I have a couple of points of clarification. First of all, with the exception of Massachusetts, the requirement that gender identity be "deeply felt" or "sincerely held" is not explicitly stated in any of the laws I reviewed. These requirements are part of the Yogyakarta Pirnciples and WPATH SOC* definitions that a court or discipline panel might choose to apply in the absence of a legislated definition. However, a court might also choose to apply the Stoller and Greenson definition or any number of other definitions that scholars have proposed. Without a clear definition of gender identity, it is not possible to say what therapists are prohibited from changing.
Something of a rabbit-hole there, but -- on Stock's idea of gender as sexually dimorphic personality traits -- it is rather "barking mad", as she put it herself, to claim that because some "transgirl" [i.e., juvenile male] has some of feminine traits "she" should be treated as if "she" had changed sex, that "she" IS of the other sex.
But again why some coherent definitions for both "gender" and "gender identity" are urgently required. Apropos of the latter, you might take close look at her kick at that kitty -- pages 128 & 129 of her book if I remember correctly.
There are really 3 "conversion therapies". They are defined by the starting state and the "desired" ending state.
1) The original meaning is a therapy which attempts to end the same-sex attraction and restore the natural other sex attraction
2) The therapy which attempts to change a trans gender identity to a normal gender identity
3) The therapy which attempts to change a normal gender identity to a trans gender identity.
Those who discuss "conversion therapy" mean Types 1 & 2. In society of today, since about 2015, there has been a concentrated industry of Conversion Therapy Type 3.
> "Stock refers only to masculine and feminine genders but this no longer reflects the current use of the term as the list of gender categories is continually growing and changing. The website Choosing Therapy lists 20 genders, MedicineNet lists 72 and Disabled World lists 107. Others say that gender is a spectrum with an infinite range of possibilities."
What an absolute dog's breakfast, a clusterfuck of epic proportions, largely because of inconsistent and contradictory definitions. Notably in various claims that "gender" is the same as AND different from "sex" -- can't be both: from contradictions, anything follows (the principle of explosion):
Rather typical of transgender ideologues that they want to have their cake and eat it too: "Get a gender recognition certificate, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" Though nice to see that the UK Supreme Court has spiked that rather clueless bit of insanity. How that GRC claptrap ever happened is a serious charge against the whole English legal system. They might just as well have passed laws stipulating that the tides can only come in between 3 and 5 pm, Monday to Friday, 1 and 3 pm Saturday and Sunday.
But I'm reminded, again, of philosopher Will Durant's take on a Voltaire quip:
WD: "If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.”
More directly, it appears largely the responsibility of feminism that they made a more or less scientifically tenable effort to differentiate between the reproductive traits that define the sexes -- ovaries and testicles to a first approximation -- and the broad range of behavioural, psychological, and social traits typical of each sex but not unique to each that define the genders, masculine and feminine:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex". Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
Though there's some evidence -- from the gold standard, the Oxford English Dictionary, no less -- that that dichotomy goes back much further, some 3 hundred to 6 hundred years ago in fact:
But both of those facts are underwritten by the solid biological principle and phenomenon of sexual dimorphism:
Wikipedia: Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different morphological CHARACTERISTICS, including characteristics NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN REPRODUCTION. .... Differences may include secondary sex characteristics, size, weight, color, markings, or BEHAVIORAL OR COGNITIVE TRAITS. [my emphasis of course]
THAT is essentially what the masculine and feminine genders ARE -- sets of sexually dimorphic traits, mostly of a behavioural, or psychological nature, ones NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN REPRODUCTION. And of course there's only TWO genders, because those traits are characterized as such based on whether they're more typical of males or of females. And if some traits are not more typical of one sex than the other then they're non-gendered, neither masculine nor feminine. Easy Peasy.
But where many people go off the rails and into the weeds -- in rather spectacular fashions -- is in your "the list of gender categories is continually growing and changing". The thing is, as I indicated, there's a whole range -- a veritable cornucopia, a plethora, a myriad -- of traits more typical of one sex than the other. EACH gender is in effect a spectrum. Dr. Maja Bowen -- La Scapigliata -- had a rather neat table of such feminine and masculine genders:
Somewhat more prosaically, consider an analogy -- the core of cognition -- with the visible colour spectrum. We might say that the reddish half and the bluish half correspond to the two genders, masculine and feminine -- for the sake of argument. But each half of the colour spectrum is comprised of a myriad of individual colours -- they're each a spectrum. Likewise the masculine and feminine genders. All that the idiots at "Choosing Therapy", "MedicineNet", "Disabled World", and, earlier, Facebook are doing is giving some names to some of the other "colours" on each side of that "visible spectrum" of "gender": reddish-green, deep-purple, etc.:
But for the sake of completeness, what the "doctors" peddling "gender-affirmation surgery" -- AKA, sterilization and castration of autistic and dysphoric children -- are doing is that because some of those kids are "gender non-conforming" -- i.e., are masculine girls or feminine boys -- they "argue" that, at best, their genitalia should be mangled to resemble those of the other sex. And at worst, they peddle the Big Lie -- been awhile since a bigger one has come down the pike -- that those kids have actually changed sex -- barking mad, a medical and biological impossibility. Some rather odious "conversion therapy".
Whole bunch of "doctors", "lawyers," "biologists", "politicians" -- e.g., Justin, "trans women are women", Trudeau -- and "philosophers" should lose their licenses to practice, if not be strung by their nuts, if they still have them attached, and be left to twist in the wind. Figuratively speaking of course ...
