There are some Substacks in existence (like Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans) dedicated to sharing the stories of parents whose children who have been indoctrinated online into believing themselves to be trans, and who have cut themselves off
This is the very thing that concerns me. Innocent and vulnerable people are caught up in the tragic web-making of the deranged who have them held hostage by cords of love, or empathy, or sympathy. It’s a terrible #enmeshment of #gaslighting, #bereavement, #grief, and the imposition of will upon other individuals.
I myself have faced this emotional blackmail, and LOST what was precious to me, so I deeply identify with this kind of pain and agony. It is only by the grace of God and my New Identity in Christ [2 Corinthians 5:17] that I can live a victorious and productive life [1 Corinthians 15:56-58]. In Christ there is hope for the future [Titus 2:13], there is cleansing of the mind from evil thoughts [Philippians 4:8-9], there is redemption and restoration of the body, mind, and spirit [Ephesians 1:7]. Now I only await the restoration of right relationships with those who were taken captive by this cult. It will come, either in this life or the next. Of this, Scripture assures me.
I first heard about gender dysphoria around 2005, when it was something that existed purely in academia. Recently I heard from a psychiatrist that due to recent changes to the DSM (mentioned in that tweet you shared), clinicians have to treat it as if it is evidence of a real condition, and they would lose their license if they diagnosed a dysphoric patient as being delusional
Hi Ali, first up I have and do read your blog as I want to understand your viewpoints.
If my poor children, with horrendously woke parents, asked me 'Why can a man choose to live as a woman and use the female facilities' the first thing I would explain is why we can make a distinction between gender identity and biological sex.
I would discuss how gender is not solely defined by biological factors such as your genitalia and chromosomes but is also profoundly influenced by social, cultural, and personal experiences. I would give examples to illustrate why gender encompasses how individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived and treated by society to try to help them understand how beyond the biological factors gender is more of a social construct, that societies norms and expectations significantly shape our understanding of what it means to be male, female, or non-binary.
This would lead to many more questions I'm sure, but I would aim to leave them with an understanding that the way society treats individuals based on their gender identity can profoundly impact their well-being and that we live in a diverse world and should respect everyone's rights and identities.
But, honestly I don't think they ever will ask me this. Instead of pity I feel they are privileged to live in a such a tolerant and open community where already they do not take issue or have prejudice against anyone based on how they choose to live their lives.
It’s not prejudiced to think that men should respect women’s right to privacy from men, because it’s not ‘prejudiced’ to understand that men represent an inherent threat to women, regardless of what those men think about themselves. I honestly don’t know what prejudices you’re referring to.
It’s not intolerant to refuse to accept people’s beliefs about themselves as reality, and doing so doesn’t help them. If it was a question of anything other than gender - like age, or race, or eye colour - no one would suggest that their own beliefs about themself should be indulged or socially affirmed, but gender gets this one exception. Is everywhere and everyone in the world that refuses to accept that men who suffer from gender dysphoria are somehow not still men ‘intolerant’? It applies to women with gender dysphoria too, but women aren’t the ones who pose an inherent risk to the opposite sex, whereas us men DO.
All that stuff about gender identity being a social construct independent of physical sex is exactly the kind of academic waffle that children should be taught to question, not just accept. It’s the opposite of critical thinking, it’s dogma! ’Non-binary’ does not refer to anything real - humans are mammals and mammals are either male or female, that’s a literal binary. If you want to believe that ‘gender identity’ is real then fine, but there is no good reason to then give that precedence over sex in anything in the real world, because it’s that exact reasoning that gets used to justify men going into women’s spaces - toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, sports etc. It’s misogyny, dressed up in academic language as social justice.
10 years ago neither you nor any other reasonable person would have been suggesting that ‘gender identity’ should be treated as objective reality and trump sex when it comes to women’s spaces, but years of relentless hammering of the prejudice/tolerance/acceptance narrative and somehow it’s become accepted, and it’s honestly really disturbing and quite frightening.
Just dismissing my viewpoint as academic waffle is pretty annoying, as is using how people thought in the past as reasoning. It's like saying 100 years ago no reasonable person would have suggested that all women should be able to vote. Okay, not the best analogy, but my point is social attitudes and scientific knowledge evolve. You claim it's relentless hammering of a narrative, but why can't this also be seen as a cultural shift and growing acceptance of diversity by modern society that drives that narrative?
I truly don't understand why you find it 'really disturbing and quite frightening'. There are literally hundreds of thousands of trans people living their lives in all different societies, and the argument that this places women at risk is unfounded. A man could just walk into a 'women's space' and do a horrendous thing without the pretence of having to live as a woman to do it. I would argue that the overwhelming majority of people who identify as an alternative gender would use those spaces as intended and do not create an increased safety risk.
