I think the answer is in this logic:Good question pic.twitter.com/cgdRX8TW01
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 23, 2025
Identity is in your feelings.
From that 1967 Clairol ad: "Why don't you try saying this out loud: 'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.' If you get a surge when you say the words, you're a blonde at heart." And you are free to bleach your hair blonde so it affirms your inner feelings.
And by the way, the blondest blondes in American culture — Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry — had to bleach their way to blondeness, and some classy writers have argued that they are more truly blonde — whatever that means! — than the natural blondes.
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because gender affirming care (genital and hormonal mutilation thru pharmaceuticals) is just like dying your hair?
Thank you for this topic. It pairs well with this Amala video.
Removing genitals would at least provide some reality test for the sincerity of the supposed trans-woman. Before permitting them to occupy a jail cell, shower or swimming lane next to real women.
I know that surgical rearrangement of the genitals is a more drastic step than bleaching your hair, but I am trying to answer the question asked on that sign. Please don't change the subject. I agree that surgery needs stronger justification, but don't take that side road here. This post is about answering the question posed by the sign.
Is that creepy narrator supposed to be some sort of hypnotist or something?
I had an acquaintance. Her identity was that she was too fat, that she was overweight. So she stopped eating and eventually died of malnutrition. The doctors called it anorexia nervous but we could call it “body-affirming identity behavior”.
“nervousa”.
Gender is defined by sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation). Corruption can simulate and force transition (e.g. homosexual) in the womb. Some people believe the latter can also be achieved through grooming or medical therapy.
If it's an easy answer, it's probably wrong. Hair color, easy to change, no permanent damage unless grossly abused, is not the analogue to the massive changes involved with genital removal and reconstruction, plus the chemical onslaught of hormonal suppression and transfer?
If you take the off-ramp, I will count it as evidence that I nailed the answer to the question asked.
Oh, now I see the AA comment. The answer to the question on the sign is "Correct, removing the genitals does not 'affirm' gender."
"It's a good question, but easy to answer."
We used to deal with those classy writers and their facile answers to morally unanswerable questions by turning our backs in disgust. How have we become so passive that the sophists can get away with their desecrations of decency scot free?
The Althouse analogy is instructive. Artificial hair color that matches your feelings makes you the blonde you know yourself to be and compels recognition as such. Similarly, under the currrent prog regime, artificial body parts that match your feelings make you a real man/woman, genes/chromosomes/eggs/ sperm be damned, and compel recognition as such.
But the sign is incomplete. Full transition involves not just removal of genitals but also the construction of new "genitals" from other body parts. Transition may start with "feelings" but trans identity also depends to some extent on actual body modification. Even if there is an "easy" answer to the question, trans ideology has not fully worked out to what extent subjectively claimed identity also requires a physical complement. Does the mere claim suffice, or the claim plus some removal, or the claim plus removal plus reconstruction? If more is needed, does that cramp the unfettered subjectivity at the heart of the trans craze?
Also I resist the concept of being guided in wisdom or insight by a marketing phrase dreamed up by an ad agency. Blond hair dyes, goth eye shadow, ruby lipstick, fingernails painted teal…these women don’t use this presentation because they think that in essence they’re “really” blonde or whatever. They choose to present themselves to the world that way for whatever reason. Transgenders, to the contrary, believe or are advised that they are “really” the opposite sex and need to conform their physical body to that reality, just as anorexics truly believe that they are fat. Mental illness, rather than an ad jingle, is a better paradigm.
I don't think the hair dying is the answer to the question. The sign questions why changing your genitals matters if genitals don't define gender. He's positing there is no reason to change your genitals and the proffered reason that it "affirms" gender is therefore erroneous. Hair dying in the commercial is not the same. The hair dye people aren't saying hair color doesn't define a person. In fact, they are probably saying the opposite. Blonds are different than brunettes. That's not what the "women can have a penis" crowd says.
Because it's not about the "me" YOU see, it about the "me" that is in MY mind. I am taking control of MY life, and YOU will not stand in MY way. It doesn't matter that you are rendered speechless by my Gingery splendor, cause that's not really me.