I see a Catch-22 there. Suppose a therapist accused of doing gender-targeted conversion therapy said he was engaging a patient in a therapeutic conversation to see if the patient's cross-gender identity was indeed "deeply" held (in order to police himself, the therapist, against "going there." He would thus avoid committing illegal conversion therapy.) Activists seeking a way to punish therapists who don't immediately affirm without any further exploration even with the patient's request and consent would lobby against including "deeply" language in the law banning conversion therapy. (Never mind the difficulty of quantifying "deeply" when the thing being quantified doesn't even exist. Is it even meaningful to talk about how "deeply" someone believes in the Tooth Fairy, as Helen Joyce might ask.)
Why would the activists oppose "deeply" language? Because it would offer the therapist a defence against the charge of conversion therapy. The therapist could say, "I wasn't doing CT. I was only carrying out a diagnostic exploratory interview to find out where the permissible boundaries were." But the activists would prefer to have the therapist punished for not affirming immediately. So they would not want to see any permission for the therapist even to find out if the patient's gender identity was "deeply" held. So what?, they would say. The patient should be affirmed and transitioned immediately no matter if his identity is deeply held or not. "Not deeply" is like being considered "only superficially pregnant."
Suppose the law, over the objections of activists, did allow explorations into the "depth" of the gender identity. The prosecution would argue that since this therapist in the dock did conclude that this patient's identity was "deeply held" and backed off, any therapy he had given up to that time should be deemed CT, because the therapist just admitted that the identity was deeply held, didn't he? If you steal jewels from the Louvre that you think, mistakenly, are worth less than $5000 but they turn out to be worth much more, you still get charged with theft over $5000. Your defence can't be, "Well I couldn't ascertain their value until I stole them and took them to an appraiser of stolen jewels." Similarly, if the patient's gender identity turns out on exploration to be "deeply held" you are still guilty of CT because you didn't immediately affirm this "deeply held" identity. Your claim that you didn't know yet if the patient's identity was "deeply held" is just a ruse to avoid conviction for doing CT.
The "deeply held" language appears to be in there to protect the therapist, to give him a leg to stand on, not the patient. (If we were serious about protecting the patient we would ban affirmative therapy, not conversion therapy!) Since the activists don't want to protect therapists from sanction, they will invent ways to use the language against therapists. Beware!
This descriptors of the ideology, like 'deeply held', is a Catch-22 that weaponizes sanctions against those who may question what that might mean in reality by assuming the terms 'gender' and 'gender identity' the beliefs reference are themselves real and descriptive. They're not. They are the weapons deployed. In other words, by capturing the language the pedophile and autogynephilic activists now have the means to bulldoze the medical and therapeutic guardrails aside by legal threat, intimidation, and process coercion of their professionals. Capturing medical and therapeutic oversight bodies of professionals in these areas and forced to include these nonsense terms upon their practitioners as if meaningful and descriptive of reality means the professionals must capitulate, undermine their professional standards and ethics, or face misconduct. The whole 'gender' field is nothing but a house of cards built upon circular reasoning for the benefit and sexual gratification of the dysfunctional few and imposed on those best positioned to stop this abuse. It's an intentional exercise of linguistic trickery to create Catch-22 across the board.
> "... forced to include these nonsense terms upon ..."
Which "nonsense terms"? "gender" and/or "gender identity"?
As both I and Peter quoted Kathleen Stock saying, there is some coherent "sense" in both of them. It depends entirely on how the terms are defined, on what they denote and refer to.
In particular, defining gender as masculine and feminine behaviours and personality traits is quite solid since those traits are manifestly obvious: there are more rapey men than rapey women, although there are also more neurotic women than neurotic men. Masculine and feminine traits writ large. As a popular book of yesteryear put it, "Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus".
The "nonsense", the rank insanity, the medical malpractice, scandal, and crime of the century comes from various "doctors [Mengeles all]" tricking autistic and dysphoric children into thinking that they can change sex, that being "gender non-conforming" -- i.e., masculine girls, and feminine boys -- is prima facie evidence that they were "born in the wrong bodies", that those kids should allow those "doctors" to mangle their genitalia into some ersatz Frankensteinian replicas of the other sex. "conversion therapy" doesn't get much starker and more flagrantly criminal than that.
Should be hell itself to pay for that crime, one way or another.
> "Never mind the difficulty of quantifying 'deeply' when the thing being quantified doesn't even exist."
What? What doesn't "exist"? "gender identity"? Peter quotes Kathleen Stock giving a couple of reasonable definitions for "gender" at least, some of which hang together better than others. See my latest here for example:
But he could also have quoted her more or less tenable definition for gender identity as well since it is of a piece with the more credible definitions for gender:
KS: “I’m going to suggest [that] having a gender identity misaligned with sex is something comprehensible, to which society should pay respectful attention – though not the degree of uncritical acceptance we currently see. ....
The Identification model involves the general idea of someone subconsciously and consciously ‘identifying’ WITH another. Psychoanalysts Heinz Hartmann and Rudolph Lowenstein write that although there are different ideas about identification in psychoanalytic theory: 'We all agree that the result of identification is that the identifying person BEHAVES in some ways LIKE the person with who he has identified himself. ....
Applied to gender identity, then, an identification model says that [for a male] to have a misaligned female [feminine] gender identity is to identify strongly, in this psychological sense, either with a particular female or with femaleness as a general object or ideal. [Likewise with a female having a male [masculine] gender identity.]” [pgs. 128, 129]
Seems like a fairly accurate description of the experiences of many of the dysphoric.
Peter, this is a great article, thank you for it. The main challenge I see here is that, as you point out, the “conversion therapy” bans, even if incredibly vaguely defined, has a massive cooling effect on open dialogue about what practices should or shouldn’t be allowed. So professionals (psychologists, social workers, etc) simply tow the affirmation line because they fear the repercussions of questioning it in the first place. I’ve continued to wonder: how can we have an open discussion within these professions about the evidence base while this functional moratorium on discourse remains? Is there a safe path forward, where a professional could speak freely without fear of losing their license?