Labelling this as 'misogyny' just perpetuates harmful stereotypes about trans individuals, and feeds the 'relentless hammering' of the men are an inherent risk to women narrative when discussing gender identities.
I'm genuinely shocked to see you say that "men are an inherent risk to women" is just a narrative. That's a fact that everyone should understand once they understand what sex is, if not before. Not all men are rapists, but all men have the potential to be, and this is why we have female-only spaces. Males are excluded regardless of this ephemeral quality of 'gender identity', because it's their maleness that makes them a risk. I know you know this.
You're using the word 'stereotypes' the same way you used 'prejudice'. I don't know what stereotypes you're referring to.
I don't know what you mean about a man being able to just walk into a female space and do something awful without having to "live as a woman" to do it. I guess he can try, but if he "lives as a woman" (which means he wears women's clothes and makeup and says he's a woman?) then he will be ALLOWED into the space when otherwise he wouldn't be, so yes it does make it easier for predatory men to prey on women in vulnerable situations, including in women's prisons (https://www.iwf.org/cruelandunusual/hector-bravo-ferrel/). That's the whole point.
Even if the overwhelming majority of trans women would not create an increased risk by being allowed into female spaces but there is a tiny minority who would, then that alone is already a reason not to allow it. What are the benefits of allowing men who "identify as women" or "live as women" into women's spaces? The risk is to women and girls' safety, whereas the benefit is to those men's feelings. That's a prime example of misogyny.
What scientific knowledge is evolving? Gender identity is about how people feel about themselves and that's the exact opposite of science, which is about observable realities like physical sex. Physical sex is not changing, and can't change.
I was being polite calling what you said 'academic waffle' - 'circular reasoning full of slogans, nonsequiturs, false equivocations and aphorisms like "living as a woman"' would be more accurate, and that is precisely why I feel sorry for children whose parents would say this to them and expect them to go along with it. "Just because everyone around you goes along with something, that still doesn't make it true" is the kind of thing parents used to say to their children, but apparently now the opposite is true, and I find that really disturbing.
Hey Ali, I do not have time today to write a considered response to this, but will try to over the weekend.
One thing I would just like to address though is that in this post you state 'they used “trans rights in Russia” as one of several incoherent reasons why they disagreed with my blog despite not having read it' - I would just like to clarify that we were not focusing on trans rights but LGBT rights in general.
I am afraid to post links to sources that I read as I worry you will just dismiss them as propaganda or an invalid news source, but as you have used news articles to illustrate your points I thought I would share this as I would be interested to know your thoughts and opinions on it.
https://theconversation.com/putins-russia-first-arrests-under-new-anti-lgbt-laws-mark-new-era-of-repression-226864 - Please note that I do find the title of the article rather extremist, but the cases it identifies are examples of why I strongly feel that peoples rights and freedoms in Russia are suppressed by it's government - therefore discussing these issues when discussing the wider content of your blog is a valid topic and not an incoherent reason.
Stuart is one of my oldest friends and I care deeply about him, his wife and their children. I wouldn't bother arguing this much if he was just some person on the internet
Hi David, nice to meet you. I've known Ali since I was at school, he was the best man at my wedding and has seen my kids grow up. I know him very well and genuinely care about him very much. Which is why I am writing here to him, in response to an article where he references me and my wife in relation to how I teach and discuss things with my children, in the hope that if I engage in discussion with these topics we can gain some common ground or at least an understanding and tolerance of each other's views and beliefs.
You however I do not know, but that last paragraph of your comment tells me all I need to know. You just make Ali's blog look bad for the type of readership it has.
This is a thoughtful response and I agree with much of it. Gender is not just biological and is influenced by the culture. I'd be happy to teach that. It's the status of someone's 'gender identity' that is in question and whether it should take precedence in defining the categories men and women I have issues with.
First of all, we have to recognise that broadening the definition of women to include men that identify as women prioritises gender identity over biological sex. This kind of inclusion removes the rights of biological women to exclude biological men from their spaces. This is not being 'tolerant' to lesbians who only want to date biological women. No one should be surprised that people are upset about this major change. This isn't accommodating a small group of troubled people for their psychological benefit. It is fundamentally undermining the legal rights of women as a class as is playing out in Tickle v Giggle and Title IX. This fundamental conflict can't be avoided when you change the definition of women. One concept has to take priority over the other.
