Transgender World

“Conversion therapy” is not therapy. It is violent abuse.

British Stonewall has made a strong video about how families and “helpers” destroys the lives of trans youth by committing them to so-called “conversion therapy.”

If anyone tries to get you or a trans friend of yours to take part in this kind of treatment, note the following:

Conversion therapy does not work, No one gets “cured” from being trans (or from being gay).
Being trans is not a mental disease. The current medical manuals (DSM-5 and ICD-11) are crystal clear on this. The psychological distress trans people feel, comes from transphobia and social invalidation, not from being trans.
Because of this, a large number of countries has banned conversion therapy. If your country or state allows for it, know that that this reflects cultural bigotry and/or political delaying tactics, and not science or the real experience of trans people.

Warning: The video below may be disturbing for people who have been or are being exposed to this kind of emotional violence.

When we present it here it is because it is extremely important that those who are or have been treated in this way, understand that there is nothing wrong with them.

There is, however, something seriously wrong with those who treat kids and teenagers in this way. They may be doing it out of some misguided belief that they are helping, but under it all you will find traditionalist bigotry and the fear of what others may think.

Real love is based on respect for a person’s core and their ability to become who they were meant to be. Conversion therapy represents a crime against humanity.

If your family, community or local health services are forcing you to go through such a treatment, seek out one of the local LGBT+ organizations to get help. There are ways of stopping this kind of abuse.

Illustration photo of trans woman: AaronAmat.

The bad science of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”

Quinnehtukqut McLamore, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, explains why ‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ (ROGD) is nothing but unscientific bunk over at Aeon.

The ROGD “theory”, which is very popular among “gender critical” TERFS and other transphobes, argues that transgender kids become trans because of transgender propaganda and cultural trends. There is no real trans identity there, as they see it.

Gender dysphoric trans kids can tell you otherwise.

The Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria theory is based on responses from transphobic parents, not from transgender kids and teenagers.

McLamore writes:

Bluntly, there is no solid evidence that ROGD exists. The study that birthed the term – circulated on, and designed for, these anti-trans websites – was first published in 2016 as a poster by the physician Lisa Littman, then at the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island.
A self-described gender dysphoria expert, Littman later published her findings in a (now heavily revised) paper in PLOS One in 2018. At no point was a single trans person studied for these findings.
Instead, Littman recruited an anonymous sample of people who claimed to be parents of trans ‘youth’ (ranging in age from 11 to 27) from websites including 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth Trans Critical Professionals. All three sources are infamous for transphobia, with 4thWaveNow in particular spreading unsubstantiated conspiracy theories…
Littman’s study is fatally flawed because it relies exclusively on parental hearsay – if indeed the respondents are actually parents. Her study cannot assess how accurately these parents assessed the timeline of their children’s gender incongruence. It shows only what unsupportive parents recruited from anti-trans web sources think happened.

Why are there more transgender people now?

McLamore argues that the reason current samples of trans youth don’t resemble past samples is that the samples from the past were not well-characterised. They were small and inadequate, collected when parents were unsupportive, and the goal was to prevent adult transition if at all possible.

Given that being trans is no longer seen as a mental illness, legal reforms have made it easier to be accepted, and researchers have gotten a more nuanced view of what it means to be trans, more trans people seek help:

In sum, claims that there can’t be this many trans youth rest upon misunderstandings of gender diversity and care models that alienated both patients and their parents – or that didn’t exist at all.
The social, legal and clinical environments in which today’s trans youth find themselves are radically different from the first-line conversion therapy previously employed. Nowadays, care is available for them, and although they are often on waitlists years long, there is enough media representation for them to see themselves. The skyrocketing rate of trans youth should be entirely expected given these shifts. This is obvious – which is precisely why the expert consensus has arrived here.

Read the article here.

Illustration photo: FluxFactory

Not all women menstruate. This is a fact. So why do women have to be defined by it?

Sara Rose Gibbs has published a very interesting thread over at Twitter on how she, as a non-menstruating cis woman was attacked by transphobes for daring to say the obvious: Not all women menstruate.