I’m asking specifically regarding the Canadian context, as I know the rules/laws are different in different jurisdictions.
I see: it's 'aspects'. Maybe 'mien'. Well, doesn't that clear the murk! It's nothing like 'soul' at all, not when we can use a collection of nebulous terms to really drill down and expose... the feelings associated with imaginings.
The problem remains, however. When one turns to and uses the language hostile to what's accurate and descriptive, then what's objectively and independently true can be undermined and assigned equally hostile terms like racist, bigoted, discriminatory, hateful, evil, and so on. You can insist people who demand clear and concise language that is descriptive independent of the captured language are committing 'violence' by using accurate terms and send people to jail for tweeting facts and claiming human skeletons are either male or female with nary an LGBTQ2S+ in sight. When each of us agrees to use the captured language, we've lost the battle for respecting a common ground based on what's true. We become collaborators.
I am replying to you but when I do the 'Reply' from my email it sends it to the general thread. My bad. Sorry for the confusion, Steersman.
Have you noticed that tomboys and transvestites evaporated from the world seemingly overnight when 'gender' language came on the scene? We used to have perfectly reasonable terms called 'masculine' and 'feminine' that referred to the traits and characteristics you mention that gender actually hijacked and repurposed. And it was fine for 20 million years to have boys with feminine traits and girls with masculine characteristics. These were descriptive. But when the language was captured by gender ideology, suddenly we have a vast confusion about the sex binary common to all mammals and plants and by which our understanding of biology and reproduction is based. This is not a bug but a feature of postmodernism generally and Queer Theory language in particular to undermine and attack our common understanding of biological reality. Giving in to this divisive intrusion by going along with this linguistic deceit and trickery I think is fundamental mistake that only aids and abets the ideologues who wish to destroy norms and boundaries by attacking the tool we use to describe it.
No problemo, Tildeb. 🙂 I've done something similar several times myself, and many others likewise -- part of the kludgy nature of Substack. Though your case seems something different from what I'd run across before -- you were responding to an email notification, I and, probably, others at the wrong level in a post.
But good point about tomboys and transvestites. And likewise about "feminine" and "masculine" as terms "that gender hijacked and repurposed". Though you might note that it was feminism which first did that some 75 to 80 years ago:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the “socialized obverse of sex”. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
But, as I've argued in a recent post of mine, the Oxford English Dictionary gives some evidence of the same distinction some 3 hundred to 6 hundred years ago:
Genspect, Feminism, and the "Transcult"; The "Rights Revolution, Part Deux"
That transgenderism has hijacked those terms -- hence the "transcult" in the title, a neologism courtesy of Substacker Helen Dale -- doesn't say much, I think, against the useful dichotomy between the traits that define the sexes -- ovaries and testicles -- and the psychological and behavioural traits typical of each sex but which are not unique to either:
The British Medical Journal has a more or less decent post differentiating between the two categories:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. These categories describe different attributes that must be considered depending on the purpose they are intended for. The World Health Organization states, 'Gender is used to describe the characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to those that are biologically determined.' ...."
And the late great US Justice, Anton Scalia, had a rather neat analogy that did likewise:
AS: "The word ‘gender’ has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics … distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male."
I agree that canadian therapist need to have more latitude to engage in exploratory therapies around gender, particularly with gender distressed youth whose dysphoria duration is short (or at the very least apparently short)
It however, will be incumbent on GET advocates to develop a consistent set of enforceable standards and quality metrics, including the definition of a futility standard.
exploratory therapy with no set end point, and no criterion to determine that this is unlikely to uncover further root causes that are driving the gender dysphoria, is essentially conversion therapy under a euphemistic labelling.
It is incumbent on advocates for criminal laws restricting therapeutic practices to provide a clear definition of what they wish to prohibit. Conversion therapy laws impede the practice of exploratory psychotherapy by creating an ill-defined no go zone in conversations with the patient. Conversion therapy laws also create a nocebo effect around psychotherapy. Clients are conditioned to resist any line of self-examination which might cause them to question their desire for medical transition. Setting up a pre-defined end-point or futility standard for therapy means that some clients will simply repeat the things they need to say to get approval for medical transition and avoid any real therapeutic work.
What, pray tell, is a "Data-Driven Transsexual"? Are you one such? If so then I would say it is rather unlikely that you would be a mother as you're apparently claiming:
"The Data-Driven Transsexual; The writings of an health services researcher, epidemiologist, and mom of teens who happens to have a remote history of successfully treated gender dysphoria"
Unlike many of the so-called "gender-critical crowd" -- rife with zealots and scientific illiterates if the truth be known -- I don't have many objections to the idea of someone changing genders -- say from masculine to feminine or vice versa; go big, fill yer boots.
What I do object to is the claim by many of the transgendered tribe that they have changed sex, or that it is possible to do so -- a medical and biological impossibility. Ran across the case of transman Stephen Whittle the other day:
QUOTE, BBC: Stephen Whittle is a transsexual. The Channel 4 documentary Make Me a Man explores his journey as he undergoes a phalloplasty - the surgical construction of a penis.
A decision at the European Court of Human Rights last month means that British transsexuals will soon be able to change the gender on their birth certificate and to get married. Sheila talks to Stephen and his partner Sarah Rutherford about this landmark decision. UNQUOTE
Ms. Whittle may well LOOK like a man -- a rather dapper and debonair one, at least 20 years ago -- but she won't EVER qualify as a male since that would require, at the very least, that she replaced her ovaries with functional testicles, a medical and biological impossibility.
