I ordered leading youth transition advocate Jack Turban’s new book, “Free to Be,” to examine the evidence he claims supports a biological basis for innate gender identity.
Science is observed and requires no belief. Use of the word belief indicates that what Jack Turban (and others) is pushing is actually a religion, not science.
Not true at all. If you believe science requires no belief you do not understand science.
Can you prove independently that gravity is a force or do you rely on the work of others and evidence generated by others (in the case of gravity, it is pure theory) to maintain this truth? If the latter (which I imagine is the case) then you believe in the authority of scientists and you believe science makes a truth claim.
You can easily refuse to believe gravity is a force, in fact some scientists do.
Sure, I get what you're saying, and that angle has merit in a discussion among good faith participants.
But nothing Turban has written rests upon prior research. It's all manufactured, subjective, psycho-spiritual, a priori presumptions based on nothing that can ever be measured emprically. To boot, the so-called research is full of spurious conclusions, cherrypicked data points, and hyperbolic self-referential causalties solely to support the next circular logic statement. Hence I say that his beliefs are ont science. What he promotes is plucked from thin air, imagined by the indivduals espousing such beliefs, with the only literature supporting it being the trash that he and his echo chamber created. It's nothing short of an advocacy for a narcisisstic God-of-one's-own-universe paradigm.
In fact, it is in many ways *worse* than religion. At least religion usually has thousands of years of hermeneutical doctrine and scripture backing it. In the timeline of human history, this gender stuff just showed up five minutes ago and is attempting to redefine reality but without the investigative rigor.
I agree with you, as both a scientist and a Christian (who happens to have studied philosophy, albeit of science).
I think the challenge here is that because this ideology cannot be proven or disproven by the scientific method (not all science can either) it becomes a question of philosophy. And philosophy is deeply challenging for an ordinary person to grasp and argue against.
I for instance do not believe there is a thing called “gender identity”, I don’t believe I have a self-conception of gender, even if I did, neither my understanding of biology or my religion would honor or validate that belief to be true. So if I had gender dysphoria, I would be in a difficult place. I thankfully only experienced discomfort with my sex as a teenager and that faded.
However many people have genuine persistent distress they experience because they believe their bodies are somehow malfunctioning, and unfortunately in an effort to explain this malfunction, society has decided to simply assume that the acceptance of the belief must be the path to resolve. Not only that, but it’s blocked off all possibility of alternative ideologies.
I don’t think science is the tool to resolve this one. I love science, it speaks an obvious truth, but when you’re up against people who can both hold to the claim that two sexes exist and genders also exist, then you need really strong philosophical arguments to push against that.
I personally highly favour natural law, but that then leans on a creator a “right way to be made” but I think biology also draws heavily on this concept through “function” talk. But if you don’t like natural law then the alternative options are trickier. The existing philosophical underpinning is that the human person is highly malleable and can determine its own destiny. And if that’s true then sexuality and transideology are natural spawns of this belief structure.
Although I disagree with the atheist that espouses trans-ideology but I fully understand how they should believe it to be true. And I find the atheists who push against transideology have a lot of useful things to say that are fundamentally true and good, but bury themselves in the science hoping it will be the tool to save humanity. I just can’t see how that will play out.
It is like saying, "We can't prove gravity so we can't prove Anorexia." The person is 80 lbs and dying. Just like our children who follow the evil doctrines of this degenerate mob.
Not true at all. If you believe science requires no belief you do not understand science.
Can you prove independently that gravity is a force or do you rely on the work of others and evidence generated by others (in the case of gravity, it is pure theory) to maintain this truth?
He/She is confounding the question of the reality of trans by stating that even gravity cannot be proven. So, I likened it to Anorexia. The proof is in the sufferers.
That's a terrific response, and I appreciate it. I'd write more, but I think we've beat this horse enough and for me it's time for dinner. Glad to chat with you!
Excellent point. I avoid thinking of gravity and magnetism for precisely the reason that they are bonkers and require a huge commitment to something that feels like magic. It took me forever to rethink gravity as a quantum entropic effect (equivalence and Verlinde), a huge relief.
They’re not bonkers per se. They’re simply presumptions. So gravity must exist for our physical laws to be true, how it manifests is a mystery, for now at least. Proving it exists at all will always be a mystery.
A brief view is Heisenberg uncertainty as quantum particles get closer produce an effect of “gravitational attraction” through entropy. It would be true in any particle system anywhere. Similar to the value of Pi. It seems to arise from any particle system, as Pi arises from any number of geometries and transcendental equations.
Good point. I don't observe any of this stuff, therefore it does not exist for me. Maybe Jack observes it, that's his business and his paycheck.
But it's not religion. Religion needs transcendent thought, eschatology, verifiable tenets, and at least a suggestion of revealed knowledge, etc. etc. And you use the word "religion" as though that were a bad thing.
It always amazes me that one can claim, when genetically XY, to not know what it is to be male, but at the same time know what it is to be female, when never having experienced an XX body.
That's why they need the accoutrements... dresses, lipstick etc, because they think 'wanting to wear' a costume is akin to 'being'. But, actually, most of the actors in this takeover know damn well what's what.
They’re impersonating female, or impersonating a concept of tawdry femininity. When you grasp the system, it’s extremely simple. Mae West was also a female impersonator, as is Cher. You might call Mrs Doubtfire a female impersonator, or Dame Edna Everage, but they are too much simply playing a housewife character.
And I hate to say it, but I'm going to, I think many of them are pretending to be women so they can have sex with straight men. If you watch Hanah Gadsby's Gender Agenda, an 'apparent' comedy show, Mx Dahlia Belle explains it perfectly. Don't eat anything for an hour before watching it, or during.
I dont doubt it - there are two natural reasons males simulate females - one is to avoid lethal aggression by adult males, and another is to bypass male supervision of a harem to mate with females. In both cases the appearance of the male is female but not because of grooming or decoration.
Its been close to a decade since I first began looking into gender identity ideology, and I assumed that such radical surgical and pharmaceutical regimens would have some sound body of science behind them. Hence, I grabbed a copy of Principles of Transgender Medicine and Surgery--edited by the then-leading gender advocates--only to find repeated admissions that their science was weak or simply missing. Unsurprisingly, Turban can do no better ten years later, and the human tragedy wrought by drugs and scalpels on incredibly vulnerable souls continues apace wherever the ideology dominates.