She writes:

I’ll never forget the first time I accidentally waded into a discussion on trans issues. It was a few years ago, I hadn’t really encountered the transphobic crowd before. Someone posted complaining about the term “people who menstruate” to describe, well, people who menstruate.
The poster wanted to call them WOMEN. Embarrassingly, I knew very little about trans identities. So I wasn’t thinking about trans men or non-binary folks who might still have periods when I said I didn’t understand the problem with the term.
Not all women menstruate
I was thinking of myself - a cis woman who’s infertile. I thought it was both logical & inclusive to say “people who menstruate” because not all women do - & it can be very painful when people assume things about your reproductive system when it simply doesn’t work.
What followed completely shocked me. Suddenly my mentions were full of people screaming at me - awful things designed to cause maximum hurt. They called me a handmaiden, told me I was erasing women. One woman told me I was “divorced from my womanhood”.
Learning about transgender exclusion
So I looked into why they were saying these things. And that’s when I started to follow trans folks on here, watch trans YouTubers, start reading articles etc. I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t known what the discussion was about but also the bullying had been so intense, full on, cruel & personal that it left me in tears for days. And I’m a Jewish person on the internet. I thought I’d heard it all. I felt instinctively that it was important to defend whoever those nasty bullies were targeting.
So trans people didn’t galvanise me into action, not initially. It was the transphobes. I may not have known anything about gender identity or transitioning - but I sure as fuck knew bullying when I saw it. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Follow up to thread
Just a follow up as this gained a lot more traction than I thought! The purpose wasn’t to centre myself (and I’m so so sorry if I came off that way) just to illustrate how the bullying mentality of that horrible movement is creating more trans allies than enemies.
Bit more context because it’s relevant - I think this was specifically in regards to some sort of workplace initiative for accommodations for people who menstruate. My point was if that survey had just gone out to women, that could have been distressing to people like me as opposed to telling people that if you menstruate and want to feed back via this survey thing (if I’m remembering right) you can opt in, rather than have salt rubbed in the wound if it doesn’t apply to you or being left out if it does but you’re not a woman. Seems thoughtful.

Full thread here.

On how transphobes invalidate cis women

Note the way nearly all transphobes, to the right or to the left, insists on reducing a woman’s identity to bodily functions. This was the way traditionalists kept women under control in the 19th and 20th century. Women were nurturing life-givers, for sure, but they were also emotionally unstable, intellectually weak and unfit for positions of power, all because of their bodies.

For some 200 years feminists have tried to get out of this body trap and show how women are the equals of men in any part of life. But now, because of irrational transphobia, there are even women who try to reduce the worth of women to a fully functioning uterus, all in attempt to keep trans women out. We see that this narrative also invalidates many cis women. This is truly sad.

Illustration by marzacz.

More than a third of transgender Brits have been subjected to conversion attempts

The Guardian reports that polling for Galop, an LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity, found that one in five British LGBTQ+ people and more than a third of trans people have been subjected to attempted conversion.

More than 400,000 people who are gay, transgender or non-binary have been subjected to someone trying to change, “cure” or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to new research that suggests a proposed ban on conversion practices will have a wider impact than previously thought.

Galop reports over at their web site:

The majority of LGBT+ respondents who have experienced conversion practices (56 per cent) stated that conversion practices come from the people they should feel safest with – their own family.

Transgender (43%) and non-binary people (36%) are significantly more likely to be subjected to conversion practices that other LGBTQ people.

More than 4 in 10 (43%) trans people have been subjected to conversion practices. Over 1 in 3 (36%) non-binary and gender-diverse+ people have been subjected to this kind of treatment.

One survivor explained that her mother tried to make her date men when she was dating a woman, exposing her to images of male genitalia and heterosexual sex acts and pornography and threatened to poison her food on a regular basis when she refused to break up with her girlfriend.

A trans respondent said:

I was actively told by a friend of mine at the time that I wasn’t really trans and that I was doing it for the attention and that they’ll never see me as trans and will actively go against it and tell people I’m lying.

The British government is now going to ban “conversion therapy”.

Report here.

Illustration: Denis Novikov

Trans Women on a Desert Island

Over at twitter a transphobe wrote the following parable:

Put 100 women and 10 men on a deserted island. In 100 years you will have a community of men, women, boys and girls. Put 100 trans women and 10 men on a deserted island. In 100 years you will find the skeletons of 110 men. It. Is. Science. You can’t change sex.

A transgender woman’s reply:

Put 100 trans women and 10 guys like this on a deserted island and in 100 years you have 10 male skeletons and signs of someone having engineered boats

So true.

Just to make sure: People are not defined by their skeletons. As long as you are alive, we cannot even see them. Being alive is what counts.

Photo: pixdeluxe

Stop Using the Bible to Dehumanize Transgender People

At its core, the anti-trans movement is all based on wild interpretations of a few Bible passages. To those who use the Bible this way and m

Newsweek

One of the truly strange aspect of the current anti-transgender activism is the far right Christians attempts at demonizing transgender people. I know a lot about the origins of the Christian religion and the development of theology, and one thing is absolutely clear: Jesus, whoever and whatever he was, preached a gospel of love: Love for your neighbor, love for the poor, love for the outcasts, love for those who were considered «unclean» by society, love for children, love for everyone. Not once did he attack gay or transgender people.