Me to HS Althouse: "My Mom has an opening Wednesday afternoon, and she says she can work you in for a touch up."
If the genitals do not define gender (the false premise), then removing them similarly cannot affirm gender. But making a mousy Norma Jean blonde did affirm her gender. it made it just a bit more obvious and eye-catching.
'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.'
or, maybe...
'If I've only one life, let me live it pretending to be a blonde.'
I don't get the analogy. The two things could not be more different. Like a glass of water and the ocean. There is something in common, but missing the difference is a serious mistake.
The whole gender argument is a lie/misdirection. It's biological sex that matters. They weren't asking for feelings on IDs before this crap came up.
If blondes had special rights, expectations, and responsibilities relative to the rest of us? Then maybe we get in the same galaxy here.
"Correct, removing the genitals does not 'affirm' gender."
The problem with the sign is not the affirm/does not affirm contradiction. Its fundamental problem is that it cedes the ground to those who seek banish biology and replace it with gender, a concept created by grammarians to apply to nouns and adopted by engineers to apply to connection hardware.
Gender is meaningless when applied to mammals, especially Homo sapiens. Slicing off a boy's penis doesn't transform him into a her (nor a single into a plural), it just renders a non-reproductive human male -- a eunuch, gelding, a steer.
Gender affirming care is the lobotomy of our time. Where did you stand, with the "experts"?
Under the assumption that the character of your genitals is irrelevant to your gender, however you change that character does not change your gender. So we go to affirmation, affirmation is dodgy, I can affirm my gender any way I like because affirmation is my statement, true or false. So if I affirm my gender by any act that affirms my gender, there is no restriction.
Genital modification and bleaching your hair are both equally trite affirmations of what ever you want to affirm.
“Yer soaking in it.”
The answer is blowing in the album Blond on Blond.
"If you take the off-ramp..."
Like a joke, if you need to explain it, then...
If bleaching your hair affirms your inner blonde, then what are you doing when you dye it back to original?
People confuse the two definitions:
af·firm
verb
1. state as a fact; assert strongly and publicly.
2. offer (someone) emotional support or encouragement.
I have no problem with people asserting whatever they want, whether it’s the blonde with the mousy brown roots or the bearded lady. But if you assert that you are Jesus Christ, don’t expect me to bow down and worship you.
All action is reaction
Expansion, contraction
Man the manipulator
Underwater, does it matter?
Antimatter, nuclear reactor
Boom boom boom boom
Who's your mother? Who's your father?
I guess everything's irrelative
Who's your mother? Who's your father?
I guess everything's irrelative
I'm a janitor, oh my genitals
I'm a janitor, oh my genitals
Oh my genitals, I'm a janitor
All action is reaction
Expansion, contraction
Man the manipulator
Underwater, does it matter?
Antimatter, nuclear reactor
Boom boom boom boom
Who's your mother? Who's your father?
I guess everything's irrelative
Who's your mother? Who's your father?
I guess everything's irrelative
I'm a janitor, oh my genitals
I'm a janitor, oh my genitals
Oh my genitals, I'm a janitor
—— Suburban Lawns
There was a cult in Russia in the 19th century where men would stand there and let people cut off their balls. This was to make them pure and untainted. Whatever blows your hair back, man.
Castration was fairly common in the 17th and 18th century Europe. People admired the male soprano voice, and musically gifted boys were often pressured to undergo mutilation and the loss of family life to retain their bell-like voices into adulthood. In America, castration was used by the planter class to deal unruly slaves, a practice that persists in Africa to this day.
Bleaching hair is a poor analogy, because unlike gender affirmation surgery, the hair will grow back as It was.
Men in feminine clothing. Women in masculine clothing. Same-sex couplets or bigendered union. Gender mocking, perhaps adaptive.
Sex isn't an identity. Different personalities within the 2 sexes aren't "genders".
People who dye their hair blonde know they aren't really blonde. Cutting your hair doesn't change your sex. Neither does cutting off body parts.
I’ve never heard of a blonde filing a complaint because someone said she was a bottle blonde, not a real blonde.
