२१ मार्च, २०२२

"Don't blame men. It's not our fault that men make better women than women do."

Quips Instapundit, linking to "Women's opportunities are being taken away by 'womxn'/Biological men that identify as women are invading the area created specifically for women and are not only doing a disservice to the women but themselves as well" (Campus Reform). 

I'm not blogging this to engage on the issue whether transwomen belong in women's sports. But I will say, as I've said before, that I think women's sports has to do with the physical body, and not with the mind. Transgenderism radically prioritizes the mind over the body. Each of us holds dominion over our own mind, and that includes power to think of yourself in gendered terms and to give any meaning you want to the idea of what it means to be a woman. In your mind, you can believe it refers only to the body or only to the mind or to something in between or to nothing at all.

The reason I'm blogging this is to extract an unexamined question from "men make better women than women do." And that is: What makes a woman?

If you Google that question, the first thing you'll see is probably the Katy Perry song with that title:

 

Katy says you "could spend your whole life, but you couldn't describe what makes a woman/She’s always been a perfect mystery... and that's what makes a woman to me." That is: It's a mystery! There's no answer — even if you spend your whole life looking for the answer. There's a problem with the question! There is nothing that "makes a woman." 

I quoted the chorus. The verse contemplates the possibility that it has to do with speaking in a sweet way, having soft skin, being a bitch, buttering up her man, changing her mind, fearing abandonment, having a particular sort of hairdo, not wearing makeup, having intuition, crying, or nursing a broken heart.

I see there was an op-ed in the NYT with the headline "What Makes a Woman?" back in 2015. The author, Elinor Burke, remembered the way Lawrence H. Summers — president of Harvard at the time — was denounced as a massive sexist because he simply wondered aloud about the possibility of difference between the male and the female mind. But more recently Caitlin Jenner had announced, "My brain is much more female than it is male." We're told:

“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girl’s brain’ or ‘that’s a boy’s brain,’ ” Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Britain’s Aston University, told The Telegraph last year. The differences between male and female brains are caused by the “drip, drip, drip” of the gendered environment, she said. The drip, drip, drip of Ms. Jenner’s experience included a hefty dose of male privilege few women could possibly imagine.... 
After [Ms.] Jenner talked about [her] brain, one friend called it an outrage and asked in exasperation, “Is he saying that he’s bad at math, weeps during bad movies and is hard-wired for empathy?” After the release of the Vanity Fair photos of Ms. Jenner, Susan Ager, a Michigan journalist, wrote on her Facebook page, “I fully support Caitlyn Jenner, but I wish she hadn’t chosen to come out as a sex babe.”

From the comments: "I was disappointed that Caitlyn Jenner came out as a sexpot. A stereotypically male stereotypical vision of what a woman is."

Here's a 2016 article in The Atlantic: "What Makes a Man or a Woman?" We're told of the "internal tension on the left":

On one hand, we are told that gender is simply a social construct; that there is no such thing as a “male brain” or “female brain,” as we all exist on a spectrum; and that we should break out of the rigid “binary” modes of thinking about male and female, allowing for a broader range of personal expression.... 
But the transgender movement... argues that a person who conforms outwardly to socially conditioned, feminine gender roles is actually and truly a woman, irrespective of sex, while a person who adopts stereotypical male behaviours and dress is actually and truly a man. How regressive! 
Moreover, in arguing that a biological man can have a female brain or vice versa, the transgender movement seems to be saying that gender is not a social construct, but is instead rooted in biology—but, apparently, not the biology dictated by chromosomes. The alternative theory is that trans people’s bodies don’t align with their souls.... 
Is gender a mere social construct, or is it biological? And if gender is a meaningless social construct, while sex is a set of immutable biological characteristics, then why is there a push in progressive circles to eliminate sex-based protections in favour of gender-based ones?

And here's an article in Elle from 2015, "What Makes A Woman?/Three women discuss how they defined femininity on their own unique terms." 

Is femininity just a performance, as gender theorist Judith Butler once argued? Or is our sense of womanhood beyond our control, shaped by early experiences in our childhood? Indeed, femininity is personal, complex and tied irrevocably to circumstances that we often have no control over. So the best way to understand is to listen to each other’s stories. And so we've asked three women....

If it's really all about telling your own story, then if "men make better women than women do," it would be because they tell better stories about their womanhood! And why wouldn't a transwoman tell a better story about what it means to be a woman? In their circumstance, they have so much more incentive.