The proponents of the trans delusion are completely bound to the genetic/born-that-way notion. Because if you are not born-that-way, it is a choice. And if it is a choice, therapists can use techniques to eliminate this delusional state. It's NOT "conversion therapy" if a therapist is helping a patient with a delusion. That's what terrifies the gender therapists - the money is so huge that they are terrified of actual logical considerations in this delusional psychotic state.
It doesn't have to be a choice. That puts the evil on the children. It is a mental illness. "Oh, it's not mental!" It's not? What is it then? Is it physical? Is it emotional? Is it spiritual? No, no, no. Then what the hell is it? It's mental. Trans kids are in the same category of illness as Anorexia. They are people with a delusional disorder. Anorexics look in the mirror and swear they are fat. Trans kids look in the mirror and deny their sex. The whole psychology industry, including the APA has bought into this delusional thinking and it is a tradgedy and a disgrace.
"Nothing I am saying contradicts the view that transgender people exist and deserve dignity and respect." There is no actual objective evidence that the transgender notion is anything other than a delusion. There is no evidence that there is a thing termed "transgender people". This is not schizophrenia, another mental state which has a dubious status. But with schizophrenia, objective evidence about behavior exists. More importantly, psychiatrists can tell the difference between a fake and a real schizophrenic, as they must be able to detect fakers who use the "insanity defense". With trans, the ONLY test is "do I think I am trans?" That's not a disease, that's a delusion.
I'll add that scientists can tell you what schizophrenia IS. They can identify the behaviors typically associated with schizophrenia and how the illness can be treated. Not only is it unclear what trans means, we don't even know how to identify it in action. Cross-dressing can be a sign, but there are trans people who dress in gender-conforming ways. Some trans people adopt different names, and some do not. Some change their pronouns, and others don't. Some opt for medicalization, and some hold off. They all say they are trans, but there's no common thread except a nebulous idea of gender identity.
I don't care how people dress or act or think of themselves, but anyone who demands legal and social concessions had better be able to give me a coherent reason why.
For doctors who have sworn to do no harm, this is not going to end well. These are people of science motivated by their hatred of everything good, true and right. And their hatred of conservative Americans. They are leftists. That's what they do.
How can a doctor, who has presumably studied legacy psychologist Jean Piaget's stages of development, from sensory-motor through pre-operational to operational, ignore well-documented, time-tested concepts of human cognitive development? Object permanence, acquired age 3-4, is a thought process Piaget named, well-proven over the decades since. "Wrong body since birth" just does not comport with established child development. A brief explanation of object permanence:
Jack Turban is an awe and a wonder. He debated this topic at Darmouth last spring, and out of the gate he could not provide a coherent definition of "gender identity." Isn't that the whole ballgame?
I wouldn't let a cardiologist operate on me who didn't know the location of the human heart; similarly, I don't take anything Jack Turban says very seriously.
These people just make it up as they go from their own guilt plagued hearts. This all begins with John Money. One of the most evil characters in American history. Would love to see an article on him.
I hate to point it out, but the “gay rights movement” used exactly the same argumentation tactics and won society over.
There’s no biological evidence in support of sexuality. You are not “born gay” or otherwise. Studies have not found a “gay gene” or a “straight gene”. What they have found is sexuality often emerges from childhood, is usually persistent and appears to have no obvious cause. The instances of homosexual behaviour or otherwise are usually very small. Smaller still were cases of successful homosexual or other relationships and manifestations of that sexual behaviour in history as these were, for good reason, severely repressed in society up until very recently. Now that we have the freedom to choose our sexual behaviour what has come to light is that sexuality need not be persistent or exclusive (many so-called “straight people” have regular “gay” sexual encounters or change their sexuality later in life and vice versa), some individuals are shaped into homosexuality by their environment by witnessing homosexual behaviour as young children or through negative sexual experience like sexual abuse or other psychological trauma. Some people have shifting or wildly loose understanding of their own sexuality, shifting from one sexual behaviour (e.g. exclusive heterosexual monogamy) to another (e.g. asexuality) with relative ease.
First the gays rights movement attempted to validate itself through biological research and when that failed it adopted an identity-based approach. This is to say that sexual orientation is an innate, immutable concept emblazoned within the individual that is not of their own choosing and simply must be respected by others.
Sexuality is a pure psychological concept that for many people can be resolved with psychological care, particularly if their sexuality emerged as a direct response to trauma. However this kind of care has now been deemed “evil” and seeks to
“erase” homosexual or other persons. So we now have the pure freedom to choose what sort of sexual practice we want, society cannot dictate whether it is right or wrong to do so and society also punishes those who make a negative claim that sexuality is not an identity.
Are we surprised that the transgender movement has been so successful when we were able to so successfully convince ourselves gay rights are inalienable?
No, the gay rights movement claimed that homosexuality was a natural variant of sexual attraction present in all animals (well, mostly mammals), and that the attraction was invariant, it never changed over a lifetime.
Both observations are empirically true, well-defined and often observed by anyone who works closely with animals, from laboratory animals to farmers to naturalists.
Penguins, sheep and apes, all have individuals who have sex with the same sex, and may pair bond for life.
So gays claimed it was observed throughout nature, and was present from birth, not “culture.driven” - there no gay or straight sheep or penguin culture.
The trans movement never claimed trans was natural and represented in a wide variety of animals. They did claim it was present at birth, but could find no way to substantiate the claim since trans has never been observed in nature, not a single instance anywhere at any time.
Gays also felt that the more people knew gays, the more likely they would cease to be interested or fearful, and had a strong commitment to engaging with media.
Trans uses the opposite strategy, refusing to engage with media and refusing debate.
Gays also sought to stop medical intervention on an invariant feature of the psyche of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
Trans seek to remove doctors from medical treatment (bit of a conundrum) precisely because they wish to “transition” the body.
Homosexuality is a constant.
I feel “gay” is a hobby. That reduces confusion of homosexual sex (not unusual at all) with gay politics.
I disagree, there is very limited evidence that mammals or any animal species has deliberate heterosexual sex in the same way that homosexual persons engaging in homosexual acts are deliberately engaging in these activities.