So which should it be? Note first of all that gender is dependent definitionally on sex. Imagine in 50 years that instead of sex, people just choose their gender identity as male and female such that sex becomes independent of gender altogether. What then does it mean to be a man or woman? The categories would either have to hew to a stereotype - women is looking like a woman did in some historical moment, or it would shift with cultural fashions and become arbitrary (ie meaningless). It would become identity, but lose its 'gendered' status. Or imagine going to an alien world where everyone is biologically identical - what would gender be, or mean there? Gender doesn't make sense without sex existing prior and providing the definitional content. Yes there's a culturally constructed element to it but gender ultimately derives its meaning from sex.
Second, what is the status of gender identity? What status should we accord someone's internal sense of themselves, what is its reality?
Note there is no scientific account or proof of gender identity, no scan or diagnostic test that can be done. It is entirely a subjective account. And on what basis are people forming their view, aren't they subject to cultural ideas of what gender identity is, and how they would recognise it? If you accept that gender is partly socially constructed, then you have to accept ideas around gender identity can be constructed.
The irony here is that because gender identity is only an internal sense it requires social proof through dress and cosmetic changes to sex characteristics. Whereas biological sex just is and doesn't require any social proof, it actually allows greater latitude as we understood through second wave feminism - being a man or woman doesn't need to define how you dress and express, but I think you'd agree a masculine man who had entirely male dress and behaviour would be a strange kind of woman...
Ask yourself what is real and what is socially constructed?
Third, you are steel manning gender identity arguments probably with a born in the wrong body, dysphoria, medicalisation frame. But this isn't reality. The reality is young people are very confused and are being influenced through media bubbles. Go to Reddit and check out trans subs. You will see people with normal adolescent doubts being encouraged to think of themselves as trans. Non-binary which might have been a safe halfway point to explore gender now can mean girls who want to chop their tits off, actually an act of self-harm, self-denial as it limits their future. In these subs you will see that young people talk about gender identity just like it's a cosmetic choice of identity - effectively a consumer choice conception.
And if you believe in culture what do you think of allowing preschool children to choose their gender? Or to socially transition at that age? If you believe in the concept of child development you have to see that it is effectively adults at that point shaping children in a way that makes them more likely to medicalise. Where else do children get their ideas about gender? If gender is socially constructed, why are we constructing it in a way that makes people medicalise? Why are numbers of these people increasing?
This is the very thing that concerns me. Innocent and vulnerable people are caught up in the tragic web-making of the deranged who have them held hostage by cords of love, or empathy, or sympathy. It’s a terrible #enmeshment of #gaslighting, #bereavement, #grief, and the imposition of will upon other individuals.
I myself have faced this emotional blackmail, and LOST what was precious to me, so I deeply identify with this kind of pain and agony. It is only by the grace of God and my New Identity in Christ [2 Corinthians 5:17] that I can live a victorious and productive life [1 Corinthians 15:56-58]. In Christ there is hope for the future [Titus 2:13], there is cleansing of the mind from evil thoughts [Philippians 4:8-9], there is redemption and restoration of the body, mind, and spirit [Ephesians 1:7]. Now I only await the restoration of right relationships with those who were taken captive by this cult. It will come, either in this life or the next. Of this, Scripture assures me.
This post by an experienced 30yr veteran psychologist on X is worth the trouble to read https://x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1808825717204922755?t=ypNxzgY-rQ4mZMvOT7jORw&s=09
I first heard about gender dysphoria around 2005, when it was something that existed purely in academia. Recently I heard from a psychiatrist that due to recent changes to the DSM (mentioned in that tweet you shared), clinicians have to treat it as if it is evidence of a real condition, and they would lose their license if they diagnosed a dysphoric patient as being delusional
Hi Ali, first up I have and do read your blog as I want to understand your viewpoints.
If my poor children, with horrendously woke parents, asked me 'Why can a man choose to live as a woman and use the female facilities' the first thing I would explain is why we can make a distinction between gender identity and biological sex.
I would discuss how gender is not solely defined by biological factors such as your genitalia and chromosomes but is also profoundly influenced by social, cultural, and personal experiences. I would give examples to illustrate why gender encompasses how individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived and treated by society to try to help them understand how beyond the biological factors gender is more of a social construct, that societies norms and expectations significantly shape our understanding of what it means to be male, female, or non-binary.
This would lead to many more questions I'm sure, but I would aim to leave them with an understanding that the way society treats individuals based on their gender identity can profoundly impact their well-being and that we live in a diverse world and should respect everyone's rights and identities.
But, honestly I don't think they ever will ask me this. Instead of pity I feel they are privileged to live in a such a tolerant and open community where already they do not take issue or have prejudice against anyone based on how they choose to live their lives.