Indeed, the first of the 3 women who tell their story to Elle is a transwoman, a model named Hari Neff:

I do feel a certain amount of pride as someone who completely constructed herself from the ground up. None of this was given to me – this body was not given to me and my standing as a woman was not given to me. I had to earn all of this for myself; every trans person has to make that for themselves and I think that’s why trans people are so strong....

I was just going out and changing up my look, experimenting with drag. I didn’t dive into being a woman – I added elements piece by piece.... I was shaving my eyebrows, had bleached hair and wore make-up...

I think I internalised femininity through fashion and through pop culture, and started to create a woman in my head.... I began to attach desires and value judgements to things, and eventually understood that this woman was stronger and better equipped than I was to deal with the world. I came to the point where I had no doubt that I would be a better person, a happier person, if I inhabited her....

Radical feminists ask, ‘Why would you ever want to be a woman? Why would you ever want to give up that male privilege?’ And I don’t really have an answer for that other than the burden of being a man, for me, was far more severe than anything I’ve experienced on the other side.

Once you’ve changed gender, the annoying aspects of daily life become secondary. I sweat the small stuff less. I’m very happy. I’m not saying that trans women are more evolved than other women, but I really do think they are the coolest, most beautiful people in the world because everything about them in relation to their gender, their appearance, the people they ‘are’, they built.

And there you have it, Neff seriously makes the point that Instapundit put in a quip.

७९ टिप्पण्या:

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

Darker corners of the net have been hypothesizing what would happen if 'AquaMa'am' ended up switching back to his male identity either in the short or long-term, casting off his female identity in a taunting manner as a 'gotcha' to NCAA, women everywhere, and other interest groups.

It raises some interesting issues, even more controversial than the ones surrounding what's going on. Frankly, if he pulled this stunt it would be even more damning of NCAA, women, and trans-supporters (aka 'transporters') than it is now...which is also why I secretly am hoping this would happen.

These people deserve it.

Tim म्हणाले...

As I remember it, Summers got in trouble for saying that men and women were different. That while average intelligence between men and women was as close to equal as to make no difference, the standard deviation of intelligence for men was a lot bigger. The distribution was much flatter. There are more really intelligent and more really stupid guys than girls. Which is just what the data shows. No inference was made as to why or how this occurred, just that the data indicated this was the case. As most leftists, which is most Harvard students, alumni and faculty, firmly believe they are entitled to their own facts, this was considered to be beyond the pale.

Kevin म्हणाले...

In my mind I can bench press 450lb.

On a bad day.

gilbar म्हणाले...

can't We ALL Agree, that the Only thing Womb People are for, is making babies?

Kevin म्हणाले...

There is nothing that "makes a woman."

But we do know what little girls are made of.

Is that stuff still inside as she grows up? Or is that part of the mystery?

Critter म्हणाले...

I’m breaking my practice of not commenting on this topic only to say this discussion is among the uninformed and clueless. I’ll never understand why people need definitions when we should just live our lives. Nothing fits neatly into any definition so why bother? Just accept people for who they are and get on with life.

Gahrie म्हणाले...

I've asked before, and I'll ask again: Why the fuck are you women putting up with this bullshit? They are literally destroying femineity and womanhood are you are not only applauding you're helping! They've spent fifty years trying to destroy masculinity but at least we fought back.

They named men woman of the year and you cheered. They called mothers "birthing people" and you applauded. They're eager to destroy women's sports to display their virtue. (Oh how I long for eleven of the US Men's under 18 soccer squad to declare themselves women and immediately take the starting line up of the US Women's National soccer team)

How much is too much? How far is too far?

Original Mike म्हणाले...

"Each of us holds dominion over our own mind, "

I wish!

wendybar म्हणाले...

DNA makes a woman, a woman. Period.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

Pick a hair color and stick with it.

Deevs म्हणाले...

That Gina Rippon quote about there being no difference between male and female brains is interesting. In the "transwomen are women" debates I often hear the person in the affirmative refer to some study that showed through MRI scans that transwomen brains are closer to female brains than male brains. I've never actually seen this study, so I've always wondered at its quality. I always figured it's probably not great since no one seems to be recommending MRI scans as a diagnostic tool for identifying a trans person. Still, now I have to wonder how accurate Ms. Rippon's claim is alongside the claims of this unnamed study. One day I'll get around to researching it.

