At an exuberant ceremony in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order that bars natal males from girls' and women's sports. It applies to K-12 schools and universities.
The republicans were the first to politicize this issue. Researchers have been working to come to a conclusion about this issue. It is not as simple as Trump would have you believe.
It is simple. The women's category exists because male athletes in all sports at all comparable levels of competition have a huge advantage vs. female athletes. As such, ALL males are excluded from the women's category; that's how sports categories work, excluding everyone not a member of the protected class.
Actually, there is already copious literature on this issue all showing male advantages. Dr. Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist UChicago emeritus, on his website "Why Evolution Is True" has written extensively about this issue. And yes, male advantage is real.
Or it's "problematized"....largely for ideological reasons to maintain the illusion that biology is a "social construct" and tenderize thinking so that trans women are not really trans, but somehow, become physiologically female.....Here is a brief taste from CNN of what I mean:
There has long been a strand of feminism which argued that men and women were identically capable, and only the sexism of the patriarchy was holding women back. I recall in the 1990s attempting to explain to that type of feminist why the Tour de France, one of the toughest bicycle races in the world, has separate categories for men and women.
My conjecture is that Beryl Burton, the British women's cycling legend, had a difference of sex development precisely because she was a statistical outlier. For some feminists, Burton's achievement is proof that women can beat men in cycling races, only if they self-actualise and begin to believe in themselves.
Eh, conflating everything any strand of feminists say with feminism is like conflating everything some GOP voters say with the tenets of Republican thought and using it to discredit all of the GOP and what they stand for.
White supremacists tend to vote GOP, are they a strand of Republicanism?
Some people go way off into the fringes. They always will. Guilt-by-association is BS, and always will be.
Respecting preferred pronouns (within reason) or the terms “transgender woman” or “transgender girl” are not the same as referring to natal males as “transgender females”. It’s an egregious confusion of sex and gender identity from a person that I had expecred to be well-educated on this topic. It’s a shame. The headline here and your strawman defense of it gives me pause in reading your work and continuing to subscribe
If someone insists that they are female, despite being male, at which point does politeness end and reality begin? This is why I don't use 'trans woman' in my own writing, because as a woman is an adult human female, a 'trans woman' must also be female.
That's why I prefer and use "transwoman" -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't. Bonus is that it "offends" many transactivists:
Wiktionary: "The unspaced spelling transwoman is sometimes used interchangeably, including by a few transgender people. However, it is often associated with views (notably gender-critical feminism) that hold that transgender women are not women, and thus require a separate word from woman to describe them. For this reason many transgender people find transwoman offensive."
Well this should be interesting, with the directive to DHS to bar males coming into the country to play women's sports, because there are several international males with DSDs that play in the National Women's Soccer League, including the League MVP and MVP of the Championship game.
Their 2025 season starts up in a month, so they may already be in-country.
It's an open secret in the league, rarely mentioned.
The Athletic did a piece about one of them, Barbra Banda, when he was DQ'd from the Women's Africa Cup of Nations tournament for failing the sex-verification testing. He was subsequently allowed to play in the Olympics for the Zambia women's team and the 2024 NWSL season.
Isn't it interesting that people with very rare differences of sex development are discovered precisely because of their sporting ability? It's almost as if males and females are different in some fundamental way.
Banda isn’t male. She’s a female with abnormal testosterone levels. Whether she should be eligible to compete in women’s sports is a valid debate, but she was born and remains female.
Well, The Athletic and most of the NWSL disagree with you, along with anyone looking at him objectively.
There are women with naturally high T levels, but those women's levels don't approach male levels, and their entire body's bone structure doesn't look male. Only someone with male levels of T since puberty looks like that.
I’m not her doctor, but every source I’ve read refers to her as a “cis woman” or “natal female” or similar (including the Athletic). Happy to be corrected if you have accurate information to the contrary.
Yeah, I read the article, thanks. Nowhere does it say she was born male. The closest they come is to say that not enough has been made public about Banda’s condition to say for sure what caused her to fail the gender verification test; although they hinted that it was more than just testosterone levels, nothing is specified. I’m not sure what point you think you’re proving here.
The only other part of a gender-verification test is checking the sex-chromosome makeup. If there was a problem with that, then he's a male, and with a DSD, which the article also alluded to.
This is just restoring sanity. Normally that doesn’t really deserve to be celebrated. That it seems necessary here merely highlights the degree of insanity pushed by trans activists idiots.
Trump is crazy in other ways, but on this, he is spot on.
Hey Benjamin, thanks as always for your excellent reporting.
Your comments at the end caught my attention, because this is the kind of decision I need to make interpersonally (I'm not public-facing like you). How did you land on your policy? I only ask because, as someone who works with trans-identified youth, I wrestle internally with the ethics of using their preferred pronouns out of dignity and respect, while recognizing that in supporting social transition I may be contributing to their confusion and potential decision to make irreversible medical decisions.
