over at Transgender Report. There is only one possible conclusion to draw from all of this: The regret rates are extremely low.

Defining what "transgender regret" is, is not an easy task, as there are various ways of transitioning (legal, social, medical etc.) But if we look at what most people consider "transitioning", namely undergoing hormone replacement therapy and gender-affirming surgery as part of coming out as trans publicly, we end with regret rates around 1 percent.

A meta-study from 2021 ended up with the following conclusion:

“A total of 27 studies, pooling 7928 transgender patients who underwent any type of GAS [gender-affirmation surgeries], were included. The pooled prevalence of regret after GAS was 1% (95% CI <1%–2%). Overall, 33% underwent transmasculine procedures and 67% transfemenine [sic] procedures. The prevalence of regret among patients undergoing transmasculine and transfemenine surgeries was <1% (IC <1%–<1%) and 1% (CI <1%–2%), respectively.”

In comparison, studies indicate that approximately 20% of cisgender plastic surgery patients report some degree of dissatisfaction post-surgery. Specific procedures have higher regret rates, with breast augmentation leading at 31%, followed by rhinoplasty at 27%, liposuction at 24%, and eyelid surgery at 16%.

This does not mean that all gender-affirming surgery is perfect. What we see here is most likely that transgender patients are so relieved to be able to live as their true selves, that they are willing to live with some imperfections. They starting point is most often a jarring mismatch between body and gender, and not a cis person's desire to live up to some kind of esthetic perfection.

Go to Transgender Report for a large number of articles, news stories and papers looking at transgender regret and regret rates.

Photo: Gettys

A sidebar on what it means to be transgender

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 11:46:00 +0000

The Crossdreamer Sidebars blog has been my blog for more in depth discussions related to writings on this, my main blog. I have ignored if for too long. I am resurrecting it with a post on what it means to be transgender.

Over and over again I have found that gender variant people get lost in discussions about what it means to be trans, because there are so many different ways of defining the terms. Indeed, there are even trans people who try to control the discourse by making the defininition of the term trans as narrow as possible.

I will continue to defend the original understanding of trans, the one becoming dominant in the 1990's. According to this understanding transgender is an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance.

Transgender is therefore not a term that refers only to those who desire to transition or who have transitioned from one gender to another gende. It is not limited to those who used to be called transsexuals, and it does not require that you experience gender dysphoria.

More about my understanding of the word transgender over at Crossdreamer Sidebars.

PS: The sidebar blog has also gotten its own domain name. This has, apparently, a big effect on search engine rankings.

Photo: Piksel

Novels that treat transgender side characters in a good way

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 15 May 2024 06:58:00 +0000

There are some good discussions about transgender representation in books going on, most of them focusing on the works of visibly queer and transgender authors. That got me thinking: What about strong transgender characters in other books?

There are a lot of novels and stories that presents negative and bigoted views of trans people, and in particular trans women. These characters are often sexualized, pathologized, ridiculed and presented as "traps" – a threat to cisgender adults and children.

However, there are also good books that do the opposite, books where the transgender side characters are just people like everyone else. I am going to present two books that passed my trans humanization test, and one that does not quite make it.

Summon The Angels by J.J. Campanella

Campanella has published two books in their Eddy Bratenahl series. These are exciting and entertaining crime/thrillers with some drops of horror added – well written and well researched.

Bratenahl is a policed psychologist at the Chicago Police Department. As such he is not really supposed to take part in investigations, but for reasons that will become clear to the readers of the books he does end up doing detective work anyway, due to his experience and contacts.

Amanda Richards is introduced in book 1, A Sum of Destructions, but it is in the second book, Summon the Angels, she plays an essential role. You do not have to have read book 1 to read book 2.

Minor spoilers from here on.

When Amanda disappears she leaves her nephew Joshua in Bratenahl's care. He is soon engaged in the search for Amanda. The book then follows this search in parallel with a presentation of Amanda's past, including her training as a glass artisan in Japan.

Campanella has clearly done a lot of research on Japanese culture, and that alone makes the book worth reading.

The reason Campanella passes my trans humanizing test is because Amanda is presented as a complete human being. She is treated with respect by the author (and most of the other characters), and the story about her transgender journey and her life as a transgender woman seems true and believable.

By the way, there is another strong female character that caught my interest. Mary Kate Calderon is a veteran homicide detective working side by side with Bratenahl, and she has powers you rarely see in books like these. The book definitely passes the Behcdel test.

Summon of the Angels is a real page-turner, but what makes me love it is the way they go beyond pure entertainment and explores more existential questions like the role of evil and suffering in people's lives. Amanda's life story therefore becomes one of many threads in a tapestry depicting love and hate in a world that is often hard to understand and embrace.

J.J. Campanella: Summon the Angels

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty

The story about pirate captain Amina al-Sirafi is equally fascinating. The book is set in the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Amina is a retired pirate queen who for various reasons is dragged back into her old kind of life, having to face threats and dangers of both the natural and supernatural kind in the area that is now known a s Oman, Yemen and Somalia.

She has to fight a "Frankish" mercenary and occultist named Falco Palamenestra, who has opened doors to forces you preferably should leave behind.