Huh, got an error trying to send this through, so sorry if it comes twice.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

As Dave Chappelle notes, the vast majority of trans women are white men, colonizing women’s spaces and bodies the way they have throughout history.

Browndog म्हणाले...

I think of the adjectives average men used to describe women before feminism compared to today.

They've destroyed their brand.

WK म्हणाले...

Katy seems to know what makes a woman. Others only know about “feels”.
Billy Joel know what a woman always is.
Shania Twain knows what it is like to feel like a woman.
So does Mary J Blige.
Aretha Franklin know what a natural woman feels like.
More feels like than makes.

Enigma म्हणाले...

Too much navel gazing here. It's simple behavioral conditioning about taboos and the creation of superstitions. Left wing academics documented the creation non-functional superstitious behavior 75 years ago. See B.F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning.

Step 1: Invent science and study male/female differences as OBVIOUS natural, functional categories.
Step 2: Discover deep and enduring sex differences across all cultures. Declare biology real and create women's sports, etc. to shield them from men in competition.
Step 3: The next generation of progressives/change politicians decide to challenge biology and can only do this by changing the discussion from sex to gender. Doublespeak arises.
Step 4: Make discussion of biology taboo, whereby children go untrained and feel "dirty" for even thinking about biological and any "racist/sexist" innate differences.
Step 5: Create an untrained culture that lacks all awareness of the strong evidence from biological research.
Step 6: As biology is taboo, create the incoherent anti-progressive and bigoted mish-mash that is "Privilege" theory and Wokeness. This is "biology" for ignorant bigots.
Step 7: Become an army of ignorant tin-hat dictators who promote utter nonsense and set themselves up for an extinction event.

tommyesq म्हणाले...

“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girl’s brain’ or ‘that’s a boy’s brain,’ ” Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Britain’s Aston University, told The Telegraph last year. The differences between male and female brains are caused by the “drip, drip, drip” of the gendered environment...";

I do feel a certain amount of pride as someone who completely constructed herself from the ground up. None of this was given to me;

and

I’m not saying that trans women are more evolved than other women, but I really do think they are the coolest, most beautiful people in the world because everything about them in relation to their gender, their appearance, the people they ‘are’, they built.

all run counter to the notion that you are "born this way."

n.n म्हणाले...

Trans/neo is confusing. Trans/homo is "=". What is a liberal society to do with the feminine female "burden"?

Real American म्हणाले...

Nonsense. A woman is an adult human female. She has xx chromosomes and female reproductive organs. It is not a costume. It is not a belief. The people pushing the trans ideology want to debase our language and muddy the waters to trick people into believing there's no definition. There is, and it's a biological fact. No amount of delusions, hormones, surgery, name and wardrobe changes, politics, laws, or enabling can change it.

robother म्हणाले...

Emphasis on "make." If you want to make a project out of becoming a woman, then a man is just the... man for the job.

n.n म्हणाले...

Trans/fluid, identify as male, of the masculine gender, and hold the surgical, medical, and psychiatric corruption. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #BabyLivesMatter

Zev म्हणाले...

You can believe whatever you like in your mind, but reality is a different beast.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"What makes a woman?"

You know that question is verboten, right?

It marks the ultimate victory of the patriarchy for men to decide what makes a woman.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

Biology is destiny. Failure to comprehend that is delusional. If we want to humor the delusional, we can, but we still have to draw some lines. One possible solution: Men's competition, women's competition, transgender competition. Lia Thomas is the fastest transgender swimmer in the NCAA--so far.

Follow the science!

Patrick म्हणाले...

Waaaay too much keyboard ink spilled on this post. Anything tangentially transgender is not worth reading about. Sorry, it just isn't. Unless you want to talk about how it is part of a mental disorder.

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Here's a question: where's the actual science (not pop psychology but actual, peer-reviewed scientific studies) showing that feelings override biology? I'm not aware of any, but I haven't gone looking for it, either.

Karen of Texas म्हणाले...

What makes a woman? Raise your hand if you've heard,"Got your period?? Ah, now you're a woman."

So, getting your period equals what makes you a woman.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

Why is she covering those hooters with a mumu?

Clyde म्हणाले...

What makes a woman? XX chromosomes and 18 years.

farmgirl म्हणाले...

