Some people find me kind of theatrically pessimistic or doomsaying. (No clue how they got that idea.) I do have a lot of optimistic feelings about the future, but in politics in particular I am constantly confronted with a basic problem: change in the favor of the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized requires solidarity across difference, but the political ideologies associated with pursuing that change have become obsessed with emphasizing the differences instead of the solidarity. All the left has is people power. But that can’t work if you insist some people are more important than others.
Hi Freddie. You may take this for granted, but this short paragraph is the best, simplest, clearest, distillation of this moment: "Change in the favor of the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized requires solidarity across difference, but the political ideologies associated with pursuing that change have become obsessed with emphasizing the differences instead of the solidarity. All the left has is people power. But that can’t work if you insist some people are more important than others." I know over-the-top praise can be uncomfortable, but I read pretty much everything, and at this point, if I could get everyone on the left (and the "left") to read one person, it would be you. Thank you.
I agree that this is a superb summary. But then I despair because Freddie will then turn around and refuse to participate in the only politics that matters today: Democrat v Republican for elected office.
The vast majority of elections in the United States, at all levels, will be won by a Republican or a Democrat. And in the vast majority of cases (like >99%), the Democrat will be more sympathetic to the causes of the Left than the Republican. And especially at the highest level, POTUS and Senator, the winners have hugely disproportionate power, not least in their ability to appoint federal judges to lifetime positions, judges who can overturn at a whim any progressive legislation.
Most leftists today see only trees. Freddie sees groves of trees. What is needed is to see the forrest.
You know you frequently have interesting things to say around here, but they only come after you go through your pro forma denunciation of my supposed refusal to participate in partisan politics. Though I hate the Democrats, I am also a registered Democrat who voted for the Democratic candidate in 2000, 2004, 2008 (helping Obama win Indiana, where my vote really mattered), 2012, and 2020, only failing to vote in 2016 because I moved to New York in late summer of that year and was thus prevented from registering by New York's draconian voting laws.
Well I can't pull up your writings from 2016, but I'm pretty sure you were denouncing Democrats pretty consistently. I distinctly remember you calling HRC "garbage". And just a few days ago, you wrote that you "held your nose" to vote for Biden.
IMO, this is just not helpful to anything you care about. Even if the Left abandoned all its ridiculous internal divisions tomorrow, there would still not be enough of us to take meaningful power in the quasi-democratic system we have today. (And destroying the system is not possible without a violent civil war that we would lose.)
So we need allies, allies who have power, or have a meaningful chance of gaining power. There is a name for those allies: Democrats.
Reject that alliance, and we will continue to tilt at windmills.
And in case this wasn't clear enough: who you VOTE for doesn't matter. You're just one vote. But you have a bully pulpit, you have the ability to persuade. That's what matters to me, and why I bother. When you help convince people that HRC vs DJT doesn't matter to the Great Struggle, we end up with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. And they're not going away.
So, he should just overlook [hence, not talk about] all the flaws of the Democrat party because they *may* (strong 'may' there) align in causes *sometimes*? Where's the coherence in that?
Talk about flaws, ways to be better, sure. But "garbage", "held my nose", "I hate the Democrats" doesn't help. And not voting for the lesser evil doesn't help (when a lot of us do it). It doesn't lead to better results down the road, it just leads to greater evil now.
Are you really asking a Marxist to play nice with HRC?
This reminds me of Freddie's analysis of Principles and Observations About Social Justice Politics. The idea was that very few within the movement are allowed to criticize it, and when criticism becomes "forbidden", it is impossible to recognize and address serious internal problems.
Yes, I am asking a Marxist to play nice with HRC. For the very simple reason that Marxist goals were significantly set back by Trump, in particular the appointment of hundreds of far-right judges with vast power. There was literally zero chance of getting anyone better than HRC in 2016. She trounced Bernie in the primaries (look up the vote totals). To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: we do politics in the world we live in, not the one we want to live in. You can make things better in the real world, or make them worse. Marxists allying with Democrats will make things better far more often (for the oppressed) than not allaying with Democrats.
I think he's pretty comfortable and effective as a critic.
I get where you're coming from, but I don't think Marxists allying with Democrats will do anything in real world politics. There aren't nearly enough of them to make a difference, and almost all of them vote Democrat already. Even if this allyship does happen, the Democrats will entertain approximately 0% of the Marxist agenda. Freddie praising HRC wouldn't have changed the election outcome. So you're asking him to give up his core values and get nothing in return.
I wouldn't have universal healthcare here in Canada if the Socialists had played nice with the Liberals. I think most progressive victories are the result of not playing nice for decades.
Pieces like this one and the post discussing the demonization of those Vietnam vets are why I subscribe. A powerful blend of intelligence and passion/principle.
I have no problem with "queer." The issue is that a) academia (and recently media) have been "queering" things so relentlessly for decades that it's hard to say that it has any meaning at this point, what isn't queer, and b) that bundling function is precisely what a lot of the younger generation rebel against.
That's fair, but like everything else I think it depends on which circles you travel in. Tumblr isn't real life, after all, and the vast majority of people spend no time thinking about college after they graduate. I'm not sure where in the media is using the word "queer", most straight people are still way too scared of the word to use it (which is fine by me, honestly.)
I'm fairly involved in queer... stuff... and I have never in my life met a single person that identifies as "fraysexual". The only "new" sexual identify that I have seen gain any real traction is "pansexual" but I still meet a hell of a lot more bisexuals.
But I think this is where the media being so unrepresentative makes a big (negative) difference - yes, you don't meet a lot of fraysexuals in the wild, but you do have a media edifice that is filled with people who think that we have to take concepts like "fraysexuality" seriously as a matter of course. If you're a regular person, your concept of these movements is inevitably filtered through the media, and if you're a white guy without a college degree who is sympathetic to many left goals, including racial justice, but all you read is Vox.com and they're telling you every day that you're evil by dint of your identity, you're not going to join that effort.
I dunno, I'm pretty up on this stuff and I've never heard the term "fraysexual" until I read this post. I just googled it and got about 130K results, and I did a news search and no sites I have ever heard of came up. I think your experiences in academia are coloring your opinion of what is actually general knowledge amongst the straights. I see mainstream news coverage of gays and transgender people, and not much else, to be honest. Maaaaybe asexuals.
But this fraysexual thing is becoming a distraction from your larger point, which I agree with, at least in terms of activist circles. It's a conflation of what's important on an individual level and what's important on a societal level.
I missed it when I first read this comment this morning but who is this non-college-educated left-sympathetic white male Vox reader? I'm pretty sure Vox has a CAPTCHA that screens out anyone without at least master's degree. That's what made Yglesias' (admittedly self-aware) "Everyone I Know Is Voting For Warren" article so funny
But that's kind of indictment of the same dynamic in and of itself, you know? If the defense of this type of discourse is that it won't offend people we need to attract because they won't read it, that's not much of a defense.
Oh I agree completely, Vox is a prime example of the completely self-reflexive quasi-"progressive" discourse. The issue isn't really your hypothetical guy reading Vox, it's that, more likely, all the media people he actually reads are the ones who read Vox. (On both sides of the political aisle--as Matt Christman has pointed out, everyone in the media class, left or right, went to college and has either absorbed this discourse or is reacting to it.) As you've pointed out many times, these discursive echo chambers really do have a downstream effect on the broader political conversation.
That is nonsense. Sheer nonsense. I don't know where you live, perhaps SF or Seattle or NYC, but there are millions of younger gay men who fucking detest this term.
A lot of the 40+ y/o's wo dislike "queer" have a gut-level fuck-no reaction to the word because they remember instances of the word being hurled at them as an epithet. I'm in my late twenties and could be called "queer" but I don't like the word either because it seems to lump together a lot of "identities," but more importantly, political projects/goals in a way that seems confused and self-defeating. Solidarity is important, but there's a reason why even though liberation for all is necessary to achieve liberation for one, it would be incoherent to talk of a "LGBTW (workers) community" for example. Adding the "W" to "LGBT" would make it harder, not easier, to foster solidarity. "Queer," which seeks to encompass not just sexual identities, but gender identities, sometimes people with differences of sexual development/intersex conditions, asexual people, etc., makes it difficult to discuss the specific ways in which, for example, trans people and gay people face shitty outcomes and discrimination. It's not obvious to me that all "queer" people would or should have similar political goals, which is fine--working side-by-side (solidarity!) when our interests overlap and insect is made easier when our differences (in make-up and goals) are allowed to sometimes exist separately. It's a matter of honesty and respect.
