The problem with the nonbinary/binary argument is that you're still putting yourself on a binary, so you're still binary.
Any high school student should be able to easily figure this out. It's proof of the terrible degradation of our public education since Bush Jr that they don't.
"Many people have reservations or even strong resistance to the participation of trans athletes in sports, particularly on women’s teams. I can understand why some people might worry about fairness or equality. But what seems to be missing from that conversation is our humanity."
"It might not seem like such a big deal to swim on a team that doesn’t align with your true self. But think about how overwhelming it would be to spend 20 hours a week in a place where you feel you don’t belong. Eventually, for me, that reality made it hard to get out of bed to go to practice."
"I believe that when trans athletes win, we deserve to be celebrated just as cis athletes are. We are not cheating by pursuing our true selves — we have not forsaken our legitimacy. Elite sports are always a combination of natural advantage or talent and commitment to hard work. There is so much more to a great athlete than hormones or height. I swim faster than some cis men ever will."
Articulate and sympathetic guest essay, although if they're taking androgenizing drugs (by definition, PEDs) they should not be competing in sport, even in male category - presumably have a therapeutic use exemption.
Excerpts from trans identified woman Iszac Henig's story:
Alternatively, “think about how overwhelming it would be to spend 20 hours a week in a place” with someone you feel doesn’t belong there, someone whose sex-based advantages invalidate your effort and perseverance, someone whose entitlement trumps your dignity and your discomfort. And maybe, think about how overwhelming it is for the mother of the man whose hatred of his masculinity and his very self are everywhere encouraged and exalted.
It’s such a false fix. We would all have done better if the first individuals experiencing dysphoria were encouraged to identify as a dog instead. You’re not comfortable in your human male body? What’s your preferred dog breed? Cocker spaniel? Than identify as one and you will be one. Now which human will be responsible for your care and feeding?
Such a false fix, clearly no more feasible or beneficial than your dog option. Yet allies affirm the one and would be ostentatiously offended by the other.
The female team doesn't align with your true self actually and you are forcing yourself on females by insisting they accept you there. We don't accept men in female spaces. Your feelings are not more important than ours, despite your insistence that we accede to your wishes.This insistence alone is evidence that you are male.
Exactly. Women/girls don’t have to convince or manipulate others into believing they are female. It is a biological reality that men cannot ever share. They need to learn to accept their male form.
Biology matters more than the emotional construct one builds for themself. This has nothing to do with humanity, which is an argument meant to manipulate women into feeling sorry for men who hate their maleness. It is not our responsibility to manage the feelings of others or to step aside to be “nice”. Biological men compete against other biological men. Biological women compete against biological women. Consequences of non-acceptance of self belong to the individual struggling to accept themself and cannot be achieved by stealing accolades and accomplishments earned by others.
Yes, the NYT has become known for its sympathetic portraits of trans-identified people. If only they'd venture into new territory: sympathetic coverage of female athletes forced to compete against and disrobe in front of male athletes.
Absolutely, female athletes have compelling stories that deserve to be told. It's frustrating that trans identified men muscling in on the female category dominate media coverage. We hardly ever hear of the converse, trans identified women, which was what made Iszac Henig's story interesting - and the fact that the male swim team accepted her. It seems an intolerable loss, that a young woman should assume a simulacrum of masculinity, at the sacrifice of health, authentic sporting ability and fertility.
Yes. She is an outlier. Most women just stay in the women’s category regardless of gender ID. They can’t compete w the men (neither can Henig), the other women accept them because they know they’re women, and they do not seem to find it psychologically intolerable to participate on women’s teams. Which sheds light on the myth that men who would prefer to be women are somehow too psychologically fragile to participate on men’s teams. They could do it if they want to. A few do.
She took a coveted spot on the women’s team at Yale, then abandoned her teammates and swam in the men’s team without qualifying for it. She treated the university swimming program like her personal validation regime. The ONLY way these women get to be in men’s teams is by being admitted to the women’s side in a college setting and then being indulged by the university when they switch, wasting resources and time. I believe there is a woman who did the same at Harvard.
Humans are intelligent creatures capable of contemplating complex abstract topics. But it's often a good idea to stop doing that and keep it really simple instead.
"What Does Non-Binary Mean?"
