There's No Such Thing as Being Transphobic

It's Megan Murphy, on Substack, "Spoiler: it's because there's no such thing as a trans person":

The easiest way to combat transgender ideology is to simply not go along with it. Don’t play along with the notion that one must use “preferred pronouns.” (Sexed pronouns are not a matter of preference, they are not an opinion or a judgement, they are a matter of grammar.) Don’t play along with the idea that it is possible to be “born in the wrong body.” (You are born with a sexed body, and unfortunately you don’t get a say in that.) Don’t play along with the idea that it is somehow special or original to not relate to every single stereotype associated with "masculinity” or “femininity.” (No one does. We are have our own personalities and preferences, and while femininity is more commonly associated with females and masculinity with males, how we feel about those sterotypes does not dictate our sex. If it did, we would be changing sex all the time and we would all be “trans.”)

“Trans” is not a real, valid category with a coherent definition, which means that “transphobia” is also not a real, valid, or coherent concept. I realize some make the argument that being “polite” about such things is a better means to bring people over to “our side” or open people up to listening to our concerns, but I actually think it just creates an incredibly confusing conversation. It also opens us up to debates around things like “trans rights” (not a valid concept) or which kids are “really trans,” and therefore would benefit from being medicalized as “trans kids” (no child should be and there is no such thing as a “trans kid”).

I fail to see why lying is polite or useful when talking about things like legislation and policy. It certainly isn’t polite or useful when dealing with kids whose brains are not fully developed and are at risk of having their bodies destroyed for life on account of said lies.

You might like to think of yourself as a “live and let live” kind of person. You might think there are more important issues than transgenderism. You might think, “Why not just let some people identify however they like.” But we are talking about something much bigger: the truth. And reality. We are also talking about women’s rights and the safety and wellbeing of kids.

But if anything, truth and reality are hills worth dying on.

Trans activists are manipulating reality and impeding our ability to speak the truth via language. Don’t play along.

Abigail Shrier:

For Hillsdale College:

J.K. Rowling: My Comments About Real Women Being Real Women Have Been 'Profoundly Misunderstood'. Please Don't Murder Me

At AoSHQ, "She says her comments about sex being real have been "profoundly misunderstood."

The Year the West Erased Women

It's Ayaan Hirsi Ali, at UnHerd, "Progressives care more about semantics than emancipation."

How Feminism Got Hijacked

From Zoe Strimpel, at Bari Weiss's Common Sense, "The movement that once declared 'I am woman, hear me roar' can no longer define what a woman is. What happened?":

“Pregnant people at much higher risk of breakthrough Covid,” The Washington Post recently declared. This was in keeping with the newspaper’s official new language policy: “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”

“I’m not a biologist,” Ketanji Brown Jackson, the next Supreme Court justice and a formerly pregnant person herself, told her Senate inquisitors while trying to explain why she couldn’t define “woman.”

“It’s a very contested space at the moment,” explained Australian Health Secretary Brendan Murphy—a nephrologist, a doctor of medicine—when he was asked the same question at a hearing in Melbourne. “We’re happy to provide our working definition.”

The meaning of “woman,” the Labor Party’s Anneliese Dodds, in Britain, observed, “depended on context.” (Never mind that Dodds oversees the party’s women’s agenda.)

“I think people get themselves down rabbit holes on this one,” Labor’s Yvette Cooper added the next day, March 8, International Women’s Day. She declined to follow suit.

What were normal people—those who did not have any trouble defining woman, those who found talk of “pregnant people” and “contested spaces” and “rabbit holes” baffling—to make of this obvious discomfort with “women”? Jackson, Dodds and Cooper—and, no doubt, every individual formerly or currently capable of becoming pregnant on the masthead at The Washington Post—would call themselves feminists. Champions of women’s rights. (So, too, one imagines, would Dr. Murphy.) Once upon a time, it was women like them who proudly declared, I am woman, hear me roar. It was women like them who stood up for women and womanhood.

But now these exemplars of female empowerment—educated, sophisticated, wielding enormous influence—seemed to have forgotten what “woman” meant. Or whether it was okay to say “woman.” Or whether “woman” was a dirty word.

It wasn’t simply about language. It was about how we think about and treat women. For nearly 2,500 years—from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” to Seneca Falls to Anita Hill to #MeToo—women had been fighting, clawing their way out of an ancient, deeply repressive, often violent misogyny. But now that they were finally on the cusp of the Promised Land, they were turning their backs on all that progress. They were erasing themselves.

