Originally posted 2017-07-10 21:15:04.
The nonsense that biological sex has no basis in reality and that a person can be changed from male to femaleĀ is just that, nonsense.
With the exception of a very small number of individuals, in which cases we can always identify a specific genetic irregularity, all humans are either male or female. So there are TWO SEXES. We are not tilapia, frogs or molluscs, and these sexes are fixed FOR LIFE. This is what we observed when we did basic biology in school.
Gender is what society is based on
Humans have by far the most intricate and developed social systems of any species on the planet and, as a part of this, we have developed gender.
We still do not know to what extent gender is innate. What we can say is that it is certain that it does have an innate foundation.
There are so many proofs now, that the old-fashioned orthodoxy that humans are blank sheets of paper written on by upbringing is wrong, that it is amazing it still gets credence. But, of course, it suits special-interest groups, feminists and others to pretend that it is true, because it allows them to scapegoat others.
We know that there are distinct trait differences between men and women. We know that their brains are different. It is true that they are more alike than different, but they are still different.
Consider the morphology of the human. On average, adult males and females are markedly different. Men are bigger, stronger, have a different muscle type, carry less fat and are more aggressive; women are smaller, lighter, not as good at running and more agreeable. These are not small differences. Would it be at all reasonable to suppose that brains would have no differences? No.
David Reimer
Fortunately, we don’t have to take women’s word for it. We have the brain scans and other neurological evidence, and we have the Money/Reimer case.
John Money was the United States’ leading researcher into sex and gender. David Reimer was a baby, one of twins, whose penis was burned off in a ‘routine’ circumcision.
Money believed in ‘nurture’ over nature. He believed we are all blank sheets of paper, made into what we are by conditioning. So he said that Reimer should be raised as a girl and given surgery, hormones and therapy to reinforce this. If Money and the nurturists, and that includes feminists, were right, then everything should have been fine. But it was not. In his early teens Reimer began having strong cross-gender feelings — as the boy he actually was. He found out what had happened and promptly transitioned.
Tragically, although he married and tried to have a normal life, he ultimately killed himself. His twin brother, who had been used by Money in therapy, did the same, soon after. Money was found to have falsified his case notes and was disgraced. He too died.
Nurture, in other words, is not everything. Case closed.
Gender
Along with our two sexes, we have two sets of behaviours which, usually, are associated with them. The sexes are male and female and the genders a masculine and feminine. These consist of a complex set of social behaviours, signals and interactions, the essential purposes of which are to allow us to select mates and to pair bond, so that children can be raised in safety.
Human children must be cared for until around the age of 12. This requires huge resource expenditure and, particularly were there are several children, a bonded pair is more successful than a lone mother. This leads to the nuclear family, and around it the extended clan. This is a phenomenally successful social model and it is the main reason humans have become so dominant.
So there are TWO genders — not 40. However, the gender binary does not map congruently onto the sex binary. This means that it is not always the case that a person born male, for example, will grow up to develop masculine gender. So that person might grow up to be feminine. This is neither abnormal nor even rare; it’s just a natural part of biological variation.
Sexuality
Sexuality — whom we desire as sexual partners — is believed by many researchers to be innate, and it seems most likely that at least in some cases this is true. Since sexuality is a fundamental urge, it seems reasonable that this would be harder to change than, say, the length one wears one’s hair.
Sexuality works like this: amongst born males, feminine sexuality — the desire for dominant males —Ā tends to lead to a feminine gender. Expressions of male homosexuality are in fact a sexual variation in which a male-born person desires to have men as dominant sexual partners, and a result of this is a tendency to exhibit feminised behaviour. The inverse is true in women. How this is expressed varies according to social pressure.
So we have: a man is a person born male with masculine sexuality and gender; a woman is a person born female with feminine sexuality and gender; a transman is a person born female with masculine sexuality and gender and a transwoman is a person born male with feminine sexuality and gender.
In males, a secondary form of transgender exists, in which the man is attracted to the image of himself as a woman. This is called autogynephilia, and regular readers will know I have written a lot about it. It is outwith the scope of this discussion, since the men who have it retain a heteronormative male desire for women, albeit misdirected onto themselves.
