You need to read TJ Klune's anti-JK Rowling books about love, diversity and magic

In a world full of evil fascists, transphobic TERFs and religious fanatics comes the anti-JK Rowling books you have been waiting for,  books about love, diversity and personal growth.

It is when you are living in dark times like these that you need art that can give you meaning and hope. This is why I will use this opportunity to tell you about two books that have given me a psychological and spiritual injection of  compassion and optimism.

TJ Klune

Travis John Klune (or TJ Klune as he is known) has written several romantic fantasy novels. 

He is a gay and neurodiverse author who has some really profound insights into why some people become bigots who do everything in their power to control others. But he is also very good at describing how diversity and allowing people to be themselves can lead to personal growth and happiness.

The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the follow up Somewhere Beyond the Sea, are clearly targeting a young adult audience, but – believe me – the books have something for everyone, including a kind of humor those who have lived for some time will appreciate. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea presents Linus Baker, a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He is the perfect by the book bureaucrat. 

He is often sent to orphanages for magical children to report on them, and even though he feels compassion for the kids, he does not really see how the system uses these orphanages to keep the magical children away from society at large.

Gender variation, normalcy, "autogynephilia" and the culture war

I was talking to the transgender blogger Joanna Santos on WhatsApp the other day and we made some observations regarding generational shifts regarding the role of transphobic theories like "autogymephilia" in the lives of trans and gender variant people.

If we allow ourselves to generalize a bit we may say that the older generations (boomers and those 50+) have had to face several challenges:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.
2. The way these theories can be used by family and friends.
3. The way these narratives easily become internalized, leading to shame, suppression of transgender dreams, fear, anger and depression.

The younger generation, and especially Gen Z and the Millenials, more often face only one of these three:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.

The right wing and TERF backlash against transgender rights makes this remaining bullet-point painfully visible right now, but as Joanna pointed out to me, young people today get their gender affirmed by those who matter: Friends and family. 

A new culture for the young

Younger cis people may not fully understand what being trans means, but are more likely to have grown up in a cultural setting where you respect and accept the identities of others, and where marginalized groups are to be included and not ostracized.

Anti-LGBTIQ literature in the Spanish language

There is a serious lack of online resources on anti-LGBTQ activism in the Spanish language. Queer and transgender people need to know who these people are, their way of thinking and their tactics if they want to stop them from doing more harm. 

The first post of our new Spanish language blog, Mundo LGBTIQ,  is therefore on "Anti-LGBTIQ literature written in Spanish". 

Here follows an English language translation of that post. The original can be found here.

By Amilka González

The Spanish language is the second most spoken language in the world by natives, with almost 500 million speakers.In recent years many Spanish-speaking groups have become increasingly committed to the dissemination of discourses that question the human rights of the LGBTIQ population, which raises the need to map both groups and discourses. This would be the starting point for analyzing transnational relations and alliances between Spanish-speaking anti-rights groups and Spanish speaking anti-rights group.

It can be said that dedicating the first article of our new Spanish language blog to anti-LGBTIQ rights literature is giving undeserved publicity to ideas that are harmful to society. However, if we want to understand how these ideas work and why they are shared by many people, we believe it is necessary to map these discourses.

This is not a novel idea. It is a strategy known to anti-racist organizations that for decades have monitored hate speech related to racial segregation and other types of discrimination. An example of this is the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in the US, which has been dedicated to this work, in addition to being known for its legal battles against supremacist groups.

Is it OK for a cis woman to refuse treatment from a transgender gynecologist?

Photo of transgender gynecologist Petra De Sutter from Open Dialogue.

Petra De Sutter is a gynecologist and politician, currently serving as the federal Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium. Would it be OK for a cis woman to ask for another female gynecologist, if Petra was the one assigned to her? 

Sometimes I get questions via tumblr over at my Trans-Express news blog. Some are genuine and well meant, while others are traps set by transphobes who aim at luring me into saying something they can use against trans people in general.

The following question might have been such a trap:

Do you believe that if a woman or girl requests a female gynaecologist, and the gyno is a pre-transition trans woman, the patient is transphobic for being uncomfortable or asking for a cis woman doctor? Genuine question.

There is, in fact, a good chance this questions was written by a British TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). 

However, as I started thinking about the question I realized that this was an opportunity to say something more about the kind of bigotry we find in racism, homophobia and transphobia. So I wrote an answer.