I’m not relying on Katey Perry for the definition of a woman.

J Melcher म्हणाले...

Analogous to the frequently made claim that immigrants appreciate their new, chosen, homeland more than native born citizens do

farmgirl म्हणाले...

Sorry- I, uh- got ahead of myself.
I listened to the song- we’re not a mystery. We’re just individually indescribable:0)

Also, we were “created” male and female.
Anything else is self- made.

Not the same.

Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

If it's really all about telling your own story, then if "men make better women than women do," it would be because they tell better stories about their womanhood!

Most guys tell stories about their manhood

Like fishing stories they tend to exaggerate certain details...

Mark म्हणाले...

What makes a woman?

What makes a woman is revealed in the body.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The first half dozen pages of Derrida's interview with Christie McDonald cover what a woman is, in the context of feminism Choreographies (pdf)

Includes Emma Goldman's quip "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" in the first line.

Feminism takes itself as the exchange of sexual identity cards, which is just trying to interest women in pursuing in what interests men instead of what interests women, namely the making of places.

What a woman is without regard to feminism is covered in Derrida's very short "Spurs," (skip the preface by somebody else). Woman is not at all concerned with truth. She is truth. A reading of Nietzsche on women.

It's possible that women won't recognize the truth of any of these, just like Levinas on the phenomenology of the erotic seems right to men and wrong to women.

Jupiter म्हणाले...

How Freudian.

rhhardin म्हणाले...


The trans swimmer discouraging women flap sounds like it's turning into just another thing that men are doing wrong. that may work to rally women, maybe overcoming their natural trans-empathy, but nevertheless is an internal conflict. Blame men or pity trans people. It's a hard choice for a women. Both are so attractive.

Paul Zrimsek म्हणाले...

One of the many things wrong with the gender radicals is that they don't seem to realize they need an answer to Katy Perry's question. It can't merely be a matter of self-identification, or the self-identification would be without content: "I identify as a (person who identifies as a (person who identifies as a (...)))

wildswan म्हणाले...

It seems that men can transition into women and then into women's sports and become champions but women cannot similarly successfully transition. This surely means something but it's a "Hunter's laptop" - a fact the media will not let us know or reflect on at this moment. Later we will be allowed to know. Oh thank you, Masters of the News, you is so good to us poor little nobodies.

But those women swimmers will always be done out of their medals and their moment in the sun.

There were East German woman who also lost their medals back in the day when changing your hormone mix was called doping and I wonder what the difference is between their hormone mix and that of Lia Thomas. Perhaps we should reparatively restore those medals? why not?

And then I'd like to see how men who transition handle being an aging woman. Perhaps they'll show us the way to just replace parts and get rid of age. Punch it, chewie.

pacwest म्हणाले...

and that includes power to think of yourself in gendered terms and to give any meaning you want to the idea of what it means to be a woman.

Too bad reality keeps intruding on wishful t thinking. Damn problem that. I highly recommend that we avoid reality as much as possible. You get better results that way.

Smilin' Jack म्हणाले...

What makes a woman?

Let’s listen to an expert:

I didn’t dive into being a woman – I added elements piece by piece.... I was shaving my eyebrows, had bleached hair and wore make-up... I think I internalised femininity through fashion and through pop culture...

And there’s your answer. The man who builds a house knows what makes it better than the person who merely lives there.

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

"And there you have it, Neff seriously makes the point that Instapundit put in a quip."

Is that mansplaining? Transmansplaining? No, I guess that is transwomansplaining -- going on and on as some kind of expert telling women how men are better at being women than women are.

Sex Tips for a Straight Woman from a Gay Man

The Vault Dweller म्हणाले...

Well I would say the easy answer and probably the correct one is that a woman is an adult human female. To the extent that is a constraining or excluding I'm fine with that. As far as what makes a woman in broader what type of characteristics, other than adult human female, we associate, expect or hope for in a woman I don't know. But my sense is that it is not to mimic the characteristics we expect in a man.

Amy Welborn म्हणाले...

Do you notice something?


Those agitating most strongly to be considered - by law, society and custom - as a part of the natal group they were *not* born as - are men. Wanting to be considered as women.

There are certainly girls and women who have noped on their femaleness - in concerning numbers for young women - but this BIG QUESTION and this naming of men to "best woman" and "woman of the year" does not get duplicated in the other direction. Perhaps it's because we don't have many "best man" type of recognitions any more. It's either "best person" or "best woman" (or "best [Choose your ethnicity]).