What we are seeing in animal studies for homosexual activity (which there very few and extreme examples) is that some non-human animals have disordered sexual function and for the most part that’s not abhorrent in non-human animals as they aren’t moral agents and can’t choose their actions, they act on base instinct and sometimes that instinct is disordered. So we see cases of animal mothers eating their sexual partners or animals mothers killing or eating their children or abandoning their children especially if they conceive and bear young very early in life. We see coerced sexual behaviour in animals - most non-human animal sex is not consensual or wanted by the female animal, some female animals run away from their sexual partners and some animals bodies are designed with superficial birth canals to limit the amount of sperm deposited by the multiple male partners that will naturally copulate with the female. Almost all non-human animals engage in ”incest” of some kind, whether it be mother-father-child or brother-sister kind. We don’t call this incest for non-human animals as they are not moral agents.
Now, given our knowledge of non-human animal sexual behaviour we do not as human animals seek to emulate this behaviour. We have very strong commitments against incest, paedophilia and rape. We don’t eat our sexual partners or our children as a matter of course. And if we kill our children or sexual partners we are punished for doing so.
Homosexual sex, even if it were strongly observed in non-human animals is not an appropriate argument for warranting its behaviour in human animals. But even so, the non-human animal studies if they suggest non-human sexual homosexual sexual activity is strongly consistent than this strongly pushes back against the y human based evidence that suggest homosexuality in the human animal species is wildly divergent. If this weren’t true, you would have no examples of so-call “gay” men and women who have long-term successful sexual relationships including the rearing of children with an opposite sex partner. But we have numerous examples of this, tragically. We also have numerous examples of so-called “gay” parents who abandon their children (especially if they are not their biological children) to pursue other sexual relationships, straight or gay.
Human sexuality is more complex than biology, the so-called “gay movement” tried without success to reduce their behaviour to “natural” biology but have catastrophically failed.
Transgender activists have already emulated the gay movement in grounding transgender behaviour in non-human animal studies, also without success because as explained above for animal sexual behaviour, the moral argument doesn’t stack up. If you’re unfamiliar with these studies they are easy to find, this jstor article is a good example: https://daily.jstor.org/transgender-proclivities-in-animals/
The only reason that animals haven’t “become” transgender so to speak is because they lack the intelligence to manipulate their own bodies medically.
You are contradicted by legions of scientists, and observations - literally thousands of written observations going back 2500 years for both homosexual pair bonding and homosexual sex in animals. It’s very old news.
It’s utterly natural, but unusual behavior, and sociobiology has empirically deduced genomic advantage for homosexualities. It was difficult to explain evolutionarily but genomic statistics show why one particular type - late birth order homosexuality has substantial advantages in humans. The others are likely similar.
The best way to think of homosexuality is as a complex altruism. Similarly with Catholic Priests and Nuns, Buddhists, and others who don’t marry and reproduce.
So, unfortunately your observations are irrelevant since it’s pure opinion and not empirical science.
Catholic priests and nuns may marry, it’s only in the Western or Latin rite where celibacy is maintained and you can enter the priesthood and religious life after having children provided you are not married at the same time (this includes your marriage being annulled).
Celibacy in the Catholic Church is a traditional discipline to enable focus on the utter dedication of one’s life to God and for God. As marriage is considered a vocation and a sacrament and so is religious life and priesthood, it’s the tradition in the Latin rite to only hold one of these sacraments at once to maintain focus. It has nothing to do with altruism and isn’t a sacrifice for any person or society. I can’t speak to Buddhist celibacy as there are so many variants of Buddhism but I can’t imagine that their celibacy is considered altruistic either.
I think arguing homosexuality has inherent benefit for society is a poor argument. Homosexual persons can’t reproduce, they often have very complex relational and psychological issues and have until recently (due to advancement of medicine) have been known as highly effective vectors of venereal disease due to their sexual behaviour. Whether a behaviour is “natural” is immaterial to whether or not it is morally good.
And I’m unconvinced there is more than about 30 years of literature arguing in favour of human homosexual pair bonding using non-human surrogates. 2000 years ago homosexuality was a criminal and moral offence, if homosexual behaviour existed in most civilised societies it was at least frowned upon or at worst eradicated completely.
Some more ancient Pacific cultures took the position even to socialise out homosexual behaviour by manipulating sex behaviour. So we have examples in Pacific cultures where men who would in other cultures be considered “gay” be considered “feminine” and treated as a kind of woman, without denying the biological reality of the man.
But even if the science and the history and the philosophy was replete with examples of homosexual behaviour in all animal species (however small) it wouldn’t follow that homosexual sexual behaviour is morally good.
The moral argument is what won gay rights and gay marriage and gay adoption in modern western society. A moral argument with a strong “identity-based” underpinning has been the successful argument and it’s how the transgender movement is succeeding. It’s unfortunate for those who are gay or lesbian who wish to wash their hands of this association however many prominent LGB people in philosophy openly grant this connection, e.g. Stonewall.
I agree. I have my doubts about the status of the "gay identity". I think that for a lot of guys, they want a lot of sex and no consequences. There are a ton of examples of people have hetero relations, kids, etc, and then making a decision in midlife that they are gay. I believe that Freud identified gay sex as arrested development - many go thru a phase of intense affection for same-sex persons. Most progress beyond that. Some get stuck in a developmental dead-end.
I find middle aged “coming out as gay” particularly devastating. In fact only recently a colleague of mine ended her 7-year relationship with her boyfriend (who simply “fell out of love with her”) and discovered through a third-party that he very heavily invested in the homosexual lifestyle, in an extremely flamboyant way that was very unusual.
There were no hints he was gay in their relationship, he didn’t even reveal his sexuality as a reason for their relationship demise. But if the theories of sexualitu hold true he must have known he was gay, since he was a young child, and that feeling would have been consistent and persistent.
If so, why did he choose to engage in an exclusive heterosexual sexually active relationship for nearly a decade, when he knew he had an exclusive sexual attraction to men? Why did he choose to subject this woman to nearly a decade of lies and ruin her childbearing years? Now she has severe trauma, she thinks every man is hiding a gay persona and enters really risky sexual relationships because she thinks she does not deserve better.
It baffled my mind why if sexuality is fundamentally true, that so many people still choose to outwardly lie to their loved ones about it. There’s nothing shameful about living a chaste life and being comfortable with having sexual desire you cannot act upon. But dragging your family through a pit of lies is selfish and cruel.