Even in the case of AGPs, however, gendered behaviours that define one as masculine or feminine have aĀ genetic stimulus arising from sexual desire. If we take theĀ preceding paragraphs together, it follows that feminine homosexual men are a form of transwoman — something readily confirmed by observation.
The New Gay Man
So how do we explain the ‘New Gay Man’ — the apparently masculine male who desires male lovers and to play the feminine role in sex?
This is where socialisation comes in. In the West, gender non-conformism suffers tremendous social intolerance. Many feminine gay men describe being beaten for ‘being girly’. This causes them to hide in plain site — to affect gender normativity while clandestinely pursuing a gender non-conforming sex life. This device is the basis of reams of bunk produced by ‘queer theory’ airheads. The alternative, often followed by transwomen who discover their natures in childhood, is to transition, move town and vanish; to invent a new life as a woman.
To see how strange this is, you have to go to a place where social intolerance of gender non-conformity is reduced and look at what happens there. That is exactly what I do, in my travels in southeast Asia (and, yes, full disclosure, I date transwomen. But I also have manyĀ gay, TS, gender non-conforming friends and contacts who are not lovers.)
Going abroad
In these places, e.g. the Philippines, we can see what happens when social intolerance, stigmatisation and violence is reduced. Here, boys who desire men or who ‘feel girly’ become ‘bekis’. They are supported in this by a complex social network that I call ‘beki culture’. (Beki is the polite Phils term for a GNC boy.) These cultures are divided into ‘men’ and ‘not men’ groups, rather than ‘men’ and ‘women’. This is a subtle but important difference.
Bekis NEVER socialise as men, because they can’t; they are just too ‘girly’ to be accepted. But they do join the ‘not-men’ group, where other bekis and girls will reinforce their socialisation and development into ‘not-men’. Neither bekis nor women are daft enough to suggest that bekis are ‘real women’. The only bekis I’ve ever heard iterating such a position were actually brought up in or spent long times in the West. However, everyone respects that bekis are part of the social group that includes women, and are protected in it, although bekis have lower status than women.
Through socialisation in the ‘not-men’ group, bekis learn a set of aspirations, life-goals and behaviours. These are, more or less, the same as those that girls learn, though there are some differences.
So, while a beki desiring a good job might be told by her boss she has to cut her hair and stop wearing make-up, this doesn’t change her sense of self, her ‘gender identity’. She’s a girl and always will be, because of her sexuality and socialisation as a ‘not-man’. (Essentially, when presenting as a man, she’s cross-dressing!) Gays in these cultures recognise that they are ‘not-men’.
Bruce Jenner
Compare this to the nonsense of a man like Bruce Jenner who, at the age of 65, having socialised not just as a man but, successfully, as a highly competitive, aggressive alpha male, suddenly decided that he is ‘a woman’. It defies rationality and should be called out. Jenner and others like him have a right to live in peace with human dignity, but they are not ‘real women’. If a beki who has socialised as a girl since the age of 5, lived all her life as a girl and is as feminine as one, is still not a ‘real woman’ — and she would be the first to accept that — then Jenner et alii can go fly a kite.
Most bekis are extremely well-adjusted, rational, sane people with no illusions about themselves. They’re not pretending to be ‘real girls’, they’re attempting — and often succeeding — to be more beautiful, glamorous and sexually attractive THAN ‘real girls’. (This latter can cause jealousy and hostility, though not usually.) Their desire — it appears to be universal — is to find a nice straight man and settle down with him for life, to play the role of wife, homemaker and mother. Cats, dogs, rabbits and dolls are usually the children, though I know bekis who have adopted orphans and have thrown themselves into the role of working single mums. Their children are lucky.