It means technological advances make transhumanism a possibility, robots are poised to take over many jobs, and artificial wombs are only a couple of decades away.
The ruling classes no longer need or want a gendered society full of strong men and fertile women who want to pair bond and raise families. They want a population of genderless, sterile, atomised worker drones instead. Robots can replace men and artificial wombs can replace women. AI can raise the kids and ensure they are effectively and specifically indoctrinated, for their allocated jobs.
But rather than overtly outlaw families, pair bonding, sexual dimorphism, reproduction etc (which would cause a backlash) .... it's a lot easier to socially engineer society with feminism and then trans ideology, while simultaneously removing gendered terms from language, culture and the legal system, and injecting everyone with sterilising agents under the banner of some imaginary health emergency with a free burger and fries and a rainbow sticker as an added incentive.
It makes a lot more sense when you don't over think it.
Thanks for weighing in. I'm not sure I understand all of this, and I disagree with some of it. I'm a lifelong feminist and do not believe feminists (or lesbians, if you're slighting us with the "pair bonding" references) are the culprits. I don't think covid was an imaginary health emergency, nor that vaccines sterilized people, if that's what you mean there. I don't think "the ruling classes...want a population of genderless, sterile," etc. I think the ruling classes are still white men who know the difference between women and men and are exerting more control over women than they should.
But we agree that gender ideology is widespread, dangerous, and illogical. And that a certain "back to basics" approach - there are only two sexes; men and women are different in many obvious ways - would be helpful.
I won't attempt to back up my bullet-point thesis with references and context because that would be a long read.
But I'll just add that I think feminists have been victims of an ideology which has exploited their concerns for the purposes of social engineering, and that this is now also happening with the 'trans community' (or maybe I should just say 'young people' in general).
I don't know what Naomi Wolf's current standing is in the feminist world, but I'd certainly recommend checking out her research into the covid vaccine - which focuses on its devastating effects on pregnancy and fertility. She gave a very good talk at Hillsdale College a while back. It's called 'what's in the pfizer documents' or something like that.
As for the ruling class.... they have as much or as little power as we decide to put in their lap. If everyone stopped watching TV and Hollywood movies and home schooled their own children the ruling class would have no way to indoctrinate and corrupt the youth and society could then return to relative sanity once those children began to fill up society as adults.
All the trans stuff is lies, lies, lies, and more lies! This self serving cult thinks of nothing but me,me, me.
No real world problems concern them, but they’re so” mistreated”!
What bull! Have they heard of people being bombed, losing their families? Have they heard of people with cancer? Have they heard of animals being mistreated?
None of that is their concern! They are selfish self absorbed jerks!
Get a life ! It’s not all about you and your” suffering “!
Non-binary is insane! Plus these crazy people don’t even accept the binary of sex, which is a fact, so how can they be “nonbinary “ if there is no binary? So stupid!
Non binary is a non issue in these two cases. Both are females they just decided to reject biological sex and up until recently no one knew what non binary was. I have no issue with them competing alongside their biological sex when it comes to sport. My issue is biological males thinking they are women and competing alongside women. Language needs to be correct, why does everyone tip toe, around people it just adds to confusion and leads to false hoods, you believe what you want doesn’t mean the rest of society have to go along with it. How many males are competing in the olympics as women, this would be interesting to know how many cheats there are.
Hi The 80s Called, Yes, that's the core problem in sports: Males demanding a right to compete alongside girls and women. I do write about that in previous essays (see "But She Identifies as a Woman" and others) and will again. We don't yet know about the Olympics. After the Lia Thomas debacle, many elite-level sport federations (World Aquatics, World Athletics, World Cycling) have restricted the women's category to just females - unless males did not go through male puberty, which almost all did.
The problem is massive at lower levels - schools, clubs, recreational sports. There, the rules are different, sometimes allowing "self-ID" (any man can enter if he just says the magic words: I'm a woman). So it seems to be girls and recreational athletes, including everyone from skateboarders to discus throwers, who are suffering most - including losing out on prize money, scholarships, and motivation to keep training in the face of obviously unfair practices.
Thanks Mariah, in New Zealand we have grass roots sports that allow men to identify as women and compete in the female category. We also have national mountain biker who is a man racing in the women’s category and of course winning titles. The women have been told if they speak out it will affect their selection in the future. Do you know how the men still perform if they took puberty blockers and cross sex hormones ?