A medical scandal and crime of the century -- "conversion therapy" writ large which might have passed muster if transitions from one sex to another were actually possible. But they ain't. Whole bunch of so-called "doctors [Mengeles all]" should lose their licenses if not be strung up by their nuts -- if they still have them attached -- and be left to twist in the wind, figuratively speaking of course ....
if you don’t want to call me a mother, that’s entirely your pregroative, I am not one to police your language.
The reason I call my self a mother, and the reasons my children call me their mother, and the reason my husband calls me the mother of his children. Is because this is the role that I am playing in their lives, which is obvious and apparent to anyone who sees us and our interactions.
And if for any reason someone decided that they did not consider me their mother, then that’s entirely their call.
You might note that there are different levels of response here -- to a comment or to a post. Would be greatly appreciated if you tried to stay in the right lane -- so to speak.
But the bigger question -- which ran through Whittle's tale -- is that when the chips are down -- for example, when there's a question of paternity -- you are simply not the female parent of, presumably, your husband's kids.
Some reason to argue that that is perpetrating a rather egregious fraud. You and "he" may want to play make-believe, to fool yourselves, but when it has some rather direct and quite sticky social consequences then you're going to be out of luck. Y'all may wish to read and/or watch Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" A salient quote about the play:
Wikipedia: According to Lawrence Kingsley, Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as "George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion." The play demonstrates "how his characters must rid themselves of falsehood and return to the world in which they must live."
Then the law -- as it often is -- is an ass. Britain's "Gender Recognition Act" for example -- they might just as well have tried to pass a law saying the tides can only come in from 3pm to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
And most "adoptive mothers" at least have a more or less solid claim to being or having been a female -- ovaries, dude. Rather more than you'll ever have.
As for getting fucked, you're the one trying to tell kids, many more than just your "own", how to live their lives -- and as lies in fact. Methinks society has a much more solid justification -- in that very lie -- for saying that you and your tribe of "doctors" should be the ones to "get fucked".
But since you opened the door, I am in fact quite curious as to how you came to "think", apparently, that you are or should have been a female.
As a point of reference, you might consider how transwoman Dawn Ennis apparently reached the same conclusion:
No, there's no coherent sense beyond some 'soul-like' collage of imaginings that mixes sexual stereotypes with the ridiculous notion of 'knowing' (ie 'deeply held' fanciful feelings) what some other sex might feel like. None us can do that because none of us can change sexes. Brute fact. Gender is simply a weaponized term to refer to this anti-realistic imagining as if real, as if true, as if inherited, as if chemically and surgically alterable by body mutilation to 'feel' more in line with this sexually adjacent yet somehow 'true' soul. It's bogus. It's simply neither real nor knowable. So it's a nonsense term. Basing an 'identity' on a nonsense term as if this magically makes the imaginary collage real becomes obviously false and ludicrous when every definition circles back to claiming without evidence from reality that we really, really, really do have this 'soul'. Just the fluidity that is demonstrated by those claiming to have it reveals the lie.
The battle lines here are all about capturing the language and we capitulate the war against reality when we collaborate and willingly submit to the capture of the language. So, no, gender (and gender identity) isn't real not because I say so but because reality does not grant it any explanatory or descriptive power to define it.
Fighting this battle using reality-informed terms tears away the camouflage and reveals the brutality behind the disguised terms wrapped so prettily with bows of words like 'kind' and 'nice', 'compassionate' and 'empathetic'. All lies. To reveal just how malicious and damaging this deceitful ideology is in practice, try describing various gender-care medical interventions with accurate terms. For example, as Mia Hughes describes to Peter Boghossian, “Protect trans kids” actually means sacrificing vulnerable youth to modern medicine’s greatest crime of mutilation and chemical interference including brain damage; a “trans woman” seeking love on a lesbian dating app is a paraphilic heterosexual man trying to force himself on lesbians, and “genital reconstructive surgery” means flaying and inverting penises and attaching appendages made out of forearm flesh into women’s groins, and so on. This use of accurate terms is our means of defense.
So I will not yield on accepting such captured yet ethereal and disguised terms as if descriptive about reality and I don't think anyone who respects what's true should submit. That starts with the base term 'gender'.
Don't think you're listening -- "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up"?
There's a coherent and scientifically tenable definition for "gender" as sexually dimorphic personality and behavioral traits. For examples, the British Medical Journal, and even Wikipedia at least starts off well:
I have a couple of points of clarification. First of all, with the exception of Massachusetts, the requirement that gender identity be "deeply felt" or "sincerely held" is not explicitly stated in any of the laws I reviewed. These requirements are part of the Yogyakarta Pirnciples and WPATH SOC* definitions that a court or discipline panel might choose to apply in the absence of a legislated definition. However, a court might also choose to apply the Stoller and Greenson definition or any number of other definitions that scholars have proposed. Without a clear definition of gender identity, it is not possible to say what therapists are prohibited from changing.
As a legal beagle, you might have some interest in this bit in the latest post from Colin Wright:
> ... the Biden administration’s 2024 rule expanded the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity,”
"BREAKING: Federal Court Rejects Biden-Era Redefinition of Sex";
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/breaking-federal-court-rejects-biden?utm_medium=reader2&triedRedirect=true
Something of a rabbit-hole there, but -- on Stock's idea of gender as sexually dimorphic personality traits -- it is rather "barking mad", as she put it herself, to claim that because some "transgirl" [i.e., juvenile male] has some of feminine traits "she" should be treated as if "she" had changed sex, that "she" IS of the other sex.
But again why some coherent definitions for both "gender" and "gender identity" are urgently required. Apropos of the latter, you might take close look at her kick at that kitty -- pages 128 & 129 of her book if I remember correctly.
There are really 3 "conversion therapies". They are defined by the starting state and the "desired" ending state.