It's quite common in certain left circles outside of the US to use "queer" - After reading this post and giving it some thought, I think it's in view of the same reasons of solidarity that Freddie discusses. In my social/organizing circle in Europe, for instance, most of my queer friends grew up in non-English-speaking countries and wouldn't have experienced that specifically as a slur.
This is what makes me insane about intersectionality. If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible. Intersectionality is, in the final judgment, poisonous to the communitarianism that leftist thought requires.
(I'm not exactly a leftist myself, rather a hard-communitarian social democrat, but here our interests are aligned, I think.)
"If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible." THat is a brilliant distillation of a problem that's been vaguely bugging me for a looong time-- thank you!
Paragraph one: "If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible"
Paragraph two: 'hard-communitarian social democrat'
I find this so interesting because I've always seen intersectionality as a unifier for the identity problem rather than a divisive concept leading into it. Of course I understand how intersectionality highlights identity, but to me it serves as an acknowledgement that we have differences (ie. aren't monolithic) and yet we share a common (intersectional) space which shows us exactly what our common needs are, thus unifying us in our cause while encouraging it to be pluralistic.
It could be that I have an outdated understanding of how this term is being used today, but I'm often amazed at how so many variations in understanding can exist in relation to some seemingly basic terminology... which undoubtedly exacerbates current issues around divisive political discourse. So interesting.
I've said this many times, but people act as though intersectionality means the opposite of what it means. People say shit like "I'm intersectional so I think race comes before class" all the time. It's wild.
I hate this shit too, the carving of people into finer and finer groups and finding new ways to mob and shame. The more I look into it, the more the behavior reminds me of toxic nerd communities (video games, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.). It's all posturing and jockeying for status.
It's not like the Left I know. It's some hideous mutant offspring that escaped a lab.
Johnson's case is probably the worst example of trans activists' determination to transform many historical figures into a transperson based entirely on classic sexist & homophobic criteria. Johnson was NOT trans. And yes, Freddie's entirely correct that it doesn't matter who threw the first brick at Stonewall. But it does matter that trans activists insist on erasing gays & lesbians from their own civil and human rights movement while crediting all its achievements onto trans people -- and especially labeling GAY people who were at the forefront of the movement as "trans."
THANK YOU. The brick discourse gets worse every pride month, and it's ridiculous.
The line I see is something like, "Remember, we owe EVERYTHING to the black trans woman who threw the first brick at Stonewall. We would not have gay rights without Marsha P Johnson. So we all need to honor black trans women / care about their specific concerns."
It drives me crazy because 1) Marsha specifically said she wasn't there when it started. I don't care either, but when everyone is demanding we "center black trans women" it's just more grating when they keep yelling about something that literally didn't happen.
2) Stonewall was important! But the gay community was organizing before Stonewall, and I'm pretty sure a counterfactual universe where Stonewall didn't happen wouldn't be one where gay activists accomplished nothing for the next 60 years.
3) The specific concerns of black trans women deserve attention because black trans women are human beings who deserve rights, acceptance, equality – everything. It’s insulting to say they deserve these things because one person threw a brick. It’s even worse when the person didn’t really throw the brick, so the argument immediately collapses if you bother to investigate.
And as this article points out beautifully, the movement should be about us coming together for freedom. Instead, it’s the opposite. The queer community spends June fighting over everything. Kink at pride, cops at pride, flags with problematic origins, which identities are “valid.” And most importantly, who is more oppressed.
We spend all of June fighting over who has it worse. Bi women with husbands? (They don’t get enough acknowledgement of their queerness) Trans women? (Oppressed by cis queers) Lesbians? (Why isn’t our special flag included?) We just bicker all month. I can’t wait for June to end.
"We spend all of June fighting over who has it worse." UGH. This is true. It's turned pride into an ordeal rather than a celebration. Sometimes I think the obsession with Stonewall is indicative of the left's bigger issues. One important protest is emphasized instead of the very arduous, sustained activism of ACT UP because the latter is much more exciting - bricks, arrests, cops.
In my mind the worst sin of all is that the people making this argument don't even give a shit about how Johnson identified HIMSELF, which was as a gay man, transvestite, and drag queen. Sure, maybe he'd have been trans if he grew up in another era, but we don't know that and we never will! How can a group that's so pathologically obsessed with others validating their own gender identity 24/7 have no qualms about utterly invalidating their beloved historical figure's self-identification? The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. I am also LGBT and loathe pride month because of all the political bickering and corporate bullshit. Can't wait for it to be over.
"Problematic" could be the adjective of the decade. It's most useful when it means "emotionally complicated" or "upsetting" or "makes my tummy hurt." It's so overused that it's lost all meaning. We are all problematic because we're all evolving, self-aware primates.
As a member of the LGBT community for decades, I can attest that this question of "who threw the first brick" was never a matter of concern until the last couple of years. If your opinion isn't "it was a Black trans woman" you'll be labeled as a Bad Gay - i.e. a rich white cis man or a TERF. It makes me nervous to see the left revising history to fit current needs. The truth is that it was a bunch of white gay men and drag queens of many colors, which means there was something like solidarity! But solidarity isn't moving the Twitter needle as much as starting in-group fights.
I hate seeing the left become a caricature of itself, but unfortunately groups splintering and purging members does happen. Meanwhile, while we argue over who gets excommunicated, the right-wing is busy using their power to enact anti-trans legislation, while DOJ argues for an expansion of a religious right to discriminate.
I think some people will be afraid to comment on this post if they aren't LGBT, but it's okay for people to have an opinion, and it's okay to ask questions! Ultimately what Freddie is saying applies to just about every leftist group - just yesterday there were reports on the Sunrise movement being beset by "internal divisions". Wow, a leftist group splintering, who could've predicted.
To your first point, there's also no longer any room for respectful disgreement in the LGBT community. For example, I'm not a radical feminist by any means but I do have a ton of concerns about medical transition of minors and I think there's going to be a massive wave of detransitioners and lawsuits over the next decade due to the affirming model of "trans" health care for teenagers (there are already hundreds and maybe thousands of detransitioners who are rarely mentioned because they're inconvenient to the activist narrative). I also think this is an issue because so many kids with gender dysphoria turn out to be gay and are being pushed to transition instead of becoming comfortable with themselves in their sexuality and gender non-conformity like generations of gays before them. I ALSO think trans people deserve equal rights and dignity and respect...yet somehow my concerns about the medical transition of minors, which seem pretty well founded given the Kiera Bell ruling and the fact that Sweden has officially stopped transitioning minors, makes me an evil bigot and a TERF in the eyes of the rest of the LGBT community. It's utter madness that's going to have lifelong medical consequences for a generation of LGBT kids.
I share your concerns. I affirm trans women as women. I abhor anti-trans legislation. I'm cool with whatever pronouns people want. But it's amazing how quickly a very extreme dogma has taken root in the LGBT community - and it's so strong that we are encouraged not to have open discussions in our own community about... what is happening in our own community... unless we agree 100% with that dogma! Can we talk about what we actually see happening to youth? Not unless we go along with very specific dogma, or else we will be labeled rad-fem, racist, TERFS, who want trans kids to die. We're also seeing people of influence, like ACLU lawyers, saying that objective reporting on these matters is bad and shouldn't happen because that will give the right-wing ideas.... As if the right-wing has ever been out of ideas and strategies to implement them! (If only)
Totally in agreement with you. One thing that has bothered me recently though: "anti-trans legislation" has become an umbrella term for everything from restrictions on medical transition of minors, rules about girls'/women's sports, and bathroom bill type stuff. I think the bathroom bills are stupid and definitively anti-trans, but I don't agree that restrictions on medical transition of minors or on who can play in what sports league are anti-trans; I just think they're framed that way by activists and it's ultimately damaging to the rights of young people to grow up healthy and the rights of women and girls to have a fair shake at sports. Of course we've utterly dispensed with nuance at this point so I'm just screaming into the void here...
