Twitter has fallen. What's next for transgender debate and news sharing?

Since he took over Twitter Elon Musk has shown himself completely unable to preserve the social platform as an open and inclusive arena for information sharing and discussion. We look for alternatives.

By opening the door to trolls and embracing extremist bigots he has turned a platform that was already struggling with hate into a battlefield.

Now he has destroyed the only valuable thing left of twitter: Its extremely strong brand. We know of a lot of people who feel sick when seeing the new black and white X logo. It represents all that Musk stand for and all that has been lost during this process.

Elon Musk is a transphobe who is actively deadnaming his estranged transgender daughter. He recently declared that the term "cis" is a slur. No wonder that so many trans and queer people are moving away from twitter right now. 

The fact that some remain, though, tells us how important this platform has been for trans and gender variant people from all over the world. Some of the best trans activists, journalists, artists and scientist have shared their ideas on Twitter.

We have prepared ourselves for the fall of Twitter for quite some time now, and share transgender news and resources on these platforms:

• Mastodon

• Telegram

• Flipboard

• Tumblr

• Bluesky

We will continue sharing news and articles on eX-Twitter for the time being. Threads is not available in Europe and, yes, we are too old for TikTok!

As you can see, we are hedging our bets,  waiting to see what platform will become the new big arena for transgender discussions and news curation. The problem is that it takes a lot of time to build a following on any such platform, and it is very hard to track down your old followers on the new. We will do what we can, though.

Image: A team of three sculptors spent over two months creating the homage to the famous Norwegian Blue after the dead parrot was voted the nation’s favorite Monty Python sketch in a survey by the British Channel Gold in 2014. Photo by David Parry/PA.

UPDATE: Thanks to Julia for an invite to Bluesky!

Why is it so hard for a scientist like Richard Dawkins to understand the difference between sex and gender?

Richard Dawkins find it hard to grasp the difference between gender and biological sex, reducing gender identity to a matter of procreation in the process. No wonder he is loved by transphobic TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).

Richard Dawkins is now actively helping anti-trans activists. How can such a renowned scientist end up in such a bad place?

Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Ray Blanchard all belong to what I would call a school of traditional gender role thinking masquerading as science based facts. 

If  you go through their arguments it soon becomes clear that the statement "gender is biological sex" is simply a rephrasing of the sentence "biological sex is biological sex and biological sex," which explains nothing. But this is clearly about reproduction. Gender is reduced to sperm and eggs. They cannot grasp reality of the concept of gender as something related to, but still different from, biological sex. 

Dawkins discusses trans people with a gender critical TERF

In the video below, where Dawkins discusses transgender identities with Helen Joyce,  Dawkins find it "distinctly weird that people can simply declare that 'I am a woman, though I have a penis'". He sees this as "a strange distortion of language."

There is no cure for crossdreaming, but there are ways of integrating it into your life.

Over at r/crossdreaming a crossdreamer posted an anxious presentation of the way erotic crossdreaming (referred to as "autogynephilia" by them) had come to dominate their life. They were clearly looking for a "cure". 

It is always hard to find a good way of answering such questions about cross-gender embodiment fantasies, given that I, at least, do not think that there is a cure for crossdreaming. It is part of our nature, with roots in biology and shaped by culture and personal experiences.

There were several responses. Here is mine:

Is America turning completely transphobic? Not really!

The current onslaught on transgender people in the US is extreme and destructive, and it is easy to get the impression that most Americans have become rabid transphobes. That is in no way the case, something trans people and their friends should keep in mind.

Fox News is in not a source of fact based balanced information. The fact that they finally have sacked Tucker Carlson does not change that. But the truth is that as far as opinion polls go, they are pretty reliable. 

On April 26 they published a poll that showed that for the most part the majority of Americans do not support the Republican "culture war."

When asked about  the most important issue facing the country today, only 1% answered "Wokeness/Transgender issues".  The fact that the survey saw wokeness and transgender issues as one and the same thing, says a lot about Fox, but the answer says even more about Americans.  Transgender people are not seen as a threat by most.

So what did Americans see as important? "Economy/Jobs" (24%),  obviously, followed by "Inflation/Cost of living" (16%) and "Gun control/Gun violence" (12%). 

As far as gun violence goes, this is not an answer in support of Republican politics. Far from it. American voters favor gun limits over arming citizens to reduce gun violence. 87% support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers.

Many observers now argue that the Republican Party's obsession with "culture wars" will cost them dearly in the 2014 election. 

Targeting families with trans kids is seen as a major problem by Americans

60% of the respondents say that school boards banning books is a major problem. There is no call for censorship of LGBTQA books in schools.

Joanna's conclusion: Transgender people are who they are because nature made them possible.

Today we know very well that being trans isn't a sexually fueled mental illness, however we still need to understand how the nature of wanting to be the other sex encompasses elements of sexual energy. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Since all of the trans people I know trace their gender feelings to before puberty, it would be far too simplistic to try and reduce feelings of gender incongruence to sexual dysfunction. 

Blanchard reducing gender identity to misdirected sexuality

However the now infamous Ray Blanchard did his best to do so and by the late 1980's was simply dismissing testaments of early childhood gender dysphoria by his patients as lying (hardly a scientific method) so they could fit a narrative aimed at transition. 

He eventually concocted a theory that attributed that desire as either a misdirected sex drive or wanting to attract heterosexual men as partners (in the case of patients attracted to men). He called the made up disease that supposedly drove those of his patients who were attracted to women "autogynephilia."

At this point let us simply state that some forms of gender variance exist primarily for the achieving of sexual arousal, which only adds confusion to the mix. 

Interesting discussions about gender, sex and transgender lives from the Crossdream Life Forum

Selected discussions on gender variance and being various shades of trans from the Crossdream Life forum.

I have had the honor of being  co-funder and moderator of Crossdream Life, a discussion forum for all kinds of gender variance. There are a lot of insightful, clever and compassionate people over there.

I will use this post to draw your attention to some selected threads that bring up new and interesting perspectives on the many variations of transgender, nonbinary and queer existence, as well as on what we might call cigender gender variance.

Keep in mind that me linking to these discussions here is not an endorsement of everything that is said. This is the point of having a discussion forum like this: That members can, within reasonable limits, present ideas out of the ordinary.

A Transgender Typology and Unification Theory

Koloa has presented a very interesting alternative approach to talk about trangender identities and lives that avoid the kind of pathologization we find in many other models.

Are we just protecting cis people and the binary again?

A discussion about the gender binary, gender identity and gender expression.

Jemimah, the transgender Hemingway and more

A complex and multifaceted discussion about sex and gender, which also includes information about the transgender side of Ernest Hemingway.