In addition to questions about trans, mental illness, and violence, which are -- as Leor points out -- delicate and tricky to unpick, there are serious concerns about trans as a *subculture* and violence.
Online trans spaces are soaked in violent imagery and rhetoric. This glorification of violence is justified by wildly exaggerated stories about trans persecution, mostly notably the wholly invented claim that we're currently living through a "trans genocide."
I've written about this before, including for @UnHerd: "The truth is that the subculture that has grown up around trans identities too often excuses, legitimises, and even glorifies violence..." unherd.com/thepost/the-vi…
"That includes violence directed at the self — where self-harm and suicide demonstrate sincerity and commitment to trans identity in the face of adversity — and violence directed outward at perceived enemies." elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/resilience-o…
"This goes hand-in-hand with a toxic dynamic called phobia indoctrination: the attempt to instill irrational fears in members of a high-control group in order to manipulate them." elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/phobia-indoc…
Supposedly responsible 'grownups' and advocacy orgs traffic in phobia indoctrination, too. Rather than reassuring kids that "it gets better" when others don't accept your identity or you have to wait to 18 to transition, far too many adults favor apocalyptic & militant rhetoric.
What's happening here isn't trans genocide: it's trans radicalization. The warning signs are everywhere: grimacing skulls that promise “DEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION,” baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, torrents of rape and death threats, calls to stomp/mace/kill terfs...
Kids in trans spaces are indoctrinated into irrational fears. For some, these irrational fears isolate them and make them afraid of the outside world.
For others, phobia indoctrination inspires dreams of vengeance.
Research into violent radicalization among Quebec college students found that transgender and gender-diverse youth were at the *highest risk of support for violent radicalization.*
Communities that mythologize martyrs recruit martyrs. Communities that glorify vengeance and violence inspire it.
You also get migration between violent subcultures, like the weirdly well-traveled neo-Nazi-to-trans-activist pipeline. Forget 'genderfluid.' Think 'extremism-fluid.' elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/fanaticism-f…
No sane, responsible community looks or acts like this. We don't know enough yet to say anything useful about what happened today in Iowa. But we know plenty to say that the trans community as a whole has serious radicalization problems. unherd.com/thepost/the-vi…
@the_midwits I'd be shocked if AGP wasn't an exacerbating factor: it supplies an extra dose of aggrieved entitlement and makes social life an endless string of opportunities to be offended.
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I really wish the gender-related executive orders and messaging were taking into account that we're dealing with a radicalized population that includes a lot of very vulnerable, psychologically unwell young people who've been told for years to expect a "trans genocide."
I don't think we have a mass-deradicalization playbook. But imperative to be as clear and specific about what's being proposed and as compassionate about the "why?" as possible.
I realize for Trump, the appeal *is* the culture war. But many of the people working behind the scenes to craft these executive orders & shape public messaging should know better than to use inflammatory language. Describing what's happening in plain English is damning enough.
Every now and then, I check in on Room of One's Own bookstore in Madison, WI, which was a chill feminist bookstore until it sold a few years ago to someone going through a gender meltdown and everything went completely off the deep end.
They've still got a (righteously enforced) mask mandate. "Don't want to wear mask? That's okay, you just can't come in."
They regularly promote staff top-surgery fundraisers and whoever controls their Twitter accounts loves to forget all about books in favor of "slutty kinky horny queer" shitposting.
It turns out that Reed and I agree about one thing!
If you acknowledge that male rapists with prison-onset gender dysphoria* shouldn’t be housed with female prisoners and therefore aren’t really women, you’ve acknowledged that self-identification has limits.
*I didn't coin this but it's 👌
Same goes for sports: either transwomen are women—in which case they get to clobber female athletes in the boxing ring and snag medals and scholarships at all-state track meets—or they’re… not.
We regret to inform you that the positive outcomes data we promised would rescue our embattled field took a wrong turn & will not be arriving to save the day.
We will henceforth be shifting to a more “vibes-based” evaluation model, under the guise of “centering trans voices."
So far, the uptake of our global child-sterilization campaign has been disproportionately white 🥹 We promise to do better & start confusing & sterilizing more non-white children as soon as humanly possible. Please hold us accountable to our diversity, equity, & inclusion goals.
Have definitely suspected this was a motivator: "I've always been chubby and I think a lot of my dysphoria and desire to be masc has been just because I didnt think I could pass as a pretty feminine person because of being chubby." reddit.com/r/actual_detra…
There's also the use of the language of "passing" applied not just to "passing" as the opposite sex but passing as an 'acceptable' member of your own sex. The implied equivalence is interesting and gets at the way femininity feels like a performance or affectation for many girls.
For many girls, "passing" as an acceptable member of your own sex class still means being thin enough, pretty enough, feminine enough. The band of 'acceptable' femininity is perilously narrow, and the equation of femininity with *being female* is pushing girls toward transition.
Very often, the suggestion is that if you are the kind of made-up person trans activists call "cisgender," then little is being asked of you -- certainly nothing you should hesitate to part with. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There's no recognition that if 2 people disagree about trans issues, the disagreement matters deeply to both parties. It is not "weird" or suspect to care about what's being asked in the name of trans activism, which is no less than the erasure of sex and embrace of illiberalism.
Everybody gets to care about this issue because it does not affect only people who identify as trans: it affects everybody. It seeps into every setting where sex matters. It affects the fabric of civic life, the content and tenor of politics, the legitimacy of institutions.