It’s not prejudiced to think that men should respect women’s right to privacy from men, because it’s not ‘prejudiced’ to understand that men represent an inherent threat to women, regardless of what those men think about themselves. I honestly don’t know what prejudices you’re referring to.
It’s not intolerant to refuse to accept people’s beliefs about themselves as reality, and doing so doesn’t help them. If it was a question of anything other than gender - like age, or race, or eye colour - no one would suggest that their own beliefs about themself should be indulged or socially affirmed, but gender gets this one exception. Is everywhere and everyone in the world that refuses to accept that men who suffer from gender dysphoria are somehow not still men ‘intolerant’? It applies to women with gender dysphoria too, but women aren’t the ones who pose an inherent risk to the opposite sex, whereas us men DO.
All that stuff about gender identity being a social construct independent of physical sex is exactly the kind of academic waffle that children should be taught to question, not just accept. It’s the opposite of critical thinking, it’s dogma! ’Non-binary’ does not refer to anything real - humans are mammals and mammals are either male or female, that’s a literal binary. If you want to believe that ‘gender identity’ is real then fine, but there is no good reason to then give that precedence over sex in anything in the real world, because it’s that exact reasoning that gets used to justify men going into women’s spaces - toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, sports etc. It’s misogyny, dressed up in academic language as social justice.
10 years ago neither you nor any other reasonable person would have been suggesting that ‘gender identity’ should be treated as objective reality and trump sex when it comes to women’s spaces, but years of relentless hammering of the prejudice/tolerance/acceptance narrative and somehow it’s become accepted, and it’s honestly really disturbing and quite frightening.
Just dismissing my viewpoint as academic waffle is pretty annoying, as is using how people thought in the past as reasoning. It's like saying 100 years ago no reasonable person would have suggested that all women should be able to vote. Okay, not the best analogy, but my point is social attitudes and scientific knowledge evolve. You claim it's relentless hammering of a narrative, but why can't this also be seen as a cultural shift and growing acceptance of diversity by modern society that drives that narrative?
I truly don't understand why you find it 'really disturbing and quite frightening'. There are literally hundreds of thousands of trans people living their lives in all different societies, and the argument that this places women at risk is unfounded. A man could just walk into a 'women's space' and do a horrendous thing without the pretence of having to live as a woman to do it. I would argue that the overwhelming majority of people who identify as an alternative gender would use those spaces as intended and do not create an increased safety risk.
Labelling this as 'misogyny' just perpetuates harmful stereotypes about trans individuals, and feeds the 'relentless hammering' of the men are an inherent risk to women narrative when discussing gender identities.
I'm genuinely shocked to see you say that "men are an inherent risk to women" is just a narrative. That's a fact that everyone should understand once they understand what sex is, if not before. Not all men are rapists, but all men have the potential to be, and this is why we have female-only spaces. Males are excluded regardless of this ephemeral quality of 'gender identity', because it's their maleness that makes them a risk. I know you know this.
You're using the word 'stereotypes' the same way you used 'prejudice'. I don't know what stereotypes you're referring to.
I don't know what you mean about a man being able to just walk into a female space and do something awful without having to "live as a woman" to do it. I guess he can try, but if he "lives as a woman" (which means he wears women's clothes and makeup and says he's a woman?) then he will be ALLOWED into the space when otherwise he wouldn't be, so yes it does make it easier for predatory men to prey on women in vulnerable situations, including in women's prisons (https://www.iwf.org/cruelandunusual/hector-bravo-ferrel/). That's the whole point.
Even if the overwhelming majority of trans women would not create an increased risk by being allowed into female spaces but there is a tiny minority who would, then that alone is already a reason not to allow it. What are the benefits of allowing men who "identify as women" or "live as women" into women's spaces? The risk is to women and girls' safety, whereas the benefit is to those men's feelings. That's a prime example of misogyny.
What scientific knowledge is evolving? Gender identity is about how people feel about themselves and that's the exact opposite of science, which is about observable realities like physical sex. Physical sex is not changing, and can't change.
I was being polite calling what you said 'academic waffle' - 'circular reasoning full of slogans, nonsequiturs, false equivocations and aphorisms like "living as a woman"' would be more accurate, and that is precisely why I feel sorry for children whose parents would say this to them and expect them to go along with it. "Just because everyone around you goes along with something, that still doesn't make it true" is the kind of thing parents used to say to their children, but apparently now the opposite is true, and I find that really disturbing.
Hey Ali, I do not have time today to write a considered response to this, but will try to over the weekend.
