Originally posted 2021-05-03 18:30:10.
This is an unusual post for me. It is likely that my web presence will have to be significantly modified in the future. I’m afraid Covid-19 has caught up with us and we have lost all our sponsorships and support. This website generates no income and is really a vanity. So things will have to change and it is likely that I shall use other media more in the future.
However, before beginning these changes, I want to make a few things quite clear, regarding the ‘trans debate’, if something so vicious can be called a debate.
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I am a moderate. I neither support the extremist Transactivists, who would apparently transition their aspidistras, nor the extreme TERF/ Gender Critical side, who would burn all trans people at the stake. That means I am hated by both, since moderation is no longer acceptable in our political climate.
I support the Blanchard Taxonomy, because it is completely consistent with observation. It is true that since 1989, when Dr Blanchard proposed it, we have seen much change and in particular in the last decade, the appearance of new forms of apparent gender dysphoria that were not then considered; but even so, his Typology holds up.
This classifies those who wish to appear to be of the opposite sex into homosexual and non-homosexual. In males, Blanchard posited that all non-homosexual gender dysphorias are provoked by Autogynephilia, which he described as ‘A man’s propensity to be aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman’.
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The Trans Canard
If there were no such understanding, then we should have to believe an obvious canard, one which has been debunked time and again, is given no scientific credence at all and is prima facie irrational. Yet this is the explanation that is believed by many transgender people and shockingly, many therapists. It is called the ‘feminine (or female) essence theory.’ This suggests that there is some mystical ‘essence of woman’ that can be present in a man, to such an extent that he really is a woman. But ask yourself: how could a man possibly know what it was, or even felt like, to be a woman? It’s an obvious nonsense.
I have long been hated by adult and elderly transitioning Autogynephiles, just for pointing out the above and that a person who has spent all his life as a man cannot simply, one fine day, become a woman. It cannot be done. As a result of standing by the scientific consensus I have been banned from Quora and Twitter and even had an online eBook seller refuse to handle my books – which were not about transgender at all, save one, and that positive. (It doesn’t mention Autogynephilia even once.)
Attacks by trans activists
My Youtube channel is under constant attack and even my website suffers DDoS attacks regularly. It takes little to guess who is behind these. I have been defamed on Reddit and on the personal website of one of the nastiest of transactivists, Andrea James, as well as by partisan trolls hiding behind fake names like ‘tailcalled’ and ‘Jack Molay’. (The same James called Dr Alice Dreger’s unborn baby, with whom she was heavily pregnant, a ‘womb turd’. Nice; but the others are no better.)
That does not mean that I object to them presenting in a feminine manner, or as near to it as they can manage. I am a libertarian, what used to be called a classic Liberal, until the word ‘Liberal’ was hijacked by the extreme Left. For me and others like me, the motto is ‘Do as you like as long as you neither harm any other nor impede them from doing as they like too.’
So if you want to be Caitlyn Jenner or India Willoughby, I’ll play along, call you she and madam, in social situations, because I’m a nice guy. I have no desire to offend anyone and take care not to in my personal life. So I support these individuals’ right to be treated fairly and with respect as taxpaying citizens and fellow human beings.
Trans whom I respect
On the other hand, for the other group of males who wish to appear as women, those with homosexual gender dysphoria, I have only respect. This actually is a group who appear to be ‘women in men’s bodies’ but far from being accepted they are vilified. Non-homosexual trans males hate them because they are simply so much more feminine; feminists hate them for the same reasons and act as if ‘woman’ were a territory they might exclusively claim; modern gay males hate them because they expose the inherent truth – that they are women pretending to be men in order to have sex with other women pretending to be men.
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As Dr James Cantor, himself identifying as a gay man, said, ‘homosexual men are partly-formed transsexuals’. Those with homosexual gender dysphoria refuse that charade. They want masculine men, not faux-masculine gym-flies and they want to be women to those men. And so they are hated.
Support for this group, more than any other, informs my position; and full disclosure, I am happily married to one.
Moderate trans view
So what is my ‘moderate view’, in the light of the above? Well, firstly, ‘Live and let live’. I consider the majority of attacks against trans people to be scurrilous, superficial and quite deliberately cruel. There are legions of ‘TERF/Gender Crits’, typified by the meanness of their attitudes, who do everything they can to harm trans people. While some of their complaints may be legitimate, most stem from an abhorrent form of feminism and they have cherry-picked stories that appear to support their position. I am completely against them.
Transing chlidren
I am wholly against ‘transing’ children, where this means parents of certain political viewpoints attempting to ‘set’ their children’s gender. I am also against ‘gender neutral’ parenting because children need its value system in order to mature appropriately – and if they are Childhood Onset, as above, they need it to know what they are not. They need the sounding-board of gender to understand themselves.
This definitely does not mean pressuring children in any way at all, although it does mean always suggesting the gender-normal path first. For example, with a boy at the toy shop, suggest perhaps boy toys and only if the child refuses, then move to the girls’ section. The watchword should always be ‘follow the child’; try to guide, but do not insist.
A parent’s duty
Having said all of that, it’s a parent’s duty to observe, self-educate, discover all there is to discover and then address the central question: is my child exhibiting Childhood Onset dysphoria or not? And if that child is a boy and is, then parents must ask themselves whether they would rather the child grows up as a ‘gay man’ or a woman, and they must justify that. The decision must ultimately be the child’s, however.
Another issue which has become topical is that of trans athletes participating in women’s sports. I think Martina Navratilova was right: it is unfair for a person who has gone through a male puberty to compete against females. Men and women really are different and all the radical feminist nonsense in the world will not change that. I am not sure what the solution to this is, but born-male athletes taking the gree in women’s sports is just unreasonable.
(It is interesting to note, a propos of this, that in sports which are more about skill and accuracy than sheer strength and speed, trans women do not, apparently, have an advantage over cis women. No trans woman has ever been a major prizewinner in women’s golf, for example – but that might be because my national sport is clearly the finest and fairest in the world, full of checks and balances designed to factor out physical strength!)
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Transing away the gay
It is sometimes said that supporters of trans people are guilty of ‘transing away the gay’ but in the first place, at least half of those who transition are non-homosexual, so exactly how does that work? In the case of Childhood Onset, yes, a choice is available: the person, if male, will either grow up to be a woman or a ‘gay man’ and if female, a man or a lesbian. But why should gays be a protected class? What’s wrong with growing up to be a woman?
The fact is that the opposition proposed by some – that it is to sign up for a ‘lifetime of hormones and surgery’ is absolute nonsense. We all live, all our lives, under the influence of hormones and replacement therapy simply puts in place the levels normal for the opposite sex.
As for surgery, then in global terms, the vast majority of trans women are intact. They never had genital surgery and do not intend to, and they are quite happy like that. In fact, the frequency of this sort of intervention in the West appears to be because of pressure from ‘medical experts’ – who make lots of money out of them – and an essentialist idea that ‘a person with a penis cannot be a woman’. Well, that is just nonsense too.
The Gay meat-market
Why should the rest of us be expected to contribute our children to the gay meat-market, notorious for substance, physical and emotional abuse, sexual adventurism, promiscuity and extreme behaviour? Why would we not prefer our sons, if they were in this position, to be women and do everything we can to afford them normal, ordinary lives, as women? So if it came down to it, yes, I’d ‘trans away the gay’ without a second thought.