On "bathroom" bills: I believe that spaces that exclude people with dicks (known as "men" for the past thousand or so) are perfectly legitimate. If "bathroom" means toilet room with stalls with doors, then there isn't much point (and we should just have common toilet rooms for all people regardless of sex/gender/whatever). If "bathroom" means a place where people disrobe in front of each other, then segregation by body type (that is, whether or not you have a dick) is something that humans have done forever, and should be allowed. I don't care what's going on in your brain: if you have a dick, you are a "man", and if you don't, you are a "woman", according to the long-established common meaning of those words. And if "bathroom" means battered-person shelter, then segregation by presence or absence of dick is absolutely essential to the well-being of the vast majority of the battered persons.
I agree with you in some ways and disagree in others. I see toilet stalls and battered women's shelters as no-brainers but in opposite directions: nobody with a dick should be in a women's shelter and people should be able to use the toilet that matches their gender identity and call it a day. Creeps who want to spy on or molest women and girls in public bathrooms don't need to feign a trans identity to do it; there's nothing stopping them now, unfortunately. Locker rooms are trickier and I genuinely don't know what I think the right answer should be. On the one hand, Americans are incredibly prudish about nudity in a way that sometimes seems pathological. Is a girl or woman really going to be scared or scarred for life by seeing someone with a penis changing into gym clothes? Particularly if that person is just minding their own business? I don't really think so...but I do know that the way men behave in locker rooms is very different from women and I would assume that any trans women changing in a women's locker room would be trying to leave that behavior behind. Anyone should be able to be kicked out of any restroom or locker room for creepy behavior regardless of sex or gender.
Bottom line: I think that people without dicks should have the right to spaces that exclude people with dicks. The Equality Act would ban all such spaces.
respectfully: detransitioners are mentioned all the time. 60 minutes just devoted an entire prime time television segment to them, without a single trans person interviewed. In the past two years detransitioners have been on the cover of the Atlantic, and they were the subject of Abigail Shrier's book that was #1 on Amazon in the LGBT section for several months last year. Shrier was personally interviewed by dozens of outlets, including several right here on Substack.
I have been out as trans for fifteen years. Detransitioners have always existed and they always will, but the percentages have remained remarkably close 1%, even as more and more people transition as the world has become more accepting. Is that not sufficient media coverage of a group that comprises a tiny slice of the trans community, which is already a tiny slice of the population?
If you take a leftist, materialist view on the Kiera Bell case there's a much more convincing answer than trans activists run amok: Kiera Bell received insufficient care because the NHS has been gutted. Take a look for yourself at the waiting times to even get in the door at a public gender clinic in the UK: https://genderkit.org.uk/resources/gender-services/. And that's for adults as well as minors. The idea that hordes of children are getting irreversible surgeries is literally impossible under the material conditions that are present. It's a moral panic with no basis in reality.
In the United States, the answer is the same but for different reasons. Who do you think is paying for all the irreversible surgeries of trans minors in the United States? Insurance sure as shit isn't, go check any plan under the sun. Even the most progressive tech company policy is not going to cover surgery for minors, the only way a minor is getting surgery is if the parents are a) convinced enough to let them do it and b) have the money to pay for it out of pocket. That population is vanishingly small.
Again, this is a moral panic with no basis in reality. The medical community has been developing standards for treating trans patients for decades and they seem to be doing quite well. The problem, as always, is the material conditions for trans people that can't access care.
Every single one is at least a year and a half. And that is just to get in the door of a Gender Clinic, after you have already been referred by a general practitioner. Many of them are 3+ years, for adults and probably even longer for minors. Please consider what that means in the context of the constant moral panic that is constantly hammering away about how minors seem to transition too easily.
The UK and the US have very different medical systems. In the US it's extremely easy for minors, and pretty much anyone, to get access to hormones and puberty blockers. Adults, which includes people between 18-25 who aren't minors but also don't have fully developed brains, can go to planned parenthood and get a prescription for HRT in their first visit - they even advertise this on their website: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-greater-texas/patient-resources/transgender-healthcare. I know it's anecdotal but there are many trans people and detransitioners who tell their stories online and can confirm that that was their experience. Therapists in the US who try to explore other potential causes of a teen's gender dysphoria can lose their license for practicing "conversion therapy." With Keira Bell it's a clear failure of the NHS to offer appropriate treatment to troubled teenagers. In America it's looking more and more like a cash cow for pharma companies that's leading to anyone with gender dysphoria being fast tracked to medical transition without appropriate (expensive, non-pharmaceutical) interventions like therapy.
I don't know - I mean, I suppose on some level they are, but on some level they're not? I mainly provided that as a counterexample to your point about trans healthcare being difficult for adults to come by in the UK since it's much easier in the US.
ah you're correct, thanks. Regardless, they cut the only trans person interviewed that attempted to calm the moral panic: https://www.instagram.com/p/CPbblhSHIvh/
Respectfully, I disagree with most of what you've said. You have a point about detransitioners being a lot more visible over the past couple years so perhaps I'm wrong about that one. Out of curiosity, where does that 1% number come from and how recent is that statistic?
I disagree that concerns about medical transition are "a moral panic with no basis in reality." I'm actually not even primarily concerned about surgery since it seems to be relatively uncommon, though it's definitely happening. I'm very concerned about HRT and even more concerned about puberty blockers, though. You're right that trans healthcare has been around for a long time but it's only very recently that medical treatment like puberty blockers has been given to minors. Most adult trans people living today, including trans doctors who treat trans teens, transitioned as fully grown adults who went through their natal puberty and whose brains were fully developed by the time they received medical treatment. I find that their attitudes towards the transition of young people to be rooted in relatively superficial concerns about secondary sex characteristics and passing. I don't think passing is inherently a superficial concern but I do think that it's superficial when it comes into conflict with a person's physical health and development. For example, take Jazz Jennings, who had to undergo multiple surgeries because her genitals weren't fully developed enough for a successful bottom surgery. She's going to have to live with complications of not having gone through natal puberty for the rest of her life.
What is your opinion on the medical risks of HRT and lupron? There's a class action lawsuit against the makers of lupron because women who were prescribed it for precocious puberty in the 90s now have osteoporosis in their 20s and 30s. HRT gives natal females a 4x greater risk of heart attack than females not on HRT (and 2x greater than natal males) and a similar risk of stroke has been shown for natal males taking estrogen. Both types of treatment usually lead to permanent losss of fertility and in women it can mean vaginal atrophy and hysterectomy. Those risks might be totally acceptable to a grown adult with a fully developed brain and I think they have the right to consent to such treatment. I don't see how a teenager can meaningfully consent to those kinds of risks when we know that, developmentally, they're not capable of that sort of long term thinking and they're wired to take risks and push boundaries.
Thank you, this is absolutely right. I find the notion that a pre-pubescent kid is reliable in determining gender mind-body match to be absurd on its face. Does no one remember what it was like to be a pre-pubescent kid? We trust their testimony absolutely?
I don't have opinions on lupron really, I'm not a medical professional. I'm sure there are downsides to almost any medical intervention, I think there's downsides to me taking hormones for the past fifteen years but I truly could not care less. There's downsides to drinking alcohol but I had a margarita last night. I'm fairly certain Jazz Jennings would tell you the same about her choices.
The thing about "fully developed brain" is who gets to decide when someone is capable of making that decision? Isn't that what mental and medical professionals are trained to do, along with a child's parents? Are they not doing exactly what their job is, trying to establish standards that help the most people achieve the most happiness? Are you sure you just don't like the conclusions they've reached? What makes you think that something else, something nefarious is happening?
