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.

Transgender kids do not regret transitioning

Remarkably few transgender kids regret transitioning socially, new research shows. 94 percent stick with their identity.

The youth desistance myth

Anti-transgender activists who attack health care for trans kids love to question the stability of the gender identities of children. The main message is that (1) the kids have no idea what they are talking about, (2) they are influenced by "the transgender cult" and misguided parents and (3) most of the children become cis (non-transgender) in the end.

This is all very strange, given the kind of harassment trans and queer youth face when coming out. If this was all a propaganda-fueled whim, why do their transgender identities persist over so many years? 

What about the research documenting that most of them become cis in the end? We hear numbers from 65 to 95 percent, right?  

Well, it turns out that those researchers did not study gender dysphoric transgender kids who identified as another gender (compared to the one assigned to them at birth). Instead they looked at kids who expressed any kind of gender variance (as in expressing untypical gendered behavior), which is obviously not the same.

More about that here and here.

As for trans kids following fashions or the transgender ideologies of parents: We have heard this before, right: "Gay parents raise gay kids!" Right wing extremists and leftist TERFs talk about "grooming." It doesn't work that way. Most gay and trans kids have cis/straight parents.  In fact, most parents of trans kids go through periods of denial and resistance.

New research shows that 94 percent stick with their trans identity

So the persistence and intensity of the gender identities of transgender kids are clearly based in something more stable and fundamental than transgender propaganda. But do we have the science to back that up?

What modern art can tell us about gender identity and biological sex

But is it real?

The history of the use of linear perspective in art has a lot to teach us about the way be approach the "reality"  of biological sex and gender.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend about the reality of reality  the other day  and we came over the following example:

Two-dimensional perspective images

At some point in time someone came up with the idea of two-dimensional linear perspective drawing (first in Antiquity and then again in the Renaissance). From the 15th century onwards this gradually became the norm for how "the real world" should be depicted. 

Photography became so popular because the photos produced lived up to the ideal of two-dimensional perspective.

By two-dimensional perspective I mean using various tricks to give the illusion of depth in an image on a flat surface, as paper or canvas. One such trick is to present parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance.

Leon Battista Alberti, Della Pictura drawing showing a horizon line and vanishing point, 1435. Via Classical Art.

Two-dimensional perspective art (and later photos)  became the default standard for "real". "I like paintings that look like reality," people would say and point to pictures like this one:

What does the word "gender" really mean?

The main problem with the term gender is that it is not referring to one phenomenon only, but many. It is this ambiguity of language that makes discussions so confusing. But it also this complexity that makes the topic so interesting. 

The reason for this ambiguity is that the language most people use today has been developed within a culture that requires you think of male and female as "natural" and mutually exclusive. Moreover, these concepts of male and female are supposed to determine everything you are or can do.

However, reality does not care. Nature does not care. And everyone violates these rules on a daily basis. Everyone!

Here are the most important phenomena referred to as "gender":

Biological sex

Biological sex refers to what is called "gametes", as in sperm and egg. Gametes are real, so biological sex is real. 

Still, the two sexes are not mutually exclusive. Nature throws a lot of dice that comes up intersex, with different chromosomes (as in XY women and XX men) and a wide variety of ambiguous genitalia and sex characteristics.

Many species reproduced by way of gametes, as in human sperm an eggs. Other species have other ways of continuing the species.

By the way: Not even post-modernist gender philosophers deny the existence of gametes.  They are simply pointing out that our understanding of what the existence of biological sex means for our daily lives is colored by culture, and that the scientists themselves are also influenced by culture when they develop and present their theories. 

They are right about this, and scientists may also change their views based on new concepts and new ideals developed elsewhere. Homosexuality and gender dysphoria are, for instance, no longer seen as mental illnesses.  

Note also the way transphobes try to present  the statement "gender is the same as biological sex" as science. That statement represents, at best, 19th century science. I know of no serious scientists today – whether they come from the natural sciences or from the social ones – that argue that the complexity of cultural gender can be reduced to gametes, genitalia or chromosomes. 

Cultural gender

Throughout the ages various cultures have created an insane number of social rules as to how men and women should dress and behave. A Roman man would not be caught dead in trousers. Most cis/het American men today will not be seen in a toga ("Eeeeek! A dress!!!)

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.