"I don't think the hair dying is the answer to the question. The sign questions why changing your genitals matters if genitals don't define gender."
Natural hair color doesn't define blondeness — in the philosophy of the ad. Blondness is an inner feeling, and, with artificial hair coloring, the true blonde, the person with the blonde inner feeling, can enjoy the fulfilling life of outward blondeness.
You don't have to accept that logic. Just acknowledge that it is the answer to the question on the sign.
"I’ve never heard of a blonde filing a complaint because someone said she was a bottle blonde, not a real blonde."
That's a different issue. The sign doesn't ask a question related to that.
"Bleaching hair is a poor analogy, because unlike gender affirmation surgery, the hair will grow back as It was."
I'm not trying to make a perfect analogy. I am addressing the precise question asked on the sign and actively excluding other matters. These other matters are obvious and easily perceived and I'm not trying to argue with them. I'm focused on THE ONE QUESTION asked on the sign.
The answer to the question is, genital modification affirms your gender if you want it to. A George Constanta approach.
I prefer black hair.
Just sayin'.
"People who dye their hair blonde know they aren't really blonde."
That's not the philosophy pushed in the Clairol ad. The Clairol ad, in the wonderful year of 1967, is asserting that you are what you feel.
Here's a Jefferson Airplane song that occurred to me.
It's about money and technology, which means it's just about money. It's the "Transsexual Empire" of doctors and clinics that a lesbian feminist warned about over 40 years ago.
"People who dye their hair blonde know they aren't really blonde."
The ad is brushing aside what you might think you "know" based on what stodgy squares flatly dictate. It has this test: "If you get a surge when you say the words, you're a blonde at heart." The words — "If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde" — are repeated throughout the ad, and I guarantee that some women, even today, will feel the feeling — the surge. The ad is telling you to cast off your old-time-y "knowledge" of your hair color and embrace the joyful life of the thoughts that thrill you. That is the real truth.
Very similar to religion, by the way. You have a transcendent feeling that is more true than the mundane real world.
The principle difference being, you still have your hair, and if you change your mind, you can go back to the color you had before.
"The principle difference being, you still have your hair, and if you change your mind, you can go back to the color you had before."
This is the side road I need you not to take. It is not addressing the question asked. It's an obvious point that no one has any difficulty seeing. Stick to the question asked.
"Does she or doesn't she, only her hairdresser knows for sure"
Is she or isn't she, only her urologist knows for sure
From that 1967 Clairol ad: "Why don't you try saying this out loud: 'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.'
Better yet, how about the 1950s Miss Clairol hair color ad slogan?
"Does she/he... or doesn't she/he? Only their hairdresser knows for sure!"
Our hostess wants us to use the word feel. If you feel like modifying your genitals or being a bottle blond is helpful then it’s good. Like the song, you make me feel like a natural woman, but being sung to your new genitals.
“Very similar to religion, by the way. You have a transcendent feeling that is more true than the mundane real world.”
It’s a matter of numbers. It could be a delusion, a shared delusion, or a mass psychosis. Only when the numbers become quite large does it qualify as a religion, but the dividing lines are fuzzy.
I feel as though a seen blogger is leaning on me tostick to the question asked. That provokes me to resistance. I've been commenting this blog for almost 20 years, and the reason it works for me is that I only do what motivates me. I realize that this feeling that you're leaning on me to write about [whatever] must necessarily come from within — It's coming from inside the Howard — but please know that if it were coming from the Althouse, I would be asking you to cut it out.
Ann Althouse said...
"blah blah blah"
This is the side road I need you not to take. It is not addressing the question asked. It's an obvious point that no one has any difficulty seeing. Stick to the question asked.
Jinx
If I’ve but one life, let me live it with the penis I was born with.
“That's not the philosophy pushed in the Clairol ad. The Clairol ad, in the wonderful year of 1967, is asserting that you are what you feel.”
That may work for blondeness, but don’t try it for Blackness.
Yes, reality always bites. While it might be true that Blondes Have More Fun, it's not true that transgenders do, either before or after, almost categorically. If your pursuit of happiness depends on forcing the whole of society to praise your madness, the chances are it's an unhealthy preoccupation for both parties.