The thing is, the research on brain development is pretty robust at this point and it's accepted that brain development, particularly the parts responsible for long-term planning and risk assessment, is not complete until around 24-25. It's pretty "settled" as much as any science can ever really be settled. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708
I don't necessarily think that there's some massive nefarious conspiracy going on; I think we've reached a point where social acceptance of trans people has improved to such a degree that trans issues are mainstream and that that's coincided with a lot of well-meaning people trying to make up for past failures to accept the gay community by doing anything they they think going to help trans people, sometimes regardless of (or totally ignorant of) the scientific evidence. The incentives of well-meaning activists and everyday people who want to see trans people people accepted also just happen to align with the incentives of pharmaceutical companies in a for-profit medical system in which they have a long history of malfeasance and substandard care in pursuit of profits. All of the above also happens to align with huge increases in anxiety, depression and social isolation among teenagers who spend a lot of time online and are desperately searching for something that can make them feel better. It's a whole confluence of factors.
I think you're greatly overstating the case for the "undeveloped teen brain" theory, which is largely based on myths, gut feelings, and a "telephone game" style repetition of poorly sourced claims.
When you say "The thing about "fully developed brain" is who gets to decide when someone is capable of making that decision?" you completely lose me. There is a very obvious line between adults and children and I am not here for people to blur it.
"There is a very obvious line between adults and children"
Which is why we can drive at 15, have sex (with other teenagers) at 16, enlist, vote and have sex (with other adults) at 18, and drink alcohol at 21. None of which accounts for the brain science cited upthread suggesting that development continues through age 25, which is also when we can rent cars. I'm not arguing against the necessity of establishing bright lines for legal reasons, but let's not pretend there's some magic a priori age when things go from unacceptable to acceptable.
This looks like another study that uses, as a denominator, people who kept going to the gender clinic after transition. You can't measure detransition by looking only at patient records -- you'll miss anyone who detransitioned and stopped going, or sought alternative medical treatment because they were unhappy with their care.
Detransitioners are part of the gender debate online, but I doubt my parents have heard of them. The 60 Minutes piece was the first mainstream coverage I can remember. And they did interview at least one trans person (Erica Anderson).
My view is that we should do our best to minimize regret -- whether that's regret that you transitioned, or regret that you didn't transition earlier. The number of people who regret transitioning clearly isn't zero. I wish we could talk about them without both sides trying to advance their own agendas, so that we can get better at helping kids get the best outcome (whatever that is for them).
We can talk about them. Trans people always have. We've always known that detransitioners exist because they always have an always will. The difference now is that cisgender people want to talk about them constantly and use the moral panic as a culture war bludgeon, which we are doing right here in Freddie's comment section. Demanding that detransition rates be zero is demanding the end of medical care for trans people.
The way to minimize regret is to improve the mental and healthcare that questioning people receive. I said this above. It is not culture, it is not some nefarious conspiracy, it is not kids watching youtube. Fixing the material reality of overburdened clinics in the UK and unaffordable healthcare in the United States are the easiest targets for minimizing regret. That is the boring reality.
And why would your parents need to have heard of a population that even the most generous studies put at 5% of transitioners when less than 5% of the general population even ids as trans? I've been trans for fifteen years and my parents probably don't know about detransitioners, who cares? Furthermore, why do you care?
maybe think of this discussion in the context of Freddie's post. You're framing the interests of detransitioners and trans people as opposed (both sides agendas', etc). That's just not the case. Both communities need the exact same thing: better mental and physical care. We sink or swim together, our interests are not opposed.
This is the crispest, shortest distillation of the problem with identity politics I've ever seen. Thanks for helping me understand something that's been bothering me for a long time but that I couldn't quite articulate.
Eugene Debs said, "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Nowadays I suspect most leftists would be uncomfortable with that formulation of solidarity, since he is claiming oppressions that aren't his own. (Of course he did in fact go to prison, but since his experience as an educated white man in prison would have been different than an impoverished person of color, does it really count?)
You could argue Debs was using his privilege to bring attention to the marginalized. But I don't think anyone is actually allowed to argue that, even though we're always told to do it.
I don't think your writing is pessimistic or doom saying. The best way I've found to describe it is as infused with a sort of realistic melancholy I quite enjoy. A pretentious label I know, but I think it fits you well and is a rare style in todays discourse.
To some extent, all politics is identity politics. The whole point of classic socialist organizing was trying to activate people's identity as 'worker' or 'farmer' as someone in conflict with 'capital' and management. I don't think you can just brush that off.
People have a complex set of identities that gets even more complex in the modern age and it makes just about any political movement more difficult, one way or the other.
I think the toughest thing about political organizing from the left perspective is that you have to be ready to put in time and energy into doing said organization, but then, yeah, you have to settle in to be a small part of a much greater whole. It's tough, psychologically. It'd be a lot easier if it was a group of part-time activists full-time other things so being that small part of a greater whole isn't so psychologically difficult, but then I don't know if there's a lot of room for that in 2021. With an increased level of political consciousness(and strength of political identity), people like that tend to get left behind.
It's because whatever the supposed "left" is, exists as a subculture masquerading as a political movement. You can consider the proliferation of identities and orientations like different craft brews (an example you have used) or indie bands. The main purpose is to create a language and level of complexity capable of separating the initiated from the general public the same way going to a punk show and saying your favorite band is Blink-182 marks you instantly and obviously as a poser. This serves the very important role of preserving the clout and cultural capital of the people most involved.
The political portion is a very distant 2nd, when it factors in at all. Once you realize you're not even really doing politics it makes way more sense.
Hyper individualism is silly and patently illogical with lots of evidence (simple common sense included) pointing to an obvious conclusion - we are not important. Sorry, boohoo, you came in 8th place, better luck next time, but here is a ribbon, hope that makes you feel better, sorry for your lived experience. We have taught a generation to wallow in self-indulgent claptrap.
I know I’m being a troll but I think our fearless leader Freddie comes from a similar place in his April 23 post - “you feel exhausted because life is pain”
From DeGraffenreid v General Motors, 708 F2d 475 (9th Cir 1983):
"The legislative history surrounding Title VII does not indicate that the goal of the statute was to create a new classification of 'black women' who would have greater standing than, for example, a black male. The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities, governed only by the mathematical principles of permutation and combination, clearly raises the prospect of opening the hackneyed Pandora's box."
That's an early statement of the entire problem, isn't it?
On the other hand (and I have many, many hands) there are forms of discrimination that affect, e.g., black women differently from black men or white women. There's truth in that. But then when the argument is extended over the ensuing 40 years, we each wind up spinning in our own little solipsistic universes. I am very sympathetic to Freddie's call for unity in the struggle for justice, but I also see the fear of the groups that might get left out. I hate reality, it's so complicated.
This is why Adam Curtis's films strike such a cord. It's exactly the thesis of all his films: the left has lost the will to sacrifice individually for the greater good.
I think the left increasingly feels like pushing its own narratives and constructing its own heroic figures is important enough that it's okay to be a little loose with the details. This Marsha P. Johnson episode is a skirmish in a larger war - the 1619 project is a slightly bigger battle.
Ultimately this is not much different from conservatives fighting to keep the Columbus and Thomas Jefferson stories pure. The conservatives never cared about the details, if you're defending tradition it doesn't matter if George Washington really chopped down the apple tree - the veracity is almost besides the point. I think there are parallels with the new left - if you're a true ally, the veracity of the Marsha P. Johnson story becomes besides the point. Why would you try to disrupt a useful narrative? This cynicism feels new to me. But it's not totally indefensible as a strategy.
The socialist left also has its own myths and heroic figures, so I don't think you can chalk this entirely to identity politics or individualism - people wear Che shirts, not 'all of the Cubans' shirts.
Hi Freddie. You may take this for granted, but this short paragraph is the best, simplest, clearest, distillation of this moment: "Change in the favor of the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized requires solidarity across difference, but the political ideologies associated with pursuing that change have become obsessed with emphasizing the differences instead of the solidarity. All the left has is people power. But that can’t work if you insist some people are more important than others." I know over-the-top praise can be uncomfortable, but I read pretty much everything, and at this point, if I could get everyone on the left (and the "left") to read one person, it would be you. Thank you.
I agree that this is a superb summary. But then I despair because Freddie will then turn around and refuse to participate in the only politics that matters today: Democrat v Republican for elected office.
The vast majority of elections in the United States, at all levels, will be won by a Republican or a Democrat. And in the vast majority of cases (like >99%), the Democrat will be more sympathetic to the causes of the Left than the Republican. And especially at the highest level, POTUS and Senator, the winners have hugely disproportionate power, not least in their ability to appoint federal judges to lifetime positions, judges who can overturn at a whim any progressive legislation.