I don't personally believe, like a lot of people clearly do, that using a preferred pronoun is intrinsically a grand philosophical statement about gender essentialism. It's just being polite as a baseline. Also, MSM outlets all use the kind of language I use. With the exception of "natal male" or "biological male." Some in the trans movement find that offensive. And others on the right say that there should be no qualifier; just "male" will suffice. That is incorrect. People will get confused without qualifiers. Same with the need for "cisgender" or "nontransgender." My patience with people either complaining about this or pretending like they can't understand what a "trans woman" is is at an all-time low. But if I don't put that note on an article like this, I'll get inundated with people playing dumb as they seek to make a political point. I'm not here to serve their political movement. I just blocked two people, they were being so annoying.
Ah gotcha, that makes sense! I follow your thinking on this, and I agree that using a person's preferred pronoun is just being polite as a baseline, and also that there needs to be qualifiers for clarity. Though I am probably more "gender-critical" than not, and I think clear language is incredibly important, if a person is going to actually interact about these ideas, or (in my case with youth) with people having these experiences, it is pointedly obtuse to not be sensitive with one's language. I don't think anyone wins the war of ideas by being an a-hole.
It is astoundingly obtuse to have lived as a human with an IQ above 70 and have ever heard anything about transgender people, literally ever, and not be able to figure out what a transgender woman is. I cannot believe how often people come at me pretending like I'm confusing them with such verbiage. They're all lying their faces off and are just playing games with me, because they don't want to admit there is any such thing as a transgender woman. They think such people are just men in dresses waiting to attack anything that moves.
I think when it comes to 'trans woman' it may be true for most people that they generally understand this to be a male identifying as a woman. There are still apolitical and older people who are thrown by it, but I'd concede this point as it pertains to the large majority of readers.
But 'trans female' and 'trans male' are designed to obfuscate and confuse.
"They think such people are just men in dresses waiting to attack anything that moves."
This strikes me as bad faith. The issue, of course, is that a large swath of trans-identifying males have what was previously deemed transvestic fetishism (comorbid with personality disorders and enhanced criminality), and these individuals are being collapsed - in language and policy - into the same category as the usually-gay young males who have dysphoria from a young age.
It sounds like you've had some pretty direct experience with people who understand the issue but are pretending not to in order to make their point. This is probably the result of the particular role/way in which you're approaching this issue, namely as a reporter. In which case, I completely understand your response.
Perhaps it is because I'm occupying a different role in this conversation - working with youth with ASD, trauma, who are sometimes also gay/lesbian - that I take a different view. I think that using a person's preferred pronoun is BOTH just being polite at baseline while ALSO making a statement about reality. This is obfuscated for these youth by the introduction of the concept of gender identity as separate from one's sex, and the conflation of gender identity with gender expression. That is why, for me, this feels like a moral/ethical dilemma: if I use their preferred pronouns as a way of conferring dignity and respect, I am also contributing to a way of thinking that is incorrect and creates incredible confusion for them. It may also, if medical transition is on the table, contribute to them thinking medical transition is a good intervention for them.
I say this having worked with several trans- or non-binary-identified youth now. Though their stories and trajectories have been different in each case, the one that got me most into this was a 15-year old girl I worked with who went on puberty blockers when she was 11, and was taking testosterone when I met her. She has since stopped, and gone back to using she/her pronouns, but this experience has been a significant driver of my very deep dive trying to understand this issue.
I guess what I'm saying is, I don't know that in EVERY circumstance that it will make sense to use a person's preferred pronouns. Supporting social transition for youth like this doesn't strike me as a benign act without downsides.
Right. If I call Lia Thomas "he" and Buck Angel "she", I'm going to alienate half the room and blow any chance of an honest discussion. In any case, I have no desire to spend half my life fighting with people over pronouns.
Also, how in god's name does anyone expect their brains to do anything but resist them by calling Brianna Wu "he" and Buck Angel "she"? Am I supposed to demand to know the full report on everyone's birth before I refer to them in conversation? Give me a royal break.
If we take queer theory seriously, a neopronoun or opposite sex pronoun is no longer queer when it is accepted, because it has become normative. And if gender is fluid, we cannot know a person's pronoun even if they/them told us what it was five minutes ago. So, I just use folx' current name to refer to them, even if it does result in the use of more syllables. Which gets complicated if you can't remember people's names.
Curiously, when growing up, I was taught that it was extremely rude to refer to someone by pronoun when they were present. Hence the common rebuke "Who's she? The cat's mother?"
I dislike having to use they/them pronouns in my writing, because it invariably is confusing, especially if you've got one person with such pronouns and there is a group of people in the larger context of what you're saying. I try to use a lot of stand-in words like "the doctor" and to structure the sentences without using any pronouns. Whoever thought up this version of a genderless pronoun was not thinking.