Both the new hair color and the new genitals are fake. The woman is still a brunette and the man is still a man.
The Clairol company was trying to sell a product. The doctors and pharmaceutical companies are trying to make sales too. They are all being equally truthful, selling just the sizzle and trying to make the customer think they've gotten the steak.
Q. - If genitals don't define gender, how does removing them affirm it.
A. - It doesn't.
This prompts the question: What does define gender?
When you're in a hole, you should stop digging is good advice.
“I'm focused on THE ONE QUESTION asked on the sign.”
Said no DC court of appeals judge ever.
"Identity is in your feelings."
How about if you feel that the identity of people born with XY chromosomes is male and those with XX, female?
Even if sex reassignment surgery was a simple as coloring your hair, there is a more fundamental difference. To a rough approximation everybody can see your hair color, and it may influence their perception of you. Unless you are walking around naked, nobody can see the results of sex reassignment surgery.
It doesn't. That's my answer.
I have been know to be wrong.
If it's easy to answer, what is the answer? The only thing I see in your post is, "Identity is in your feelings." But that only answers the question if you accept the framing that hair color doesn't define identity. And if you accept that, then what need have you for affirming care or hair color? You already know/feel who you are. If you say that physical transformation affirms your identity, then you are claiming that hair color does at least to some extent define identity, else why do it? Of course, perhaps you just think you look better as a blonde? Fair enough, but that is no longer a question of identity or affirmation. If someone told me, seriously, her true identity is blonde/ she's blonde at heart, I would gently suggest counseling or therapy. It is different in severity, but delusional all the same.
"Chances are, she'd have gotten that young man anyway."
Wow. Different times.
Brunette?--yeah, sure. Redhead?-Fine. Blue Hair? Maybe. A dick?--WTF? Hell, no!
The Clairol commercial is a stupid (and trivial) commercial (presumably knowingly so?) about hair color.
I'm focused on THE ONE QUESTION asked on the sign
If you are serious (really?), the question on the sign is a conversation starter.
Is life--and gender--really that trivial? Are the people selling gender transformation treating it as trivially as that commercial? Does the weight of things play no role in your analysis?
If gender can be determined by cosmetic surgery, there's no reason to attribute much significance to gender. But that's preposterous. So there must be a flaw in the premise that gender can be determined by cosmetic surgery.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm not trying to make a perfect analogy. I am addressing the precise question asked on the sign and actively excluding other matters. These other matters are obvious and easily perceived and I'm not trying to argue with them. I'm focused on THE ONE QUESTION asked on the sign.
Your problem is that you are conflating mental illness with a desire to be more attractive to men. There is overlap in the extremes but it is not the bullseye you think it is.
The person who wants blond hair realizes that they are a brunette but would rather be blond. Changing your personality in this way is much like losing weight or putting on makeup.
Denying the biological reality of your gender is different from putting on makeup. Putting on makeup is based on reality knowing that you are making yourself look a different way to attract the opposite sex in a way that is likely to work.
A man who "thinks" he is a woman does not know what a woman feels like.
Using the women's bathroom does not make you "feel" like a woman. Dressing like a woman does not make you "feel" like a woman. No person born a man is ever going to know what pregnancy and childbirth are like.
That is unless you want to ascribe mental illness to every man or woman who wants to put on makeup.
You are also ignoring the elephant in the room. The biggest cause of "Gender dysphoria" is fucked up single moms. The massive increase in "transgender identity" is a social contagion driven by evil over educated white women in rich countries.
These poor kids are not trying to free their inner blond. They are trying to get acceptance from some shrieking liberal harpy who gave birth to them pretending to be a mother living their blighted hateful existence seeking victim hood through their children.
Howard said...
I feel as though a seen blogger is leaning on me tostick to the question asked. That provokes me to resistance. I've been commenting this blog for almost 20 years, and the reason it works for me is that I only do what motivates me. I realize that this feeling that you're leaning on me to write about [whatever] must necessarily come from within — It's coming from inside the Howard — but please know that if it were coming from the Althouse, I would be asking you to cut it out.