Western GNC and sex
In the 15 years that I have been studying this, the visibility of Western GNC has gone through the roof. But still, the West is saddled with the kinds of attitudes that were formed in a culture of severe homophobia and social intolerance. Thus, GNC males may claim to be ‘real women’ — sometimes without even attempting to appear to be so. Screeds of absolute nonsense is littered around the internet supporting this — entirely Western and principally Anglo-Saxon — delusion, and it’s all bunk. It exists because of a desire to hide the underlying truth: sex is fixed and gender is an innate function of sexuality.
Sex comes in two morphs: male and female. There are two genders: masculine and feminine. Driving these are two sexualities. But these do not map onto each other in a precise way.
Hi Rod,
Your theories seem to make so much sense compared to most of the bunk that is written now about these issues. However there is one thing that puzzles me – you say that “amongst born males, feminine sexuality ā the desire for dominant males ā tends to lead to a feminine gender”; but it seems to me we see these feminine boys (who will usually grow up to be gay) from a very young age, maybe even 3 or 4 years old. Surely these boys are too young to have any sexual feelings, any idea about whom they will desire as sexual partners when they grow up? I find it hard to believe that it is sexuality that it is at the root of the feminine behaviors in such young boys.
Hi Smokie… You’re not from Arbroath, are you? I am and that is what we get called! Anyway, first, most of what I am saying comes straight from the science so they are not really my theories.
Boys start having crushes at a very early age, 6 or before. These are what we might call ‘pseudo-romantic’ feelings. This is confirmed over and again. If you read Janet Mock’s book ‘Redefining Realness’ she talks about her early feelings and her cross-gender behaviour in childhood. Now while GNC childhood behaviour is not a firm predictor of HSTS transsexualism in later life, if it persists it can be of some expression of homosexuality.
As the boy matures his crushes — which are focussed on men, typically older men and often teachers and other responsible adults — turn from pseudo-romantic to ‘proto sexual’ and he begins to have fantasies about his target sex, typically undressed. At this stage there is no real sexual element; it is the body of the target — for our HSTS, a man — that he is fixed on, but in a vague, indeterminate manner. As puberty occurs these feelings become really sexual and the subject begins to physically desire the bodies of his (or her) sexual targets. Soon after, as he discovers his own sexuality, he begins to really want sex with men.
NOW: Caveat: Most boys who engage in cross-gender role-play stop quickly. Of those who persist, only between a fifth and a third will become transgender — the rest will probably be gay males.
Anyway, the point is that the sex drive develops quite slowly and provokes a set of behaviours as it does so. It’s not really a desire for sex per se that causes early crushes on men. The child is developing normally, except, where other children are crushing on girls, he’s crushing on boys and men. At this age, he has no real conception of sex (unless he has been abused, which is different.)
Gendered behaviour is not, as some would have it, entirely a social construct; the ‘Blank Slate’ Theory has been dead in the water for over 2 decades now. Part of it is innate and that part is specifically related to sex and reproduction. It is the mechanism whereby we attract and bond with partners, in order to have and rear children; this method has been enormously successful for humans and so is an evolved and innate component of our behaviour. Gender, in other words, has been selected for over the millions of years of human and pre-human evolution. It can’t just be taken away to suit some people’s political notions. (Evolution is still going on, by the way; the idea that it stopped when we came along is just silly.)
In other words, while the way you button a coat is constructed, the way you attract mates is innate. So these children are acting out an innate gender role that conforms to their (also innate) developing romantic and sexual desire for men. It’s just that this desire and its consequent behaviours are not the ones normally associated with their sex, and this leads to a problem after puberty.
So why do some GNC kids come out as trans and some as gays? This is the function of a balance between their dysphoria (their discomfort at playing a gender role that conflicts with the one predicted by their sexuality) and social intolerance — how much flak they get from family, friends, school, peers, other gays, etc. Where the latter is low you see more transwomen, where it’s high, more gay males. Ken Zucker, whom I respect but disagr4ee with on this, regarded his ability to condition GNC boys out of a trans pathway into a more conventional (in the West) homosexual one, as a great success. I see where Dr Zucker is coming from, I just don’t think it’s particularly a better outcome and seems to involve an awful lot of distress for no real benefit. (I think he assumed that all HSTS would want surgery, but actually very few to; they are happy with their penises, they just want to look, live and love like women — or how they think women do!)