Most leftists today see only trees. Freddie sees groves of trees. What is needed is to see the forrest.
You know you frequently have interesting things to say around here, but they only come after you go through your pro forma denunciation of my supposed refusal to participate in partisan politics. Though I hate the Democrats, I am also a registered Democrat who voted for the Democratic candidate in 2000, 2004, 2008 (helping Obama win Indiana, where my vote really mattered), 2012, and 2020, only failing to vote in 2016 because I moved to New York in late summer of that year and was thus prevented from registering by New York's draconian voting laws.
Okay?
Well I can't pull up your writings from 2016, but I'm pretty sure you were denouncing Democrats pretty consistently. I distinctly remember you calling HRC "garbage". And just a few days ago, you wrote that you "held your nose" to vote for Biden.
IMO, this is just not helpful to anything you care about. Even if the Left abandoned all its ridiculous internal divisions tomorrow, there would still not be enough of us to take meaningful power in the quasi-democratic system we have today. (And destroying the system is not possible without a violent civil war that we would lose.)
So we need allies, allies who have power, or have a meaningful chance of gaining power. There is a name for those allies: Democrats.
Reject that alliance, and we will continue to tilt at windmills.
And in case this wasn't clear enough: who you VOTE for doesn't matter. You're just one vote. But you have a bully pulpit, you have the ability to persuade. That's what matters to me, and why I bother. When you help convince people that HRC vs DJT doesn't matter to the Great Struggle, we end up with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. And they're not going away.
So, he should just overlook [hence, not talk about] all the flaws of the Democrat party because they *may* (strong 'may' there) align in causes *sometimes*? Where's the coherence in that?
Talk about flaws, ways to be better, sure. But "garbage", "held my nose", "I hate the Democrats" doesn't help. And not voting for the lesser evil doesn't help (when a lot of us do it). It doesn't lead to better results down the road, it just leads to greater evil now.
Are you really asking a Marxist to play nice with HRC?
This reminds me of Freddie's analysis of Principles and Observations About Social Justice Politics. The idea was that very few within the movement are allowed to criticize it, and when criticism becomes "forbidden", it is impossible to recognize and address serious internal problems.
Yes, I am asking a Marxist to play nice with HRC. For the very simple reason that Marxist goals were significantly set back by Trump, in particular the appointment of hundreds of far-right judges with vast power. There was literally zero chance of getting anyone better than HRC in 2016. She trounced Bernie in the primaries (look up the vote totals). To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: we do politics in the world we live in, not the one we want to live in. You can make things better in the real world, or make them worse. Marxists allying with Democrats will make things better far more often (for the oppressed) than not allaying with Democrats.
I think he's pretty comfortable and effective as a critic.
I get where you're coming from, but I don't think Marxists allying with Democrats will do anything in real world politics. There aren't nearly enough of them to make a difference, and almost all of them vote Democrat already. Even if this allyship does happen, the Democrats will entertain approximately 0% of the Marxist agenda. Freddie praising HRC wouldn't have changed the election outcome. So you're asking him to give up his core values and get nothing in return.
I wouldn't have universal healthcare here in Canada if the Socialists had played nice with the Liberals. I think most progressive victories are the result of not playing nice for decades.
Pieces like this one and the post discussing the demonization of those Vietnam vets are why I subscribe. A powerful blend of intelligence and passion/principle.
There is a word that encompasses all gender and sexual minorities: queer. Pretty much anyone 40 or under is fine with it, 40 or over isn't.
I have no problem with "queer." The issue is that a) academia (and recently media) have been "queering" things so relentlessly for decades that it's hard to say that it has any meaning at this point, what isn't queer, and b) that bundling function is precisely what a lot of the younger generation rebel against.
That's fair, but like everything else I think it depends on which circles you travel in. Tumblr isn't real life, after all, and the vast majority of people spend no time thinking about college after they graduate. I'm not sure where in the media is using the word "queer", most straight people are still way too scared of the word to use it (which is fine by me, honestly.)
I'm fairly involved in queer... stuff... and I have never in my life met a single person that identifies as "fraysexual". The only "new" sexual identify that I have seen gain any real traction is "pansexual" but I still meet a hell of a lot more bisexuals.
But I think this is where the media being so unrepresentative makes a big (negative) difference - yes, you don't meet a lot of fraysexuals in the wild, but you do have a media edifice that is filled with people who think that we have to take concepts like "fraysexuality" seriously as a matter of course. If you're a regular person, your concept of these movements is inevitably filtered through the media, and if you're a white guy without a college degree who is sympathetic to many left goals, including racial justice, but all you read is Vox.com and they're telling you every day that you're evil by dint of your identity, you're not going to join that effort.
I dunno, I'm pretty up on this stuff and I've never heard the term "fraysexual" until I read this post. I just googled it and got about 130K results, and I did a news search and no sites I have ever heard of came up. I think your experiences in academia are coloring your opinion of what is actually general knowledge amongst the straights. I see mainstream news coverage of gays and transgender people, and not much else, to be honest. Maaaaybe asexuals.
But this fraysexual thing is becoming a distraction from your larger point, which I agree with, at least in terms of activist circles. It's a conflation of what's important on an individual level and what's important on a societal level.
I missed it when I first read this comment this morning but who is this non-college-educated left-sympathetic white male Vox reader? I'm pretty sure Vox has a CAPTCHA that screens out anyone without at least master's degree. That's what made Yglesias' (admittedly self-aware) "Everyone I Know Is Voting For Warren" article so funny
But that's kind of indictment of the same dynamic in and of itself, you know? If the defense of this type of discourse is that it won't offend people we need to attract because they won't read it, that's not much of a defense.
Oh I agree completely, Vox is a prime example of the completely self-reflexive quasi-"progressive" discourse. The issue isn't really your hypothetical guy reading Vox, it's that, more likely, all the media people he actually reads are the ones who read Vox. (On both sides of the political aisle--as Matt Christman has pointed out, everyone in the media class, left or right, went to college and has either absorbed this discourse or is reacting to it.) As you've pointed out many times, these discursive echo chambers really do have a downstream effect on the broader political conversation.
Except that a lot of gays and lesbians reject that term and it's not up to you to tell them they should accept it.
I mean... yes? But that's not what I was doing?
ok, apologies for misunderstanding
No worries, not a big deal. I appreciate the apology. :)
That is nonsense. Sheer nonsense. I don't know where you live, perhaps SF or Seattle or NYC, but there are millions of younger gay men who fucking detest this term.
Okay.
A lot of the 40+ y/o's wo dislike "queer" have a gut-level fuck-no reaction to the word because they remember instances of the word being hurled at them as an epithet. I'm in my late twenties and could be called "queer" but I don't like the word either because it seems to lump together a lot of "identities," but more importantly, political projects/goals in a way that seems confused and self-defeating. Solidarity is important, but there's a reason why even though liberation for all is necessary to achieve liberation for one, it would be incoherent to talk of a "LGBTW (workers) community" for example. Adding the "W" to "LGBT" would make it harder, not easier, to foster solidarity. "Queer," which seeks to encompass not just sexual identities, but gender identities, sometimes people with differences of sexual development/intersex conditions, asexual people, etc., makes it difficult to discuss the specific ways in which, for example, trans people and gay people face shitty outcomes and discrimination. It's not obvious to me that all "queer" people would or should have similar political goals, which is fine--working side-by-side (solidarity!) when our interests overlap and insect is made easier when our differences (in make-up and goals) are allowed to sometimes exist separately. It's a matter of honesty and respect.
It's quite common in certain left circles outside of the US to use "queer" - After reading this post and giving it some thought, I think it's in view of the same reasons of solidarity that Freddie discusses. In my social/organizing circle in Europe, for instance, most of my queer friends grew up in non-English-speaking countries and wouldn't have experienced that specifically as a slur.
This is what makes me insane about intersectionality. If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible. Intersectionality is, in the final judgment, poisonous to the communitarianism that leftist thought requires.
(I'm not exactly a leftist myself, rather a hard-communitarian social democrat, but here our interests are aligned, I think.)