Not only making grammar and communication difficult, but reinforcing the damaging delusion that someone can become neither male nor female by the power of self-expression alone.
I intentionally use the correct pronoun which corresponds to the individual’s sex.
Demi Lovato, for example, was always a she. I will not go out of my way to avoid using the correct pronoun because “nonbinary” does not exist, just like “transgender” does not exist. Bruce Jenner is a he and Dylan Mulvaney is a he as well.
The whole thing is bullshit, and everyone needs to intentionally violate what these people ask for in order to provoke them.
This has been where I've often landed in practice as well. It's interesting, because I also was taught to not use pronouns to refer to someone in their presence, so in practice, the person to whom I'm referring doesn't experience a difference in how I treat them when I simply use their name. However, it can become complex when I'm speaking about a person to others, as often happens when I'm in groups with these kids. Also, using someone's name when speaking about them, and never using pronouns, makes for some awkward sentences.
Also, I work with kids with disabilities, many with ASD. For some of these kids, understanding the world in its complexity is hard enough, without throwing in a confusing sentence like "No, that person is now a 'he.'" They intuitively understand pronouns to be referring to a person's sex, and are confused by this idea of gender identity being superimposed.
My peers in this field seem to believe they are simply treating these kids with dignity and respect by adhering to these strange pronoun rituals and requests, but I think it's actually contributing to confusion. And instead of undermining harmful stereotypes, it actually reinforces them. By conflating "gender expression" with "gender identity," these kids leap to conclusions like "If I feel uncomfortable in my body or don't fit the stereotype of a 'typical' girl, I must be a boy." This is also perhaps more true for kids with ASD. This might be fine if this was limited to pronouns and how one dresses and presents. But when medical transition is on the table, it becomes dangerous.
Not to undermine Ben's response; I think the practice might be different when reporting vs. when communicating interpersonally. For me as a frontline worker, the most important thing is maintaining relationship with my clients. Without relationship, I can't help them. But I always hold these things in tension as I operate.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response, and how much consideration you put into the way you choose to interact with the young people you serve. I'm a teacher, and I face a similar internal struggle. At the end of the day, I've decided to use preferred pronouns because "we have to Maslow before we can Bloom", and these individuals are deeply affected by how they believe they are perceived by others. Essentially, I don't want them to get so hung up on pronouns that they can't learn, and learning is what we're there to do. But I also make a point to sprinkle SEL throughout my lessons - and since I'm an old school feminist, a lot of that is reminding my kids that there are no boy or girl things, you can like what you want, you can wear what you want, you can play with who you want, you're exactly who you are meant to be - and who you are is awesome. Hopefully, some of that makes it through.
The memoir Detransition: Before and After written by detransitioned woman Max Robinson discusses this, and quite well. She talks about using “preferred pronouns” as a means of continuing conversation that would otherwise be derailed by all the divisive tactics (“transphobia” argument). If keeping our foot in the door conversationally means playing along with the delusion simply to have thoughtful dialogue, I’m in. As a previously captured woman, these instances were the ones that stand out clearly to me. Someone thoughtfully engaging me in conversation while pushing against the definitive statement I was weaponizing. The interactions where people chose ad hominem etc. served only as evidence that strengthened the us vs. them dynamic and drove me deeper into the ideology.
I really like this framing, particularly the part about retaining the relationship and the ability to dialogue about the issue within that context. I also find the most effective method of pushing against a person's erroneous thinking is not through direct challenge, but through genuinely curious inquiry, and through highlighting contradictions or ways in which a person's own practices don't align with their expressed values. I find this in particular when speaking with well-intentioned but ideologically captured colleagues; they often don't recognize how their viewpoint on this issue - the gender-affirmation-only viewpoint - is actually causing harm. Ultimately they want what is best for these kids, and they believe they are doing the best. But to alienate them by arguing over language and pronouns is to lose the war of ideas before it's even begun.
Absolutely, friend! It comes down to our willingness to see that many, if not most, people who are ideologically captured are trying their best to be good--just as we are. When we come from a place that positions others in a favorable light, it becomes more difficult to attack. Humanizing one another, through humanizing ourselves (I've found), to be the best approach. Curiosity, nonjudgment, attempts at genuine understanding etc. are far more powerful tools than the haughty contrarian who is "too good to have been gotten". The ego gets in the way of genuine inquiry on all sides of this issue. There's a cult or grift in this world that can capture each and every one of us--it depends on what our individual poison is. When people in general can accept that, the judgment falls away.