Here it is:

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Social conditioning

There are many levels of bigotry – being this racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of aversion felt towards minority groups. The phobia can be conscious, deliberate and hateful, or it can be implicit and an indirect effect of cultural prejudices.

One of the ways society keep marginalized groups excluded is by conditioning its citizens to fear or loathe them. This is not only a mental process; it is an emotional form of conditioning.

Kids will, from a very young age, see that their parents and peers express distaste when meeting – or talking about – members of these groups.

The same adults will often use the same kind of expressions as when they talk about something diseased, rotten or corrupt. Kids pick up on these feelings. They develop the same emotional responses.

New Norwegian survey shows increased public support for LGBTQ+ people, trans people included

Over 70% of Norwegian women think it is OK to share a locker room with a transgender person.  Over 60% support gay, lesbian and bisexual people, while some 50 percent express support for transgender people. The support for queer people is increasing. That is not bad, the current anti-LGBT activism considered.

[UPDATE: Click here for an update on the recent terrorist attack against Oslo Pride and what that may mean for Norwegian support of queer people].

LGBTQA+ issues have become weaponized in what some refer to as "the culture war." In many ways we see a repeat of the way queer people were used as a threat in the mid-war period, when especially Fascists and Nazis presented gay and gender nonconforming people as a threat to the social order and the common man. 

"Gender critical" TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and right wing extremists have now come to the point where they want to force trans people back into their closets. In countries like the USA, Russia, Poland and Hungary, the extreme right are going after all queer people, and not only those trans. 

An important question is therefore whether this kind of hate activism reflects broader trends among the population as a whole or whether this is more about extremists making a lot of noise, with little effect on the attitudes found among people in general.

A recent British study shows that Brits in general are very LGBTQA-friendly, and that a majority feel an admiration for trans people. 

Given the intense anti-trans activism of transphobic British TERFs, right wing fundamentalists and the media in that country, the British numbers may indicate that the trend towards increased acceptance of queer people has a fairly strong fundament, in the sense that the many  countries continue to move towards greater  LGBT+ acceptance.

The Norwegian survey of public attitudes towards LGBT+

The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir) published an updated version of its survey of people's attitudes towards what they refer to as "LGBTIQ" people earlier this week. This provides an interesting case of shifts in attitudes in one country.

"The TERFminator" – Lesbian feminist LGBTQA-activist puts "gender critical" transphobes in their place

  

The lesbian feminist and LGBTQA-activist Brita Møystad Engseth argues strongly against the transphobia of "gender critical" feminists.

As the transphobic hysteria grows more intense it becomes harder and harder for "gender critical radical feminists" or TERFs to hide the fact that they are using the exact same arguments as the extreme right.

The British TERF Helen Joyce now argues that anti-trans activists must harness the power of the state to reduce the number of transitioning trans people. This is basically a call for the erasure of trans identities.

The TERFminator

Birta Møystad Engseth (56), a Norwegian lesbian feminist and queer activist does understand the threat the TERFs have become to the queer community and the rest of society.

In an interview published in  the Norwegian LGBTQA magazine Blikk she is presented as "the TERFminator", because of her relentless campaigning against the destructive activisms of the TERFs.

"I cannot waste the rest of my life being silent," she says.

Why words like queer and trans make perfect sense

Yes, umbrella terms like queer and transgender make perfect sense, but maybe not for the reasons many think.

You have probably heard the questions: “Being gay is about sexuality and being trans is about gender identity, so why do the two belong to the same queer community?"

Or: “Trans men and women suffer from gender dysphoria, while drag queens and ‘crossdressers"‘ are just ‘performing’,” so why should being trans be a matter of gender expression instead of identity only?”

Setting the false premise of  “all crossdressers are just performing” aside, these questions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding, namely that membership in the queer and trans communities need to be based on some kind of easy definable common “essence”. 

In the case of “queer” some would argue that that would be sexual orientation, I suppose, and in the case of "transgender," gender identity or gender dysphoria.

I am not denying that there may be biological components to the development of queer and trans identities. In fact, I think it is hard to explain the existence of queer and trans people without such components, given the severe social conditioning found in societies where the cis/het (cisgender and heterosexual) ideal is the norm. Why would anyone chose to be queer or trans, given the kind of harassment we see?

 Yet, I do not think we – or science – have come to a point where such factors can be used to define social groups. Moreover, such litmus tests, if possible, would without doubt be used to invalidate some trans people, which is not a good thing.