I couldn't agree more. How someone can drag another person through a completely false relationship including marriage and children, using their family as a shield from their homosexuality, ruining the other person's life (for lots of reasons including preventing the other person from enjoying an authentic partnership for all those years) has always been beyond me. Your friend is certainly not alone. Paedophiles also do it as a matter of course, as do autogynephiles. I think it's actually rampant.
I'm 56, never married, think I am now celibate ....because their are SO MANY potential pitfalls to tethering yourself to another person (in my case, Man). And the older I get, the more thankful I feel that I was able to enjoy a life of complete independence. Commiserations to your friend. I totally feel their pain.
No, sexual orientation is a natural phenomenon in animals, and is invariant over the lifetime of animals.
Homosexual sheep don’t become heterosexual, neither do penguins, lionesses or apes.
Sexuality has nothing to do with psychology - there is no known “psychology” of penguins yet some pair born homosexually for life, as do, geese. Roughly 10% of sheep are homosexual as ranchers know.
Your statements were common 50 years ago. The natural history of homosexuality has become much more detailed and specific since then.
There are no credible cases of sex attraction reversal.
It’s not a “psychological” concept but one of attractions. It’s not reversible by therapy, and research and consensus are firm.
This type of biological argument that you propose to justify homosexual sexual behaviour in non-human animals is indeed an old argument. It has been wholesale abandoned by most LGB proponents who prefer moral arguments to argue their case as they are far more relevant to society than emulating non-human animal behaviour, for the reasons explained above.
For instance, we don’t use the seahorse as a valid argument for why a male human should be impregnated and carry a child. However, based on your argument above, we should because there is at least one consistent non-human animal example of transgender behaviour - pregnant males.
It’s a hard pill for LGB to swallow unfortunately, but the transgender movement is a natural progression from the sexuality movement. Both have claimed and have failed to justify a biological basis and both now firmly cling to psychological evidence and moral reasoning for justification. And because of the success of the so-called “gay” movement, we naturally have paved the way for the success of the transgender movement. Unless we abandon both (which we won’t) then we have to accept both as being naturally emergent from one another.
It’s fascinating to think that the center of the Venn diagram of people with Own-Body perception issues and people who are gender non conforming could be the population that typically identifies as trans.
It could be interesting to look into how people with autism likely have a more relatively stable disturbance in their Own Body perception whereas people who have traumatic events like a sexual assault (a common trigger for gender dysphoria) could have a transient issue in this as a sort of dissociation
"Free to Be...You & Me," the great book, record and film project, carried the exact opposite message of Turban's book. His title leeches off its legacy.
If you look up just one song, check out "William Wants a Doll," and you'll see what I mean.
As always very readable. I believe firmly that certain forms of trans will be located eventually in a material reality of the brains “map” of the body. This is the “false limb” version of trans. Sexual body integrity disorder. Trans and BIId know this, and avoid discussing it entirely - I’ve seen trans people publicly excoriated for even proposing a question about the similarity - that there a problem in body mapping causing distress. The issue of course is not being the opposite sex, but having the wrong sex, in having the wrong arm or leg.
The other part of trans is simply female fetishism; not being in the wrong body but getting turned on by the idea of being what I think of as ‘hooker female’. As with all fetishes there’s no underlying substrate. Getting turned on by balloons or rubber has no magic neural basis, neither does erotic female impersonation.
Feminine males and masculine females are natural variants of behavior in animals, and in males are seen as a way to bypass dominant males to mate.
Trans would identify all gay males as trans because by definition, males having sex with males is “gender nonconforming”. Gender is a fictional term as you note “pseudoscience”, and any observations based on “gender” have no value in science, no truth value and can be refuted trivially.
My 100% favorite “nonconforming” behavior is playing with dolls. Common in both boys and girls, predominantly male in adults, but labeled as feminine. Girls tend to play with female dolls which are called dolls while boys play with male dolls called action figures. Some adult women may have dolls but I rarely see it. However adult men collect “action figures” well into adulthood (as well as hentai and other sexualized figures) you only red to watch the ubiquitous TV show Big Bang Theory to see men playing with dolls, it eve serves as a key plot point. Feminine? Masculine.? Atypical?
> Rather, it suggests that genetic factors may contribute to gender nonconformity, which can cause distress and a desire to be the opposite sex,
> In conclusion, biological factors are associated with being transgender, but being transgender itself is not an inherent condition one is born with.
The second sentence comes close to contradicting itself. What is biological is inherent, no? And surely we are born with our biology? Thus if there are biological factors there are inherent factors. What bothers me is that the author seems to feel that the battle between trans ideology and sanity hinges on whether or not there is a biological component. If there is then the transies win, therefore our side will attempt to deprecate the biological aspect while yet admitting that it is there.
Bad strategy. The question is not whether there is a biological factor, the question is whether trans identity accords with reality or even trumps reality. We say it does not. Ergo trans is a disorder irrespective of whether or not it has a biological factor. As mentioned above, trans is comparable to anorexia, which nobody attempts to rehabilitate to being an 'identity'. It is a disorder plain and simple and if a teenage girl who weights 70 pounds 'identifies' as fat, she is mistaken and that fact would not be less true in the slightest if we did discover 'a gene for anorexia'.
> many of the twins were same-sex attracted, a factor often associated with gender nonconformity
This is like claiming that the emperor's pants do not exist but that his tunic is spectacular. Trying to claim that homosexuality is healthy, natural and normal but trans is disordered, is not logically possible. It is equally hopeless to hinge that question on whether or not genes are involved. Transies and homosexuals are equally suffering from what is objectively and unavoidably a disorder. The important difference however is that homosexuals do not usually deny reality -- their behavior is disordered whereas the transie's mind is disordered.
Genes, prenatal stress, childhood traumas of different kinds, who knows what else? The point is that irrespective of the etiology, what is unreal remains unreal.
Science is observed and requires no belief. Use of the word belief indicates that what Jack Turban (and others) is pushing is actually a religion, not science.
Not true at all. If you believe science requires no belief you do not understand science.
Can you prove independently that gravity is a force or do you rely on the work of others and evidence generated by others (in the case of gravity, it is pure theory) to maintain this truth? If the latter (which I imagine is the case) then you believe in the authority of scientists and you believe science makes a truth claim.