I have read about Maori women organizing against the male takeover of women's spaces and sports in New Zealand. I'll be very interested in hearing how entitled white people frame their arguments against Maori women.
This is so good. You take a seemingly complicated subject and simplify it. Or maybe it's really a simple subject that society has made complicated and you unravel. Well done!
Hi Judy, My goal precisely, so it's great to hear that it worked for you. Also, thanks so much for reviewing and editing an early draft. Your input is always so helpful.
This nails it: "confusing a preference or style (androgyny) with physical attributes (femaleness or maleness)" ... it's been in human culture for so long, it's almost impossible for us to separate femme/butch styles from female/male bodies as a default assumption.
I do not know how to best create that separation so that every human, whether man or woman, can choose clothes, jobs, styles, hobbies, that they like, without pretending that "men" and "women" are biological realties.
I understand the desire because I've always thought of myself as a person or human first, although I obviously know I am biologically a woman. I think gender stereotypes are unhealthy, but pretending biology isn't real is equally unhealthy.
Yes. The stereotypes and the magical thinking are both unhealthy. The fact of femaleness could be, as it seems to be for you, just a known fact, not a defining feature of one's daily reality except when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, sex, sports, etc. Alas. We were heading that direction, and now we're not - or not if trans activists have their way.
“… rejecting sex roles and accepting our maleness or femaleness as a simple fact that is only relevant for such things as sexuality, procreation, sports performance, privacy, and urination positions…”
Why, why, why is this not where we are?
So sad that things have gone the other way.
Wish we could toss the word “gender” completely (other than in linguistics) and stick to “sex” for clarity. “Gender” at this point adds nothing but confusion to the discourse.
Yes it does, and yes, let's toss it. In addition to old-fashioned, sexist stereotypes, the "gender identity" terms point toward personality type. I'd love to see them called personalities or something un-confusable with sex. Then the fact that there are 100+ [gender identities] on Wikipedia and 3,000+ on WikiGender would make some sort of sense: a self-definition game that the young, especially, seem to be enjoying. Sure. Have at it. Choose a personality type that fits you. Like Myers-Briggs, Hogwart House, whatever. It's natural to want to find our tribes. Unnatural to cut off healthy body parts in order to express one's "true self" in stereotypical ways.
Oh I like the idea of making a new term and doing it like a personality test! Gender is too attached to sex in our minds. We need someone really famous to coin a new word!!!
It's where we were *going* via 2nd wave feminisim...
Lots of theories about how we got derailed: the third wave and various critical theories, especially postmodernism and its demon spawn, queer theory; conservative backlash; the need to always have some righteous cause for activists (and their wealthy organizations) to do after same-sex equality was achieved; massive pharmaceutical profits to be made; technologism/transhumanism...
Love the "demon spawn." :-) Yes, maybe all of those plus covid-related isolation, social media influencers, esp TikTok and YouTube, a certain susceptibility girls seem to have for social contagion (anorexia, cutting, etc.) And yes, alas, we 2nd wave feminists were heading that direction, or trying to. And we did make tremendous progress, of course.
I do think that's part of it. Research shows there are usually co-morbidities including autism, OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, adverse childhood experiences, and more. "I must be a boy" becomes a solution to numerous problems, a promise of a whole new person, with a new name and, in many schools, apparently, a special status. Then the detransitioners realize that "transitioning" did not resolve their underlying issues -- and added new problems.
Q: I have more questions.
A: I have more answers.
🤣
The problem with the nonbinary/binary argument is that you're still putting yourself on a binary, so you're still binary.
Any high school student should be able to easily figure this out. It's proof of the terrible degradation of our public education since Bush Jr that they don't.
"Many people have reservations or even strong resistance to the participation of trans athletes in sports, particularly on women’s teams. I can understand why some people might worry about fairness or equality. But what seems to be missing from that conversation is our humanity."
"It might not seem like such a big deal to swim on a team that doesn’t align with your true self. But think about how overwhelming it would be to spend 20 hours a week in a place where you feel you don’t belong. Eventually, for me, that reality made it hard to get out of bed to go to practice."