You have to remember that the New Gay Man, the super manly manly man with added sock odour, who is attracted to clones of himself, is a complete fabrication; they did not exist prior to around 1960. That is a politically-derived sexual role, and one which, manifestly, sits ill with many gay men. Prior to that, gay men were either ‘girly boys’ or ‘queens’ — and typically would switch roles as they aged.
Thanks for your reply! I would like to ask you a few further questions, if that’s ok.
So, you are saying (I think) that sexual orientation is innate – people are born with a predisposition to being attracted to males, or females (or both, presumably)?
And are you saying that the gender behavior/roles are also innate? That straight females are born with an instinctive knowledge of what it takes to attract men and that pre-gay, pre-HSTS boys are also born with this instinctive knowledge, and are from a young age, acting this out, e.g. wanting to look pretty etc.? Or is more the case that pre-gay, pre-HSTS boys copy the behavior of females as they divine that this is what attracts males?
If the former, doesn’t this to some extent support the “brain sex” theory that the transgender lobby go on about – essentially that some males are born “girls on the inside”, in some way at least (due to pre-natal hormones, or whatever)?
Hi Smokie…I like your questions.
I think that everything exists on a scale. My Biology studies sort of insist. So yes I think that some people are born with a predisposition to being attracted to males and some to females; but some more than others. This, in all but a few cases, is most marked as ‘male attraction to femininity’ and ‘female attraction to masculinity’. Two caveats. First is that libido is also on a scale — some people are hornier than others. A relative disinterest, on the part of a male, in sex with women is not necessarily an indicator of elevated interest in masculinity. For some people, sex just isn’t that important.
The second is that both males and females will engage in same-sex behaviour even when their primary attraction is to the their opposites. A good example would be ‘situational homosexuality’. This, for example, is what ‘prison sex’ is. It used to be thought that this was just a question of big tough men raping weaker ones but studies show that this is not the full picture. Some men offer themselves to powerful alpha males inside the community, as receptive partners, either orally or anally. It seems that this confers status and protection on the recipient. In the Philippines, lesbian affairs between women are common, when the men are away working. This seems to be less about status than group bonding. It’s also seen in bonobos (Pan paniscus) and other species (even lions!)
This suggests that there is a rather higher tolerance of same-sex behaviours than most people realise. This sex is non-productive, obviously, but as well as affording pleasure, seems to offer other social rewards. These social rewards may be extensive and probably explain ‘men who have sex with men (MSM’) but are not ‘gay’ and probably a fair bit of ‘lipstick lesbianism’. It seems possible that, at least in women, this might be more frequent in individuals with naturally lower libidos. (This causes a concern I have with the Kinsey Scale; it doesn’t control for this.)
Now, with these caveats out of the way, gender. Yes I do think that within feminine homosexual men and HSTS transwomen, their gendered behaviours (girliness) is innate. Bailey suggests that this might have to do with incomplete masculinisation of the brain, probably in the foetus. I’m inclined to agree, but it remains conjectural. However, there have been many studies that show that feminine gay men and HSTS tend to be smaller, lighter and more neotenous than the average for males in their population: this could only be innate. With so much evidence today supporting the idea that gender has an innate basis, related to sexuality, can we really suggest that the physical characteristics are innate and the gender ones are not? Occam’s Razor should be applied here.
One of the open secrets of the gay scene is that boys begin as receptive (bottoms)and as they get older, become dominant (tops). Anybody familiar with the gay scene, anywhere, knows this. The idealised model, of ‘egalitarian’ partners, just doesn’t stand scrutiny. While ‘switching’ does take place, preferred sexual roles are clear. (There was an article last week in one of the gay-friendly mags saying ‘such and such a celebrity (an out gay) is a top now — doesn’t time fly’. You may read into that what you will.)
It’s possible that as time and testosterone take effect, therefore, feminine gay men become less girly as they age. It might also have to do with that old saw, ‘dignity and decorum’!