It is worth considering the nature of this aggressive insistence on the part of these men to be considered as women and be welcomed as women - even if they are fully intact genitally (which many, if not most are)

There is an unpleasant aspect to much of M to F transgenderism. Frankly, it's a fetish. And the reason for the insistence, narcissism and aggression on these men's parts drops into place pretty perfectly when you understand it as such - Oh, I get it - they get sexually aroused from being perceived as women and accepted into women's spaces. That also explains the refusal to take no for an answer.

It's called autogynephelia.

The whole mess of "trans" is not even a coherent identity. It's a catch-all phrase that in the present moment includes not only these young women suffering so much – almost unbelievable levels of suffering, depression and anxiety who end up trying to escape it all by escaping the female part of themselves – but also freakish men who frankly are sexually aroused by themselves as women.

As a commenter on a board I read said:

The thing with "true trans" is that in order to accept that it's real, one still needs to define "trans" and as we have seen "trans" means anything from a dysphoric, mentally ill individual to a man who likes to wear lipstick on Thursdays and gets off when you call him "Candi" to a girl trying to escape misogyny to a drag queen to a woman who likes video games and a man who likes kittens to a gay man or lesbian trying to escape homophobia.

Owen म्हणाले...

I think this is incorrect: "There's a problem with the question! There is nothing that 'makes a woman.'"

The answer to the question is "a mystery." That is different from saying "nothing." A "mystery" means "Whatever it is, we don't know it and can't know it." In other words, the solution set is not objectively EMPTY, it's just not accessible to the likes of us.

The Vault Dweller म्हणाले...

Having listened to some of Katy Perry's song I will say I am not a fan of women artists trying to 'own' the word bitch when they just mean at times mean or disagreeable. On one end it portrays an idea that whenever a woman is mean or disagreeable she is a bitch, and on the other end it seemingly tries to justify any and all behavior of being mean or disagreeable as fine because women are going to naturally be a 'bitch'.

Ted म्हणाले...

Your headline immediately made me think of that famous line from "Tootsie," delivered by Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange: "I was a better man with you as a woman... than I ever was with a woman as a man."

(Of course, Hoffman had only been pretending to be a woman -- something that used to be considered funny in movies, but never will be again.)

iowan2 म्हणाले...

But I will say, as I've said before, that I think women's sports has to do with the physical body, and not with the mind,

That's what I have been trying to say, but made if way more complicated. You have it distilled down to the core.

This fixes all the debate. We keep trying to be binary, when it can be treated exactly that way.
The body is important in those things that the body, in fact, is determinate.
Mother. Men can't be.
Athletes. testosterone makes a difference.
Public toilets and locker rooms. Genitalia matter.

Now we get the High school athletic associations, and the NCAA see the light, and we are on our way. Everybody wins.

Bart Hall म्हणाले...

What makes a woman ?? Two X chromosomes, a vulva, a particular configuration of the pelvis, and an open angle of the forearm bones.

Except for the vulva, all characteristic are determinative in complete (or even partial) skeletons many tens of thousands of years old.

Static Ping म्हणाले...

Critter: I’ll never understand why people need definitions when we should just live our lives.

Because the laws are arranged around the distinction between men and women. Breaking down the definitions is a fundamental and massive change in how the law works and, by extension, how everyone lives. Trans also fundamentally undercuts the entire concept of homosexuality, which we were supposed to care about but only when it is not inconvenient to the new thing we are supposed to care about.

I agree that we should just live our lives. The problem is this imposition is going to make that impossible. This is not some minor thing. This is revolutionary and totalitarian. Something will have to give and how it gives will be very unpleasant.

mikee म्हणाले...

We indeed "all exist on a spectrum" of gender, but we individually inhabit only a fairly small range of that spectrum, in most cases.

As to sports, I realized at 15 that I'd never make it to the Olympics as a male swimmer when a kid a full year younger than me, but a full foot taller than me, with one arm in a Fiberglas cast, lapped me on the 500 free, leaving me in a distant 2nd place. Genetics is what it is, and a lot of athletes are born, then also made, successful. Males under 6' tall are at a disadvantage in swimming as males.

Crimso म्हणाले...