"I believe that when trans athletes win, we deserve to be celebrated just as cis athletes are. We are not cheating by pursuing our true selves — we have not forsaken our legitimacy. Elite sports are always a combination of natural advantage or talent and commitment to hard work. There is so much more to a great athlete than hormones or height. I swim faster than some cis men ever will."
Articulate and sympathetic guest essay, although if they're taking androgenizing drugs (by definition, PEDs) they should not be competing in sport, even in male category - presumably have a therapeutic use exemption.
Excerpts from trans identified woman Iszac Henig's story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/opinion/trans-athlete-swimming.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vE8.y4aF.640IrnyHsMEq&smid=url-share
Alternatively, “think about how overwhelming it would be to spend 20 hours a week in a place” with someone you feel doesn’t belong there, someone whose sex-based advantages invalidate your effort and perseverance, someone whose entitlement trumps your dignity and your discomfort. And maybe, think about how overwhelming it is for the mother of the man whose hatred of his masculinity and his very self are everywhere encouraged and exalted.
It’s such a false fix. We would all have done better if the first individuals experiencing dysphoria were encouraged to identify as a dog instead. You’re not comfortable in your human male body? What’s your preferred dog breed? Cocker spaniel? Than identify as one and you will be one. Now which human will be responsible for your care and feeding?
Such a false fix, clearly no more feasible or beneficial than your dog option. Yet allies affirm the one and would be ostentatiously offended by the other.
Exactly. There here's another story we never hear: Trans-ID men expressing compassion for women, even tho they claim to "feel like" us.
The female team doesn't align with your true self actually and you are forcing yourself on females by insisting they accept you there. We don't accept men in female spaces. Your feelings are not more important than ours, despite your insistence that we accede to your wishes.This insistence alone is evidence that you are male.
Exactly. Women/girls don’t have to convince or manipulate others into believing they are female. It is a biological reality that men cannot ever share. They need to learn to accept their male form.
Biology matters more than the emotional construct one builds for themself. This has nothing to do with humanity, which is an argument meant to manipulate women into feeling sorry for men who hate their maleness. It is not our responsibility to manage the feelings of others or to step aside to be “nice”. Biological men compete against other biological men. Biological women compete against biological women. Consequences of non-acceptance of self belong to the individual struggling to accept themself and cannot be achieved by stealing accolades and accomplishments earned by others.
Well said.
Yes, the NYT has become known for its sympathetic portraits of trans-identified people. If only they'd venture into new territory: sympathetic coverage of female athletes forced to compete against and disrobe in front of male athletes.
Absolutely, female athletes have compelling stories that deserve to be told. It's frustrating that trans identified men muscling in on the female category dominate media coverage. We hardly ever hear of the converse, trans identified women, which was what made Iszac Henig's story interesting - and the fact that the male swim team accepted her. It seems an intolerable loss, that a young woman should assume a simulacrum of masculinity, at the sacrifice of health, authentic sporting ability and fertility.
Yes. She is an outlier. Most women just stay in the women’s category regardless of gender ID. They can’t compete w the men (neither can Henig), the other women accept them because they know they’re women, and they do not seem to find it psychologically intolerable to participate on women’s teams. Which sheds light on the myth that men who would prefer to be women are somehow too psychologically fragile to participate on men’s teams. They could do it if they want to. A few do.
She took a coveted spot on the women’s team at Yale, then abandoned her teammates and swam in the men’s team without qualifying for it. She treated the university swimming program like her personal validation regime. The ONLY way these women get to be in men’s teams is by being admitted to the women’s side in a college setting and then being indulged by the university when they switch, wasting resources and time. I believe there is a woman who did the same at Harvard.
Yes, the Harvard one is Schuyler Bailar.
Bravo!
Thanks, Bill.
Humans are intelligent creatures capable of contemplating complex abstract topics. But it's often a good idea to stop doing that and keep it really simple instead.
"What Does Non-Binary Mean?"
It means technological advances make transhumanism a possibility, robots are poised to take over many jobs, and artificial wombs are only a couple of decades away.
The ruling classes no longer need or want a gendered society full of strong men and fertile women who want to pair bond and raise families. They want a population of genderless, sterile, atomised worker drones instead. Robots can replace men and artificial wombs can replace women. AI can raise the kids and ensure they are effectively and specifically indoctrinated, for their allocated jobs.