You can easily refuse to believe gravity is a force, in fact some scientists do.
Sure, I get what you're saying, and that angle has merit in a discussion among good faith participants.
But nothing Turban has written rests upon prior research. It's all manufactured, subjective, psycho-spiritual, a priori presumptions based on nothing that can ever be measured emprically. To boot, the so-called research is full of spurious conclusions, cherrypicked data points, and hyperbolic self-referential causalties solely to support the next circular logic statement. Hence I say that his beliefs are ont science. What he promotes is plucked from thin air, imagined by the indivduals espousing such beliefs, with the only literature supporting it being the trash that he and his echo chamber created. It's nothing short of an advocacy for a narcisisstic God-of-one's-own-universe paradigm.
In fact, it is in many ways *worse* than religion. At least religion usually has thousands of years of hermeneutical doctrine and scripture backing it. In the timeline of human history, this gender stuff just showed up five minutes ago and is attempting to redefine reality but without the investigative rigor.
I agree with you, as both a scientist and a Christian (who happens to have studied philosophy, albeit of science).
I think the challenge here is that because this ideology cannot be proven or disproven by the scientific method (not all science can either) it becomes a question of philosophy. And philosophy is deeply challenging for an ordinary person to grasp and argue against.
I for instance do not believe there is a thing called “gender identity”, I don’t believe I have a self-conception of gender, even if I did, neither my understanding of biology or my religion would honor or validate that belief to be true. So if I had gender dysphoria, I would be in a difficult place. I thankfully only experienced discomfort with my sex as a teenager and that faded.
However many people have genuine persistent distress they experience because they believe their bodies are somehow malfunctioning, and unfortunately in an effort to explain this malfunction, society has decided to simply assume that the acceptance of the belief must be the path to resolve. Not only that, but it’s blocked off all possibility of alternative ideologies.
I don’t think science is the tool to resolve this one. I love science, it speaks an obvious truth, but when you’re up against people who can both hold to the claim that two sexes exist and genders also exist, then you need really strong philosophical arguments to push against that.
I personally highly favour natural law, but that then leans on a creator a “right way to be made” but I think biology also draws heavily on this concept through “function” talk. But if you don’t like natural law then the alternative options are trickier. The existing philosophical underpinning is that the human person is highly malleable and can determine its own destiny. And if that’s true then sexuality and transideology are natural spawns of this belief structure.
Although I disagree with the atheist that espouses trans-ideology but I fully understand how they should believe it to be true. And I find the atheists who push against transideology have a lot of useful things to say that are fundamentally true and good, but bury themselves in the science hoping it will be the tool to save humanity. I just can’t see how that will play out.
Comparing it to gravity is just nonsense.
It is like saying, "We can't prove gravity so we can't prove Anorexia." The person is 80 lbs and dying. Just like our children who follow the evil doctrines of this degenerate mob.
Why can’t we prove anorexia if we can’t prove the existence of gravity? I wouldn’t have thought that was true.
Earlier there was this:
Emwisnie 24 hrs ago
Not true at all. If you believe science requires no belief you do not understand science.
Can you prove independently that gravity is a force or do you rely on the work of others and evidence generated by others (in the case of gravity, it is pure theory) to maintain this truth?
He/She is confounding the question of the reality of trans by stating that even gravity cannot be proven. So, I likened it to Anorexia. The proof is in the sufferers.
That's a terrific response, and I appreciate it. I'd write more, but I think we've beat this horse enough and for me it's time for dinner. Glad to chat with you!
Bon appetite! Good to meet you likewise.
Excellent point. I avoid thinking of gravity and magnetism for precisely the reason that they are bonkers and require a huge commitment to something that feels like magic. It took me forever to rethink gravity as a quantum entropic effect (equivalence and Verlinde), a huge relief.
They’re not bonkers per se. They’re simply presumptions. So gravity must exist for our physical laws to be true, how it manifests is a mystery, for now at least. Proving it exists at all will always be a mystery.
A brief view is Heisenberg uncertainty as quantum particles get closer produce an effect of “gravitational attraction” through entropy. It would be true in any particle system anywhere. Similar to the value of Pi. It seems to arise from any particle system, as Pi arises from any number of geometries and transcendental equations.
Good point. I don't observe any of this stuff, therefore it does not exist for me. Maybe Jack observes it, that's his business and his paycheck.
But it's not religion. Religion needs transcendent thought, eschatology, verifiable tenets, and at least a suggestion of revealed knowledge, etc. etc. And you use the word "religion" as though that were a bad thing.
It always amazes me that one can claim, when genetically XY, to not know what it is to be male, but at the same time know what it is to be female, when never having experienced an XX body.
That's why they need the accoutrements... dresses, lipstick etc, because they think 'wanting to wear' a costume is akin to 'being'. But, actually, most of the actors in this takeover know damn well what's what.
They’re impersonating female, or impersonating a concept of tawdry femininity. When you grasp the system, it’s extremely simple. Mae West was also a female impersonator, as is Cher. You might call Mrs Doubtfire a female impersonator, or Dame Edna Everage, but they are too much simply playing a housewife character.
And I hate to say it, but I'm going to, I think many of them are pretending to be women so they can have sex with straight men. If you watch Hanah Gadsby's Gender Agenda, an 'apparent' comedy show, Mx Dahlia Belle explains it perfectly. Don't eat anything for an hour before watching it, or during.
I dont doubt it - there are two natural reasons males simulate females - one is to avoid lethal aggression by adult males, and another is to bypass male supervision of a harem to mate with females. In both cases the appearance of the male is female but not because of grooming or decoration.
I feel precisely same way. Their feeling is male because… thy are male and they have feelings, those are male feelings by definition.
I think it’s mysogynistic mansplaining taken to a new level.
Its been close to a decade since I first began looking into gender identity ideology, and I assumed that such radical surgical and pharmaceutical regimens would have some sound body of science behind them. Hence, I grabbed a copy of Principles of Transgender Medicine and Surgery--edited by the then-leading gender advocates--only to find repeated admissions that their science was weak or simply missing. Unsurprisingly, Turban can do no better ten years later, and the human tragedy wrought by drugs and scalpels on incredibly vulnerable souls continues apace wherever the ideology dominates.