So why is it that so many people who call themselves «Christians» are so full of hate?

It seems to me that Christianity has been hijacked by people who do not understand the basis of their own religion. American right wing «Christians» are, for instance, desperately trying to portray Jesus as an American nationalist who wants to protect a white, conservative, hegemony. But he was not American. He was not «white», at least not in the «Nordic» sense so many right wingers imagine, and he did not care about nationalism. In fact, the reason Christianity became such a success was that it was not anchored in one ethnic group, geographical location or state.

Nor was he a conservative defender of traditional gender roles. He respected women. Listen to them. Cared of them. He used their help. Consevative Christians have desperately tried to downplay the role of his female disciples, but the gospels are very clear in their presentation of his female followers. Jesus was not a defender of the Patriarchy. And it was this radicalism that made the Roman and Jewish establishments so angry that they had him killed.

Jesus was not a transphobe

Serene Jones, a theologian and minister, points out what should be obvious: The Gospel of Jesus does not support transphobic politics.

She writes:

//As a Christian theologian, a minister, and the president of a seminary with many transgender students, I am horrified by the continued use of Christianity and the Bible to viciously attack the transgender community. The Bible never said that being transgender is wrong. This extremist, wrong-headed belief is simply based on shaky extrapolations of the text.

In contrast, nearly every page of the Bible tells us that we must love and care for one another, not degrade and harm each other. This message of love and care is clear, not a false extrapolation. But in this legislative onslaught, a biblically false hate-message is the prized weapon of attack.//

I will add here that there are parts of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, that are both bigoted, prejudiced and hateful. But the message from Jesus was not.

This is important for all, even if you are not a Christian or religious at all. The compassionate and inclusive side of real Christianity played an important role in the development of the humanistic side of modern democracies. The transphobic «Christians» are now actively attacking the vey foundations of those democracies, foundations that are partly indebted to that religion. Their activism i not only anti-human. It is, as I see it, anti-Christian.

Jack Molay

The Gender Violations of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare was queer, violating gender norms over and over again.

After seeing Lavern Spicer complain about contemporary gender issues, as in:

Shakespeare didn’t walk around putting pronouns in his plays. That’s why they’re classics. Imagine if this dude wrote “My name
is Macbeth and my pronouns are they/them” SMH.

...Jason Tondro decided to provide some real info on Shakespeare and gender:

Shakespeare took great delight in confusing the audience about gender, and I’m gonna give you just two examples because I’m waiting for take-out.
The famous best example is Twelfth Night, in which a male actor dresses up as Viola, a young woman who dresses up as a young man who falls in love with another man and who is loved by another woman (who is played by a man).
[In Shakespeare’s time women where not allowed to be actors.]
But my personal favorite is Othello, when Desdemona’s maid explains women behave badly because they learned all that shit from men, and then you remember both women are being played by men, so the whole scene is really men holding up a mirror and saying “take a long ass look”.
Shakespeare used the singular “they” centuries before it became the target of a cultural war, and it’s funny the OP should cite Macbeth because that’s where Shakespeare wrote “Unsex me here” ffs (take out is late).
I could do a whole class lecture on Beatrice’s “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.” scene and lemme tell you, you would not be sorry. But my pot pie is here so Imma let you go.

Complete twitter thread here.

Note also that As You Like It is about a woman who flees her uncle and goes to a forest where she uses her adopted male identity to find love. Rosalind, who disguises herself as the boy Ganymede, “raises many interesting debates on homosexuality, gender blending, androgyny, and sexual identity.”

George Santos’s drag queen denial harms all queer and transgender people

As some of you will have noticed, the newly elected Republican House representative, George Santos, has been caught lying about almost everything. The latest issue is his past as a drag queen – as “Kitara Ravache”.

You cannot make this stuff up, but Santos, who identifies as a gay man, seems to have been taking part in a drag show in Brazil not so long ago.

In an interview with CNN, drag performer Eula Rochards says that she knew Santos from LGBTQ events he attended in the town of Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro. She says he was well known in the gay community when he lived there. She has provided the photo of him dressed up as a woman you find above. You may compare it with this one:

Drag is a celebration of gender

There is obviously nothing wrong in Santos taking part in a drag queen competition. Drag can be a wonderful celebration of gender variance, whether the drag queen identifies as a woman or a man.