In spite of this lack of reliable "DNA tests" for transness and queerness the existing LGBTQ+ and transgender communities represent meaningful alliances. Broad terms like queer and trans make sense at the moment we move from some kind of "objective" idea of what people essentially are over to the social scene. 

14 Ways of Being a Transphobe (and still feel good about yourself)

"I am not transphobic, but..."  Illustration: yacobchuk/crossdreamers

Harassing transgender kids, stopping trans women from going to the bathroom and calling vulnerable trans women of color sexual perverts doesn’t make anyone look good, does it? 

So what can an anti-trans activist do about that?

Always  aware of the needs of  transphobic activists I have put up some advice over at Medium. Click here for your guide to being a transphobe with pride.

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The Rise of the Left-handed Cult

The 20th century saw a dramatic rise in the number of left-handed people. Was it all part of a leftist conspiracy? Read on to find out!

Right now ant-transgender activists, left and right, are trying to tell the world that the current rise in the number of transgender people is caused by a transgender conspiracy.

RightLeftRightWrong tells a similar story about left-handed people:

The history of the sinister left-handed

In pre-modern times left-handed people were thought to consort with the Devil. Left-handedness in women might be considered proof of them being witches.

In the 19th century science and medicine were used to fight the threat of those left handed:

The infamous (but influential) 19th Century physician Cesare Lambroso, who identified various facial and racial characteristics with criminal traits, turned his attention to handedness at the end of the century and the start of the next and, perhaps not surprisingly, he identified left-handedness as a mark of pathological behaviour, savagery and criminality.

At the middle of the 20th century American psychoanalyst Abram Blau suggested that left-handedness was caused by perversity and the result of emotional negativism.

What is the connection between transphobic TERFs and behaviorism?

Over at tumblr guiltyidealist asked me the following question:

Hey! I saw a post of yours that grouped TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] with "behaviorists". Would you mind explaining what behaviorists are in this context? I'm a psych major, so "behaviorism" for me refers to Skinner boxes and shit. 😅

Here's my reply:

Actually, this was a meme originally posted by trans activist and engineer Kelley Winters over at facebook.

The whole text goes like this:

“If gender identities of cisgender children were as eggshell-fragile as behaviorists/TERFs say, the whole world would be trans, and we would be debating whether cisgenderism is a psychopathogy. Hard enough to get kids to bring their dirty plates into the kitchen, let alone control their gender.”

Pavlov’s dogs

The behaviorism of Skinner & Co was based on a view of human beings as stimulus/response machines. The most well known example used to explain behaviorism is, as you probably know,  Pavlov’s dog experiment. 

Pavlov saw that dogs would salivate in response to the food placed in front of them, but he also saw that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever they heard the footsteps of his assistant who was bringing them the food. Pavlov managed to get the dogs to associate the sound of a metronome with food. The metronome would from then on make the dogs salivate, even if they were not presented with food. This is what is referred to as conditioning.

People as programmable machines

Behaviorists ended up believing that nearly all human behaviors were the results of such conditioning. Since these “experts” refused to discuss the inner life of humans  – as feelings and thoughts were thought not to be  scientifically observable and therefor not “real” –  their “therapies”  basically consisted of “reprogramming” patients with new types of associations. 

This led to a lot of unsavory practices, including different types of “conversion therapies” where gay, lesbian and trans people where taught to associate same-sex attraction or gender variance with negative feelings, for instance by giving gay men electric shocks while showing them gay porn.

Given their completely inhumane understanding of what it means to be human, many of these “therapists” ended up as tools of a sexist, homophobic and transphobic society. They became the torturers of cis/het “normalcy”.

Feminist philosopher Judith Butler is crystal clear in her condemnation of transphobic feminists

Judith Butler presents a strong defense of transgender and nonbinary people in a new interview with The New Statesman. 

I have developed a deep respect for Judith Butler, feminist philosopher and gender theory developer. 

I do not agree with her in everything. I do believe, for instance, that her strong focus on "gender as a peformance" makes it harder to discuss the biological side of  the complex interplay between genes, epigenetics, hormones, mind, culture and society that shapes a gender identity.  

But here observations about how language, narratives and power leads to the oppression of women (and people in general) are very helpful. She is a hard read, though, which is why the interviews we have are so useful.

I am not sure Alona Ferber of the New Statesman really knew what she was letting herself into when she approached Butler for an interview. The recent British debate on feminism, gender and transgender lives has been colored by the vicious attacks of "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" (TERFs), and the way Ferber asks her questions it may look like she thinks J.K. Rowling and the TERFs represent mainstream feminism.