"If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible." THat is a brilliant distillation of a problem that's been vaguely bugging me for a looong time-- thank you!
Paragraph one: "If we treat ourselves as the unique intersection of all our various identities, we become so radically individual that solidarity is impossible"
Paragraph two: 'hard-communitarian social democrat'
lol
The second is not an identity, so no lol achieved. Sorry.
To be clear I was being facetious, I agree with AJKamper but the phrase "hard-communitarian social democrat" just made me giggle
I find this so interesting because I've always seen intersectionality as a unifier for the identity problem rather than a divisive concept leading into it. Of course I understand how intersectionality highlights identity, but to me it serves as an acknowledgement that we have differences (ie. aren't monolithic) and yet we share a common (intersectional) space which shows us exactly what our common needs are, thus unifying us in our cause while encouraging it to be pluralistic.
It could be that I have an outdated understanding of how this term is being used today, but I'm often amazed at how so many variations in understanding can exist in relation to some seemingly basic terminology... which undoubtedly exacerbates current issues around divisive political discourse. So interesting.
I've said this many times, but people act as though intersectionality means the opposite of what it means. People say shit like "I'm intersectional so I think race comes before class" all the time. It's wild.
Amazing, seeing as the word literally describes itself. Guess we can't have nice things.
Intersectionality means "I have these stacking identities to give me power" when a lot of people use it.
I hate this shit too, the carving of people into finer and finer groups and finding new ways to mob and shame. The more I look into it, the more the behavior reminds me of toxic nerd communities (video games, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.). It's all posturing and jockeying for status.
It's not like the Left I know. It's some hideous mutant offspring that escaped a lab.
Just one point about Marsha Johnson: Johnson himself never viewed himself as trans. He called himself a "queer boy" and a "transvestite." Here's a video of him saying that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdUEFtPFJLo&list=FLf009cF_LDNLEYM1_exA8uQ&index=2
Johnson's case is probably the worst example of trans activists' determination to transform many historical figures into a transperson based entirely on classic sexist & homophobic criteria. Johnson was NOT trans. And yes, Freddie's entirely correct that it doesn't matter who threw the first brick at Stonewall. But it does matter that trans activists insist on erasing gays & lesbians from their own civil and human rights movement while crediting all its achievements onto trans people -- and especially labeling GAY people who were at the forefront of the movement as "trans."
Yep.
THANK YOU. The brick discourse gets worse every pride month, and it's ridiculous.
The line I see is something like, "Remember, we owe EVERYTHING to the black trans woman who threw the first brick at Stonewall. We would not have gay rights without Marsha P Johnson. So we all need to honor black trans women / care about their specific concerns."
It drives me crazy because 1) Marsha specifically said she wasn't there when it started. I don't care either, but when everyone is demanding we "center black trans women" it's just more grating when they keep yelling about something that literally didn't happen.
2) Stonewall was important! But the gay community was organizing before Stonewall, and I'm pretty sure a counterfactual universe where Stonewall didn't happen wouldn't be one where gay activists accomplished nothing for the next 60 years.
3) The specific concerns of black trans women deserve attention because black trans women are human beings who deserve rights, acceptance, equality – everything. It’s insulting to say they deserve these things because one person threw a brick. It’s even worse when the person didn’t really throw the brick, so the argument immediately collapses if you bother to investigate.
And as this article points out beautifully, the movement should be about us coming together for freedom. Instead, it’s the opposite. The queer community spends June fighting over everything. Kink at pride, cops at pride, flags with problematic origins, which identities are “valid.” And most importantly, who is more oppressed.
We spend all of June fighting over who has it worse. Bi women with husbands? (They don’t get enough acknowledgement of their queerness) Trans women? (Oppressed by cis queers) Lesbians? (Why isn’t our special flag included?) We just bicker all month. I can’t wait for June to end.
"We spend all of June fighting over who has it worse." UGH. This is true. It's turned pride into an ordeal rather than a celebration. Sometimes I think the obsession with Stonewall is indicative of the left's bigger issues. One important protest is emphasized instead of the very arduous, sustained activism of ACT UP because the latter is much more exciting - bricks, arrests, cops.
the former, I mean
In my mind the worst sin of all is that the people making this argument don't even give a shit about how Johnson identified HIMSELF, which was as a gay man, transvestite, and drag queen. Sure, maybe he'd have been trans if he grew up in another era, but we don't know that and we never will! How can a group that's so pathologically obsessed with others validating their own gender identity 24/7 have no qualms about utterly invalidating their beloved historical figure's self-identification? The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. I am also LGBT and loathe pride month because of all the political bickering and corporate bullshit. Can't wait for it to be over.
"Problematic" could be the adjective of the decade. It's most useful when it means "emotionally complicated" or "upsetting" or "makes my tummy hurt." It's so overused that it's lost all meaning. We are all problematic because we're all evolving, self-aware primates.
As a member of the LGBT community for decades, I can attest that this question of "who threw the first brick" was never a matter of concern until the last couple of years. If your opinion isn't "it was a Black trans woman" you'll be labeled as a Bad Gay - i.e. a rich white cis man or a TERF. It makes me nervous to see the left revising history to fit current needs. The truth is that it was a bunch of white gay men and drag queens of many colors, which means there was something like solidarity! But solidarity isn't moving the Twitter needle as much as starting in-group fights.
I hate seeing the left become a caricature of itself, but unfortunately groups splintering and purging members does happen. Meanwhile, while we argue over who gets excommunicated, the right-wing is busy using their power to enact anti-trans legislation, while DOJ argues for an expansion of a religious right to discriminate.
I think some people will be afraid to comment on this post if they aren't LGBT, but it's okay for people to have an opinion, and it's okay to ask questions! Ultimately what Freddie is saying applies to just about every leftist group - just yesterday there were reports on the Sunrise movement being beset by "internal divisions". Wow, a leftist group splintering, who could've predicted.
To your first point, there's also no longer any room for respectful disgreement in the LGBT community. For example, I'm not a radical feminist by any means but I do have a ton of concerns about medical transition of minors and I think there's going to be a massive wave of detransitioners and lawsuits over the next decade due to the affirming model of "trans" health care for teenagers (there are already hundreds and maybe thousands of detransitioners who are rarely mentioned because they're inconvenient to the activist narrative). I also think this is an issue because so many kids with gender dysphoria turn out to be gay and are being pushed to transition instead of becoming comfortable with themselves in their sexuality and gender non-conformity like generations of gays before them. I ALSO think trans people deserve equal rights and dignity and respect...yet somehow my concerns about the medical transition of minors, which seem pretty well founded given the Kiera Bell ruling and the fact that Sweden has officially stopped transitioning minors, makes me an evil bigot and a TERF in the eyes of the rest of the LGBT community. It's utter madness that's going to have lifelong medical consequences for a generation of LGBT kids.
I share your concerns. I affirm trans women as women. I abhor anti-trans legislation. I'm cool with whatever pronouns people want. But it's amazing how quickly a very extreme dogma has taken root in the LGBT community - and it's so strong that we are encouraged not to have open discussions in our own community about... what is happening in our own community... unless we agree 100% with that dogma! Can we talk about what we actually see happening to youth? Not unless we go along with very specific dogma, or else we will be labeled rad-fem, racist, TERFS, who want trans kids to die. We're also seeing people of influence, like ACLU lawyers, saying that objective reporting on these matters is bad and shouldn't happen because that will give the right-wing ideas.... As if the right-wing has ever been out of ideas and strategies to implement them! (If only)
Totally in agreement with you. One thing that has bothered me recently though: "anti-trans legislation" has become an umbrella term for everything from restrictions on medical transition of minors, rules about girls'/women's sports, and bathroom bill type stuff. I think the bathroom bills are stupid and definitively anti-trans, but I don't agree that restrictions on medical transition of minors or on who can play in what sports league are anti-trans; I just think they're framed that way by activists and it's ultimately damaging to the rights of young people to grow up healthy and the rights of women and girls to have a fair shake at sports. Of course we've utterly dispensed with nuance at this point so I'm just screaming into the void here...