“Innate identity” is just the soul. Such requires metaphysics. This is not even pseudoscience.
The proponents of the trans delusion are completely bound to the genetic/born-that-way notion. Because if you are not born-that-way, it is a choice. And if it is a choice, therapists can use techniques to eliminate this delusional state. It's NOT "conversion therapy" if a therapist is helping a patient with a delusion. That's what terrifies the gender therapists - the money is so huge that they are terrified of actual logical considerations in this delusional psychotic state.
It doesn't have to be a choice. That puts the evil on the children. It is a mental illness. "Oh, it's not mental!" It's not? What is it then? Is it physical? Is it emotional? Is it spiritual? No, no, no. Then what the hell is it? It's mental. Trans kids are in the same category of illness as Anorexia. They are people with a delusional disorder. Anorexics look in the mirror and swear they are fat. Trans kids look in the mirror and deny their sex. The whole psychology industry, including the APA has bought into this delusional thinking and it is a tradgedy and a disgrace.
"Nothing I am saying contradicts the view that transgender people exist and deserve dignity and respect." There is no actual objective evidence that the transgender notion is anything other than a delusion. There is no evidence that there is a thing termed "transgender people". This is not schizophrenia, another mental state which has a dubious status. But with schizophrenia, objective evidence about behavior exists. More importantly, psychiatrists can tell the difference between a fake and a real schizophrenic, as they must be able to detect fakers who use the "insanity defense". With trans, the ONLY test is "do I think I am trans?" That's not a disease, that's a delusion.
I'll add that scientists can tell you what schizophrenia IS. They can identify the behaviors typically associated with schizophrenia and how the illness can be treated. Not only is it unclear what trans means, we don't even know how to identify it in action. Cross-dressing can be a sign, but there are trans people who dress in gender-conforming ways. Some trans people adopt different names, and some do not. Some change their pronouns, and others don't. Some opt for medicalization, and some hold off. They all say they are trans, but there's no common thread except a nebulous idea of gender identity.
I don't care how people dress or act or think of themselves, but anyone who demands legal and social concessions had better be able to give me a coherent reason why.
For doctors who have sworn to do no harm, this is not going to end well. These are people of science motivated by their hatred of everything good, true and right. And their hatred of conservative Americans. They are leftists. That's what they do.
How can a doctor, who has presumably studied legacy psychologist Jean Piaget's stages of development, from sensory-motor through pre-operational to operational, ignore well-documented, time-tested concepts of human cognitive development? Object permanence, acquired age 3-4, is a thought process Piaget named, well-proven over the decades since. "Wrong body since birth" just does not comport with established child development. A brief explanation of object permanence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqUNy1Vcxa0&t=52s
Jack Turban is an awe and a wonder. He debated this topic at Darmouth last spring, and out of the gate he could not provide a coherent definition of "gender identity." Isn't that the whole ballgame?
I wouldn't let a cardiologist operate on me who didn't know the location of the human heart; similarly, I don't take anything Jack Turban says very seriously.
Thank you Christina for another well written column. Appreciate you!
These people just make it up as they go from their own guilt plagued hearts. This all begins with John Money. One of the most evil characters in American history. Would love to see an article on him.
I hate to point it out, but the “gay rights movement” used exactly the same argumentation tactics and won society over.
There’s no biological evidence in support of sexuality. You are not “born gay” or otherwise. Studies have not found a “gay gene” or a “straight gene”. What they have found is sexuality often emerges from childhood, is usually persistent and appears to have no obvious cause. The instances of homosexual behaviour or otherwise are usually very small. Smaller still were cases of successful homosexual or other relationships and manifestations of that sexual behaviour in history as these were, for good reason, severely repressed in society up until very recently. Now that we have the freedom to choose our sexual behaviour what has come to light is that sexuality need not be persistent or exclusive (many so-called “straight people” have regular “gay” sexual encounters or change their sexuality later in life and vice versa), some individuals are shaped into homosexuality by their environment by witnessing homosexual behaviour as young children or through negative sexual experience like sexual abuse or other psychological trauma. Some people have shifting or wildly loose understanding of their own sexuality, shifting from one sexual behaviour (e.g. exclusive heterosexual monogamy) to another (e.g. asexuality) with relative ease.
First the gays rights movement attempted to validate itself through biological research and when that failed it adopted an identity-based approach. This is to say that sexual orientation is an innate, immutable concept emblazoned within the individual that is not of their own choosing and simply must be respected by others.
Sexuality is a pure psychological concept that for many people can be resolved with psychological care, particularly if their sexuality emerged as a direct response to trauma. However this kind of care has now been deemed “evil” and seeks to
“erase” homosexual or other persons. So we now have the pure freedom to choose what sort of sexual practice we want, society cannot dictate whether it is right or wrong to do so and society also punishes those who make a negative claim that sexuality is not an identity.
Are we surprised that the transgender movement has been so successful when we were able to so successfully convince ourselves gay rights are inalienable?
No, the gay rights movement claimed that homosexuality was a natural variant of sexual attraction present in all animals (well, mostly mammals), and that the attraction was invariant, it never changed over a lifetime.
Both observations are empirically true, well-defined and often observed by anyone who works closely with animals, from laboratory animals to farmers to naturalists.
Penguins, sheep and apes, all have individuals who have sex with the same sex, and may pair bond for life.
So gays claimed it was observed throughout nature, and was present from birth, not “culture.driven” - there no gay or straight sheep or penguin culture.
The trans movement never claimed trans was natural and represented in a wide variety of animals. They did claim it was present at birth, but could find no way to substantiate the claim since trans has never been observed in nature, not a single instance anywhere at any time.
Gays also felt that the more people knew gays, the more likely they would cease to be interested or fearful, and had a strong commitment to engaging with media.
Trans uses the opposite strategy, refusing to engage with media and refusing debate.
Gays also sought to stop medical intervention on an invariant feature of the psyche of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
Trans seek to remove doctors from medical treatment (bit of a conundrum) precisely because they wish to “transition” the body.
Homosexuality is a constant.
I feel “gay” is a hobby. That reduces confusion of homosexual sex (not unusual at all) with gay politics.
I disagree, there is very limited evidence that mammals or any animal species has deliberate heterosexual sex in the same way that homosexual persons engaging in homosexual acts are deliberately engaging in these activities.