How we got from there to here is the story of an unbelievable hijacking. Two, actually.

It was only five decades ago, in the 1970s, that women—mostly white, middle-class and from places like New York, Boston and north London, and fed up with being sidelined by their comrades on the left—forged a new movement. They called it Women’s Liberation.

At the start, Women’s Liberation was seen as the domain of women with money—like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and, in the United Kingdom, Germaine Greer and Rosie Boycott. But soon it became the movement of everyday mothers, daughters, wives, working women, poor women, and women regularly beaten up by their boyfriends and husbands.

They embodied a politics of action: protesting, writing, lobbying, setting up shelters. They formed sprawling, nationwide organizations like the National Organization of Women, the National Abortion Campaign and the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

And at the center of their politics was an awareness of their physicality, a keen understanding that the challenges women faced were bound up with the bodies they had been born into. Exploitation at home and at work, the threat of sexual violence, unequal pay—all that was a function of their sex. Nothing better summed up the ethos of Women’s Liberation than “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” which was published in 1973 by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Every feminist had a copy or had read one. It sold something like four million copies. It was a bible. That’s because “Our Bodies, Ourselves” rejected the old, Puritan discomforts with female sexuality that, feminists argued, had prevented women from realizing themselves, and empowered women by educating them about their own bodies.

By the 1980s, women had won several key victories. Equal pay was the law (if not always the reality). No-fault divorce was widespread. Abortion was safe and legal. Women were now going to college, getting mortgages, playing competitive sports and having casual sex. In the United States, they were running for president, and they were getting elected to the House and Senate in record numbers. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

In the wake of all these breakthroughs, the movement began to lose steam. It contracted, then it splintered, and a vacuum opened up. Academics took over—hijacked—the cause. There was an obvious irony: It was women’s liberationists who had successfully made women a topic worthy of academic scholarship. But now that the feminist professoriat had the luxury of not worrying about the very concrete issues the older feminists had fought for, feminist professors spent their days reflecting on their feminism—exploring, reimagining and rejecting old orthodoxies.

“As soon as the academics got hold of feminism, they ruined it,” said Kathleen Stock, a feminist philosophy professor formerly of the University of Sussex and the author of “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism.” “It should be and is a grassroots movement about women and their interests. Academics just took it away from them.”

It wasn’t just that these academics took it upon themselves to develop fiendishly complex theories about women, dressed up in a fiendishly complex language. It was that this hyper-intellectualized feminism, by embracing this hyper-intellectualized language, excluded most women. It transformed feminism from activism to theory, from the concrete to the abstract, from a movement that sought to liberate women from the discriminations imposed on them by their sex to a school of thought that was less interested in sex than gender...

Still more.

 

Not a 'Kitchen Table Issue,' Jen Psaki? (VIDEO)

From Abigail Shrier, "Actually, Our Kids Are All We're Thinking About":

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki accused Republican lawmakers of “engaging in a disturbing, cynical trend of attacking vulnerable transgender kids,” and exploiting them. “Instead of focusing on critical kitchen table issues like the economy, COVID, or addressing the country’s mental health crisis,” she said, “Republican lawmakers are currently debating legislation that, among many things, would target transgender youth with tactics that threaten to put pediatricians in prison if they provide medically necessary, life-saving care for the kids they serve.”

Life-saving care? Surely she must mean insulin or antibiotics?

No, she means “gender affirming care” that devilish euphemism for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and experimental surgeries whose benefits are unproven, but whose risks—permanent sexual dysfunction, infertility, cardiac event and endometrial cancer are a few—ought to nudge any doctor toward soul searching. As I’ve written many times, these treatments are often recklessly administered, of questionable benefit to children, and attended by forbidding risks.

For these reasons, in the last two years, national gender clinics in France, the UK, Sweden and Finland have all reevaluated or curtailed their use. But as Psaki made clear, any legislator who tries to follow suit will face double-barreled legal opposition from the current Administration. Psaki said:

Legislators who are contemplating these discriminatory bills have been put on notice by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services that laws and policies preventing care that health care professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the Constitution and federal law. To be clear, every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming health care for transgender kids is a best practice and potentially life-saving.

There is, in fact, no proof that “affirmative care” improves the mental health of gender dysphoric youth long-term—much less that its interventions are “life-saving.” An outstanding recent paper in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy is only the latest to expose the poor empirical basis for these treatments with minors. It’s a must-read paper for any policy maker, parent, or psychologist grappling with this fraught question.