On "bathroom" bills: I believe that spaces that exclude people with dicks (known as "men" for the past thousand or so) are perfectly legitimate. If "bathroom" means toilet room with stalls with doors, then there isn't much point (and we should just have common toilet rooms for all people regardless of sex/gender/whatever). If "bathroom" means a place where people disrobe in front of each other, then segregation by body type (that is, whether or not you have a dick) is something that humans have done forever, and should be allowed. I don't care what's going on in your brain: if you have a dick, you are a "man", and if you don't, you are a "woman", according to the long-established common meaning of those words. And if "bathroom" means battered-person shelter, then segregation by presence or absence of dick is absolutely essential to the well-being of the vast majority of the battered persons.
I agree with you in some ways and disagree in others. I see toilet stalls and battered women's shelters as no-brainers but in opposite directions: nobody with a dick should be in a women's shelter and people should be able to use the toilet that matches their gender identity and call it a day. Creeps who want to spy on or molest women and girls in public bathrooms don't need to feign a trans identity to do it; there's nothing stopping them now, unfortunately. Locker rooms are trickier and I genuinely don't know what I think the right answer should be. On the one hand, Americans are incredibly prudish about nudity in a way that sometimes seems pathological. Is a girl or woman really going to be scared or scarred for life by seeing someone with a penis changing into gym clothes? Particularly if that person is just minding their own business? I don't really think so...but I do know that the way men behave in locker rooms is very different from women and I would assume that any trans women changing in a women's locker room would be trying to leave that behavior behind. Anyone should be able to be kicked out of any restroom or locker room for creepy behavior regardless of sex or gender.
Bottom line: I think that people without dicks should have the right to spaces that exclude people with dicks. The Equality Act would ban all such spaces.
respectfully: detransitioners are mentioned all the time. 60 minutes just devoted an entire prime time television segment to them, without a single trans person interviewed. In the past two years detransitioners have been on the cover of the Atlantic, and they were the subject of Abigail Shrier's book that was #1 on Amazon in the LGBT section for several months last year. Shrier was personally interviewed by dozens of outlets, including several right here on Substack.
I have been out as trans for fifteen years. Detransitioners have always existed and they always will, but the percentages have remained remarkably close 1%, even as more and more people transition as the world has become more accepting. Is that not sufficient media coverage of a group that comprises a tiny slice of the trans community, which is already a tiny slice of the population?
If you take a leftist, materialist view on the Kiera Bell case there's a much more convincing answer than trans activists run amok: Kiera Bell received insufficient care because the NHS has been gutted. Take a look for yourself at the waiting times to even get in the door at a public gender clinic in the UK: https://genderkit.org.uk/resources/gender-services/. And that's for adults as well as minors. The idea that hordes of children are getting irreversible surgeries is literally impossible under the material conditions that are present. It's a moral panic with no basis in reality.
In the United States, the answer is the same but for different reasons. Who do you think is paying for all the irreversible surgeries of trans minors in the United States? Insurance sure as shit isn't, go check any plan under the sun. Even the most progressive tech company policy is not going to cover surgery for minors, the only way a minor is getting surgery is if the parents are a) convinced enough to let them do it and b) have the money to pay for it out of pocket. That population is vanishingly small.
Again, this is a moral panic with no basis in reality. The medical community has been developing standards for treating trans patients for decades and they seem to be doing quite well. The problem, as always, is the material conditions for trans people that can't access care.
sorry wrong link for the wait times dashboard: https://genderkit.org.uk/resources/wait-times/
Every single one is at least a year and a half. And that is just to get in the door of a Gender Clinic, after you have already been referred by a general practitioner. Many of them are 3+ years, for adults and probably even longer for minors. Please consider what that means in the context of the constant moral panic that is constantly hammering away about how minors seem to transition too easily.
The UK and the US have very different medical systems. In the US it's extremely easy for minors, and pretty much anyone, to get access to hormones and puberty blockers. Adults, which includes people between 18-25 who aren't minors but also don't have fully developed brains, can go to planned parenthood and get a prescription for HRT in their first visit - they even advertise this on their website: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-greater-texas/patient-resources/transgender-healthcare. I know it's anecdotal but there are many trans people and detransitioners who tell their stories online and can confirm that that was their experience. Therapists in the US who try to explore other potential causes of a teen's gender dysphoria can lose their license for practicing "conversion therapy." With Keira Bell it's a clear failure of the NHS to offer appropriate treatment to troubled teenagers. In America it's looking more and more like a cash cow for pharma companies that's leading to anyone with gender dysphoria being fast tracked to medical transition without appropriate (expensive, non-pharmaceutical) interventions like therapy.
lol ok we're in "18-25 year olds aren't capable of making their owns decisions" territory now. We're done here.
I don't know - I mean, I suppose on some level they are, but on some level they're not? I mainly provided that as a counterexample to your point about trans healthcare being difficult for adults to come by in the UK since it's much easier in the US.
18-25, yes. Under 18, no. For under 18, legal parent/guardian should decide. That is not currently the case in most blue states in the US.
>" 60 minutes just devoted an entire prime time television segment to them, without a single trans person interviewed"
Not true. The segment gave extensive air time to Erica Anderson, a transgender woman and gender psychologist:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/60minutes-2021-05-23/
ah you're correct, thanks. Regardless, they cut the only trans person interviewed that attempted to calm the moral panic: https://www.instagram.com/p/CPbblhSHIvh/
Respectfully, I disagree with most of what you've said. You have a point about detransitioners being a lot more visible over the past couple years so perhaps I'm wrong about that one. Out of curiosity, where does that 1% number come from and how recent is that statistic?
I disagree that concerns about medical transition are "a moral panic with no basis in reality." I'm actually not even primarily concerned about surgery since it seems to be relatively uncommon, though it's definitely happening. I'm very concerned about HRT and even more concerned about puberty blockers, though. You're right that trans healthcare has been around for a long time but it's only very recently that medical treatment like puberty blockers has been given to minors. Most adult trans people living today, including trans doctors who treat trans teens, transitioned as fully grown adults who went through their natal puberty and whose brains were fully developed by the time they received medical treatment. I find that their attitudes towards the transition of young people to be rooted in relatively superficial concerns about secondary sex characteristics and passing. I don't think passing is inherently a superficial concern but I do think that it's superficial when it comes into conflict with a person's physical health and development. For example, take Jazz Jennings, who had to undergo multiple surgeries because her genitals weren't fully developed enough for a successful bottom surgery. She's going to have to live with complications of not having gone through natal puberty for the rest of her life.
What is your opinion on the medical risks of HRT and lupron? There's a class action lawsuit against the makers of lupron because women who were prescribed it for precocious puberty in the 90s now have osteoporosis in their 20s and 30s. HRT gives natal females a 4x greater risk of heart attack than females not on HRT (and 2x greater than natal males) and a similar risk of stroke has been shown for natal males taking estrogen. Both types of treatment usually lead to permanent losss of fertility and in women it can mean vaginal atrophy and hysterectomy. Those risks might be totally acceptable to a grown adult with a fully developed brain and I think they have the right to consent to such treatment. I don't see how a teenager can meaningfully consent to those kinds of risks when we know that, developmentally, they're not capable of that sort of long term thinking and they're wired to take risks and push boundaries.
Thank you, this is absolutely right. I find the notion that a pre-pubescent kid is reliable in determining gender mind-body match to be absurd on its face. Does no one remember what it was like to be a pre-pubescent kid? We trust their testimony absolutely?
And now the police are taking our kids from us:
https://www.city-journal.org/transgender-identifying-adolescents-threats-to-parental-rights
Planet of Cops indeed.
this is the most recent study I know of on detransition, admittedly there is not a lot of them out there: https://epath.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Boof-of-abstracts-EPATH2019.pdf#page=139.
I don't have opinions on lupron really, I'm not a medical professional. I'm sure there are downsides to almost any medical intervention, I think there's downsides to me taking hormones for the past fifteen years but I truly could not care less. There's downsides to drinking alcohol but I had a margarita last night. I'm fairly certain Jazz Jennings would tell you the same about her choices.