1) The original meaning is a therapy which attempts to end the same-sex attraction and restore the natural other sex attraction
2) The therapy which attempts to change a trans gender identity to a normal gender identity
3) The therapy which attempts to change a normal gender identity to a trans gender identity.
Those who discuss "conversion therapy" mean Types 1 & 2. In society of today, since about 2015, there has been a concentrated industry of Conversion Therapy Type 3.
> "The therapy which attempts to change a normal gender identity to a trans gender identity."
So you're saying there's some merit in the concept of "gender identity"? Pray tell, how might you define the term?
You might consider my recent comment here which includes a quote from Kathleen Stock's Material Girls who has a similar opinion:
https://justdad7180.substack.com/p/the-unintelligibility-of-conversion/comment/169243873
Though I expect her conception is rather more coherent and intelligible than yours is likely to be.
> "Stock refers only to masculine and feminine genders but this no longer reflects the current use of the term as the list of gender categories is continually growing and changing. The website Choosing Therapy lists 20 genders, MedicineNet lists 72 and Disabled World lists 107. Others say that gender is a spectrum with an infinite range of possibilities."
What an absolute dog's breakfast, a clusterfuck of epic proportions, largely because of inconsistent and contradictory definitions. Notably in various claims that "gender" is the same as AND different from "sex" -- can't be both: from contradictions, anything follows (the principle of explosion):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
Rather typical of transgender ideologues that they want to have their cake and eat it too: "Get a gender recognition certificate, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" Though nice to see that the UK Supreme Court has spiked that rather clueless bit of insanity. How that GRC claptrap ever happened is a serious charge against the whole English legal system. They might just as well have passed laws stipulating that the tides can only come in between 3 and 5 pm, Monday to Friday, 1 and 3 pm Saturday and Sunday.
But I'm reminded, again, of philosopher Will Durant's take on a Voltaire quip:
WD: "If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.”
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
More directly, it appears largely the responsibility of feminism that they made a more or less scientifically tenable effort to differentiate between the reproductive traits that define the sexes -- ovaries and testicles to a first approximation -- and the broad range of behavioural, psychological, and social traits typical of each sex but not unique to each that define the genders, masculine and feminine:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex". Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender#As_distinct_from_sex
Though there's some evidence -- from the gold standard, the Oxford English Dictionary, no less -- that that dichotomy goes back much further, some 3 hundred to 6 hundred years ago in fact:
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gender_n?tl=true
But both of those facts are underwritten by the solid biological principle and phenomenon of sexual dimorphism:
Wikipedia: Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different morphological CHARACTERISTICS, including characteristics NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN REPRODUCTION. .... Differences may include secondary sex characteristics, size, weight, color, markings, or BEHAVIORAL OR COGNITIVE TRAITS. [my emphasis of course]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism
THAT is essentially what the masculine and feminine genders ARE -- sets of sexually dimorphic traits, mostly of a behavioural, or psychological nature, ones NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN REPRODUCTION. And of course there's only TWO genders, because those traits are characterized as such based on whether they're more typical of males or of females. And if some traits are not more typical of one sex than the other then they're non-gendered, neither masculine nor feminine. Easy Peasy.
But where many people go off the rails and into the weeds -- in rather spectacular fashions -- is in your "the list of gender categories is continually growing and changing". The thing is, as I indicated, there's a whole range -- a veritable cornucopia, a plethora, a myriad -- of traits more typical of one sex than the other. EACH gender is in effect a spectrum. Dr. Maja Bowen -- La Scapigliata -- had a rather neat table of such feminine and masculine genders:
https://lascapigliata.com/2018/03/27/how-conflation-of-sex-and-gender-became-a-tool-of-transgender-ideology/
Somewhat more prosaically, consider an analogy -- the core of cognition -- with the visible colour spectrum. We might say that the reddish half and the bluish half correspond to the two genders, masculine and feminine -- for the sake of argument. But each half of the colour spectrum is comprised of a myriad of individual colours -- they're each a spectrum. Likewise the masculine and feminine genders. All that the idiots at "Choosing Therapy", "MedicineNet", "Disabled World", and, earlier, Facebook are doing is giving some names to some of the other "colours" on each side of that "visible spectrum" of "gender": reddish-green, deep-purple, etc.:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/02/gender-facebook-now-has-56-categories-to-choose-from-including-cisgender-genderqueer-and-intersex.html
But for the sake of completeness, what the "doctors" peddling "gender-affirmation surgery" -- AKA, sterilization and castration of autistic and dysphoric children -- are doing is that because some of those kids are "gender non-conforming" -- i.e., are masculine girls or feminine boys -- they "argue" that, at best, their genitalia should be mangled to resemble those of the other sex. And at worst, they peddle the Big Lie -- been awhile since a bigger one has come down the pike -- that those kids have actually changed sex -- barking mad, a medical and biological impossibility. Some rather odious "conversion therapy".
Whole bunch of "doctors", "lawyers," "biologists", "politicians" -- e.g., Justin, "trans women are women", Trudeau -- and "philosophers" should lose their licenses to practice, if not be strung by their nuts, if they still have them attached, and be left to twist in the wind. Figuratively speaking of course ...
Re gender identity being "deeply held".
I see a Catch-22 there. Suppose a therapist accused of doing gender-targeted conversion therapy said he was engaging a patient in a therapeutic conversation to see if the patient's cross-gender identity was indeed "deeply" held (in order to police himself, the therapist, against "going there." He would thus avoid committing illegal conversion therapy.) Activists seeking a way to punish therapists who don't immediately affirm without any further exploration even with the patient's request and consent would lobby against including "deeply" language in the law banning conversion therapy. (Never mind the difficulty of quantifying "deeply" when the thing being quantified doesn't even exist. Is it even meaningful to talk about how "deeply" someone believes in the Tooth Fairy, as Helen Joyce might ask.)
