For Reference

Quotes by tonidorsay, placed here for reference and use by others. (via tonidorsay) See All Of the Posts at once: Archive

[tonidorsay]

The What Is Series

Oh, look!  a Complete collection of posts that describe these core concepts that folks have such a hard time with. Like social constructs.  Like violence against trans people.  two things which seem to have filled my feed.

Concepts currently explained:

Transphobia

Privilege

Stigma

Violence against trans people

Identity

Identity politics

Gender Identity

Genderism/Genderist

Socialization

The problems with Gender abolition

Sexual Identity

Key facts about trans people

What feels like a woman means

microaggressions

Gender Roles

Gender Roles in relation to TERF ideology

Agency

Social constructs

Cultural Appropriation

Wanna know why I laugh at them, go read a few…

[tonidorsay]

Odd how all of these exist, and yet no one who hates trans folk seems to be able to see how they are all related and interconnected.

Probably that hate on trans folk thing in action, one would think.

[tonidorsay]

You know, it is rather funny how folks never think about how these concepts of Privilege, Stigma, Identity, Socialization, Microaggressions, Agency, social constructs, and cultural appropriation apply in other systems of oppression, like patriarchy, and racism, and ableism, and so forth. The underlying mechanics and such are still the same, and yet folks get so bogged down in the minutia they miss the larger picture.

[mediamattersforamerica]

This is still—and may always be—the ultimate example of right-wing hypocrisy.

[jane0303-deactivated20161020]

Not to mention fucking misogynistic bullshit, oh my god. Slapped around???

[tonidorsay]

Apparently I am a living threat, based entirely on year old posts that the disconnected from reality terfs are trying hard to deconstruct ( and failing in very predictable ways because they are, in the end, prejudiced and it affects their ability to think clearly )

[transgender-harms-women]

You’re a disgusting, sick, perverted man, and an actual murderer! (Tony has admitted to “having a body count” while serving in the US military) and you have actually threatened to shoot women on this site. Rot in hell freak

[tonidorsay]

Damn.

You lie exactly 10 times in the above statement.

Proving my point.

Which you are utterly unaware of.

Also proving my point.

[tonidorsayquotes]

Yeah, this really happened....

[tonidorsay]

Calling trans women male/men is never radical. It is common, pathetic, violent, and cruel. Here is why.

Calling nonbinary and Agender folks male/female or men/women without their approval is never radical. It is common, violent, cruel, and pathetic.

Calling trans men female/women is never radical. It is common, pathetic, violent, and cruel.

Here is why:

In 2002, the World Health Organization complied a landmark study of worldwide violence. This was the The World report on violence and health.

Representing a consensus of experts and scientists, peer reviewed multiple times over, and acting as the new foundation of broader support and understanding of the forces involved in tracking harmful, violent behavior, the report made it clear that there is a far more universal form of violence which is just as deadly as the aforementioned brutality.

At this point, the WHO, a part of the medical and legal aspect of the United Nations, representing the vast majority of the nations, and principle informing body to the other well known aspect of the UN relating to Human and Civil Rights, is not broadly or widely disagreed with by professionals, although often lay people, uninformed or misinformed by such trite and false aphorism such as the “sticks and stones” childhood rhyme, remain unaware of the violence they are engaged in.

That childhood rhyme, as well, is a statement of defiance, an utterance of the bullied to the bully, the oppressed to the oppressor, the victim to the abuser, a statement that they will no longer be hurt by those words because they can no longer be hurt by them — the scars are grown thick and calloused.

Two kinds of violence in particular are discussed at length, especially as they affect the lives of people in minority populations. These are psychological and deprivation/neglect.

Psychological violence includes and consists of the exclusion – or ostracism – of persons, and the application of stigma and societal efforts to deny them human dignity. So violence is also a core aspect and a major part of denying people their human and civil rights. This includes the violence of microaggressions (Sue, Derald Wing; Capodilupo, Christina M.; Torino, Gina C.; Bucceri, Jennifer M.; Holder, Aisha M. B.; Nadal, Kevin L.; Esquilin, Marta. Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice. American Psychologist, v62 n4 p271-286 May-Jun 2007), developed out of the work of Dr. Chester Pierce, and further added to later by Mary Rowe. Microaggressions are a core concept in Critical Race Theory, and were brought into the mainstream of Feminist efforts and are often noted by Radical Feminist scholars such as Dr. Watkins, better known as bell hooks, in their critical race theory lensed approaches to feminism, which is directly oppositional to the sort of Radical Feminism, seen a colonialist, imperialist, white supremacist, and classist, and even admittedly so, given the background and privileges of the author and her advisor, who both drew heavily on their Catholic background and understanding in their work.

Deprivation/neglect consists of various forms of interpersonal, institutional, and consistent patterned violence that does not fundamentally include and consider the existence of trans people. This is called Ciscentrism, which is the normative pattern and the primary Axis of Oppression that trans people face, just like White Supremacy (racism), Patriarchy, Ableism, and so forth dominate other axes of oppression and are related form that work in tandem to oppress groups of people at a societal level. The effects of Deprivation and neglect all stem from the denial of basic human dignity, in this case, the most fundamental of which is recognizing that trans women are women, trans men are men, and as women and men, they are also female and male, since in English (and most other languages) those concepts are linked inextricably and creating separation is actively engaging in hostile action towards trans people. Trans people, as a rule, suffer multiple times higher than statistically normative rates of issues, and the only group that matches them, within the margin of error, are the adult survivors of child abuse and neglect.

What are some of the effects of this lifelong deprivation and neglect?

Poor physical health. Several studies have shown a relationship between various forms of household dysfunction (including childhood abuse) and poor health (Flaherty et al., 2006; Felitti, 2002). Adults who experienced abuse or neglect during childhood are more likely to suffer from physical ailments such as allergies, arthritis, asthma, bronchitis, high blood pressure, and ulcers (Springer, Sheridan, Kuo, & Carnes, 2007).

Poor mental and emotional health. In one long-term study, as many as 80 percent of young adults who had been abused met the diagnostic criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder at age 21. These young adults exhibited many problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicide attempts (Silverman, Reinherz, & Giaconia, 1996). Other psychological and emotional conditions associated with abuse and neglect include panic disorder, dissociative disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, anger, posttraumatic stress disorder, and reactive attachment disorder (Teicher, 2000; De Bellis & Thomas, 2003; Springer, Sheridan, Kuo, & Carnes, 2007).

Social difficulties. Children who experience rejection or neglect are more likely to develop antisocial traits as they grow up. Parental neglect is also associated with borderline personality disorders and violent behavior (Schore, 2003).

Juvenile delinquency and adult criminality. According to a National Institute of Justice study, abused and neglected children were 11 times more likely to be arrested for criminal behavior as a juvenile, 2.7 times more likely to be arrested for violent and criminal behavior as an adult, and 3.1 times more likely to be arrested for one of many forms of violent crime (juvenile or adult) (English, Widom, & Brandford, 2004). THis one is particularly disturbing given that of late several TERFs on tumblr have taken to passing around a study and using it as proof that trans women are “male socialized”, which is an ostracizing argument, violent in and of itself, but in doing so, they are arguing that the victims of their historic, 40 year old pattern of abuse, noted by the publication of Dr, Raymond’s book which popularized their arguments, is a directly contributing cause of that violence through the ongoing and persistent abuse and neglect of trans people as children, which a significant number of them oppose the treatment of. That is victim blaming, and is ultimately contributing to the bullying an rape crises that are going on in the US at present.

Alcohol and other drug abuse. Research consistently reflects an increased likelihood that abused and neglected children will smoke cigarettes, abuse alcohol, or take illicit drugs during their lifetime (Dube et al., 2001). According to a report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as many as two-thirds of people in drug treatment programs reported being abused as children (Swan, 1998).

These are further divided into Interpersonal and Community forms of violence, which then means that violence can be noted in 20 distinct forms by which it can happen.

They developed, out of that, a definition of violence that is as follows:

“the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”

The Bolded portions are what this post is going to focus on here.

The typology established distinguishes four modes in which violence may be inflicted:

physical;

sexual

psychological attack

deprivation.

It further divides the general definition of violence into sub-types according to the victim-perpetrator relationship.

Self-directed violence refers to violence in which the perpetrator and the victim are the same individual and is subdivided into self-abuse and suicide. This demonstrates that suicide and self-abuse are directly caused by external forces which drive an individual to this sort of violence.

Interpersonal violence refers to violence between individuals, and is subdivided into family and intimate partner violence and community violence.

The former category includes child maltreatment; intimate partner violence; and elder abuse, while the latter is broken down into acquaintance and stranger violence and includes youth violence; assault by strangers; violence related to property crimes; and violence in workplaces and other institutions.

Assault is predominantly physical in terms of the way most people think of it, but it is also, as the image above demonstrates, non-physical, as is common especially among bullies and those who engage in domestic violence, which sets the stage and creates the opportunity for more physical violence by excusing that physical violence and establishing a pattern of blamelessness for the perpetrator and blame and fault for the victim.

Collective violence refers to violence committed by larger groups of individuals and can be subdivided into social, political and economic violence.

When speaking about the ideology itself of a certain kind of radical feminism, this is kind of violence that the ideology, notably structured by the book written by Janice Raymond under the watchful tutelage of Mary Daly that popularized and more widely disseminated the popular opinions and stereotypes of trans people (conflating them with performance artists) that to this day are used by anyone who opposes the human dignity, and therefore the human and civil rights of trans persons, as tools of violent oppression and direct violence, relying on established institutional violence in a system that is centered around and focused on the lives of Cis people, in order to further these ends.

See where it says power?

The systems that operate in this world are created without consideration, thought, inclusion, attention, or concern to the needs and lives of trans people.

When you see Someone attacking trans people, they are usually using that institutional power.

When someone says trans women are men or male, that trans men are female or women, that non binary people don’t exist or that the pronoun choices of someone are stupid, all of that…

All of that is the use of institutional power.

Those things are done with intent when folks are attacking trans people.

So we have the intentional use of power.

This is actual, as well, and it is against both an individual and a group.

And the effect of that is perpetuating the ongoing psychological and social harm.

It is violence to call a trans woman male or a man, to use the wrong pronouns,not make arguments based on the idea that they are not women, and so forth.

It is violence.

There is no but, no well, maybe, no if. This isn’t an abstract talking point or some hypothetical mental exercise.

It is violence.

This isn’t a thing one can disagree about honestly, for that matter.

Do not ask a trans woman to be nice to someone being violent towards them.

Doing that tells everyone you value people less than your beliefs.

One of the more pervasive forms of this harm is exclusion — more formally described as Ostracism. Kipling D. Williams is one of the foremost researchers in this area of study, which has been ongoing for many years. Using thoroughly vetted methods, he has noted some startling factors that arise directly out of ostracism itself — with or without verbal derogation or physical assault (that means insults and related microaggressions).

Note that: without any sort of physical violence or even the use of slurs, there is violence done by the act of ostracism.

When one is ostracized, physically, the body receives such stimuli in the same way it receives a physical blow. That is, in controlled or uncontrolled situations, the act of ostracism, but itself, is felt by the body int he same way that a physical attack is felt.

The body reacts to them the same, with the physical blow simply involving more effort on the part of the body to heal, while with the nonphysical attack, the healing takes much, much longer.