So yes I think that HSTS and femboys etc are copying women’s gendered methods for attracting mates, but only in the same was as girls do — from their peers. Their desire to attract a particular sex of mate is, at that age anyway, innate. There is no gene for the way you button your shirt, but anthropologists have long been aware that there are consistent measures of mate-attracting gendered behaviour, found all over the world. These include: making the eyes look larger; wearing the hair long and decorating it; wearing clothes that expose or attract attention to certain parts of the body etc (and in the inverse, an injunction against all these things by sexually-repressed cultures like Islam!) This extent of commonality has to be innate.
The brain sex. Oh, the brain sex. The answer to your question is ‘yes and no’. There are two completely different types of Male to Feminine expression. One is the type we are talking about, who are exclusively attracted to men from childhood. They are called homosexual transsexuals or HSTS. The other, however, is not only more prevalent but far more vocal in the West. These are called autogynephilic transwoman or AGP, and they are ‘sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as a woman’. (Search ‘autogynephilia’ on here, there is quite a lot to read, and also check the links page for papers by Blanchard and by Lawrence. I’m going to give you a link to an article that is well worth reading on this: http://www.annierichards.com/once.htm I will ask the author if it’s OK to put that up on this site too.)
AGPs are not feminine at all and are similar, on all the physical measures, to the average for males in their population. Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner is a very well-known example.
MRI and other studies have shown that HSTS do have brains similar in some ways to women, and AGPs have brains indistinguishable from men’s. The trouble is, it’s mainly AGPs who make the ‘brain sex’ claim, and to them it does not apply. (Check my links page for papers by Guillamon, Savic&Arver and Rametti; Guillamon 2016 is comprehensive and freely available from the link.)
Note that great care must be taken with such brain analyses because they do not establish causation. In other words, we don’t know if the brain got that way because of the behaviour or vice-versa. It could be either or both. We just don’t know, so it’s really best seen as a snapshot. An experiment to establish causationy would be, IMO, near impossible.
Thanks. One thing that puzzled me, you referred to “feminine homosexuals” and “femboys” as if there was another type – but I thought you were saying that feminine type gendered behavior is innate to pre-gay boys, i.e. it comes with the territory of their instinctive/innate wish to attract males?
Is there a different type of young pre-gay boy who does not have this innate “girlishness”? Or do all pre-gay boys have it, but some make a decision to suppress it? I’m talking about young boys here, say 6, 7, 8, 9, etc.
Thanks for the links, yeah I’ve read about Blanchard’s studies before about the 2 types of MtF – I had come across a stat that something like 2/3s of MtFs are “lesbian” or bisexual, this made no sense at all to me, until I read about Blanchard’s work. Amazing how the transgender lobbyists seem to have managed to discredit him though – if I ever see a reference to him in a trans-friendly article, it is to his “debunked” theories!
Hi Smokie
The reference to feminine homosexuals comes from Bailey’s research amongst others. Personally I don’t think there is any other kind, but I use that form to point out that the ones I am talking about are feminine, rather than that there are two types. Having said that, something tugs at the back of my mind that there might actually be a number of non-dysphoric or low-dysphoric AGP men who appear as gays because they like the experience of ‘sex as a woman’ ie, being penetrated. But that is just a hunch.
However, even if we could show such a population, I do not believe they would present before puberty, since AGP onsets at or after that, typically at the time the boy begins to masturbate. So the correlation is between ‘girly’ Gender Non-Conforming (GNC) boys and HSTS/homosexual adolescents and men (who are also feminine.) I can’t remember if I mentioned to you, but gay men, as they get older, will sometimes move from being ‘bottoms'(receivers) to ‘tops’ (givers). This is possibly the cumulative effect of testosterone at work.
Blanchard is anything but ‘debunked’, as a wander round Bangkok will demonstrate! However, southeast Asian AGPs are both far more passable and far better adjusted than Western ones, largely because they accept their condition (they see themselves as ‘gay’ despite being pseudo-bisexual rather than homosexual) in their teens and hit the hormones before they masculinise.
Thanks again