What we are seeing in animal studies for homosexual activity (which there very few and extreme examples) is that some non-human animals have disordered sexual function and for the most part that’s not abhorrent in non-human animals as they aren’t moral agents and can’t choose their actions, they act on base instinct and sometimes that instinct is disordered. So we see cases of animal mothers eating their sexual partners or animals mothers killing or eating their children or abandoning their children especially if they conceive and bear young very early in life. We see coerced sexual behaviour in animals - most non-human animal sex is not consensual or wanted by the female animal, some female animals run away from their sexual partners and some animals bodies are designed with superficial birth canals to limit the amount of sperm deposited by the multiple male partners that will naturally copulate with the female. Almost all non-human animals engage in ”incest” of some kind, whether it be mother-father-child or brother-sister kind. We don’t call this incest for non-human animals as they are not moral agents.
Now, given our knowledge of non-human animal sexual behaviour we do not as human animals seek to emulate this behaviour. We have very strong commitments against incest, paedophilia and rape. We don’t eat our sexual partners or our children as a matter of course. And if we kill our children or sexual partners we are punished for doing so.
Homosexual sex, even if it were strongly observed in non-human animals is not an appropriate argument for warranting its behaviour in human animals. But even so, the non-human animal studies if they suggest non-human sexual homosexual sexual activity is strongly consistent than this strongly pushes back against the y human based evidence that suggest homosexuality in the human animal species is wildly divergent. If this weren’t true, you would have no examples of so-call “gay” men and women who have long-term successful sexual relationships including the rearing of children with an opposite sex partner. But we have numerous examples of this, tragically. We also have numerous examples of so-called “gay” parents who abandon their children (especially if they are not their biological children) to pursue other sexual relationships, straight or gay.
Human sexuality is more complex than biology, the so-called “gay movement” tried without success to reduce their behaviour to “natural” biology but have catastrophically failed.
Transgender activists have already emulated the gay movement in grounding transgender behaviour in non-human animal studies, also without success because as explained above for animal sexual behaviour, the moral argument doesn’t stack up. If you’re unfamiliar with these studies they are easy to find, this jstor article is a good example: https://daily.jstor.org/transgender-proclivities-in-animals/
The only reason that animals haven’t “become” transgender so to speak is because they lack the intelligence to manipulate their own bodies medically.
You are contradicted by legions of scientists, and observations - literally thousands of written observations going back 2500 years for both homosexual pair bonding and homosexual sex in animals. It’s very old news.
It’s utterly natural, but unusual behavior, and sociobiology has empirically deduced genomic advantage for homosexualities. It was difficult to explain evolutionarily but genomic statistics show why one particular type - late birth order homosexuality has substantial advantages in humans. The others are likely similar.
The best way to think of homosexuality is as a complex altruism. Similarly with Catholic Priests and Nuns, Buddhists, and others who don’t marry and reproduce.
So, unfortunately your observations are irrelevant since it’s pure opinion and not empirical science.
Sorry.
Catholic priests and nuns may marry, it’s only in the Western or Latin rite where celibacy is maintained and you can enter the priesthood and religious life after having children provided you are not married at the same time (this includes your marriage being annulled).
Celibacy in the Catholic Church is a traditional discipline to enable focus on the utter dedication of one’s life to God and for God. As marriage is considered a vocation and a sacrament and so is religious life and priesthood, it’s the tradition in the Latin rite to only hold one of these sacraments at once to maintain focus. It has nothing to do with altruism and isn’t a sacrifice for any person or society. I can’t speak to Buddhist celibacy as there are so many variants of Buddhism but I can’t imagine that their celibacy is considered altruistic either.
I think arguing homosexuality has inherent benefit for society is a poor argument. Homosexual persons can’t reproduce, they often have very complex relational and psychological issues and have until recently (due to advancement of medicine) have been known as highly effective vectors of venereal disease due to their sexual behaviour. Whether a behaviour is “natural” is immaterial to whether or not it is morally good.
And I’m unconvinced there is more than about 30 years of literature arguing in favour of human homosexual pair bonding using non-human surrogates. 2000 years ago homosexuality was a criminal and moral offence, if homosexual behaviour existed in most civilised societies it was at least frowned upon or at worst eradicated completely.
Some more ancient Pacific cultures took the position even to socialise out homosexual behaviour by manipulating sex behaviour. So we have examples in Pacific cultures where men who would in other cultures be considered “gay” be considered “feminine” and treated as a kind of woman, without denying the biological reality of the man.
But even if the science and the history and the philosophy was replete with examples of homosexual behaviour in all animal species (however small) it wouldn’t follow that homosexual sexual behaviour is morally good.
The moral argument is what won gay rights and gay marriage and gay adoption in modern western society. A moral argument with a strong “identity-based” underpinning has been the successful argument and it’s how the transgender movement is succeeding. It’s unfortunate for those who are gay or lesbian who wish to wash their hands of this association however many prominent LGB people in philosophy openly grant this connection, e.g. Stonewall.
Morally? We're back to 19th century. Next we scrutinize birth control and women working.
I agree. I have my doubts about the status of the "gay identity". I think that for a lot of guys, they want a lot of sex and no consequences. There are a ton of examples of people have hetero relations, kids, etc, and then making a decision in midlife that they are gay. I believe that Freud identified gay sex as arrested development - many go thru a phase of intense affection for same-sex persons. Most progress beyond that. Some get stuck in a developmental dead-end.
I find middle aged “coming out as gay” particularly devastating. In fact only recently a colleague of mine ended her 7-year relationship with her boyfriend (who simply “fell out of love with her”) and discovered through a third-party that he very heavily invested in the homosexual lifestyle, in an extremely flamboyant way that was very unusual.
There were no hints he was gay in their relationship, he didn’t even reveal his sexuality as a reason for their relationship demise. But if the theories of sexualitu hold true he must have known he was gay, since he was a young child, and that feeling would have been consistent and persistent.
If so, why did he choose to engage in an exclusive heterosexual sexually active relationship for nearly a decade, when he knew he had an exclusive sexual attraction to men? Why did he choose to subject this woman to nearly a decade of lies and ruin her childbearing years? Now she has severe trauma, she thinks every man is hiding a gay persona and enters really risky sexual relationships because she thinks she does not deserve better.