The reason she has to face Falco is that the grandchild of the rich and poweful woman Salima is helping Falco find a magic object of great importance.

This grandchild is not one of the most central characters in the book, for sure. But by the end of the book "Dunya" lives as Jamal.

What makes Chakraborty pass my unscientific trans humanization test is that Jamal is treated as any other character in the book. Being trans is just one of many sides of this person. He is not defined by his gender variance. He is not judged on the basis of his gender variance, and Amina's crew treats him as the person he wants to be.

If you are into exciting and creative historical fantasy, this book is for you.

Shannon Chakraborty: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

The late George Alec Effinger has written an exciting and surprising science fiction book set in the Middle East, in a fictional city called Budayeen, which seems like a mix between Cairo and Beirut.

This is a brutal world where you can enhance your mind with electronic plug-ins and where bodies can be altered to perfection. The protagonist Marid Audran, who is a kind of an anti-hero, it has to be said, becomes involved in both local and international power struggles, which takes a hard toll on his quality of life, to say the least.

For some reason Budayeen is also home to a large number of transgender women, including Marid's own girlfriend, Yasmin. These transgender women have agency, and they are in general described as full fledged human beings. They are all treated with respect by Marid.

So far so good.

The fact that most of these transgender women are sex workers is not in itself disqualifying for winning my trans humanization prize. However, this approach makes it much harder to overcome the sexualization aspect of transgender presentation.

I am reminded of John Burdett's Bangkok thrillers, where the transgender sex workers are presented as some kind of exotic third gender (and not always with respect).

Effinger is much more respectful of his transgender characters than Burdett. The trans women are always addressed with the correct pronouns, to give one example. Still, when even Yasmin, refers to cis women as "real women", I find it hard to give Effinger a full score.

I understand that the unique life stories of many transgender women give them a special life experience than is different from cis women. This makes it possible to present the trans women of this book as a special category of women. But the category of cis women is as diverse as the category of trans women, and it makes no sense to describe one of these categories as not "real".

Sure, this use of words may reflect the inherent logic of the world building done by Effinger, but choosing to present trans women as not real women, without problematizing this approach leads to a fail in my test.

George Alec Effinger: When Gravity Fails

Let me know if you have other book favorites that pass the trans humanization side character test!

Top photo: Adobe AI

Crossdreamers

What Pakistan's LGBTQ community can teach us about destructive trans separatism

Classical transsexual

Becoming your own enemy

Are you a man or a woman?

Tolerance or intolerance?

Societal obligation

Hierarchy and policing

Nonbinary

From “Ideology” to “Mutilization”: Trump’s War on Trans People

Trauma and self realization among older transgender people

Avoidance and reflection

Shame stands in the way

On the nonbinary God, politics and culture war

Christ Giving a Blessing

Gender Euphoria and Gender Dysphoria: Two Sides of the Same Coin

How to treat gender dysphoria

Two sides of the same coin

Balance

Imposter syndrome

The transgender backlash and what to do about it

Shifting support

The effect of anti-trans propaganda

The failure of pro-democracy politicians

First hand experience

The Humanist Report

Gender variance and camouflaging conversion therapy as care

The need for help

Gender critical dogma

Authenticity should be a main goal

Abusing client openness

Trans activist Andrea James on Sasha Ayad

Disguising conversion therapy as talk therapy or "exploratory therapy"

Sasha Ayad and Genspect

The autogynephilia theory is a pseudoscience rooted in transphobia

Does gender dysphoria have a biological basis?

What science says about the biological component

Relevant literature

Pluribus and fighting the hive mind

Reflections on Gender Variance

Queerphobia, Science and the Problem with Realism

A dialogue with a homophobe

The bivalence fallacy

What Really Drives Transphobia: The Fears of the Fearful

From Hitler to Trump

Controlling science

Transphobia cannot be explained by politics alone

The psychology of transphobia

The Shadow

The Myth of Normal

The case of Britain

What can we do?

Good is evil, evil is good

Norwegian doctors/gatekeepers stop transgender kids from getting the treatment they need

Cis-normative gatekeepers

Would they deny cis kids treatment?

Caution, the consequences be damned

HKS, the pro-trans alternative

Rikshospitalet wants to close down HKS

Celebrating Trans+ History Week with some articles from our archives

How J.K. Rowling and transphobes are forcing men into women's bathrooms

A trans man in the restroom

Social exclusion

Policing public restrooms

You need to read TJ Klune's anti-JK Rowling books about love, diversity and magic

TJ Klune

The emotional lock-ins of bigots

The cleansing force of childhood creativity

Dedicated to transgender people

The Weight of America: Transgender People Under Siege

The faces of the US

Comfortably numb

Under siege

Imploding from within

Were There Transgender Vikings? The Laxdæla Saga Says So.

Transgender people in history

Getting behind the stereotypesReconstructed Viking women's clothing.Photo: Battle-Merchant

A Norse Game of Thrones

Sexuality and gender in the Viking age

Transfeminine crossdressing in the Laxdæla saga

Getting behind the stereotypes
Reconstructed Viking women's clothing.
Photo: Battle-Merchant