“Being excluded is painful because it threatens fundamental human needs, such as belonging and self-esteem,” Williams said. “Again and again research has found that strong, harmful reactions are possible even when ostracized by a stranger or for a short amount of time.”

In his work, Dr. Williams has identified three stages of dealing with ostracism. The first stage is simply being ostracised. For trans people, the signals of ostracism come in many forms. Most of them have to do with aversion or anxiety about trans people or transness in general — that is to say, transphobia.

The messages that trans people are told are often about there being something wrong with them are part of Stigma. They also receive messages about how what they are doing is wrong, or about how they are behaving is wrong, and when those messages are combined with the ones they have received all their lives and internalized – taken into themselves – these message serve to reinforce and often mirror the idea that something is wrong with them.

When trans people reach out initially, those first tentative steps they take only with people they trust in ways that they find almost impossible to do with other people, they ask some variant of the question “what is wrong with me” or they state, bluntly, “there is something wrong and I need to fix it” and they are referring to themselves.

This is the power of stigma – an unseen mark that connotes the lack of value and unworthiness of a person.

Social stigma is the extreme disapproval of or discontent with a person or group because of being different in some way, that are perceived, and separate them, from other members of a society. Stigma is then applied to a person, by the greater society, who differs from their cultural norms.

Stigmatized people see others in three distinct ways:

the stigmatized are those who bear the stigma;

the normals are those who do not bear the stigma; and

the wise are those among the normals who are accepted by the stigmatized as “wise” to their condition

The wise come in two forms:

Active wise, who speak out to effect change in the stigma; and

Passive wise, who remain socially silent.

Stigmatization involves dehumanization, demonization, threat, policing, aversion, shaming, and sometimes the depersonalization of others into stereotypes. Stigmatizing others can work as self-esteem enhancement, control enhancement, and anxiety buffering, through comparing oneself to less fortunate others, and so increase one’s own subjective sense of well-being and one’s self-esteem.

Policing other women can only ever serve the oppression of women. Policing is an act of oppression, an effort in service to ideology over humanity, a moment of support for the patriarchy.

Consider that for a moment.  People actually benefit from the act of stigmatizing others, emotionally.  It isn’t rational – but people, by and large, are not rational beings.

This is part of why it is noted that Trans women, specifically, are eroticized, being exotic in their perceived natures, and so objectified, as women, but are also treated as the objects of ire more broadly. They are objects of desire as Women, and objects of Ire as Trans people, a particular combination that exists only for trans people, and does apply to a lesser extent to Trans men and non-binary/GNC trans people as well.

Stigma can enter into a person when they live with it for a great deal of time.  It becomes a part of the way they think about themselves, about things related to themselves, and become s a part of their goals.

Passing is an example of internalized stigma – it serves within the community to act as a manner by which the stigma experienced by trans people can be avoided through “fitting in” – that is, meeting the expectations and following the rules of the broader culture and oppressive structures.

Being an Ally is often expected to involve being an Active Wise, and when an Active Wise fails to fully understand the nature of the stigmas, or errs in including stigma in their own actions, they are often the targets of ire, which serves to unintentionally convert them into passive wise, when such anger should be seen as a loss of trust and a call and appeal to do better and improve.

The second stage of dealing with ostracism is Coping.

Coping usually means the person being ostracized tries harder be included. The way they do that may vary. For example, some of those who are ostracized may be more likely to engage in behaviors that increase their future inclusion by mimicking, complying, obeying orders, cooperating or expressing attraction. Others may seek to connect with persons who are similarly ostracized, creating an Affinity Group (or in-group), and possibly even advocate for changes to the social norms. In yet other cases — and in particular if there is something that gives them a sense that they are being ostracized by a larger group, or they gain the sense that it isn’t possible to gain inclusion, or they come to feel or be told that they have little control over their lives (such as by being told that their knowledge of themselves is invalid or untrue, as frequently happens with Trans people when they are told they are not women), they may turn to provocative behavior and even aggression, such as when this happens between two groups that are oppressed under two different axes of oppression — especially when there are aspects of situational membership shared.

“They will go to great lengths to enhance their sense of belonging and self-esteem,” is how Williams describes it. However, ”At some point, they stop worrying about being liked, and they just want to be noticed.”

This can lead — especially among competing out-groups — to internal warfare and the creation of ideologies and statements of outright hostility. This is the collective and interpersonal violence noted previously.

The example most readily found of this is the way that TERF’s engage with Trans people. At this point, after 40 years of open hostility between the two out-groups, they are constantly engaged in a series of escalating aggression and provocative behavior. This is most notable in the way that Terfs call trans women men and then say Kill all men, and the way that trans women say die cis scum. While both are acts of violence done by each side against the other, it should be noted that the trans response to the consistent, 40 year pattern of outright hostility that was sparked and established by the publication of Dr. Raymond’s hate speech laden book, “The Transsexual Empire, the Making of the She-Male”, which is also the point at which the slur she-male entered the public lexicon, as documented by its etymology in the popular usage, thus meaning that Radical feminists also contributed to the fetishization that Dr. Raymond was, herself, claiming to be in opposition to, by providing a readily recognizable term for the Porn industry that she still opposes to this day.

All of which comes to a head in the incredibly hostile statement “kill yourself” which is a direct act of violence with an often deadly outcome.

When ostracization continues for a long time — decades, in this case — the third stage, called Resignation, is reached. At this point, many simply give up.

“This is when people who have been ostracized are less helpful and more aggressive to others in general,” says KD WIlliams. “It also increases anger and sadness, and long-term ostracism can result in alienation, depression, helplessness and feelings of unworthiness.”

Trans people, as a general rule, are in the third stage for the most part. This is particularly true for those who transition as adults, but still applies in many situations to those who transition as children. The long term effects of ostracism are incredibly damaging to people, as a whole, and all major pediatric organizations look at it as a form of child abuse and neglect — for good reason.

The issues that face the adult survivors of child abuse and neglect are massive and potent ongoing social issues that are merely exacerbated by the constant interpersonal and community attacks that trans people experience from TERFs.

As I’ve noted previously in discussing how to identify transphobia and the argument of ostracism that is the male socialization argument, these attacks are harsh, critical, dehumanizing, overt acts of violence that are based in the presence within a Dominant Class and are founded on the principles of Ciscentrism, which is opposed by Transcentrism. I discuss some of the specifics about how this oppression is engaged in various posts such as here, here, and here.

Williams says “Endure ostracism too long and they’re depleted. You don’t have it in you to cope, so you give up. You become depressed, helpless, and despairing.” Even memories of long-ago rejection can bring up those feelings.

His work, widely cited and broadly available, lays out the foundation for the manner in which trans people are actively and intentionally harmed through acts of violence that include microaggressions, psychologically damaging verbal attacks, and active efforts at exclusion and using existing stigma and shame against trans people in both externalized and internalized varieties, preying on low self esteem and insecurities of trans people (in particular, those going through the crisis point of transition, which is an incredibly fragile time and is, itself, an act of overt and fundamental hostility to another person during a time of incredibly personal and psychological vulnerability), and acting as if in concert with larger forces (such as those on the religious right and those within patriarchy) to create a powerful and potent mix of violence that has the appearance of being socially sanctioned in an environment where such behavior is not only tolerated, but often encouraged (social media).

This is the violence against trans people that is often talked about — it need not be a clue by four to the skull to have the same effect, and indeed, when combined with the life history of such experiences, it makes it an outright act of cruelty, inhumane in its force, and absolutely an act of violence.

In the end, it does not matter if biology claims trans women are males.

Biology is not concerned with the violence done to people.

Biology is not a shield to do violence to people, and indeed, the admittedly flawed models of colloquial biology often cited against trans women have also been used to justify and make excuses for violence against minority populations in oppressive systems.

Violence is still violence. It is still immoral, still unethical, and defending it is immoral and unethical.

Psychology, sociology, anthropology, physiology, medicine — these sciences have all proven that calling a trans woman a man is violence.

Violence is not limited to broken bones and bruised flesh and physical damage visible to the seeing.

It is also words. Ask those fleeing persecution, read history, talk to survivors of child abuse and domestic violence and prison violence.

Words are just as physically damaging - and according to many measures more so, since the brain treats those words no differently than it treats the body blows. The science is there to demonstrate this, and it is well known.

Calling trans women men is violence. It has physical, measurable consequences, and it endures and we know that this applies even when it is strangers.

The science establishes it.

This is fact. Not opinion.

Calling a trans woman a man is an act of violence, an assault, and those who do so are being violent, are being immoral, are being unethical, are cruel and callous and pathetic.

Silence in the face of violence is complicity, especially when that violence is social. Defense of calling a trans woman a man is defending violence.

Liking it, re blogging it without calling it out, these are forms of complicity.

Name it what it is. Don’t dress it up, don’t reduce it, it is violence. It is unethical. It is immoral.

Shame those who do it, teach them it is wrong.

Because not doing so means you are complicit, means you are supporting, means you are not trying to stop violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even straight people.

It means you are not trying to stop violence against people of color, against immigrants, against the disabled, against the poor.

It means you are standing by watching as someone does violence to another person.

And that is immoral, unethical, and shameful.

No person should have to undergo surgery or accept sterilization as a condition of identity recognition. If a sex marker is required on an identity document, that marker could recognize the person’s lived gender, regardless of reproductive capacity. The WPATH Board of Directors urges governments and other authoritative bodies to move to eliminate requirements for identity recognition that require surgical procedures.

The expression of gender characteristics, including identities, that are not stereotypically associated with one’s assigned sex at birth is a common and culturally-diverse human phenomenon which should not be judged as inherently pathological or negative. The psychopathologlisation of gender characteristics and identities reinforces or can prompt stigma, making prejudice and discrimination more likely, rendering transgender and transsexual people more vulnerable to social and legal marginalisation and exclusion, and increasing risks to mental and physical well-being. WPATH urges governmental and medical professional organizations to review their policies and practices to eliminate stigma toward gender-variant people

Pathological

involving, caused by, or of the nature of a physical or mental disease.

caused by or involving disease; morbid.

caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition

dealing with diseases

1680s, “pertaining to disease,” formed in English from pathology. 

Synonyms: morbid, diseased, sick, ill, unhealthy, aberrant, medical, medical condition

[tonidorsayquotes]

You know,  despite all the evidence and establishment of this as a fact presented above, they still keep arguing that it isn’t violence on their part.

[tonidorsay]

The What Is Series

Oh, look!  a Complete collection of posts that describe these core concepts that folks have such a hard time with. Like social constructs.  Like violence against trans people.  two things which seem to have filled my feed.

Concepts currently explained:

Transphobia

Privilege

Stigma

Violence against trans people

Identity

Identity politics

Gender Identity

Genderism/Genderist

Socialization

The problems with Gender abolition

Sexual Identity

Key facts about trans people

What feels like a woman means

microaggressions

Gender Roles

Gender Roles in relation to TERF ideology

Agency

Social constructs

Cultural Appropriation

Wanna know why I laugh at them, go read a few…

[tonidorsay]

Odd how all of these exist, and yet no one who hates trans folk seems to be able to see how they are all related and interconnected.

Probably that hate on trans folk thing in action, one would think.