The authors state, as if with a sigh: “The evidence underlying the practice of pediatric gender transition is widely recognized to be of very low quality.”

Activists often exaggerate the suicide risk to gender dysphoric minors—as well as the mental health efficacy of these treatments—in order to coerce parents into acceding to the interventions. But as the authors point out: “The ‘transition or suicide’ narrative falsely implies that transition will prevent suicides. [N]either hormones nor surgeries have been shown to reduce suicidality in the long-term.”

That the Biden administration would peddle an activist talking point with no solid factual basis signals how desperate it is to please the radical flank of its supporters. That is too bad. Leaders who mollycoddle the activists quietly corrupting nearly every institution of American life fool themselves that they are merely paying a tax. They don’t realize it’s a ransom, and that those who demand it will never be satisfied until they have despoiled every American institution. And much worse in this case: they encourage irreversible harm to children.

In an address chock-a-block with fictions, perhaps Psaki’s most surprising was the notion that unlike the “economy, COVID” and the “country’s mental health crisis,” the risks gender activists now pose to our children is not a “kitchen table issue.” It is - she means - the sort of thing that excites Twitter, not normal Americans.

In Psaki’s worldview, then, Americans are not shaking their heads at their talented daughters, wondering if they ought to bother helping them train in a sport. Nor does she think Americans are desperately worried about what radical teachers are pushing on their kids at school—from racial essentialism and division to phony gender science about their bodies and identities.

But in the real world, Americans are very, very worried about these things. I’ve been privileged with a special window into their terror: an inbox full of thousands of desperate parents who write me daily of their teen daughters caught in the grips of a sudden transgender epiphany. And Ms. Psaki, I can promise you this: given the widespread availability of medical gender treatments, on demand, without therapist oversight and often without requiring parental consent - that is not merely one of that family’s concerns. It is all that family is thinking about. Every minute of every day—dear God, how can I save my little girl from doing harm to herself?

America has essentially become an unlocked medicine cabinet for gender medicine seekers as young as 15. As a result, any family with a kid who announces she is trans —whether encouraged by peers or social media or an activist educator, or accompanied by serious mental health co-morbidities—is hurled into crisis. The only thing parents know for certain is that a quick medical transition will be encouraged by virtually every adult she encounters. Far less certain is whether the family can do anything to stop it...

Still more.

 

Leave Your Pronouns!

At the door, that is.

It's Boy George, of Culture Club fame, at Instapundit, "WHEN YOUR GENDER-BLENDING CAMPAIGN HAS LOST BOY GEORGE."

And Twitchy, "Does he really want to hurt SJWs? Boy George wants everyone to ‘leave your pronouns at the door!’"

Leave your pronoun's at the door!

— Boy George (@BoyGeorge) January 6, 2020

BONUS: Flashback to 1995, at NYT, "Boy George: Switching Pronouns."

Identity Politics, Equality and Marxism (VIDEO)

Here's the Roaming Millennial. She's a cool chick, lol.

Yes, social justice is cancer, and here's why. This video explains what social justice is & breaks down the problem with identity politics & the concept of justice vs. equality. Also SJWs are commies. Yeah.

Cosmo May Have Outdone Itself with This Garbage Piece on Baby Gender

At Twitchy, "‘Are you f*cking NUTS?!’":

Dear Cosmo,

Stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Love,

Parents...

Fortunately we have President Trump rolling back the Obama admin's degenerate gender policies.

Leftists are losing on this issue, but don't seem to know it (think Bill Nye the Idiot Guy).

Candice Jackson Appointed to Lead the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights

In terms of power, controlling the executive branch bureaucracy's up there with holding the majority on the Supreme Court.

It's going to take a while to clean out Obama's treasonous deep state, but the extremely politicized "Office for Civil Rights" at the Department of Education (in charge of Title IX regulations) is an excellent place to start.

At Instapundit, "SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD APPOINTMENT TO ME":

Report: New Head of Federal Anti-Rape Agency Is a ‘Libertarian Feminist’ and Clinton Critic; Candice Jackson will allegedly become deputy secretary at the Office for Civil Rights. “A conservative legal activist known for defending the women who accused President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment has been tapped to head the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights on a temporary basis. OCR is the agency that regulates Title IX compliance, and is responsible for the recent effort to compel schools to police sexual assault internally.”

Marine Corps Pushes Back Against Decision to Ignore Study About Women in Combat

From Fuzzy Slippers, at Legal Insurrection.