Butler, however, will hear nothing of it. She clearly and systematically describes a feminism that is inclusive of transgender women and where the TERFs are seen as allies of Trump and the transphobic extreme right.

This means a lot, because Butler is one of the most respected and influential gender philosophers in our time. When she says that the "gender critical" TERFs have misunderstood the basis of feminism, it is much harder to dismiss the arguments made against them.

Not that there is anything new in what she says. Trans activists have made the same arguments for years. But she presents them in a "I need to bookmark this" manner.

I have published a summary of the interview over at Trans Express that gives you the most important highlights of Judith Butler's understanding of feminism and the role of transgender women. 

Click here to read it! 

By the way: The quote in the image above is for an interview Judith Butler made with the Trans Advocate back in 2014. Her dislike of TERFs have been known for a while. I guess Ferber did not read it.

Sex, gender, biology and culture in the chaos that is the transgender debate

You need both biological and cultural perspectives to understand what makes transgender people trans. Some anti-trans activists deliberately try to ignore this fact  is in their quest to invalidate transgender people. Here's why they do this.

Recently I got a question over at tumblr from a person who wanted to understand their transgender friend a little better, and who wanted to know more about concepts like sex and gender.

For those of us who are debating sex and gender on a regular basis, the answer might seem pretty straightforward. For those who are not well versed in the gender debate, however, what may seem straightforward is normally not.

You can read my answer over at tumblr: What is the difference between sex and gender?

The article basically presents the five different phenomena people refer to when using the term "sex":

1. Biological sex
2. Sexual characteristics
3. Gender expressions
4. Gender roles
5. Gender identity

Much of the confusion and misunderstanding found in gender and transgender debate is caused by people not being able to distinguish between these different phenomena.

There is one interesting dimension I did not explicitly discuss in that article, and which might help us understand the current sex/gender/transgender debate a little bit better. 

This dimension reflects the difference between biological and cultural processes, and the interactions between them. It is used in the arguments of both trans and anti-trans activists, but not in the way many people think.

Sorry, gender cannot be reduced to biological sex.

Why is it transgender people cannot understand that biological sex is biological sex? That is pretty obvious isn't it? Or...?

The recent J. K. Rowling is a transphobic TERF debate has in many ways clarified what the anti-trans arguments boil down to.

Rowling gave her support to Maya Forstater, who – among other things – has argued that “I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.”

Forstater's statement echoes a lot of similar arguments about trans people denying the reality of biological sex. How can sex be "socially constructed", when everyone can see that little boys have penises, and little girls have vaginas?

These common sense statements are  seductive,  partly because they seem so intuitively true  and partly because many  trans activist have found it hard to communicate their concerns in simple to understand ways.

Here comes a simple and common sense explanation for why Forstater's argument is wrong.

Words about motherhood

To put the whole discussion into perspective, I am going to use somewhat different, but related example, namely the concept of motherhood.

I am sure we all can agree that a good definition of "a mother" is a person who has given birth to a child. This truth actually applies to most mammals. The biological definition of "mother" therefore implies that the person in question is female, and she has a fully functioning uterus and fertile eggs.

But note that this is the biological definition of mother. It does not reflect the way we think of motherhood in a social and cultural setting.

I grew up with a friend whose biological mother had died giving birth to him. Her sister, who happened to be infertile and had no kids, adopted him. She and her husband raised him as their own. As far as he was concerned, she was his mother and her husband was his father, and that was the way the rest of us also saw it.

In other words, there is a cultural and social definition of motherhood that is different from the biological one. We could probably say that a mother is a woman who  who raises a particular kid and loves them and cares for them. The term "mother" is defined by the interaction between the woman and the child. She sees the kid as her child, and the kid sees the woman as their mother.

Moreover, the social role of being a mother also includes other members of the family and the community. They will also see this woman as the mother of this kid.

Lesbian TERFs are using the exact same tactics against trans people as homophobes used against gay men and women

The arguments TERFs and other transphobes use against transgender people these days have also been used against gay and lesbian people.

"Trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (TERFs)  are arguing that trans women are a threat to cis women and children. The tactic is partly to sexualize transgender people, reducing their gender identity to some kind of perversion, and partly to describe them as member of some kind of sinister misguided cult ("transtrenders").