[tonidorsay]

On Socialization Arguments Recently, I watched someone unironically use the argument that trans women are not women because they were socialized as men, and that as such, they cannot ever be anything other than men. They also applied it to trans men, indirectly. Specifically, these were the uses of the concept: You cannot transition out of your socialization, just like you can’t transition into male privilege. and Your socialization dictates that what you say goes, men dominate, and push their way into female spaces. (Aversion, Animus) Now, most trans folk tend to fall for these arguments. They are, for the most part, still dealing with a lot of the internalized shame and stigma that is hurled at them, and this is a fairly common, very old argument that presupposes, at its core, that one cannot change because of their socialization. Indeed, in the second example, that’s even made explicit. Now here’s the problem: A woman said those things. , I say a woman because she claims to be a woman, but as I’ve seen no evidence of it, I’m merely giving her the basic dignity to which she is entitled by respecting that claim of hers — and I’ll note I’m doing so despite being called a man, white, and other things which are false. As a woman, she was socialized as a woman. She was socialized that if I am a man, she is supposed to be quiet and not argue with men. She was socialized to not make waves, to be more interested in finding a good man than living a life that is her own construction. She was socialized to see her job as being a woman and as being a mother, and she was socialized to look for the prince. Women are expected to be taken care of by men, and to do what men tell them to do, and to not contradict a man in a public space like the internet. Yet here she was not doing those things. Here was a woman who was actively defying the very socialization that she was saying that one cannot defy. In feminist discourse, what she’s arguing is that Structure (in this case, Patriarchy) is so powerful that it overrides the ability of any person to have Agency, while she, in turn, retains that Agency for herself and is able to actively use it to resist the power of Structure. She was arguing that Structure is more powerful than Agency, and that Agency is of no practical value to others. When I pointed this out to her earlier, the responses from her and another consisted primarily of not affording me the basic core precept of dignity, and, instead, acting in a manner that is directly oppressive and that seeks to decide, for me, regardless of any other reality outside their own narrow viewpoint, that I am what they say I am. They acted in a manner, then, which seeks to erase my own Agency, and to police my actions and behaviors in order to bring it into line with systems that they approve of. It is an act of oppression against human dignity to decide fro another person what they are in terms of their worth, their value, or their Agency. Nearly all major civil rights issues are directly related to the concept of ensuring and recognizing the value of an individual person’s Agency. When you see people who seek to exclude trans persons from discourse, and “terf’ or “radfem” pesons, in specific, using that argument, remember that they are, themselves, going against the very socialization that they are speaking about, and if they can go against, then there has to be some other reason for someone else not be able to do so, unless, of course, they are trying to police the lives of other people. When you see conservatives doing it, remind them that socialization means they wouldn’t be speaking out themselves, because we in america are socialized to hold up as heroes those who undergo the arduous task of self empowerment and become whole persons — we hold people who rise the fullness of their potential as architects of the future. It probably won’t work, but it gives you a entry point. In any case, here’s the simple truth: the way people are socialized does have an impact on how they live their lives and it does influence their decisions and their experiences. It doesn’t make those decisions for you, and it cannot stop you from being yourself if you are strong enough — if you have the personal Agency enough — to defy it. The act of Transition — an act that trans people have to undertake against tremendous odds and that typically has enormous personal, emotional, and spiritual costs — is an act of Agency; an effort that, in and of itself, is absolutely concomitant with the act of overcoming the very socialization that they speak of. In practice, I point out that transition is only about 10 to 20% physical. And that part takes time — a lot of time, really, but most folks with means concentrate on the first three years or so. The rest of it, and the part that is the hardest, is the social part, and a major reason that it is so damned hard is stuff like this socialization argument, and the real, measurable, tangible harm that comes from being told you are not a woman, you are not a man, you just have a mental illness and related aggressive, violent statements made for the express purpose of causing emotional and mental harm to another person. The person who said those things is a serial abuser. Abuse was their response to me when I pointed out the problem — which isn’t hard to figure out, really, given that it is about the least feminist statement one can make — and abuse is what they hurl at other trans people. I’m sharing this so that the next time you see someone use the socialization argument against anyone, you can point out to them the core flaw there: they are part of the same system that socializes themselves.

A. E. D'orsay: On Socialization Arguments  (via tonidorsayquotes)

[tonidorsayquotes]

The Real Meaning of Genderism and Genderist

genderism

Noun

The belief that gender is a binary, comprising male and female, and that the aspects of a person’s gender are inherently linked to their sex at birth.

Genderism is the cultural belief that gender is a binary, or that there are, or should be, only two genders — man and woman — and that the aspects of one’s gender are inherently linked to the sex in which they were assigned at birth.

It can reinforce negative attitudes, bias, and discrimination towards people who display expressions of gender variance or nonconformity and/or whose gender identity is incongruent with their birth sex.

Genderism is of particular relevance to individuals who fall within the transgender spectrum, and is the overarching ideology responsible for transphobia and gender bashing.

In addition, much like how transphobia is parallel to homophobia, genderism is said to be parallel to heterosexism.

Known uses of the word in professional contexts:

Shirley R. Steinberg (1 April 2009). Diversity and Multiculturalism: A Reader. Peter Lang. pp. 229–230. ISBN 978-1-4331-0345-2.

Genny Beemyn; Susan R. Rankin (1 November 2011). The Lives of Transgender People. Columbia University Press. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-0-231-51261-9.

Derald Wing Sue (26 July 2010). Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact. John Wiley & Sons. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-470-49139-3.

The Psychology Of Prejudice And Discrimination. ABC-CLIO. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-275-98234-8.

Norton, Jody (1997). ""Brain Says You’re a Girl, But I Think You’re a Sissy Boy": Cultural Origins of Transphobia". International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies. 2, Number 2 (2): 139–164.

Roger J.R. Levesque (5 September 2011). Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer. p. 2641. ISBN 978-1-4419-1694-5.

Frederick T.L. Leong; Wade E. Pickren; Mark M. Leach; Anthony J. Marsella (1 November 2011). Internationalizing the Psychology Curriculum in the United States. Springer. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-4614-0072-1.

Preves, Sharon Elaine (July 2000). "Negotiating the Constraints of Gender Binarism: Intersexuals’ Challenge to Gender Categorization". Current Sociology 48 (3): 27–50.

Jack Harrison, Jaime Grant, Jody L. Herman (2011–2012). "A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and Otherwise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey" (PDF). LGBTQ Policy Journal (Harvard Kennedy School) 2: 22.

Brent Bilodeau, Ph.D.,Genderism: Transgender Students, Binary Systems and Higher Education, http://www.amazon.com/Genderism-Transgender-Students-Systems-Education/dp/3639004930

It is also sometimes used to describe Discrimination towards gender variant persons who fall outside of the gender binary; is prejudice towards individuals whose professed gender identity does not fit the gender binary as strictly male or female.

It is a type of transphobia and sexism.

It affects third gender, genderqueer, and other non-binary identified people.

Cisgender and binary transgender people can both display prejudice against non-binary people, and there is discrimination of this sort in the transgender community much like there is transphobia in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.

When you see someone using “genderist” in reference to trans people, you are immediately notified that they are engaging in hate speech, as they are trying to appropriate the term that describes them for use against the trans community, which holds *precisely the opposite view*.

Right now, here on Tumblr, the “genderist" tag is being used by transphobic TERFs, Trans critical, and Gender Critical people to malign and insult and engage in violence against Trans people. Genderism, genderists are also being used as well.

Be aware of this, and do not be fooled.

Genderists are the people who argue that a trans woman is a man/male or a trans man is a woman/female.  And the evidence of this use is above, in professional, actual use in legal, political, scientific, and academic standards.

[tonidorsay]

What is: A Reasonable Conversation

[tonidorsayquotes]

One of the most common challenges affecting online discourse is that the participants are often emotionally, personally invested in the subjects they speak to when it comes to aspects of justice, and so are prone to unreasonable and defensive arguing that gets ugly really fast, and posturing which positions them as unchanging and immovable.

These things interfere with the ability to have a conversation, and for examples you can look to pretty much any of the exchanges with TERFs and related haters that I have frequently, or pretty much any of the long posts you see.

Presented here are five images and a few chunks of text that discuss the basics of what goes into a reasonable conversation that are important for everyone involved in a conversation to understand and follow.

First we need four basic images:

Figure 1

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Figure 4:

Ok, so we have some basic, well known fully supported concepts from which to start.

Let's begin:

You cannot have a discussion from the get go if you cannot agree to abide by basic principles of reasonable discussion.

Note that it starts with "are you willing to change your mind on the subject".  That doesn't just mean the bad guys, either, It means you, as well. BE it climate change or trans people or the value of capitalism, if you are not willing to change your mind on the topic, then you already start from a place of not being able to enter a discussion.

Some would argue I am not willing -- which isn't true.  Indeed, given that I started out from a place much more restrictive than most of those I engage with, and have changed as I have learned, I can say that I am always willing to change, except in what specific case: when the conversation shifts to me, personally.

Hard for anyone else to know what I think or feel without actually knowing me, and as 99.99% of the people online do not know me as a person, it makes it really hard fro them to have enough of a strong argument or insight enough to make any statements regarding me as a person.

But, even then, I could have my mind changed.  Nothing is impossible.

They certainly aren't going to get there if they are uninformed or misinformed, though.

The next part is that if one or more of your arguments is shown to be faulty, will you stop using it -- forever.

If you cannot start with those two things, then you shouldn't even be engaging. 

This is key, and a major part of why when people demand I educate them (such as saying "but you are supposed to teach me!") I generally will respond negatively.  IF you come at me negatively, then you are showing me that you do not want to learn, in reality, and therefore are simply trying to bait me.

And I have better things to do -- and often more interesting things to do.  If I am n the mood and have the time, I might choose to run down that rabbit hole, but odds are it is going to get shunted to a different sideblog when I do so.

Keep that in mind -- sideblogs are great for those ugly arguments with people who don't follow either of those two basic starting points. If you feel you must argue, then shift it to a sideblog. Something like toniarguingwithtransphobes to make it clear that these exchanges are not actual conversations, but people being dicks to each other.

There is a third one that the above list doesn't deal with:L know what you are talking about and possess at least some competence in it.

People often will repeat the line "a person has got to know their limitations".  That isn't a call to not push them or expand them, it is a call to understand what the limits of what you can do are, and not to go wandering off into t he night and start talking about something you don't have the knowledge of.  I'm not going to ever talk about football in the way that many do, or wade into arguments about someone's personal headcannon, because you know what?  I don't possess the competence to do so.

Arguing with someone who is incompetent is a waste of time.

The rest of the first one is important -- often arguments will devolve into derails of various sorts. A derail is a way of introducing another arguments without addressing or finishing the argument in question.

A strawman is a way of saying the argument is about something by making up what it is about.

Arguing that "what I meant was really" when it wasn't what you said is the same way.

Here's how to avoid that -- if you fuck up in what you said, and it wasn't what you meant, concede the point (you are right, I said it poorly and that wasn't what I meant.) and then introduce a new argument that *is* what you meant.

Logical fallacies are all ways of breaking the core basic premise of reasonable conversation. You can study some of the hundreds of them here:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/pdf/FallaciesPoster24x36.pdf

The website that comes from is very handy.

You can also use this resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Formal_fallacies

Neither are exhaustive, and most are deeply misunderstood by a lot of people (or taken in a way that benefits them).

Note that insulting someone is not part of that. If you call someone a buffoon, you are not breaking the rules. If you argue that they are wrong because they are a bufoon, then you are.  Note the difference there.

Arguments have a long, often admirable history of insults buried in them -- this is part of why discourtesy is so rampant. But insults should only ever be used in fun -- when you get serious with them, things get ugly.