Ann Althouse said...
"blah blah blah"
This is the side road I need you not to take. It is not addressing the question asked. It's an obvious point that no one has any difficulty seeing. Stick to the question asked.
Well played.
If Genitals don't define Gender, how does removing them affirm it.
Genitals do define gender.
Removing them is nuts.
"Affirming" is just a word used to make the whole process seem like a box of hair color.
try again:
What I like about the vid I posted - it contains a trans who admits it's a mental disorder. But also the same trans understands the need for female privacy in public female only spaces. Respect that is lacking from the fake-men who pretend to be women just to access these private spaces
- because these men pretending to be women are sickos and pedos. but that is a separate issue from the question.
Perception is a many splendored thing influenced through natural and anthropogenic forcings.
The answer to the question on the sign is very simple: "Shut the f*ck up, you bigot! Hate crime! HATE CRIME...!!"
Ann Althouse said...
"I know that surgical rearrangement of the genitals is a more drastic step than bleaching your hair, but I am trying to answer the question asked on that sign. Please don't change the subject. I agree that surgery needs stronger justification, but don't take that side road here. This post is about answering the question posed by the sign."
The sign asks the wrong question. The push for transgenderism is not about affirming feelings. It's a a way to avoid procreation by any means necessary. The side effects, whether affirmation or gender confusion, are collateral damage.
Are they putting urinals in women's bathrooms these days?
Unfortunately the trans-patient's new plumbing" doesn't work as advertised after gender reassignment surgery. It's not so simple, and only the start of surgical odessey. Remember a sad story in New York magazine from a trans man sharing his very painful experience post gender reassignment surgery. More surgery. And more surgery. And the reconfigured and reconstructed human-assemby never quite works as promised.
When you color your hair and the dye-job fails to please, your only harm is your ego and self-image, and it can easily be fixed. By another dye-job, or haircut.
Despite the attempt by the Clairol advertising campaign to convince us that we all can become (our inner) blonde by using their product we all know that is false. The shared false logic with gender affirmation surgery is that if we act out our delusions we can have happier lives.
Yes, you may freely affirm your personal identity in private all you wish but you can not publicly change your "true" identity just by altering your appearance unless it is natural looking. Beyonce Knowles and lots of other Black entertainers have worn blonde wigs or bleached their hair probably as some kind of social statement. We know their appearance is fake and that's OK because we all know it's superficial and they aren't insisting we affirm them as blondes.
I know that some trans are aggressive and very hostile when they are "misgendered" even though they are obviously trans. If we can't define what a woman is when we are talking about a biological woman how can a transwoman demand they are a woman? This group has caused tremendous backlash against LGBTQ -- because they are attempting to impose on others to get external validation rather than asking for acceptance. A transperson who is mentally well is satisfied by internal validation. Maybe surgery is necessary and hopefully successful but they just want to go about their life in peace not redefine what gender is for anyone else.
If gender is determined by something other than the genitals, then affirmation would come from something other than the state of the genitals. So, if you say you are a woman, to affirm your gender would be to say that you are, in spite of the physical evidence to the contrary.
Mrs. Peters was supposed to meet her husband for lunch, but she waited and he didn't show. Recalling he'd said something about a haircut, she walked down to the barber shop, poked her head in and said, "Bob Peters here?"
The barber said, "No, Ma'am, just cut hair."
I always thought the "blondes have more fun" thing was simply a restatement of "gentleman prefer blondes." Nothing to do with the woman's feelings or self-image. She's going to have more fun as a blonde because she'll attract more men.
So the Clairol folks are saying that it does not matter if the drapes don’t match the carpet. Trying to understand the implied trans analogy.
Trying to stick to the Althouse answer to the question posed by the sign ....
....to bring out your inner blonde, you dye your hair blonde. That indicates that the notion of blondness for self image purposes is defined by hair color (natural or not.)
The question on the sign asks - if your gender is not defined by your genitals, then changing your genitals is not going to change your gender is it ?
In the blonde case, we have a reference point - hair color - which when changed produces the desired self image. But in the gender case we have no reference point. We are not told what it is that needs to be changed to achieve the correct gender self image. All we are told is that changing genitals isn't the change required, because genitals are not definitional.