However, since the Republican party at the moment is running a campaign of hate against any kind of gender variance, drag queens and transgender kids included, it has become hard for Santos to explain his drag queen past.

George Santos admits to dressing up as woman, but denies he was a drag queen.

A missed opportunity

Sure, we can call it poetic justice, but his denial on this point only reinforces the idea that “crossdressing” and gender variance is something bad.

In the Washington Post trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan writes that her disappointment that Santos found it necessary to disavow something that should really be no source of shame, goes deep:

With the latest twist of his story, George Santos had an opportunity to make people think well of him again. He might have said, “It’s true I did drag in my younger days; that was a fun time and I want everyone to know that I support everyone’s right to pursue their dreams, whether they are part of my LGBTQ community or part of some other marginalized group still seeking full equality under the law.”
He could have said that, and for a single moment, won back a little of the respect he’s lost since his election.
But he didn’t. Because the crowd he seeks to join has no place in their hearts for anyone who is different. Because the crowd he seeks to join is less interested in legislation than destruction. Because the crowd he seeks to join isn’t really all that concerned with whether the things it says are true.
No lie.

It is hard to understand why anyone queer or trans would like to be associated with organizations that want to erase their identity and destroy their community. That says a lot about the lure of power and the desire to be “an insider”.

Top photo: Performer Eula Rochards provided CNN with this image of a person she claims is George Santos. CNN has not independently verified the image. Photo No. 2 is by John Locher/AP Photo.

More from CNN in the video below.

British YouTuber returns to YouTube after proudly coming out as trans

British YouTuber Charlie McDonnell, also known as charlieissocoollike, has returned to the platform for the first time since coming out as trans.

Pink News reports:

McDonnell scrubbed their channel of its content after stepping back from the public eye a few years ago, before later came out publicly as trans in October 2022.
However, she made a surprise return to YouTube on Thursday (20 January) with a “reintroduction” question and answer video.
McDonnell confirmed that she goes by she/they pronouns and that she began hormone replacement therapy four months ago. She added that her first name is Charlie, which she plans to formalise legally.

She responds to one interesting question on whether her public YouTube persona stopped her from embracing your identity?

This question is kind of incredible… So I stopped making YouTube videos because making them made me feel unhappy and when I decided I was gonna leave YouTube the kind of reason that I gave people was I felt likeI came up with this internet persona"charlieissocoollike" when I was 16 years old and, you know, clearly I was not that person. So I felt like it was really beneficial to me to take this big step away from YouTube to be able to really figure out who the hell I am.
And I have done a lot of work on that and I do think that not having to worry about being “charlieissocoollike"really did help me to have the space to figure out who I actually am.
And so now that I’ve done that work the idea of coming back to YouTube feels kind of good, because now I’m like…well I can bring my true self to this platform and that is…exciting.

Over at twitter Charlie comments on gender euphoria:

on occasionally people ask about what gives me gender euphoria, and i feel like they want me to say "i put on a pretty dress and felt so feminine uwu” but the real answer right now is “my boobs hurt”

The Real Story about Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill

In this video trans advocate Hannah Graf explains Scotland’s blocked Gender Recognition Bill and addresses some of the fears linked to it.

Graf was previously captain in the British military, in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. After she came out as transgender in 2013, she advised the army on transgender issues.

From Lorraine on the British TV Channel ITV.

See also this post on Hannah: British transgender couple is expecting their first child

How video games helped me accept I am transgender - Reader’s Feature

A reader discusses how playing as Princess Peach and using WWE’s create-a-wrestler mode helped them come to terms with their own identity.

Metro

A reader discusses how playing as Princess Peach and using WWE’s create-a-wrestler mode helped them come to terms with their own identity.

By the way: Cis kids and youth are also using roleplaying for exploring their gender identity. It is just that people take that for granted, not understanding that the cultural and social context is different for those who are trans.

Transgender World

Transgender World

“Conversion therapy” is not therapy. It is violent abuse.

The bad science of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”

The Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria theory is based on responses from transphobic parents, not from transgender kids and teenagers.

Why are there more transgender people now?

Not all women menstruate. This is a fact. So why do women have to be defined by it?

More than a third of transgender Brits have been subjected to conversion attempts

Trans Women on a Desert Island

The Gender Violations of William Shakespeare

George Santos’s drag queen denial harms all queer and transgender people

Drag is a celebration of gender

A missed opportunity

British YouTuber returns to YouTube after proudly coming out as trans

The Real Story about Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill

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