You don't use the n word, or the t word or the f word or similar slurs, because a slur is very nasty and always speaks to character in the context of the argument.

Next we have a pyramid of how you approach an argument. IN this methodology, there are 7 core approaches to arguments. At the bottom are the most simple, most superficial forms of argument.

Note that only the top 3 are actually having a conversation. The rest is just being a dick for the sake of being a dick.

For example, I recently had someone jump on a post that is a statement of mine and say that it wasn't supported by any Sources or evidence. You see this often.

THe problem is that in making that claim, they didn't support their own statements with any evidence or sources, and they are *just* as required to do so under the rule of the third level.

THat is, both sides must always present the evidence if they are going to argue about evidence.  Both sides also have to enter into it with good faith.

Here's the way that whole process actually works:

Point 1 is stated by Person A

Person B concedes, or challenges point 1, Provides evidence or straight logic against it.

Person A responds, provides proof of their original point, compares the evidence of Person B with their own, refutes any points raised in it (or concedes any)

Person B concedes or challenges new evidence, Provides evidence or straight logic against it.

And so forth.

It doesn't work when you just say "well, you have no evidence!" -- to make that very same assertion, you have to provide the evidence yourself. That's how the process of an actual conversation works.

You also do not simply state "look up these sources".  You identify the source and then you provide the reasoning and basis of that source *in the conversation* itself.

The only time you just hurl references at a person is when you are not in a conversation (I wasn't earlier today, and usually I am not).

You also have to operate from good faith. For example, often when I argue with people, they will argue that I am not a woman.  That isn't the case, and that is an act of arguing from bad faith, in and of itself.

In truth, it remains unproven, and they cannot provide any evidence that I am not a woman (cannot prove a negative) so the entire effort involved is fruitless.

THe next element is a chart produced by the World Health Organization for the UN which deals in the whole of the different kinds of violence engaged in worldwide.

Note carefully the bottom of that chart, and the right side of it.

Acquaintance and stranger, psychological violence and deprivation/neglect violence.  That is four kinds of violence:

Acquaintance Psychological Violence

Acquaintance Deprivation/Neglect Violence

Stranger psychological violence

Stranger Deprivation/neglect Violence

These kinds of violence are the sort you will find and encounter on line in social media spaces like Tumblr.

You cannot have a conversation with someone who is engaging in violence with you. Because violence is not reasonable.

It doesn't' matter if they don't think trans women are women.  IF they are going to make that argument, reasonably, then they have to acknowledge that the consensus of experts is that they are women, and they have to proceed from that basis in a reasonable fashion.

If they don't, then it isn't a conversation. It is an act of bad faith, and violence, and refers back to Figure 1, where they have already lost.

When people say that I should be nicer to my haters, what they are asking me to do is be reasonable with unreasonable people. They are asking me to allow other people to be violent towards me.

Which is an unreasonable request and so is, from the start, an act of bad faith.

The same applies in pretty much any of the "Not all" responses.  

The last figure is where insults and other acts of violence come into play (because a lot of the insults out there are violent). IT is not reasonable to engage in the various forms of abuse that are engaged in against other people.

Note that 75% of that last chart is non-physical acts of violence. There are a lot of things that one would want to do in response when one is feeling attacked (and so defensive). 

A major tool when engaging in a decent conversation, for all participants, is the skill set of active listening:

When you don't understand something someone else has said -- which is cause for a lot of the problems one encounters, especially in areas such as social justice -- you should engage in active listening in order to understand them.

IF all sides engage in this, it takes a lot longer, and the posts get REALLY long, but if you think that you are going to have a good conversation about touchy subjects in short, pithy, easy to read posts, well, you aren't being reasonable, and are also being a fool.

Active listening is a key element in any conversation, really, not just online ones.  Especially situation s where one gets emotional or defensive.

And there you have it -- the tricks and aspects of having a reasonable discussion.

[tonidorsayquotes]

[tonidorsay]

Who is Mrs. Antonia Elle D’orsay, Ph.D., M.S., M.A.?

Well, first, let’s ask some of the people who have worked against human and civil rights that have run into her:

She is an egotistical, arrogant, prudish, vindictive little fuck that needs to have her head opened up and examined preferably by untrained people.

She is one sick puppy.  She is scum that eats the livers of young children for breakfast, and she doesn’t even like liver.

She is the guy you were warned about, the dark shadow that you catch out of the corner of the eye as you walk by those dark alleyways.

She’s probably trans, but she lies about everything, so you can’t even be sure that’s true.  When given a choice between the lady or the tiger, she’s the tiger. With rabies. And one of those matador swords in her neck.

You know that feeling you get when you are in the middle of a really scary movie or book, and something happens to make you jump? Well, if you do know that feeling, she’s like that. If you don’t, well, you’ll find out and be screaming as your brains drip down the back of your throat.

She cheats. She’s crazy, ugly, guilty, shame filled, and miserable.  She’s what you think of when you close your eyes and envision the worst of what humanity has to offer.

She is among the worst of the transgender kooks, a loose cannon, someone to be worried about, a sociopathic nutjob, a perverted, mutilated freak whose only value in this world is that she serves as a punching bag for others.

She might not get physically violent, but she will find a way to destroy those who dislike her. She scares people. 

the Emperor Palpatine of the trans************* movement himself,

She is a bizarre troll, poor, some group called “peak radfem”, sad, a dick, a bad father, a moron even when she’s right, got her degrees from an online for profit university, and other assorted heinous crimes, as well, such as the Trans Nation Bumper sticker.

She is pretty smart for a black girl. She writes a blog full of verbose, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Dealing with her would drive anyone to drink.

Half the time after dealing with toni i have to fight the urge to smoke a bowl and bathe in bleach so…

When the only way to make sense of a d’orsay post is to mainline crazy and do a rectal shot of pure ethanol, but no seriously this shunt would drive a teetotaler to three fingers of everclear with a chase of bleach

She is a murderer and war criminal, pretentious and only a male would use so many words. She runs all the trans blogs on tumblr, especially 18 that are the worst of the worst.  She uses horrible terms like “housie” and the slur “TERF”, and she only ever attacks women and never does anything else except make real women miserable by stalking them and she doesn’t respect ownership of tags or the term femme.

Now let’s see what the truth is:

She is, then, everything that a lot of people who spend their time trying to say mean, nasty, ugly, hurtful things to other people dislike, because she isn’t affected by any of the old reliable and standard nasty, ugly, hurtful things and she’s the one who wrote all of this. Much of which was on the suggestion of those who don’t like her.

She is black and white and red all over.  She is from Arizona, a veteran, and is, much to her personal chagrin, approaching 50 way too damned fast for her own comfort. She is currently married, has five children and four grandchildren. She currently lives in Phoenix Arizona.

She is an internet gunslinger of sorts at times.  If someone is harassing you and you are a trans person, you can seek her help and if you genuinely need it, she will step in and take the worst that people can throw at her.

She works at a charitable organization for trans people that provides housing and classes to help make life better called This Is HOW, and is the creator and co-director of The Trans 100. She is recognized internationally, nationally, and locally as an Expert on Trans Lives.

Her fans are the people who hate her. The people who like her are generally called “borg”, “cultists”, “loons”, “creeps”, “weirdos” and various other terms all indicating “people that no one wants to be around”.

She writes a blog  that exists under the domain of dyssonance.com. Her sideblogs on Tumblr, despite the assertions above, consist of Transcentrism, Theofficialtrans, and Thisishowarizona, as well as tonidorsayquotes. There are two she uses specifically to repost the same factual post about the folks who hate her on tumblr. She changes them on occasion.

She is 5 foot 8, 145 pounds, employed but with no income, and helping trans people *is* her job.  She went and got a life, and it is a pretty good one, overall, that she enjoys far more than she finds troublesome.

Folks REALLY don’t like her for always being truthful.

They call this wife, mom, grandmother, veteran, sociologist and psychologist all those things and more — like “man”, “ugly”, and more.  

Doubt it?  Let’s demonstrate some of it:

They create spoof accounts like “broni dorsay” or this one, and steal my property to put up so that people think it is me:

And all of the above are the *nice* things they say. The really bad stuff they hide from people who don’t follow them.

Things like death threats:

The things they think about me have become mythical, and I have become a symbol to them, my mere existence a threat to them.

That is who Toni D’orsay is. The Empress of the Known Universe, the Empress of the Empire once written about…

[tonidorsayquotes]

Now, note that because of this post, there will be complaints about how I am “spamming the radfem tag” with my “ugly selfies”.

As if saying that isn’t misogyny, and as if the rest of the post doesn’t exist.

Haters gonna hate.

[tonidorsay]

Toni D'orsay

Who is Mrs. Antonia Elle D’orsay, Ph.D., M.S., M.A.?

Well, first, let’s ask some of the people who have worked against human and civil rights that have run into her:

She is an egotistical, arrogant, prudish, vindictive little fuck that needs to have her head opened up and examined preferably by untrained people.

She is one sick puppy.  She is scum that eats the livers of young children for breakfast, and she doesn’t even like liver.

She is the guy you were warned about, the dark shadow that you catch out of the corner of the eye as you walk by those dark alleyways.

She’s probably trans, but she lies about everything, so you can’t even be sure that’s true.  When given a choice between the lady or the tiger, she’s the tiger. With rabies. And one of those matador swords in her neck.

You know that feeling you get when you are in the middle of a really scary movie or book, and something happens to make you jump? Well, if you do know that feeling, she’s like that. If you don’t, well, you’ll find out and be screaming as your brains drip down the back of your throat.

She cheats. She’s crazy, ugly, guilty, shame filled, and miserable.  She’s what you think of when you close your eyes and envision the worst of what humanity has to offer.

She is among the worst of the transgender kooks, a loose cannon, someone to be worried about, a sociopathic nutjob, a perverted, mutilated freak whose only value in this world is that she serves as a punching bag for others.

She might not get physically violent, but she will find a way to destroy those who dislike her. She scares people. 

the Emperor Palpatine of the trans************* movement himself,

She is a bizarre troll, poor, some group called “peak radfem”, sad, a dick, a bad father, a moron even when she’s right, got her degrees from an online for profit university, and other assorted heinous crimes, as well, such as the Trans Nation Bumper sticker.

She is pretty smart for a black girl. She writes a blog full of verbose, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Dealing with her would drive anyone to drink.

Half the time after dealing with toni i have to fight the urge to smoke a bowl and bathe in bleach so…

When the only way to make sense of a d’orsay post is to mainline crazy and do a rectal shot of pure ethanol, but no seriously this shunt would drive a teetotaler to three fingers of everclear with a chase of bleach

She is a murderer and war criminal, pretentious and only a male would use so many words. She runs all the trans blogs on tumblr, especially 18 that are the worst of the worst.  She uses horrible terms like “housie” and the slur “TERF”, and she only ever attacks women and never does anything else except make real women miserable by stalking them and she doesn’t respect ownership of tags or the term femme.

Now let’s see what the truth is:

She is, then, everything that a lot of people who spend their time trying to say mean, nasty, ugly, hurtful things to other people dislike, because she isn’t affected by any of the old reliable and standard nasty, ugly, hurtful things and she’s the one who wrote all of this. Much of which was on the suggestion of those who don’t like her.