Why would the activists oppose "deeply" language? Because it would offer the therapist a defence against the charge of conversion therapy. The therapist could say, "I wasn't doing CT. I was only carrying out a diagnostic exploratory interview to find out where the permissible boundaries were." But the activists would prefer to have the therapist punished for not affirming immediately. So they would not want to see any permission for the therapist even to find out if the patient's gender identity was "deeply" held. So what?, they would say. The patient should be affirmed and transitioned immediately no matter if his identity is deeply held or not. "Not deeply" is like being considered "only superficially pregnant."
Suppose the law, over the objections of activists, did allow explorations into the "depth" of the gender identity. The prosecution would argue that since this therapist in the dock did conclude that this patient's identity was "deeply held" and backed off, any therapy he had given up to that time should be deemed CT, because the therapist just admitted that the identity was deeply held, didn't he? If you steal jewels from the Louvre that you think, mistakenly, are worth less than $5000 but they turn out to be worth much more, you still get charged with theft over $5000. Your defence can't be, "Well I couldn't ascertain their value until I stole them and took them to an appraiser of stolen jewels." Similarly, if the patient's gender identity turns out on exploration to be "deeply held" you are still guilty of CT because you didn't immediately affirm this "deeply held" identity. Your claim that you didn't know yet if the patient's identity was "deeply held" is just a ruse to avoid conviction for doing CT.
The "deeply held" language appears to be in there to protect the therapist, to give him a leg to stand on, not the patient. (If we were serious about protecting the patient we would ban affirmative therapy, not conversion therapy!) Since the activists don't want to protect therapists from sanction, they will invent ways to use the language against therapists. Beware!
This descriptors of the ideology, like 'deeply held', is a Catch-22 that weaponizes sanctions against those who may question what that might mean in reality by assuming the terms 'gender' and 'gender identity' the beliefs reference are themselves real and descriptive. They're not. They are the weapons deployed. In other words, by capturing the language the pedophile and autogynephilic activists now have the means to bulldoze the medical and therapeutic guardrails aside by legal threat, intimidation, and process coercion of their professionals. Capturing medical and therapeutic oversight bodies of professionals in these areas and forced to include these nonsense terms upon their practitioners as if meaningful and descriptive of reality means the professionals must capitulate, undermine their professional standards and ethics, or face misconduct. The whole 'gender' field is nothing but a house of cards built upon circular reasoning for the benefit and sexual gratification of the dysfunctional few and imposed on those best positioned to stop this abuse. It's an intentional exercise of linguistic trickery to create Catch-22 across the board.
> "... forced to include these nonsense terms upon ..."
Which "nonsense terms"? "gender" and/or "gender identity"?
As both I and Peter quoted Kathleen Stock saying, there is some coherent "sense" in both of them. It depends entirely on how the terms are defined, on what they denote and refer to.
In particular, defining gender as masculine and feminine behaviours and personality traits is quite solid since those traits are manifestly obvious: there are more rapey men than rapey women, although there are also more neurotic women than neurotic men. Masculine and feminine traits writ large. As a popular book of yesteryear put it, "Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus".
The "nonsense", the rank insanity, the medical malpractice, scandal, and crime of the century comes from various "doctors [Mengeles all]" tricking autistic and dysphoric children into thinking that they can change sex, that being "gender non-conforming" -- i.e., masculine girls, and feminine boys -- is prima facie evidence that they were "born in the wrong bodies", that those kids should allow those "doctors" to mangle their genitalia into some ersatz Frankensteinian replicas of the other sex. "conversion therapy" doesn't get much starker and more flagrantly criminal than that.
Should be hell itself to pay for that crime, one way or another.
> "Never mind the difficulty of quantifying 'deeply' when the thing being quantified doesn't even exist."
What? What doesn't "exist"? "gender identity"? Peter quotes Kathleen Stock giving a couple of reasonable definitions for "gender" at least, some of which hang together better than others. See my latest here for example:
https://justdad7180.substack.com/p/the-unintelligibility-of-conversion/comment/169233415
But he could also have quoted her more or less tenable definition for gender identity as well since it is of a piece with the more credible definitions for gender:
KS: “I’m going to suggest [that] having a gender identity misaligned with sex is something comprehensible, to which society should pay respectful attention – though not the degree of uncritical acceptance we currently see. ....
The Identification model involves the general idea of someone subconsciously and consciously ‘identifying’ WITH another. Psychoanalysts Heinz Hartmann and Rudolph Lowenstein write that although there are different ideas about identification in psychoanalytic theory: 'We all agree that the result of identification is that the identifying person BEHAVES in some ways LIKE the person with who he has identified himself. ....
Applied to gender identity, then, an identification model says that [for a male] to have a misaligned female [feminine] gender identity is to identify strongly, in this psychological sense, either with a particular female or with femaleness as a general object or ideal. [Likewise with a female having a male [masculine] gender identity.]” [pgs. 128, 129]
Seems like a fairly accurate description of the experiences of many of the dysphoric.
Peter, this is a great article, thank you for it. The main challenge I see here is that, as you point out, the “conversion therapy” bans, even if incredibly vaguely defined, has a massive cooling effect on open dialogue about what practices should or shouldn’t be allowed. So professionals (psychologists, social workers, etc) simply tow the affirmation line because they fear the repercussions of questioning it in the first place. I’ve continued to wonder: how can we have an open discussion within these professions about the evidence base while this functional moratorium on discourse remains? Is there a safe path forward, where a professional could speak freely without fear of losing their license?
I’m asking specifically regarding the Canadian context, as I know the rules/laws are different in different jurisdictions.