The thing about "fully developed brain" is who gets to decide when someone is capable of making that decision? Isn't that what mental and medical professionals are trained to do, along with a child's parents? Are they not doing exactly what their job is, trying to establish standards that help the most people achieve the most happiness? Are you sure you just don't like the conclusions they've reached? What makes you think that something else, something nefarious is happening?
This makes me think that something nefarious is happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/detrans/
The thing is, the research on brain development is pretty robust at this point and it's accepted that brain development, particularly the parts responsible for long-term planning and risk assessment, is not complete until around 24-25. It's pretty "settled" as much as any science can ever really be settled. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708
I don't necessarily think that there's some massive nefarious conspiracy going on; I think we've reached a point where social acceptance of trans people has improved to such a degree that trans issues are mainstream and that that's coincided with a lot of well-meaning people trying to make up for past failures to accept the gay community by doing anything they they think going to help trans people, sometimes regardless of (or totally ignorant of) the scientific evidence. The incentives of well-meaning activists and everyday people who want to see trans people people accepted also just happen to align with the incentives of pharmaceutical companies in a for-profit medical system in which they have a long history of malfeasance and substandard care in pursuit of profits. All of the above also happens to align with huge increases in anxiety, depression and social isolation among teenagers who spend a lot of time online and are desperately searching for something that can make them feel better. It's a whole confluence of factors.
This standard has to apply to all elements of the age of legal majority (like driving and voting) or what it's pretty blatantly transphobic.
I think you're greatly overstating the case for the "undeveloped teen brain" theory, which is largely based on myths, gut feelings, and a "telephone game" style repetition of poorly sourced claims.
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/npy71v/the_institution_of_science_is_not_trustworthy_a/
When you say "The thing about "fully developed brain" is who gets to decide when someone is capable of making that decision?" you completely lose me. There is a very obvious line between adults and children and I am not here for people to blur it.
"There is a very obvious line between adults and children"
Which is why we can drive at 15, have sex (with other teenagers) at 16, enlist, vote and have sex (with other adults) at 18, and drink alcohol at 21. None of which accounts for the brain science cited upthread suggesting that development continues through age 25, which is also when we can rent cars. I'm not arguing against the necessity of establishing bright lines for legal reasons, but let's not pretend there's some magic a priori age when things go from unacceptable to acceptable.
This looks like another study that uses, as a denominator, people who kept going to the gender clinic after transition. You can't measure detransition by looking only at patient records -- you'll miss anyone who detransitioned and stopped going, or sought alternative medical treatment because they were unhappy with their care.
Detransitioners are part of the gender debate online, but I doubt my parents have heard of them. The 60 Minutes piece was the first mainstream coverage I can remember. And they did interview at least one trans person (Erica Anderson).
My view is that we should do our best to minimize regret -- whether that's regret that you transitioned, or regret that you didn't transition earlier. The number of people who regret transitioning clearly isn't zero. I wish we could talk about them without both sides trying to advance their own agendas, so that we can get better at helping kids get the best outcome (whatever that is for them).
We can talk about them. Trans people always have. We've always known that detransitioners exist because they always have an always will. The difference now is that cisgender people want to talk about them constantly and use the moral panic as a culture war bludgeon, which we are doing right here in Freddie's comment section. Demanding that detransition rates be zero is demanding the end of medical care for trans people.
The way to minimize regret is to improve the mental and healthcare that questioning people receive. I said this above. It is not culture, it is not some nefarious conspiracy, it is not kids watching youtube. Fixing the material reality of overburdened clinics in the UK and unaffordable healthcare in the United States are the easiest targets for minimizing regret. That is the boring reality.
And why would your parents need to have heard of a population that even the most generous studies put at 5% of transitioners when less than 5% of the general population even ids as trans? I've been trans for fifteen years and my parents probably don't know about detransitioners, who cares? Furthermore, why do you care?
maybe think of this discussion in the context of Freddie's post. You're framing the interests of detransitioners and trans people as opposed (both sides agendas', etc). That's just not the case. Both communities need the exact same thing: better mental and physical care. We sink or swim together, our interests are not opposed.
This is the crispest, shortest distillation of the problem with identity politics I've ever seen. Thanks for helping me understand something that's been bothering me for a long time but that I couldn't quite articulate.
Eugene Debs said, "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Nowadays I suspect most leftists would be uncomfortable with that formulation of solidarity, since he is claiming oppressions that aren't his own. (Of course he did in fact go to prison, but since his experience as an educated white man in prison would have been different than an impoverished person of color, does it really count?)
You could argue Debs was using his privilege to bring attention to the marginalized. But I don't think anyone is actually allowed to argue that, even though we're always told to do it.
I don't think your writing is pessimistic or doom saying. The best way I've found to describe it is as infused with a sort of realistic melancholy I quite enjoy. A pretentious label I know, but I think it fits you well and is a rare style in todays discourse.
To some extent, all politics is identity politics. The whole point of classic socialist organizing was trying to activate people's identity as 'worker' or 'farmer' as someone in conflict with 'capital' and management. I don't think you can just brush that off.
People have a complex set of identities that gets even more complex in the modern age and it makes just about any political movement more difficult, one way or the other.
I think the toughest thing about political organizing from the left perspective is that you have to be ready to put in time and energy into doing said organization, but then, yeah, you have to settle in to be a small part of a much greater whole. It's tough, psychologically. It'd be a lot easier if it was a group of part-time activists full-time other things so being that small part of a greater whole isn't so psychologically difficult, but then I don't know if there's a lot of room for that in 2021. With an increased level of political consciousness(and strength of political identity), people like that tend to get left behind.
It's because whatever the supposed "left" is, exists as a subculture masquerading as a political movement. You can consider the proliferation of identities and orientations like different craft brews (an example you have used) or indie bands. The main purpose is to create a language and level of complexity capable of separating the initiated from the general public the same way going to a punk show and saying your favorite band is Blink-182 marks you instantly and obviously as a poser. This serves the very important role of preserving the clout and cultural capital of the people most involved.
The political portion is a very distant 2nd, when it factors in at all. Once you realize you're not even really doing politics it makes way more sense.
Hyper individualism is silly and patently illogical with lots of evidence (simple common sense included) pointing to an obvious conclusion - we are not important. Sorry, boohoo, you came in 8th place, better luck next time, but here is a ribbon, hope that makes you feel better, sorry for your lived experience. We have taught a generation to wallow in self-indulgent claptrap.
I know I’m being a troll but I think our fearless leader Freddie comes from a similar place in his April 23 post - “you feel exhausted because life is pain”
From DeGraffenreid v General Motors, 708 F2d 475 (9th Cir 1983):
"The legislative history surrounding Title VII does not indicate that the goal of the statute was to create a new classification of 'black women' who would have greater standing than, for example, a black male. The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities, governed only by the mathematical principles of permutation and combination, clearly raises the prospect of opening the hackneyed Pandora's box."
That's an early statement of the entire problem, isn't it?
On the other hand (and I have many, many hands) there are forms of discrimination that affect, e.g., black women differently from black men or white women. There's truth in that. But then when the argument is extended over the ensuing 40 years, we each wind up spinning in our own little solipsistic universes. I am very sympathetic to Freddie's call for unity in the struggle for justice, but I also see the fear of the groups that might get left out. I hate reality, it's so complicated.
This is why Adam Curtis's films strike such a cord. It's exactly the thesis of all his films: the left has lost the will to sacrifice individually for the greater good.
I think the left increasingly feels like pushing its own narratives and constructing its own heroic figures is important enough that it's okay to be a little loose with the details. This Marsha P. Johnson episode is a skirmish in a larger war - the 1619 project is a slightly bigger battle.
Ultimately this is not much different from conservatives fighting to keep the Columbus and Thomas Jefferson stories pure. The conservatives never cared about the details, if you're defending tradition it doesn't matter if George Washington really chopped down the apple tree - the veracity is almost besides the point. I think there are parallels with the new left - if you're a true ally, the veracity of the Marsha P. Johnson story becomes besides the point. Why would you try to disrupt a useful narrative? This cynicism feels new to me. But it's not totally indefensible as a strategy.
The socialist left also has its own myths and heroic figures, so I don't think you can chalk this entirely to identity politics or individualism - people wear Che shirts, not 'all of the Cubans' shirts.