One thing I would just like to address though is that in this post you state 'they used “trans rights in Russia” as one of several incoherent reasons why they disagreed with my blog despite not having read it' - I would just like to clarify that we were not focusing on trans rights but LGBT rights in general.
I am afraid to post links to sources that I read as I worry you will just dismiss them as propaganda or an invalid news source, but as you have used news articles to illustrate your points I thought I would share this as I would be interested to know your thoughts and opinions on it.
https://theconversation.com/putins-russia-first-arrests-under-new-anti-lgbt-laws-mark-new-era-of-repression-226864 - Please note that I do find the title of the article rather extremist, but the cases it identifies are examples of why I strongly feel that peoples rights and freedoms in Russia are suppressed by it's government - therefore discussing these issues when discussing the wider content of your blog is a valid topic and not an incoherent reason.
Stuart is one of my oldest friends and I care deeply about him, his wife and their children. I wouldn't bother arguing this much if he was just some person on the internet
Hi David, nice to meet you. I've known Ali since I was at school, he was the best man at my wedding and has seen my kids grow up. I know him very well and genuinely care about him very much. Which is why I am writing here to him, in response to an article where he references me and my wife in relation to how I teach and discuss things with my children, in the hope that if I engage in discussion with these topics we can gain some common ground or at least an understanding and tolerance of each other's views and beliefs.
You however I do not know, but that last paragraph of your comment tells me all I need to know. You just make Ali's blog look bad for the type of readership it has.
This is a thoughtful response and I agree with much of it. Gender is not just biological and is influenced by the culture. I'd be happy to teach that. It's the status of someone's 'gender identity' that is in question and whether it should take precedence in defining the categories men and women I have issues with.
First of all, we have to recognise that broadening the definition of women to include men that identify as women prioritises gender identity over biological sex. This kind of inclusion removes the rights of biological women to exclude biological men from their spaces. This is not being 'tolerant' to lesbians who only want to date biological women. No one should be surprised that people are upset about this major change. This isn't accommodating a small group of troubled people for their psychological benefit. It is fundamentally undermining the legal rights of women as a class as is playing out in Tickle v Giggle and Title IX. This fundamental conflict can't be avoided when you change the definition of women. One concept has to take priority over the other.
So which should it be? Note first of all that gender is dependent definitionally on sex. Imagine in 50 years that instead of sex, people just choose their gender identity as male and female such that sex becomes independent of gender altogether. What then does it mean to be a man or woman? The categories would either have to hew to a stereotype - women is looking like a woman did in some historical moment, or it would shift with cultural fashions and become arbitrary (ie meaningless). It would become identity, but lose its 'gendered' status. Or imagine going to an alien world where everyone is biologically identical - what would gender be, or mean there? Gender doesn't make sense without sex existing prior and providing the definitional content. Yes there's a culturally constructed element to it but gender ultimately derives its meaning from sex.
Second, what is the status of gender identity? What status should we accord someone's internal sense of themselves, what is its reality?
Note there is no scientific account or proof of gender identity, no scan or diagnostic test that can be done. It is entirely a subjective account. And on what basis are people forming their view, aren't they subject to cultural ideas of what gender identity is, and how they would recognise it? If you accept that gender is partly socially constructed, then you have to accept ideas around gender identity can be constructed.
The irony here is that because gender identity is only an internal sense it requires social proof through dress and cosmetic changes to sex characteristics. Whereas biological sex just is and doesn't require any social proof, it actually allows greater latitude as we understood through second wave feminism - being a man or woman doesn't need to define how you dress and express, but I think you'd agree a masculine man who had entirely male dress and behaviour would be a strange kind of woman...
Ask yourself what is real and what is socially constructed?
Third, you are steel manning gender identity arguments probably with a born in the wrong body, dysphoria, medicalisation frame. But this isn't reality. The reality is young people are very confused and are being influenced through media bubbles. Go to Reddit and check out trans subs. You will see people with normal adolescent doubts being encouraged to think of themselves as trans. Non-binary which might have been a safe halfway point to explore gender now can mean girls who want to chop their tits off, actually an act of self-harm, self-denial as it limits their future. In these subs you will see that young people talk about gender identity just like it's a cosmetic choice of identity - effectively a consumer choice conception.
And if you believe in culture what do you think of allowing preschool children to choose their gender? Or to socially transition at that age? If you believe in the concept of child development you have to see that it is effectively adults at that point shaping children in a way that makes them more likely to medicalise. Where else do children get their ideas about gender? If gender is socially constructed, why are we constructing it in a way that makes people medicalise? Why are numbers of these people increasing?