These are  not new types of tactics, historically. They have been used against feminists, people of color, working class citizens and gay men and lesbian women for ages.

So, you might rightly ask why lesbians and pro-lesbian feminists are using the same tactics against trans people, as straight, cis, people used against homosexuals. They have clearly learned nothing from history.

Over at twitter The Implausible Girl has collected a wide variety of newspaper clippings documenting how the arguments used against gay men and lesbian women are now repeated in a transgender context.  I will present some of them below.

The point is simply to document that the TERFs and other transphobes are committing the same crimes against trans people as those that have been committed against gay and lesbian people. And although there may be some people out there who ask legitimate questions about some of the arguments raised by some trans people, it is clear that as far as the TERF activists are concerned, this is not about discussing facts. This is about using any false argument that may force trans people back into their closets, even if that argument has been used against people like themselves.

Understanding the tactics of TERFs

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists are now actively harassing transgender kids in an attempt to erase their identities. (Photo:  Antonio Guillem)

Here's how trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are trying to hide their transphobic bigotry.

I never recommend that trans people get engaged in online discussions with militant TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Many of them are Internet trolls, and there will be no constructive debate.

Nevertheless,  a few times a year I do engage with them on twitter, partly to show those who are listening in that there is a different way of looking at transgender people, and partly to find out how the TERFs think. There are not many of them, but they do some serious damage, and in order to limit that damage, we need to understand what drives them.

The two main groups of TERFs

There is no simple answer to that, as the TERFs are not a homogenous group. Still, if we allow for some simplification, we could say that there are at least two groups of women associated with their cause:

1. White, straight, middle or upper class women, who are looking for some kind of excuse to force transgender children back into the closet and restrict transgender women to their homes.
2. Militant "radical feminists".  The latter group consists mainly of real cis lesbians (some of them channeling aggressive  masculine energies), or cis straight women who resent men so much that they "have abandoned heterosexuality" (also known as "political lesbians").

The most vocal trolls belong to the second category.

(Please note that these women represent a very small, but active, minority among feminists. Most feminists, lesbians included, support transgender people.)

Are cis women responsible for the murders of transgender women?

Some  trans-exclusionary "radical feminists" (TERFs) are getting really annoyed at me over at tumblr.

I believe the main reason is that I present the similarities between them and other transphobes in a clear away, and they hate to be put in the same box as right wing extremists and religious fundamentalists.

My comparison of apartheid bathroom segregation and the current TERF/extreme right attempts at banning trans women from women's spaces really got them going, as did a tumblr post I wrote on how TERFs  must share some of the blame for current violence against transgender women.

This is probably why I was asked this strange question: "how is it women's fault that men kill trans women?".

This is most likely a TERF trying to bait me. She wants get  me to write something outrageous that can be used in her fight against transgender people. And the fact that she even bother to ask such questions is a good thing. My blog is clearly making a difference.

Did I bite? But of course I did!

You can read my response regarding the murder of trans women and the role of TERFs and other "Aunt Lydias" over at Trans Express!

The photo is from the TV series The Handmaid's Tale. The woman to the left is Aunt Lydia, the matriarch that is doing all she can to support the misogynistic tyranny of Gilead.

A new US study of changes in people's attitude towards homosexuals, tells us how trans people may gain recognition and acceptance

In the US people's attitudes towards gay and lesbian people have changed dramatically, and in a positive way. It turns out it is much harder to dehumanize sexual variation when people meet gay, lesbian and bisexual people in the workplace or among friends. In other words: The more gay and lesbian people straight people have meet, the less likely they are to be homophobic. It is a fair guess that over time the same will apply to the attitudes towards trans people.

In 2004  polls showed that 60 percent of  Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while only 31 percent were in favor. Today  61 percent support same-sex marriage, while 31 percent oppose it.

Support for same-sex marriage has increased among nearly all demographic groups, across different generations, political and cultural divides and religious faiths.

In The Washington Post Samantha Schmidt argues  that the main reason for this reversal is that gay and lesbian people started to come out in great numbers. At the same time gay and lesbians became much more visible in the media.

Y does not necessarily equal M: On what intersex people can tell us about gender identity

Emily Quinn is an intersex woman with XY chromosomes and (as she says) "balls".
According to the logic of transphobes she should be banned from women's bathrooms.

The current debate about intersex women in sports, is actually weakening the TERFs and the transphobic right's attacks against transgender people. The very existence of  XY intersex women, who have been raised as women and who identify as women, makes it very hard to reduce gender identity to chromosomes and genitals.