I'm old enough to remember when the GOP was allegedly waging war on women. Thomas wins a Medal of Honor in the war on women.

gilbar म्हणाले...

if YOU have a problem, with men taking women's places..
the National Women's Law Center has a word for You: MISOYGNIST

'Lia, we need people like you': National Women's Law Center is calling critics of controversial trans swimmer Lia Thomas MISOYGNISTS

You LITERALLY, can NOT make this stuff up!!

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Women. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.

--Steven Wright

n.n म्हणाले...

women artists trying to 'own' the word bitch

It's cross-species cultural appropriation, without negative connotations. Just like a pride parade of lions, lionesses, and their unPlanned cubs.

Chris Lopes म्हणाले...

"Just accept people for who they are and get on with life."

Sometimes there's a difference between who people are and who they say they are. A man "identifying" as a woman is still a man. While using his preferred pronouns doesn't hurt anyone, letting him compete in women's sports, change in the women's locker room, or stay at a woman's shelter would. Dealing with such a person on a one to one basis is one thing, making society buy into their delusion is another.

Bender म्हणाले...

From the trans perspective, what makes a woman is sexual stereotypes.

StephenFearby म्हणाले...


Hippocampus (2021)

Sex differences in hippocampal connectivity during spatial long-term memory

This study is behind a Wiley paywall (only abstract available), but since I have access to the full paper, below is a pertinent extract:

"...One study used diffusion tensor imaging to map the structural connectome of the human brain (Ingalhalikar et al., 2014). They found that females had more interhemispheric connections than males (i.e., structural connections between the hemispheres), while males had more intrahemispheric connections than females (i.e., structural connections within each hemisphere)." Which links to a much fuller and more interesting explanation:

Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America (2014)

Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain.

"...In all supratentorial regions, males had greater within-hemispheric connectivity, as well as enhanced modularity and transitivity, whereas between-hemispheric connectivity and cross-module participation predominated in females.

However, this effect was reversed in the cerebellar connections.

Analysis of these changes developmentally demonstrated differences in trajectory between males and females mainly in adolescence and in adulthood.

Overall, the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1316909110

Vive la difference!

Rollo म्हणाले...

Katy's pretty bland in this one. Meredith Brooks and Shania Twain brought more energy and sass to answering the woman question.

I feel for kids who don't know who they are, but if a fiftyish Richard/Rachel Levine had asked me, I would probably have told him that gender was the least of his problems.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...


“I’m breaking my practice of not commenting on this topic only to say this discussion is among the uninformed and clueless. I’ll never understand why people need definitions when we should just live our lives. Nothing fits neatly into any definition so why bother? Just accept people for who they are and get on with life.”

Wow, that sounds so measured and tolerant. Never mind the people victimized by it.

n.n म्हणाले...

DNA makes a woman, a woman.

Sex is genetic, and gender is attributes with a narrow, sex-correlated normal distribution. The transgender spectrum disorder occurs on the fringe, and aside from recognizing individual dignity, individual conscience, and intrinsic value, or as a political congruence (e.g. leverage), has no redeeming value to society or humanity. While normalization is not another wicked solution, it does avoid reconciliation. It's over, maybe.

Jamie म्हणाले...

StephenFearsby, interesting excerpts. But can these differences be observed in - for instance - the brains of neonates? Can they be observed across cultures? In those rare cases pre-DNA, where a child was born with hermaphrodite genitalia, parents had to choose how to raise the child, later it was possible to determine definitively whether the person was genetically male or female or one of the very rare variants, would that person's brain show the characteristics of the chromosomal sex, or would environment have altered brain structures, as the person quoted in Ann's post suggests?

Rory म्हणाले...

"Why the fuck are you women putting up with this bullshit?"

For the same reason progressive women put up with their sons being denied due process.They still gain from the overall arrangement. -

Steve Pitment म्हणाले...

True story. Once, when there was some noise in the house from kids playing, I heard a concerning and repetitive squeaking sound. I surmised that the washing machine was having mechanical difficulties, or something like that. Turns out it was Katie Perry on the radio. What a dreadful and untalented performer.

Bunkypotatohead म्हणाले...

They break just like a little girl.

Christopher B म्हणाले...