But rather than overtly outlaw families, pair bonding, sexual dimorphism, reproduction etc (which would cause a backlash) .... it's a lot easier to socially engineer society with feminism and then trans ideology, while simultaneously removing gendered terms from language, culture and the legal system, and injecting everyone with sterilising agents under the banner of some imaginary health emergency with a free burger and fries and a rainbow sticker as an added incentive.
It makes a lot more sense when you don't over think it.
Hi Plato's Rabbit Cave,
Thanks for weighing in. I'm not sure I understand all of this, and I disagree with some of it. I'm a lifelong feminist and do not believe feminists (or lesbians, if you're slighting us with the "pair bonding" references) are the culprits. I don't think covid was an imaginary health emergency, nor that vaccines sterilized people, if that's what you mean there. I don't think "the ruling classes...want a population of genderless, sterile," etc. I think the ruling classes are still white men who know the difference between women and men and are exerting more control over women than they should.
But we agree that gender ideology is widespread, dangerous, and illogical. And that a certain "back to basics" approach - there are only two sexes; men and women are different in many obvious ways - would be helpful.
I won't attempt to back up my bullet-point thesis with references and context because that would be a long read.
But I'll just add that I think feminists have been victims of an ideology which has exploited their concerns for the purposes of social engineering, and that this is now also happening with the 'trans community' (or maybe I should just say 'young people' in general).
I don't know what Naomi Wolf's current standing is in the feminist world, but I'd certainly recommend checking out her research into the covid vaccine - which focuses on its devastating effects on pregnancy and fertility. She gave a very good talk at Hillsdale College a while back. It's called 'what's in the pfizer documents' or something like that.
As for the ruling class.... they have as much or as little power as we decide to put in their lap. If everyone stopped watching TV and Hollywood movies and home schooled their own children the ruling class would have no way to indoctrinate and corrupt the youth and society could then return to relative sanity once those children began to fill up society as adults.
'Back to basics' is definitely the way forward :)
Thanks for restacking, Joe. Love your profile. Yes, Irreversible Damage is an eye-opening book! Glad to learn you’re on our team.
All the trans stuff is lies, lies, lies, and more lies! This self serving cult thinks of nothing but me,me, me.
No real world problems concern them, but they’re so” mistreated”!
What bull! Have they heard of people being bombed, losing their families? Have they heard of people with cancer? Have they heard of animals being mistreated?
None of that is their concern! They are selfish self absorbed jerks!
Get a life ! It’s not all about you and your” suffering “!
Non-binary is insane! Plus these crazy people don’t even accept the binary of sex, which is a fact, so how can they be “nonbinary “ if there is no binary? So stupid!
Non binary is a non issue in these two cases. Both are females they just decided to reject biological sex and up until recently no one knew what non binary was. I have no issue with them competing alongside their biological sex when it comes to sport. My issue is biological males thinking they are women and competing alongside women. Language needs to be correct, why does everyone tip toe, around people it just adds to confusion and leads to false hoods, you believe what you want doesn’t mean the rest of society have to go along with it. How many males are competing in the olympics as women, this would be interesting to know how many cheats there are.
Hi The 80s Called, Yes, that's the core problem in sports: Males demanding a right to compete alongside girls and women. I do write about that in previous essays (see "But She Identifies as a Woman" and others) and will again. We don't yet know about the Olympics. After the Lia Thomas debacle, many elite-level sport federations (World Aquatics, World Athletics, World Cycling) have restricted the women's category to just females - unless males did not go through male puberty, which almost all did.
The problem is massive at lower levels - schools, clubs, recreational sports. There, the rules are different, sometimes allowing "self-ID" (any man can enter if he just says the magic words: I'm a woman). So it seems to be girls and recreational athletes, including everyone from skateboarders to discus throwers, who are suffering most - including losing out on prize money, scholarships, and motivation to keep training in the face of obviously unfair practices.
Here's a list of just a sampling of those male winners in women's sports: https://womenssportspolicy.org/253-male-victories-in-female-sports/
Thanks Mariah, in New Zealand we have grass roots sports that allow men to identify as women and compete in the female category. We also have national mountain biker who is a man racing in the women’s category and of course winning titles. The women have been told if they speak out it will affect their selection in the future. Do you know how the men still perform if they took puberty blockers and cross sex hormones ?