She is black and white and red all over.  She is from Arizona, a veteran, and is, much to her personal chagrin, approaching 50 way too damned fast for her own comfort. She is currently married, has five children and four grandchildren. She currently lives in Phoenix Arizona.

She is an internet gunslinger of sorts at times.  If someone is harassing you and you are a trans person, you can seek her help and if you genuinely need it, she will step in and take the worst that people can throw at her.

She works at a charitable organization for trans people that provides housing and classes to help make life better called This Is HOW, and is the creator and co-director of The Trans 100. She is recognized internationally, nationally, and locally as an Expert on Trans Lives.

Her fans are the people who hate her. The people who like her are generally called “borg”, “cultists”, “loons”, “creeps”, “weirdos” and various other terms all indicating “people that no one wants to be around”.

She writes a blog  that exists under the domain of dyssonance.com. Her sideblogs on Tumblr, despite the assertions above, consist of Transcentrism, Theofficialtrans, and Thisishowarizona, as well as tonidorsayquotes. There are two she uses specifically to repost the same factual post about the folks who hate her on tumblr. She changes them on occasion.

She is 5 foot 8, 145 pounds, employed but with no income, and helping trans people *is* her job.  She went and got a life, and it is a pretty good one, overall, that she enjoys far more than she finds troublesome.

Folks REALLY don’t like her for always being truthful.

They call this wife, mom, grandmother, veteran, sociologist and psychologist all those things and more — like “man”, “ugly”, and more.  

Doubt it?  Let’s demonstrate some of it:

They create spoof accounts like “broni dorsay” or this one, and steal my property to put up so that people think it is me:

And all of the above are the *nice* things they say. The really bad stuff they hide from people who don’t follow them.

Things like death threats:

The things they think about me have become mythical, and I have become a symbol to them, my mere existence a threat to them.

That is who Toni D’orsay is. The Empress of the Known Universe, the Empress of the Empire once written about…

[tonidorsayquotes]

Now, note that because of this post, there will be complaints about how I am "spamming the radfem tag" with my "ugly selfies".

As if saying that isn't misogyny, and as if the rest of the post doesn't exist.

Haters gonna hate.

[tonidorsay]

What Is: Gender Roles in relation to TERF ideology

Gender  is composed of several different aspects, but the aspect that most people are dealing with when arguing with transphobic people is Gender Roles.

Gender Roles are the socially constructed norms that apply in the broader world to individuals in relation to their perceived or presumed sex.

In radical feminist theory of the sort used to attack trans women, trans women are not transgressing these gender norms by being women instead of men; they are, instead, reinforcing them.

That is, the act of not being men is itself not challenging the basics of patriarchal power and is not an act of defying gender roles.

This is important, and is, in the end, the crux of why TERFs and Trans people always have these terrible fights.   So let’s say it again.

According to TERFs, trans women are not defying gender roles.

That is the single most important thing to understand about this division and battle. To transphobes, trans women are not defying gender roles, and are, instead, reinforcing the gender roles by acting the part of icons and standing up as the stereotypes for women.

The act of transition for trans women, itself, is not, in the trans hating radical feminist hate speech view, a shift in identity, as is recognized by every major medical and scientific group.

It is a performance in the same vein that drag culture is a performance. It is make believe and a pretense. To them, the idea that someone’s life is not biologically and socially predetermined by the circumstances of their birth is anathema — it is an impossibility.

This is, in part, due to the feminine mystique, the European imperialist idea that all women, across all cultures (even though the idea of woman changes in different cultures), experience a common way of being a woman, that being a woman is a universal experience, and that this is a fundamental essence of womanhood that trans women cannot possibly know, not having had that experience.

This despite the fact that they cannot possibly know that, and for the same reasons that they assert that trans women cannot know such.

Note the “not” parts there. It is a negative statement, and therefore cannot be “proven” because negatives are not logically possible to prove.

As an example, one cannot prove that god does not exist. No matter how hard you try, there is always going to be an exception to that. Even the “conundrum” often falsely used as an attack on omnipotence relies on a negative: ”if god is all powerful then can he make a rock he cannot lift?”

(as a note, that conundrum is limited by the human understanding of what it is to be omnipotent, which is flawed because God is so removed from humanity so as to be truly beyond our understanding at this time. Therefore, the question is applying a limited human understanding of the universe to something outside the human capacity for such, and so cannot be answered because it makes no sense.)

TERFs and other transphobes do not acknowledge that the universe as we understand it is socially constructed. Despite this being a fundamental tenet of science (and particularly the understanding of knowledge, a scientific endeavor), they choose instead to use “social construct” as a shorthand for “bad thing”.

Which is a commonly held idea, and one of the most anti-intellectual things one can think.

This is key, because it contradicts with the systemic power system that they reference: patriarchy. TERFs and similar transphobes focus on a “I have a hammer and everything is a nail” theorem that presupposes that all other forms of oppression ultimately stem from patriarchy.

In their view, racism comes from patriarchy. Ableism comes from patriarchy. Class division comes from patriarchy.

"All men are equal, but some men are more equal than others".

For the overwhelming majority of TERFs on tumblr, the degree of familiarity with feminism, and with radical feminism in specific, is extremely small. They are, as a whole, very young.  Most are between 16 and 24, and do not have a broad experience with the world.  Many have a history of negative encounters (abuse and related violence), predominantly white, typically from a middle class social background, are privileged along multiple axes, and perceive themselves as being without fault and so wrongly blamed.

They do not understand, then, most of what they are talking about.  Not because of their age, but because their age means they have a limited and narrow experience of the world, and have had little introduction to or essential education in the basic social science that the sources they turn to rely on.

For example, the argument of Patriarchy posits that gender roles are socially constructed.  By the force of patriarchy (itself a social construct), for the purpose of reinforcing that patriarchy. Power protecting itself.

According to this view, society and culture create gender roles, and these roles are prescribed as ideal or appropriate behavior for a person of that specific gender. Stronger versions argue that the differences in behavior between men and women are entirely social conventions, whereas weaker versions believe that behavior is defined by biological universal factors to some extent, but that social conventions also have some effect on gendered behavior.

It is, then, fundamentally a genderist conceptualization, and one they cling to because it exists at the heart of their creed. Which is why it makes me laugh every single time I see one of them use the word genderist to mean people whose very existence defies that understanding.

Other theories claim that there are more genders than just the two most commonly accepted (male and female).

Diamond and Butterworth showed how gender identity and sexual identity are fluid and do not always fall into two essentialist categories (man or woman and gay or straight) through their interviews with sexual minority women over the course of ten years. One woman had a relatively normal early childhood but around adolescence questioned her sexuality and remained stable in her gender and sexual identity until she started working with men and assumed a masculine “stance” and started to question her gender identity. When ‘she’ became a ‘he’ he began to find men attractive and gradually identified as homosexual as a man.

The perception of sexuality by others is an extension of others’ perceptions of one’s gender. Heterosexuality is assumed for those individuals who appear to act appropriately masculine or appropriately feminine. If one wants to be perceived as a lesbian, one must first be perceived as a woman; if one wants to be seen as a gay man, one has to be seen as a man.

Sound familiar? “You can’t be a lesbian because you were born a man”:

That is an act of using gendered concepts and applying the very social constructions that state there are only two and that gender identity and sexuality are not fluid — it is, in short, directly contravening the science itself, which also demonstrates something that, within the radical feminist framework they are using, that they are, themselves, using patriarchy in the effort to reinforce those gender roles on other people.

This is all learned well before other characteristics are developed. Children already know all of these social stereotypes by the AGE of three and have known such long before the introduction of the Internet and modern speed of communication.

And for Trans people, this certainty still exists and is also reflected in their own understanding.  Which defies the expectation given by transphobes and TERFs because if their ideas were true, then trans people would not fundamentally have that basis.

This is also why they cannot accept the understanding that sex, itself, is a socially constructed phenomena. To them, the idea that sex is a social construct contradicts their idea, which presumes that commonly accepted biological criteria that are supposed to distinguish males from females.

Criteria established, in their own worldview, by the Patriarchy for the purpose of oppressing women. And which they view as synonymous with sex category, which are applied to a person in everyday life through commonly recognized cues that are not necessarily fulfilling biological criteria of sex.

As a whole, their entire approach is anti-intellectual and wholly based in old and wrong science (some of it stretching back to the mid 1800’s).

They argue for the dissolution of stereotypes and norms that define separation between men and women while also using those same stereotypes and arguments against trans people, because trans people are already defying those expectations, but the way they defy them is seen as reinforcing them by TERFs.

This is why the only major difference between a TERF and a radical feminist — but a crucial one — is that TERFs see trans women as men/male and radical feminists see them as women/female.

The use of men/male and women’female in the above is intentional: in English, and within the context of these battles, the terms are synonymous.

Gender roles are applied to women, to Gender. When one uses female in place of woman and argues that gender roles are applies to sex, one is arguing with a synonym, in the scientific sense. It is a circular argument: a woman is an adult human female, so saying woman is saying female.

This is why it is so easy to spot their transphobia, even when they try very hard to hide it in heavily spun and dog whistled terms: They always think of trans women as men.

This is also why so many of them do not give any sort of hardship to trans men — in their view, they are women, and they are women who are defying the social expectations — they just go too far.  It is hard to fault people who go too far for them, given how extremist they are already.

So in the end, the core of this fight comes down to the three core notions that Radical feminists cling to:

The essentialist idea that one is either a man or a woman, and the essentialist idea that there is a shared, universal essence to being a woman. Transness is an Existential experience, and applying a Essetntialist concept to it is always going to create friction and conflict.

The essentialist idea that one being a man or a woman is always permanent; that manhood or womanhood are fixed states and unchanging.  This despite the science demonstrating that it is not true.

That the process of challenging the fixed gender roles does not constitute defiance of norms — that trans women are not challenging the expectations of women and men in society at large.

These things sit at the crux, and are why the battles get so vile and foul.

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What is: Gender Roles

A gender role is a theoretical construct in the social sciences and humanities that refers to a set of social and behavioral norms  that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex.

Socially accepted gender roles differ widely between different cultures.

Proponents of gender role theory assert that observed gender differences in behavior and personality characteristics are, at least in part, socially constructed, and therefore, the product of socialization experiences; this contrasts with other models of gender that assert that gender differences are “essential” to biological sex.

Gender differences exist in almost all societies. With differences in the norms adopted, this suggests that gender differences are, at least partly, influenced by culture.

Gender roles refer to the set of attitudes and behaviors socially expected from the members of a particular gender identity. Gender roles are socially constructed which are often politicized and manipulated, which then result in the oppression of people.

Gender Roles exist as parts of various scial stratifications and understandings in the west.  Kinship is the most important and weighted of these in social systems.

The gender role of the woman is to be pursued; to attract and to draw to them. The gender role of the man is to pursue. to be worthy of and value.

The gender role of women is to support and nurture, the gender role of men is to protect and provide.

Gender roles affect lineage — patrialineal lineages descend through the men, matrilineal descend through the women.  This affects surnames and is linked to inheritance.

Women are “given away” in exchange between two families — they give up their family and become a member of the Man’s. This is a part of the gender roles they are expected to fulfill.

Gender roles are not linked directly to clothing. Clothing is used to signify such, but is not a part of gender roles.

Gender roles affect permissibility in occupations — women are more favorably seen in roles which reflect the dominant social system int he west — support and care giving occupations are “More suited to their temperament”.