Well said. As I've started to become more courageous and speak plainly and openly about these issues with people with whom I disagree in my personal circles, I have not had my worst fears about being "cancelled" or just "written off" realized. I think this is because I do lead with genuine curiosity and an attempt to understand, and a recognition and affirmation of the other person's deeper values, while still disagreeing with them. That has allowed me to have some very interesting conversations that, I hope, are moving the needle, even if ever so slightly, for people to re-think their (often highly politicized and vocal) stances in favour of gender-affirming care.
The ACLU's phrase "lawless attacks by elected officials" appears to imply that non-elected lawyers should decide policy rather than elected leaders. In other words, their activist interpretation of the law, which is not at all impartial or reasonable according to the 'common man' test, is more important than democracy. I would respond that this is not a matter of unlawful discrimination, because males cannot participate in women's sports regardless of their gender identity.
What the ACLU is advocating for is the male privilege to decide which sex category to compete in. I am sure this privilege will be fully leveraged in the ACLU's fund raising efforts. Are the supposed 'rights' of male cheats really the priority right now?
An actual transgender woman wouldn't be so masculine about forcing their way into places they weren't wanted. I note the prominent male sports cheats do not appear to have undergone any gender reassignment surgeries, whereas transmasculine females, who do not attempt to force their way into men's sports, frequently have radical surgeries, most commonly double mastectomies.
Two things about this capture my mixed feelings at the moment:
1) An EO is now in place protecting girls' and women's sports and spaces with force of the government. Good. It should have never gotten to this point in the first place, to say the least.
2) It was signed using women and girls as props by man who has used women and girls as props his whole life and never showed any particular interest in the integrity of women's spaces or women's sports until it benefited him in some way.
Trump's ancestor was a pimp deported from his own country of Germany on return from the US. The Donald organised beauty pagents for young girls. Seems the apfel doesn't fall far from the baum.
In the third-to-last paragraph I think you meant to say "Rep McBrideM has said she will comply with the rule," not Ms. Mace.
It caught my eye that you use the phrase "Considerably media-savvy" to describe Riley Gaines. Do you think she's wielding unmerited or oversized influence? I think I read somewhere that she intended to go to dental school after college, so I'm guessing whatever media skills she has are a result of taking on a cause that she was passionate about.
Nice to see that EO of Trump's. Though I doubt he's read or understood much of it since he's insisting that "there are two genders". Rather inconsistent with the EO which has anathematized, somewhat unreasonably, the whole concept of gender.
But -- given your rather "illogical" insistence that some "natal males" are "transgender females" -- you may wish to read the Wikipedia article on the principle of explosion: "from contradictions anything follows":
As always, I appreciate your work on these issues, and the amount of time required to research and write. In the spirit of wanting to be helpful, I've noticed what appears to be a typo in the first line of the article: "...executive-order singing on Wednesday..." I trust you meant "signing."
Pardon the cross post for those who also follow Lisa SD but just want to add that fact checking is miserable on this topic by mainstream media
I just watched on Nightline last night coverage of the order preventing transitioned mtf athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports and failed to get the most basic facts straight about the real advantages conferred by male puberty despite suppression of testosterone for athletes like Lia Thomas, and the difference between inclusion of male to female trans athletes vs female to male trans athletes (they reported as if these were the same), minimized the number of trans athletes participating in women’s sports, and only interviewed Lia Thomas and not one of the athletes who competed against Lia, and failed to include a single expert on the subject of trans inclusion in sports while referring sympathetically to the climate of “anti-trans” legislation (instead of acknowledging the idea of “safeguarding” legislation) I was yelling at the tv by the end of it 😖 and while Lia’s rhetoric about “policing bodies” and denial of physiological advantage (there are “all kinds of body types” in athletic competition) was certainly frustrating I was most angry at the media for doing such a lazy job of fact checking at the most basic level
PS I just watched a very good YouTube interview with one of Thomas’ former teammates that really details the enforcement of Lia’s inclusion by the university, to the point it became impossible to speak up, it’s just wild to listen to and I don’t think it’s been adequately covered by the media
What a shame that such a common sense policy has been politicized.
The Democrats totally blew this one.
The republicans were the first to politicize this issue. Researchers have been working to come to a conclusion about this issue. It is not as simple as Trump would have you believe.
It is simple. The women's category exists because male athletes in all sports at all comparable levels of competition have a huge advantage vs. female athletes. As such, ALL males are excluded from the women's category; that's how sports categories work, excluding everyone not a member of the protected class.
Actually, there is already copious literature on this issue all showing male advantages. Dr. Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist UChicago emeritus, on his website "Why Evolution Is True" has written extensively about this issue. And yes, male advantage is real.
Why anyone would doubt that male advantage is real is utterly beyond me.
Or it's "problematized"....largely for ideological reasons to maintain the illusion that biology is a "social construct" and tenderize thinking so that trans women are not really trans, but somehow, become physiologically female.....Here is a brief taste from CNN of what I mean:
https://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/1887240575725818299
There has long been a strand of feminism which argued that men and women were identically capable, and only the sexism of the patriarchy was holding women back. I recall in the 1990s attempting to explain to that type of feminist why the Tour de France, one of the toughest bicycle races in the world, has separate categories for men and women.