I see: it's 'aspects'. Maybe 'mien'. Well, doesn't that clear the murk! It's nothing like 'soul' at all, not when we can use a collection of nebulous terms to really drill down and expose... the feelings associated with imaginings.
The problem remains, however. When one turns to and uses the language hostile to what's accurate and descriptive, then what's objectively and independently true can be undermined and assigned equally hostile terms like racist, bigoted, discriminatory, hateful, evil, and so on. You can insist people who demand clear and concise language that is descriptive independent of the captured language are committing 'violence' by using accurate terms and send people to jail for tweeting facts and claiming human skeletons are either male or female with nary an LGBTQ2S+ in sight. When each of us agrees to use the captured language, we've lost the battle for respecting a common ground based on what's true. We become collaborators.
Who are you replying to and to what? Do you realize that you reply to individual comments and to the the post itself? There IS a difference.
I am replying to you but when I do the 'Reply' from my email it sends it to the general thread. My bad. Sorry for the confusion, Steersman.
Have you noticed that tomboys and transvestites evaporated from the world seemingly overnight when 'gender' language came on the scene? We used to have perfectly reasonable terms called 'masculine' and 'feminine' that referred to the traits and characteristics you mention that gender actually hijacked and repurposed. And it was fine for 20 million years to have boys with feminine traits and girls with masculine characteristics. These were descriptive. But when the language was captured by gender ideology, suddenly we have a vast confusion about the sex binary common to all mammals and plants and by which our understanding of biology and reproduction is based. This is not a bug but a feature of postmodernism generally and Queer Theory language in particular to undermine and attack our common understanding of biological reality. Giving in to this divisive intrusion by going along with this linguistic deceit and trickery I think is fundamental mistake that only aids and abets the ideologues who wish to destroy norms and boundaries by attacking the tool we use to describe it.
No problemo, Tildeb. 🙂 I've done something similar several times myself, and many others likewise -- part of the kludgy nature of Substack. Though your case seems something different from what I'd run across before -- you were responding to an email notification, I and, probably, others at the wrong level in a post.
But good point about tomboys and transvestites. And likewise about "feminine" and "masculine" as terms "that gender hijacked and repurposed". Though you might note that it was feminism which first did that some 75 to 80 years ago:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the “socialized obverse of sex”. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender#As_distinct_from_sex
So you can blame feminism for that ... 😉🙂
But, as I've argued in a recent post of mine, the Oxford English Dictionary gives some evidence of the same distinction some 3 hundred to 6 hundred years ago:
Genspect, Feminism, and the "Transcult"; The "Rights Revolution, Part Deux"
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/genspect-feminism-and-the-transcult
That transgenderism has hijacked those terms -- hence the "transcult" in the title, a neologism courtesy of Substacker Helen Dale -- doesn't say much, I think, against the useful dichotomy between the traits that define the sexes -- ovaries and testicles -- and the psychological and behavioural traits typical of each sex but which are not unique to either:
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/a-common-humanity-or-bust
The British Medical Journal has a more or less decent post differentiating between the two categories:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. These categories describe different attributes that must be considered depending on the purpose they are intended for. The World Health Organization states, 'Gender is used to describe the characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to those that are biologically determined.' ...."
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
And the late great US Justice, Anton Scalia, had a rather neat analogy that did likewise:
AS: "The word ‘gender’ has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics … distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male."
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
https://open.substack.com/pub/datadriventranssexual/p/conversion-therapy-for-trans-indentity?r=6izq1z&utm_medium=ios
I agree that canadian therapist need to have more latitude to engage in exploratory therapies around gender, particularly with gender distressed youth whose dysphoria duration is short (or at the very least apparently short)
It however, will be incumbent on GET advocates to develop a consistent set of enforceable standards and quality metrics, including the definition of a futility standard.
exploratory therapy with no set end point, and no criterion to determine that this is unlikely to uncover further root causes that are driving the gender dysphoria, is essentially conversion therapy under a euphemistic labelling.
It is incumbent on advocates for criminal laws restricting therapeutic practices to provide a clear definition of what they wish to prohibit. Conversion therapy laws impede the practice of exploratory psychotherapy by creating an ill-defined no go zone in conversations with the patient. Conversion therapy laws also create a nocebo effect around psychotherapy. Clients are conditioned to resist any line of self-examination which might cause them to question their desire for medical transition. Setting up a pre-defined end-point or futility standard for therapy means that some clients will simply repeat the things they need to say to get approval for medical transition and avoid any real therapeutic work.
What, pray tell, is a "Data-Driven Transsexual"? Are you one such? If so then I would say it is rather unlikely that you would be a mother as you're apparently claiming:
"The Data-Driven Transsexual; The writings of an health services researcher, epidemiologist, and mom of teens who happens to have a remote history of successfully treated gender dysphoria"
Unlike many of the so-called "gender-critical crowd" -- rife with zealots and scientific illiterates if the truth be known -- I don't have many objections to the idea of someone changing genders -- say from masculine to feminine or vice versa; go big, fill yer boots.
What I do object to is the claim by many of the transgendered tribe that they have changed sex, or that it is possible to do so -- a medical and biological impossibility. Ran across the case of transman Stephen Whittle the other day:
https://herriotts.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/the-usual-suspects-steven-whittle/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/dec/23/music.society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Whittle
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2002_32_mon_01.shtml
Of particular note from the last link:
QUOTE, BBC: Stephen Whittle is a transsexual. The Channel 4 documentary Make Me a Man explores his journey as he undergoes a phalloplasty - the surgical construction of a penis.