I've often tried to come up with a 'unified field theory', as Steve Hayward likes to say, to explain the vehement support of gay and especially trans from progressive females. In the past I've used the concept of a radically illogical extension of Blank-Slate-ism supported by feminism but that always faltered on the incongruity of also supporting the 'born this way' concept of sexuality. I'm thinking now the piece I was missing was the intersection of the radical Blank Slate with equally radical extensions of equity-based outcome equality. This would align the concept that we are assigned a race and sex at birth as being indicative of a set of social assumptions (straight, gender aligned with our naughty bits, even extending to intelligence and other attributes) tied to biological markers with the idea that we can and should construct a society in which everyone can achieve their self-actualizing goals because limitations, including such limitations as IQ, don't really exist except as social constructs in their unconstrained vision, borrowing from Mr. Sowell. If Will Thomas wants to be an Olympic-caliber swimmer then we need to construct a reality that allows him to achieve that goal.

William50 म्हणाले...

"Women were designed by God to guide, direct and supply the boundary conditions for their men. They were designed by God to be the relationship managers of marriage. They are the ones who are intended to provide strength, shelter and correction. Without understanding these roles, marriages will flounder and gender issues will remain unresolved."

From the book Guardian Angel: What You Must Know about God's Design for Women, by Skip Moen, D.Phil.

Tina Trent म्हणाले...

Gahrie, women are leading the fight against being made second class females, literally, in sports and the law, by the trans movement.

Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, and local conservative women's groups are the ones who drafted the legislation and stood up first to fight against biological males encroaching women's sports and against school districts encouraging children to declare themselves transgender and receive life-altering drugs and surgeries that sterilize them forever. We went to the state legislations, organized the opposition, and led the fight in the schools. Women unambiguously are the first and most consistent opponents of the trans agenda to disappear biologically-based sex distinctions.

All this started with hate crime laws when Clinton, Holder and Kagan codified the imaginary distinction between sex and gender into hate crime laws passed first in the states, then federal law. They did this to exclude biological women from being counted, in federal stats and state laws, as victims of gender bias hate. Sex bias laws on the books are just systematically ignored: police and prosecutors are trained to ignore them. The 10,000 women alone raped by strangers annually would "overwhelm" and "distract" state hate crime law enforcement from highlighting the handful of overwhelmingly minor "bias crimes" committed against people other than biological females. Kill a trans person and it is automatically investigated as a hate crime. Kill a random woman, or 40, and it is intentionally not investigated as anti-female sex or gender animus or hate. The same is true of gay serial killers who prey on male victims. These laws were the beginning of the end of equal justice. Now all we have is justice in drag. There are countless cases where the non-preferred types of victims are officially of less worth in sentencing killers, such as the white woman and Hispanic man also murdered in the Atlanta massage parlor case. They are literally counted as less human than the Asian victims, in the media and in the courtrooms. It's sick.

walter म्हणाले...

If quoting trans tunes, the err..low hanging fruit..would be Dude loooks like a lady.
But if making it about feelings, maybe everything can trans. Consider Twain:

Man! I Feel like a Woman! Lyrics
[Intro]
Let's go, girls!
Come on!

[Verse 1]
I'm going out tonight
I'm feelin' alright
Gonna let it all hang out
Wanna make some noise
Really raise my voice
Yeah, I wanna scream and shout
No inhibitions
Make no conditions
Get a little outta line
I ain't gonna act politically correct
I only wanna have a good time

[Pre-Chorus]
The best thing about being a woman
Is the prerogative to have a little fun and...

[Chorus]
Oh-oh-oh, go totally crazy
Forget I'm a lady
Men's shirts, short skirts
Oh-oh-oh, really go wild
Yeah, doin' it in style
Oh-oh-oh, get in the action
Feel the attraction
Color my hair, do what I dare
Oh-oh-oh, I wanna be free
Yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man! I feel like a woman!
[Verse 2]
The girls need a break
Tonight we're gonna take
The chance to get out on the town
We don't need romance
We only wanna dance
We're gonna let our hair hang down

[Pre-Chorus]
The best thing about being a woman
Is the prerogative to have a little fun and...

[Chorus]
Oh-oh-oh, go totally crazy
Forget I'm a lady
Men's shirts, short skirts
Oh-oh-oh, really go wild
Yeah, doin' it in style
Oh-oh-oh, get in the action
Feel the attraction
Color my hair, do what I dare
Oh-oh-oh, I wanna be free
Yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man! I feel like a woman!

[Post-Chorus]
Oh, oh
Uh-huh
Oh, yeah

Jim म्हणाले...