A few times I have ended up in discussions with "trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) in social media. These women are neither "radical" nor real "feminist", sharing – as they do – the common traditionalist prejudices against transgender women.

On the "positive" side: They have taught me a bit about how prejudices are created and spread, and that might come in handy.

But Science!

TERF activists often pretend to have a discussion with you. In this pretend discussion they may even refer to Science (capital S implied), their most common argument being that trans women cannot be women, because they have Y chromosomes.

When you refer to real science, the one that show that gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon, and tell them that most experts in the medical field believe that the transgender identities are caused by variations in the hormone balance in the womb, combined with environmental and social factors, they simply fail to respond.

Alternatively they argue that the science community has been taken over by "transgender cult". In other words: They are not really interested in science at all. They want to cherry pick findings that seem to confirm their own prejudices.

The Gender Pencil Test

The TERFs are masters at using social control and stigmatization to invalidate and marginalize trans people.

Like the racists of Apartheid and Jim Crow, they know, for instance,  that  access to public bathrooms serves as a very important symbol of social acceptance and inclusion.   So they do their best to ban the people they do not like from these spaces, in order to hurt and humiliate them.

Like the white racists of South Africa they also use sports to put "The Other" in their place.

On lesbians, transgender people and feminism

Here is another question I got over at tumblr:

What definition of "lesbian" and "feminist" does this blog use? I appreciate that male-inclusionists use the term egalitarian for themselves. Why use feminist for yourselves when you support gender essentialism and refuse to acknowledge sex-based oppression?

Yes, I know, this is most likely a trans-exclusionary "radical feminist" trying to get me to show the world that I am misogynistic anti-feminist. But I cannot let an opportunity like this get wasted.  Here is my reply:

What is a lesbian?

A lesbian is normally defined as a homosexual woman, meaning that she is sexually attracted to people of her own gender. I believe that sexual orientation can often be more fluid than the binary this concept grows out of allows for, but for many this represents a perfect description of their sexuality.

Feminism

A feminist is a person who supports feminism. As I see it, feminism should at least include the following:

1. A clear understanding of how our societies (which are dominated by men and the Patriarchy) stop women from from achieving equals status to men as regards real power and influence, employment and salaries, legal framework, social welfare and services, as well as personal respect and validation. Moreover, feminism will have to include political means by which to change this.

But that is not enough. The oppression of women is so effective, because it is part of our language, the mental maps we use to navigate the world, and our institutions. This explains why women sometimes are as strong supporters of the status quo as men are (as in women voting for Trump and Putin).

Therefore feminism must include:

2. The goal of replacing the Patriarchy with a new understanding of biological sex, sexuality and cultural gender where men, women and non-binary people are understood as equals – politically, socially, and culturally. This is a society where being a man is no longer understood to be the default norm for being human, and where men no longer dominate.

Biological sex should be irrelevant. Sexual orientation should be irrelevant. Gender identity should be irrelevant. Everyone should be seen as human first, anything else second. But we are definitely not there yet. I live in a country where the three most powerful politicians are women, but where women continues to be belittled, ignored, dismissed and harassed because they are women.

Transphobic propaganda and the myths of desistance and regret

The great majority of transitioning trans people do not regret their decision to live as their true gender.

It is interesting to see how transphobic, lesbian,  "radical feminists" (TERFs) use the exact same arguments that were used to invalidate and marginalize lesbians. 

The most common one was that homosexuality was an acquired sexual perversion caused by the propaganda of the homosexual movement. If you could protect children from the gay movement, there would not be any lesbians.

This is obviously the same argument that is used today to stop lesbians from adopting children. Lesbian parenting is unnatural, will hurt the children and make them gay and so on and so forth.

The desitance-argument

The desistance-argument forms the foundation of the TERF argument against the the identity of transgender people. Since so many gender variant people, in the end, do not chose to transition, the TERFs assume that none of them are really of the gender they claim to be.  They have been duped by trans activists.

This is a completely misleading reading of the research available, as it mixes up gender nonconformity with gender identity. 

Variation in gender expression is used as a way of exploring both identity and sexuality among straight, gay and queer people. You will find “butch”, “femme” and “androgynous” people among all of them. 

The majority of these people are not gender dysphoric. They do not experience a severe misalignment between their gender identity and their assigned gender, or between mind and body. They simply express masculinity, femininity or any other aspect of cultural gender in a way that feels right for them.