A decision at the European Court of Human Rights last month means that British transsexuals will soon be able to change the gender on their birth certificate and to get married. Sheila talks to Stephen and his partner Sarah Rutherford about this landmark decision. UNQUOTE
Ms. Whittle may well LOOK like a man -- a rather dapper and debonair one, at least 20 years ago -- but she won't EVER qualify as a male since that would require, at the very least, that she replaced her ovaries with functional testicles, a medical and biological impossibility.
A medical scandal and crime of the century -- "conversion therapy" writ large which might have passed muster if transitions from one sex to another were actually possible. But they ain't. Whole bunch of so-called "doctors [Mengeles all]" should lose their licenses if not be strung up by their nuts -- if they still have them attached -- and be left to twist in the wind, figuratively speaking of course ....
if you don’t want to call me a mother, that’s entirely your pregroative, I am not one to police your language.
The reason I call my self a mother, and the reasons my children call me their mother, and the reason my husband calls me the mother of his children. Is because this is the role that I am playing in their lives, which is obvious and apparent to anyone who sees us and our interactions.
And if for any reason someone decided that they did not consider me their mother, then that’s entirely their call.
You might note that there are different levels of response here -- to a comment or to a post. Would be greatly appreciated if you tried to stay in the right lane -- so to speak.
But the bigger question -- which ran through Whittle's tale -- is that when the chips are down -- for example, when there's a question of paternity -- you are simply not the female parent of, presumably, your husband's kids.
Some reason to argue that that is perpetrating a rather egregious fraud. You and "he" may want to play make-believe, to fool yourselves, but when it has some rather direct and quite sticky social consequences then you're going to be out of luck. Y'all may wish to read and/or watch Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" A salient quote about the play:
Wikipedia: According to Lawrence Kingsley, Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as "George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion." The play demonstrates "how his characters must rid themselves of falsehood and return to the world in which they must live."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F#Reality_and_illusion
My elaborations on the theme:
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
Can't see much value in any "therapy" that tries to trick people into believing a lie.
This isn’t Twitter. Get the fuck off my thread.
Listen. I am my children’s legal mother. No different than any adoptive mother.
If you are curious about my life, just ask
If you are going to tell me about my life, get fucked.
Then the law -- as it often is -- is an ass. Britain's "Gender Recognition Act" for example -- they might just as well have tried to pass a law saying the tides can only come in from 3pm to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
And most "adoptive mothers" at least have a more or less solid claim to being or having been a female -- ovaries, dude. Rather more than you'll ever have.
As for getting fucked, you're the one trying to tell kids, many more than just your "own", how to live their lives -- and as lies in fact. Methinks society has a much more solid justification -- in that very lie -- for saying that you and your tribe of "doctors" should be the ones to "get fucked".
But since you opened the door, I am in fact quite curious as to how you came to "think", apparently, that you are or should have been a female.
As a point of reference, you might consider how transwoman Dawn Ennis apparently reached the same conclusion:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2020/12/29/study-transgender-children-recognize-their-authentic-gender-at-early-age-just-like-other-kids/#20bbb14526bf
Archive link: https://archive.ph/03Imb
My elaborations on the theme:
"Genspect, Feminism, and the 'Transcult'; The 'Rights Revolution, Part Deux' ":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/genspect-feminism-and-the-transcult
No, there's no coherent sense beyond some 'soul-like' collage of imaginings that mixes sexual stereotypes with the ridiculous notion of 'knowing' (ie 'deeply held' fanciful feelings) what some other sex might feel like. None us can do that because none of us can change sexes. Brute fact. Gender is simply a weaponized term to refer to this anti-realistic imagining as if real, as if true, as if inherited, as if chemically and surgically alterable by body mutilation to 'feel' more in line with this sexually adjacent yet somehow 'true' soul. It's bogus. It's simply neither real nor knowable. So it's a nonsense term. Basing an 'identity' on a nonsense term as if this magically makes the imaginary collage real becomes obviously false and ludicrous when every definition circles back to claiming without evidence from reality that we really, really, really do have this 'soul'. Just the fluidity that is demonstrated by those claiming to have it reveals the lie.
The battle lines here are all about capturing the language and we capitulate the war against reality when we collaborate and willingly submit to the capture of the language. So, no, gender (and gender identity) isn't real not because I say so but because reality does not grant it any explanatory or descriptive power to define it.
Fighting this battle using reality-informed terms tears away the camouflage and reveals the brutality behind the disguised terms wrapped so prettily with bows of words like 'kind' and 'nice', 'compassionate' and 'empathetic'. All lies. To reveal just how malicious and damaging this deceitful ideology is in practice, try describing various gender-care medical interventions with accurate terms. For example, as Mia Hughes describes to Peter Boghossian, “Protect trans kids” actually means sacrificing vulnerable youth to modern medicine’s greatest crime of mutilation and chemical interference including brain damage; a “trans woman” seeking love on a lesbian dating app is a paraphilic heterosexual man trying to force himself on lesbians, and “genital reconstructive surgery” means flaying and inverting penises and attaching appendages made out of forearm flesh into women’s groins, and so on. This use of accurate terms is our means of defense.
So I will not yield on accepting such captured yet ethereal and disguised terms as if descriptive about reality and I don't think anyone who respects what's true should submit. That starts with the base term 'gender'.
Don't think you're listening -- "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up"?
There's a coherent and scientifically tenable definition for "gender" as sexually dimorphic personality and behavioral traits. For examples, the British Medical Journal, and even Wikipedia at least starts off well:
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
Wikipedia: Gender is the range [spectrum] of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl) ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
Also see my earlier comment:
https://justdad7180.substack.com/p/the-unintelligibility-of-conversion/comment/169243873
That various gender ideologues have wooish and quite unscientific definitions is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Hi Peter, Great article. May I put it on CAN-SG website with appropriate acknowledgement of you?
Please share it widely.