Engineer here.

They used to sell fiberglass kits you could put on an old VW beetle that made it look just like a Porsche 356. It wasn’t a Porsche, though. It never would be.

That expresses how I feel about trans.

farmgirl म्हणाले...

Theology of the Body
Pope John Paul II

n.n म्हणाले...

the vehement support of gay and especially trans from progressive females

To be fair, neither male nor female trans/homos receive physiological advantage from their sex and sex-correlated gender attributes, other than through brayed inculcation do not encroach (e.g. trans/bi) on couples' relationships, and, unlike trans/neos, trans/quasis, trans/pseudos, do exhibit a stable divergence from the normal sex-correlated gender distribution.

Stephen Lindsay म्हणाले...

“And there you have it!” This was a top-tier post. Amazing.

Ken Mitchell म्हणाले...

wilLIAm Thomas isn't a woman, not even a "transgender woman". He's a man, with all his male bits and advantages. He dates exclusively women. As a trans-woman, he's a "male lesbian".

As man and as a swimmer, wilLIAm Thomas was a failure. Ranked #462 as a male swimmer, he decided to cheat, and CLAIM to be a woman. Because that was the ONLY way that he could win. And now he's stealing womens' medals and accolades and scholarships.

Keith_Indy म्हणाले...

I think that’s why trans people are so strong

That’s why they’re at higher risk for suicide and generally a walking encyclopedia of mental disorders.

And if your self-image and self-esteem require everyone around you to tip toe around reality, then your not strong.

I really do feel for them. I felt like a freak growing up, buck teeth sticking out, hit puberty before most of the other boys (seriously making fun of me for having thick pubic hair before everyone else, and then sprouting 11 inches in one year. I hated my body but not my SELF.

Thank God i didn’t grow up in todays environment.

The Grey Man म्हणाले...

I'm a trans-emperor. I identify as Napoleon. When do I get Corsica?

Teacher_in_Tejas म्हणाले...

Regarding a previous commenter who referred to women being reduced to "birthing people" I saw one even worse, some female CEO referred to biological women as "bleeders." Jesus, even the most chauvanistic male from the fifties would not be so disrespectful towards women.

goldglove51 म्हणाले...

As with most commentary on this subject, the terms defined do not answer the question...and the question is the wrong one anyway. The transgender issue isn't one about man or woman, nor about 'gender'...a word in the past most often appied to language.

It is a question about sex, and about male or female...very different than the above. Now Caitlyn Jenner or any other so-called 'transgender' can identify as anything they please, and I brook no issue with it. Indeed, if one wishes to identify as a barn owl, or a 1977 Ford Fairlane, go for it. But such identity does not make that person an owl nor a 35 year old automobile. Whoever it is is either a male, or female, human.

Asking 'what is a woman' can truthfully be answered any way one pleases. But to ask 'what is a male human', or a female human, can only be answered correctly based upon whether the subject has XX or XY chromosomes. Period. Caitlyn Jenner is male. Nothing he does...adding or subtracting from his body...can change that. Lia Thomas, the Penn transgender swimmer, may identify as a woman, but one need only take a glance at him (as, unfortunately, his female teammates are forced to do) physically to see he is male, no matter how carefully he tries to hide his maleness when he swims.

And so, one can argue the question 'what is a woman' all day long, and not be wrong from either side of the question. But one cannot argue 'what is a female human'; the answer is simply contained in the subject's DNA, and whether or not his/her chomosomes are both X, or XY.

Jim म्हणाले...

Titania McGrath made a related point on Twitter last fall:

"Misogynists always claim that men are better than women at sports.

But if that’s the case, how come [transgender weightlifter] Laurel Hubbard only started winning gold medals *after* she transitioned?

#Checkmate"

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1444307754831818753

Phelps म्हणाले...

“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girl’s brain’ or ‘that’s a boy’s brain,’ ” Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Britain’s Aston University, told The Telegraph last year.

I deal with a lot of neuroscientists, and this drives them crazy. This is either an evil, devious deception or an outright lie, depending on how you look at it.

It is difficult to tell the difference between a boy or girl's brain -- meaning, prepubescent. For men and women, any competent neuroscientist can tell the difference at a glance. It's not even hard. The differences are as stark as the pelvic and skull shape differences.

And yes, a MTF trannie has a male brain, just like its male everything else.