It baffled my mind why if sexuality is fundamentally true, that so many people still choose to outwardly lie to their loved ones about it. There’s nothing shameful about living a chaste life and being comfortable with having sexual desire you cannot act upon. But dragging your family through a pit of lies is selfish and cruel.
I couldn't agree more. How someone can drag another person through a completely false relationship including marriage and children, using their family as a shield from their homosexuality, ruining the other person's life (for lots of reasons including preventing the other person from enjoying an authentic partnership for all those years) has always been beyond me. Your friend is certainly not alone. Paedophiles also do it as a matter of course, as do autogynephiles. I think it's actually rampant.
I'm 56, never married, think I am now celibate ....because their are SO MANY potential pitfalls to tethering yourself to another person (in my case, Man). And the older I get, the more thankful I feel that I was able to enjoy a life of complete independence. Commiserations to your friend. I totally feel their pain.
No, sexual orientation is a natural phenomenon in animals, and is invariant over the lifetime of animals.
Homosexual sheep don’t become heterosexual, neither do penguins, lionesses or apes.
Sexuality has nothing to do with psychology - there is no known “psychology” of penguins yet some pair born homosexually for life, as do, geese. Roughly 10% of sheep are homosexual as ranchers know.
Your statements were common 50 years ago. The natural history of homosexuality has become much more detailed and specific since then.
There are no credible cases of sex attraction reversal.
It’s not a “psychological” concept but one of attractions. It’s not reversible by therapy, and research and consensus are firm.
I’ve addressed this comment above.
This type of biological argument that you propose to justify homosexual sexual behaviour in non-human animals is indeed an old argument. It has been wholesale abandoned by most LGB proponents who prefer moral arguments to argue their case as they are far more relevant to society than emulating non-human animal behaviour, for the reasons explained above.
For instance, we don’t use the seahorse as a valid argument for why a male human should be impregnated and carry a child. However, based on your argument above, we should because there is at least one consistent non-human animal example of transgender behaviour - pregnant males.
It’s a hard pill for LGB to swallow unfortunately, but the transgender movement is a natural progression from the sexuality movement. Both have claimed and have failed to justify a biological basis and both now firmly cling to psychological evidence and moral reasoning for justification. And because of the success of the so-called “gay” movement, we naturally have paved the way for the success of the transgender movement. Unless we abandon both (which we won’t) then we have to accept both as being naturally emergent from one another.
It’s fascinating to think that the center of the Venn diagram of people with Own-Body perception issues and people who are gender non conforming could be the population that typically identifies as trans.
It could be interesting to look into how people with autism likely have a more relatively stable disturbance in their Own Body perception whereas people who have traumatic events like a sexual assault (a common trigger for gender dysphoria) could have a transient issue in this as a sort of dissociation
"Free to Be...You & Me," the great book, record and film project, carried the exact opposite message of Turban's book. His title leeches off its legacy.
If you look up just one song, check out "William Wants a Doll," and you'll see what I mean.
As always very readable. I believe firmly that certain forms of trans will be located eventually in a material reality of the brains “map” of the body. This is the “false limb” version of trans. Sexual body integrity disorder. Trans and BIId know this, and avoid discussing it entirely - I’ve seen trans people publicly excoriated for even proposing a question about the similarity - that there a problem in body mapping causing distress. The issue of course is not being the opposite sex, but having the wrong sex, in having the wrong arm or leg.
The other part of trans is simply female fetishism; not being in the wrong body but getting turned on by the idea of being what I think of as ‘hooker female’. As with all fetishes there’s no underlying substrate. Getting turned on by balloons or rubber has no magic neural basis, neither does erotic female impersonation.
Feminine males and masculine females are natural variants of behavior in animals, and in males are seen as a way to bypass dominant males to mate.
Trans would identify all gay males as trans because by definition, males having sex with males is “gender nonconforming”. Gender is a fictional term as you note “pseudoscience”, and any observations based on “gender” have no value in science, no truth value and can be refuted trivially.
My 100% favorite “nonconforming” behavior is playing with dolls. Common in both boys and girls, predominantly male in adults, but labeled as feminine. Girls tend to play with female dolls which are called dolls while boys play with male dolls called action figures. Some adult women may have dolls but I rarely see it. However adult men collect “action figures” well into adulthood (as well as hentai and other sexualized figures) you only red to watch the ubiquitous TV show Big Bang Theory to see men playing with dolls, it eve serves as a key plot point. Feminine? Masculine.? Atypical?
It’s all nonsense.
Is there a risk, that where gender non-conformity might be celebrated, it might be pathologized?
> Rather, it suggests that genetic factors may contribute to gender nonconformity, which can cause distress and a desire to be the opposite sex,
> In conclusion, biological factors are associated with being transgender, but being transgender itself is not an inherent condition one is born with.
The second sentence comes close to contradicting itself. What is biological is inherent, no? And surely we are born with our biology? Thus if there are biological factors there are inherent factors. What bothers me is that the author seems to feel that the battle between trans ideology and sanity hinges on whether or not there is a biological component. If there is then the transies win, therefore our side will attempt to deprecate the biological aspect while yet admitting that it is there.
Bad strategy. The question is not whether there is a biological factor, the question is whether trans identity accords with reality or even trumps reality. We say it does not. Ergo trans is a disorder irrespective of whether or not it has a biological factor. As mentioned above, trans is comparable to anorexia, which nobody attempts to rehabilitate to being an 'identity'. It is a disorder plain and simple and if a teenage girl who weights 70 pounds 'identifies' as fat, she is mistaken and that fact would not be less true in the slightest if we did discover 'a gene for anorexia'.
> many of the twins were same-sex attracted, a factor often associated with gender nonconformity
This is like claiming that the emperor's pants do not exist but that his tunic is spectacular. Trying to claim that homosexuality is healthy, natural and normal but trans is disordered, is not logically possible. It is equally hopeless to hinge that question on whether or not genes are involved. Transies and homosexuals are equally suffering from what is objectively and unavoidably a disorder. The important difference however is that homosexuals do not usually deny reality -- their behavior is disordered whereas the transie's mind is disordered.
Genes, prenatal stress, childhood traumas of different kinds, who knows what else? The point is that irrespective of the etiology, what is unreal remains unreal.