I have read about Maori women organizing against the male takeover of women's spaces and sports in New Zealand. I'll be very interested in hearing how entitled white people frame their arguments against Maori women.
“Nonbinary” doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t exist. Simple as.
I used to quip that if you're not a Duggar, you're gender nonconforming.
Hilarious.
This is so good. You take a seemingly complicated subject and simplify it. Or maybe it's really a simple subject that society has made complicated and you unravel. Well done!
Hi Judy, My goal precisely, so it's great to hear that it worked for you. Also, thanks so much for reviewing and editing an early draft. Your input is always so helpful.
This nails it: "confusing a preference or style (androgyny) with physical attributes (femaleness or maleness)" ... it's been in human culture for so long, it's almost impossible for us to separate femme/butch styles from female/male bodies as a default assumption.
I do not know how to best create that separation so that every human, whether man or woman, can choose clothes, jobs, styles, hobbies, that they like, without pretending that "men" and "women" are biological realties.
I understand the desire because I've always thought of myself as a person or human first, although I obviously know I am biologically a woman. I think gender stereotypes are unhealthy, but pretending biology isn't real is equally unhealthy.
Yes. The stereotypes and the magical thinking are both unhealthy. The fact of femaleness could be, as it seems to be for you, just a known fact, not a defining feature of one's daily reality except when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, sex, sports, etc. Alas. We were heading that direction, and now we're not - or not if trans activists have their way.
“… rejecting sex roles and accepting our maleness or femaleness as a simple fact that is only relevant for such things as sexuality, procreation, sports performance, privacy, and urination positions…”
Why, why, why is this not where we are?
So sad that things have gone the other way.
Wish we could toss the word “gender” completely (other than in linguistics) and stick to “sex” for clarity. “Gender” at this point adds nothing but confusion to the discourse.
Yes it does, and yes, let's toss it. In addition to old-fashioned, sexist stereotypes, the "gender identity" terms point toward personality type. I'd love to see them called personalities or something un-confusable with sex. Then the fact that there are 100+ [gender identities] on Wikipedia and 3,000+ on WikiGender would make some sort of sense: a self-definition game that the young, especially, seem to be enjoying. Sure. Have at it. Choose a personality type that fits you. Like Myers-Briggs, Hogwart House, whatever. It's natural to want to find our tribes. Unnatural to cut off healthy body parts in order to express one's "true self" in stereotypical ways.
Oh I like the idea of making a new term and doing it like a personality test! Gender is too attached to sex in our minds. We need someone really famous to coin a new word!!!
JK Rowling would be a good candidate for such a project. She already came up with the Hogwarts Houses and is totally on our side.
It's where we were *going* via 2nd wave feminisim...
Lots of theories about how we got derailed: the third wave and various critical theories, especially postmodernism and its demon spawn, queer theory; conservative backlash; the need to always have some righteous cause for activists (and their wealthy organizations) to do after same-sex equality was achieved; massive pharmaceutical profits to be made; technologism/transhumanism...
Love the "demon spawn." :-) Yes, maybe all of those plus covid-related isolation, social media influencers, esp TikTok and YouTube, a certain susceptibility girls seem to have for social contagion (anorexia, cutting, etc.) And yes, alas, we 2nd wave feminists were heading that direction, or trying to. And we did make tremendous progress, of course.
A complex subject, we all need to begin to understand. Thanks!
Hey Kathleen, thanks so much for letting me know you found it valuable.
Most mental illnesses are.
I do think that's part of it. Research shows there are usually co-morbidities including autism, OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, adverse childhood experiences, and more. "I must be a boy" becomes a solution to numerous problems, a promise of a whole new person, with a new name and, in many schools, apparently, a special status. Then the detransitioners realize that "transitioning" did not resolve their underlying issues -- and added new problems.
Mean? Stupid, confused, mentally unstable, a fad. You know, just for starters.
I wish it were just a fad, but unfortunately, it’s more than that , if ordinary people have to bow down to these liars!
Hi David, I agree about confused, often mentally unstable, a fad. Thanks for reading my story.