My conjecture is that Beryl Burton, the British women's cycling legend, had a difference of sex development precisely because she was a statistical outlier. For some feminists, Burton's achievement is proof that women can beat men in cycling races, only if they self-actualise and begin to believe in themselves.
Eh, conflating everything any strand of feminists say with feminism is like conflating everything some GOP voters say with the tenets of Republican thought and using it to discredit all of the GOP and what they stand for.
White supremacists tend to vote GOP, are they a strand of Republicanism?
Some people go way off into the fringes. They always will. Guilt-by-association is BS, and always will be.
No, the research is done and the results conclusive, as if we really needed scientific endorsement of what we can all see with our own eyes.
“Ultimately, the former male physiology of transwoman athletes provides them with a physiological advantage over the cis-female athlete.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/
“Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3
In summary. Testosterone matters. Follow the science, Democrats. You lost because of this lunacy. And you deserved to lose. Idiots.
Respecting preferred pronouns (within reason) or the terms “transgender woman” or “transgender girl” are not the same as referring to natal males as “transgender females”. It’s an egregious confusion of sex and gender identity from a person that I had expecred to be well-educated on this topic. It’s a shame. The headline here and your strawman defense of it gives me pause in reading your work and continuing to subscribe
If someone insists that they are female, despite being male, at which point does politeness end and reality begin? This is why I don't use 'trans woman' in my own writing, because as a woman is an adult human female, a 'trans woman' must also be female.
That's why I prefer and use "transwoman" -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't. Bonus is that it "offends" many transactivists:
Wiktionary: "The unspaced spelling transwoman is sometimes used interchangeably, including by a few transgender people. However, it is often associated with views (notably gender-critical feminism) that hold that transgender women are not women, and thus require a separate word from woman to describe them. For this reason many transgender people find transwoman offensive."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trans_woman
theres rent to pay
Well this should be interesting, with the directive to DHS to bar males coming into the country to play women's sports, because there are several international males with DSDs that play in the National Women's Soccer League, including the League MVP and MVP of the Championship game.
Their 2025 season starts up in a month, so they may already be in-country.
It's an open secret in the league, rarely mentioned.
The Athletic did a piece about one of them, Barbra Banda, when he was DQ'd from the Women's Africa Cup of Nations tournament for failing the sex-verification testing. He was subsequently allowed to play in the Olympics for the Zambia women's team and the 2024 NWSL season.
https://archive.ph/c7hg0
Isn't it interesting that people with very rare differences of sex development are discovered precisely because of their sporting ability? It's almost as if males and females are different in some fundamental way.
Yep, plus you look at each of them and think, "That is a male body".
https://bolanews.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/B73A4349-860x573.jpg
http://mbc.mw/storage/2024/03/WhatsApp-Image-2024-03-07-at-11.09.59.jpeg
https://zambianeye.com/barbara-bandas-disqualification-faz-is-to-blame/
In any contact sport, you can instantly tell the difference between a lean, athletic female and a male. As Shakira put it, hips don’t lie.
Banda isn’t male. She’s a female with abnormal testosterone levels. Whether she should be eligible to compete in women’s sports is a valid debate, but she was born and remains female.
Well, The Athletic and most of the NWSL disagree with you, along with anyone looking at him objectively.
There are women with naturally high T levels, but those women's levels don't approach male levels, and their entire body's bone structure doesn't look male. Only someone with male levels of T since puberty looks like that.
I’m not her doctor, but every source I’ve read refers to her as a “cis woman” or “natal female” or similar (including the Athletic). Happy to be corrected if you have accurate information to the contrary.
No. The Athletic calls him a "woman", not natal female, not cis. It also says his condition results from a DSD. Here's the article again.
https://archive.ph/c7hg0
Yeah, I read the article, thanks. Nowhere does it say she was born male. The closest they come is to say that not enough has been made public about Banda’s condition to say for sure what caused her to fail the gender verification test; although they hinted that it was more than just testosterone levels, nothing is specified. I’m not sure what point you think you’re proving here.
The only other part of a gender-verification test is checking the sex-chromosome makeup. If there was a problem with that, then he's a male, and with a DSD, which the article also alluded to.
This is just restoring sanity. Normally that doesn’t really deserve to be celebrated. That it seems necessary here merely highlights the degree of insanity pushed by trans activists idiots.
Trump is crazy in other ways, but on this, he is spot on.
Hey Benjamin, thanks as always for your excellent reporting.