Deviation from gender roles is punished, much like any devation from any norm is punished by society. This punishment is extremely cruel during crisis points central to the establishment of personal identity, especially between the ages of 9 and 18 for most people, but also during other points of identity crisis (transition, loss of a spouse or child, mid-life crisis, mid-20’s crisis, and other points of intense emotional and core identity turmoil).

Gender roles, then, are socially powered expectations of the people around you that you are taught, yourself.  Gender roles are one of the earliest things people learn: children are capable of identifying gender roles (even in social systems with more than two) as early as age 3 (which is also the age when many trans people become aware of their own gender).

[tonidorsay]

The Trans Critical idea in a nutshell:

Being a woman is a zero sum game.

 a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant’s gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). 

Thus cutting a cake, where taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others, is a zero-sum game if all participants value each unit of cake equally (see marginal utility). 

So the core argument of TERFs and other Trans Critical/Gender critical sorts is that there is a finite amount of Woman, and that amount is threatened if something else is added to Woman (trans women) and so represents a threat to all women.

The problem is that it is not a zero sum game.

Incidentally, this is also the basis of all Respectability arguments.

Respectability arguments seek to appease the Patriarchy.

So…

Trans critical/Gender Critical are respectability arguments that seek to appease the Patriarchy, not oppose it.

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What is: "I feel like a woman"

Regarding why trans people say things like:

I have always felt like a woman

or

I have always felt like a man

or

I have always felt like I am not a woman or a man

or

I have always felt like a woman and a man

or similar expressions of such, what they are trying to express in colloquial and layman’s terms is the concepts of sex identity and gender identity.

Now that is Two (2) concepts, each distinct, heavily conflated, because in layman's and colloquial terms, they are readily intertwined and intermingled in actual life. 

Roughly translated, the whole thing means that a Trans person is aware that they are a woman, man, both, or neither, at the same core level as they are aware of themselves as a person, distinct from other people.

Some people, primarily those who are ignorant and misinformed of what these concepts are, or who apply their own prejudice towards trans people and thereby discount 60+ years of proven science, would prefer to argue that what this is suggesting is that there is a “brain sex” — and yet, that’s not what this is describing.

It is describing a sense of self-awareness — which, while decidedly part of the brain’s physiology, is really part of the existential notion that one exists, and therefore is not part of that argument, nor even related directly to biological systems.

This is important to note, because what it means is that when someone talks to or about a trans person about this and says things like "do you mean it is about clothing, or about sexual intercourse, or about physiological process or genitals" or similar stuff, they are being fundamentally dishonest and deceitful, and displaying their ignorance and incompetence because they do not understand what the trans person is saying to them, and therefore not listening, and so are talking about something other than the actual concept being discussed.

These questions are a form of gaslighting of trans people, and seeks to corrupt and twist the words of trans people for the purpose of furthering their oppression, not proving something "true" about trans people, since they have nothing to do with the idea being expressed, which is that the trans person exists.

Furthermore, if these people do not, themselves, have the ability to say what it means to them to feel like a woman, it is incredibly difficult for them to be honestly making a judgement about someone else's understanding of themselves.

This is like looking at a person and telling them they are actually a dog, and they know they are a dog, but not willing to admit it. Seems pretty nasty, doesn't it?

Trans people are not immune to this -- and indeed, often when pushed, trans people will resort to all manner of reactions and arguments and justifications for this because they often are no more knowledgeable about this than anyone else.

What that means, as well, is that this description has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, and therefore arguments about biology aren’t valid when contradicting it.

It would be akin to saying that the United States Army shouldn’t exist because of broccoli.

This all comes together in the core aspect here: like sexual orientation, this is part of what creates the sense of self in people, and it therefore is part of how they know that they exist as an individual human being, and is a part of that.

So the same question of how you know can be answered in as many different ways as there are people, and it is the still same way that those asking the question know what their social sex identity is.

This effectively makes it the trans version of the question “how do you know you are gay?”, with the same accurate answer of “I just do, because I know I exist.”

The answer may not satisfy those seeking some sort of concrete answer, but it is inevitable that they themselves will discount any answer because for them the same question remains unanswered in a way they would accept from a trans person, usually due to cis privilege.

So asking the question, especially in a venue such as Tumblr, is a form of logical fallacy and a trap, meant to defame and ridicule and provide justification for hate speech and violence against trans people.

 This is especially  a common tactic among transphobes, who can be identified using expressions described here.

DO be sure to reference the links earlier in this post, as it is a part of the What is Series.

[tonidorsay]

What is: The problems with Gender Abolition

So a few people have been wondering why it is that I go after the idea of gender abolition.

There are many reasons, but the chief one is that it is used as a tool by people who do not actually care about it to attack, defame, and justify violence against trans people while seeming “decent” despite their hate speech.

Which will strike some folks as pretty sad, given that it is also many other really nasty things.

Nevertheless, Let’s look at these claims regarding gender abolition and why it is so wrong.

They are not trying to Abolish Gender

They aren’t. They admit it, as well, but they do not realize they are admitting it.

When confronted, what they mean when they say gender abolition is the abolition of Gender Roles (and sometimes Gender Behaviors and Gender Expressions). You have to wheedle this out of them, because they will describe these three distinct parts of gender as if they are all one thing.

They are not the same thing, nor are they one thing.  They are parts of gender, so what they really want to get rid of are parts of gender.

They do not want to get rid of the language issues. They do not want to get rid of the way we gender objects by declaring them male or female (the action of saying that something is “male” or “female” is an act of applying a gendered concept, and therefore using gender).

Now, the argument they will often use in defense of their statements is that they are arguing it from a feminist perspective. In this perspective, it explicitly excludes biological aspects — so referencing any sort of social construction relating to biology (such as saying that then only sex would be left) is in direct contravention to this idea, since the social constructions themselves are part of the social conventions and structures that are part of Gender.

I have already pointed out on several occasions that they do not understand what a social construct is, and that they do not understand what Gender is,so I won’t go into more depth on that at this time — unless I get a wild hair and decide to make another combo post.

But their not realizing that Gender is composed of multiple, distinct parts is part of the flaw int heir thinking, and is a holdover from a very ciscentric and limited way of thought that is influenced by their hostility towards trans people.

If you are going to Abolish Gender, you need to abolish all of it, otherwise, you are not going to achieve your goal, since all of these parts — language, “biology”, expressions, behaviors, etc —are all interdependent.

They treat it as an academic exercise without consequence

Inevitably, they use the phrasing and idea in order to gain credibility among their in-group, without consideration for what it really is.  When they do consider it, they apply it as a kind of mental exercise that is purely academic, without regards to the harm it would cause — their focus is on the outcome, and not the way they would achieve it.

The outcome they invariably arrive at is that the world would be a better place, so that the exercise really looks like this:

Say we will abolish gender.

?

The world is better!

If you don’t believe me, ask them how they plan to achieve that stuff in the middle.

For them, this is little more than an academic exercise, not something they honestly expect to ever achieve, so it becomes strictly a rhetorical tool by which they further the oppression and harm of trans people.

Occasionally one of them will say that they would hope that people would see the benefit and change for the better peacefully — which is mighty naive and incredibly juvenile of them to think, akin to the way they often criticize pageant contestants and the “world peace” answer.

How would you convince them?

Are you going to use the culture you live in which has only the most superficial connections to their cultural ways of seeing gender?

How are you going to deal with cultures where gender is defined by what you do, instead of your anatomy?

and so forth.

In the end, this brings us to the next problem:

The idea is based on Western concepts of Gender

The arguments around the value and benefit of getting rid of gender all surround a couple of different aspects.  The most overtly hostile to trans people one is the one they use to make it seem like they are being supportive: without gender, you wouldn’t have to transition!

It sounds best if you say it in a breathy, child like voice.

But the more serious aspects of it are that it is based on western concepts of gender and the way that gender in western society is structured around genitals and secondary sex characteristics.

This classification of people is not a universal one for gender.  THere are some that classify someone’s gender entirely on what they do (the interests and activities they enjoy), and some do it using a blended form of both the physical and the activity.

By which I mean that they choices you are allowed later in your life through the socialization of you as a person into that culture are going to be based on what you enjoy, on your gentials (as they are in the US) or on a combination of both.

Western gender roles proceed from the designation, whereas other systems designate sex according to the gender roles.  It is the reverse, much like how most Americans find the Japanese system of house numbering to be incredibly confusing.

And all of which ignores that gender is a suppositional concept — it is based on the implication of genitalia, and signified in multiple ways that are entirely based on the cultural norms of that society.

Which means…

To achieve their goal, they must destroy other cultures

Getting back to that question mark, they seem to think that somehow this one thing will overcome all the other social aspects of differing culturals and varying identities, and magically change the world for the better.  Yet if you say to them they are engaging in magical thinking (literally) then they get defensive and deny it, and so you have to take them at face value if you are acting in good faith and that means they are willing to engage in the western notion of manifest destiny and righteous propriety and actively colonize and override and in the end force entire other groups of people who have very different ideas of gender and propriety and destroy those cultures.

If family is the building block of a society, then gender is the building block of family.  That is how deep it lies within a given culture — at the root, as they note and claim, and what that means is that in attacking it, the ripples throughout that culture and society will, ultimately, destroy it. 

It will no longer be the culture and society that it was.  There are real world parallels for this activity, most notably in the treatment of the indigenous populations of many different nations.  I live just off a main street named Indian School Road, and the connotations to me as a Lakota, and to the people here who are Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and more and who were stripped out of their homes in order to teach them a new way of thinking has had incredibly consequences on their cultures.

This is why the idea is racist, colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist. It is especially anti-Black, anti-Asian and Pacific Islander, and Anti-Indigenous.

and that leads us to the next point, which, thankfully, is…

They cannot achieve their goal

The biggest issue is that gender is a social construct, and there has, in all of human history, never been an abolishment of a social construct. That is not to say that it isn’t possible, but it is meant to indicate that doing so is so unlikely and improbably as to be outside the range of thinking.

Social constructs can be diluted, changed, warped, altered, reduced in import, raised in import, and assorted other thing, but ending them, abolishing them, has never happened, nor is it likely to happen given the nature of human social systems and the depth within cultural systems at which gender systems exist.

So that is why gender abolition is a pile of manure being sold to the gullible and the uninformed.

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What is: Facts about Trans People

CISCENTRIC: the concept was established only in relation to the cis world. Something can be Ciscentric without being transphobic.

CISSEXIST: the concept is sexist in regards to trans people in relation to Cis people. Something can be transphobic and cissexist, or just cissexist.

CISNORMATIVE: a norm which applies only to the cis population, but is often pushed at trans people. Most cisnormative concepts are applied in a transphobic way, but are not transphobic themselves, merely Ciscentric.

TRANSCENTRIC: a concept which centers trans lives as normative.

TRANSPHOBIC: a concept which involves aversion, anxiety, and/or animus, singly or in any combination, to teams people or Transness. 

CISNESS (Cis): Cisness is the state of awareness or condition in society of someone who does conform in a majority of aspects to the way their society or culture sees them as behaving and living in relation to their culture’s social construction of physiological sex, usually due to an absence of variance between their physical sex and one or both of their social sex identity and/or internal sex identity. It exists at the same level as awareness of self, and it is, itself, an awareness, but because it is not at variance, is often unnoticed and unremarked.