Also at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Why Marines have a problem with women in combat."

And see the editorial at the Washington Post, "Women in combat."

BONUS: From Julie Pulley, at WSJ, "Women in the Infantry? No Thanks."

Now Our Schools Want to Teach Kids That there is No Such Thing as 'Gender'

From Warner Todd Huston, at RWN, "'Gender Fluidity'":

This is how bad our schools are getting. Now schools want to teach our children that there is no such thing as a human gender and that we are all open to “gender fluidity.”

Todd Starnes of Fox News is reporting that public schools in Virginia want to start teaching kids about “gender identity.” The school wants to teach that there is no such thing as gender except that which the individual decides.

Fairfax County Public Schools released a report recommending changes to their family life curriculum for grades 7 through 12. The changes, which critics call radical gender ideology, will be formally introduced next week.

“The larger picture is this is really an attack on nature itself – the created order,” said Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council.

“Human beings are created male and female. But the current transgender ideology goes way beyond that. They’re telling us you can be both genders, you can be no gender, you can be a gender that you make up for yourself. And we’re supposed to affirm all of it.”

The plan calls for teaching seventh graders about transgenderism and tenth graders about the concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum — but it sure smells like unadulterated sex indoctrination.

I have said it a million times, we need to tear down our “schools,” eliminate liberals from them, and re-build them into something useful. Our schools are an international laughing stock and this story is yet another example of why.

Hey Leftists, Attacking an Entire State for Homosexual Equality Might Not Be Such a Great Idea

Funny, but leftists are now losing the battle of public opinion on the Indiana religious freedom controversy.

Ann Friedman, at the Washington Post, nails it, "The progressive case against boycotting states like Indiana":

How can outsiders support lasting change? By donating to grass-roots campaigns such as Freedom Indiana and pro-gay-rights candidates for local political office, even when the state is out of the national spotlight. And if we’re going to be outraged now, we should also make a point of cheering for victories, such as the marriage-equality decision last year and several municipal-level human rights ordinances that have been passed throughout Indiana. Otherwise, we don’t come across as well-meaning outsiders who support love and equality. We just look like condescending jerks.

Oops! Thought crimes. Ann Friedman you are now considered an enemy of the state!

Leftist Heads Explode as Donations Top $840,000 for #MemoriesPizza

At Gateway Pundit.



Image Credit: IPayMyJizyaWith.357.

Carly Fiorina: Tim Cook Opposition to Indiana Religious Freedom Law Totally Hypocritical

Typical leftist hypocrisy.

See Ms. Fiorina's interview at WSJ:

Once a Fortune 50 chief executive herself, Carly Fiorina is disgusted with how CEOs rushed to condemn Indiana’s new religious freedom law. Mrs. Fiorina, who is weighing a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, called the week’s controversy over the Indiana statute the result of corporations bowing to “narrow special interests” rather than broad public anger.

CEOs like Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook, who publicly objected to the Indiana law, have engaged in “a level of hypocrisy here that really is unfortunate,” said Mrs. Fiorina, who was CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005.

“When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” she said Thursday afternoon during an interview with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”

More.

The Rise of the Memories Pizza Truthers

It's the "megalothymiamanical" Memories Pizza Truthers, in fact.

From Ed Driscoll, at Pajamas:

California Taxpayers to Foot Bill for Convicted Murderer's Sex Change Operation

Regressive leftist Democrat Party values.

From Darleen Click, at Protein Wisdom, "California taxpayers ordered to pay for murderer’s sex change."

Also at Memeorandum.

Appalachian State University: Radical Leftist Dorm Bulletin Board Targets Christian, White 'Privileged' Students

More leftist totalitarianism from the ideology of hate.

At Campus Reform, "App State dorm bulletin board shames 'privileged' students."

And a Christian student at the university, Laurel Littler, was attacked on social media for posting the photo below. See Fox & Friends, "Shaming Students - Dorm Fliers Attack Christians & Males - Trouble With Schools."

Forget Assault Prevention: Dispensing Common Sense Advice Puts You at Risk of 'Victim-Blaming'

From Ashe Schow, at the Washington Examiner, "Colleges struggle with protecting students without being accused of victim-blaming."

Leftists put people in danger. Sad.

'This isn’t gender neutrality, this is women upset that men can stand and pee...'

"This is going to turn me into an activist."

 Heh, at iOTW REPORT, "Leftist Idiocy – Retrofitted Gender Neutral Bathrooms Are Blocking the Urinals With Tape."