Your comments at the end caught my attention, because this is the kind of decision I need to make interpersonally (I'm not public-facing like you). How did you land on your policy? I only ask because, as someone who works with trans-identified youth, I wrestle internally with the ethics of using their preferred pronouns out of dignity and respect, while recognizing that in supporting social transition I may be contributing to their confusion and potential decision to make irreversible medical decisions.
I don't personally believe, like a lot of people clearly do, that using a preferred pronoun is intrinsically a grand philosophical statement about gender essentialism. It's just being polite as a baseline. Also, MSM outlets all use the kind of language I use. With the exception of "natal male" or "biological male." Some in the trans movement find that offensive. And others on the right say that there should be no qualifier; just "male" will suffice. That is incorrect. People will get confused without qualifiers. Same with the need for "cisgender" or "nontransgender." My patience with people either complaining about this or pretending like they can't understand what a "trans woman" is is at an all-time low. But if I don't put that note on an article like this, I'll get inundated with people playing dumb as they seek to make a political point. I'm not here to serve their political movement. I just blocked two people, they were being so annoying.
Ah gotcha, that makes sense! I follow your thinking on this, and I agree that using a person's preferred pronoun is just being polite as a baseline, and also that there needs to be qualifiers for clarity. Though I am probably more "gender-critical" than not, and I think clear language is incredibly important, if a person is going to actually interact about these ideas, or (in my case with youth) with people having these experiences, it is pointedly obtuse to not be sensitive with one's language. I don't think anyone wins the war of ideas by being an a-hole.
It is astoundingly obtuse to have lived as a human with an IQ above 70 and have ever heard anything about transgender people, literally ever, and not be able to figure out what a transgender woman is. I cannot believe how often people come at me pretending like I'm confusing them with such verbiage. They're all lying their faces off and are just playing games with me, because they don't want to admit there is any such thing as a transgender woman. They think such people are just men in dresses waiting to attack anything that moves.
I think when it comes to 'trans woman' it may be true for most people that they generally understand this to be a male identifying as a woman. There are still apolitical and older people who are thrown by it, but I'd concede this point as it pertains to the large majority of readers.
But 'trans female' and 'trans male' are designed to obfuscate and confuse.
"They think such people are just men in dresses waiting to attack anything that moves."
This strikes me as bad faith. The issue, of course, is that a large swath of trans-identifying males have what was previously deemed transvestic fetishism (comorbid with personality disorders and enhanced criminality), and these individuals are being collapsed - in language and policy - into the same category as the usually-gay young males who have dysphoria from a young age.
It sounds like you've had some pretty direct experience with people who understand the issue but are pretending not to in order to make their point. This is probably the result of the particular role/way in which you're approaching this issue, namely as a reporter. In which case, I completely understand your response.
Perhaps it is because I'm occupying a different role in this conversation - working with youth with ASD, trauma, who are sometimes also gay/lesbian - that I take a different view. I think that using a person's preferred pronoun is BOTH just being polite at baseline while ALSO making a statement about reality. This is obfuscated for these youth by the introduction of the concept of gender identity as separate from one's sex, and the conflation of gender identity with gender expression. That is why, for me, this feels like a moral/ethical dilemma: if I use their preferred pronouns as a way of conferring dignity and respect, I am also contributing to a way of thinking that is incorrect and creates incredible confusion for them. It may also, if medical transition is on the table, contribute to them thinking medical transition is a good intervention for them.
I say this having worked with several trans- or non-binary-identified youth now. Though their stories and trajectories have been different in each case, the one that got me most into this was a 15-year old girl I worked with who went on puberty blockers when she was 11, and was taking testosterone when I met her. She has since stopped, and gone back to using she/her pronouns, but this experience has been a significant driver of my very deep dive trying to understand this issue.
I guess what I'm saying is, I don't know that in EVERY circumstance that it will make sense to use a person's preferred pronouns. Supporting social transition for youth like this doesn't strike me as a benign act without downsides.
Right. If I call Lia Thomas "he" and Buck Angel "she", I'm going to alienate half the room and blow any chance of an honest discussion. In any case, I have no desire to spend half my life fighting with people over pronouns.
Also, how in god's name does anyone expect their brains to do anything but resist them by calling Brianna Wu "he" and Buck Angel "she"? Am I supposed to demand to know the full report on everyone's birth before I refer to them in conversation? Give me a royal break.
If we take queer theory seriously, a neopronoun or opposite sex pronoun is no longer queer when it is accepted, because it has become normative. And if gender is fluid, we cannot know a person's pronoun even if they/them told us what it was five minutes ago. So, I just use folx' current name to refer to them, even if it does result in the use of more syllables. Which gets complicated if you can't remember people's names.
Curiously, when growing up, I was taught that it was extremely rude to refer to someone by pronoun when they were present. Hence the common rebuke "Who's she? The cat's mother?"