TRANSNESS (Trans): Transness is the state of awareness or condition in society of someone who does not conform in a majority of aspects to the way their society or culture sees them as behaving and living in relation to their culture’s social construction of physiological sex, usually due to a variance between their physical sex and one or both of their social sex identity and/or internal sex identity. It exists at the same level as awareness of self, and it is, itself, an awareness.

WPATH: The World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The WPATH is an international, multidisciplinary, professional association whose mission is to promote evidence-based care, education, research, advocacy, public policy, and respect for transgender health. The vision of WPATH is to bring together diverse professionals dedicated to developing best practices and supportive policies worldwide that promote health, research, education, respect, dignity, and equality for transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people in all cultural settings.

The Standards of Care (SoC): The international Standards of treatment for Trans people. The minimums level of treatment considered ethical, moral, and standard.

Gender Dysphoria:  refers to discomfort or distress (disgust at their own genitalia, social isolation from their peers, anxiety, loneliness, and depression) that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth (and the associated gender role and/or primary and secondary sex characteristics).

GENDER: Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behavior, and expressions that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women. Gender is always social - that is, it only comes into play in relation to other people. Things, objects, parts, language all are involved in gendering things. When one says “that is male” one is gendering it.

GENDER ROLES: What we call Femininity and Masculinity. They deal in how we expect persons of a particular sex to behave or act within our culture. The three billion ways to be a man, and the three billion ways to be a woman, and all the stuff related to sexism lies here. Social sex roles are a set of social and behavioral norms that are structurally designated as appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship based on their social sex.

GENDER EXPRESSIONS: how people present themselves to the wider world, not always in line with their Social Sex role. It has to do with primarily “superficial” stuff — dress and body decoration — that affect things like attraction and courtship. Expressions are the tools by which we convey to others, who cannot see our physical anatomy, that we fit into this particular box for a given physical sex.

GENDER BEHAVIORS: all the little things that social sex influences that are outside the realm of the usual and the commonplace – the indirect effects, so to speak. Inheritance is part of this, kinship is part of this, lineage is part of this, even names are part of this. These behaviors are basic elements, often focused around interpersonal relationships and the interplay between Social Sex Roles and Social Sex Expressions. Male privilege is an excellent example of a Social Sex Behavior.

Selections from the WPATH Standards of Care:

Official Title:

Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People

On Gender nonconformity not being the same as gender dysphoria:

Gender Nonconformity Is Not the Same as Gender Dysphoria  Gender nonconformity refers to the extent to which a person’s gender identity, role, or expression differs from the cultural norms prescribed for people of a particular sex (Institute of Medicine, 2011). Gender dysphoria refers to discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth (and the associated gender role and/or primary and secondary sex characteristics) (Fisk, 1974; Knudson, De Cuypere, & Bockting, 2010b). Only some gender nonconforming people experience gender dysphoria at some point in their lives.

On Surgery & Hormones being required to be trans

Indeed, hormone therapy and surgery have been found to be medically necessary to alleviate gender dysphoria in many people (American Medical Association, 2008; Anton, 2009; The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, 2008).

While many individuals need both hormone therapy and surgery to alleviate their gender dysphoria, others need only one of these treatment options and some need neither (Bockting and Goldberg, 2006; Bockting, 2008; Lev, 2004).

Often with the help of psychotherapy, some individuals integrate their trans- or cross-gender feelings into the gender role they were assigned at birth and do not feel the need to feminize or masculinize their body. For others, changes in gender role and expression are sufficient to alleviate gender dysphoria. Some patients may need hormones, a possible change in gender role, but not surgery; others may need a change in gender role along with surgery, but not hormones.

On nonbinary individuals

Some individuals describe themselves not as gender nonconforming but as unambiguously cross-sexed (i.e., as a member of the other sex; Bockting, 2008).

Other individuals affirm their unique gender identity and no longer consider themselves either male or female (Bornstein, 1994; Kimberly, 1997; Stone, 1991; Warren, 1993). Instead, they may describe their gender identity in specific terms such as transgender, bigender, or genderqueer, affirming their unique experience that may transcend a male/female binary understanding of gender (Bockting, 2008; Ekins and King, 2006; Nestle, Wilchins, and Howell, 2002).

They may not experience their process of identity affirmation as a “transition,” because they never fully embraced the gender role they were assigned at birth or because they actualize their gender identity, role, and expression in a way that does not involve a change from one gender role to another.

For example, some youth identifying as genderqueer have always experienced their gender identity and role as such (genderqueer). 

On Dysphoria being required to be Trans 

Only some gender nonconforming people experience gender dysphoria at some point in their lives.

What helps one person alleviate gender dysphoria might be very different from what helps another person. This process may or may not involve a change in gender expression or body modifications.

Gender identities and expressions are diverse, and hormones and surgery are just two of many options available to assist people with achieving comfort with self and identity.

On Regrets after surgery

Although Harry Benjamin already acknowledged a spectrum of gender nonconformity (Benjamin, 1966), the initial clinical approach largely focused on identifying who was an appropriate candidate for sex reassignment to facilitate a physical change from male to female or female to male as completely as possible (e.g., Green & Fleming, 1990; Hastings,1974).

This approach was extensively evaluated and proved to be highly effective.

Satisfaction rates across studies ranged from 87% of MtF patients to 97% of FtM patients (Green and Fleming, 1990), and regrets were extremely rare (1-1.5% of MtF patients and less than 1% of FtM patients; Pfafflin,1993).

On Transgender Children

When it comes to the persistence of cross gender behaviors from childhood, newer studies, also including girls, showed a 12 - 27% persistence rate of gender dysphoria into adulthood (Drummond, Bradley, Peterson-Badali, & Zucker, 2008; Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis, 2008).

In contrast, the persistence of gender dysphoria into adulthood appears to be much higher for adolescents. In a follow-up study of 70 adolescents who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and given puberty suppressing hormones, all continued with the actual sex reassignment, beginning with feminizing/masculinizing hormone therapy (deVries, Steensma, Doreleijers, & Cohen-Kettenis, 2010).

Another difference between gender dysphoric children and adolescents is in the sex ratios for each age group. In clinically referred, gender dysphoric children under age 12, the male/female ratio ranges from 6:1 to 3:1 (Zucker, 2004). In clinically referred, gender dysphoric adolescents older than age 12, the male/female ratio is close to 1:1 (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003).

Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past without success (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), particularly in the long term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly,1965). Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.

On Diagnoses

Some people experience gender dysphoria at such a level that the distress meets criteria for a formal diagnosis that might be classified as a mental disorder. Such a diagnosis is not a license for stigmatization or for the deprivation of civil and human rights. Existing classification systems such as the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) (World Health Organization, 2007) define hundreds of mental disorders that vary in onset, duration, pathogenesis, functional disability, and treatability. All of these systems attempt to classify clusters of symptoms and conditions, not the individuals themselves. A disorder is a description of something with which a person might struggle, not a description of the person or the person’s identity.  Thus, transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals are not inherently disordered. Rather, the distress of gender dysphoria, when present, is the concern that might be diagnosable and for which various treatment options are available. The existence of a diagnosis for such dysphoria often facilitates access to health care and can guide further research into effective treatments.

Research is leading to new diagnostic nomenclatures, and terms are changing in both the DSM (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2010; Knudson, De Cuypere, & Bockting, 2010b; Meyer-Bahlburg, 2010; Zucker, 2010) and the ICD. For this reason, familiar terms are employed in the SOC and definitions are provided for terms that may be emerging. Health professionals should refer to the most current diagnostic criteria and appropriate codes to apply in their practice areas.

On additional studies relating to broader prevalence needed:

(i) Previously unrecognized gender dysphoria is occasionally diagnosed when patients are seen with anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, substance abuse, dissociative identity disorders, borderline personality disorder, sexual disorders, and disorders of sex development (Cole, O’Boyle, Emory, & Meyer III, 1997).

(ii) Some crossdressers, drag queens/ kings or female/male impersonators, and gay and lesbian individuals may be experiencing gender dysphoria (Bullough & Bullough, 1993).

(iii) The intensity of some people’s gender dysphoria fluctuates below and above a clinical threshold (Docter, 1988).

(iv) Gender nonconformity among FtM individuals tends to be relatively invisible in many cultures, particularly to Western health professionals and researchers who have conducted most of the studies on which the current estimates of prevalence and incidence are based (Winter, 2009).

On Options for Psychological and Medical Treatment of Gender Dysphoria

For individuals seeking care for gender dysphoria, a variety of therapeutic options can be considered. The number and type of interventions applied and the order in which these take place may differ from person to person (e.g., Bockting, Knudson, & Goldberg, 2006; Bolin, 1994; Rachlin, 1999; Rachlin, Green, & Lombardi, 2008; Rachlin, Hansbury, & Pardo, 2010). Treatments options include the following:

Changes in gender expression and role (which may involve living part time or full time in another gender role, consistent with one’s gender identity);

Hormone therapy to feminize or masculinize the body;

Surgery to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (e.g., breasts/chest, external and/or internal genitalia, facial features, body contouring);

Psychotherapy (individual, couple, family, or group) for purposes such as exploring gender identity, role, and expression; addressing the negative impact of gender dysphoria and stigma on mental health; alleviating internalized transphobia; enhancing social and peer support; improving body image; or promoting resilience.

On withholding treatment for adolescents

Refusing timely medical interventions for adolescents might prolong gender dysphoria and contribute to an appearance that could provoke abuse and stigmatization. As the level of gender-related abuse is strongly associated with the degree of psychiatric distress during adolescence (Nuttbrock et al., 2010), withholding puberty suppression and subsequent feminizing or masculinizing hormone therapy is not a neutral option for adolescents. 

On informed consent

Feminizing/masculinizing hormone therapy may lead to irreversible physical changes. Thus, hormone therapy should be provided only to those who are legally able to provide informed consent. This includes people who have been declared by a court to be emancipated minors, incarcerated people, and cognitively impaired people who are considered competent to participate in their medical decisions (see also Bockting et al., 2006). Providers should document in the medical record that comprehensive information has been provided and understood about all relevant aspects of the hormone therapy, including both possible benefits and risks and the impact on reproductive capacity.

On the broad needs for health

WPATH recognizes that health is dependent upon not only good clinical care but also social and political climates that provide and ensure social tolerance, equality, and the full rights of citizenship. Health is promoted through public policies and legal reforms that promote tolerance and equity for gender and sexual diversity and that eliminate prejudice, discrimination, and stigma. WPATH is committed to advocacy for these changes in public policies and legal reforms.

On Trans People In Other Cultures

In applying these standards to other cultural contexts, health professionals must be sensitive to these differences and adapt the SOC according to local realities. For example, in a number of cultures, gender nonconforming people are found in such numbers and living in such ways as to make them highly socially visible (Peletz, 2006).

In settings such as these, it is common for people to initiate a change in their gender expression and physical characteristics while in their teens, or even earlier. Many grow up and live in a social, cultural, and even linguistic context quite unlike that of Western cultures. Yet almost all experience prejudice (Peletz, 2006; Winter, 2009).

In many cultures, social stigma towards gender nonconformity is widespread and gender roles are highly prescriptive (Winter et al., 2009). Gender nonconforming people in these settings are forced to be hidden, and therefore may lack opportunities for adequate health care (Winter, 2009).

The Standards of Care, Version 7 represents a significant departure from previous versions. Changes in this version are based upon significant cultural shifts, advances in clinical knowledge, and appreciation of the many health care issues that can arise for transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people beyond hormone therapy and surgery (Coleman, 2009a, b, c, d).