But then, the sign writer asks - why do gender affirmers in fact attempt genital alteration ? This looks very like a performative contradiction - you try to swap out the genitals while claiming that genitals don't need swapping to achieve your gender image.
In the blonde analogy, we would be hearing that you can bring out your inner blonde by .... leaving your hair brown. But we don't. We hear and see inner blondes dyeing their hair blonde.
Ultimately this all boils down to the fundamental theorem of gender - any specific definition of gender rapidly decays into a contradiction. Therefore the only way for the concept to persist is to avoid offering a defintion.
The blonde analogy actually offers a neat demonstration. Blonde self image CAN be defined without semantic decay into incoherence precisely because there is a clear objective reference point. Hair color. Gender - deliberately - lacks such a thing.
And now, because I am a wee bit pedantic on this subject, I will discharge my mind on the sign.
As a matter of biology, genitals do not define gender, even when we use gender as a synonym for sex. Gender (ie sex) is defined by gamete type, which for practical purposes is marked by gonad type, since the gonads are the gamete factories.
Genitals are mostly the auxiliary sexual organs - penises, vaginas etc, which - in humans and other similar creatures - develop as a result of differering doses of sex hormones, most importantly testosterone. The doses differ between the sexes primarily because of high testosterone production in the male gonads. Thus most of what y'all think of as genitals develops as a hormonal consequence of the prior differentiation of the gonads. So sex - gonadal differentiation - comes first. Genitals come later after sex has already been established. This is why we sometimes get weird sexual development disorders where a male, for example, can finish up with female genitals. But that doesn't make him female, because his sex is defined by his gonads.
"Gender (ie sex) is defined by gamete type..."
Now, you're in Humpty Dumpty territory: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean....
Althouse - how many people use "gender" to mean "sex"? Virtually everyone outside of activists and gender studies professors. All government forms used to use "sex" as the identifying factor, but then, for some reason, they started using "gender", probably because "sex" sounded dirtier. That squeamish change was not intended to smuggle in the academic discussion of "sex vs. gender" and it has done profound damage to discourse and society.
Not quite sure what you're snarking about, Ann. "gender = sex" is a standard meaning in any dictionary. Indeed if you look for example at Merriam Webster, despite its current wokishness, it gives possible meanings in a logical order. Starting with (1) grammatical kinds, then (2) gender = sex as a reproductive kind, then a direct derivative of (2) being (3) a description of societally understood sex roles for behavior etc, and then a further most recent second order derivative (4) gender identity, which you will note is not actually defined, but merely handwaved in male / female related direction, with an attached negatively expressed carve out - ie but not necessarily to do with male and female.
That's precisely what I meant by the standard gender identity `'definition" having to be not a definition - it needs a carve out to avoid any definition that could be binding. The MW (4) definition could fit blonde and brunette self image just as well as male / female self image, confirming that it's a non defintion.
As ChrisSchuon says gender = sex is the standard meaning aside from grammatical kinds, and I'll wager that Ann despite her roaming college campuses for most of her adult life, never heard meaning (3) before she was 30, nor meaning (4) before she was 50.
In any event gender = sex is hardly my, or even Humpty Dumpty's, freshly invented meaning. And in any other event the comment about gonads and genitals is simply correcting a biological error in the sign. Gender (meaning 2, ie sex) is not defined by gentials but by gametes.
If your position is that the actual color of your hair is irrelevant to your identity (I have black hair but identify as a blonde) then why does it become the defining feature of your identity if you color it blonde? Either the color of your hair defines you or it doesn't. It can't be irrelevant in the first instance, but not the second. The sign is a question about consistency, not identity. Or feelings.
But more importantly, what is the value of a thought exercise that requires pretending "changing sex" isn't tied to complex questions of rights, privileges, safety and mental health concerns in a way that superficially changing your appearance isn't? Going blonde doesn't require the rest of the world to overhaul civilization to accommodate your spicy new 'do.
What do you call the "gender affirming surgery's" version of a bad dye job?
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