I dislike having to use they/them pronouns in my writing, because it invariably is confusing, especially if you've got one person with such pronouns and there is a group of people in the larger context of what you're saying. I try to use a lot of stand-in words like "the doctor" and to structure the sentences without using any pronouns. Whoever thought up this version of a genderless pronoun was not thinking.
Not only making grammar and communication difficult, but reinforcing the damaging delusion that someone can become neither male nor female by the power of self-expression alone.
I intentionally use the correct pronoun which corresponds to the individual’s sex.
Demi Lovato, for example, was always a she. I will not go out of my way to avoid using the correct pronoun because “nonbinary” does not exist, just like “transgender” does not exist. Bruce Jenner is a he and Dylan Mulvaney is a he as well.
The whole thing is bullshit, and everyone needs to intentionally violate what these people ask for in order to provoke them.
This has been where I've often landed in practice as well. It's interesting, because I also was taught to not use pronouns to refer to someone in their presence, so in practice, the person to whom I'm referring doesn't experience a difference in how I treat them when I simply use their name. However, it can become complex when I'm speaking about a person to others, as often happens when I'm in groups with these kids. Also, using someone's name when speaking about them, and never using pronouns, makes for some awkward sentences.
Also, I work with kids with disabilities, many with ASD. For some of these kids, understanding the world in its complexity is hard enough, without throwing in a confusing sentence like "No, that person is now a 'he.'" They intuitively understand pronouns to be referring to a person's sex, and are confused by this idea of gender identity being superimposed.
My peers in this field seem to believe they are simply treating these kids with dignity and respect by adhering to these strange pronoun rituals and requests, but I think it's actually contributing to confusion. And instead of undermining harmful stereotypes, it actually reinforces them. By conflating "gender expression" with "gender identity," these kids leap to conclusions like "If I feel uncomfortable in my body or don't fit the stereotype of a 'typical' girl, I must be a boy." This is also perhaps more true for kids with ASD. This might be fine if this was limited to pronouns and how one dresses and presents. But when medical transition is on the table, it becomes dangerous.
Not to undermine Ben's response; I think the practice might be different when reporting vs. when communicating interpersonally. For me as a frontline worker, the most important thing is maintaining relationship with my clients. Without relationship, I can't help them. But I always hold these things in tension as I operate.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response, and how much consideration you put into the way you choose to interact with the young people you serve. I'm a teacher, and I face a similar internal struggle. At the end of the day, I've decided to use preferred pronouns because "we have to Maslow before we can Bloom", and these individuals are deeply affected by how they believe they are perceived by others. Essentially, I don't want them to get so hung up on pronouns that they can't learn, and learning is what we're there to do. But I also make a point to sprinkle SEL throughout my lessons - and since I'm an old school feminist, a lot of that is reminding my kids that there are no boy or girl things, you can like what you want, you can wear what you want, you can play with who you want, you're exactly who you are meant to be - and who you are is awesome. Hopefully, some of that makes it through.
I love this. Thank you. :)
The memoir Detransition: Before and After written by detransitioned woman Max Robinson discusses this, and quite well. She talks about using “preferred pronouns” as a means of continuing conversation that would otherwise be derailed by all the divisive tactics (“transphobia” argument). If keeping our foot in the door conversationally means playing along with the delusion simply to have thoughtful dialogue, I’m in. As a previously captured woman, these instances were the ones that stand out clearly to me. Someone thoughtfully engaging me in conversation while pushing against the definitive statement I was weaponizing. The interactions where people chose ad hominem etc. served only as evidence that strengthened the us vs. them dynamic and drove me deeper into the ideology.
I really like this framing, particularly the part about retaining the relationship and the ability to dialogue about the issue within that context. I also find the most effective method of pushing against a person's erroneous thinking is not through direct challenge, but through genuinely curious inquiry, and through highlighting contradictions or ways in which a person's own practices don't align with their expressed values. I find this in particular when speaking with well-intentioned but ideologically captured colleagues; they often don't recognize how their viewpoint on this issue - the gender-affirmation-only viewpoint - is actually causing harm. Ultimately they want what is best for these kids, and they believe they are doing the best. But to alienate them by arguing over language and pronouns is to lose the war of ideas before it's even begun.
Absolutely, friend! It comes down to our willingness to see that many, if not most, people who are ideologically captured are trying their best to be good--just as we are. When we come from a place that positions others in a favorable light, it becomes more difficult to attack. Humanizing one another, through humanizing ourselves (I've found), to be the best approach. Curiosity, nonjudgment, attempts at genuine understanding etc. are far more powerful tools than the haughty contrarian who is "too good to have been gotten". The ego gets in the way of genuine inquiry on all sides of this issue. There's a cult or grift in this world that can capture each and every one of us--it depends on what our individual poison is. When people in general can accept that, the judgment falls away.