Public Policies of the WPATH

On Identity Documents and Surgery Requirements

No person should have to undergo surgery or accept sterilization as a condition of identity recognition. If a sex marker is required on an identity document, that marker could recognize the person’s lived gender, regardless of reproductive capacity. The WPATH Board of Directors urges governments and other authoritative bodies to move to eliminate requirements for identity recognition that require surgical procedures.

On being trans being a Medical Condition (Mental Illness, Etc.)

The expression of gender characteristics, including identities, that are not stereotypically associated with one’s assigned sex at birth is a common and culturally-diverse human phenomenon which should not be judged as inherently pathological or negative. The psychopathologlisation of gender characteristics and identities reinforces or can prompt stigma, making prejudice and discrimination more likely, rendering transgender and transsexual people more vulnerable to social and legal marginalisation and exclusion, and increasing risks to mental and physical well-being. WPATH urges governmental and medical professional organizations to review their policies and practices to eliminate stigma toward gender-variant people

Pathological

involving, caused by, or of the nature of a physical or mental disease.

caused by or involving disease; morbid.

caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition

dealing with diseases

1680s, “pertaining to disease,” formed in English from pathology. 

Synonyms: morbid, diseased, sick, ill, unhealthy, aberrant, medical, medical condition

The very document that lays out the treatment for Trans people, and the very organization that is responsible for setting the standards and operating on the research and scientific evidence, state, in veryclear terms, that being Trans is not a medical condition, and in addition to that, they state that calling it a medical condition has been proven to be harmful to the health and well being of Trans people.

This is why professionals involved in the care and well being of Trans people who are culturally competent and knowledgeable, do not engage with it on those terms.

Trans people are gender noncomforming.  The standards of care applies to them, so long as they are trans people, and that includes all treatments.

Transness — being trans — does not come from dysphoria. It comes from the conflict between social sex, internal sex, and physical sex. That conflict is not dysphoria. Dysphoria is separate from that. That is the standard that the science shows.

Dysphoria does not make someone a trans person. Being a trans person is what makes someone have dysphoria. 

Not because they are trans. But because the world they live in is not designed for, considerate of, or permissible for, trans people.

Transphobia is aversion, anxiety, or animus, singly or in any combination, regarding trans people, transness, or trans related issues.

Aversion is things like being disgusted, in opposition to, identifying something as repugnant, and exhibiting strong feelings about this. Aversion is the desire to avoid, the act of arguing to avoid or reduce encounters. It includes being unwilling to listen or accept factual,statements made by trans people. It also includes not wanting trans people in the restroom. It also includes saying things like you need dysphoria to be trans.

Anxiety is distress, worry, concern, and overt anxiousness about something or someone that is strongly expressed in physical, literal, or metaphorical terms. Anxiety is worry, concern, or anticipatory ideation relating to trans people or Transness. It includes prejudice against trans people, such as worrying about what they do in the restroom. It also includes things like saying that transness is a medical condition.

Animus is a strong and intense dislike. It involves devaluing the lives of people, erasing their dignity, opposing their civil and human rights, denying them the ability to mark themselves,and outright harm to them. Animus is intense dislike, easily distinguished by overly concerned and reactionary language and violence, in any form. It includes agitating in the interest of preventing trans people from being In the restroom by law or policy.It also includes things like telling other trans people they aren’t trans enough.

So any of those thing, either individually or in combination, is what makes up transphobia.

Examples of Transphobic Statements

People who mutilate themselves like transgendered (Animus)

Transness is a mental illness. (Animus)

Transness is a medical condition (Anxiety)

I do not feel safe having male socialized trans women in my space. (Aversion, Anxiety)

Cis assigns a gender to someone. (Anxiety)

Trans women are biologically male. (Animus)

Trans women are men (Animus)

Trans men are traitors (Animus)

Dysphoria is needed to be trans (Aversion)

trans politics enforces gender and gender roles by reducing womanhood to a stereotype made up by males. (Animus, Anxiety)

If we include gender identity protections in this bill, it will be harder to pass (Aversion, Anxiety)

The second you become pregnant you are a woman.(Animus, Aversion)

There are many other examples, readily found in pretty much any attack on trans people and their lives or in any post that deals in trans issues coming from someone who proclaims themselves “trans critical” or “gender critical”. 

Some Facts Often ignored by TERFS, Trans Critical People, and related anti-LGBT people:

Biology does not determine what a person’s social sex is.

Gender is a complex system of inter-related parts that vary according to culture and social influence and is not a fixed system.

Gender Dysphoria is not a mental illness.

It is a core violation of human rights to deny trans people necessary medical care, regardless of their age. Agitating against that medical treatment is engaging in a willfully, intentional act of violence and trying to deny human rights to other people.

According to the SPLC and the ADL, the actions and speech of Cathy Brennan constitute hate speech. According to the World Health Organization, that classifies them as acts of violence.

On Trans Women’s Girlhood

Some folks think that Trans women do not experience girlhood, and argue that trans women do not grow up with the mythical idea of “sex-based oppression” (which doesn’t exist, as the oppression is gender based, since sex in social situations *is* gender).

These people often like to try and distance themselves from the more violent, dishonest, extremist elements in Radical feminism — generally referred to as TERFs — by disavowing some of the key aspects that informed the ideas of these terfs, even when making that “sex based oppression” argument, that is, itself, part of those dishonest, transphobic, extremist viewpoints.

They like to describe the ways in which physiology is used to oppress women, often ignoring the fact that physiology is presumed (social sex) in social systems and that the norm they are arguing is part of the very system they claim to be opposing.

Among those things they argue are the following:

That trans women do not grow up being shamed and feeling grossed out and insecure about their periods. This ignores the fact that trans women grow up being shamed and feeling grossed out and insecure because they don’t get periods, and that is used against them both internally and externally in order to further the idea of their being “wrong”.

That trans women are taught that masturbation is a healthy thing, when, in fact, trans women are taught that masturbation is shameful, that if they they masturbate they are perverts and horrible, and that the discussion of trans women masturbating is a really sick and disgusting thing.

That trans women are not subject to the cultural and social stigmas of having body hair being taught to them, when, in fact, they recieve these messages and in a state of pretty hard core crisis as their bodies do the very things they thought they wouldn’t do, often forcing many trans women to begin the ritualistic habit of shaving off all their body hair and creating a sense of horror about body hair that endures throughout their lives, ultimately leading to the most expensive process in transition.

That trans women did not face gender based bullying of the same sort as cis women, where they are treated very cruelly  for things boys would not be, which ignores that trans women are bullied and told that being themselves is a bad thing, while still recieving all the messages that they have to act and look a certain way as girls, and then being punished when they try to do those things by everyone around them, which is, itself, gender based bullying (and gender based oppression).

That trans women are not subjected to constant threats and deeds of sexual violence and harassment, when, in fact, transphobic and ciscentri ideas are based on such, and it starts at essentially the same age, and is constantly given in the form of mixed messages that amount to consistent abuse and neglect.

That trans women do not have the Whore/Madonna complex drilled into them despite this being one of the most common attacks used against trans women, especially by other women, and the way that often these abused and neglected children who grow up trying their damndest to fit in turn to that when they first transition, and sadly are sucked into it seeking the validation and affirmation they have been denied their whole lives because that was the message that they received loud and clear as children.

Keep in mind, all of these things apply to young trans girls — who are often told they are not allowed to be girls, that they are not girls, which is a direct and perpetuating form of violence against them recognized as such by all leading medical organizations in the US.  Trans women — including young trans women — are seen as objects of desire and told they need to be objects of desire, which they usually strive for in a manner of overcompensating because of the messages they are told they are being fake that are internalized in the same way cis women internalize them.

So the harm from female socialization is still felt and the fact remains that trans women are female socialized, but they are punished for that socialization, even long after it has supposedly ended, and that socialization itself is combined with the violence, neglect and abuse done to them through additional axes of oppression to force them into some dark places that they are then blamed for being forced into.

All of this is done to girls because they are girls. It is done to women because they are women.

The act of saying that it happens to them because they have vaginas is part of the very system of oppression that also oppresses trans women: the patriarchy, which is what made that call and reinforces that idea.

When trans people say they have always felt like x or y, what they are trying to express in colloquial and layman’s terms is the concept of gender identity, now more commonly referred to as either social sex identity and physical sex identity, which is two concepts, each distinct.

Roughly translated, the whole thing means that a Trans person is aware that they are a woman, man, both, or neither, at the same core level as they are aware of themselves as a person that is distinct from other people.

Some people would prefer to argue that what this is suggesting is that there is a “brain sex”. That is not what this is describing. It is describing a sense of self-awareness — which, while decidedly part of the brain’s physiology, is more authentically part of the existential notion that one exists, and therefore is not part of that argument, nor even related directly to biological systems.

What that means, as well, is that this description has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, and, therefore arguments about biology aren’t valid when contradicting it. It would be akin to saying that the United States army shouldn’t exist because of broccoli.

This all comes together in the core aspect here: like sexual orientation, this is part of what creates the sense of self in people, and it therefore is part of how they know that they exist as an individual human being, and is a part of that.

So the same question of how you know can be answered in as many different ways as there are people, and it is the still same way that those asking the question know what their social sex identity is.

This effectively makes it the trans version of the question “how do you know you are gay?”, with the same accurate answer “I just do, because I know I exist.”

The answer may not satisfy those seeking some sort of concrete answer, but it is inevitable that they themselves, will discount any answer because for them the same question remains unanswered in a way they would accept from a trans person, usually due to cis privilege.

In the end, it does not matter if biology claims trans women are males.

Biology is not concerned with the violence done to people.

Biology is not a shield to do violence to people, and indeed, the admittedly flawed models of colloquial biology often cited against trans women have also been used to justify and make excuses for violence against minority populations in oppressive systems.

And they are not scientific and they are outright lies.

Violence is still violence. It is still immoral, still unethical, and defending it is immoral and unethical.

Psychology, sociology, anthropology, physiology, medicine — these sciences have all proven that calling a trans woman a man is violence.

Violence is not limited to broken bones and bruised flesh and physical damage visible to the seeing.

It is also words. Ask those fleeing persecution, read history, talk to survivors of child abuse and domestic violence and prison violence.

Words are just as physically damaging - and according to many measures more so, since the brain treats those words no differently than it treats the body blows. The science is there to demonstrate this, and it is well known.

Calling trans women men is violence. It has physical, measurable consequences, and it endures and we know that this applies even when it is strangers.

The science establishes it.

This is fact. Not opinion.

Calling a trans woman a man is an act of violence, an assault, and those who do so are being violent, are being immoral, are being unethical, are cruel and callous and pathetic.

Silence in the face of violence is complicity, especially when that violence is social. Defense of calling a trans woman a man is defending violence.

Liking it, re blogging it without calling it out, these are forms of complicity.

Name it what it is. Don’t dress it up, don’t reduce it, it is violence. It is unethical. It is immoral.

Shame those who do it, teach them it is wrong.

Because not doing so means you are complicit, means you are supporting, means you are not trying to stop violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even straight people.

It means you are not trying to stop violence against people of color, against immigrants, against the disabled, against the poor.

It means you are standing by watching as someone does violence to another person.

And that is immoral, unethical, and shameful.

[tonidorsay]

Trans critical and gender critical are excuses and justifications to engage in violence against women, born from self hate.