Well said. As I've started to become more courageous and speak plainly and openly about these issues with people with whom I disagree in my personal circles, I have not had my worst fears about being "cancelled" or just "written off" realized. I think this is because I do lead with genuine curiosity and an attempt to understand, and a recognition and affirmation of the other person's deeper values, while still disagreeing with them. That has allowed me to have some very interesting conversations that, I hope, are moving the needle, even if ever so slightly, for people to re-think their (often highly politicized and vocal) stances in favour of gender-affirming care.
Men, Benjamin. Men with a special identity.
There's no such thing as a TransFemale. Female denotes XX chromosomes, a characteristic that can never be trans'd.
The ACLU's phrase "lawless attacks by elected officials" appears to imply that non-elected lawyers should decide policy rather than elected leaders. In other words, their activist interpretation of the law, which is not at all impartial or reasonable according to the 'common man' test, is more important than democracy. I would respond that this is not a matter of unlawful discrimination, because males cannot participate in women's sports regardless of their gender identity.
What the ACLU is advocating for is the male privilege to decide which sex category to compete in. I am sure this privilege will be fully leveraged in the ACLU's fund raising efforts. Are the supposed 'rights' of male cheats really the priority right now?
An actual transgender woman wouldn't be so masculine about forcing their way into places they weren't wanted. I note the prominent male sports cheats do not appear to have undergone any gender reassignment surgeries, whereas transmasculine females, who do not attempt to force their way into men's sports, frequently have radical surgeries, most commonly double mastectomies.
Two things about this capture my mixed feelings at the moment:
1) An EO is now in place protecting girls' and women's sports and spaces with force of the government. Good. It should have never gotten to this point in the first place, to say the least.
2) It was signed using women and girls as props by man who has used women and girls as props his whole life and never showed any particular interest in the integrity of women's spaces or women's sports until it benefited him in some way.
He also came on to the women and dared people to have a problem with it.
Trump's ancestor was a pimp deported from his own country of Germany on return from the US. The Donald organised beauty pagents for young girls. Seems the apfel doesn't fall far from the baum.
In the third-to-last paragraph I think you meant to say "Rep McBrideM has said she will comply with the rule," not Ms. Mace.
It caught my eye that you use the phrase "Considerably media-savvy" to describe Riley Gaines. Do you think she's wielding unmerited or oversized influence? I think I read somewhere that she intended to go to dental school after college, so I'm guessing whatever media skills she has are a result of taking on a cause that she was passionate about.
Thanks, I caught the mis-naming thing. I have no idea about Gaines. She is very good at online, this I know.
Nice to see that EO of Trump's. Though I doubt he's read or understood much of it since he's insisting that "there are two genders". Rather inconsistent with the EO which has anathematized, somewhat unreasonably, the whole concept of gender.
But -- given your rather "illogical" insistence that some "natal males" are "transgender females" -- you may wish to read the Wikipedia article on the principle of explosion: "from contradictions anything follows":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
You might just as well say that black is white, that 2+2=5.
As always, I appreciate your work on these issues, and the amount of time required to research and write. In the spirit of wanting to be helpful, I've noticed what appears to be a typo in the first line of the article: "...executive-order singing on Wednesday..." I trust you meant "signing."
Actually, no. Trump 2.0 is a MUSICAL.
And a 5, 6, 7, 8...!
Ben,
Didn't this individual very recently get a big award from this organization?
"I’m thrilled to share that my reporting at Erin In The Morning........has been nominated for the GLAAD Media Award for Independent Journalism."
Yes
erin in the morning lies every 2nd word. wow lie with dogs, get flees
There's no such thing as 'trans females'. It's a contradiction in terms.
Pardon the cross post for those who also follow Lisa SD but just want to add that fact checking is miserable on this topic by mainstream media
I just watched on Nightline last night coverage of the order preventing transitioned mtf athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports and failed to get the most basic facts straight about the real advantages conferred by male puberty despite suppression of testosterone for athletes like Lia Thomas, and the difference between inclusion of male to female trans athletes vs female to male trans athletes (they reported as if these were the same), minimized the number of trans athletes participating in women’s sports, and only interviewed Lia Thomas and not one of the athletes who competed against Lia, and failed to include a single expert on the subject of trans inclusion in sports while referring sympathetically to the climate of “anti-trans” legislation (instead of acknowledging the idea of “safeguarding” legislation) I was yelling at the tv by the end of it 😖 and while Lia’s rhetoric about “policing bodies” and denial of physiological advantage (there are “all kinds of body types” in athletic competition) was certainly frustrating I was most angry at the media for doing such a lazy job of fact checking at the most basic level
PS I just watched a very good YouTube interview with one of Thomas’ former teammates that really details the enforcement of Lia’s inclusion by the university, to the point it became impossible to speak up, it’s just wild to listen to and I don’t think it’s been adequately covered by the media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D55FlfBGz0E